Visual Novels

In my last post I discussed Japanese Dating Sims and that they are a subset of a general category called Visual Novels.  The Visual Novel is a hybrid media form that has never caught on yet, but thanks to devices like the iPad, they could in theory become very popular. We just need a breakaway hit to finally emerge and then all the copycats will follow.

So what is a Visual Novel?  Well that depends on what direction you come from.  From a static media perspective, the visual novel is a comic book with choices.  From a video game perspective, its a graphic adventure game without an inventory to keep track of.   They all have text and pictures. Most have choices to make, some tell a linear story (aka Kinetic Visual Novels) without choices. Most are hand drawn graphics.  Some have voice over, music, sound effects, some pictures are animated.

Just as comic books have a reputation of being about superheroes (since the majority of them are), Visual Novels have a reputation of being about romance and sex because the majority of them are.  But just like Comic Books do not need superheroes, VNs do not have to be about romance or sex. Some of the new independent producers are doing adventure, horror, sci-fi, etc. Most of the new ones stay in the “rated T for Teen level”

The best way to learn about visual novels is to just download a few and try playing them.  A couple of good sources, many of which are free:

http://www.renai.us/ – A collection of mostly free independently produced Visual Novels. Windows, Mac, and Linux links available for most VNs.
http://vndb.org/ – A database of Visual Novels from around the world, and thus mostly from Japan in Japanese.

If you are interested in creating your own:

http://www.renpy.org/ – Ren’Py is an open source freeware Visual Novel development and publication suite used by many independent VN creators.
Lemma Soft Forums – A forum dedicated to making of Visual Novels. A lot of creators meet here to post their work, get feedback, help each other out, etc.

I have been trying out a few:

Ripples - A kinetic short romance available as an iphone app. Also downloadable. Rated PG.

Fantasia, Realm of Thanos – A Fantasy Adventure. Rated PG. There is also a sequel I have not tried yet.

Daemonphilia – Romantic Comedy. Not Graphic. PG-13

Each Uisage – A mystery story set on a remote island in 1985. I love the original watercolor painted graphics. Rated R.

Digital: A Love Story – A story told over BBS messages on 1988 computers, some of which you have to “hack”. Fun concept PG.

Is There a Future Here?

As a commenter in the last post pointed out.  Visual Novels today come from two different sources.  Japanese games translated into English, and independent authors/artists mostly doing it for fun in their free time.  Neither source is likely to bring about any breakaway hits anytime soon.

The Japanese games tend to be very Japanese, and tend to cater to the shy teen males in Japanese prep schools.  They are very dialogue heavy, so you can spend time and get to know the characters.  As one commenter puts it:

This is the secret of the visual novel. They are socialization simulcra. I don’t mean a simulcra in the sense of a simulation, an accurate model which can duplicate responses. I mean it in the sense of a substitute that elicits and provides many of the same responses. Visual novels are not dating simulations, they are dating substitutes. Virtual dolls. Little computer friends.

Consider their first person presentation, their stylized graphics that focus on expressive faces and communicating emotion, the hours of voice acting directed at the player/protagonist who never breaks the illusion by speaking with a voice. All highly effective and relatively cheap ways to simulate social interaction.

Consider also the mundane hours of banter in place of traditional narrative. I found it boring while playing Yume Miru Kusuri but if I consider what was said, how long it took to say it and what meaningful new information was exchanged, then I compare that to a typical session of socialization in Second Life I’m stunned by how similar they are. I don’t mind that when talking to my “real” friends, because a lot of social is not story telling, it’s simply connecting and expressing support and interest in each other. I was bored by a simulcra of it, but even for me it quickly began to be captivating. I can only imagine how strong the impact must be for an anxious awkward high school kid in a society like Japan’s.

The problem with these dialogue heavy cultural specific visual novels is that they tend to be weak on plot.  These games cater to a specific demographic that does not exist much outside of Japan.

The other source are the independent sources. Ordinary people with some talent for writing and/or drawing and/or programing who are looking to express themselves in a medium they find suited to their talents. This is what attracted me to the medium myself.

Generally speaking there are usually only a small number of people working on these VNs, often just one person.  Its a rare individual that is good in writing, drawing and programming, which is one of the reasons that VN development is uncommon.  Quality varies extensively, unfortunately sometimes it varies within the VNs themselves.  Then there is also the imitation problem.  Many indie VN developers are heavily influenced by Japanese VNs, pushing the bloated dialogue, weak plot, and Hentai content too far.

