Visual Novels versus Dating Sims. And the English Genres.

[hasteroth]

Read this

A visual novel (ビジュアルノベル, bijuaru noberu?) is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art. As the name might suggest, they resemble mixed-media novels or tableau vivant stage plays. Visual novels are commonly called dating sims in the west, a misnomer as visual novels are classified as a sub-genre of adventure games and not simulation games. This has led to confusion with the other genre known as dating sims, which often shares a similar visual format with visual novels, but has gameplay based on statistics.

In Japanese, a distinction is often made between visual novels proper (abbreviated NVL) and adventure games (abbreviated AVG or ADV). This distinction is normally lost in English, where adventure game refers to a different genre. Visual novels and ADVs are especially prevalent in Japan, where they make up nearly 70% of PC games released.[1] They are rarely produced for video game consoles, but the more popular games are sometimes ported to systems such as the Sega Dreamcast or the Playstation 2. The market for visual novels outside of Japan, however, is small.

Now which do you prefer?

And any thoughts?

[LivingFlame]

Holy crap, I've been wondering what the difference between NVL and ADV was for a while now. Thank you for this. XD

And I haven't played enough of either yet to answer the actual proposed question, so I'll just move along now.

[hasteroth]

I prefer ADV (Fate/Stay Night, Clannad, Katawa Shoujo) over Novel (A Dream of Summer, Tsukihime).

I prefer VNs over Dating Sims. THough I've only played 1 dating sim.

I've always wanted to play some of those generic school life dating sims that sell so well in JApan (but in English)

You know with flags and stuff.

If anybody knows any good ones in english (or any Dating sims at all in English) could ya tell me?

Or even a Dating Sim that plays well with AGTH.

[Chez]

Well the distinction is prevalent through japan if we place this into the American market where the genre is not as well defined and the majority of people usually don't bother reading up on their games when they see the word Adventure they will think its a game like a RPG but typically they will expect more like Persona 4 ADV but sometimes you get ADV's such as Tears to Tiara or Utawaremono(these are exceptions because they play like RPG's) which to an average gamer would seem disappointing and result in returns.

Though i would personally like the change i feel it should stay where it is at. They have their own American market that will translate and import the games from japan. So for now changing it for their benefit over the majority seems fruitless.

As for ADV over NVL either one is okay but upon checking my vndb ADV has more significance in my finished games list.

[hasteroth]

Well the distinction is prevalent through japan if we place this into the American market where the genre is not as well defined and the majority of people usually don't bother reading up on their games when they see the word Adventure they will think its a game like a RPG but typically they will expect more like Persona 4 ADV but sometimes you get ADV's such as Tears to Tiara or Utawaremono(these are exceptions because they play like RPG's) which to an average gamer would seem disappointing and result in returns.

Though i would personally like the change i feel it should stay where it is at. They have their own American market that will translate and import the games from japan. So for now changing it for their benefit over the majority seems fruitless.

As for ADV over NVL either one is okay but upon checking my vndb ADV has more significance in my finished games list.

Same, plus All my favourites are ADV except one (A Dream of Summer)

[Otohiko]

Well, these distinctions are in the eye of the beholder and to some extent the eye of the designer. You can come up with as many three-letter acronyms as you like, but how useful these are is really a matter of how well the audiences understand them. Question is, do they have to?

I don't know, from my perspective, I see the difference but as far as games go, it's not a terribly important one to me. In the end the feel of many of these games, be they ADV or NVL is very similar. From my view as a gamer in the Western tradition, both have about similar design and about the same depth of gameplay which, shall we say, is not impressive. But this doesn't mean I don't like them - they're a great narrative medium and produce some really great stories, something for which they're appreciated by those who 'get' them. Otherwise, eh, in a Western market where in the past few years there has been a giant move towards user-driven, user-created, so-called 'sandbox' experience - you can't be surprised people don't quite 'get' the director-driven, ultra-linear VNs. There's really not much gameplay to speak of there. In all fairness, I'd personally just stop treating them as games altogether - much easier to appreciate them (for me, anyway) if I think of them as slightly-interactive storytelling.

[hasteroth]

Well, these distinctions are in the eye of the beholder and to some extent the eye of the designer. You can come up with as many three-letter acronyms as you like, but how useful these are is really a matter of how well the audiences understand them. Question is, do they have to?

I don't know, from my perspective, I see the difference but as far as games go, it's not a terribly important one to me. In the end the feel of many of these games, be they ADV or NVL is very similar. From my view as a gamer in the Western tradition, both have about similar design and about the same depth of gameplay which, shall we say, is not impressive. But this doesn't mean I don't like them - they're a great narrative medium and produce some really great stories, something for which they're appreciated by those who 'get' them. Otherwise, eh, in a Western market where in the past few years there has been a giant move towards user-driven, user-created, so-called 'sandbox' experience - you can't be surprised people don't quite 'get' the director-driven, ultra-linear VNs. There's really not much gameplay to speak of there. In all fairness, I'd personally just stop treating them as games altogether - much easier to appreciate them (for me, anyway) if I think of them as slightly-interactive storytelling.

There is a HUGE difference between ADV and NVL.

NVL is in novel style, text box fills up whole screen with picture in background (reads like a book).

ADV is for Adventure which isn't totally accurate but who cares, that's why I use the acronym. There is a text box at the bottom of the screen. Sprites and backgrounds are displayed above the textbox.

ADV usually has more choices, more dialogue heavy, and have a very different story telling style. They make you feel like you ARE the main character (Very good example of this is Katawa Shoujo).

NVL VNs are usually more linear (have less choices, some notable exceptions to this exist). Less dialogue. You almost always feel like you are seeing the story through the eyes of another, unlike VNs which put you in the position of the main character.

[Otohiko]

That's a relative difference though. While certainly ADV games like Katawa Shoujo or Utawarerumono are more interactive than a completely linear novel, in the end they are still extremely linear and have very limited points of choice for the player. Certainly from a purely game design perspective, the difference isn't terribly huge, especially compared to the gigantic gap between Japanese visual novel style games (be they NVL or ADV) and comparable Western-type RPG or even adventure games.

[hasteroth]

That's a relative difference though. While certainly ADV games like Katawa Shoujo or Utawarerumono are more interactive than a completely linear novel, in the end they are still extremely linear and have very limited points of choice for the player. Certainly from a purely game design perspective, the difference isn't terribly huge, especially compared to the gigantic gap between Japanese visual novel style games (be they NVL or ADV) and comparable Western-type RPG or even adventure games.

I beg to differ. Katawa Shoujo is not a linear game. Sure it follows the same number of days (duh) for each route in the demo, but there is no true route, no main girl, no... ok I forgot the proper term. But whatever. There are two endings for each girl in the full version (Release Date TBA)

[Otohiko]

Well, again, we're talking in very relative terms. It's non-linear only insofar as there is a number of possible paths with different endings, but it's still a very finite set of plotlines. The fact that all the writing is done in 'paths' there is pretty telling. If we see gameplay as skill-based problem-solving, there ain't much of that in the game.

Again, not that I'm attacking it at all, I like it quite a bit. Just not from a gameplay perspective. I like the storytelling, but it's simply unfair for it to be judged as a game and compared to so-called Western-style equivalents.