Are Visual Novels Games? Discussion

[Naoki_Saten]

Following up on a discussion that began on the chat, this topic is about the question of how to classify Visual Novels.
Can Visual Novels really be considered games? If yes, does it work for ALL kinds of Visual Novels?

What are the requirements for a game? The amout of interaction? The consequences of all actions the ‘player’ can take?

For example, if we limit the definition of a game to “something that requires interaction with a human party”, VNs, even Kinetic Novels such as Planetarian would definitely be games, but so would books, since you’d need to flip a page to continue reading the story.

Things such as Game Theory and Decision Theory that @Pepe has mentioned will surely help us in this discussion.

[Bonecuss]

A point I brought up in the chat also was that maybe one definition could be that:
It is a game when the outcomes can be different when it is “played” multiple times.
So the progression from start to finish is never certain right at the start.

This would rule out things like planetarian, which has no branching, but include VNs which have branching.

[Takafumi]

I agree with Total Biscuit’s definition of game, something with a failure state. He brought it up in a recent video too.
A game needs to have a fail state - be it a game over screen or just an inability to get to the ending.
I also like oxford dictionary’s definition. “A form of competitive activity or sport played according to rules.”

Something like Planetarian or Narcissu would not be a game. It’d be a novel. There is no way to fail in those games.
In something like Kanon you can lose. You can get a bad end. That is the same as being defeated by Maleficent in KH, or getting stuck in a puzzle on Professor Layton.

So VNs can be games, but they can also not be games. I think this is why Key’s ‘Kinetic Novel’ brand is so important as it creates a visible divide between the two slightly different mediums.

I think it’s also important to clarify what the VN genre is. Kara no Shoujo? ADV. Love Plus? Dating sim. Utawarerumono? SRPG. Persona? JRPG.

[HeliosAlpha]

I agree with Total Biscuit’s definition of game, something with a failure state. He brought it up in a recent video too.

I was also thinking about VNs when TB was defining games but I don’t quite agree with it. By that definition what would make for example Clannad a “game” would be the choices but I consider it several books mashed together by modern technology. I think of VNs as modern books since I don’t feel comfortable calling something where you only read a game, some weird title like “Interactive Narrative Experience” seems more fitting. If VNs are a middle ground between books and games then such works as Utawarerumono become another abstract middle ground. I want to say works like that should be judged on a case-to-case basis depending on which of the two it’s closest to.
Game genres are incredibly hard to define over all as the medium is newer and more diverse than any other entertainment. My favorite thought on the subject is that you name things based on what you expect. Comparing Portal and CoD they’re both First Person Shooters but Portal more often gets referred to as a puzzle game because you go into it expecting puzzle rather than projectile based combat. Wanting the best of both world I’d say VNs are their own thing and people try and lump them with games because of lack of experience.

[Pepe]

Alright, as @Naoki_Saten stated, I will be approaching this from the perspective of Game Theory. For those not familiar, it is a sub-branch of actually numerous topics, such as Economics and Computer Science. I actually took this course from Coursera: https://www.coursera.org/course/gametheory so those interested in further learning may want to take this one up It does look at things sometimes from a mathematical perspective, so be warned!

Anyway, to organize what I wrote on the chat, in Game Theory, the most simple way to describe a game is through Normal Form. In order to be able to describe a game through normal form, it must have the following:

• A finite number of players (VNs have 1)
• The actions the player can take (Which would be the choices in a VN)
• The “profiles” of actions of all players (Which is the list of actions made by each player)
• And a “utility function”, given the strategy profiles of all players (Which is the ending of your VN)

If we were to classify a VN in normal form, then it could work as a game. The outcomes that result from the utility function give a certain “payoff” which could be the good end, bad end, true end, etc. Now, working with Game Theory isn’t as simple as classifying these games. Here we can assign certain values to each outcome, say, 1 to good end, -1 to bad end, 5 to true end. Then we could attempt to calculate the optimal decisions that need to be made to reach the best outcome. Like if the player had to play some bad ends to reach the good end, we could single out the least number of bad ends needed to get the most payoff from his game. But a lot of that is debatable. Is assigning a negative outcome to a bad end really fair if the player himself wishes to see the bad end?