On the other hand, the visual novel is a media format that anyone can break into, is not dominated by anyone outside of Japan yet.  Even better, I mentioned above that the iPad is quite possibly the greatest visual novel distribution device ever made, and yet there are practically no visual novel apps available yet.  Comic book publishers are already creating comic book apps for the iPad, and a visual novel is essentially a “choose your own adventure” comic book.

The market isn’t there yet, but it has potential.

What Tech Will be Gone in the NEXT Decade

I saw an article last week on a list of things that have nearly disappeared over the last decade. The list consist of:  calling, newspaper classifieds, dial up internet, encyclopedias, CDs,  land line phones, film photography, yellow pages and address books, catalogs, fax machines, wires, hand written letters.  All of them are still around, they are just becoming archaic or obsolete.

I suspect that over the next decade, there will be other things that are common today that will become archaic and decline over time.

Broadcast Network Television – Rupert Murdoch who runs Fox is already trying to kill the Fox broadcast network and turn it into a cable/Satellite only network.  He also has plans to turn all of his news sites into subscription only, which is likely to fail miserably, but his plans for TV actually make financial sense.  If so, NBC, CBS, and ABC could follow suit, and Broadcast TV as a mainstream media outlet will be dead.  Now if AM Radio can survive for 100 years, so can Broadcast TV. It will just have a lot more infomercials and pointless talk shows (just like AM radio) to fill in the gap.

Satellite Television – You are probably wondering why I would predict the downfall of Satellite after predicting the end of broadcast.  It is quite easy: The future of TV is instant access.  This is doable on internet based TV services like Uverse and FiOS, and even possible with cable services via broadband internet if you have a receiver that can buffer the show as you download.  It is not doable on Satellite. This plus the huge overhead cost of Satellite TV services will spell doom for these services.  I’d even go as far as to predict that one of the two major satellite services (Direct TV or Dish Network) will  stop satellite operations and close, or jump to the IP TV market instead.

Multiplex Theaters – Multiplexes with their 24 small theater screens are likely to head to the scrap heap. Large theaters with big (or IMAX) screens capable of 3D and digital projection will replace them. The multiplex experience is too close to home theater, and with high costs of going out to the theater, it is likely to decline in popularity.

DVDs – Just as CDs started to disappear last decade, DVDs are likely to disappear this decade with widespread On Demand TV and game download services.  BluRay will never be more than a niche market as well. This will also include video games on DVD media. Not only will places like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video start disappearing, but those Red Box dispensers will too eventually.

Printed Newspapers and Magazines – Between the Internet, and the Kindle, print is dead.  Online news papers will still exist, some may even thrive via online delivery options, but papers you read by spreading it out on the kitchen table will disappear.

Big Box Bookstores – Just as the giant chain record stores have disappeared with the demise of the CD, the giant chain bookstores will disappear with the demise of print.  Small specialty shops will still be around (rare book stores and comic book stores), as will book departments in department stores. But as more people convert to tablets, like Kindle and the Nook, and access to online libraries to go in them, the market for printed books will be dead.

Libraries – Between budget cuts and new technology, libraries will get rarer and rarer. All the major cities and universities will still keep them around, but with the primary use of the libraries being free internet sources these days, providing free “hot spots” around town is cheaper and can promote commerce in those designated areas.

Gas powered vehicles – Over the next decade, oil production is going to be level or in decline. We are going to be forced to find ways to use less oil, or live in a new Great Depression. Considering the sheer number of gas powered vehicles there are, it seems quite bold to predict their demise, but I foresee natural gas powered hybrids, plug in hybrids and pure electric vehicles (including electric bicycles) dominating the road within a decade… either that or $20 a gallon gas.

Incadescent bulbs – CFLs and LEDs for the win! This one’s a no brainer.

Hard Drives – The one weak point in computers today are the hard drives. They are physical devices with high RPM spin that are almost guaranteed to fail within 5 years. Average life span is around 3. The thing that has kept them around for so long is that solid state drives are still slower, hold less data, and more expensive.  I believe hard drives are at their peak right now.  There is little need for faster or bigger hard drives than what we have now.  If solid state drives can catch up to where hard drives are today, and that is a very likely scenario in the next decade, hard drives will become obsolete.

