The Hard Sell (Convincing people to play this)

[Paul Atreides]

Well, i'm glad that on the most notorius message boards i usually write, they are talking right now about the game and it has very positive reviews. Even some people there are working on the Spanish translation, and i also participate convincing people to try it on other minor sites. Unfortunately is like other people said, most of my friends are not interested on that kind of "anime stuff".

[Dr. Robotnik]

Rule #1 of selling people on Katawa Shoujo; do not tell them what "Katawa Shoujo" means.

[New Age Retro Hippie]

I don't even really play VNs, though it's not because I'm against the Waifu-culture. I think that VNs are too fantasy for my tastes, usually (like Tsukihime). So far I've only discussed it with a few friends; one's in love with it (he's also into the Internet culture, so I wasn't particularly surprised), another thought that I was playing a game about retarded people (I tried to be pretty clear on exactly what it is so >_>;), and another is just a nice guy who takes a general interest in what others have to say, though probably would never be interested in playing this game.

[Mysterious Stranger]

I usually give people this review from The Escapist, since it hits on pretty much every point I could possibly think of. Saves some breath, at the very least.

[contown]

I got one friend to play it. I was telling him about VNs in general, mentioned KS. Told him it was my favorite. So I put a couple random VNs on a flashdrive for him and told him to download this, because it's actually a good read. (I've never managed to fap to it. Too attached.) He laughed and said he only cared about the porn.

Then he got Lily's bad/neutral end, (got the good end later, of course) teared up, and took a two hour walk at 1 in the morning, contemplating parts of his views on life.

[kyouriharu]

Unfortunately my friends are quite close minded when it comes to entertainment. I can't convince them to play the games I enjoy for the life of me. Their heads are stubborn to change and only follow the big name game, movie, manga trends. I do throw out a good word whenever it is mentioned.

[MoogleDee]

So far I've sold only one of my friends on KS. I used a method similar to what Bigbishounen said before. I told my friend about how I had strong feelings about something that happened and then mentioned how it was a game. That piqued his interest enough to give it a shot.

[amentoraz]

Its interesting that I see much being "out-of-the-norm" as a pre-requisite to KS. Being myself quite like that (sort of a Rin myself, thoug I still have to explore her path, which makes me afraid because I expect a brutal catharsis), I was fastly attracted to KS. Well, also that I saw it on /b/ threads in 4chan and I was like, "a game that has made it to /b/ like that has to be interesting".

When selling KS to friends what I've tried is emphasizing its not any sort of pervy fap material, or just leaving the sex thingie out of my description. A good idea is to compare it to games such like Fahrenheit: that is to say, the fact that there's sex scenes in a game doesn't make it a game about having sex and fapfapfap.

Also that its not some simple cheesy game shamelessly trying to teach you people with disabilities should be treated as equals.

To be honest, I have a few people around me 'weird' enough to like KS, but their problem here is language. I'm quite adept at english but the same can't be said about most people I know, and I think having a very good english is necessary here. The game is long enough reading it at a decent speed; if you go 1/4 a normal english reading speed and you often have to check out the dictionary, I'm afraid KS may turn into a nightmare. If the spanish translation is ok, I know about 4 or 5 people I could enroll.

Probably my girlfriend will end up playing as well, if only because I'm talking so much about it with her.

[chadachada123]

It was a hard sell, but I convinced two friends to start playing. One of them fell as much in love with it as I did, and me and him now talk about it all of the time. My other friend tried, but was too bored with it to even push through act one, despite protests from me and my first friend.

I've talked about it with 3 other people. One had heard of it before and kept being dismissive, only saying "crippled porn!1!" The other that was with him said it sounded interesting, and that he'd look into it. The final friend was with both me and the other fan of KS, and we both of us talking about its positive bits and "feels," he seemed to become interested.

One thing that works well, I found, is, once the "dating sim" or "visual novel" idea is in the air, to point out what was the case with me: I downloaded it expecting porn, but ended up having the most emotional experience of any medium, ever.

I'm not even a big anime fan, nor have I ever tried a visual novel before, but if you know that your friend is kinda into anime, it can be an alright sell. Just point out how, after just an hour or two of reading, you tend to entirely forget that your route's girl is disabled, realizing and acting as if she is just a normal person.

[StepmaniaFreak]

I ended up showing one of my friends a collection of comments from 4chan all related to KS and that piqued his interested enough to try it. I originally found this image by Googling the game and instantly fell in love with it once I read through most of it. It's fairly large, though, so I'll only be posting a direct link to it, instead of posting it in the usual tags.

Dat Image

[micechasekittens]

I recommended it to a few people, but I always left out the dating part of it till the very end. If you first start out by stating what it is at the most simplest level 'It's a dating game where the girls are disabled' then pretty much anything you say after that point will not be heard. I was about to type 'would fall on deaf ears' but that would be a horrible pun. Anyway it wasn't the dating aspect that got me into this game to begin with.

This is my first visual novel due to my preconceived notion that the romance vn genre was merely porn. I also hate the shallowness of romantic comedies (failure to be funny or show a meaningful relationship) and pretty much avoid things where romance is the central plot. Yet in KS I found an amazing story with characters that I identified with and some complex relationships where sex is more a plot device than some reward that is to be given out.

So I emphasize the complex characters, music, interesting setting, cute artstyle, followed up by a 'by the way there is dating'. A giant paragraph detailing how it was tastefully done proceeds that statement. When I first finished this game, I was gushing about it with so many of my friends. A couple have tried it (fact that it is free is good incentive to at least give it a try). Ever since playing this I have lost my interest in some upcoming triple A games due to knowing that it has been ages since I played a game with characters and a story that really moved me (Rule of Rose was that one).

[HacksArePro]

Just say that it is a good story.

Funny thing that made me want to put this on my top ten list of good things for the year. I was one of those people that had these ill conceived notions that KS is a cripple dating sim that a friend of mine over on steam likes to play. Somewhere in my frame of mind, I wanted to play this game just to find material to make fun of it (I'm a terrible person, I know). Next thing I know it, the feels started creeping in and I want my Hanako.

Curiosity does not kill the cat.

[XanatosPlannedThis86]

Actually this gives me idea after reading through these responses. Perhaps, one could create a commerical or advertisement to ease people into this game. A commercial which could convey what Katawa shoujo is about, and pull in people who are open minded but never played a visual novel. Such an advertisement would be a challenge. Especially if you created a standard ad with a thirty second time limit. I think the videos 4ls have kind of conveyed it.

Or if you want to create an advertisement for the close minded, One would have their work cut out for them. Results might be rewarding.

[Zig_Zac]

My Situation is funny....

The guy at work who told me about the gam ena dgave me a copy, didn't even play it. He just thought it was a joke.

After I played it and told him how good it was, and how I'm always on the forum, he decided to try it..

He played Emi's route first during the week, of course and thought it was good... but only good...

But then he played Lilly this weekend and now he is totally hooked and trying to play it at work, and is having deep and meaning-fulls with me about it at work... Lol!

Awesome

[Eldrazor]

I'm having a really hard time of how to describe the game. Technically it's a game about a disabled guy romancing disabled girls, but that description just leaves people thinking wrong about KS. Especially when I mention that it comes from 4chan, renowned for housing the most socially awkward and uncomfortable people and content.

So how would you describe Katawa Shoujo in a representative way?
I've managed to convince quite some people by saying "You won't regret it, trust me, it's amazing." and just whining about it infinitely, and so far noone has regretted playing it, but there are some people who aren't interested, and I want them to experience the miracle that Katawa Shoujo is.