Furthermore, we could also classify VNs into separate games. Is getting into a character’s route already an outcome? Then the route itself would be considered a new game. Indeed, for most VNs, once you get into a character’s route, the choices you make in the common route have absolutely no effect on the rest of the route; only the choices made during the route affect the outcome. Of course, I can think of a few exceptions, like in CLANNAD and the goddamn Kappei route which required you to interact with Yoshino in common so that you could get the good end, but my experience tells me that isn’t very common.

Now, I did a bit more research after the skype chat and found this resource: http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/whatis.htm which seems to imply Visual Novels fall more under Decision Theory. Although, most decision theory involves risks where there is a probability for the outcome to change despite your decision. Despite that, perhaps VNs would be more classified as “Decision Making” rather than “Game Playing”

Another resource here: http://assets.cambridge.org/052181/4626/sample/0521814626WS.pdf seems to assert that “A game must have two or more players, one of which may be nature.” (p.4, under Terminology). The example it gives to a single player game such as Solitaire is that nature plays first by shuffling the cards.
However, in p.6, the author states that “Games of skill are one-player games whose defining property is the existence of a single player who has complete control over all the outcomes. Sitting an examination is one example. Games of skill should not really be classified as games at all, since the ingredient of interdependence is missing.”
This seems to describe VNs right on the dot, because the single player has complete control over all the outcomes based on his decision. Therefore, if we use this author’s words, then VNs “should not really be classified as games at all”. And yet they are still called “Games [of skill]”.

So, after all this rambling about Game Theory, what do I think? I think that the normal form that I described earlier is merely a way to convert Visual Novels into a means to be thought of from a mathematical perspective, which does not necessarily guarantee its status as a game. What it can do, on the other hand, is allow the player to devise an optimal solution to his desired outcome, which takes a lot of skill. Anthony Kelly (author of the book I linked above) does seem to describe it quite well with his explanation of “Games of skill” and that jives in with looking at games from the normal form. Any idiot can click and attempt every possible set of actions, but it takes someone with skill to decide what actions to take to maximize his own payoff.

But, as he said, they “should not really be classified as games at all”

[rune_devros]

I think the question of “Are ____ games?” is not a very useful one, as with most semantic discussions. You list off a series of properties that something has or has not fulfilled and the answer you get most of the time is a binary yes or no and then everyone arguing over edge cases like Visual Novels. I’ve never found these discussions to give a lot of useful game design guiding principles.

More useful questions would include:

• How does the interactivity (or lack of) facilitate or harm the telling of a story? I enjoyed Rewrite’s Mappy hunting segment because it helped improve the notion of this town where mysterious things were happening and surprises could be around every corner.
• Does inserting interactivity into visual novels necessarily improve the player experience and immersion? On the other hand, I found that To the Moon’s puzzle segments were incredibly out of place.
• If we included or remove a fail state, how does that change the player’s experience? Visual novels have this branching tree structure with some parts terminating abruptly at bad ends based on a single choice the player made. I had to reload a bunch of times in Refrain’s ending and I’m not sure that helped with the experience.

[Takafumi]

This seems to describe VNs right on the dot, because the single player has complete control over all the outcomes based on his decision. Therefore, if we use this author’s words, then VNs “should not really be classified as games at all”.

What’s different between going into a VN blind and trying to figure out how to get the true/good end through what the player sees as an optimal decision, and someone playing Fire Emblem on hard mode blind trying to figure out what square they should move a unit to? Mario, Professor Layton, DanganRonpa… Actually many single player games are completely controlled by the player. You can find walkthroughs that give the exact step-by-step sequence you need to go through the game. Some genres don’t have much randomness. Not everything is a card game, an RPG, or a procedurally generated game (although you wouldn’t believe that with the shape of the Steam frontpage.)

I found that To the Moon’s puzzle segments were incredibly out of place.

Totally not a VN. Adventure game all the way, with some puzzle elements.

