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Post by Discoalucard on Apr 15, 2015 21:42:04 GMT -5
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Post by drpepperfan on Apr 15, 2015 22:16:31 GMT -5
lol ok then
This was certainly unexpected.
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Post by Gendo Ikari on Apr 16, 2015 11:34:53 GMT -5
I hope they don't intend to make an upgrade to Unity as unpolished and buggy like Hatoful Boyfriend's.
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Post by BillyBobBaggyBottom on Apr 16, 2015 11:39:30 GMT -5
One of the tropes that really gets to me is the "accidental pervert" trope. Overused in a lot of anime, and honestly I've never seen one take a more realistic approach to the situation. Here's an idea, if you accidentally open a door and find someone of the opposite sex undressed or undressing (that isn't your significant other), quickly close the door and apologise. Depending on how well you know the person you can actually make light of the incident later. Do not try to make small talk, or try to walk in the room, you stop being an accidental pervert, and just become a pervert.
On another note, I feel like this game is more of a "let's test the waters to see if there is an audience out there for this type of game". I'm not really a fan of visual novels without more gameplay elements and choices. But hey, at least it did well, we might start seeing more complex visual novels from Japan come to the west because of it.
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Post by hudakj on Apr 16, 2015 14:55:40 GMT -5
They should have gone full-on ero-romance on this because, honestly, they knew they couldn't make a good enough profit if it was strictly an educational game. In addition, the genre and audience expectations are so solidified at this point, most potential buyers would feel bait-and-switch'd if the game didn't deliver on the romance. Because the game isn't really intended to just introduce the gamer to Japanese culture--it's main purpose is far more likely to be and introduction to Overdrive's bread-and-butter romantic visual novel franchise. Seriously doubt this was intended to be a dig at Western otakus, more like the dev's predispositions on its primary beta-male otaku audience in general. Nothing about this guy seems much different from the typical Japanese loser equivalent. I'm particularly thinking of that one Sakura Wars game in which the character has the same "babe in the woods" reaction to living in New York City. One of the tropes that really gets to me is the "accidental pervert" trope. Overused in a lot of anime, and honestly I've never seen one take a more realistic approach to the situation. Here's an idea, if you accidentally open a door and find someone of the opposite sex undressed or undressing (that isn't your significant other), quickly close the door and apologise. Depending on how well you know the person you can actually make light of the incident later. Do not try to make small talk, or try to walk in the room, you stop being an accidental pervert, and just become a pervert. It's really quite interesting because, unless you're watching a porn, there are very few live-action movies that attempt this without lamp-shading the peeping tom as an out-and-out pervert. Almost always the innocent guys do quickly shut the door and apologize after the lady screams and/or hurls a nearby articles at them for a split second. If they do stick around innocently it's either that the poor schmoe is being seduced/ensnared like in The Graduate or that it's an unspoken mutual consent, like in the erotically romantic scene in Witness. Maybe the writers of these sorts of scenes have such a withering opinion on these sorts of otaku archetypes that they believe that if such a person did walk in on a pretty girl undressing or such, they wouldn't even have the balls to immediately own up to the mistake and save face, but rather stand there stunned and embarrassed, like a kid that wet his pants in front of his classmates. Though it's difficult to ignore that the reality of it--that the devs want to milk as much of the titillating situation that the artists spent half their salary drawing as much as possible.
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Post by Discoalucard on Apr 16, 2015 15:00:28 GMT -5
They wanted it to be clean for the mass market, plus Steam doesn't allow ero games. Apparently it worked. The reason we decided to cover it is because it sold so well.
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Post by Joseph Joestar on Apr 16, 2015 15:25:08 GMT -5
They wanted it to be clean for the mass market, plus Steam doesn't allow ero games. Apparently it worked. The reason we decided to cover it is because it sold so well. I love it how edgefest Hatred can get approved, but when it comes to fuck scenes...
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Post by Woody Alien on Apr 16, 2015 17:01:20 GMT -5
They wanted it to be clean for the mass market, plus Steam doesn't allow ero games. Apparently it worked. The reason we decided to cover it is because it sold so well. And Steam still asks you for age confirmation when you enter the game's page on the store, even if it's not an eroge... I didn't want to seem too harsh on the game, but I really couldn't enjoy it. Mostly because, if I really have to play "myself" in a game, I would like to be represented as a normal person and not as an unlikable, moronic man-child. Seriously, if one reacts with mild curiosity at the sight of a huge temple, and then happily rants and raves about being given a glass of water at a maid café (café that we don't EVEN GET TO SEE might I add), he's not endearing, but just plain crazy. To say nothing about his orgasmic reactions when seeing the Shinkansen... And then there's the fact that those learned, competent Japanese girls STILL fall, seemingly for no reason, for the first foreigner guy they meet even if he's an idiot. Probably, as another poster before me said, he's just a Japanese otaku/NEET "disguised" as a Western otaku, so something like this is to be expected. Still, the only people that I saw to like un-ironically this turn of events were some 14-year-olds on Steam who declared Makoto/Akira to be "MAI WAIFU" (mostly Akira for the record). I still don't know how these things work, but I suspect that, were this game not made by Japanese people, someone would have described it as almost racist.
