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I first started writing this in like 2018 and I finished half of it now but I didn't do it the way I was planning back then and it's a bit of a disjointed mess. I hope it's good enough anyway. - There have been some arguments as to what the definition of a visual novel should be, and that's well and good. But let's look at it from the other direction: what works should our definition of visual novels include? Let us begin our journey with a silly, myopic statement I will nevertheless repeat until @Palas finally calls a hit on me: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is not a visual novel. Okay, bullets fired, I feel better already. But why am I trying to define the boundaries of the visual novel category to exclude the pretty good adventure game series Ace Attorney, and what kinds of criteria am I using? Furthermore, why would anyone disagree with me when I am obviously right? ...Okay, let's back up a bit. Why do I care so much about categories at all? Categories Categories are useful because they allow us to make predictions about something assigned to that category. In the visual novel community, there are there are several important predictions to make: 1. I am likely to enjoy this work if it executes its aesthetic well 2. I would consider a person who reads/plays/likes this more a part of the community than one that does not 3. I would probably enjoy talking to someone who reads this work {about visual novels} We can see straight away that different parts of this would be important to different people. If you want to be part of a close-knit community, getting 2 and 3 right matters a lot. If you can find the visual novels you enjoy without community assistance, 1 matters little. The VN category helps us determine what things are acceptable to discuss, and what things are not our (main) concern. Similarly, the category helps us determine what people will be in our community, and what people will not. It's generally more entertaining to discuss things you care about, and it's better when the people you discuss with are more in tune with you. As such, there are real stakes, and real reasons to want to avoid being maximally inclusive. But what draws people to VNs, and what does that draw mean for their desired definition of the VN category? Let me attempt a list of categories: Archetypes of attraction to VNs Weebs The Weeb likes some part of Japanese culture. The Weeb is very skeptical and/or dismissive of visual novels not made in Japan, though the Weeb might make an exception for things made in Korea or China (Indonesia is probably too Western, however). If we asked the Weeb, the main problem with the visual novel category right now would be that too many people see fit to include a flood of shitty EVNs. The Weeb might grudgingly accept Katawa Shoujo depending on the Weeb's other preferences. Moefuck The Moefuck reads visual novels because they really like cute girls or boys. Often personal aesthetics play a big part here and specific preferences are hard to predict, for example certain Moefucks may reject an entire artist or company due to the artstyle in their works being unacceptable. The Moefuck cluster is often seen as an amorphous, rainbow-vomiting blob ruining visual novels by the more seriously afflicted storycucks, but in truth there is more variation in it than they may expect. Moefucks are not necessarily hostile to works with serious stories, they just prefer those stories to also have cute girls. Storycucks The Storycuck wants to experience good stories, and finds VNs to be a source of such stories. In terminal cases, the Storycuck may not be able to deal with the large amount of filler in many visual novels and bounce right out into the community periphery after initially being hooked by some particularly well-paced VN. The perfectly horrible case is the Storycuck that is too distracted to watch shows, unable to get into books due to lack of visual stimulus, yet also unable to deal with SoL content. Is there any being more cursed? Anyway, I digress. The Storycuck doesn't really care that much about medium conventions like moe or superficial presentation style or whatever: they want a compelling narrative. If we ask a Storycuck, one problem with the visual novel category right now is that it doesn't admit other related genres like walking simulators, or things like Actual Sunlight and To The Moon. Their perspective on more extreme extensions like Phoenix Wright or even JRPGs will depend on their evaluation of gameplay. Degenerate Fappers These gender-neutral guys just wanna have fun, in a way that generally requires at least one hand to be free for use. You're unlikely to actually see pure Fappers in the community as they don't really have stories to discuss. I'd try the f95zone or whatever if I were looking. In mixes with other types, this manifests as disinterest in anything that does not have porn. In their eyes, if it's got no ero, it has no place calling itself a VN — after all, if it can't be fapped to, there's no point in reading it! Ero-JRPG fanboys So now you're thinking to yourself - these guys (still gender-neutral) have got to have a lot of overlap with the Degenerate Fappers. I agree, but I think it's worth separating out the two. The Degenerate Fappers don't really have a need for the visual novel category because of their DF association — they'll be arguing mostly from another type's perspective, with a modifier of Horny — but the Ero-JRPG fanboys have a lot to lose if their objects of passion are cut out of the VN category. Why? Because the wider JRPG community often has a serious intolerance of porn in their games. There _are_ places that specify in just Ero-JRPGs [nekohen], but there aren't that many games in the category, and focus for some may be less on the story contents (often machine translated!) and more on the gameplay (ui only patches!) and porn. This leads to wishing to classify Ero-JRPGs like Toushin Toshi II, Evenicle, etc. as VNs despite them being basically equivalent to your average JRPG if one ignores the sex scenes. The pure Ero-JRPG fanboy doesn't really like to read for long stretches without interaction, and if it could remove something from the definition, it would probably pick first choice-free visual novels, then extensionally VNs with few enough choices to be bothersome. Autists The motivation of the Autist when it comes to the visual novel category is that it be clear and defined by a definition that is as Not Bullshit as possible. This is a meta-motivation that may cause people to go against the naive interests of their other types. For example, observe the Storycuck Zaka's high Autism interaction as he proclaims walking simulators should not be considered VNs, despite him having liked Gone Home quite a bit and being interested in more of the genre. The Autist's greatest gripe is when people goddamn try to shove things in the FUCKING category that obviously don't fit PLEASE STOP IT DAMN YOU. VN Evangelists The VN Evangelist wants to spread the word of visual novels by any means possible, and is not afraid to butt heads with some stuffy Autist if they have to. They can and will use imprecise language like "it's like playing an anime, man", wide definitions (expect Phoenix Wright to be on their list of 'VNs' to play for beginners), and such villainy to attempt to get more people into visual novels. A community member in favor of more exclusion may cringe at their methods and predict that they will overwhelmingly attract annoying orbitals who will finish DDLC or whatever and then fuck up discussion with their terrible, uninformed opinions. The Evangelist will tell said member to loosen the fuck up and not be so elitist, and who knows maybe DDLC-kun will be a productive member of the community one day NOT THAT THEY AREN'T ALREADY BUT ANYWAY. And so on. The VN Evangelist wishes more things were on vndb in general so it could have more arguments to get people to try other 'VNs' out. Artistes The Artiste is probably making a VN. Or two. It's got culture up to here. VNs are a medium, but it's so boring if you just take the conventions for granted, right? They want to break and remake in a Shivan storm of creation, never settling for the mediocrity of the established form. They resent criteria that restrict their medium-busting ambitions, and would like for you to abandon your silly notions of traditional presentation methods. The Artiste wants you to fucking chill out on insisting on any definition, but okay can we have like, The Walking Dead in the category please? (Zaka: No.) Oh and Actual Sunlight should definitely be in the category. (Zaka: Sure) Incredibly half-arsed conclusion Speaking as a person who is a Storycuck and Autist, but has low amounts of Weeb, Moefuck, and Horny, I think we should have a somewhat restrictive definition of visual novels, but we should welcome diverse artstyles and embrace EVNs. As I don't value gameplay highly, I consider the _choiceless visual novel_ the best way to ground the category, even though this is arguably ahistorical. Choices are fine, intrusive gameplay only good if it serves the narrative, and things that are OBVIOUSLY JRPGs FOR CHRIST'S SAKE should frankly just be taken out of VNDB right this minute. That said if something is very close to a VN and also story heavy and honestly it kind of reads like a VN? fuck it IS a VN fuck you include Actual Sunlight actually... then uhh yeah... Maybe we can compromise my ideals. —But your reasons for being into VNs may be very different. And this is why we must fight. I can only hope I will one day prevail, or at least see Actual Sunlight (kino) included on VNDB. Until then, I will attempt to appeal to the Autism in both of us to at least get a sensible — if fragile — boundary established.

