Ahh, whoops. I just now went back to read this and realized I omitted a crucial bit of info. I meant the English Android VN market is crap. The management would like to apologize.
Ah, yeah. Can't argue with that. It seems like it shouldn't be too hard to just export your VN into an Android format, since most are made in Ren'Py anyway, which supports that, but I guess it's too much hassle for projects that aren't designed to work well in both.
As to the other issue, I oppose censorship as a principle. If the original creator put something in, then for fuck's sake leave it in and/or translate it to be as close to the original as possible. I've all but given up on trying to watch cartoons brought over here from another country (the dub versions, at least) because we seem to mangle the fuck out of them. Digimon was butchered. Rockman EXE was heavily modified (or so I've heard). LBX's first season was so eviscerated that the dub has *half* of the episodes that the original did.
The argument that's come up here before is that often the sex scenes are added for reasons other than art in the first place, which is true. Personally, I prefer having extra stuff (which you can skip) than omitting stuff (and not knowing it was there). I can see the arguments for both sides, but I think that the best case would be if artists could just make what they want and what fits the story best without having to have sex or having to omit it according to the preference of their local market. But sex is far from the only thing where this is an issue, just the most prominent, and saying that artists should be uninfluenced by practical constraints us a utopian to the point of irrelevance anyway.
I'll also say that I'd rather have sex scenes than titillation and romance that completely dance around the subject of sex, which is more pandering, in my view, than an easily skippable shoehorned sex scene, and I much prefer something that doesn't fit when it's a small part of the package compared to when it creeps into the narrative but isn't an aspect of it which progresses reasonably.
Eh. I wouldn't mind introducing all age version as default, if there is option to toggle back the "original" version. Besides widening audience appeal
The thing is, it doesn't typically widen audience appeal. The VN audience in Japan is only a certain size, because it's a stigmatized hobby, and kids are going to find it weird regardless of the content. Combine that with the fact that personal computers for recreational use are much more limited in market penetration compared to the west, and there really wouldn't be a significant new base of potential buyers opened up for most games.
I'm probably biased since I prefer "visual novel" over "dating sim" though. Most of my favourite VN have been all age, such as Stein;Gate and Key games. Contrarily, I find VN with sex tends to veer toward formulaic moe love love nonsense...
The thing about those games without sexual content is that in order to succeed, they face a much steeper battle. They need something to set them apart, and must be high quality, or else they fail. VNs with sex are a much safer bet, and more experimental things do better in this large subset of the market. So you do get a lot of generic stuff, but you also see a lot more innovation. Of course, this perspective of mine seems to be a bit dated. It's been a while since Sengoku Rance, and even since Monstergirl Quest, and non-sexual content is doing better, not least because VNs are becoming popular in the more sex-averse west. I think things are changing, but for the time being a Japanese developer who wants to succeed still has a better chance with sex scenes.
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Topic: Visual novel thread (Read 45694 times)