[musashiken]

Originally Posted by selkirk

That's the whole point. We're not only talking specifically about Erogames. "Visual Novel" would just be a term to indicate all types of games where you get a story in text form, and you make choices to choose the path the story moves along.
One of the problems with just using the term "Erogame", is that there's a huge variety of games, with vastly different gameplay, which could all be grouped as such. Would you really consider Kanon, Schoolmate, and let's say, some strip Mahjong game the same thing? All three could be considered as an "Erogame", but few people would really consider them to be the same type of game.

Well, the thing is we need to find out how "Visual Novels" originated. I'm pretty sure Leaf was the forefounders of the term with their famous "Shizuku", "Kizuato" and "To Heart" Visual Novels. And why are they called such? It's because the creators wanted to create a type of digital Novel with slight interaction (choices). And novels are essentially pages and pages of text, so Visual Novels have text all over the screen with pictures as the background. Oh and the Japanese Wiki says so too. And if you know Japanese, it also states the specific difference between Visual Novel and Adventure Game and that is what I said: the placement of text. To Heart is a Visual Novel because the game is described wholly with text and without much visual aid. Whereas Shuffle is an Adventure game because it's basically like watching anime with still pictures and text that is mainly dialogue with little description. And the interface of the game is deliberately made to emulate a traditional adventure game: Upper 2/3 of the screen is like a 2d dungeon view, lower 1/3 of the screen is for dialogue.

And because of the above, I just cannot agree with your definition of "describing a story with text" as Visual Novel. Comics tell stories with text too, so are they novels too? Yeah, it's a shitty analogy but what you're trying to do is to completely ignore the original Japanese intention of the term and explain it along English terms. Don't forget that the term "Visual Novels" did not originate along with erogames. There were thousands of erotic games involving nudity during the PC-98 and Dos/V eras, years before Leaf created the word "visual novel" for their games. And yes, Leaf was the first to create the "whole page with text" games.

Originally Posted by selkirk

Granted, good call for pointing out a Non-adult game in a thread which should be talking about Erogames. However, no one's saying that "Visual Novel" should be used for all erotic games. Far from it in fact. Furthermore, that's not the only case where people talked about games with no erotic content in that thread, and hence why a better term than "Erogame" is needed. Unless you say that the definition should be strictly adhered to, and a new thread created for, oh dang, we don't really have a term to use, do we? What, "What Non-Ero-games are your favorites at the moment?" I highly doubt that would stay on the topic of, for lack of a better term, ADV games for long.

There's always "All-ages" Japanese PC games. And no, I did not say that Visual Novels should only be used for erogames. But yes, I agree there are people who do not know what ero-games mean so they have the benefit of the doubt.

Originally Posted by selkirk

And why wouldn't it help? It's not like various Galge and BL games aren't "Adventure" games. They are, it's just a very open description, and quite unlike what many people seem to think of as an "ADV" game. Still, that doesn't mean it's not a correct term. Kinda like how Chess, 4X games, TBS, RTS, etc, can all be called "Strategy" games.

Well, I was just merely saying that all this is just confusing for the casual player.

Originally Posted by selkirk

I'm no expert on what p977tt was thinking, but those games do share certain characteristics, just not whether or not they have erotic elements. They all tell a story through text, similar to what I among others would likely group under the term "Visual Novel". Whether or not it's adult isn't really the point here, imho.

That's the difference between you and me, I'd still call Symphonic Rain an ADV game instead of Visual Novel. Although the creators call it a M.ACT. Which probably means Music Action game and I think it's a good name for the genre since you do play music in the game.

Originally Posted by selkirk

And by coincidence, all the Erogames you've played have been, in my opinion, Visual Novels. How about a strip mahjong game? How about an erotic simulator with no story? As for "ADV" being specifically and only for "ones with the dialogue boxes in the bottom half of the screen", as you yourself mentioned, that's not the case, even for the Japanese.

That's your opinion. I was using that example as a simplified representation of most Japanese Adventure games. And you misunderstand me, I was trying to state the other way round, that games with dialogue boxes in the bottom part of the screen are usually termed as ADV/AVG by the creators. If other elements are introduced like "Strip Mahjong" as the bulk of the game play, it would be called "Strip Mahjong" (I'm not kidding, Elf has called their strip mahjong games as such). And an erotic simulator is called that, Insult Simulation Game or something similar in Japanese.

Originally Posted by selkirk

Does where the text appear really make enough of a difference to merit different genre labels?

As per my reasons above.
If you're trying to generalize games, using general terms like Japanese Adventure Game, Japanese Bishoujo Game might be a better choice. For me, I just stick to Non-Adult, Erogames and the subgenres like Visual Novel, SRPG, Strip Mahjong etc. Of course I'd have to further explain myself most of the times...

Originally Posted by selkirk

The thing is, oftentimes the genre labels the company give don't help, like the example given earlier (Gun Action RPG). Nor do the similar-but-not-quite terms that are never defined help, such as "Interactive Novel".

I dunno, if you play enough erogames, you'd probably agree to the labeling.
I mean, it's not hard to guess from the names given right? Gun Action RPG? Probably an RPG about guns, and if I know erogames as well as I do, it's more likely just a normal ero ADV game about guns in a fantasy setting. Interactive Novel? Yeah, Visual Novel with more options. But maybe because I belong to the older group of erogamers, there were very few genres then. I agree that all this new labelling is just marketing gimmick to promote the same thing with a new word.

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

So, what... does that negate your opinion or something? Playing Devil's Advocate? You really don't care but just wanted to pick on a n00b for not being technically right? A comment like that confuses me about your motivation, so what is it?

Yeah my bad for that statement. I was caught between wanting to fling my hugely worthless epenis at a noob(or bunch of noobs) even though I could be wrong in the first place and wanting to be nice instead and take back my words.
Yep, guess I'll go rant instead with unabashed smartass attitude.

Originally Posted by luckyovermind

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This will definitely make a good 4-koma manga

Hmm, I should have joined in that argument. Little Busters is NOT an erogame.
In the official site, Little busters is an "ALL-AGES" Love Adventure game.

There are 2 kinds of games in Japan. "ALL ages" and "Above 18" games. To me, "Above 18" games are Erogames and vice versa. There are no in-betweens except for the occasional panties-flashing console games like Dreamcast games and what happened to that? So it's either Nipples or No Nipples in the world of Japanese gaming. Unless I'm mistaken and Japan is rewriting its censorship categorizing laws.



Look, point is there's no easy way for us English speakers to simplify the categories of Japanese games with just a word or two. You either go and make an effort to understand their way of terms or not at all.

If you want, here's my formula in differentiating them:

Number 1: Japanese games are either "ALL AGES" or "ABOVE 18 (I call them erogames)"

Number 2: If they're Visual Novels, they must be full of text.

Number 3: If they're ADV/AVG, they must be 2/3 picture and 1/3 dialogue.

Number 4: If they're something else, they must be ADV style during dialogue and probably have "extra" gaming options like battle game modes etc.

Number 5: If there's the word "Novel" somewhere, I'm probably looking at pages full of text.

Number 6: If it's called Insult game and has both pages full of text and pages with partial text... hell do I even care anymore?