Desktop computers – You know those big boxes with 2 or 3 DVD burners and 2 or 3 big Sata drives powered by 500 watt power supplies sitting under your desk like the one I am using right now? Archaic dinosaurs by the end of the next decade! I think the 10s will see the end of Moore’s law of bigger and faster, replaced by smaller and more energy efficient. The big desktop computer under my desk is likely to be the size of my ipod touch in 10 years powered by a 30 watt power adapter — and just as powerful.  Its tempting to just predict everyone will use laptops, as that trend is already coming to pass, but the primary attraction of desktops is gaming, which is doable on laptops but it is awkward.  The primary components to the desktop is the full size monitor and the full size keyboard.  Monitors won’t be shrinking in size any, and LED backlighting, touch screens, and 3D capabilities will become more common place.  This pretty much guarantees there will be a place for non-mobile computing, it is the CPU part of the computer that will be getting smaller and more energy efficient.  It may even get small enough to carry around with you to move to different keyboard/monitor “terminals”.

The key to the next decade is energy efficiency.  All signs point to energy being a major concern in the next 10 years.  The more energy efficient our tech, the less impact energy shortages will have, and the cheaper it will be to live.

The XBox360 Solution

Its September and that means the new fall season of TV is coming. As usual the networks rearrange their schedules and schedule most of my favorite shows opposite one another.

I do not have cable or satellite, just an antenna to pick up local HD channels. My “DVR” consists of a tuner card on my computer running Windows Media Center — far and away the best DVR software despite the fact that the files it saves are proprietary. Between WMC, and websites like Hulu and streaming video on network sites (cbs.com, abc.com, etc.), and pay for TV like iTunes, Amazon, and Netflix, I do not miss anything I want to see, despite the lack of cable or Satellite.

The problem is, none of this can be seen on my TV, just my computer. All I can watch on my TV are live channels, DVDs, and my previously metioned Apple TV.

I decided that I would find a way to solve this once and for all. I researched many possible fixes: Wireless enabled television (too expensive), building a media PC (also too expensive), TiVo (another monthly fee to pay, high startup cost), a media server (none support the WMC proprietary files),  a converted xbox or linux box with XBMC loaded (same WMC proprietary issue), a Windows Media Extender (difficult to find, most no longer being supported) and a PC toTV device (poor screen resolution no HD support).  I mention these options because others may find them more suitable.

For me, the easiest and most cost effective solution is to get an XBox360.

I don’t own any consoles, never had the need, as my computer is powerful enough to play anything. But if I want to watch all this internet based television on my actual television, the XBox360 is the best way to go. I got the “arcade” model, the extras you get in the “elite” are needed for console gaming enthusiasts, but not needed for my uses.

Setting all this up turned out to be a major chore as I ran into some undocumented issues that Microsoft apparently does not even know how to fix. My computer connects wirelessly to a router in the same room as my TV, so all I had to do on the xbox is plug in a cat 6 ethernet cable (the 54mb limit of the way over priced wireless G adapter Microsoft sells is too low to stream HD).  Once connected, my computer had no problem seeing my XBox, but the XBox could not see the computer.

The official answer from Microsoft is to make sure your network is “private” and that and that both file and media sharing is enabled. It turns out you must also turn off Internet Connection Sharing as well (its a service under administrative tools, disable it from ever starting so it does not come on when you reboot your computer).  Microsoft either does not know about the issue, or they dont think it is common enough to publicize as a possible fix.  Took me a good 4 hours of troubleshooting to find this out though.

Anyways, once fixed, I can play all my media files through my TV, including my DVR recordings via the Windows Media Extender feature. The xbox also has netflix built in.

What I still could not do was access hulu and other streaming video.  Turns out there is an easy fix for that too called PlayOn ($40 one time after two week trial). It installs on your PC and plays online streaming video through your TV by pretending to be stored video. Works on PS3 and Wii as well.

And with that addition, I can watch anything  I want on my TV, sans cable or satellite.

Surreal Places: Pure Environments

Recently the New York Times did a fascinating article on new mediums of art on the web that included Second Life. Most of us have known for some time that Second Life is a great medium for art, and it is nice to see some outside recognition of that fact.

I thought I’d take you to three places that exemplify the idea of a “medium of art”, specifically all three of these builds are what I would call “pure environments” in that they take a 256×256 meter space and build a space that invokes a feeling and can be appreciated like a painting would. These spaces are not subdivided into different environments, nor are there stores or rentals to fund them. They simply exist. They are great places to explore or take cool screenshots.

All three are kind of famous, and regular SL explorers may already be familiar with them. But I have never mentioned any of these here before, so hopefully there will be some new visitors.

The first pictured above is called Euphoria Realm on the REZ server and it is a very simple build by Yuki Aabye. A railroad track runs through a flooded valley. There is an abandoned flooded house in the water, and above ground there is a bus stop with a fire built in a barrell and two broken TVs. Looks like the former resident of the house had to find shelter elsewhere.

