Abstract

The Atelier series is unique among Japanese role-playing games (RPG) for being the only major brand to consistently feature female protagonists. This paper studies the history of the series, focusing on what Ian Bogost calls "procedural rhetoric," the persuasive organization of rules framing the game text. It examines three games, Atelier Marie (Gust, 1997), Atelier Rorona (Gust, 2009), and Atelier Ryza (Gust, 2019), showing how the series began as a simulation of everyday life that explicitly criticized masculine adventures typical of RPGs before progressively developing into an adventure-game where this simulation aspect became ancillary to the story's development. As characters and narrative became progressively more important, the series's procedural rhetoric also increasingly mirrored the linear adventure narratives of traditional RPGs. If early Atelier protagonists were introverted and organized, by Ryza, Atelier became the story of an extroverted tomboy who identified with the external world of adventure before the domestic space of the workshop. These character changes are reflected in the evolution of the game's procedural rhetoric, such as the fleshing out of the narrative and the removal of the game's "time attack" element. A comparative study of the procedural rhetoric in Atelier helps us appreciate the implicitly gendered nature of the RPG genre, offering a critical perspective on Japanese games.

Keywords

role-playing game - gender - procedural rhetoric - JRPG - simulation - narrative - shōjo