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I'm not trying to be rude to anyone at all, but I'm wondering who is paying these talented, artistic people?
Someone must be making a lot of money out of games if they can afford to pay these people (who earn every cent of it) fairly.
I'm surprised I haven't seen requests for investors in the recruitment threads.

I think I have a decent job, but being able to afford to pay a team of 2-4 people a real monthly wage is not even close to possible. And I know a lot of the people making games here are students, who probably don't have huge incomes.

I was very fortunate to have some people who volunteered to work on the project I started, and I'm very grateful to them, but I can't help feeling sorry for them at the same time. They make no demands at all, despite this being a potentially massive project.

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Working on a VN to teach lower-conversational Japanese, and a guide to living in Japan.
It's a very long dev process.

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I don't think anyone here is paying anybody a monthly wage!

Freelancers tend to have multiple projects - working on one of our games would be just one of them. I don't have staff artists, I have people who are assigned particular jobs and do them for a stated fee.

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Hanako Games

@Zylinder, Ah, Malaysia, where you can get a delicious bowl of Kway Teow for $1.50 and waitresses can find your table in a crowded room without a number.



I'm not sure what you mean by the first bit. If the sprite isn't professional quality after 1 hour, then they wouldn't be earning $25 an hour because the sprite wouldn't be good enough at that point. If they spend another hour, just one hour, on bringing it up to scratch doing quality and emotions and such, and they are earning only $12.50 an hour. It's possible for me to do a sprite in an hour, but it wouldn't be worth it, and people won't want to pay me $25 for it. Problem is people want the quality of 4 hours work for the cost of 1.

I understand it can be hard to find artists for your projects. Artists willing to work on those types are projects aren't huge in number, and the artists often have their own stories to tell. Some artists are willing to work for free (like me) so money isn't always the be and end all of the equation. But we do require something in return and if we are happy with it we will stay. If not, we don't.



Some people can do it. Frankly I could do it, but I'm super grateful I can take care of that part myself. And VNs are on the cheap side of game development XD
But I don't think anyone would expect you to pay a team on a single person's wage... it's a single person wage. It's fine if people want to volunteer for free to do things if they enjoy it. That's what they get out of it and it's fun doing projects like this. Money isn't everything if you can get something else out of it. As long as it balances out with someone in the end it's okay, no need to feel guilty about it

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The other 1/2 of Cyanide Tea l My Deviantart Account I My Tumber Account I Break Chance Memento I Ristorante Amore

Frankly, the prospect of paying writers and programmers up front (as opposed to profit share) is still pretty new to me. Usually the creator/project leader is one or the other, and since working on text and code can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days for the same end result (depending on skill or mood), it's not something you can usually quantify. Theres more trial and error and 'playback testing' and deleting.

Art on the other hand, you can more or less estimate the number of hours put into something. Sure there's trial and error too, but if the artist is stuck getting the basic posture right then that means they're not commercial grade artists.

I'll have to second everything Auro said. I can't really time myself for sprites always as honestly, it differs a lot depends on the costumes or the level detail in the hair (curly hair is murder, but so pretty <3), but I'd say it may take me anywhere from 4-8+ hours. This is assuming it is one hair style and one costume. I tend to get myself in trouble and do patterns like plaid by hand so that takes sometimes an hour longer depending on the complexity.

I've honestly only had two clients for sprites. One is Komi and I think I went by his standard prices. I don't recall completely, but it may have worked out to be around $50 for each sprite with multiple outfits. I chipped in a few variations with the outfits, too. I've also gotten paid $200 for a sprite that was very customizable. Every color was on a different layer, you could choose patterns, a school uniform that could change bows and ties, 8 different hairstyles, 9 outfit items, accessories, a bajillion different expressions... That one took forever to complete. Designing outfits is very time consuming for me, so it does take me longer if there isn't a previous reference to go on, but I also really enjoy it so I usually don't charge for it.

I get paid around anywhere from $40-60 for CGs normally. Those usually have at least two characters and a detailed background. CGs also take me anywhere from 4-8+ hours depending on how overly ambitious I am at the background. Honestly, I'm probably more on the 8+ side on things, so in general I make way below the 10.25CAD minimum wage here. I don't know too many artists who do make minimum wage, actually. And as was pointed out, we don't get benefits, either. Artists do art because they love it, not because they make an amazing amount of money.

