Darklord Rooke

And what would your point be? I never said they were the same, I said CRPGs sought to emulate tabletop RPGs. As I keep on saying, offering infinite choices and a player driven story is impossible with current technology, if you think it isn't then please inform us how you would achieve that. Having players making limited choices within a presented framework is so far as close as you can get without going multiplayer. Because of this, a 'told story' has always been a fundamental part of the CRPG framework, as 'a' narrative is closer to RPG roots than 'no narrative.' I am not thinking of Visual Novels as novels at all. However, the potential for VNs to present a player-dictated story, as opposed to a story told to the player, is what splits the categories. It's why novels were categorised differently to gamebooks, and it's why VNs and KNs are undoubtedly two completely different types of games. Don't assume I think something I haven't actually said. In fact, I believe Pabloc and I had a bit of a back-and-forth when I suggested Visual Novels couldn't possibly be novels. Because if we start categorising games by story-telling method, we'll have to classify ALL games by storytelling method. Why do those VN/game hybrids get special treatment? I know VNDB like having a hodpe-podge, do as you please type of categorising system, but the system we have in place in the West is fairly ordered atm. Piling in these inconsistencies is not the way to keep it so.

Fuwanovel seems to have a limitation on how many times you can quote somebody. Because of this I'll be splitting my reply into two. I would wager you are looking at the sequel (2001) and not the original (1988). 35 people is a lot for RPGs, even by today's standards. Once again, tabletop RPGs put a lot of emphasis on narrative. Unstructured narrative yes, but still a narrative. I believe even you have admitted that. Furthermore, the game wasn't any less structured than games like Baldur's Gate. Games like Baldur's Gate and Torment emphasised player choice and freedom as well as delivering a storytelling experience.I would love to hear your thoughts on what makes Pool of Radiance such an unstructured game in comparison. No. CRPGs needed to limit choices from the outset due to technical deficiency. Modernish CRPGs like Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment, offered more choices and presented the player with more options than most of their older CRPG brethren, which were basically combat sims because of various limitations. You really do just make this stuff up as you go along, don't you? Two words. Diablo (1, 2 and ,3) and Skyrim. In fact, games like Planescape Torment (which presented a quality story) performed so well, they pretty much killed off story based RPGs for the next few years. All you saw were hack and slash diablo clones, like Titan Quest and Sacred, or sandbox style RPGs like Daggerfall and Morrowind. Style of presentation? Explain. If you mean things like the 'text box' CRPGs had those since the 70s. Then why bother mentioning them at all? And what are these elements you are so fond of mentioning? If you're talking about the structured story presentation, once again that's the only possible choice available to developers. One day, when I say the words "CRPG developers sought to emulate the tabletop experience as thoroughly as computers would allow," it will get through to you. While you are correct when you say the tabletop narrative is controlled by the players, and offers close to unlimited choices, current technology cannot possibly emulate this. That's the reason why a more structured story has always been implemented. So, while a delivered story isn't an inherent part of the tabletop experience, it has been an unquestionable part of the CRPG experience as they sought to emulate its tabletop ancestor. ????? Which modern RPGs would these be? Sandbox RPGs, hack and slash, story based, isometric? I'm sure you're not talking about games like Divinity, are you? Because that would just be absurd. All CRPGs have been structured worlds due to technical limitations. Wrong. Offering infinite possibilities to interact with the environment at every turn is a) impossible, and even if it wasn't it would b)cost far too much money and c) take far too much time. If you disagree, then I'm open to suggestions on how you would offer unlimited methods to interact with the environment.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a named logical fallacy. CRPGs wouldn't need to include the storytelling of VNs when the genre came from a storytelling background. Pools of Radiance had a tiny bit of narration and story, but the point was it was there. It was there in tiny amounts because developing studios were 2 men operations working from their garages and couldn't afford a writer, NOT because it wasn't a part of the genre. And previous RPGs were NOT sandbox. Storytelling is essential to the experience of tabletop D&D, you couldn't emulate the experience without it. Unstructured storytelling is beyond the capabilities of computers and developers at this point in time. Like I said before, CRPGs best emulate the tabletop RPGs but there are computer limitations. Furthermore, I see nothing to suggest visual novels must be limited to structured storytelling. If, at some point in the future, computers allowed players to form their own plot, story and narrative and a developer offered that in a visual novel format, then that game WOULD be a visual novel. The narrative would be a cohesive whole to the player, even if they are free to dictate where it goes. And of course the quality of the storytelling experience relied on the DM, just like the quality of stories in novels relies upon the writer. That doesn't change what the genre is about, at it's heart. I was drawing similarities to the Western situation. A novel, a storytelling experience without choices, is categorised as different to a gamebook, a storytelling experience with choices. This situation mirrors that of KNs and VNs. It's baffling to you because you're thinking in terms of 'mouseclicks' and not of 'choices, and what that could potentially imply.' Just because VNs haven't fully realised its potential in that respects, doesn't mean the potential isn't there. You keep stating this like it's a fact, yet you offer no argument to explain this situation other than 'isn't it obvious.' Well, no it's not obvious and it's blatently false. @Pabloc: Games are separated by genres in the west, so if, by your argument VNs are novels, then there's no possibility for a hybrid with any game. We don't tag things by storytelling experience, we tag things by gameplay (shooter, RTS etc etc.) If VNs ARE games, then they couldn't possibly be hybrids with RPGs because that genre already holds 'story with choices' close to its heart.

