Please seperate Visual Novels from Games in your store

[Mickey]

Not sure why this needs to be said, but the store page has been overrun with visual novels and to a lesser extent movies for awhile now. It's endlessly frustrating searching for games and having so many visual novels and movies cluttering up the page.

Selling these different mediums on your platform is fine, while I personally won't spend $10-15 dollars on a visual novel, there's obviously alot of people who will. But forcing them to appear all over your page is almost as bad as when you guys had DLC cluttering up the majority of the front page - its the same thing.

But seeing as you are Valve, and you tend to move at a turtles pace, I don't anticipate this being fixed for a long time, but you guys need to get your act together and improve arguably the single most important part of your business in the store page before it ends up becoming an even bigger problem.

[Lucius]

As someone who's an avid fan of visual novels, I agree - they aren't games, at least not in the traditional sense. So aren't The Walking Dead either. These are more like interactive fiction if anything. You don't "play" anything other than click a button and turn the "pages" (or in the case of VNs, progress the dialogue), so what's the "gaming" part here? It's no more a game than turning the pages of a book or pressing "play" on a Netflix movie.

Should we consider Black Mirror: Bandersnatch a game then? Why not just label every interactive DVD or bluray menus as a game considering how some of them have secret easter eggs if you click on the correct button? Ironically, those menus are far more interactive than visual novels.

Well, if that's the case, how about interactive YouTube videos that play out a "Choose Your Own Adventure" narrative, linking other videos as part of the "choices"? Should that kind of interactive fiction be considered a game too?

[Spawn of Totoro]

Orius님이 먼저 게시:

Should we consider Black Mirror: Bandersnatch a game then? Why not just label every interactive DVD or bluray menus as a game considering how some of them have secret easter eggs if you click on the correct button? Ironically, those menus are far more interactive than visual novels.

There have been games like that, yes.

Orius님이 먼저 게시:

Well, if that's the case, how about interactive YouTube videos that play out a "Choose Your Own Adventure" narrative, linking other videos as part of the "choices"? Should that kind of interactive fiction be considered a game too?

A chose your own adventure is still a game, so yes, those would still be games.

Orius님이 먼저 게시:

As someone who's an avid fan of visual novels, I agree - they aren't games, at least not in the traditional sense. So aren't The Walking Dead either. These are more like interactive fiction if anything. You don't "play" anything other than click a button and turn the "pages" (or in the case of VNs, progress the dialogue), so what's the "gaming" part here? It's no more a game than turning the pages of a book or pressing "play" on a Netflix movie.

My wife played the Walking Dead. It required quick decision making and reflexes at times, so yes, that would still be a game.

A book and movies are strait out, pre-determined with no real interaction and no choices. Far different from having the decision to choose left or right that creates a difference in the story.

-----

VNs are still classified as games. Even consoles have had them for a long time, at least in Japan. They required interaction and decision making as well as often contain or are puzzles in themselves.

As I said many years ago, before this was necro'd:

Spawn of Totoro님이 먼저 게시:

I could understand a Visual Novels genre as a catagory, but not to seperate them from games as they are still games.

[cinedine]

Orius님이 먼저 게시:

Well, if that's the case, how about interactive YouTube videos that play out a "Choose Your Own Adventure" narrative, linking other videos as part of the "choices"? Should that kind of interactive fiction be considered a game too?

Yes.
One of the definitions is "has at least one win- or loss-state". the other definition is "past time activity".