Heard the industry’s own tumor, minori, is finally closing up shop and quitting games. I was so happy I didn’t write a damn thing all day. Plenty of people think minori made “masterpieces” like Ef and Eden, that it was a big-name studio worth mentioning, and that its sudden “collapse” (just quitting games, mind you) is somehow sad. But I still say the reason the Galgame industry is in this mess has a lot to do with these so-called “old studios, old stubborn farts” who refuse to die. Go back to the ancient days, before the concept of Galgame even existed — there was only what they called エロゲーム, porn games, literally. Everything in them existed to deliver porn. Later, as some older studios joined in, the porn ratio in these porn games kept shrinking and the “story” kept growing. As the industry developed, “30% story, 70% porn” gradually turned into “70% story, 30% porn,” and some games even went “100% story, no porn,” becoming true visual novels. The hordes of otaku who’d been secretly playing porn games could finally straighten their backs and announce they weren’t in it for the dirty pictures, purely for the story — and some elite specimens among them even elevated “playing porn games” into an “artistic pursuit.” So we see a lot of companies wanting to put out all-ages games, to finally operate in the clean light of day, goods out, people in, no longer forced to spend every day side by side with AV, becoming real game development companies. Sounds like the birth and sprouting of some new art form… except Galgame’s audience was never the general public. It’s otaku who want to see tits and pussy. Which is why KID, who went all-ages, died. 5pb., who inherited the mantle and wanted to go all-ages, is still desperately clinging to the accidentally successful Steins;Gate. Key puts out all-ages games too, but its output feels like it’s stopped running entirely. minori tried all-ages as well, took a massive loss, and afterward started frantically selling tits and ass to survive. People always criticize otaku as disgusting — on one hand elevating themselves by saying they play for the story, on the other saying they won’t buy a game without 18+ content. In the end they just want to see dirty pictures. I thought that way years ago too, but now I’ve got a new take:

Must’ve been almost two years ago now — there was this game called Hatsukoi Sankai Me. It had that annoying Sendai auntie in it, but the story was actually pretty interesting. And when it came out the marketing was basically nonexistent, yet the quality was already above par for a 2018 visual novel. This is why we keep saying the industry is doomed: everything coming out this year is just too dumb. So the studio behind Hatsukoi Sankai Me, Windmill — colloquially “Fuusha-sha” — grandly announced a new title this year with a name that sounds like they were happy to burn money on it: Yakusoku no Natsu, Mahoroba no Yume. Literally that’s “Summer of Promise, Dream of Illusion.” Though mahoroba isn’t quite just “illusion” — it leans more toward “utopia” or “paradise.” The game wasn’t even out and Windmill started promoting it, at least half a year of preheating. Then I saw how they were promoting it and I fucking spat out my drink. They chose to promote this game by releasing the scenario text first! Look, as an eroge company, wouldn’t you want your marketing to push sales as hard as possible? Who buys eroge the most? Isn’t it the “hardcore wealthy otaku” who scream “my wife” at everything on the internet, retweet every lewd image, and shout “I want to draw bishoujo” in their spare time? The irony is that the people who nitpick the scenario every day (like me) often aren’t the ones willing to drop money on tokuten, and sometimes they even turn into 割り厨. In short: the people who actually buy a lot of eroge don’t care about story at all. As long as the girls look good and the plot doesn’t have them gang-raped into meat toilets, sales won’t be low. What good is a good story? It doesn’t sell. Look at Sakura no Uta — praised to the heavens, and it still didn’t top the sales charts that year. Who was number one? Yuzusoft (lol). So if I were Windmill, for this new title I’d just keep dropping CG after CG, mostly lewd ones, the lewder the better. That’s how you build attention and sales, dammit. Of course, this seems to be the mainstream way to promote a visual novel these days. The industry really hasn’t changed one bit.