I read
this interesting piece on Kotaku that the guys at BioWare who are in charge of Dragon Age's future-- the ones who are planning its DLCs --may actually be considering putting together a "romance pack" DLC, with additional relationships for your fantasy characters to take part in. He even suggests that one could be a "take Leliana on a date" DLC.
As I read through it I just keep thinking: man, why doesn't BioWare just join forces with one of the better dating sim/eroge makers? Dragon Age is already half-there: you can choose which character(s) to bang, but you have to court them by saying the right things to them, and if you try courting more than one you might wind up with two angry people on your hands.
All I could do while reading was think: "man, why don't these people just try playing a visual novel or a dating sim some time?" (It also makes me wonder if Love Plus, with the appropriate marketing, might not perform reasonably well here.)
Having played Dragon Age extensively-- and loved it --I have no problem telling you that the story is pretty standard fare, the battle system is decent (it's basically Final Fantasy XII's gambit system, but done so that it doesn't completely suck), and the characters are mostly familiar archetypes. What makes Dragon Age stand out? Two things: one, all of the aforementioned aspects are VERY solidly made, and two, the characters are for the most part really ENJOYABLE to interact with, making the players WANT to spend time on that stuff. (And of course, those rare sex scenes...well, rare in North America, anyway.)
Now, it's not like there's NEVER been a dating sim outside of Japan-- I remember being gifted a well-meaning "game for GIRLS!" called McKenzie & Company in the mid-'90s that was one --but certainly the licensed ones from Japan haven't done very well here. But it's clear that gamers seem to dig that aspect of Dragon Age-- so maybe it just needs someone like BioWare to give it that more respectable "gamer" cred and a good system and you could have a serious hit on your hands.
What do you guys think? Would you play an east-meets-west RPG with dating sim elements? (Do you already play Dragon Age?) And those of you who pay VNs and whatnot: what company would you most want to have work with an A-list game producer?
C'mon. That'd be kinda cool.
I think the first step is hoping that the people in production environments get a grasp of how dating sims (to use the same, but probably inaccurate, term) are in Japan. Because in a nutshell, a lot of it is just dressed-up pornography. What counts as good entertainment that people seek after (say, Fate Stay Night) is few and far in between, and in those cases the romance elements are usually written into the story in a way that is similar to what we already have in some of the newer Japanese games (Persona 3 and 4 comes to mind). I think Dragon Age is closer to those sort of paradigm when it comes to romance.
If the West is have a real romance-type game, it's going to be more along the lines of a visual novel, but with some kind of catchy, if casual, gameplay elements, that focuses on storytelling. Maybe a Heavy Rain knd of game, but a "girl flick" rather than a murder mystery.
That said, dating sims will probably never fly in the US. Definitely not the current iteration like Love Plus... Maybe something more like IM@S or Princess Maker? But even so... We're just starting to get some alternative style bishoujo games like those Cave shooters. We've always had bishoujo style fighting games and SRPG/RPGs. So who knows. But then again there's no analog to dating sims in the US as a genre, so...
Those kinds of games get a lot of bad rep around here too: people say they're games for nerds and losers who just want to bang little girls. While that may be true in some cases, a lot of VNs have legitimate and well thought out stories, and in some cases those are bigger sell points than the art style or the amount of ero-content in the games.
If I had to pick a company to work with an A-list producer, I'd probably go along the lines of Leaf (who made the games ToHeart, Kizuato, Tears to Tiara, Utawarerumono) since they have a tendency to make pretty solid ero RPGs anyways and the field wouldn't be all to new to them, or maybe Nitro+ (Chaos;Head, Saya no Uta, Full Metal Daemon Muramasa) simply because they like to make games with very dark and gritty plot lines which I think would go over pretty well with a western audience.
I think a big chunk of what would make it work is the involvement of BioWare, Bethesda, or another well-regarded western RPG maker though. In my experience a lot of western gamers are biased against JRPGs and/or anything that smacks of anime, so the gamer cred would be vital.
Granted, I'm talking about marketing success here, as opposed to the game itself ;)
I think the problem is if they were developing the game constantly keeping the dating element in mind, it'd probably turn out to be a different game entirely. With Dragon Age, for a lot of people, the romance aspect is just something tacked on to a system meant for achieving different endings, or development of character stats. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people simply skipped through the dialogue just so they could burn through the game with characters with the highest stats possible, or just to complete all the achievements.
That and, if they did happen to involve a Japanese company, a lot of the press for it would change from a "Hey they're coming up with a cool new idea" to "Hey, they're making a game to satisfy all your perverted urges" simply because that's the way a lot of people view Japanese products. At least that's how I think it'd turn out.
This is the kind of ideology that I'm talking about. Not that I'm trying to dig on you, omo, but in the western world VNs are made out to be nothing but sex games with a little bit of text and flair tacked on.
