Do you think visual novels should still be classed as games

[VG Hermit]

im just thinking that they should have their own seach filter in the steam store. sure we have the tags, but i think visual novels should be considered a different form of media and have a proper filter in the steam store.
just so people who are looking for visual novels can easily search for them with a single click and people who aren't interested in visual novels can easily filter them out

[Astraea Kisaragi]

You have now even interactive books classified as games. Example http://store.steampowered.com/app/339350

Visual novels are much more gamelike compared them.

[cinedine]

Do you consider TellTale games as Visual Novels? Do you consider Japanese adventure games like Danganronpa or Zero Escape as Visual Novels?

[VG Hermit]

Originally posted by Astraea Kisaragi:

You have now even interactive books classified as games. Example http://store.steampowered.com/app/339350

Visual novels are much more gamelike compared them.

that's why i think we should start considering these different forms of media like movies because it's rather annoiying to be looking for a game and end up wasting your time on something that isn't a game. like we should have 2 things added interactive E-books and Visual Novels to the set of filters

[Winged One]

whether a person enjoys VN's come down to personal taste, more indepth filters would be nice in general..


however Visual Novels are technically a genre of game, the gameplay revolves mostly on making choices and seeing how the story changes based off of it, often with a few other game mechanics thrown in (which can vary from strategy to problem solving, even some have some dungeon crawler segments) (not unlike all the Tell Tale games or "Life is Strange", which can litterally be called a western variation of a Visual Novel.. they are near identical from a design standpoint)..

now Kinetic Novels (Visual Novels without choices), they are certainly harder to clasify as a game..

as far as genres go, Visual Novels are far older of a genre than FPS or RTS games.. they started showing up around the same time as the early RPGs and TBS..


although as I said, better content filters in general would be nice to allow people to more easily filter out content they are not interested in..

[VG Hermit]

Originally posted by cinedine:

Do you consider TellTale games as Visual Novels? Do you consider Japanese adventure games like Danganronpa or Zero Escape as Visual Novels?

no because those have some form of gameplay. i'm talking about the ones that are just clicking to move the story forward and making the occasional choice the ones that have absolutly no gameplay in them

[Astraea Kisaragi]

Well, dunno. For example the Hyperdimension Neptunia games are combined visual novel-3D action RPG games. Could you know into which category should they be put?

But I do agree that games like the one I linked should be not classifcied as games, its just reading pages.

[Radene]

Originally posted by The Classy Hippo:

Originally posted by cinedine:

Do you consider TellTale games as Visual Novels? Do you consider Japanese adventure games like Danganronpa or Zero Escape as Visual Novels?

no because those have some form of gameplay. i'm talking about the ones that are just clicking to move the story forward and making the occasional choice the ones that have absolutly no gameplay in them

You know back in ye olde days, the "gameplay" consisted of typing commands. "Move east. Get ye flask. Look at door". And we never for a moment considered those games to be "not games".

[Winged One]

Originally posted by Radene:

Originally posted by The Classy Hippo:

no because those have some form of gameplay. i'm talking about the ones that are just clicking to move the story forward and making the occasional choice the ones that have absolutly no gameplay in them

You know back in ye olde days, the "gameplay" consisted of typing commands. "Move east. Get ye flask. Look at door". And we never for a moment considered those games to be "not games".

I remember playing Zork on our old Amiga.. now thats a classic

[VG Hermit]

Originally posted by Astraea Kisaragi:

Well, dunno. For example the Hyperdimension Neptunia games are combined visual novel-3D action RPG games. Could you know into which category should they be put?

But I do agree that games like the one I linked should be not classifcied as games, its just reading pages.

it's simple the game just needs to have some sort of gameplay loop like puzzles, rpg battles, actions segments to be considered a game. the things i would consider visual novels would be ones that have no gameplay in them at all. ones that are just clicking to move the story forward and making decisions

[VG Hermit]

Originally posted by Radene:

Originally posted by The Classy Hippo:

no because those have some form of gameplay. i'm talking about the ones that are just clicking to move the story forward and making the occasional choice the ones that have absolutly no gameplay in them

You know back in ye olde days, the "gameplay" consisted of typing commands. "Move east. Get ye flask. Look at door". And we never for a moment considered those games to be "not games".

but text based adventure games usually had puzzles for you to solve which is a form of gameplay.

