Visual Novel Definition From Academic Paper

I collected academic papers about visual novels for at least one ongoing NLJ article project. I figured that the best place to start my reading was “What is a Visual Novel?” This paper, authored by Elin Carstendottir. Janelynn Camingue, and Edward F. Melcer, was published in the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction on October 5, 2021. As promised, it delivered a definition of “visual novel” after studying previously published papers and a selection of popular visual novels. Their definition strikes me as reasonable, albeit a touch antiseptic. I will have to ponder whether it breaks on the margins (e.g., can I come up with games that check all or most of the boxes but would have questionable claims to being a visual novel?) But I cannot think of any pieces that I would consider to be visual novels that are not covered by their proposed definition.

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