In a lot of cases there is a lot of thought put into the plot and characters in these games. The problem is, only a few of those games have been brought stateside, or have been fan-translated. It also doesn't help that a lot of people who do get their hands on these games who don't understand the language will just skip through and try to find the sex scenes anyways.
It just makes me sad that some things which are so good and well thought out are thought to be no more than a sexual release for perverts.
Site: http://katawa-shoujo.com/
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The other problem is, of course, getting the execs at the respective developers and publishers to believe that this is the best way to spend a major game maker's time. Generally speaking, these major big-budget game studios are going to want to target as wide of an audience as possible for each release. Thats why using DLC to "hone in" on specific sub-sections of their audience makes sense. But for what you're proposing to really have a chance at finding a broad audience, it'd have to be a full big-budget production with an exceptional presentation to overcome the genre/premise. Who will green-light such a risky product in this market? And if it isn't a big-budget production and seems in any way cheap, the chance at really making this a "respectable" product line is lessened. Without that one major breakthrough hit, it's hard to see how the genre can gain much traction.
So in other words, I'm just not sure if I can see it happening anytime soon due to the high risk. If you could convince someone to take the risk and really go all-out in an attempt, there's a chance it could work, but at least an equally-large chance it'll be a total flop that damages the developer/publisher's reputation (and hurts their share price). But of course, we'll see...
I certainly can't expect we'll see games with Kratos seducing Athena, but perhaps more games that include branching romance paths can be a possibility. I think that we will largely see them in genres that already appeal to a more Japanese-oriented gamer (like the afforementioned MegaTen games) and WRPGs (where player choice is the main focus of the game). I don't expect to see a stand alone dating sim game though, at least not in much more than a niche market.
o_O
I think games like Persona 3 and 4 are exactly what you're looking for. They're made by Japanese studios, but they sell just fine over here. As in, North Americans are ready for "dating sims" of some kind. To put it in different words, the romantic aspects in Dragon Age is not new to North America. It's been done before, perhaps without so much fanfare and without the cinematic presentation. What is Leisure Suit Larry?
But real dating sims are like Love Plus and Tokimeki Memorial, where the game is stat-based (or RPG-style) and those stats help you score, being the main point of the game. Dragon Age isn't so much about that, as the character interaction plays out more like a multi-path visual novel. The point in those games is to enjoy the story presented. It's like whatever games like Heavy Rain are called (adventure games?). The "game" component of Dragon Age has almost nothing to do with sleeping with whoever, but it isn't the case for a dating sim. (This is just semantics.)
hahaha truer words were never spoken.
Love the game, love the idea, let's get it on!
You have to be realistic. I'd say somewhere around 10-20% of these types of games produced fits your description. The rest are just yaruge of all types. Of course, when fans in the west talk about dating sims they think about all the visual novels and the nakige and whatever, but that's a relatively small portion of commercially produced "dating sims" or whatever general category (bishoujo games) all that fall under.
This is a good primer.
The history of eroge is fairly shallow; i mean things didn't turn around until To-Heart, was just 13 years ago. Before then it was just the shallow, click-to-get-HCG variety (not counting the console side of things).
There are actually a lot more plot and character centric eroge than most people would lead you to believe. About 10 to 15 games that are released per month don't fall under the typical yaruge sub-genre. Mind you, it's the yaruge that are often highlighted because there are very few bishoujo games that actually make it big.
For example, here's a site that does monthly listings of VNs that I check regularly.
January 2010
February 2010
March 2010
While they don't usually list many, if any at all, of the yaruge released per month, you can see that there really isn't a shortage of bishoujo games within the industry.
I do admit that the whole genre has had a very shallow history, though. Before Leaf came out with Shizuku, Kizuato, and ToHeart there was never really much in the form of plot or character development in many of the games, but that doesn't mean that times haven't changed. If I had to be honest, I'd say that it's something more like 50% of the amount of games produced nowadays are yaruge, maybe even less, yet a large percentage of people still believe that they all fall under the same category.
Hell yeah
One of the oldest games i can remember that had dating sim elements was Thousand Arms for the PS1. Though, back then, i'm sure it was dumbed down for the US release. There were traces of a dating sim element in Azure Dreams as well, but it was gutted quite badly for it's release over here(you couldn't marry any characters, it was replaced with them helping your mother with chores and coming to your house to wake you up in the morning instead).
Yeah... but that's a list of non-yaruge, of course you won't find many on those list. And even so I'm sort of skeptical how many of those are just simple bishoujo games without real stories behind them (or in other words, very wordy porn). In other words, they're a far cry from games like Fate Stay Night or Chaos;Head or anything like those.
Try like, a list of all 18+ PC games from Getchu (Jan 2010).
I'm not going to say your 50% number is wrong, but it's just not my impression and I've yet to see any facts that contradicts my impression.