Eroge Market Victim of Moe Boom

Y not just put every genre on 1 game?

Oh sankaku I love your yellow journalism writing and crazy exaggerations.
I hope 2010 is a good year since the world is so going to end because of the global warming in two years, anime and eroge will be dead before though because of the moe virus.

Moe kill the Eroge Star?

I don't get it. Are they saying that moe is hurting the industry, when they themselves said that it is a very broad term, so it has no absolute meaning to everyone. I don't see how it can be a sure problem if it don't even have a a real meaning just something that changes with each person you ask.

The insider mentioned that the price of games are expensive, not the production costs. So why is it assumed that reducing the games' prices aren't a reasonable option?

Moe is not simply based upon the way that something looks or behaves, nor dose it have to exclusively tie it self down to the same standard that something is cute. The Japanese slang term moe (literally meaning budding) refers to the characteristics of something that is growing, developing, evolving or just basically a diamond in the rough. Moe is also interpreted as a burning passionate sensation branched off from the term "moeru" (burning). When applied towards anime, manga, video games (or really just any form of entertainment) moe is a emotionally positive reaction towards observing the dynamics of a character, relationship, or situation in the the way it reflects upon the viewers key feelings to evoke upon a change within themselves through inspiration or to maintain there own self worth. It really is just a exuberant, sincere and honest feeling as well as a form of appreciation, affection, and admiration towards a character that they are emotionally moved by. There is no style or genre that best represents moe since it is a sensation and is subjective to whatever someones moe feeling happens to be. What I have noticed is how the term moe has been modified as some sort of convenient "catch all" word basically referring to anything cute, loli, ecchi, slice of life, slapstick or even sometimes porn, even the terms hentai (weird person) and otaku (maniac) are grossly misinterpreted when carried over to different cultures.

Moe as a fad or as a trend in Japan is mainly due to whatever generates the most moe feeling within that time or era of what becomes most relative towards what people feel more in need of reflecting off of the current climate or environment that they are situated within. Its whatever is felt as moe that becomes popular over time and not actually moe the feeling it self, since what it is that encompasses the literal meaning that the more recent slang term moe is structured upon has always existed through out entertainment. One more thing I've noticed is that whats rarely taken into account within many English speaking fandom communities are the Japanese sensibilities vs. Non Japanese sensibilities and cultural differences in what become least or most appealing towards demographics. Just because something is popular in Japan it doesn't have to hold to the same standards that apply towards whats popular in your own culture. Say, for example, what the Japanese fans think is moe or interesting doesn't have to mean that the Americans fans would have to find it the same as well because even Americans can have there own "moe sense" that is entirely alien to the Japanese. Sometimes I fell its almost as if some people just want to imitate the Japanese in what they say and do (even I'm using too much Japanese slang...lol) but I suppose it can be more interesting to go along with the flow from the influence of things that are foreign. In the end moe is only a feeling that is based upon personal preference and whatever it is that works for someone won't necessarily work with someone else.

Not the first time that the industry was in crisis. Back in 2003-4 there was a boom in eroge publishers because the "moe" culture started to take off and demand surged, much like the video game crisis in 1987. And then the market simply couldn't sustain all of them, over-speculation bubble burst and many of them fold. Unfortunately eroge is such industry that if you can't adapt to the taste of the crowd, you will be phased out. There are a few companies that I considered still making innovations within the industry. But most of them have already resorted to cookie-cutting and starting to saturate the genres. As gloomy as the outlook of the situation is, there will always be some demand for such product. And as long as the anime sector still stands, there will be some synergy with the eroge business. But this should serve as a wake-up call to the keymakers to the industry of how dire the current situation is.

- Ex-eroge critic

An anonymous site interviews an anonymous developer. Sadly this is not much by means of concrete information.

This is why I decided to start working on my own series of Visual Novels; for the Source Engine. You simply can't expect translation groups to deliver English Translation. My options are to make my own novels, and release them for free; or to learn Japanese.

Both options are difficult but atleast one gives me the opportunity to set up a small business.

"An almost total lack of innovation, whether technical or narrative, and an evident lack of interest in new markets, domestic or international, seem more of a barrier to expansion than the tiny core of established fans the industry has so carefully served all these years."

I don't think this is terribly fair. If getting a "landmine" costs a gamer 100 dollars of wasted cash, then /producing/ a landmine, and promoting it could very well put a game-maker out of business, or close to it. It doesn't seem like the kind of risk most companies would be willing to take.

"A bird in hand is better than two in the bush," so to speak. They have a known market, they know what they have to do in order to sell to it, and they're content not to risk going out of business to go after that other "bird" - a bird that may not even actually be in the bush in the first place.

