List of Genres & Tags

[trooper6]

Hello! We are supposed to list genre titles and tags for our games in the WIP and Completed Forums...and it got me thinking...what are the generally accepted genres and tags in the VN world? And are there others as well? I thought perhaps we could brainstorm and this thread could be a resource for others.

Now, I'm no expert on the Japanese side of the VN world, so I'm not going to be so great with that and would welcome refinements of my definitions and additions, as well! All start off with some of the things I've seen on the boards so far:


BxB, GxG, BxG, GxG -- these are markers of romantic pairings available: Boy pursues boy, girl pursues girl, boy pursues girl, girl pursues boy, etc.
Action -- Fight! Fight! Fight!
Adventure -- Story with Exploration and Puzzles
Bara -- Gay male themed game created by gay men for gay men.
Bian, Onna x Onna, or Onna-doushi -- Lesbian themed game created by lesbians for lesbians
Bishoujo -- A Romance game with a male progatonist
Boy's Love (BL) -- Gay male themed game created by women for women.
Comedy -- Game focuses on humor
Drama -- Game focuses on more serious situations without humor
Edutainment -- A game that has an educational goal, as well as entertainment purposes
Fan Fic -- Creating an original story in the pre-existing world
Fantasy -- Incorporating fantastical elements, like magic, dragons, etc.
Freindship -- Focuses on Friendships
Historical - This VN is set before a non-fictional historical background, such as the Middle Ages or Victorian times
Horror -- Focuses on the frightening, the scary, the horrific!
Kinetic Novel (KN) -- A Kinetic Novel is a Visual Novel without player choice or branching story lines
Magical -- Game includes magic
Mecha -- Large Robots!
Mystery -- The main thrust of the game to is to figure out a mystery
Otome game -- Romance Game with a female protagonist
Paranormal -- Ghosts and Vampires and Werewolves, oh my!
Parody -- A humorous or satirical take on an existing property
Post-Modern - This VN focuses on deconstructing elements found in other VNs
Psychological - This VN deals with psychological issues or mental disorders, such as agoraphobia or schizophrenia
Renai -- A Romance Game
School -- Set in a school...often high school
Science Fiction -- Futuristic technology. May or may not have aliens or space travel
Short -- The game is short
Slice of Life -- A game where you follow the character going about their daily life?
Stat Raiser -- A game with RPG-like elements that involve raising character skills or other similar statistics
Survival Horror -- Game focuses on horrific situations that also feature survival elements and resource management
Tragedy -- This do not turn out well for the protagonists
Yaoi -- Gay male themed
Yuri -- Lesbian themed






That's my start of the list. I have a question. What do you call a game that is going for a literary sort of vibe? In books it would be just called "literature"--but that is awfully vague, don't you think? So what would you call them? Drama?

[LVUER]

Try http://vndb.org/
They have extensive database of VNs and their tags/genres.

[lemonscent]

Try http://vndb.org/
They have extensive database of VNs and their tags/genres.

This.

I think of action as more "fight! fight! fight!" in general, whether that uses swords, knives, or fists, than simply guns & car chases, but maybe I'm in the wrong here.

[trooper6]

I'll change the action description lemonscent!
I checked out vndb...and some of those tags are really spoiler-y.

[lemonscent]

LOL I can't believe you used "fight! fight! fight!".
That was just a random brainfart-y example that I came up with in a split second for the heck of it. xD
But I'm not complaining.

[Googaboga]

An otome game has to have a female protagonist for it to be considered an "otome" game. If the protag is male then I'm pretty sure it is called a "bishoujo" game.

This topic is neat. I have a question myself. I've been wondering do the tags BxG, GxB, etc always imply romance? If the game was strictly friendship based would using those tags be incorrect? Or can those tags be used for a game where you simply develop a relationship with another character regardless of whether it is romantic or not?

[LVUER]

I'll change the action description lemonscent!
I checked out vndb...and some of those tags are really spoiler-y.

When you open a VN, you can set the tag like whether you want to see technical one, the sexual tags, the summary or all of them, and most important; to spoil you, minor spoilers, or spoil you all.

[gekiganwing]

Use as many tags as you need to describe your story, art, gameplay, and so on. Make sure your audience understands what the terms mean. It might also be wise to describe your VN in a short, simple phrase. Even if it's a complex story that doesn't easily fall into a single genre or category.

Boys Love is fiction about gay men, but it's created by women for women. Bara is fiction about, created by, and for gay men.

Now as for useful similar terms for fiction about gay women... there's three suggested in TVTropes' "Yuri Genre" article. It's good to have some distance between the extremes of genuine lesbian literature and fanservice/pornography.

Also, I recommend using the full phrase "otome game." Why? Because Urban Dictionary currently states, "The term 'otome' is also slowly being integrated as a new way of referring to a ramped anime/manga fangirl."

That's my start of the list. I have a question. What do you call a game that is going for a literary sort of vibe? In books it would be just called "literature"--but that is awfully vague, don't you think? So what would you call them? Drama?

That's a good question. I'd say avoid words with negative connotations -- you don't want people to think it's pretentious or incomprehensible. Think about terms that tell the audience that your VN is a story with pictures, rather than a (romance) game, or porn without plot.

I've been wondering do the tags BxG, GxB, etc always imply romance? If the game was strictly friendship based would using those tags be incorrect? Or can those tags be used for a game where you simply develop a relationship with another character regardless of whether it is romantic or not?

Good question. If the main character is just friends with the cast, I'd say just use a tag like "Friendship" to describe the story. If the story includes both friendships and romances, then say so.