はいはい to add credibility to this essay, let me, a very loud specimen (gender neutral) of the often neglected otomefolk tribe, affirm this definition is quite accurate. We're just romancedudes (gender neutral) that plays under slight different set of rules, but the pursuit of a moenirvana is all the same.

I've always considered the Romancedude a subtype of the Moefuck that specifically wants the romance content in VNs. Part of the appeal for (western) men here is that the romance genre is generally either gender-neutral or female-centered, especially in erotica (or at least that is my perception - and that counts!). A lot of arrow gay are very explicitly male-oriented, which can be hard to get anywhere else. But it's not like otome/bl isn't a thing too — however the Otome/bl/yuri fan is Actually just a subtype of Romancedude (gender neutral dude, remember). That said, while there is so much overlap b/w Moefuck and Romancedude that I'm conglomerating them, we can see examples of the pure Romancedude that doesn't really care for moe that much. Possibly the preponderance of the Romancedude-Moefuck combination is due to the medium primarily offering just that! Yeah, but imagine how bad it could be if we didn't push back????????? Anyway, autism is actually pretty high on VNDB, which has pseudo-authority status, so I'm still hoping for AA to get taken off sometime. Any year now!!! The real solution, of course, is to just not be as engaged in a community of such plebs as would call AA VN to begin with. Considering that such a community will likely also be newbie-friendly and thus filled with such cringe as one so denoted brings, this is a natural motion as one gains experience anyway. It can even be fun to rally around how cringe all the dumb mainstream articles are.

