Kinetic Novel >> I started to use it because the folks at Insani I think described it with Planetarian as a visual novel without the choices. About the true meaning of kinetic - it's something like moving, or in constant motion, so yeah, it sounds very engrish, heh. I have changed it to Digital Novel now - the term kinetic is in brackets. Himeya has been using the term digital novel for the Fairy series, it's based on that.
Protagonist >> I will change the words to "protagonist" whenever you can see the game through his/her eyes (the main character), and use "cast" for all the people you can interact with, date, get endings with etc,... Would that be fine?
Adventure >> I'll think about that some more. Himeya uses ADV, adventure for most of its games now, also in older times they have been using "ANM" for the less interactive pieces, I figured it means something like animated novel or similar. Also, G-Collections uses the term adventure on various occasions, although they also use love-sim to describe some games, but that term is very hard to put into a category.
Love-sim >> Any ideas where "love-sim" might be comfortably positioned? Is it a gameplay-thing, or a content-thing? Most recently it's been the official description for the Sagara Family, but tSF is IMO the classical choice-based adventure, a visual novel at best. I'd say they mean "girl-getting games" in general, and perhaps the choice-based gameplay titles of those.
Visual Novel >> would this be fine then?
Choice-based gameplay (description - generally called visual novels with a varied degree of player interaction...)
* VN adventure - (multipath, multiend) - Season of the Sakura, horny bunnies...
* VN "true VN" (multipath, multiend, text-based) - Crescendo, Kana, Private Nurse...
* VN (multiview, one-end), the ones called "ANM" by Himeya
* VN (digital (kinetic) novels - one-path, one-end)
Manga/Anime style >> changed to "mostly" manga/anime style for now. When Sprung sets of a new wave of Western DS, we can remove it completely ^_^
Yuri& Yaoi >> thanks for the tip, I'll try to find a good place for it.
Mixed Games >> I was actually trying to avoid mixed or borderline games - I was not able to avoid it with the ren'ai element (semi-ren'ai or "light" game), but what I wanted to do was a simple guide for the basics, rather than a guide for all the "grey (or gray?)" areas - the person wondering about a game would then decide on his own whether the game is more ren'ai or just a hentai game.
The problem is I could imagine every category having a "mixed" subcategory, and we'd have word games to no end. I'll probably write a disclaimer of some sort for this. A "catch clause" (huh, if you don't know what that means, I translated it from the German word Auffangsklausel, Taleweaver, help!!!). I noticed on the Himeya page that they have The Maids' Story described as "maid training sim". And this incidentally fits perfectly into the "catch clause" which is Dominant Element Gameplay - it's there so people can't start arguing about the others' incompetence or whatever.
More suggestions are welcome.
PyTom wrote:You know, the sort of case that causes respectible linguists to go off and shoot themselves.
Heh, when I found in a conversation with a Russian friend what THEY use the word "biznis" (business) for, I felt the same way - though it was the very same kind of word perception one would expect ^_^ - it simply means ANYTHING that is suited to make money.
Yang Sei Fu wrote:I hope people aren't thinking about defining my game as "a run-of-the-mill sad ROMANCE game"...
Nah, it's Yet-another-novel-turned-game for us ^_^.
Seriously, I think that genre-breaking is perfectly fine, refreshing and shows you have the courage - just recently I visited the game studio I worked in and they had to make even more sacrifices towards more commercial play - simpler plot, more stereotypical characters... But that's just the way it goes, people (or "the customers", as the publisher calls them) like a clear definition of what they're buying (or so they say).
, so... well, anyway, if you have something to point out, leave a message after the beep, if not, then I'm probably going to send it to eclipse to update.