Talk:Higurashi When They Cry

Gameplay?
I will admit to lacking familiarity with the work in question, but the simple statement "gameplay is restricted to reading..." seems absurd to me. The further I read through the strangely-titled "gameplay" section of this article the more it comes across as if this article was either written by someone whose definition of "game" includes Moby Dick and Pride and Prejudice or by someone who refuses to accept that a novel can be presented with pixels on a computer screen rather than ink on paper. The term "gameplay" implies the existence of ludic elements that are not only not being described here, but in fact their absence is being described. Regardless, this comes across to me as if the article is trying to push a point of view that visual novels don't count as "real novels" or "real literature" or something to that effect, and I would suggest finding a more WP:NPOV way to present this information. HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 23:47, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I realise my initial reaction here was a bit strongly worded, so perhaps I should elaborate having thought this through a bit more. To me the "gameplay" section of this article only reads as coherent if I assume that the writer considers all murder-mystery stories to be "games", and while I don't necessarily disagree with that viewpoint, I don't think it conforms with WP:NPOV to write from such a viewpoint. Regardless, on initial reading this section came across to me as if it was written either by someone who is arguing that the definition of "game" and "gameplay" should be broadened to include things that do not traditionally fall into those categories, or by someone who is very insistent that visual novels do not count as literature. HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 01:06, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

I should probably also clarify that I am not trying to argue that the article should be saying "this is not a game" or "this is a work of literature", just that the current insistence that it is "a game" and that it has "gameplay" comes across as if it is trying to push some sort of point of view, and that a statement like "gameplay is restricted to reading individual scenes, during which characters are displayed as static two-dimensional sprites" reads as a euphemistic way of saying "it is not a game and is actually a piece of literature but we are insisting on calling it a game for some reason". To be clear, as an outside observer the "gameplay" section of this article does not make it clear to me what definition of "gameplay" this article's subject meets that Murder on the Orient Express or bonus content on a DVD Video menu does not. Ideally I think terms like "game" should be avoided in favour of terms like "software" or "work". HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 02:23, 27 May 2023 (UTC)