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Even in the "common" novel, the text is a contributing visual. Set a beer down in front of me and I'll talk your ear off about typography. Depending how you typeset it, a given text can be received in surprisingly different ways. An author can also choose to be more explicit in their use of typography as visual — again, see House of Leaves. William Wharton also did this a lot in his novels, using multiple fonts for various voices and effects. Faulkner even wanted to chronologically color code all the text in As I Lay Dying. (There's a version published that actually does this, btw.) There is always a visual aspect to the rendered narrative. We just need to pick an arbitrary dividing line: where do visuals become so much a part of the narrative that they help us define something as a visual novel. And finding that line isn't science; it'll always be up for debate. Then we're arguing the same thing, since I also believe VNs are games. (I mean, hell — there are walkthroughs for most of them!) I explicitly called out hybrids in my definition, but I think my own shorthand was my downfall there. In my brain, "games" meant "all other entertainments more commonly recognized as games" and "VN" meant "the specialized sub-genre of games known as VNs." You've made some very good arguments regarding that distinction, though, and I plan to clarify that in future drafts of the definition.

We're in agreement. I want them to be considered VNs, too. Their interfaces are visuals, and that is the point. Diegetic visuals are still visuals in my book. We can take this to absurd lengths, of course — "My intentional lack of visuals are my visuals!" "The choice of Times New Roman is my visual!" — but at that point, we might as well just burn it all down and live in caves because we've decided definitions are useless. Is a box of refrigerator poetry magnets a poem or the potential for a poem? Again, I think there's a difference between a ludic text that allows for play and discovery within a structure — House of Leaves, I'm looking at you, baby — and something that has absolutely no form without play. Both are very interesting, but they're very different beasts. For the sake of useful conversation, I'd offer that it's best not to conflate them. You're basically arguing against genres. This is entirely defensible — and often useful in academic discussions. But for a working definition, which limits the potentially limitless so we can discuss it, it's not very practical. There is a difference between a VN and a platformer, and if I generally like one and not the other, I want a way to usefully signify that.

I think we’re in agreement here. The definition of “narrative” I used (borrowed from the OED) reads a bit narrowly and could stand to be broadened. A train of thought can still be a novel, as Joyce did a good job showing. But a list of unrelated words or statements picked at random? Probably not, unless you’re a diehard dadaist. Here we disagree. It’s a visual novel. By its very name, it seems to demand some sort of visual accompaniment. Otherwise, a straight ASCII dump of Huck Finn could be saved out as a PDF and qualify as a VN. A definition so broad doesn’t help us usefully discuss VNs, which is why I’m looking for a working definition here rather than a textbook one. I’d argue the opposite, and I think by using the world “build” at the end there, you might just doing the same. The emergent can certainly be wonderful raw material, but someone still needs to recognize the potential underlying narrative, then structure the text to best frame it. Me dumping all of Groucho Marx’s letters on your desk is not a narrative. Me editing and ordering his letters to spotlight the delightful back and forth between him and his studio is something much different. As for your MMO idea, you’re butting up against the notion of a working definition again. If anything that generates text to be read on a screen can be considered a VN, then a VN stops being a useful thing to define (which I suspect is your intent). Back to my chair example, it’d be like you saying that anything I can sit should be considered a chair. I’d ask for one and you’d give me a dead mule. “It has four legs and a back,” you’d say, “just like you’d expect. Go ahead and sit. It’s really not comfortable, but how many chairs are, really?” Yet I’d still be wanting for a chair. I’d be interested in hearing you flesh this out more. It seems like you’re hoping to blur the lines between text as a framework for the ludic (in which a reader plays between the lines, so to speak) and the ludic itself (where the play *is* the text). I could be misunderstanding, but this sounds like another case where the line between "VN" and "game" becomes so incredibly porous that any definition becomes useless. Again, I suspect this might be your intent.

I agreed with the definition, every point. Such nuance! I had this idea of a NVL-format VN, but with no graphics, just voice acting and a character icon sprite beside each line of dialogue. This would fail point 4. I wonder what you'd call it. Kinetic novel sounds silly, since from the name you'd picture graphical effects. Probably the term Japanese people used to use: "Sound Novel"