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[JoshuaFH]

I went though and watched the young black jack anime. It's good. Sorta makes me want a original black jack anime, although maybe it wouldn't work as well.

If by 'original' do you mean the several season long huge one that already exists? Or the several movies? Or the Osamu Dezaki quality OVA? Black Jack as an IP is thoroughly fucking squeezed of every drop of entertainment they could ever hope to wring out of the poor guy, so much so they had to travel back in time and preemptively start squeezing his younger sexy self just to get that little itty bit more out of him.

[penguinofhonor]

I read these last two posts as "Jack Black" and honestly I'm really disappointed now that I realized my mistake.

[Criptfeind]

I went though and watched the young black jack anime. It's good. Sorta makes me want a original black jack anime, although maybe it wouldn't work as well.

If by 'original' do you mean the several season long huge one that already exists? Or the several movies? Or the Osamu Dezaki quality OVA? Black Jack as an IP is thoroughly fucking squeezed of every drop of entertainment they could ever hope to wring out of the poor guy, so much so they had to travel back in time and preemptively start squeezing his younger sexy self just to get that little itty bit more out of him.

Hum, I guess I should have looked harder then barely to see if any existed.

[Reelya]

Well they could continue Young Black Jack and gradually morph that into the start of the old Black Jack. And then where would we be? All that would be left is Even Younger Black Jack, a shonen series where we see his early adventures and how he became the Frankenstein creation we know and love.

[Leafsnail]

It was a game?
That's pretty cool. I'd tabletop that crap tbh.

I use the term "game" pretty loosely, but it does have (absolutely meaningless) RPG-style stats in it.

[Reelya]

Yeah, a "game" in which you click through story content, and occasionally pick a dialogue/action choice. Most of the dialogue choices have no impact whatsoever - they just merge back into the main story a few clicks later. And each route has exactly one "true ending" (as far as I am aware), and a number of "bad ends" - where you made the wrong choice a die with a simple "game over, try again" type thing.

That really describes most Visual Novels actually. They're like the old Choose Your Own Adventure books, except they don't have as much of the "Choose" or "Your Own Adventure" part.

[Orange Wizard]

Huh, people click? I usually use the spacebar/automode.

Anyway, yeah. Some VNs are more gamey than others. I don't think the distinction matters much.

[Neonivek]

Some Visual Novels to me are games. For example "Long live the Queen"

While others are more... Visual novels. Closer to the Chose your own Adventure book, then of actual games.

And other are novels with games attached for example the Love Hina visual novel. Where there is a trivia game in it.

The only reason I hesitate to give them the blanket qualification of game... is that it is a huge slap in the face of Novels.

But this is all semantics anyhow.

[Culise]

Aye.  You've got simulation games on the one hand, you've got kinetic novels (no choices at all, only reading) on the other, you've got the branching CYOA stories on yet another, and a host of possibilities throughout.  I suspect it's a good illustration of the principle that subgenres can easily nest fractally. 

[Reelya]

Actually the Japanese draw a stronger distinction between Visual Novel and Adventure Game than the international fans do. A lot of the things that are thrown around as VNs are actually considered to be a type of ADV/RPG game in Japan and not a VN.

The issue is that a media artwork can have elements of different genres in it, but that doesn't mean that it's single dominant genre is defined by those elements: Star Wars has humorous moments in it, but that doesn't mean we can file Star Wars in the "comedy" section of the video store. Those scenes are there to break up the tension between the action scenes. Similarly, full motion video cutscenes don't make a game a "movie", and occasional "anime-style" dialogue you have to click through in an RPG doesn't "make" it a Visual Novel. That would make Super Robot Wars a Visual Novel.

Long Live the Queen seems heavily based on Gainax's Princess Maker series, which is more in the simulation space. That specific type of game usually have you scheduling something on a daily or weekly basis, trying to optimize a set of RPG stats, and only has occasional mini dialogue-events to break up all the number-juggling. Sure, there is a story, but "game with story" isn't enough to call something a visual novel. To fit the visual novel definition, I'd say you need something such as "clicking through dialogue is the main thing the game is about".

[Sirus]

I would argue that Long Live the Queen is more like a CYOA than a simulation. After all, making the same choices each playthrough will lead to the same outcomes. Admittedly the choices aren't quite as simple as "date X or Y" but it's pretty static once you dig a little deeper past the stat training.

[Reelya]

I'm not sure that determinism/non-determinism can be used as a criteria to separate CYOA/VNs from other things. Plenty of non-VNs are deterministic, and there are plenty of VNs that will add a random factor, such as a random chance that an encounter happens at a particular location at a particular time.

[Neonivek]

It is far better in my mind that instead of making all Visual Novels games.

That we instead make All Visual Novels... Visual Novels. Their own thing unique and distinct then trying to cram it into another.

It reminds me of back when they lumped Television in with Radio.

[Flying Dice]

Long Live the Queen ain't a VN. It's a management game in the same stripe as Princess Maker, albeit with a more defined story.

[Orange Wizard]

IMO any game that involves primarily clicking through dialogue would count as a VN, and any VN (barring kinetic novels or VNs with minimal/inconsequential choices) would count as a choose-your-own-adventure game.

Long Live the Queen occupies some weird middle ground between simulator and CYOA. It's definitely not a visual novel. I don't think it should count as a simulator either, though we don't really have a good definition of simulator on hand.