[mock-possum]

Watching the video is entirely different than playing the game, in my own experience as a gamer. If you’re not in control then you’re not playing. It’s not the same thing. Watching someone else play is always different from playing for yourself.

[the_af]

There's very little to control -- nothing, in many visual novels -- so "watching" is the same as "playing". These are like animé, only you click "next" to read/watch the next scene. You don't "play" a visual novel in any meaningful sense.

Some have minor decisions to make, some none at all.

I'm not a fan of the genre, but that's neither here nor there.

[astrange]

They're e-books, not games. I think calling them games is a mistake since it causes people to say things like "they're not a fan of the genre", which is a weird thing to say about the concept of books.

Japan calls them a variety of different things. Sometimes they're called "adventure games", like Monkey Island or Phoenix Wright, or "kinetic novel" or "sound novel". They don't actually use the term "visual novel" though. (complicating this a bit, it's common in Japanese game marketing to make up a new genre for every game series instead of just saying it's "an FPS" or whatever.)

[the_af]

They are sold in gaming sites, so it's easy to see where the confusion may arise.

> [...] it causes people to say things like "they're not a fan of the genre", which is a weird thing to say about the concept of books.

I'm not a fan of the genre because it tends to be terrible. Way more uncomfortable than reading a book (staring at a computer screen), the requirement to press "next" or choose between trivial dialogue choices is tiring, and the writing is uniformly terrible.

So in principle I wouldn't have anything against the genre, except in practice it's terrible.

There is a genre of videogames that is way better than visual novels and requires lots of reading, but also has real and often innovative gameplay: interactive fiction (the evolution of text adventures of old, Infocom et al).

[soraminazuki]

> I'm not a fan of the genre because it tends to be terrible.

Whoa, that's harsh. I suspect that has to do more with translation quality than the writing quality. Getting translation right is difficult, if not impossible. But people tend to underestimate that. Additionally, dialogue choices in visual novels are far from trivial. They often represent major turning points in the story.

Though visual novels aren't quite mainstream even in Japan, they were quite popular. If the writing was uniformly terrible, it wouldn't have sold as much.

[the_af]

I can get past awful translations, and actually have for other art forms. I'm confident that this isn't the problem for visual novels, but that they are actually amateurish stories, neither books nor movies (nor games).

It's ok that other people like them though, I'm not the Good Taste Police.

> Though visual novels aren't quite mainstream even in Japan, they were quite popular. If the writing was uniformly terrible, it wouldn't have sold as much.

I'm sure you can find the flaw in "lots of people like this therefore it cannot be uniformly terrible". There are plenty of examples of this phenomenon.

In Spanish we have a saying: "eat poop, millions of flies cannot be wrong!".

[fomine3]

You can say "not for me"

[astrange]

I agree the usual 2-3 line UI for them makes them take forever to get through. I suspect this has to do with Japanese people being famously underemployed throughout the 2000s, so they had lots of free time.

Some of them like When they Cry or Planetarian have full-screen text - those are the ones Japan actually calls "novel games". Those are usually more worth reading.

[userbinator]

Some have minor decisions to make, some none at all.

...and some are highly branchy, the Western equivalent being CYOA.

[the_af]

Which visual nivel is highly branchy? I've no patience for them so I've only seen a few, and they were almost like reading a (bad) book. Fans of the genre in forums seem to be against too much "gameplay", too.

[userbinator]

Here's two I found flowcharts of:

Kagetsu Tohya: http://www.nowere.net/a/src/1347481654955.jpg

Clannad: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Morlok8k/Clannad_VN_Flowch...

Those are all DAGs, but I suspect there are some with actual loops too.

[jquery]

That question is like asking a film lover, "what film is over two hours"? The answer is "lots of them". Branching isn't considered gameplay. And of course fans are against gameplay, the genre is defined by the lack of it. Once it has enough gameplay it's not a visual novel anymore, it's a regular game.

[the_af]

> That question is like asking a film lover, "what film is over two hours"? The answer is "lots of them"

Well, the problem in this case is that the answer isn't "lots of them" but "very few of them". And those that have options, based on reviews I've seen, are mostly cosmetic, the story is "on rails".

Being "on rails" defines the genre, I'd say. That, and terrible writing.

[jquery]

The majority of visual novels have branching paths after a common route that lead to entirely different endings.

I think perhaps you shouldn't speak with such authority on the medium. Many have terrible writing, many have excellent writing. It depends on the author(s) and also to an extent on the localization team if it's being read in English or another language.

[Ferret7446]

Nah, the line isn't so clear. The Visual Novel Database has run into this problem categorizing "borderline" games which have significant dialogue in addition to significant gameplay.

[jquery]

Might as well link their criteria: https://vndb.org/d2#1

[boomboomsubban]

Not really true with a visual novel, where the only difference between two people playing is how quickly they read the text on screen.

[wahahah]

There are choices which set flags, decide character routes, and determine a multitude of endings.

Typically a full playthrough will try to get all endings, but won't get all of the subchoices that just affect flavour. https://vndb.org/v11/lengthvotes