Hey people.

I'm working with a french website and forums dedicated to video games and abusing my position to give yuri games some highlight. In that regard, after doing a couple reviews for recently released games such as Nurse Love Addiction and Flowers, I've conducted an interview with Hanako, from Hanako Games about her work, her views on VN and yuri along with her curator group Hella Yuri.

Here's the link if you're interested : http://jv.jeuxonline.info/article/14227/interview-hanako-games

It's in french, but here's the original before I did the translation :

-First off, could you do a short introduction ? Who you are, about Hanako Games, those sort of things.

My name is Georgina Bensley. I'm originally from the Southern US, but have settled in England. I've been making independent video games commercially as 'Hanako Games' for over ten years now.

-How did you decide to create video games ? Why settle for the Visual Novel genre ?

I've always been interested in video games since I was a little girl. Even when I was in school, I fooled around with some game creation software. It became a hobby, then a side business, then a full one.

I don't create strictly visual novel titles. Most of my games have at least some other gameplay elements mixed in, and I've worked on a few games that were purely puzzle or RPG or the like. However, I really enjoy playing with narrative, and especially with the ability to choose and change how a story turns out. It's something that is very difficult to do in most forms of media, but very easy with a computer. I like the idea of "what if" – what if the hero had figured out the villain's plan from the beginning? What if these two people never met and the whole adventure went differently?

As an independent developer, I can chase down whatever ideas seem interesting and explore them.

-What are your inspirations ? Your favorite Visual Novel ?

Almost anything is an inspiration of some sort, I'm always turning ideas over in my head and thinking about ways to play with them. I can pick out a few favorites that I come back to time and time again – anime like Sailor Moon and Utena, games like Princess Maker or the Sierra Quest games – but it varies a lot.

My favorite VNs in recent years would be The House in Fata Morgana, the original Kara no Shoujo, and the Zero Escape series. I enjoy complex storylines and mysteries.

-Among your games, Long Live the Queen got popular with both the specialized press and gamers. How did that impact Hanako Games and yourself ?

Obviously, having a game be a success is great because it means I have funding to work on more strange little projects for a while without having to worry too much about mainstream popularity. It does make you a bit nervous, though, as you'll always be wondering "what if I never match that again"?

Of course, I've had that sort of thought in the past and then ended up surpassing whatever high mark I was thinking of, so you really never know what will happen.

-Could you give us some insight about the creation process of your games ? Any parts you struggle with ? Some you find especially easy ?

The hardest part is usually waiting for the artwork to be completed so that I can finally release something!

-Along with the gameplay, the artstyle regularly change from game to game. Often very manga-like, but Black Closet had a more Western flavor to it. Do you have a dedicated artist, or are you working with different ones ?

I don't have a staff artist, I hire whoever I can find that's available at the time and suitable for a particular project.

-So far, your games doesn't include Voice Acting. Do you plan on eventually adding some in the future ? What is your opinion on Voice Acting regarding Visual Novels ?

As a player, I appreciate good voice acting. As a developer, though, I'm unlikely to create fully voice-acted games. I like writing quite a lot of text, and a lot of rare/alternate text that doesn't come up in most playthroughs, and being able to add even more options as I go along and think of more possibilities. It's hard enough to manage getting voice actors to read out ten hours or more worth of text, but even more difficult to get them to come back later when you suddenly want to add more to the story.

I wouldn't rule out a partially-voice-acted game, maybe one with a few special cutscenes that are voiced while the rest of the game isn't. But I don't think full voice acting is likely for me.

-Of all the games you made, which was the more fun, interesting or satisfying to make ?

I don't think I can say, really. Every game goes through peaks and valleys during the development process. It has to have seemed like a really fun and interesting idea to begin with, or I wouldn't have started working on it. I have so many ideas that only the ones I'm most excited about ever have a chance to come to fruition.

But once a game is in production, there will always be snags and frustrations, and eventually the time comes when I'll desperately wish for a game to be over with so I can do something else instead. On the other hand, the exciting moments when progress goes smoothly, when new milestones are hit, when I have something to show off... There's a lot of ups and downs.

-Several of your game have some yuri elements, a couple of them are fully yuri (Black Closet and A Little Lily Princess). What makes you want to include such themes in your games ?

I enjoy yuri myself, and traditionally there hasn't been very much available. So when I have the freedom to create things myself, naturally I tend to add what I like.

-Many people think that Visual Novels and Yuri games are not "real" games or just for porn. As a game developer and publisher involved with both, how do you feel about it ? What would you like to say to those who misunderstand those genre ?

The general public's opinion of visual novels has gone through some ups and downs over the past ten years or so. For a while, 'visual novel' and 'dating sim' were synonyms to most western gamers, if they'd even heard of them at all, and it was assumed that the entire genre was nothing but porn. That slowly began to change as more hobbyist and experimental games came out in English, and moved the perception of the genre outside of the hardcore fans to being something more indie/artsy.

Now in the past couple of years we've seen another big shift, with so many titles being released in the wider English market that are lightly or blatantly erotic, sometimes with patches to adjust the level of content. This appears to have caused some confusion for customers who aren't very familiar with visual novels. We see one set of people thinking absolutely every game contains sex, even if it doesn't, and either denouncing it blindly or being very disappointed if they don't get what they expected. We see another set of people expecting every game to be like the one VN they played in the past and then being very upset when it turns out to be full of fanservice.
It would be nice if people recognised that these games can be as different from each other as any other video games are, and treated each game as its own entity rather than "Oh, another one of THOSE."