Indeed, that seems to be the case. However, it is also true that Aaeru wished to develop strong links with the English Visual Novel Community. She wished to aid with the production of visual novels in the West, and attempted to establish links with the English community back in 2012. And from some of the crowd, we might be able to attract new talent to the creative side of things. ... The thing is, I know next to nothing about what the OELVN community need. I only know I want to promote their work and attract new people to join their ranks. ... I want to leverage that increase in popularity to attract more attention to VN creation. - Aaeru 2012 Her overall goals were not hidden, or questioned. She wanted to make VNs popular in the West, which meant popularising fan-tls, and OELVN creation. 2 sides of the coin. However, you cannot aid in the production of visual novels with such a sloppy attitude regarding copyright. It was a lesson she quickly learnt two years ago, creators of works largely have different expectations and viewpoints than consumers. It was why her efforts were rebuffed in 2012, and it is why no progress has been made on that front in the past two years. Furthermore, it is an undeniable fact that the state of the visual novel industry in the west is in trouble, both here and in Japan (for different reasons obviously.) You cannot make visual novels popular in the West without having a visual novel industry in the first place. Anybody with such a wish would also be required to wish for the prosperity of such an industry. If you have no prosperous visual novel industry, you have no visual novels with which to spread. This requires funds, therefore to wish for visual novels to be popular in the West is to encourage the FINANCIAL SUPPORT of such an industry. Increasing the fanbase is only part of this, the other half is to encourage the fanbase to support the official developers. If you do only part of this, then you are lax in your duties. Following Aaeru's wishes or goals doesn't mean following her method. I want what Aaeru wanted back in 2012, but her method was not the way to achieve this. And this brings me to my next point. That's a nice little anecdote, unfortunately I don't roll with anecdotes. I roll with facts and figures. All I see from the fan-tl community whenever this issue arises is the tired argument that an expanding fanbase will mean an increase in sales. Well, let's look at the facts, shall we? The fanbase has expanded exponentially from where it used to be, but where's the pay-off we've been promised? The influx of 'true fans'? JAST doesn't sell enough copies to remain afloat without being propped up by J-List. MG can barely sell enough to keep it's doors open, and the only way they can acheive this is to release a ton of nukige that only take a few weeks to translate for quick dough. They've had to resort to pleading with the fan-tl community to wait a couple of weeks before uploading cracked copies online, because as soon as you guys do their sale figures plummet. The truth of the matter is the vast majority of the VN community still can't be bothered to support the industry. And you are part of the problem Steve, because you don't actively encourage the final step. You automatically assume that expanding the fanbase will result in a flock of new fans willing to buy the product. Well, there's jack all evidence to support this. It's a naive point of view. If half the people who downloaded and enjoyed the damn game would pay for the product, the industry wouldn't be in the dire straits it is now. And maybe if you encourage the practice, more people would buy the game. Like I said before, MG's bestselling games were around 2,000 copies before STEAM. It took a DRM platform to move a respectable number of copies. 5 times as many copies as their previous best-selling game. Welcome to reality Steve, where fairness and justice are playground illusions. There will never be a perfect solution for all, there will never be fairness for all, and if you think there can then you're naive. The feelings of the creators who poured hundreds of hours into making the damn game, and the condition of the industry – an industry we all love, trumps the rights and feelings of those souls who want the game for free. Because at the end of the day, if we don’t encourage the financial support of such an industry, there’ll be fewer VNs for everybody. Then nobody gets their VN fix.