I wish I could afford to do art for free or for lower prices, but freelance work is a large portion of my income. Bills need to be paid and the cost of living in Canada is very high compared to some countries. I'm just lucky I don't live in Toronto anymore. $800+/month for a bachelor apartment makes me want to cry. Even where I live rent for a single apartment is $400-600. I won't even go into the cost of food in Canada vs the US. So I guess to answer the end question, no, I would not take a 90% paycut because I can't afford to live if I do. I apologize if this sounds like whining at all, but it's the hard facts about the living situation here. Artists are just like any other profession. You need to adjust how much you make to your personal funding needs or else you're in trouble.

Anyways, I'm curious to hear from any professional writers to see if they can properly make ends meet (i.e. is it mostly off royalties, do you work in journalism?). I know a few programmers who make a good wage on freelance projects. Usually $20+/hr, though those projects are not related to games for the most part.

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http://tetiel.deviantart.com

Change those dollar signs to pound signs and get some idea of how much pain rent is in England!

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Hanako Games

*nods* Oh, I'm fully aware of how awful that is, too. I don't know how some students afford to go to school full time in most Western European countries and not be homeless. Australia and New Zealand are also extremely expensive, from what I understand. Canada is for sure not the worst! I'm just mainly putting the cost out there to explain further why most people can't charge $10-15 per sprite.

Now my head is spinning trying to figure out how people in your country can make ends meet on a freelance salary. Gah, didn't even consider that @_@

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http://tetiel.deviantart.com

Really? Really?!

Professional and commercial grade artists redo and struggle with work and postures all the time. Normal freaking Rockwell spent months without finishing a painting once because he couldn't get it right. Watch some professional comic artists work and see how often they redraw a figure. It ticks me off to see that common misconception about professional art - that pro artists just "draw it right the first time". You only SEE the one they drew right the first time. The last half a dozen times when they didn't are in the garbage can. Can they sometimes hit it out of the park on the first try? Sure, but professional artists use first and second drafts JUST LIKE WRITERS.

That whole myth of artists being able to just slap pretty pictures on the page with no effort is why so many people want to pay nothing or chicken scratch for art. "I'm not paying that much! All you have to do is sit down and scribble out the pictures while watching TV, it's easy, right?"

@DarkSpartan

Like has been pointed out amateur writers do NOT get $.05 a word. Playboy used to be one the highest paying magazines for writers in the world, and they paid $.05 a word. Most first time (and second and third) time NOVEL authors get $5000 for a novel, which is generally considered 180K words. That breaks down to less than 3 cents a word for a finished and approved manuscript that has probably gone through multiple drafts and revisions.

And allow me to be the next in the long line of people to say that $10-$15 a sprite IS insulting and way too low for an artist. I pointed out the formula to calculate price for an artist before in another thread:

(Time the art takes in hours) X (Minimum wage per hour in artist's country) = LOWEST PRICE YOU CAN PAY

For instance, let's say it takes an artist 3 hours to make a sprite. (Unlikely for professional quality, especially if sprite DESIGN is part of the package) Let's say that artist lives in the U.S. where the minimum wage is a laughably hard to live on $7.50 an hour. At minimum, that artist needs to make $22.50 per sprite. But that is too low as well. Because that artist has spent years perfecting their skills at an explicit or implicit monetary cost to themselves, be it art school or just foregone work opportunities spent practicing art. They could make $22.50 for 3 hours of work sweeping floors and that would be EASIER than making art. So they need to charge more.

I know from working with professional artists both as friends and mentors at art school and at a studio, in the U.S. a professional freelance artist can expect anywhere between $60-$120 an HOUR for their time. So if you were having a professional sprite done, just like those in Japanese commercial games like Catherine, and that artist could somehow knock it out in 3 hours (keep in mind, in professional games development, one artist is usually paid to DESIGN and CONCEPT the characters, and another paid to actually draw the final art sprites), it would cost $180-$360 a sprite. Which lines up nicely with what those Japanese companies actually spend on sprites.



And a lot of people don't do it as a hobby, or do it PROFESSIONALLY as a day job, so getting paid isn't a bonus, but a necessity.


Exactly. It can be hard for an amateur writer to recognize if they are bad or not, especially if they spell everything correctly and use proper grammar. Bad or amateur art is much more immediately visible. And often you have to read quite a bit of someone's writing to tell if they are good or bad, but with art, the image immediately succeeds or fails.

EDIT: By the way, you owe me $12.90 cents for this post. I'm only charging amateur writing rates of $.02 a word, and I'm not even charging you for this sentence. I'm nice that way.

