Is a CYOA a book or a game?

[Rune Lai]

So I'm having a funny dilemma.

There's a company called Choice of Games that does digital choose-your-own-adventures, but with stat-tracking. There are no graphics, no sound. It's just text and whatever automated stuff on the back-end there is that changes your stats based on your decisions. (Kind of like an automated version of the Lone Wolf or Fighting Fantasy books if you ever read those in school.)

To me, the original physical media meant that I always considered them a "book" even after being de-coupled from the act of turning pages to read.

Two of my friends say they are games, and it is just that in older days there were in book form, but now they don't have to be.

Choice of Games sells these adventures on Steam, and various app stores.

The reason I'm asking is because I have my gaming to-play list and a book to-read list and now I don't know which to put the adventure I want to buy in. (Nerd problems.)

You guys have any opinions?

[Solana]

The lines are really blurring now, especially with e-readers. I guess with the stats I'd say 'games' in this case, though I still count the original paper CYOA as books.

I'm still old school. I bought an e-reader pretty much to buy DarkKnight's book, to bring on trips, and for the digital camera.

[Ambrienne]

I still consider them books. Really, the only difference between these and the paper ones is you've got something else keeping track of your stats. And given the speed at which you can go through a CoG book, they're really more like short stories. So, of the few of them that I've read, I can't say they engage me as much as a decent novel.

[Solana]

Touche.

Then you have things like Neil Patrick Harris's autobiography written in the form of a CYOA to make things even more complicated...

[Rune Lai]

Jan 6, 2019 11:23:17 GMT -5 Solana said:

Then you have things like Neil Patrick Harris's autobiography written in the form of a CYOA to make things even more complicated...

How does that even work?

Thanks for the input, both of you. Not a clear majority unfortunately. Must keep polling more people lol.