It really is an identity crisis.

Perhaps the best way to look at my fascination in terms of categorical attractions (content, then gameplay), explain why identity is important, and bounce the ball back to you. I apologize if I am going to get kind of down and dirty in this rant, but I might as well come clean.

I mentioned Graduation 2 in my earlier rant on the topic. It isn’t really the start or the finish in making me a “prospective fan” of the genre but an arbitrary midpoint. Being born Chinese means not only I have used or/and pirated software, but maybe I have more of a natural affinity for this kind of gameplay. It is probably the first time I bought a game of this sort, though. I also mentioned Graduation 2 because it rests on a precarious area where the gameplay intersects with content. It is this intersection that pinpoints the games I want to play.

Which, I confess, I’ve played a handful of the more pornographic variety of these games. It feels as if I have played more than I actually did because I have also seen even more ripped images from these porn games (as they are rightfully called). But why am I turning this into a confession? Probably because Japan needs to confess–the majority of games that fall into this genre is pornographic. Some are really, really bad. I hope you know what I mean so I won’t have to describe it.

The sad economic truth is that porn does sell. As a new content delivery system bishoujo gaming (as I use this term as I did in my earlier rant) is driven by this stuff. You can even see the mark it left in the annuals of gaming. What was the date on that? 1992? I think I was playing Knights of Xentar back in 1994? It’s been a while, pardon my poor recollection. The point is, it’s been with us for a long time now.

But just as porn drives delivery systems, delivery systems grow from the ashes of lesser things and into more relevant, interesting material. We have games like Princess Maker 2 (probably one of the most wide-spread English-language bishoujo game, and one of the better ones–now that it’s basically abandonware), Konami’s Tokimeki Memorial games, and many others–like Graduation 2. There were a lot of different types of porn games too, as the genre was in the process of finding itself.

Here is where my story branches. Porn games have been with us for a long time, and what I said about delivery systems just now applies to every kind of game we know–platformers, RPGs, tactical games, etc. All on top of what we usually know such as casino games or some of the more creative flash game type stuff. Well, even as I say this, where is the porno version of FF7? Or Starcraft? Appearently, they kind of exist. Why? Mainly because Japan needs to confess, it manages to have a rather diverse and healthy porn game industry compared to the US.

Honestly, however, I’m talking about porn games only because bishoujo gaming is like that solitary, delicious shiitake growing off a pile of cow dung that we know is the porn game industry. And that analogy applies as to how to make this genre proliferate outside of Japan. Quite simply, for that kind of stuff to sustain itself in the mainstream, it has to either live with its cow-dung underpinning like what these folks have done, or grow it independently. I don’t really want to play porn games, believe it or not; and certainly aside from my copy of Tsukibako I will never spend money on it.

And to that end, I am also honest about these kind of games–I only play ones that are fun. Graduation 2 was pretty fun. Harvest Moon is pretty fun. Tokimemo is pretty amusing, and especially the latter ones like 2 and 3. I suppose I could say the same about Baldr Force but I haven’t had the chance, despite the pornographic stuff. Tsukihime is pretty fun, but my Japanese skills are insufficient. I am all for the growth of the bishoujo gaming genre independent of pornography.

Which is why Insani’s All Together efforts are the bomb–they port not only legally less-grey doujinshi games, they are also not pornographic for the most part. They convey what is fun to play about these kinds of games in the unique gameplay varieties rather than catering to familiar content. Fact is, porno Super Mario is still Super Mario. But a visual novel is a novel; and a dating sim is not at all like any other sim in that Sim City is no more or less different than Sim Tower, for example. I think this definition should please the Ren’ai gaming fans (to me, it just means people who like games with romantic narrative underpinnings)?

So, back to you. What can we do to grow bishoujo gaming? What can we do to resolve its identity crisis? I suppose we should be open-minded. If people want to play their erogee, they should be able to. While that means it is both extra work for the rest of us in trying to differentiate the gaming image (kind of like how anime has to escape the hentai taint categorically), it also probably helps the bottom line of companies and encourage more commercial effort in this area. Certainly, if companies are porting games over that is in that narrow pinnacle within the gameplay axis that intersects with the bishoujo motif, we should support them however we can–both pirating and by buying? Sure.

I think it’s only fair to end this little crisis on a positive note. With things like the demo for Polyphonica available to us for free, and things like Ever 17 for a moderate cost, it is definitely the best time to be a bishoujo gaming fan today than ever before. It doesn’t even matter where you stand on software piracy! Go kick some ass with your moon powers!

