There has been a lot of talk lately about Japan’s radically changing society. It started with an article in the Guardian with the viral headline “Why have young people in Japan stop having sex?” The headline was terribly misleading, young people in Japan are having sex. They are just getting married a lot less and having fewer babies. The notion
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More random notes from around the metaverse… The Vanity Google Ever heard the term “vanity google”? It’s basically where you google your own name and any online monikers you may use, and it is actually a good idea to do every now and then, especially if you are being cyber bullied. I tried googling myself (arianeb) and of course I
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So what is a Visual Novel? Well that depends on what direction you come from. From a static media perspective, the visual novel is a comic book with choices. From a video game perspective, its a graphic adventure game without an inventory to keep track of. They all have text and pictures. Most have choices to make, some tell a linear story (aka Kinetic Visual Novels) without choices. Most are hand drawn graphics. Some have voice over, music, sound effects, some pictures are animated.
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It wasn’t too long after releasing the first version that I discovered I was wrong. A whole genre of “Dating Sims” had risen and declined in the decade before my game. My ignorance can be forgiven since all of this happened in Japan, and nowhere else.
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