Redundant Namespace?

Sometimes, I wonder why Visual Novels are a separate namespace from Video Games. I mean, there used to have separate namespace for Light Novels, but it was deemed redundant with the Literature namespace, so there ought to be a good reason why V Ns get their own namespace.

Light novels are basically just normal novels (literature) but with illustrations in them, visual novels are a very particular form of interactive narrative media that is substantially different from the vast majority of video games. The vernacular and even means of how an audience members views visual novels is very specific, and the disparity between that and how one approaches like, Baldur's Gate III is far bigger than that of "book" and "book with some manga pics in it".

Edited by number9robotic on Apr 29th 2024 at 5:45:03 AM

A light novel is basically a small novel with a few more pictures. So, obviously literature.

A visual novel is an entire literary format (usually heavily branching, but obviously that's different) that happens to be a computer executable, and that affects how it can use graphics etc. Of course, there's overlap where more gameplay elements get in, but...

The most trivial example: Fate/stay night has more words than War and Peace. It does not have gameplay, beyond having multiple reading paths.

But this presents the obvious dilemma: you can't lump them in with literature, because that's a lot of technical-related tropes that come up, especially when they're more game-y. But if you can't put them with games, either, because some are just really fancy gamebooks more than anything (or even more simplistic), and we keep those under Literature. So, where to put VN's? Their own namespace, because they're this really weird and very big liminal space.

Edited by RainehDaze on Apr 29th 2024 at 2:04:50 PM

Also see this thread.

I agree with number9robotic and RainehDaze, except I would like to push back against a common misconception: light novels are not defined by having illustrations, as some don't have any, but by their use of language, in a way that doesn't translate outside of Japan (except maybe in China). They use a restricted set of kanji, and may give hiragana transcriptions for all kanji, which makes them readable for teenagers who have only learned the more common kanji. Japan's "Literary" novels can be unreadable for the young (and a fair few adults), between the abstruse writing system and how authors are expected to keep to a sophisticated and somewhat archaic register.

And I may add that Visual Novels are not all alike. You have narratives with adventure game elements like the Ace Attorney series, you have narratives with branching paths like most dating sims, and of course there are "static visual novels" where the extent of interactivity is clicking to advance the dialogue. It can't be pigeonholed solely as a video game, and the more interactive visual novels mean it can't be for literature either.

Edited by GrafVonTirol on May 2nd 2024 at 9:57:17 AM

Graf and Rey put it best. Some Visual Novels can't be pigeonholed into either VG or Literature

It's a unique medium that truly deserves its own namespace