Otome games and Lost media

[Hinakochan]

I recently realized that the mobile otome games I used to play are slowly but surely become lost medias.
I heard about a joseimuke yuri game that was online but not for long and now is lost forever.
One of my favorite mobile otome, The cinderella contract (Yuri my love I miss you ) shut down a year ago.
And I believe all the online, gacha otomes are bound to become lost media as companies don't care about us, they just want money.
I know some mobile games got a pc port or console port, like Forbidden romance (my first Japanese mobile otome btw lol)
But I feel like most games don't/won't get an offline port sadly.

What do you think about that and what us as a community can do to preserve the games and be able to live the stories again. No commentary walkthroughs are a solution but some of us might like actually playing the game better, and a lot of mobile otome have recording and updloading stories against their ToS.
NieR: Reincarnation is a good exemple of protecting games, and I was glad the community worked so hard to bring it back! (I love NieR!)

But I think it might not be as easy for every game, especially otome games. I think most of the content is server based and not client based, which makes an offline recreation of the games impossible, like Final fantasy 14 1.0.

Sorry for the yap, I just feel really sad about all that and wish we could do something about it.

 

[801_9ma]

The prevalence of ephemeral mobile games in the current gaming industry is basically my nemesis at this point.

It genuinely depresses me to know that I could get invested in a mobile game, only for it to later shut down and only have slim hopes of being preserved—the only times I got to experience some kind of preservation were because the developers themselves were like "hi guys, we're ending service but we're releasing an offline version post-EOS" (and usually, those offline versions are severely limited in terms of what you can actually do in them). It's come to the point where nowadays I just don't want to get into joseimuke mobile games because I know my taste enough to know that what I like tends to be stuff that quickly shuts down.

As for preservation attempts themselves... recreating the games in a playable state is a massive hurdle, yeah. That being said, if you know who to talk to, sometimes you can get links to unlisted YouTube playlists with recordings of some joseimuke games out there, so perhaps that includes mobile otome games too even if it technically goes against the game ToS. Of course that requires knowing who to talk to.

Ultimately, I'm not really bringing any solutions here, mostly commiserating. I hate how the mobile game format became the most profitable yet the most fragile. I just want to play games without worrying about losing them forever. :(

 

[Hinakochan]

The prevalence of ephemeral mobile games in the current gaming industry is basically my nemesis at this point.

It genuinely depresses me to know that I could get invested in a mobile game, only for it to later shut down and only have slim hopes of being preserved—the only times I got to experience some kind of preservation were because the developers themselves were like "hi guys, we're ending service but we're releasing an offline version post-EOS" (and usually, those offline versions are severely limited in terms of what you can actually do in them). It's come to the point where nowadays I just don't want to get into joseimuke mobile games because I know my taste enough to know that what I like tends to be stuff that quickly shuts down.

As for preservation attempts themselves... recreating the games in a playable state is a massive hurdle, yeah. That being said, if you know who to talk to, sometimes you can get links to unlisted YouTube playlists with recordings of some joseimuke games out there, so perhaps that includes mobile otome games too even if it technically goes against the game ToS. Of course that requires knowing who to talk to.

Ultimately, I'm not really bringing any solutions here, mostly commiserating. I hate how the mobile game format became the most profitable yet the most fragile. I just want to play games without worrying about losing them forever. :(

Yes That's my all thought! I live in Europe and some politicians try to have a law about preserving games offline or have private servers when the game isn't online anymore, but most people see that as ridiculous and childish as if games were not also another form of art.
I'm glad I'm not the only one being sad about all of that. It feels terrible playing an online game knowing someday I won't be able to anymore. Like When final fantasy 14 shuts down, will we be able to play like usual and have private servers or a single player version. Like what's crazier is that you can get sued for "pirating" a game that no longer exist in a legal form, Are we deadass?? (genuine reaction on my part lol)

 

[801_9ma]

Yes That's my all thought! I live in Europe and some politicians try to have a law about preserving games offline or have private servers when the game isn't online anymore, but most people see that as ridiculous and childish as if games were not also another form of art.
I'm glad I'm not the only one being sad about all of that. It feels terrible playing an online game knowing someday I won't be able to anymore. Like When final fantasy 14 shuts down, will we be able to play like usual and have private servers or a single player version. Like what's crazier is that you can get sued for "pirating" a game that no longer exist in a legal form, Are we deadass?? (genuine reaction on my part lol)

Oh, Stop Killing Games, right? I'm also European and I've heard of those projects, but yeah, I'm afraid it's hard to undo video games' image as "something for kids" in the eyes of the public unfortunately. It sucks so bad. :(

As for big titles like FF14, I'd like to believe that they could release private servers (single player version seems a bit odd to me considering just how heavy on socialization MMOs are), but who knows... and I definitely agree that this last point is completely stupid. Piracy is partially born from lack of availability—if you don't want people to pirate your old games that are out of print, make them available to buy again in some way! But then again, that might be the idealistic part of me speaking, since I'm not the most tech-inclined person and I'm not sure what would really prevent a company from re-releasing a game outside of them completely losing access to the game's files.