[Elmiwisa]

I find the tag Action and Adventure to be quite easily misleading:

Action. The thing is, it could means that the game have an action scene (fighting, chasing, climbing, etc.), and is played out like any other scene the usual VN way (perhaps with more dramatic lighting, SFX and BGM). Or, it could means that there are time-sensitive challenge that the player need to complete. Clearly, you can't expect Ren'Py to be very suitable for a action challenge like an usual action game, but time-sensitive puzzle is not too far off.

Adventure. This have been long used to means "Adventure-like" game, but of course, the genre have expanded over the year to include a lot of game that is very different from the original. Many would consider VN to be a subset of Adventure-like game for example, though some would think that Adventure-like game need to be much more challenging to be qualify as one. On the other hand, to people who are not aware of the origin of the term, they might think of Adventure as in "going on an adventure", then I think exploration would be the keyword, rather than action.

Also, for Otome, I think it is just another term for GxB isn't it? Romance in general would be Ren'ai.

As for slice of life, it seems to be used in so many different games that I'm not even sure what it is supposed to be about anymore.

[Googaboga]

^Well otome games can have GxB and GxG. So it is not completely interchangeable with the GxB tag. But often times it is just GxB.

I've been wondering do the tags BxG, GxB, etc always imply romance? If the game was strictly friendship based would using those tags be incorrect? Or can those tags be used for a game where you simply develop a relationship with another character regardless of whether it is romantic or not?

Good question. If the main character is just friends with the cast, I'd say just use a tag like "Friendship" to describe the story. If the story includes both friendships and romances, then say so.

Thank you :>. So it could be something like [Male Protag][Frienship/Adventure]. I'm just making that up for an example but would that be a correct way to tag the game and get the idea across? Or would mentioning the gender of the protag not be needed if there is no romance? Or maybe a tag like [Platonic BxG/B] could work. That way people know the gender of the MC and people you can befriend and it mentions that it is not romantic.

[trooper6]

@Googaboga, I updated otome, & added Renai and Bishoujo. Thanks!

@elmiwisa, Oops! Because I was dealing with literary/film genres like Mystery/Romance/Drama/etc when I got to Action and Adventure, I just thought about them as literary/film genres rather than video game genres. Which is crazy, because Adventure games are a genre I really like. I adjusted the definitions. Thanks for reminding me!

@gekiganwing, I made Boy's Love its own category, created a Bara category, and changed the otome lable to otome game. Thanks! I also added the labels tvtropes mentioned that mark lesbian stories for lesbians rather than lesbian fetish stuff.

Anywya, gekiganwing, I wanted to address to this thoughtful response to one of my questions:

That's my start of the list. I have a question. What do you call a game that is going for a literary sort of vibe? In books it would be just called "literature"--but that is awfully vague, don't you think? So what would you call them? Drama?

That's a good question. I'd say avoid words with negative connotations -- you don't want people to think it's pretentious or incomprehensible. Think about terms that tell the audience that your VN is a story with pictures, rather than a (romance) game, or porn without plot.

I don't think of the word "literary" as having a negative connotation. I certainly don't think of literature as pretentious or incomprehensible. So...maybe "literary" is the best label? Because if a person thinks of literature as a negative thing, if they think of literary things as pretentious or incomprehensible, then they probably aren't the sort of person for literary game, right?

I think about books and the term "literature" (or sometimes "novel" or "novella" which is about length) is used in a dichotomy with the term "genre fiction." So other sorts of books: romance, western, sci-fi, fantasy, etc...they all have a specific label that describes what sort of literature they are. But the things that fall under the general category literature aren't seen as having a genre label.

In theater, you basically just have the general categories: drama, comedy, musical. With some other category modifiers referencing time (classical, contemporary), or acting/directing style/theory (physical theater, theatre of cruelty, living theater, social realism, verité, melodrama, comedia del arte, expressionist, Brechtian, etc). But the style labels don't really seem to fit in a VN world--they seem very theater specific.

In film, you have a couple of labels that might indicate the sort of thing I'm thinking of: indie and art house. Indie doesn't work, because really, 95% of the EVNs I've been seeing, even the commercial ones, regardless of are indie...I mean they aren't being put out by EA, you know? Art house...I know the term "art game" is getting popular in some circles, but I don't feel all that comfortable with the term "art game" because it implies that the other games are not art...and I think all games are art regardless of genre. "Art House" seems to imply a certain experimental aesthetic that doesn't always apply either.

Out of all of them "Literary" seems to be the best...but I'm still not 100% certain if that is the word I want to use to describe a game that does not fall into one of the other recognized genre categories and that it is supposed to be thought provoking and probably not make you feel all that rosy afterwards...that fun or "enjoyment" isn't its main goal. Or does "drama" work better?

[Hazel-Bun]

I would like to jump in and say drama would do you best Trooper, tag wise. VN being a weird mixture of game, artwork and story in an (almost) interactive comic setting, I can understand your hesitation about using a term like "Literary". Personally, if I say a VN with that tag, I would think automatically of a game with very little art or player choice that would focus on telling some human drama or something a kin to that. I'm not sure if that's what you're going for either, but that's just my two cents ^^ Hope it's of some use.

Also, you might want to add KN for Kenatic Novel. Those are VN without choices that focus on telling a linear story but with the rest of the VN elements. I still have no idea why they're called Kenatic when that implies motion or movement but that's what I've seen used. Some others you might want to add are Stat-rasier and just plain Horror. That's all I can think of at the moment!

[trooper6]

Thanks for your input Hazel-Bun! I'v updated the list with your entries.

Maybe drama is the way to go.

[TrickWithAKnife]

How about "edutainment"? That's the tag I plan to use. And hopefully they will become more popular in the future.

[trooper6]

That's a good genre tag! I'll add it, but what definition would you use?