[Pepe]

What’s different between going into a VN blind and trying to figure out how to get the true/good end through what the player sees as an optimal decision, and someone playing Fire Emblem on hard mode blind trying to figure out what square they should move a unit to? Mario, Professor Layton, DanganRonpa… Actually many single player games are completely controlled by the player. You can find walkthroughs that give the exact step-by-step sequence you need to go through the game. Some genres don’t have much randomness. Not everything is a card game, an RPG, or a procedurally generated game (although you wouldn’t believe that with the shape of the Steam frontpage.)

Before I start, let me clear something up: “Single player” in Game Theory does not mean the same as “Single Player” in video games. A “player” in Game Theory is an entity, whether human or artificial, nature or co-player, whose decisions affect the outcome of the game. Now to continue.

Actually, a lot of your examples differ greatly from each other. Let me tackle them one by one.

• Fire Emblem: I believe that Fire Emblem has adversaries during the game. If you follow a walkthrough that tells you to go to this square, does it completely determine that you will succeed in defeating your enemy? Or will your AI adversary make enough variations in his movement to force you to change your play style. Hence, it is a game.
• Mario: I will take the classic Super Mario Bros as basis for this. While there are adversaries in Mario, in the strictest sense, the way they move is quite predictable. In a sense, they do not actually make decisions, rather, they follow a pattern. Therefore, I may consider these enemies to be “obstacles” rather than “adversaries.” In this case, you may be guided by a walkthrough all the way and succeed pretty easily, even with the boss battles. Of course, it takes skill and timing to get the jumps right, so I would consider it a Game of Skill and, thus, shouldn’t be classified as a game
• Professor Layton: Puzzles in themselves are considered Games of Skill, so that kind of answers the question.
• DanganRonpa: While the bulk of Danganronpa is like an adventure game/VN, the other minigames (like shooting those words that move around) can be controlled by “nature”, and the decisions that “nature” makes can affect the outcome of your decisions. So I guess it’s a not-game that contains games hahaha

Again, this is all from a Game Theory perspective, and Game Theory is a field that relies heavily on decision making. If there aren’t at least two players whose decisions affect the outcome of the game, then it isn’t a game, in a very strict sense.

I think the question of “Are ____ games?” is not a very useful one, as with most semantic discussions. You list off a series of properties that something has or has not fulfilled and the answer you get most of the time is a binary yes or no and then everyone arguing over edge cases like Visual Novels. I’ve never found these discussions to give a lot of useful game design guiding principles.

That’s something I can honestly agree with Which is why my only goal in this topic is to introduce people to the wonderful world of Game Theory, which does list off a series of properties that a game should have.

[Mow]

I think people are thinking way too hard about this. I think its rather simple, a game is defined by the creator whether or not it is a game or not. Whats the difference between taking a test at your school and playing who wants to be a millionaire? The players perspective of game is more of, is it fun? taking a test isn’t very fun but taking a test to win tons of money is fun. It’s as simple as that. minecraft in creative mode or garry’s mod don’t really have any goals or really a fail state… how can you fail if there isn’t a goal? In schools they play “games” there but really in the teachers eye’s they are teaching tools. Whats the difference between math and a math game? the math game is defined by the creator as a game and is intended to be more fun than just math so the player will define it as a game as well. some of those are just math problems with funny aliens running across the screen every time you get one right or something.

[Yerian]

I prefer to refer to visual novels as books over games for two reasons: 1) All you do (with some exception) is read. Even if I could logically call it a game, I still tend to think about it as a novel, because novel is in the name. 2) When talking to (or showing) people who either don’t know about or are not fans of visual novels, it makes so much more sense to them and seems much less weird if you say your reading a book rather than playing a game. A game raises questions like “whats the objective?” and “why is all you do talk to those weird cartoon girls?”, while a novel is just a story and doesn’t need to be explained due to its nature.

But as this is a discussion, here are my arguments, disregarding my above preference:

I would like to counter the whole "Kinetic/Sound Novels are not games argument by agreeing with and adding on to:

[quote=“Mow, post:10, topic:585”]
a game is defined by the creator
[/quote]I think not only by the creator, but also by the player(s). Who’s to tell you that you can’t make anything and even everything a game? To quote two show/characters who seem to know games best: “Reality(or “this world”, depending on which show you prefer) is just a crappy game.”

