Introduction to Eroges/Visual novels

 What are Eroges/Visual novels?

    Gaming is quite common everywhere now. Most youths have played some form of video games may it be shooters, platformers or action games. like those Visual novels/Eroge are a genre of its own. However, this is not as nearly widely known as the other video game genre. For this reason, i hope to be able to introduce you to this unique type of gaming.

    Visual or Eroges are actually a derivative of the adventure genre of games. However, unlike most adventure games they are less focus on the gameplay, but more on the narrative of the game. Like the name suggest the game is often comparable to that of a novel, but with a strong emphasis on strong visual and audio components. 

Gameplay Elements

    Visual novels are development of the text-based adventure games that were popular for PCs back in the 80s. Even to this day many of the visual novel is text based and is released for PC users in mind. Though through the years many new implementations have been tried to adjust both the gameplay and different elements of the game.

    

    First if not the most important aspect of a Visual novel is the text box that most games are accompanied with. This is where the story unfolds in the form of text spoken by a narrative or a character. This is not at all unlike a novel in any sense. The player would tap the screen or press a button to progress the story. To the side we see a menu of options for the player such the save and load option that are like most games. This is to help players progress through the game in a timely fashion as most visual novels can be quite long and time consuming. This however was not always the case for visual novels back in the day as some older visual novels required you complete them in one sitting. other options such as text speed and auto scroll through text is available here. This is another feature that was developed over time.

    

Credit: Mizuiro (Neko Nekosoft 2001)

    Aside from the textbox we have argue the most important thing that differentiate the genre from just a simple electronic novel. That would be the images in behind the textbox, another wise known as the stills or CGs. Art of the story and characters are display for the viewer to see and often are original characters created for the story itself. The images changes and progress with the story. Often talented artists start their careers here. This is crucial element to the game as a good artwork that matches the story really help elevate the story as well entices the player with interesting character designs. In recent times this has developed as well. The once still images as slowly progressed to be more animate for recent titles. Some even as move into 3d fully prebuilt world as a visual element for the player.

    

Credit: Boku to, Bokura no Natsu (Light 2002) 

        Lastly, we have the element that defines the genre as a game, the decision tree. The player is often put into a position of a character within the story when playing through it. The character that the player would play as can change throughout the game, but the player would have to make decision for the character that they are playing as. These games can often shape and change the narrative of the story and the narrative that each decision lead down towards we call them "Routes". Of course, there are some decisions within games that do not impact the narrative in any substantial way. For those we call them the "Common Route". A majority of the enjoyment that is achieve by players is the experimentation of decision making and seeing the outcomes of changing one's decisions as well as struggle with tough decisions in general. Back before the internet age players had to repay the game to see the different ways the narrative would play out with each decision. sometimes some options are not available to the player in the first playthrough by design. This has been major element within this game genre. Almost all visual novels operate in this way, however there as also games with no input from the player. Those games are referred to as Kinetic novels. They only have a single narrative, and it progress in a linear fashion. Despite this been the default gameplay for visual novel in general, some titles have stood out and tried to incorporate other gameplay elements from other genre in their visual novels. some notable titles being the Ace Attorney series, the Utawaremono series, and the Baldr sky series. Each adding Puzzle, Rpg and Shooter game elements on top of the Visual novel elements we have discussed about.

History of Visual novels

    The idea of a visual novels really came from first the point and click text-based puzzle games that existed for the home computers such as "Portopia". Some resemblance of the genre can be found in these games such as the text-box system and the reliance on text to inform the player. However, this is still different from the more narrative choice driven games that we are familiar with today. Much of it was more puzzle focused. it wasn't until further advancement in technology that more break throughs were made.

    

The Portopia Serial Murder Case. (Enix 1983)

    With the introduction of the Windows 98 and the Famicom better graphics were available. Characters and scenery were far more convincing and distinct. With that game companies were able to expand on the idea of creating more detail narratives. For one "Snatcher" developed by Hideo Kojima is a great example of the Text based detective gameplay mixed with engaging visual arts and story. During this time there was also the development of the dating sim genre of games. Prior to this age most games of this type would purely be a erotic type of game with no substance in narrative, but rather a chore type of game with a incentive tied behind it. With the interest in manga rising as well as better graphic, companies has now an interest to make the games more than just something carnal. graphics slowly changed to be more akin to a manga panel and dialogue and story are not tied to the art. Many hit different series arise during this time such as the Tokimeki series by Konami and the Dokyuusei series. 

Snatcher (Konami 1988)

Tokimeki Memorial (Konami 1994)

Dokyuusei (Elf 1992)

    However, this was still not the modern visual novel style we are used to as of today. These games would still use various parameters to dictate the progression of the game unlike the choice based linear story telling games we have now. That doesn't come until the introduction of games like Shizuka and Yu-no. These games drive the narrative aspect of such games to a 10 ten and set the standard for visual novels in genre going into the future. 

 

Shizuka (Leaf 1996)

YU-NO (Elf 1992)

Cultural influence and lineage

    Something you may have notice throughout this blog is my avoidance using the word Eroge to refer to these games. The reason i do so is because despite the commonality of the nature in Visual novels, i don't think it the correct label to address the genre as. The name Eroge comes from the Ero part of the name, standing for erotic. The truth is that Visual novel most commonly have an erotic content tied with it and as one of its strongest selling points to consumers. Because of that aspect the games have gain a negative reputation by society in general seeing it as something you hide something sharing a similar status as porn in the pass. A negative consequence caused by the erotic aspect is the lack of representation in the west. Due to strict censorship laws many of the visual novels never ever got release in the west. Even now the genre is just seen as a subculture of the large anime culture in general. Recently it was gotten a bit better acceptance in the east with more representation in pop culture and commercialization. Hopefully i do wish that this acceptance would eventually be picked up on by the west and the industry can equally grow there as well as in the east.