Game genre of VN games - ???

[tohtamish]

In my opinion, VN should be classified as adventures. I think, such classifyng could help VNs to become more popular. Should they be in casual genre? But main principle of casual games is "easy and fun". Many VN have strong storyline and are not so "fun" as standart casual games. Perception of long story is a work, not so "relaxing". But at present, there are lots casual adventures with huge storylines. Why gamers dont want to see VN on "steam", or another online srvices, casual portals? Maybe, sites dont want to deal with VN developers?

p.s. Im talking about PC market, I dont have any consoles and cant say anything about that.

[LVUER]

Perhaps because VN doesn't have any gameplay? And the fact that OELVN isn't that popular in western market (heck, even VN is not a mainstream genre in Japan itself).

[prezzey]

Perhaps because VN doesn't have any gameplay?

Oh but clicking through dialog trees is gameplay! Of sorts I know people who got interested in VNs through Bioware RPGs, so I'm kind of being serious. They did not enjoy the combat and/or the RPG elements (to be honest, Mass Effect 2 doesn't have much by way of RPG elements anyway!), what remains is basically a visual novel. Especially with Mass Effect 2. Once they made this realization, they got interested in VNs. I've even seen a Mass Effect fan VN in development, I don't know what became of it though.

[Nanashiko]

That's usually what it gets categorized anyway is a adventure games and on occasion rpg's. I think the bigger question is not what game genre is a VN game though if it even get's categorized as a game at all. I have heard it go both ways.

[LVUER]

Perhaps because VN doesn't have any gameplay?

Oh but clicking through dialog trees is gameplay! Of sorts I know people who got interested in VNs through Bioware RPGs, so I'm kind of being serious. They did not enjoy the combat and/or the RPG elements (to be honest, Mass Effect 2 doesn't have much by way of RPG elements anyway!), what remains is basically a visual novel. Especially with Mass Effect 2. Once they made this realization, they got interested in VNs. I've even seen a Mass Effect fan VN in development, I don't know what became of it though.

No, it's not considered a gameplay (at least most people do). There are some hybrid VN which offers gameplay, like Raidy, Tomoyo After, etc. but only choosing menu/options is still not considered a gameplay since you only read, choose, and click.

[papillon]

Why gamers dont want to see VN on "steam", or another online srvices, casual portals? Maybe, sites dont want to deal with VN developers?

There are a couple of VNs on casual portals. If you don't see them, you're not looking hard enough. In general, portals don't want games that are so reading-heavy and gameplay-light, because that's just not what their audiences are looking for. Exceptions are sometimes made.

As for Steam - Steam are picky, there are tons of good games out there that can't get into Steam. Everyone is bombarding Steam with game requests and Steam flat-out ignores most of them, Or So I've Heard. I have not personally tried.

[tohtamish]

Well, steam offers also "not so popular" indy games, and often with experimental gameplay - and gamers are ready to accept it...

[IceD]

VN's are adventure games. Both most of simple story games with choices and visual novels fall into "interactive fiction" category, which somewhat evolved as a spawn of old adventure games (such as Hobbit or Mystery House). You can even see that most of japanese companies tag their vn's as ADV games. It's just a difference between how we and japanese perceive adventure game genre. Propably if we also would try to match adventure games as they do, effect would be much different but we already match almost all adventure games as rpg's, and problem lies in this.

That reminds me... Where are the times, where adventure games were like those from Sierra... I also recall discworld Noir series and Grim Fandango... Darn. Those games aren't much different from visual novels if we would try to match them on broader field. You might also see that many VN's incorporate such elements as inventory management and solving riddles throughout the story (a good example of such VN would be Jack Norton's Vera Blanc game, am I right Jack? ).

But my point is - there's nothing wrong in calling VN's "adventure games", because japanese originally made them such things. So, for us if we are going to talk about branching stories with decision points - something along the lines of "Interactive novel" or similiar would propably bring a little bit more attention than standard "visual novel", which doesn't tell us anything. I remember some companies already had their experiments with those, though. And they weren't that great

I don't want to by picky, but in this case we propably need more VN's that would be ttractive to our western world if talking about more "serious bussiness", because all of we have now are just plain imitations of japanese works. Our serious developers should drop that dang "japanese" setting (and those school romance thingies) because it's the most common mistake, and here no one is interested in reading such bullshit except youngsters. People in Europe (for example) are much more serious and tend to be interested with much more serious stuff if we are talking about culture. So, Instead of that stuff we should try to do something similiar in terms of "fascinating" but on our grounds - old tales, folklore, stories set in older times, such as I and II world war or touching subjects that are more deep and important to westerners... Those things would propably attract more attention than common average japanese visual novel. Maybe even more adults would be interested in reading such stuff, if it would be appealing to them. I think that Jack already goes by that way and his novels are raising some attention. What do you think of it?

[tohtamish]

Well, is "Saya no Uta" attractive to "serious western people"?

[papillon]

Well, steam offers also "not so popular" indy games, and often with experimental gameplay - and gamers are ready to accept it...

Gamers are ready to accept a lot of things, that doesn't mean Steam will necessarily put them on. There are only so many people running the bottleneck to that salesfront. If they personally like a game, it doesnt matter how widely popular it is. Same for the other way around.

The best way of getting onto Steam, from what I've heard, is for THEM to ask YOU... for them to have found your game on their own and decided it was something they wanted, rather than you to ask them to carry it. But it's hard to say. There aren't that many people selling non-H english VNs and I'm not sure if any have tried. Mangagamer might have but I'm not sure...

Steam isn't the same thing as a casual portal though.

[tohtamish]

I'm interested in slow moving of anime genre. Indy games move fast enough, win some places anywhere, casual games move very fast, integrate very fast into social nets. 3D technologies come after java, obvious "hardcore" genres come in casual sector. All things expand into each other. But only anime genres stay alone in its own specific sector. I know no any newbie, who hated anime after he met anime classics. People like anime. Why anime, and VN in part, get popularized so slow?

[Scott Chang]

Well i think it's mostly adventure for VN~ because even romance, fighting, or just slice of life plot are all adventure aren't they ? But personally i prefer touching or romantic visual novels~ they're really sentimental and i love reading them~

[kantocan1]

[quote="LVUER"isn't that popular in western market....[/quote]

Very true, heck, i think i'm the only kid in a western school of about 170 in my grade that likes VN's and such, seriously, after all, i think a lot of popular VN's are at least semi-romantic, I mean, who in my grade (other than me) would be liking ROMANTIC stuff>? . Though seriously, some western people don't like VN's most common ingredients, namely romantic stuff, complicated stories, for some it's something to publicly sneer at .etc. I mean, i got hooked on romantic VNs because i read the Twilight series (yes lol) .

[Der Tor]

In Germany Visual Novels are basically all thrown together with the western style point and click adventure games (like monkey island etc.). Except of course when it's a hentai game then it's all thrown into the "adult games" category and for that reason sometimes even the non-hentai Visual Novels are also thrown into the adult game category. I don't think that's very good cause the game play is completely different. Also i like Visual Novels but i don't like western style point and click adventure games and much less do i like "adult" games. And similarly someone who likes point and click adventure games or adult games doesn't necessarily like Visual Novels.