Hmmm, mine was successful. I have no idea why yours kept dropping out, but I use a download manager to resume it if it does, if that helps?

I look forward to reading your analysis of your experience in the game. It's in my backlog but I won't be able to get to it for a while

Subcategories of the same genre. TPS and FPS are both shooters, they’re different kinds of shooters depending on the viewer perspective. You don’t define entire genres like this though, it’s a way to distinguish between games of the same genre. Baldur’s Gate isn’t a VN for reasons probably well described by Chrono, not because it doesn’t have sprites or static backgrounds. Sprites and static backgrounds are technological limitations which will more than likely be scrapped in the future. Just like how RPGs used to always use a textbox, but now is no longer limited to it. Gamebooks are called that because they came in physical book format, not because it was a novel (book and novel are 2 different things.) Whether I agree with you or not is beside the point, historically in the west any novel which adds a miniscule amount of gameplay is no longer a novel. I like consistency in things, and saying that a visual novel is a type of novel even though it has gameplay is inconsistent with what has traditionally been the case. And there isn’t a very good reason to change it either.

Buy the Japanese and send them a letter . But it's expensive. The method's Aaeru employed have been, and will continue to be unsuccessful to accomplish the goals this site was constructed for. Let us not confuse the purpose behind this site and Aaeru's personal preferences in bringing about that goal. We congregated here because of Aaeru's vision, but not all of us agreed with her methods. Not correct. Aaeru wasn't about piracy, she was about the abolition of copyright.

I'm not a fan with associating fan-translation with passion, and localisation with anti-consumer heartless corporatism. Supporting the localisation means more money goes to the creators, which means you're supporting THEIR passion. I do think supporting them is the more important ideal, especially considering the state of the industry. EDIT: Of course supporting localisation doesn't mean you can't support fan-tls. Just when they clash, you support the localised copy.

Aaeru and Tay have talked about it before, Fuwa's main goal was to ultimately foster the production and distribution of visual novels in the west. Aaeru went so far as to approach the lemma website in 2012, with regards to creating a sister site solely for the development of english VNs. It's hardly a secret. It's with that goal in mind that I support the taking down of those torrents. Taking down the torrents from Fuwa WON'T decrease the piracy, but it's about if Fuwa wants to become what it originally set out to become. Referring to Steve's post, you can only fan-translate what is made. To say you encourage fan-translation without supporting companies is illogical to the extreme. Fan-translation can't EXIST without companies first making the product. And we're not sharing JUST the fan-translator's passion, you're sharing the creator's passion as well. You won't decrease the number of fan-tl's by taking down licensed works.

Indeed, in fact the same line has been spouted for the past decade... so how's that working out for you? The whole 'more players equals more buyers' thing? Before Steam took off, despite exponentially increasing the fanbase over the years, the highest selling game from MG was a smidge over 2,000 copies and JAST wouldn't be able to survive without the aid of J-List. Do you actually have any evidence that increasing the fanbase through piracy is actually increasing the number of sold copies? Because all the implied evidence says it isn't. MEANWHILE, one of MG's games gets on STEAM, a DRM service ensuring people PAY FOR THE PRODUCTS, and automatically one of the VNs sells 10,000 copies. It's done in an instant what increasing the fanbase through piracy couldn't do in a decade. Fuwa's original aim was to aid the production of visual novels in the West. How you would go about this aim in a serious manner while fully supporting the piracy of official products will be fairly amusing to watch.

