(S1, E14) Tapping Through Mobile Visual Novels
You’ve probably seen those weird ads for mobile games give you an insane scenario and ask you to make a choice. Like a pregnant woman sitting at a red light, and a man smiles at her and then your options are like “Smile back” or “Challenge him to a drag race for the chance to win your firstborn”. Well, did you know that people download those games. Because we didn’t. On this week’s episode of Pop Culture Boner we’re thinking about the phenomenon of choose-your-own-adventure, visual novel style mobile games.
Some references for you:
Petrana Radulovic (2018, Polygon) - The mobile visual novels blowing up across Tumblr
Anne Freier (2019, Business of Apps) - Gender bias: 49% of women play mobile games, but few games are made for women
Ana Valens (2016, The Den of Geek) - The Rise of the Western Visual Novel
Katherine Cross (2018, The Verge) - Don’t like visual novels? These games might change your mind
Some Wikipedia pages and game studio websites for the content I referenced:
Wikipedia - Japanese pop culture in the United States
Wikipedia - Visual novel
Wikipedia - Interactive fiction
Pixelberry Studios - Choices
Christina Love - Analogue: A Hate Story
Nitro+chiral - Dramatical Murder
As an aside, the some soundtrack to the Dramatical Murder anime was done by GOATBED, who slap. Check them out anyway. (That’s the choose your own adventure bit of this blog, for getting to the end.)
You can download the full transcript here.