Anime Expo is usually the place where a lot of the VN Publishers drop their news, but this year AX is cancelled due to the ongoing pandemic. But that doesn't mean that there are no news to share. Âge The first round of news came from Âge the creators of Muv Luv. They had an event live stream on July 1st that you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIc6XHZiDEY Announcements: Muv-Luv Photonmelodies♮ Release: Summer 2020 https://twitter.com/muvluvseries/status/1278506748706357248 and Muv-Luv Unlimited - The Day After Release: 2020 https://twitter.com/muvluvseries/status/1278510380961034241 I guess that this is Alternative Chronicles Vol.1-4 but I can't quite confirm that since I couldn't catch the live stream. Besides that they also announced the translation of the Muv-Luv Alternative manga. Jast USA Jast and Ninetail announced a Kickstarter for Venus Blood -Hypno- named VenusBlood HOLLOW for the international release. The Kickstarter should launch this Autumm. You can find more information on the official website: http://www.ninetail.tk/tde12/index.html https://twitter.com/Intl_Ninetail/status/1278741873306157056 Mangagamer Mangagamer announced an expansion for Steam Prison centering around Fin. https://twitter.com/MangaGamer/status/1278903093376270336 and Jeanne at the Clock Tower ~Jeanne a la tour d’horloge~ from Liar-Soft https://twitter.com/MangaGamer/status/1278903363569098752 Here is the website for more information: http://mangagamer.org/jeanne/ Sekai Project Sekai Project had a panel at the online convention KuroCon on this Twitch channel. (Maybe there will be a VOD later on the channel?) Here are the news posts on Sekai Projects website: https://sekaiproject.com/blogs/news/kurocon-2020-updates-announcements And on Denpasoft: https://denpasoft.com/blogs/news/kurocon-2020-updates-announcements Announcement 1: 9-nine-:Episode 4 https://twitter.com/sekaiproject/status/1279560338522824704 They hope to have Episode 4 quicker than the wait between Ep.2 and Ep.3 Announcement 2: Karakara 3 https://twitter.com/sekaiproject/status/1279560593712672776 Announcement 3: Slobbish Dragon Princess the newest VN by Whirlpool https://twitter.com/sekaiproject/status/1279561225416785921 They are aiming for similar release window as the Japanese release this October. Announcement 4: Please be Happy by Studio Élan https://twitter.com/sekaiproject/status/1279559820316565504 Official website: https://vnstudioelan.com/games/please-be-happy/ They also showed an free HD Update for Hoshizora no Memoria -Wish upon a Shooting Star- and it's Fandisc Hoshizora no Memoria -Eternal Heart-. https://twitter.com/sekaiproject/status/1279558951713964032 Since this news round will be a lot less centralized than usual I am certain that I will miss some news, so please post what ever news I miss in this thread! I don't think Nekonyan had planned to attend AX, so I am unsure if there will be any news from them.

It's such a weird feeling that I agree and disagree with something at the same time. On one hand, I'm pretty much a "storycuck" myself, and I kind of agree that there is a big number of VNs that would work better if they were linear. At the same time, I personally quite like having choices in VNs, as long as these choices aren't so confusing that I'd have to use a walkthrough. I quite often enjoy experimenting with the choices in VNs, trying to do things a bit differently to see if it makes any difference. Moreover, I'd say, a good system of choices can complement the story quite well. Take Fate, for example. This VN has a massive amounts of bad endings, and some choices that lead to these bad endings are pretty random, but that's exactly the point. It shows just how close to failure the characters always are, and makes the plot armor basically nonexistent. As a result, the reader feels that the route where they avoid death is just one of the many. The anime adaptations can't do that, for obvious reasons. PS. Most likely, AA and Danganronpa are indeed not VNs. I don't really have anything against having them on vndb though.

The original draft of the post I had in my head was more specific on noting that we should consider the archetypes more a "motivating quality" for inclusion or exclusion that would operate on a sliding scale. As such, you need to be able to assign some kind of intensity to every category to really make it work. Would be lit af to give myself the ol' Autist 9/10 tho The thing that motivated me to actually finish the post was unironically a philosophy-adjacent article, though I ended up realizing I was sort of incorporating the viewpoint anyway in my draft and not feeling like making the definition explicit. The starting motivation was another philosophy-adjacent article, fwiw.

Fair enough about the shovelware thing. I actually do frequent DLsite's doujin section fairly often and while there is plenty of shovelware to sift through none of their artwork ever hits the bottom of the uncanny valley the way that the 3D VNs do. The sheer repulsiveness of the 3D artwork is mainly what gets to me. I actually don't encounter many VNs on steam at all. My interaction with them (EDIT: the 3D VNs specifically) is limited mostly to seeing them clog the Just Released feed on VNDB with a public version, a patreon version, an android version, and an incest patch all at once which is also irksome. There's plenty of Japenese shovelware flowing through there too, obviously, but at least they usually only take up one slot.