-What do you think are the biggest differences between Japan and the Western countries when it comes to Visual Novel and the Yuri genre ? As a Western game developper involved with both, what are your thoughts on this topic ?

The biggest difference is obviously budget. While there are many larger-budget narrative games made by Western developers, they end up straying so far outside the visual novel genre that they're not considered relevant.

-Do you feel those genre can just stay as they are now or that they should evolve ? If so, in which way ?

Everything evolves, but we can't predict where it's going to go. There have already been a lot of changes since the earliest visual novels, and creators are constantly playing with new ideas.

-You also created the curator group "Hella Yuri" on steam, highlighting games with yuri elements. What motivated that choice ?

It started out as almost a joke, really. Because Brin, the Duchess of Hellas in Long Live The Queen, is a lesbian, a few people had made comments about her being the 'Duchess of Hella Yuri'. I'm not from the right area or the right age for 'hella' to have ever been part of my vocabulary, so this sounded rather funny to me.

I was curious about how many games on Steam really did contain lesbian relationships, and there wasn't any clear list anywhere that I could find, so I started trying to list them myself, and tagged it all as Hella Yuri for fun.

-What are your thoughts on Hella Yuri's growing list of titles, including some "AAA" video games ?

I'm just happy we have so many followers and people who can point out games I would otherwise have missed completely.

-Finally, could you tell us about your plans for the future ?

Right now I'm supposed to be working on a sequel to Magical Diary, which I've been promising to do for years but one thing or another always gets in the way. Beyond that, who knows?

Oh, huh, I had no idea she ran Hella Yuri. It's actually a good little service for Steam, and it's clever and honest marketing for her own games... I found Black Closet through it.

Chantelune posted:

-Finally, could you tell us about your plans for the future ?

Right now I'm supposed to be working on a sequel to Magical Diary, which I've been promising to do for years but one thing or another always gets in the way. Beyond that, who knows?

Oh, is that finally happening? Magical Diary was my first game by Hanako Games and it was pretty good. Interestingly it was part of my introduction to the yuri genre too since the only character I actually found all that interesting was the one you can get in a yuri relationship with.

karp posted:

Oh, huh, I had no idea she ran Hella Yuri.

I completely forgot about that, lol. That's the only curator group I even follow on Steam.

Shouldn't we make it sticky thread as well since it seems to get totally lost already?

Shouldn't we make it sticky thread as well since it seems to get totally lost already?

Done.

This was a nice interview to read. I really liked Black Closet, it was a neat game.

Wow. I've played Long Live the Queen, Magical Diary, Science Girls, and I've been subscribed to Hella Yuri for years, and I somehow never realized they were all made by the same person...

Well, she hires different artists every time and usually goes for a different salt on her VN core, so unless you pay attention to the dev, it's kinda hard to link her work together just playing them. ^^;

There's no visual or gameplay consistency between her work, but at least, we can't fault them to just sit on a "winning formula". Makes me wonder if the sequel to Magical Diary will actually get back the same artist or not. Though, considering she said it'd focus on a male protagonist, will have a hard time getting interested in it. ^^;

C'était super intéressant, merci pour l'interview :-)
Hanako Games really makes the best yuri games in my opinion. At least when it comes to western yuri games.
I Always thought most people in France don't even know what yuri is lol.
Where I went to school in France, people would just stare at me and be confused when I told them I like yuri T.T

So I appreciate you spreading the word haha :D

Spread the yuri!!

last edited at Oct 9, 2016 5:35AM

Mmmh, bit hard to say, to be honest. The general audience don't know much about it, if at all, yeah, and many have misconception about it, as mentioned in the interview. When I did the test for nurse love addiction on that website, there were a lot of people complaining about it because they thought it was a porn game, to the point where the mods had to wipe out the comments save a few that were actually talking about the game. Forced me to add a disclaimer in the test to point out that it was not a porn game and had no sex in it at all -.-. They seems to have calmed down, though, other yuri tests I made didn't get heat at all. Probably the title that brought misunderstanding there. That interview got good reception, but might also be because it mostly went with the VN angle and Long Live the Queen was a popular game there, so it was a more subtle push for the yuri there. :p

Another issue is that if we do have plenty of yuri manga translated in France, that's still a minor genre that few people care about. And as for the VN side, they're only translated in english. The language barrier tend to discourage a lot of people won't don't want to make the effort for a genre that they might not enjoy. Or that they don't consider to be video games at all as far as VN are concerned.

I've been promoting yuri on that website for years, mostly with pointing out titles on its forum, getting myself a bit of a reputation there, so it's mostly an evolution for me to get access to more official tools to spread some yuri, such as having credentials to make interviews like this one. ^^

Great interview!!
I love Hanako games.

A Little Lily Princess is probably my favorite. The feels!! The cuteness! The feels!!

Magical Diary was nice too, but having only two females routes (and I only really liked Ellen's route) was a letdown. Is a shame that the sequel will have a male protagonist.

rincewind posted:

Magical Diary was nice too, but having only two females routes (and I only really liked Ellen's route) was a letdown.

What was the other route? Ellen's was the only one I was aware of.

Virginia. Bit hard to not mess it up, as you have to keep thing wacky, she tend to take offence when you're trying to be sweet and romantic. :/