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I realized halfway through the blog post that I was eating a hot dog while reading it (with mustard, of course). It rated somewhere around a 2 on the "surreal moment scale". I have absolutely nothing of substance to add to the conversation, though.

I don't see any use in stretching the definition of visual novel. What good does that do anyone? It's okay for these games to be something other than VNs. It's okay to like things that aren't VNs, you don't have to transform everything you like into a VN. I just don't get why people want to do that so badly.

Thanks for some very thoughtful points made by some very thoughtful folks — Palas, Zakamutt, maefdomn, Decay, etc. (But not Rooke. Never Rooke. ) If it wasn’t already clear, the above blog post was 70% me playing devil’s advocate, 10% me being serious, and 20% me just wanting to talk about hot dogs. I’ll happily admit I have Gone Home tagged as adventure in my personal games database, and that’s exactly the genre I’d expect to find it under were I looking for it in a store. But after I finally got around to playing Gone Home — backlog ahoy! — it occurred to me to ask, “Well, why couldn’t this be considered a visual novel?” The meat of it was inherently literary, and the extratextual gameplay almost non-existent. Then I realized almost all the obvious counter-arguments I could think of stemmed not from a positive definition of what VNs are, but from a negative definition of what VNs shouldn’t be. “Gone Home lets me explore in a way that VNs don’t.” “Gone Home gives me a sense of immersion and agency that VNs don’t.” It’s akin to arguing that tomatoes must be vegetables because fruit stands don’t sell tomatoes. And that’s the part that really interests me. There’s a pervasive sameyness among VNs; maefdomn does a good job addressing some of the reasons why. The answer to “What’s a visual novel?” ends up being, “It’s something that’s like the visual novels I’ve played,” rather than a more useful discussion about what the essential elements of a VN are and aren’t. (Chronopolis’s VNBD definition is a good start, but only a start.) Without knowing where the outer edges of the art form are, both mechanically and creatively, we can’t fruitfully explore those edges. And that leaves us with wave after wave of lookalike kickstarted VNs whose main selling points are the number of romanceable characters they have and whether or not they feature imoutos. There will always be a place for that, of course, but there's room for so much more.

I can personally recommend Gone Home, if only to see what everyone is/was talking about (well, apart from that it's quite good). Pretty much everything is delivered either through text or voiceover (voiceovers are triggered by finding and reading text on objects), with some context given by the 3d environment (such as a certain hidden whiskey (I can't actually remember the type of liquor) bottle you can spot in a room; interesting touch that one). As an amusing touch to show you what the focus of the game is, there's actually a key that makes you lean in a bit for a closer look at something. I don't think it'd hold up that well if you actually were to publish it as an epistolary novel, but that comes with the territory; if the digital part isn't part of the story's power, why have it present at all?

Man, it's much too early in the morning for such heavy reading. I haven't even had a cup of coffee yet, nor a cup of tea ... and now my brain is fried already Mental note: Drink coffee first before reading anything Palas writes.

Screw you - I'll bloody well put ketchup on my hot dog sandwich. Deal with it. And relish. Sometimes even spicy mustard. Deal with it.

The definition for I and I believe vndb goes by is: "if significant parts of the story are presented with advancing text (which you virtually always click to advance), it's a visual novel or visual novel hybrid". You could easily call that a narrative-centric game, or a game story, or something.

I'll agree to disagree with you on that one. Both sides have merit, but I tend to fall in the reader response camp — e.g., "death of the author" and all that. I consider extratextual info (such as authorial intent) to be interesting, yet ultimately irrelevant to a critical evaluation of the text. After all, intent frequently fails to align with results. For instance, did you know that Atlas Shrugged wasn't originally intended to be a comedy? For shame. You didn't read to the end of the post. No delicious hot dog sandwich for you. As I suggested, it's not a slippery slope. Being a story-heavy exploration/adventure game doesn't automatically qualify something as a visual novel. What makes Gone Home special is that it's built around an already existing literary form, and the whole point of the gameplay is carry the reader through it. If nothing else, it’s worth taking time to consider what else visual novels can be, not just what they are. That’s how any art form grows. Otherwise, we’ll be locked in a perpetual ouroboros loop of big-chested high schoolers eating their own slice-of-life tails. (Oh god. That’s probably an actual thing in some VN. I just know it is. Euphoria, most likely.)