Next stop is The Refuge in Wales Springs. Built by AM Radio, he was one of the artists featured in the above mentioned NYT article. He has become famous for some of his creative builds. This build is reminiscent of a midwestern farming community circa 1948, and covers two servers. The unique dusty yellow sky is courtesy of  painted megaprims. You’ll find lots of creative details throughout.

Finally, I visited a dark and rainy swamp called Crucible by Cuwynne Deerhunter. It seems to rain here all the time. Lots of plants and animals (watch out for the piranah).

Well that does it for this tour. I need to get out of these wet clothes and take a warm bath.

Instant Access Entertainment

Occasionally I veer away from posting about life in the metaverse to talk about not too distantly related other stuff. This is one of those posts. I recently set up a modest home theater system consisting of the following components: An Apple TV and an HDTV. Going through the offerings on Apple TV, it occurred to me that this is the future of entertainment!

Well not necessarily Apple TV per se, but something close. XBox360 offers a few download services including Netflix viewing and soon hulu.com content, Playstation 3 launched its own movie download service this summer, and Blockbuster will be offering a stand alone movie rental box soon too. Eventually, there will be many options to choose from on all of these services. (Not to mention upcoming meta services like Boxee, and PlayOn which can add any streaming services like hulu.com to any of the above mentioned boxes)

The primary goal being this: Access to every movie and TV show ever made anytime you want.

This is pretty much what every customer wants. There already exists services similar to this in other countries. In the US, the closest is Verizon Fios or AT&T Uverse, both of which are expensive services only available in limited areas. They both offer “On Demand” TV supported by high speed fiber lines (25-50MB), but even there, there are limitations based on what I consider to be archaic “tiers” (i.e. if you want HBO on demand you have to pay for HBO channels too).

With access to any TV and Movie anytime you want, the whole notion of “Network TV” has to change. It will most definitely hurt network TV, but cant kill it. There have a lot of things threatening to kill AM radio, and yet it is still alive and kicking. In fact the AM radio model is where Network TV is destined to go: Non stop talk shows. (Think about it, those court shows and game shows on daytime tv are just glorified talk shows too.) All the news channels (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc.) are there already. NBC just announced a five hour reduction in its prime time schedule for (you guessed it) a talk show.

Initially, wide spread on demand is going to kill many networks, or cause some consolidation, but the long term trend (as successful models emerge) is that we may end up with more networks.

While network TV may survive, it is going to go from a majority slice of the entertainment pie to a minority slice. Inevitably, in order to get eyeballs, networks are going to start streaming live on the internet, giving access to anyone with a high speed internet account. As bandwidth and streaming technology improve, the quality of streaming will match the quality of cable or satellite TV, seriously hurting these services.

With on demand, there is little need to own DVDs, but the same can be said of mp3s and CD sales, and yet the CD sales continue. People like software they can hold in their hand. That will not stop anytime soon.

Movie theaters are already hurting, especially since the viewing experience in theaters is not much better than most home theaters these days. But, people still like to go out and watch movies with a crowd. Theaters are trying to offer things they can’t get at home like bigger screens, and 3D movies. The big 3D movie offerings over the past year (Beowulf, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Bolt) have not done any better than 2D movies however, so I am not so sure if that can save theaters. Meanwhile, they are now experimenting with live sporting events in 3D, the first ever being the Raiders vs Chargers game on December 4th, 2008. Will we go to theaters to watch sports in 3D?

Regardless, mass media, and how we get our entertainment, is going to change in the very near future.

Terrorists in Second Life? NO! (and other false stuff)

Here it is folks, with Second Life getting so much press, it is inevitable that a hate piece or two would show up. But an article on The Australian website called Virtual Terrorists has got to be the most ignorant, false and lets face it unintentionally funny piece I have ever read. They offer no evidence that terrorists are using SL as a training and recruitment tool, and the incidents they cite — if they happened at all, most are heresay — are script hackers being script hackers.

Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting bad news about the economy of Second Life, combining news about the gambling ban, and the collapse of two independent investment schemes. They followed it up with a story about a second life land glut which in truth is not happening. Land prices are still freakishly high that most new premium players cant afford a 512m parcel that they get rent free with their monthly fee.

No, the SL economy is still doing well. Growth is slower in recent months, as it happens every summer. But despite all this bad news the exchange rate of Lindens to Dollars is still stable at around 270.

Let me finish by pointing out a sane article about Second Life Debunking 5 Business Myths about Second Life which should clear things up.

CRB Ruling a threat to Virtual Worlds

Yesterday the Copyright Review Board (CRB) rejected appeals from the internet radio industry. Effective May 15th, Internet radio stations will owe hundreds of thousands of dollars that they don’t have to Sound Exchange the royalty collection agency of RIAA.

