Hold your horses here, guys. I never said anything about that I dislike it. Just little bother, not much... And so far I know that Adult Visual Novel is just nice alternative to term "porn game". In most cases for sure. My GF will disagree with the nice description saying something like "Playing porn game again?"...
And that's where you're misunderstanding.
You're assuming all AVN are just nice alternative to the term porn game which is incorrect.
"Adult game" is a very umbrella term which includes the several sub-genres which include the following two:
1) Porn game:
game with bare-bone story, very shallow characters, and all in general writing is not very good at all. Number one objective with most games in this category is to get the MC bone the girl as quick as possible, so player can fap off to the scenes as early as possible, and as much as they can.
Examples would be;
- A lot of games which have the tag "Real porn" on them. Though some AVNs which have very shallow story/characters/terrible story just for the sake of sex scenes fits into this category too.
2) Story + Characters driven Adult Visual Novels:
these are very narrative driven and the Dev gives a lot of focus to the story and characters. Characters more often than not have depth with them and are definitely not cardboard characters.
Also another attribute with games in this category is that the MC usually has sex nowhere near as early as games in the porn games category - a lot of times girls arc will be slowburn where the MC builds relationship with them.
And some games during this slowburn, while girls may show skin here and there, there will be no sex until appropriate time, and some games may not actually have any sex at all.
Examples of such;
- Games with no sex at all: The House in Fate Morgana
- Games which will have sexual content in the future but is currently in slow burn, building relationships hence just showing skins: Summer's Gone
- Games which has sex, but the story has been building relationships with characters and story, hence at the moment has only little sex: The DeLuca Family, Rebirth
- Games which currently has quite a bit of lewd and sex, but also good story and characters as well: Desert Stalker
And above are just few of the examples I can remember.
So there is clearly difference between the two.
And no offense to your gf, but I don't think she's the best person to be able to tell the difference between what is a porn game, and what is a story driven AVN, unless she played through at least some of the example games I've listed above.