 

[Hinakochan]

Oh, Stop Killing Games, right? I'm also European and I've heard of those projects, but yeah, I'm afraid it's hard to undo video games' image as "something for kids" in the eyes of the public unfortunately. It sucks so bad. :(

Yeah this one, and I know the party I vote for in my country was in favor of it too!

As for big titles like FF14, I'd like to believe that they could release private servers (single player version seems a bit odd to me considering just how heavy on socialization MMOs are), but who knows... and I definitely agree that this last point is completely stupid. Piracy is partially born from lack of availability—if you don't want people to pirate your old games that are out of print, make them available to buy again in some way! But then again, that might be the idealistic part of me speaking, since I'm not the most tech-inclined person and I'm not sure what would really prevent a company from re-releasing a game outside of them completely losing access to the game's files.

Yeah, it would be way better to have ff14 as private servers but companies are so greedy, they'd rather gatekeep and make their games become lost media than letting people play without making any profit. Also hope someday video games will be seen as art and not be looked down upon just like cinema was before!
As for pirating yeah, companies are so greedy, heard xbox wanted to implement unskippable ads in their games. I pirate my games now, even new ones, not only the one that are only available in second hand and way too expensive. People say "If buying is not owning, pirating is not stealing" and it's true. With the current state of the world buying games became a luxury, working barely makes anyone live at this point.

 

[801_9ma]

Yeah this one, and I know the party I vote for in my country was in favor of it too!

Yeah, it would be way better to have ff14 as private servers but companies are so greedy, they'd rather gatekeep and make their games become lost media than letting people play without making any profit. Also hope someday video games will be seen as art and not be looked down upon just like cinema was before!
As for pirating yeah, companies are so greedy, heard xbox wanted to implement unskippable ads in their games. I pirate my games now, even new ones, not only the one that are only available in second hand and way too expensive. People say "If buying is not owning, pirating is not stealing" and it's true. With the current state of the world buying games became a luxury, working barely makes anyone live at this point.

Yeah, the big gaming companies are so anti-consumer with their greedy practices that it's hard for me to find it in my heart to actually buy games... :') it's come to the point where I pirate games first, then if I really love them I save up money and buy my own copy later when it comes to big commercial titles. The only games I'm willing to buy blindly nowadays are indie games simply because they're more affordable and feel more genuine than the AAA stuff.

 

[Sinomis]

Gah still miss Liar! so much... never actually got to finish it because of life and then boom, gone... is so frustrating that they never give an option to play them offline or something- so much art has been lost like this and frankly i can do nothing to be furious each time... i wonder if there is any way to save them before that happens, but if there is is probably too complicated to feasibly do considering how few live service games like that are actually archived...

 

[xerois]

im just amazed with how i was there when voltage decided to shutdown lovestuck ppl began to record and import their stories for people to replay :D i think voltage is importing their lovestruck stories over to switch/pc but it doesn't seem to be the full seasons from what i read in the reviews? but i hope they continue to update them.
also ffxiv.. oof.. it reminds me of the mobile version of ff14 thats planning to be shutdown soon i don't think i'll get a chance to play it ; - ;

 

[godsblunder]

I agree it's such a shame when great stories are lost due to servers going offline. With mobile live service especially there's the cycle of games constantly shutting down because people are more hesitant to support the creatives financially knowing that the business side can shut it down whenever without care for the fans. Rarely are these ported to other platforms and even if they are, they don't always include all the previously released content, let alone add an epilogue to wrap up the narrative. In particular I remember when Level 5 shut down Otome Yuusha, there was so much content that got scrapped. For a while the team kept sharing various already completed card illustrations that were intended to released later (if the game actually survived) on their Twitter.

As a community, there's probably a way to preserve these games beyond just screen recording. I personally don't have the know-how to do it, but it's been before done with non-joseimuke media like Club Penguin for example which is now playable through private servers instead of the defunct official servers. A big issue though are that the joseimuke community is less open about piracy compared to the danseimuke side (evident even in this forum where only joseimuke is gated) so it's tough to find people to help out with these sorts of archival projects.

 

[satory]

A hot take: not the community should do something to preserve games, the creators themselves must do it. But alas, they almost never bother. They even lose original files, original copies, and I find it really strange. For example, one of the original DLC for the first Mass Effect was lost, and it never made into remake version of the game, how is this even possible
For the online games, I think, the best scenario is an offline version. ゆめくろ did this with a fund-raising campain, so maybe donating to make it happen is the best we can do.

 

[failedwebsite]

The only thing we can do as fans is demand that companies plan for preservation strategies in case the game is set for a shutdown. Pester their representatives at convention panels, expos, on social media etc.

 

[Hinakochan]

A hot take: not the community should do something to preserve games, the creators themselves must do it. But alas, they almost never bother. They even lose original files, original copies, and I find it really strange. For example, one of the original DLC for the first Mass Effect was lost, and it never made into remake version of the game, how is this even possible
For the online games, I think, the best scenario is an offline version. ゆめくろ did this with a fund-raising campain, so maybe donating to make it happen is the best we can do.

Yes I totally agree with you with the fact that it shouldn't be our work, but I don't trust companies anymore lol.
I think a good thing the companies could do is put in their contract that when the server shuts down, there will be a way to play again and keeping the previously gained/bought contents, that way they'd probably get more people to put money into the game and it would fund the offline, or private server version (for otome offline might be better I think.)