At the rate I write, I get paid *almost* $20 an hour. I get paid pretty much the same as when I used to work as an SAT tutor, which is neat, but I'm getting paid to write things that I like and Jack is extremely patient, helpful, and accommodating. But I do write faster than the average person, I think, looking around at these forums and that one writing speed thread from a while back.

My main problem is that my writing inspiration is extremely temperamental. I go through periods where I can pull 70,000 words out of the air like it's nothing, but then I subsequently get into a slump where it's hard just churning out my daily minimum of 4,000 words. I'm not sure I could pull off being a freelance writer as my primary source of income just because of that. So could I get paid more? Sure, I suppose. But at present, I'm still living at home and have less in the way of expenses than people living independently, so I don't think about all that too much right now.

I do think that artists and writers need to be valued and paid fairly, though. I buy the odd art commission every now and again and when I see people charging $10 or less on something that I know will take them more than 2 hours to do, it makes my stomach churn a bit and I always end up just paying them more. ^^; If you want quality art from a reliable artist, you're going to have to expect to pay more. I think Auro originally charged like $50 minimum per sprite, so I just ate ramen for a few weeks so I could save up. XD It was totally worth it!

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1/2 of Cyanide Tea | BCM | Ristorante Amore | The Elevator | @Twitter

Just a note.
1 CG needs at least 10,000 ~ 100,000 yen for a line artist, and another 10,000 ~ 100,000 yen for a paint artist in Japanese commercial market. So the minimum cost is $250, usually $500 for one CG.
In writing, 2~3 yen for 1 Japanese letters (≒ 0.5 words). Therefore, $0.05 for one word.

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Well, I write at 250 to 1000 words per hour, but mostly at 500, but the first stuff that I come up with is normally pretty messed up, so taking into account editing, it's about 250 words an hour for me. If I were to get paid at the high rate of $0.05 a word, that adds up to $12.50 an hour. Minimum wage in California is a bit over $8. That means that if I were to get paid $0.025 a word, I'd be working below minimum wage ($6.25).

I don't charge anything for my writing though. At those rates, I'd rather work for free. I'm pretty busy with school and those sorts of things, so I don't really have that much time to write. I'd have to be very interested in a project to write for it, since the time I can spend writing is very limited.

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Not really checking the forums any more due to time constraints, so if you want to contact me, PM. I'll get a notification and log in.
Also, I've been hit and run posting, which means I don't see many replies. If you want to respond to something I've said, also feel free to PM me.

I guess the main point is that artists working on VNs, especially those involved in the forums, are already taking a significant cut to normal wages (I'm presuming because of LOVE for the medium XD). There needs to be love for all of our creative assests as well as understanding. The artists should understand what it takes to write well and the writers should understand what it takes to draw well. Both are a lot of effort, both take time, and both took practice and study to get there (same with musicians, programmers, designers etc).

Most of us here are not looking to live off what we are creating. Quite a few of the artists here offering the low rates are students who are looking for smaller amounts of income. Some are like me and have a full time job to support thmselves with. There is of course a catch with that in that if we aren't looking at this as a job, we don't have the time to invest as if it is. Students have classes, study and assignments. People like me are working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Thus, we do not have the same turn over as professional artists. You kind of get what you pay for and that doesn't just mean quality. Sometimes it means time as well.



XD



Agh! D: Don't say that!

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The other 1/2 of Cyanide Tea l My Deviantart Account I My Tumber Account I Break Chance Memento I Ristorante Amore

That's the problem though. And it's what is already happening to a lot of the old short story and journalist jobs. There are so many people willing to write for free on the Internet, that it is difficult to find someone who is willing to pay a livable wage for writing.

When you work at a craft for free and do good work, you devalue everyone else's work in that craft. If someone is trying to make money writing and you and others are willing to do the work for free, they suddenly can't earn anything.

Amateurs can unknowingly tank freelance markets by working for less than they're worth, simply because they're willing to work for little of nothing. They either have so much spare time that it isn't worth much to them, or they are so desperate to "get a foot in the door" that they'll work for peanuts. Then the people doing the hiring and paying can tell those older professionals with families to take a pay cut or get replaced by the new blood willing to work for less than the professional can live on.

Economics make the world go round, and putting out quality free work is the same as flooding a financial market with excess gold - suddenly the value of everything goes down.