Because the new fees are per song and per listener the measly 6 hundreths of a cent fee can grow into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a station with 1,000 listeners. It works out to $11 per listener per month.

The Internet Radio is fighting for their lives right now, and only Congressional action (they are the ones who passed the stupid law in the first place) can save Internet Radio from shutting down for good as early as May 15th.

Yesterday they set up http://www.savenetradio.org/ as their central web site for organizing petitions and support. Another good source of info is http://www.saveourinternetradio.com/.

This affects Virtual Worlds like There and Second Life in a huge way. Both rely on free streams from places like Shout Cast to provide in world music. If legitimate American stations shut down, most of Shout Cast disappears.

But, I know what you are saying, “This won’t affect foreign stations will it?”. Wrong, and in even a more sinister way. A friend of mine from the UK posted a list of great internet radio stations from there. Sounds good, especially since lately British bands have been sounding better than the pop tripe we have been getting fed in the US. Only to find out that all of the stations on his list block listening in the US.

Worse than that, because of new agreements in this regard, foreign stations are being forced to drop free feeds that play in Winamp (and therefore can be fed into There and Second Life) and go with DRM based feeds like Windows Media Player feeds that do not work in There or Second Life. The only likeable foreign feed I know of is Virgin Radio Classic Rock, and who knows how long RIAA will allow them to feed into the US.

That leaves two kinds of stations: 1) Independent music only stations that make arrangements with unsigned groups or independent labels, or 2) Pirate stations that defy the law.

Stations in category 1 have limited appeal, and finding good ones will be hard. Stations in category 2 are going to be chased down and hunted by RIAA, and unfortunately tracking IP addresses of radio in There and Second Life is really easy using the DOS command “netstat”.

Because Virtual Worlds without music is dull, no doubt people will try to get around it using voice, which not only sounds crappy, but if the practice becomes widespread, There and Second Life may have to shut down voice servers.

Bottom line is this: The Virtual World community has to put its support behind Internet Radio’s survival. The loss of music to the community could be devastating.

The TIMES they are a changin'

Here are some interesting stories about two of Americas biggest newspapers refocusing their business from print to online

NY Times publisher: Our goal is to manage the transition from print to internet

Given the constant erosion of the printed press, do you see the New York Times still being printed in five years?

“I really don’t know whether we’ll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don’t care either,” he says.

Sulzberger is focusing on how to best manage the transition from print to Internet.

“The Internet is a wonderful place to be, and we’re leading there,” he points out.

The Times, in fact, has doubled its online readership to 1.5 million a day to go along with its 1.1 million subscribers for the print edition.

Sulzberger says the New York Times is on a journey that will conclude the day the company decides to stop printing the paper. That will mark the end of the transition. It’s a long journey, and there will be bumps on the road, says the man at the driving wheel, but he doesn’t see a black void ahead.

Los Angeles Times adopts new Internet strategy amid competition

The Los Angeles Times, one of the major daily newspapers in the United States, announced on Wednesday a new strategy to put more up-to-the-minute stories online in an effort to make the newspaper’s website a primary vehicle for delivering news.

The announcement follows an industry trend in which newspapers are shifting resources and energy to the Internet, where revenues are growing, and away from print editions, where ad dollars are shrinking.

The new initiative is designed to expand the audience and revenue generated by the newspaper’s website, latimes.com, according to editor James E. O’Shea, who said the newspaper is in “a fight to recoup threatened revenue that finances our news gathering.”

Under the strategy, the website will lead with breaking news to provide readers immediate access to multimedia content as stories develop, while the newspaper’s print edition will focus more on editorial analysis, broader investigative reporting and exploration of trends.

So is this the future? Newspapers the thing of the past? Instead of people reading big papers, people are reading the screen on their portable web device?

I’m thinking yes.

FineTune The Cool New Free Music Site

There is a cool new internet radio creation site called FineTune that allows you to create playlists and share them with your friends. It basically allows you to program your own internet radio station. Rules are simple, must have at least 45 songs, and no more than 3 from any specific artist.

Yes there are other sites that do the same thing like Pandora, or Launchcast, or Music Match, but this one is actually free. Check it out before it catches on too big.

Second Life and Real Life Cross Paths

http://www.nyclivewindow.com/

Intel is sponsoring a cross link between SL and RL as master builder kess quinn (aka versu richelieu) builds the world around a New York street corner in a span of 72 hours.

Check out the report on RocketBoom

Here is the real life address of the project

Here is the second life address of the project