I support the idea. Fuwanovel originally wanted to aid in the production and distribution of visual novels in the West. I can understand the theory of spreading around free VNs to build up the initial fanbase, but I get the feeling we've gotten past this stage. We have a fairly sizeable community, and VNs are getting more exposure than ever now they're appearing on Steam. If Fuwa ever wants to seriously aid in the production of VNs, and not just low-budget free ones, it will need to eventually support the official products. Furthermore, the visual novel industry is struggling in Japan, and needs much support in the West. The industry needs funds to grow and we should be encouraging the purchase of such products when able.

DEMO IS UP! You can find it here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sekaiproject/fault-milestone-one-directors-cut/posts

Pool of Radiance has a narration and a story, it may not be much of one but it's there. It's the same sort of narration you find in Baldur's Gate, except BG focused a lot more on the story because they had writers in their studio. As for Pools of Radiance "The skeleton of a long dead elf lies hidden in rocks and reeds" etc etc. It has a basic story narrated to you in 2nd person. The reason story wasn't emphasised overly much is because these games were made by a couple of people in their garage in their spare time, they weren't exactly big studios like today. Writers were the last thing you wanted, you wanted a coder, later on some art, and you hoped one of your programmers could write. It had nothing to do with not being a part of the genre. RPGs were developed to emulate tabletop D&D games, which DOES include a narrative and a story. The earliest form of these were some text-based RPGs developed in the 70s which implemented the D&D rules into a dungeon crawling, text based computer game. While some RPGs sought to drop the narrative/story aspect of the genre to focus on the dungeon crawling experience, for reasons of art or limitations, the narrative/story is an undeniable and essential part of the history of RPGs. RPGs did not incorporate structured storytelling from adventure or VNs, it has always been an integral part of the genre. By the way, Baldur's Gate had 2nd person narration, delivered by a narrator in ADV format. It has a myriad of choices throughout the game which affects the story and experience. When can I start calling it a "VN/RPG hybrid"? Baldur's Gate 2 had a million words as well, with the EE adding another 300k, so it's definitely not light on script. It is an accepted practice that once any gameplay is added to a novel, it's no longer a novel. That is why Pabloc's novel/game hybrid idea cannot logically be (even if you can have a small amount of gameplay and still call something a novel, having as much as Pabloc's suggesting with his hybrids would automatically disqualify them as such. We have a name for a novel/game hybrid, and it's called a game.) So if you look at what's historically taken place, with choose your own adventure novels being named "gamebooks", and text based 'choose your own adventure' fiction on the computer being termed as "interactive fiction", consistency would demand a separation between VNs and KNs. Concerning your "Going Home" example, it is a VN with an optional "story mode". "You can call it a "novel option" if you wish ....... The Walking Dead may have no novel narrative, but plenty of old-school RPGs do. Why? Because tabletop RPGs emphasised stories and narrative. To say an RPG needs to be a VN hybrid for incorporating properties they have always had is beyond ridiculous. The narrative isn't the worst part of VNDB's definition btw. Indeed I have problems with most of the other bits. My problems with their definition are thus: "the story needs to be uninterrupted for a significant langth" is entirely subjective and can vary greatly. I'm sure Lightning Raidy only qualifies for the VNDB database because the sex scenes were "uninterrupted" for a "significant length of time." What sort of bullshit statement is this? Is it relative to the gameplay, and if so what difficulty gameplay because gaming time increases with difficulty. Is there an arbitrary figure, or are the powers that be at VNDB pulling shit out of their arse like they usually do? "Needs to be presented in ADV or NVL format" Piss off. Since when does a genre of games need to be presented in a certain visual format to be acceptable? ADV and NDL are delivery methods of the text, nothing more and nothing less. Whether something is a VN or not has nothing to do with ADV. My favourite part is "In some special cases, a game may be added while not adhering to the above points. This is the decision of the moderators." Translation: We can't think of an acceptable definition to include all our very favourite games without also letting in some really stupid shit. So what we'll do is just ignore our own definition and add them all the same.