Also using @Mow’s argument, we can say that this:

[quote=“Pepe, post:6, topic:585”]
This seems to describe VNs right on the dot, because the single player has complete control over all the outcomes based on his decision. Therefore, if we use this author’s words, then VNs “should not really be classified as games at all”.
[/quote]Is false because the creator(s) could also be considered “player(s)”, as he/she/they certainly have control over the choice, outcomes, characters, etc., as they are the ones who set the rules. And speaking of rules, could you possibly consider that anything with “rules” could be considered a “game”? Because that would lend itself to the argument that everything is a “game.”

---

AND (I’m sorry but this has to be said) there is always the opposite question of “When does something stop being a visual novel and requires some other form of classification?” (For example, VNDB has a list of borderline VNs, such as the Phoenix Write series, School Days series, etc., and a list of games rejected for inclusion such as To the Moon (I’m looking at you @rune_devros)

[Takafumi]

I think not only by the creator, but also by the player(s). Who’s to tell you that you can’t make anything and even everything a game?

Of course. Most things could probably be seen as a game, or something that could be adapted into a game, depending on who views it. What makes a war different to a game? Your view of it.

Eventually this whole debate devolves into a discussion on what defines a word, which then leads to the ultimate conclusion that a word isn’t something that exists, it’s just a concept, and that what we understand as “correct definitions” are just the definitions that are largely agreed upon.
Of course, a discussion like that is stupid and pointless, so for the sake of sanity, let’s just focus on the majority. What would the majority define VNs as? Games, Novels, or a mix of the two worthy of it’s own label?

“When does something stop being a visual novel and requires some other form of classification?”

This is a good question. To me, a VN stops being a VN when the text segments are just a cut-away from gameplay. In a VN, it will mainly be text. For most there’ll be no gameplay. For some, there’ll be 20-60 minutes of reading in-between small sections of gameplay that break up the story or expand on the events of the overall novel.
It becomes a game when the interaction, navigation, or other gameplay forms are evidentially the core of the product. In something like To The Moon, the text is constantly interrupted and broken up by rpg-style navigation to the point where I would no longer call it a VN. It could be considered as a Text-Based adventure game or something, but not a Novel.

[Pepe]

Is false because the creator(s) could also be considered “player(s)”, as he/she/they certainly have control over the choice, outcomes, characters, etc., as they are the ones who set the rules. And speaking of rules, could you possibly consider that anything with “rules” could be considered a “game”? Because that would lend itself to the argument that everything is a “game.”

They can’t really be considered as players because they are the ones who make the rules. Their decision does not affect the outcome of the game, rather, their decisions affect the rules of the game. In a more mathematical sense, they do not have a utility function given their actions as their actions change the whole function.

Under a Game Theory sense, not everything that has rules is a game, but everything that has two or more decision makers is a game. Falling in line at a counter is a game because the players can decide to obey the line, or cause chaos by trying to get to the counter first at the same time. And that’s the beautiful part of Game Theory! You can gamify things in the real world, and use mathematical equations to get if not optimal, balanced results!

[Yerian]

Ah OK I understand now. The mathematical analogies really help. Here is a question then: You said that under Game Theory, nature is counted as one of the “players.” Could the emotions one feels when playing the game also be considered another “player”?

Here is what I’m thinking. The emotions you feel when, reading a visual novel for example, cannot be controlled by the author. But truthfully, they are not really controlled by you either. You cant really say: This game/VN is going to make me feel sad, no matter what. And if you were to play it again, you could once again not guarantee that the game/VN would make you feel the same as the previous time. In the same way, no other person when playing that game/VN will feel the exact same way you did.

This also relates back to @Bonecuss’s idea that:

It is a game when the outcomes can be different when it is “played” multiple times.So the progression from start to finish is never certain right at the start.

