What do you think defines an experienced VN reader?

[Inorin]

Some people define experienced VN readers as people who have completed a substantial number of vns; some may define them as people who started on their first vn many years ago; some may define them as people who have played most of the supposed "kamiges"; while others may define them as people who have played various genres/sub-generes (eg. galge, otoge, yaoi, yuri, eroge, chuunige, nakige, utsuge, murder mystery, escape mystery etc).

For me, it's all 4 points. What do you guys think?

Edited May 4, 2018 by wei123

[Fiddle]

Clephas

[Inorin]

Just now, Fiddle said:

Clephas

That is a very true statement.

[Yuuko]

Me

22 minutes ago, wei123 said:

otoge

Didn't know rhythm games are now VNs

[Inorin]

Just now, Kiriririri said:

Didn't know rhythm games are now VNs

Symphonic Rain isn't really a rhythm game though.

[Yuuko]

Just now, wei123 said:

Symphonic Rain isn't really a rhythm game though.

???

[Inorin]

3 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:

???

you said rhythm game so I assumed you were talking about Symphonic Rain. Am I wrong? (Probably am)

 

Edit: Oh, you were talking about otoge lol. My bad

Edited May 4, 2018 by wei123

[wyldstrykr]

ehhhmmmm isnt that. ive read grisaia no kajitsu. i eXperience reading VN??? maybe not.

i think the first part is important with different genre of VNs and able to compare them i think???

[Fred the Barber]

Salt.

[tymmur]

I don't think there is a simple answer to that question. It's possible that somebody has read every single VN in English, but understands little of the contents and is blank when asked about comparing two titles. I don't think the genres can really be used as a criteria either because it would prevent people from being experienced if they avoid contents such as yaoi, yuri, guro etc and many people do that. The number of years is not a good indicator either because 15 years of one VN each year will not make you experienced either.

 

I would say an experienced VN reader is one who is insightful regarding what is released and the contents of a number of VNs. It's somebody who can tell the difference between a good VN and a not so good one and point out why. It's also somebody who is able to reply to recommendation threads with a VN, which fits the requested criteria, yet is not on the list of VNs, which seems to be recommended in most such threads.

 

I would say the criteria pointed out by OP is a decent guideline, but you can't place specific numbers or lists to make an objective observation to tell if somebody is experienced.

[TexasDice]

Autism and/or a two-digit number of anti-mainstream reviews on Fuwanovel.net.

[MaggieROBOT]

You become an experienced reader when you start reading things that aren't in VNDB and you can barely find info about your favorite VN using the romanization of the title on Google.

[Ranzo]

I'd say when you get really jaded with them and quit the scene for a number of years, only to come back like you never left.

[Plk_Lesiak]

I don't like inventing arbitrary thresholds, but being an active reader for a few years is a must in my perspective, just because of how time-consuming the medium is. If I keep a similar pace as for the last 6-7 months, I will consider myself an experienced reader in two-three years. Considering how much short stuff and tiny OELVNs I consume, I would predict to have easily above 200 finished titles on my VNDB at that point. But numbers mean little, if you count one hour-long games as equal to 50h+ behemoths. 

Edited May 4, 2018 by Plk_Lesiak

[Dreamysyu]

The number of finished VNs is not a good scale, some VNs tend to be very short and some are very long. Reading something that lasts 100 hours generally gives you more experience that something that you can finish in an hour, though not by 100 times.

I'd say, nobody could give a good answer to this question since experience is by definition unmeasurable. In my opinion, what really matters the most is not how much you've read but how much you understand about the medium. On the other hand, it doesn't really matter if you skip some genres. An experienced moege reader is still an experienced VN reader.

1 hour ago, tymmur said:

It's somebody who can tell the difference between a good VN and a not so good one and point out why.

The problem with that is that almost every VN reader who finished a substantial amount of VNs has at least one "kamige" they hate. While there is some public opinion on what qualities make a work of fiction good and bad, in reality it depends way too much on the reader's personal preference. Also, the public opinion tends to change with time, and depends very much on what group of people you ask. Japanese fans, for example, obviously have different tastes to us here.

