joe randel's art dump

So the word on the street is the Japan’s naughty game market (or eroge industry) is taking a big downward spiral. Why? Dojin games. Dojin games are small teams of fan that make games for themselves and those that like what they like. It’s been a growing community in the past 3 years and some groups even get so popular they can make a living of it.

So with Dojin games putting up the big fight against eroge a restructure in taking place right now to save the boobies. It would seem that the first to get “restructured” is the writers. This really sucks if your company generally make the text heavy games for those who like to read while they fap as the writing will now be outsourced from freelancers rather then in studio workers. Really sucks for the writers too although those writers that have made a name for themselves are now publishing novels and the like. Next is to offer better art then the little guys because if you can’t get the writers you want then you might as well have pretty pictures (who reads these days anyway). But all this is putting a twist on the market as well. Since the restructuring people see the eroge market to be unattractive and so the talent is going else where which makes staffing a studio hard to do.

So what happens next? What happens to your favorite ergoe studio (mine is Soft Circle Correges)? Only time will tell I guess but it’s not looking good. What I would guess would need to happen (in my professional option) is to have someone release something different that hasn’t been the same thing that has been released in the last few years and jump start the industry again. Help turn heads in a new direction. But what could that be? It’s hard to predict what the masses will like.

Hopefully things get better. I’m not learning Japanese for my health ya know.