State of the industry :)

[kadakithis]

Like with any cultural stuff, it has a lot to do with the people involved and the mediums. I wouldn't say East and West are necessarily Idealistic vs Realistic (I mean we created Looney Toons and Adventure time for our animated features, and some of the most serious and realistic dramas I've ever seen were Korean) or tropes vs nontropes. We each get used to certain ideas more than others and become immune to them, like American action movies are the most ridiculous idea of violence, but we got used to them and they became somewhat normalized.

Nevermind that anime is a subculture and medium within a broader context. It's sort of like comic books. While they are definitely a part of American culture, I'd say a majority of people in America don't read comic books. But some of the more mainstream things are still enjoyed and made into film, while the subculture itself is pretty separate and has it's own idiosyncrasies. Anime is similar in that it's not as big a part of Japanese culture as it seems, and most people I know from there view it much like we view cartoons here.

I guess I'm saying that I prefer English made VNs because dealing with your own country's subculture is hard enough without a language and cultural barrier on top of it. I don't think they are better, but it does make things easier to enjoy, for me.

[chudah]

Rather then trying to make characters that resemble real life people that would do things the same way real life people do them they try to make their character idol like that are superior to real life people and a symbol of what they believe people should be like and this is exactly why I like anime and Japanese VNs so much.

That's where we differ. What the Japanese consider ideal I don't necessarily consider ideal. Besides that, I feel the most interesting stories come from characters who have internal conflicts that I can understand and relate to. When the characters respond in ways that don't make logical sense to me, it lessens the impact of the vital character development I'm always seeking. Now, that's not to say the Japanese have never written really good characters, because they most certainly have (one of my favorite characters ever has come from a Japanese otome game). It's just that so many characters in VN's utilize the same stereotypical personalities that it gets boring and predictable after awhile. But hey, to each their own.

[Troyen]

I know you mentioned before it's hard to get visibility on the Apple App Store:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/05/ ... re-revenue

As a consumer, I've kind of given up on it because it's a huge hassle to find anything worthwhile. You see the same top 10 recommendations over and over and if you try and find something manually, it's a lot of sifting through low-priced junk. But that's my personal experience.

[jack1974]

Yeah same. I don't play on tablets usually: once I was forced to wait for a few hours away from the computer so I brought the tablet with me. I TRIED to find some game: was impossible. In the top ten always the same stuff (freemium crap) and trying to browse was such a pain that in the end I gave up!