Edited May 4, 2018 by Dreamysyu
definitely -> generally, because I thought of severeal counterexamples

[Thyndd]

Probably when you've seen a ton of shit 

But come on, I don't think there are many ways to interpret what an experienced person means. An experienced reader is someone who has read a lot. Of course there is no clear threshold, mainly because you are always experienced in comparison with another person. It's a matter of proportionality. 

 

[kooolm]

If your VNDB id number is over 2000, you're an unexperienced newbie.

just kidding

[Plk_Lesiak]

21 minutes ago, Dreamysyu said:

The problem with that is that almost every VN reader who finished a substantial amount of VNs has at least one "kamige" they hate. While there is some public opinion on what qualities make a work of fiction good and bad, in reality it depends way too much on the reader's personal preference. Also, the public opinion tends to change with time, and depends very much on what group of people you ask. Japanese fans, for example, obviously have different tastes to us here.

Yeah, but I also don't think that experience alone can make someone a good critic or their opinions reasonable, even beyond the fact that we all have our subjective preferences - you can very much be a veteran with a terrible taste or outlandish stances that makes your take on various titles or issues completely useless to an average reader. Also if you stay within a niche community for very long it's often hard to resist groupthink and being apologetic towards the persistent flaws of the genre you're emotionally invested in. So, experience gives you perspective probably necessary to properly judge VNs, but doesn't make your opinions automatically more valid (and if you lack critical distance, it might actually make them conventional and heavily skewed - lacking in different ways than perspective of a newbie, but equally so).

[tymmur]

I can't help wondering why this question could even be important. It doesn't really matter if you have such a title or not. The VNs will still be equally interesting to read.

24 minutes ago, Dreamysyu said:

While there is some public opinion on what qualities make a work of fiction good and bad, in reality it depends way too much on the reader's personal preference.

I fully agree and yet will say you kind of missed my point, though admittedly I wasn't really verbose about my thinking behind my statement. My point is that there are some general terms, which makes any VN good or bad, like proper writing/editing, plotholes and such. Next there are criteria for each genre. Character detail/development/stereotypes is an important factor in some genres, but not all. H scenes are important to some genres (particularly nukige) while some other genres do better without them. An experienced reader will identify those issues and be able to compare two titles aiming to be in the same genre and tell why one is better than the other based on arguments other than personal preference.

Some people can read a lot of VNs without being able to do this. I would argue that they had the chance to gain experience and missed it and as such they are inexperienced readers, who have read a lot of VNs.

[tahu157]

Can recommend something other than Grisaia or F/SN.

[tahu157]

2 hours ago, MaggieROBOT said:

You become an experienced reader when you start reading things that aren't in VNDB and you can barely find info about your favorite VN using the romanization of the title on Google.

Does that happen to you often? I always kinda assumed VNDB was more or less complete except for future titles, but I guess it's very possible there's a lot of undocumented VNs out there.

[MaggieROBOT]

3 minutes ago, tahu157 said:

Does that happen to you often? I always kinda assumed VNDB was more or less complete except for future titles, but I guess it's very possible there's a lot of undocumented VNs out there.

As someone who loves to browser freem.ne.jp and to read RPG Maker stuff, yes. People doing free stuff on Lemmasoft usually add their things on VNDB but usually japanese indie developers couldn't care less about it.

[VirginSmasher]

The amount of VNs they've completed is the main factor to me. 

[Dreamysyu]

1 hour ago, tymmur said:

Some people can read a lot of VNs without being able to do this. I would argue that they had the chance to gain experience and missed it and as such they are inexperienced readers, who have read a lot of VNs.

Hmmm, I still don't think it's really nessecary, but it basically comes down to arguing about semantics of the word "experience", which is probably not the best idea.

1 hour ago, tymmur said:

I can't help wondering why this question could even be important. It doesn't really matter if you have such a title or not. The VNs will still be equally interesting to read.

Yeah, I fully agree with this.

1 minute ago, VirginSmasher said:

The amount of VNs they've completed is the main factor to me. 

Do moege count?

[Being]

A room full of crumpled tissues