[cinedine]

Originally posted by The Classy Hippo:

Originally posted by cinedine:

Do you consider TellTale games as Visual Novels? Do you consider Japanese adventure games like Danganronpa or Zero Escape as Visual Novels?

no because those have some form of gameplay. i'm talking about the ones that are just clicking to move the story forward and making the occasional choice the ones that have absolutly no gameplay in them

Then you will find yourself in a slippery slope. TellTale games have next to no gameplay anymore. There is an interactive experience on Steam "The 39 Steps" which is basically the novel visualized, but it does include some basic gameplay elements similar to QTEs.
So you'd have to define gameplay - which is impossible to get everyone to agree upon. Else you would arbitrarily divide titles into different sections and make finding them (and therefore buying) more complicated.

The VNs that truly just consist of clicking through are called Kinetic Novels. They should be tagged as such, so no harm done.

[Winged One]

Originally posted by The Classy Hippo:

Originally posted by Radene:

You know back in ye olde days, the "gameplay" consisted of typing commands. "Move east. Get ye flask. Look at door". And we never for a moment considered those games to be "not games".

but text based adventure games usually had puzzles for you to solve which is a form of gameplay.

as do alot of Visual Novels, especially the more well known ones.. Fate Stay/Night (while not on steam) comes to mind, if you aren't very careful at picking up on clues hints and other tiny tidbits of information, you will get killed off in any number of ways because you won't know how to properly react to a situation..
Steins;Gate does it in a similar manner, if your looking for an example avaliable on Steam..

Originally posted by cinedine:

The VNs that truly just consist of clicking through are called Kinetic Novels. They should be tagged as such, so no harm done.

yeah, Kinetic Novels don't really have much gameplay..

[VG Hermit]

Originally posted by theseraph1:

Originally posted by The Classy Hippo:

but text based adventure games usually had puzzles for you to solve which is a form of gameplay.

as do alot of Visual Novels, especially the more well known ones.. Fate Stay/Night (while not on steam) comes to mind, if you aren't very careful at picking up on clues hints and other tiny tidbits of information, you will get killed off in any number of ways because you won't know how to properly react to a situation..
Steins;Gate does it in a similar manner, if your looking for an example avaliable on Steam..

Originally posted by cinedine:

The VNs that truly just consist of clicking through are called Kinetic Novels. They should be tagged as such, so no harm done.

yeah, Kinetic Novels don't really have any gameplay.. they should be tagged seperately

thats where it starts to get confusing and the only hope is for devs and publishers to help by properly tagging it as a game or visual novel

i have to head out for a few hours now so if i don't reply that's why

[Winged One]

Originally posted by The Classy Hippo:

Originally posted by theseraph1:

as do alot of Visual Novels, especially the more well known ones.. Fate Stay/Night (while not on steam) comes to mind, if you aren't very careful at picking up on clues hints and other tiny tidbits of information, you will get killed off in any number of ways because you won't know how to properly react to a situation..
Steins;Gate does it in a similar manner, if your looking for an example avaliable on Steam..




yeah, Kinetic Novels don't really have any gameplay.. they should be tagged seperately

thats where it starts to get confusing and the only hope is for devs and publishers to help by properly tagging it as a game or visual novel

i have to head out for a few hours now so if i don't reply that's why

well a "Visual Novel" would be a "game" because it does contain a form of gameplay
(whether or not its a type of gameplay you like is entirely down to personal taste, nobody likes every genre)

[cinedine]

Originally posted by theseraph1:

thats where it starts to get confusing and the only hope is for devs and publishers to help by properly tagging it as a game or visual novel

i have to head out for a few hours now so if i don't reply that's why

Visual Novel are a subgenre of Japanese Adventure games. They usually do have some sort of rudimentary gameplay - be it choices (that actually matter opposed to the TellTale trough). And Kinetic Novels are subgenre of VNs.
Me as a customer would be horrible confused of why one kind is offered among games and the other among something else.

I don't get why they should be put away. They don't disturb anyone. Those who acutally know, know what to look for. Those who don't are repelled by it being anime or a VN already.