I'd say Papillon does fairly well from appearances, and Christine is likely doing quite well with Analogue: A Hate Story.

A know a few of those Japanese game's were 4-5 people working out of an apartment together. $30K development cost for professional quality, split 5 ways - so each developer is only shouldering $6K of the cost. They also don't sell VNs for $20 in Japan - they sell them for $80-$100. So 375 copies are what they need to move to break even.


I agree it can be a problem getting started. And yes, those of us that are our own artists are at a big advantage when it comes to the cost of making our games. As a professional artist, I can do my own art. I also consider myself a pretty good writer with a couple of publications in print magazines to my name. I'm a decent enough programmer to get by.

But all that work I can do myself still isn't TECHNICALLY free. Yes, I can get an "advance" on not needing as much money to get started, but I still have a cost. Namely, if I am making professional quality sprites and artwork for myself, that is TIME I'm spending not making $180 a pop doing the same thing for OTHER people. So that still has to be factored into whether any game I were to make and sell would be a financial success or not. For instance, will the game make more money than I would have earned just freelancing for other people for the same time investment?


If you're trying to get rich as developer or free-lancer you're already deluded. Almost all indie game makers, regardless of genre, have to have a day job. And the hobbyist EVN scene only remains as such because people keep regarding it a "hobbyist". Those 4-5 Japanese guys in their apartment are doing nothing different than some people in the EVN scene, they are just applying a professional work ethic and getting professional results. Oh, and they still aren't rich. The best you hope for is to make enough to live on. The Notchs of the world are few and far between.

Auro confirmed for making writers starve.



I'd move to suggest that the "professional" wVN scene is still entirely distinct from the "hobbyist" scene. For a professional, I'd probably say that all the people here crying foul over paying an artist only $15 for a sprite that takes hours of hard work are probably correct. I acknowledge that if you want to go commercial, you pay people the same rates as they would make with other companies, and allowing for a little less because "the artists aren't pro" would be ridiculous. If you applied for a job and then got paid less than minimum wages because "you're a first timer" and "not used to the work" you'd probably also not be very happy. (in before someone tells me this actually happens)

But for hobbyists, $15 per sprite is a lot, I'd say. You're investing money into something you have to produce, and likely can't recycle. $15 for one sprite for a one-man-act VN would still be doable, but when you get into the Katawa Shoujo clones, or want to make something like all those popular Japanese VNs, that number's probably racking up a lot. Katawa Shoujo alone has... six girls, three males? Or seven girls? Let's say 10 so we can say it'd cost $150... +$30 for extra expressions for the girls, +$30 for extra costumes for each, assuming $5 for 4 extra expressions and $5 for extra costume. That's already a production value of $210, and we're not even looking at music, amount of time spent writing, coding, CGs, backgrounds... even if you'd be cheap and grab free music, wrote it yourself, learned some rudimentary coding and took photograph backgrounds, CGs (one per girl, plus say, four extra for scenes?), you're already looking at another $150 in CGs (assuming $15 = CG, probably $25 or something in practice). That's minimum $300 for art assets.

For a hobbyist, that is a lot of money to sink into something that you can't recycle as easily or re-sell.

@LWR, psst, Christine is Scout.

Personally I don't see a problem if people want to work for free or less if they have other benefits in the project, such as a say, more flexibility with time and quality etc. I would get upset if someone was working cheaply or for free and was getting treated like the should be professional. Doing something for yourself because you want to do it is one thing. Doing something for someone else without being compensated is something else.

While I think it CAN effect the market, it isn't a huge deal as long as everyone keeps in mind what is involved and don't assume professional = cheap. Getting family and friends to help out with painting your home isn't going to destroy the painter market. It would if everyone did it, but generally there are enough people who want it done faster/better/don't have family that will hold up the market. As long as people who are working freely or cheaply aren't being used as professionals, I think it can be okay. It's a complicated aspect really. You can't demand that everyone who just wants to work for fun to suddenly demand pay. At the same time I have seen some nasty trends of people expecting professional work for low pay just because they don't have money. It requires a sane and logical approach to balance and happy team work that people unfortunately often lack :/

@Applegate, A good thing to remember is that hobbies often cost money, from cheap to OMG expensive. People who are into cooking might splurge on certain ingrediants to use in a recipe. Once that food is gone, it's gone. If you choose to spend that money without a commercial return, then you kind of have to view it as money spent on the enjoyment of creating your vision. Otherwise, why would you do it in the first place?

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