I am a stranger in a strange land when I talk about “bishoujo gaming” in general. Heck, I probably just used the wrong term there–bishoujo gaming is one of those keyword a RAML geek would use to define … that type of games for the PC. They’re mostly devoid of pornographic content as opposed to “eroge” and “h-games” are more typically known for. They’re the one you click frantically to get to from one sex scene to the next. There are all sorts of different labels to describe the various type of the same category of games–divide it up by gameplay and you get things like visual novels and adventure games and dating sims. Divide it up another way through content and you’ll get renai or horror or … the really nasty stuff that everyone plays? I don’t know.

It’s really a hard thing to grasp conceptually. For starters having all these different names probably is a good clue in that it is hard to define what kind of games I’m talking about–don’t be confused if you don’t know what I’m talking about. Heck, short of actually playing one you probably won’t have a good idea. They also vary a great deal both, as you can guess, in the gameplay axis as well as in the content axis.

It’s kind of like trying to “define” anime, isn’t it.

Yet, when you say anime people know what you’re talking about. I’m just shooting in the dark, but this split-personality problem with the bishoujo gaming (sticking to this one for convenience’s sake) scene may be an exaggerated version of what plagued anime in the early and mid 90s in how it is also intimately tied with pornography and having little mainstream appeal. Of course even today we don’t get anything more kiddy than Yugioh and the like, but is there a mainstream banner where such types of game can run under?

Yeah, and there has been such kinds of games. I think Thousand Arms or Harvest Moon is the first popular one of the bunch. Not popular enough, I guess.

But I digress. I, for one, don’t really want to know if you spent last night playing a game where you are a high school boy bent on raping every girl in your school or vicariously doing so by mentally manipulating every guy in the school, using every sexual fetishism possible, and end in a double suicide with your true love that you found in the process of turning the world into some level of hell. I want to know if you spent last night playing a game worth playing in front of all your friends! Or better yet, it’s a game where it is short (I average about 1.5 “bishoujo games” a year) and sweet and free. In other words: visual novels that are actually good novels; sim games that are actually fun, complex, not too obvious, yet not too mysterious that it is unintuitive; adventure games that have good gameplay elements; games that have good production values; good visual style; replayability; compelling; and a list of other things. That’s not including a list of things they shouldn’t be: clickfests; all porn nothing much else; music that doesn’t drive me crazy; too linear; dumb story; too episodic; etc.

I think back in the late 90s I bought a game, one of the earlier commercial attempt at porting this genre over, called Graduation. It’s Graduation II in Japan, and it is categorically a “raising sim.” I guess you can think of it like Harvest Moon, minus all the farming stuff. It was actually kind of fun, even if each time I finished the game I felt as if I just wasted 3 hours of my life. Heck, you can experience the fun with just $7 on top! It is such an old game, that it is probably easier to buy it than to pirate it.

We need more games like those.

And I’m not the only person who think so. NNL translated a few games, insani some more, and there are others that I just fail to name. They’re fan organizations, so they invariably are shady and their work can be found alongside of their original counterparts, nicely packaged for YARRRRR. Well, that doesn’t do us too much good in the short run. There are also other commercial ventures, but they tend to miss.
Still, we need more games. I think insani and a bunch of other people actually took up taking a few of the Japanese fan originals and porting them for English speakers. Now that’s free for all to begin with, so everyone can rest easy… Except that majority of them have no mainstream appeal, plus they kind of fail even more of my categorical limitations. I appreciate the doujinshi visual novel format a lot in how they can be innovative and go the extra mile to be artsy fartsy, but it really is hit or miss.

Which is why Galaxy Angel still needs your help. Even though that game still fails in a couple areas where I’m kind of a stickler for, such as length and cost, but it’s worth your support in the long haul.

And the long haul is what I am in for. I remember reading an interview of some North American licensing executive. He said he got into the business of licensing and porting anime for North America because he saw bootlegged anime. Why? Because bootleggers would not exist if there is no immediate return; and immediate return is only possible when there is already a system for the long haul in place. I ask the same question about our pirate culture. Would a bootlegger bother to download and repackage, say, Planetarian in English, and sell it? Have you seen it? And more importantly–if not, why not?

There is a whole second part to this rant–actually that’s what I am really itchy to talk about. The problem here is partly because I am, in the end, still in the dark. I don’t have facts nor even solid impressions. More importantly, this is all important background to set up the questions I will ask, which will have no real answers. To be continued, then?