In fact, now that I think about it, if you go by what we all seemed to agree on in the Is There Real Meaning in Visual Novels Discussion, emotions felt during the game are pretty much the effect of nature. Nature in this case being each person’s sum total of individual and unique experiences throughout his/her life leading up to the experience of the game/VN, causing him/her to feel/think differently than any other person.

Sorry Im getting a little abstract here

[Pepe]

The definition of a player in game theory is an entity that makes a decision that affects the outcome of the game. Nature can be counted if it makes decisions that affect the outcome, no matter how random those decisions may be. For example, nature can affect the outcome of a dice roll, which, in turn, affects the outcome of the game. We can’t predict what number nature will “choose” in the roll, but we must factor that into the game.
Emotions, on the other hand, seem more like the outcome themselves. Emotions don’t even have actions that can be put into the utility function.

So I think emotions is part of the outcome. And having negative emotions would result in a negative value for your utility function. But as you said, you can’t really predict emotions, people don’t really factor that into game theory much ^^;

[Naoki_Saten]

Is false because the creator(s) could also be considered “player(s)”, as he/she/they certainly have control over the choice, outcomes, characters, etc., as they are the ones who set the rules. And speaking of rules, could you possibly consider that anything with “rules” could be considered a “game”? Because that would lend itself to the argument that everything is a “game.”

I would also disagree with this, simply because I regard the process of creating something and the process of consuming it (playing a game, reading a book) to be two completely separate things. Cooking and eating are far from being the same thing, and “producer” and “consumer” are two different roles, even in cases where both are taken on by the same person.

What makes a war different to a game?

Well, definitions of a game vary from person to person. Personally, I regard a game as a pastime that is not necessary for your survival. In cases like ‘war’ or ‘professional sports’, I’d say that while those things can be viewed as games by an ininvolved third party, they aren’t games for the participants anymore, because they can’t decide to not participate in it without facing severe consequences.

Here is what I’m thinking. The emotions you feel when, reading a visual novel for example, cannot be controlled by the author. But truthfully, they are not really controlled by you either. You cant really say: This game/VN is going to make me feel sad, no matter what. And if you were to play it again, you could once again not guarantee that the game/VN would make you feel the same as the previous time. In the same way, no other person when playing that game/VN will feel the exact same way you did.

I’d keep emotions completely out of the equation because those aren’t even part of the game. You can win or lose a game regardless of your emotions. Emotions exist on a separate plane. They may decide how much you like or dislike a game, whether or not you will play it, etc. Emotions are the qualities of a ‘human’, but they are not properties of the abstract entity ‘player’, and thus they don’t change the ‘options’ available to the player in any way.

[Naoki_Saten]

Bumping this old topic in hopes of getting some fresh discussion and opinions.

[Rippleshadow]

I’m not educated on visual novels in general but I’ve never not considered them a type of game. If not a game, what would it be? You make decisions that affect the direction of the story and there’s a way to beat it or lose.

But there are also visual novels like Dangan Ronpa, which is clearly a game because of the class investigations, trials, and freetime events. There’s a lot more to do than just read text.
Still, I think as long as your own decisions are contributing to how the story turns out, it’s a game.

[Nin]

Interactive:
Entertainment:
Winnable:
Loseable:

From that, if someone asked me if it was a game I would say “yes”, but if I were to go into more detail I’d describe them as a game/novel hybrid.

[Naoki_Saten]

You make decisions that affect the direction of the story and there’s a way to beat it or lose.

Interactive:

On first glance, VNs seem to be games by all rights, but it’ll get tricky if you take a closer look, for example at special cases like kinetic novels:

For example, if we limit the definition of a game to “something that requires interaction with a human party”, VNs, even Kinetic Novels such as Planetarian would definitely be games, but so would books, since you’d need to flip a page to continue reading the story.

So, should we rather define games as something that requires decision making? But there are plenty of simple games (simple board games for example) out there where the players can’t make any decisions.

[Nin]

I would treat Kinetic Novels separately, since they don’t fit three of my “criteria” from above. They’re not interactive, you can’t win them, and you can’t lose them. They’re much more akin to books than games.