This and TyranoBuilder. I don't like it and its save system. Visual Novel Maker and TyranoBuilder games don't feel nearly as nice to play as Ren'Py games for some reason. Ren'Py requires some coding but the games built on it are usually more user-friendly and polished. I think we're a little bit used to being ignored by the general VN fandom lol. The otome and bl community have some overlap, but not that much and do tend to be more insular. I do wish more people would pay attention though, especially since both communities have thriving indie scenes that are very far from the common misconception of what the EVN scene looks like.

Welp, just like wanting people to stop throwing Unity asset packs on Steam as original games... Shovelware will be Shovelware. Quite likely the only reason you don't get fed up with miserable-quality crap made by Japanese people is that it doesn't show up in the storefronts/sites you use.

I think otome and BL fangirls deserve their own place on the archetype list. :> The one thing tying all the categories outside of the storycuck and the autist is convenience. People are willing to accept obviously "false" categorisation because they reflect the kinds of games that tie the community together. Ejecting only things that stretch the definitions of the genre beyond that point of utility. Just like Erogamescape lists all those obviously non-ero games, because they appeal to similar audiences and use similar storytelling conventions as eroge. Because, in practice, we use VN both as a genre description, with a very precise set of storytelling conventions and mechanics (basically the Key/Type-Moon formula), and as an umbrella term. What Palas was trying to do was to justify the use of the umbrella term by coming up with a legitimate definition for it. Something that can't really be done in a strict manner, but can work to inform the boundaries the community sets for itself. I think I even used the "pure story or gameplay serving the story" idea in an academic paper I wrote... But that was only justifiable because I was focusing on the community and fan translations, and not trying to push a legitimate genre definition. So, Zaka, I feel sorry for you and every other genre-definition-pedant, but I think that as long as we don't separate the narrow genre definition from the umbrella term, your position is utterly hopeless and you're meant to suffer for all eternity from AAs and Danganronpas of this world being miscategorized.

Fortune Arterial was the game that came to be the base for the 'August Game Rules'. 1) August games have good concepts, good protagonists (heroines tend to be hit and miss). 2) August will always make their games look pretty. 3) August will always fumble the execution for the last third of the game. Tsuki to Majo to Taiyou to is a Silver Bullet game... that in itself says a lot, but I'll elaborate. Silver Bullet games always make serious attempts to escape the mundane trends that were beginning to take over when they were formed, but they always fail, due to a lack of writing talent. Poor Silver Bullet. Their last three games were almost total disasters (I should know, since I played them) and Consome is the best game they've made... and it is still not something I would go out of my way to play now. Hanafubuki and Kachou Fuugetsu (based in the same setting) are interesting games that nonetheless inevitably feel derivative, even if they are sometimes eerie in atmosphere. Setsuei is one of those games that would satisfy the mild horror romance crowd and few others (ironically, this was one of their few games I felt escaped being mediocre in concept, if not execution).

The mind-break is pretty extreme in Hypno though... because while it is the best Venus Blood, it is also the darkest, potentially. Chaos Leonhardt is easily the freakiest villain protag ever (especially with his beloved Chaos Anora by his side). It is a lot like if you extracted the comedy from Soul Nomad & the World Eaters Demon God ending and slapped a bunch of tentacle sex and mind-breaking/soul-corruption into it.

Hypno is easily the best Venus Blood game in every aspect, from story to gameplay. Definitely worth investing in. Edit: In Hypno's world, the demons, long confined beneath the earth, unable to access the power they needed to sustain themselves from humans, discovered a way to convert the souls of the weak into artifacts called Tactica that could be used to fuel (literally, since using a Tactica gradually burns through the confined souls) their powers. They then escaped the underworld and invaded Helvetica (a simplification) and killed the Goddess, claiming the lands for themselves. Now, the four major factions have split off, and the stage is set for a new war of demons on demons, all of them wielding the souls of the dead as weapons... Leonhardt and Anora, the game's protagonists, are a brother-sister pair who are so intimately connected (emotionally, sexually, etc) that they are almost literal extensions of one another. Leonhardt is ambitious and ruthless, willing to do anything to escape the control of the Queen, and Anora will do anything to fulfill his wishes, shaving her own soul away bit by bit to serve the ends of her beloved brother.

JAST and Ninetail announcement

yes i meant that, i forget the name i think i will still localize it as masamune as it is far better than muramasa. also i need someone to photoshop in sephiroth in place of the main character i need help btw, i cant get past the menu of this game!! maybe i should not have downloaded this off some shady hentai site