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Post by hudakj on Apr 16, 2015 17:19:55 GMT -5
Seriously, if one reacts with mild curiosity at the sight of a huge temple, and then happily rants and raves about being given a glass of water at a maid café (café that we don't EVEN GET TO SEE might I add), he's not endearing, but just plain crazy. To say nothing about his orgasmic reactions when seeing the Shinkansen... Okay, in that respect it wouldn't surprise me if they were specifically mocking foreign otaku that obsess in all thing Japanese (as in the textbook definition of a "weeaboo"), likely to the point of caricature in which he fangasms over even the most banal of Japanese customs and locations.
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Post by BillyBobBaggyBottom on Apr 16, 2015 17:49:47 GMT -5
I'm actually not familiar with Steam's policies around sexual content in their games. I know The Witcher series has Game of Thrones levels of sexual content, so I'm guessing their beef is with explicit depictions of sexual activity. I never played the game myself, I did watch the Game Grumps playthrough of this game (they play the bumbling idiot so well), I could tell the game wasn't for me by watching it. Which is funny, because not being a huge fan of visual novels, Japan culture or the language, I have my curiosities regarding those topics. Which means according to the games reviews and descriptions, I should be the target audience?
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Post by JDarkside on Apr 16, 2015 21:47:05 GMT -5
They wanted it to be clean for the mass market, plus Steam doesn't allow ero games. Apparently it worked. The reason we decided to cover it is because it sold so well. I love it how edgefest Hatred can get approved, but when it comes to fuck scenes... I'm curious if Christine Love's Ladykiller in a Bind will get a Steam release, it could open a lot of doors. Though she hasn't decided on a platform for release yet, based on the e-mail interview I had with her. It's pretty much the American double standard of mature content. Violence isn't too huge a deal with us, but sexuality is a strict no-no because of our Puritan routes, and we still have yet to move past them. Unfortunately, so many sexually explicit works are so immature and childish that they never really prove otherwise to the greater culture that there's worth there. It's partly why it's taken so long for LGBT groups have had problems with acceptance (I really do know people who will not let their kids know about homosexuality or bisexuality because it's "perverse" or "inappropriate"). I forget if Valve is stationed in the US or Canada, but there's some cultural overlap in a lot of places.
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Post by Gendo Ikari on Apr 17, 2015 6:17:38 GMT -5
Even before reading, I expected there would be some romance. Another thing that holds up badly is the protagonist not knowing Makoto and Akira were girls. In this age of social networks and easy photo sharing, keeping in touch exclusively by text sounds odd. I'm not really a fan of visual novels without more gameplay elements and choices. But hey, at least it did well, we might start seeing more complex visual novels from Japan come to the west because of it. Littlewitch Romanesque recently landed on Steam and may be of your interest. More than a VN it's a "raising sim" with a lot of situations where you interaction counts (you can even influence dice rolls so to get better results), several "quests" can be missed and I don't know if there is a "perfect" run but rather several "builds" the two girls can get over the course of the story, to get to different endings. It definitely looks like it works without any sexual element.
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Post by TheChosen on Apr 17, 2015 15:28:24 GMT -5
Bought a bundle once because this game was on it. Played it couple of minutes and then I started feeling really awkward for some reason. I did watch Game Grumps (Or Steam Train, rather) play it and the rest of the game did look quite boring. I think the most stupidest thing was how you'd have our main characters do things like going to a store or something, only for game to show a picture of a goddamn sky while they talk about how awesome it looks.
At least the bundle came with Major Mayhem, which turned out to be surprisingly fun. Like Cabal meets Virtua Cop.
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Post by akirikasu on Apr 17, 2015 19:20:30 GMT -5
OK, just a quick question: Why would the developers even think of porting their game over to Unity? Do they need the advanced 3D rendering to make their 2D drawings 'pop' or something? It's just the most baffling decision I have ever heard.
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Post by Snarboo on Apr 17, 2015 19:39:11 GMT -5
Unity is very portable, so if their old engine was inflexible or hard to port, that could have made the choice more attractive. Otherwise there would be no advantages for a 2D visual novel to use it.
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