That will probably depend upon sales of Planetarian.

Heh, apparently Rooke fails at reading . They said it'll be out by the 4th of July weekend, not the 4th of July.....

Please do. If you're passionate about something (whether it's an injustry, a medium, or a developer) you should support it if you're able. I'll definitely be buying this release. Good job Sekai Project!

We don't categorise games based upon 'art style', nor do we categorise games based on the delivery method of the text (the old FF games had both of these btw.) These are things which change over time and have no affect upon the actual gameplay. And you haven't played an RPG with multiple endings??? Ugh, that is true. The whole genre is a mess to be honest, because not much thought has been applied from the outset. You're right with your definition of gameplay, 'choose your own adventure' novels are called gamebooks but take those choices out and what you have is just a novel. Kinetic novels have no choices and are therefore not games. They can't really be called a subcategory of VNs because it doesn't encompass all the traits of a visual novel. So the only logical thing to do is to separate them, it's pretty much just a novel on a computer, separate from VNs which offer some gameplay. Whether it's desirable to separate them or not is another matter, but they provide a different experience and therefore should be categorised differently. EDIT: What you could do is create another category and have VNs and KNs subecategories within. But ... eh...

I accept I may be going a touch overboard, however you cannot have a VN/RPG hybrid, and I will tell you why. The visual novel genre was created solely to accomodate specific games which were being imported from Japan which did not fit into an pre-existing category. These games, while exhibiting traits of other genres, lacked key elements of gameplay to be included in those genres. A VN is a narrative with choices, and while RPGs, adventure games and sims were all examples of genres which included these traits, a VN is one which has SOLELY those traits. A VN/RPG hybrid is impossible because the RPG genre already accomodates for every single trait a VN possesses. Narrative, choice and plenty of text are all hallmarks of the RPG genre and therefore the VN tag is REDUNDANT. It's not needed. The same is said for adventure games and I think the same can be said for sim games. You cannot have a VN hybrid in these genres because the existing genres already in place accomodate the VN traits making the VN tag redundant. I will accept, though, that VN/puzzle and VN/fighting hybrids can exist and will curb my criticism of Blazblue's place on VNDB...

Divinity:Original Sin has shifted 160,000 copies mere days after it was released. So a big FU to all the publishers out there who thought isometric old school RPGs with complexity, tons of text, and a turn based combat system would never sell. Because not only is Divinity going to be a financial success, it's going to be remembered as one of the greatest CRPGs in recent history. Rooke out.

I ..... don't know XD. They'll probably tell us on the kickstarter page once it's available.

Sure is. I don't think Aaeru was as respectful/tactful as she should have been when approaching lemma in 2012, and ideals between the two sites differed, so at that stage a relationship was probably impossible. But you're right, it's definitely time to try again.

Zero Escape has all the trappings of a visual novel because what comprises a visual novel are traits included in most other genres. Narrative, choice, lots of text, are things found in adventure, sims and RPG games. It has very few if any UNIQUE traits so your argument that I am wrong to disregard these games as visual novels because it has plenty of visual novel elements is quite a ludicrous argument to make. Of course it has plenty of visual novel staples, half the games in the world do. The Walking Dead is a game which is more than 90% story, yet it is undeniably an adventure game. So why would you think the amount of story in Zero Escape automatically disqualifies it as such? An adventure game is one which has three things, a narrative, puzzles and exploration and the Zero Escape games not only fit the bill, but its gameplay is a core part of the experience. These sorts of games were classed as adventure before visual novels came to the West and they do not get special treatment because of where they were made. The West has its own way of categorising things. I may be in the minority within the visual novel community but that would be because visual novel fans are quite enamoured with the Japanese culture. Tough. This isn’t Japan and we don’t follow their methods of categorisation.

According to the kickstarter page, the demo will be out on the 4th of July.

http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=14096