Pudding321

I try to keep an open mind to the people involved in visual novels, but I often cannot. And even though I don't like this publisher, it doesn't mean I don't like the games they help distribute. Anyway, I would have preferred a text version update or wrap-up. The video just didn't appeal to me.

Junichi's younger sister Miya in Amagami...

I don't really like this kind of video. Or maybe I don't really like SP in the first place...

Came back just to say that it has already been greenlit.

Adagio

You can play any game you have bought, digital or physical. But the PSN you access stores only games that are sold in your region. So if you want to play games outside your region, you would have to buy physical copies. I bought zero escape from a HMV shop in my city because it isn't available in local retail stores or the playstation store on my device. Even if you are able to buy physical copies, sometimes problems arise when you want to buy a game that is only set for digital release, like English versions of the Atelier series. You might not find it in the PSN store in your region. Then you might need to stick with the Japanese version in the end.

Okay, maybe I didn't write it clearly. I meant the main character, you, as the first person in the visual novel doesn't have a voice. You also speak through the textbox; other characters in the game respond to you, but you don't have a 'voice' unlike them. It doesn't mean you are mute or psychic and have powers to speak to people without opening your mouth. It is only natural and of the norms for a visual novel to have the male protagonist muted. No further explanation is needed. If you have a muted main character in a film, you would need to have a good justification. You don't need this justification in a vn. That's why this makes it a specific element in a VN. I can hardly think of any film that has this specific 'element'. Correct me if I am wrong. And I know there are visual novels with no voice. It isn't a necessity. And we shouldn't jump to any conclusions about gender issues. I'm pretty sure there are otomes where only the girl protagonist does not have a voice.

No, that's what I thought what you want. And you have misunderstood what I meant by formulas in visual novels. Reread what I said about genres and things being exclusive to a VN but not things that are a necessity in a VN. I have something to talk regarding the absence of voice in the first person. Sometimes they do have a voice, some other times they don't have a voice only to deceive the player like zero escape, and most other times they just don't. The general proposition is that players are more likely to identify themselves with the first player; others say that a male voice destroys the game. I think either explanation is reasonable. This is something you cannot do in films and hence exclusive to the subject we refer to as visual novels.

I guess mr Newton is trying to find out certain formulas in visual novels that do the magic differently from other media forms. But... I'm not sure how you can take something directly from a book and throw it into a film. The resources you can use in a film are really different than a visual novel.

I am actually used to reading from right to left in Japanese novels... What I am saying is that our expectations about culture and visual novels can be picked out, extracted, and generalised. We can expect a choice here; we can expect a dead end here; we can expect an H-scene here. It becomes so routine that we might be able to find formulas in visual novels! It doesn't really matter if there are one or two outcasts who read them differently, or whether there are divergences here or there. As long as there is a dominant trend, we can pick up dominant features. In reverse, visual novels that play with these expectations succeed because these expectations are rooted in the reader.

Then these features can be strategies that are exclusive to the visual novel as a genre. Not in the sense that every visual novel has to use the same strategies, but that only visual novels have the capacity to execute them. Most novels won't be be able to provide routes, not to mention other features that make f/sn a great visual novel.

inb4 Mr. Newton gives an example about how you may not know the number of pages there are in an ebook, or you may already know the amount of juice left in a visual novel when you play it for the second time. I can see why mr newton thinks otherwise though. There is something called genre, and there is something called interpretive frames. Politicians used to political discourse employ particular linguistic strategies in public speaking. One reason why fervent visual novel readers has an experience different from a person reading the visual novel for the first time is that readers used to this genre can quickly pick up visual novels through accessing their cultural toolkit. For example you may already have a particular habit in saving before flags, turning on or off the auto-read function, or probably you may recognise that the abrupt H-scene has nothing to do with the story and you can just skip it.

Delays only build the track for the hype train to crash.

Let's admit it: visual novels are only storybooks for adults but with hentai.

Not with money flowing in from SP

You are entirely going against Mcluhan's model despite using his words like 'cold or 'hot'. Television is a cold media, and it was Mcluhan's starting point in his model. I would encourage you to redefine these words or use your own words. Also, I would like to point out again that participation is filling out the gaps in interpretation. A book or a manga is more cold because we need to interpret it along with our imagination, which would make the experience very different among different people. On the other hand games are cold because it demands less imagination for us to interpret it, and so gamers would more likely share similar experiences. Television is cold, while films are hot (unless you sit down and watch through a film on your 'television set'). This is because of the technical difference in television programs consisting of ads, breaks, and user experience where the user would walk away, have a cup of tea, come back, and even switch channels . One thing wonderful about anime on TV when I was a child was that I often missed episodes and parts of episodes, but I could still follow on and get the gist. I would like to part from Mcluhan here in the sense that I believe the content also defines whether it is hot or cold. To Mcluhan, a personal computer would either be hot or cold, or print would either be hot or cold (fitting his famous quote 'the medium is the message'). So I do not consider games as a medium that dictate whether it is cold or hot, but that it contains content that lean more on the hot side. For games I would like to refer to 3D commercial games like SIMS, GTA, or fps games. Even though on the other hand we may have 3D models in visual novels like zero escape, it is clear that the former is more realistic in terms of graphics and sound. Regarding mechanics and user feedback in games, they are contained and programmed within the game. Sure, there are mods and people trying to brick the game, but the gaming experience is under control. The player does not generate extra meaning within the game. John Fiske proposes three levels in codes of television: reality, representation, and ideology. Both novels and games can achieve all three levels in coding, but games can achieve representation more fully through graphics and sound. This reduces the diversity in meaning generation. For a hot media like games, users are more concentrated and involved in receiving the message rather than producing meanings on their own. Are games interactive? Absolutely. Do games require a lot of participation in interpretation? Probably not.

This reminds me of the 'hot and cool media' Marshall Mcluhan suggested. Allow me to take this approach. Even though books stimulate only one single sense vision and may appear to be a hot media, they are in fact a cool media because they require the user to fill in gaps and demand more participation. Games on the other hand are hot media which need less gaps to fill and demand less participation (even though it does stimulate different senses like a cool media). Of courses there were no visual novels at Mcluhan's time, but I would say visual novels are an even cooler media than books on this scale, since there are many gaps to fill and it extends more senses in human. Here is a rough scale. Hot <<<<<<< Games, Books, Visual Novels >>>>>>>>> Cold Less Participation <<<<<<< Games, Books, Visual Novels >>>>>>>>> More Participation So visual novels are not in between games and books according to this model. It is in fact something that requires even more participation—not only our imagination from the text, but also from the sound and the graphics. For games I refer to those with high definition and realistic that we need to fill in less gaps, like GTA or fighting games with super smooth animations. But so far we don't have realistic visual novels but instead nukige or moe girls that demand our imaginations.

Fellow Danes

Yeah, but school days had already done this, so...

any h-scene in fate/stay night because the protag needs it for mana...JUSTIFIED

I would like to point out it's not the quantity of reading you do. You can read harry potter, twighlight and every book in Hunger Games (no offence to these novels though) and your writing can still remain as bad as some naruto fanfiction. Read something good, think about it, and if possible, talk to someone about it. I remember taking poem courses in university, and even though these poems were very short, they contained more inspiration value than many other novels I read. Reading and writing are not directly transferrable skills. I know some writers who don't like reading novels, and their writings are superb. Just read when you really enjoy them.

Harvest moon, yes. I miss the days when DLC wasn't a THING.

Pokemon, dota, some random online games...