World Literature

MangaGamer recently conducted a survey in which they asked their fans a number of questions regarding the kinds of visual novels they play, and what titles they’d like to see localized into English. Now, they’ve published the results of that survey on their blog (NSFW). Let’s start with the games most requested by fans:

1. Fate/Stay Night
2. Majikoi series
3. Baldr series
4. Muv-Luv series
5. Umineko no Naku Koro Ni
6. Shin Koihime Musou
7. Rance series
8. Flowers
9. White Album 2
10. Little Busters

Moving along, MangaGamer also shared some information on the demographics that took the survey. The major takeaway is that visual novels in the West are played primarily by men in the college age-range. 73% of respondents were male, while 23.5% were female, and overall 86% were between the ages of 18-30, with 62.5% being 18-24. Female fans skewed younger, with 13% of female respondents being between 13 and 17 years, while only 3.8 male respondents fell into that age range.

Unsurprisingly, the older consumers also bought more games. Those in the 13-17 range were likely to buy one title (or less) a year, while the older 18-24 bracket indicated that they were more likely to buy two or more visual novels every year. Interestingly, those over 30 are significantly more likely to buy six or more titles every year, which sort of makes them the whales of the visual novel industry.

Survey respondents also indicated that “story” [insert plot joke] and “art” were the most important factors to them, although art held more sway with women than men. For guys, the third most important factor was erotic content, while in the case of women, it was the characters and sexuality options. Interestingly, more women also indicated that they prefer to use MACs rather than Windows PCs.

There are a lot more interesting tidbits in the complete results blog post, so if you’re interested in seeing what the hardcore visual novel market likes, I would recommend giving it a read (once again, NSFW). Now, excuse me while I pour one out for poor, which unfortunately did not make the top-10 list.