Posts tagged visual novels

Visual novels are a medium, like literature, film, or games. It is a recent medium, a hybrid of games and literature, but does not stand apart from either one.

Dating sims are a genre, like first person shooters, romantic comedies, or military thrillers. Dating sims can be games, or visual novels. If someone writes a CYOA book on romance, it could probably exist under the medium of literature as well.

Please note that genres and media are orthogonal — that is, they vary independently from each other. The medium is the form that something takes. The genre is the style (or styles) of the content of that something.

Just so we’re clear, visual novels are not necessarily dating sims. In fact, most VNs involving relationships aren’t, seeing as the criteria for a dating sim includes management of relationship statistics. So please, journalists, stop confusing the two.

Feels good, man.

Anyway, I’m looking to breathe some life into /r/VisualNovels over on reddit. Right now there’s only about 20 followers, and barely a handful of links posted. I want to change that, though. Visual novels are a pretty neat medium for storytelling, one that I think could use more attention on this side of the Pacific. While it’s a small community right now, I believe that there’s probably a lot of redditors who play VNs and just don’t know that there’s a community waiting for them.

In related news, I’m going to be a panellist at Anime North! More than that, I’m moderating the panel. I and three others will be talking about visual novels (what a surprise), as an overview — not focusing on any specific ones, but rather covering the genre as a whole, OELVNs, etc. Hopefully I’ll get to spend some time this weekend chatting with my fellow panellists and work out a plan of attack for our 50 minutes or so.

Anyway, back to IRC and Seacats.