If there is any kind of virus or cancer that has crippled Japanese markets within perpetuated decline and stagnation it would have to be the long term effects of the "Japan Syndrome" that they have still been suffering from since the 90s. In ways very similar to America's economical crisis Japan has been and is still constantly devastated by cronyism, predatory banking and predatory loaning activities (like the consumer lender Aiful corp. and their debt in abusing too many Credit-Default Swaps) which could very well place them in a situation potentially worse than the 90s. There is no silver bullet solution that is just going to magically pull Japanese industries out of financial turmoil and eroge, anime and manga markets are most certainly no exception. Almost all major profits are used to pay off debt accelerated by all sorts of structured finance vehicles, hedge funds, fractionally reserve banking and long term deficit spending that just keep increasing more and more. So it really comes as no surprise as to why staff are severely under paid and companies can only retain the vitality of a weed. Probably Japans biggest problem is how The central bank of Japan has horribly exploited the Japanese yen almost just as badly as America's Federal Reserve has exploited the dollar where it would almost seem as though both organizations are virtually carbon copies of each other in the sense that they both manipulate the issuance of their currency on any given whim with absolutely no transparency. Having a fiat based currency, nothing intrinsic to back it and printing it into oblivion is why all the prices on commodities are skyrocketing, so people would rather back their savings into something more tangible than to go around splurging if they're smart. This problem as well as many situations like it all around the world can only be solved incrementally in exposing these plutocrats, criminal investors and banksters that make Madoff look like a Akiba maid, cuz seriously the government ain't gonna do shit since thats who they get provide them immunity out of fear and greed.

814364302@qq.com

Moe is good, but more BOOBs please.
Flat chest is not for me.

What does "moe" stand for?

There's a solution to all this.
English.

Moe sucks. Moe is pure crap. Everyone who likes moe is a fucking faggot! Mom+shota-son FTW!

add to that that the cosumer base isn't breeding and goes for extinction :)

I prefer eroge that have great storyline like Fate Stay/Night than a moe eroge.

Heheheheheheh

It's no different than any other VERY finite market that's selling over and over to the very finite market.

Hey, just because you released a game last year, doesn't mean you can expect to sell a game this year and the next and the next.
The gamers are merely a year old this year. We haven't necessarily expanded in numbers magically. It's not like there is magi cal growth in the market, even if there is magically more in the industry.

I see the same thing in the wargame industry (which is also brutally small in customer base numbers). If this year the number of game makers were to increase for wargaming, it will just mean they will all be selling fewer wargames to the same number of wargamers.

Some demographics don't increase, sometimes they just age.

If they are stupid enough to just continue on or are just too chicken to take a risk at being the next great thing, then let them suffer the lame sales.

Why use the non-moe Ino art for this?

Hwoow

more MOE more BETTER

I feel they'd get a bigger consumer base if they were cheaper. However, if they were cheaper, it might only even out. You have more people buying the game, but the amount of people you gain may only the same amount you made on the smaller number of people.

At the same time, I'd have to wonder how necessary eroge games are when theres more then enough free pornographic material, both 2D and 3D, readily available online.

I also wonder how many people pirate the eroge due to the high price point.

GOing international isnt a bad idea . . . too bad there are bans everywhere

You must have not studied economics.

"We’ve done everything in terms of marketing, and now companies are simply eating into each other’s profits..."

means that since there already is a saturated market,if eroge makers like Circus are competing on price, then you're just lowering margins for the whole industry and the producer is losing out/consumer is gaining.

In this case, it doesn't follow the Law of Demand.

Well cant they just expand there market outside of japan..... its another alternative market but they might have to translate the game into other languages.

Moe is the selling tool now

its like this.

adopt NiseMIDIdoronokai's (or whoever the fuck gets more faps per pic) art into 3d, like those dragonball things on the 360, give it gameplay like dragonage(except include very graphic sex scenes with penetration, hell, internal even) and customization like smackdown vs raw and soul calibur 4 combined and i will fucking get a plane ticket to japan myself to buy it. I FUCKING SWEAR!

anyone know what the title pic is from? it says Ino in the alt text of course but that's a pretty broad label.

I don't really see that he was blaming the moe boom for the industry being in trouble. The industry was always going to hit a wall because the market is too small to support more and more companies producing material. If gamers almost demand moe from a handfull of safe titles, then the obvious solution is tried-and-true vertical integration. Many companies should become a handfull of larger companies through mergers and they should do their own sales, distribution, and promotion. If the chain is all under their control, finding ways to profit shouldn't be a problem.
I agree that the market probably can't handle the number of titles coming out every month. With the relatively small target audience, it's obvious that a large percentage of these titles will fail, resulting in little or no returns on investment. Less titles with more top-shelf large productions from larger companies would work just fine.

That's my take anyway.

Wait whut? I thought both moe and ero blend well. I mean, who the heck would want to play eroge with uncute fugly looking girls? That's like watching scat pr0n with 3D pig disgusting 60yo women.

What blows me away is the sheer number of brilliant games that get utterly overlooked. I have said and will continue to say: Nothing is declining, unless it's the fan-base.

What's wrong with offering the same kind of game? The distributor already said that is what the customers want, so why make something different?

Take, for instance, Sankaku Complex. Put up sexy pictures and the page hits come. Put up inflammatory articles that make people flame each other and the page hits come. Why do something different? You want pictures of kittens and penguins instead?

I think plot and character development is something they should focus more on to build strong title or perhaps even series. If you look at the bigger picture this allow it to expand it to other form of product and media which will bring more customers in the end.