Production Cost of Commercial VN (made with Ren'Py thus far)

[DaFool]

(Where's the poll option when you really need it? )

Just curious about the production costs of a typical commercial Ren'Py VN or dating sim, if anyone is actually willing to disclose numbers:

1. $0-%500
2. $500-1000
3. $1000-2000
4. $2000-5000
5. $5000-10000
6. >$10000

Compared to more "mainstream" indie games -- World of Goo cost $120k to develop. Braid cost $180k. (source: indie-fund.com), production costs of VN and VN hybrids seem minimal, but what if you don't factor in salary you pay yourself or computers and softwares which have already been paid for. I'm sure full studios like Shira-Oka would be higher because of employees that were paid full-time, but most are project-commission basis which is what I'm interested in.

Among those numbers, was art the most expensive? Or programming? Music, even? I'm trying to gauge my skills in ballpark figures so we won't underestimate nor overestimate the worth of our skills. Many thanks if you do reply.

[Topagae]

So I know ALOT about this stuff, if you wanna get some hard numbers, there are consumer reports in gaming industry magazines that detail game companies who MAKE VN's for your commercial statistics.

For indie's you can typically make one for "Free" with free tools like Renpy and your own time. How much your time is worth is also something you can pretty easily find out at salary comparison sites like http://www.glassdoor.com/index.htm

So, the numbers themselves are incredibly variable depending on experience and a million other factors, but in general the cost is going to hit you most in this order.

Programming->art->music->writing Purely because that is the pay-scale order that they get shoved into.

Personally, we've been developing our games for about two years, and have sunk countless hours and maybe 10,000$ for things like site hosting/maintenance, domain names, advertising, buying tools we need, convention costs.

As for the worth of your skills, I took a look at your game "Magical Boutique", from a contracting point of view, that game would probably be worth 3000-10000$ (Depending on how it's made, Iphone apps are ALL the rage these days) to make if somebody paid someone to make it for them. So you can use that as a ball park for your skills maybe.

[papillon]

Whether or not to count your own time as cost when working as an indie is a debate in itself.

If you don't count your own salary or the cost of tools that were already owned, you don't hire any employees, you don't take on extra high-end costs like animation or full voice acting, and you're being sensible with scope, you should be able to budget under $10K cashflow, but it's still going to vary depending on what you want and what you've got.

You can make a hit project for a cash cost of under $500 if you're very lucky, but it's not all that likely. And if you've GOT the money to go around, hiring a studio to do art in a professional manner instead of giving yourself ulcers chasing after semi-amateur freelancers can be much more efficient.

Music is particularly odd because there's a ton of it available for dirt cheap and there are often student musicians BEGGING for work (even free!), which really doesn't happen with artists, but if you actually hire someone to custom soundtrack your costs will go through the roof. You can watch some fun flamewars between indie devs and musicians because of what each side thinks is absolutely insane valuation.

[Jake]

If you don't count your own salary or the cost of tools that were already owned, you don't hire any employees, you don't take on extra high-end costs like animation or full voice acting, and you're being sensible with scope, you should be able to budget under $10K cashflow

I have to ask - given all those qualifiers, what are you actually spending up to $10k on?

[papillon]

Art. (And music)

For purposes of discussion, I'm thinking about something like Fatal Hearts, if I'd hired a single artist. I can see that game hitting $10K for content if I hadn't cut corners everywhere I possibly could and then some.

FH is not a tiny game. It is not huge either, so I wouldn't describe it as being wildly out of scope. (I see Japanese games sometimes with ludicrously high numbers of CGs in them. FH has a decent number of CGs, the highest of any English-made game I can currently think of, but it's still small compared to a full-price Japanese game.)

Obviously, you can do a decent game for a fraction of that (in cash) if you research your sourcing first and set strict limits on your game design. There's a reason most of these indie games have so few CGs. But I figured for DaFool asking the question, he was looking for something a little more arty.

[jack_norton]

As hanako said depends if you count your own time (as you SHOULD) or not.
If you're asking "the cost of assets", then it greatly varies. You can find overpriced / underpriced artists, new ones that are willing to work for less, etc.
My budget is 90% on art, for music I always used royalty free, since usually is even better (and cheaper) than what most composers can do.
I've made games for 2 and for 5. So far I never spent more (on ART) than $10k.
But if I count my own time, all games are over 10k! You need to really account all the time you spent coding/writing the game, and then marketing it. Most portals won't accept a VN, or if they do hardly will have success since portals target is totally non-VNs. So that's not a viable option really.
Also don't forget pure VN is a very tiny niche, so is hard to get your money back. A while ago some other developers I spoke with had the impression that making money with VN was simple, but they are completely wrong. You need a good story, decent marketing, decent art, the right market, and so on.

While I'll keep making VNs (mostly dating sims), I am looking forward to try more mainstream games like RPG or simulations and...yes even casual ones!

[Melkoshi]

I'm no way in the commercial business with VN(yet anyways). But don't forget if the head of staff is an artist, the cost reduces greatly if you don't count yourself.

Currently I'm planning on a rpg/vn game. Which I am the main programmer and artist. I'm on the fence about going commercial still, but even if I do i'm using all licensed/bought, no free-to-use material. Only thing I have spent so far was on music, which even then Papillon is right about finding cheap music. I bought a music rpg pack(royality free) of around 70 songs for around...1 us dollar?

[DaFool]

Thanks for your replies. Actually the 'cheaper' Japanese VNs can have only 12 or 16 base CGs, with variations, combined with a story that takes 3 minutes on Skip Mode (and maybe 1-3 choices). That's entirely sellable for $15 when the full-price JVNs cost more than $95. But of course this is the western market, we want cheap.

Seeing maximum estimates of $10K makes me think all those 'indie' games on Steam are 'mainstream AAA' by comparison, both in production cost and size of audience. Heck, I bought an iphone RPG for $7-8 where the developers boasted they spent 100K on the project, and that's mostly for off-the-shelf model packs. At least this isn't an App store so it's possible to break even with mere 1,000 copies sold.

Working solo I can create 2 hours' worth of content in 4 months (I haven't worked full steam in years but that's my current estimated capability -- that's doing everything including music). I can either take 8 months to create 4 hours' (sellable) worth of content, though it's generally advisable to keep projects under 6 months to prevent burnout. Or take one months' (Western) salary and apply that to some additional help.

In the indie forums they also say that the most often failed projects are RPGs and side-scrollers because of the sheer amount of art assets you need (as opposed to a top-down shooter or anything that can randomly generate terrain). I can safely add VNs to that list precisely because of the CG count.

I can't believe my estimates are in the right ballpark! So from all this an aspiring maker can allocate the budget towards number of characters, BGs, CGs and see the finish line already!

[Topagae]

Don't count your chickens DaFool, a lot of this stuff is completely variable because you're depending on other people. Though from what you've told me you're definitely cutting costs with lots of free assets/tools, you have to remember that MAKING your game is only half the battle. Getting people to play it an ENTIRE different beast that requires lots of resources to do right as well.

On that note, project wonderful is fantastic :3

[papillon]

Most people count their own time, and for good reason. If you've ever been employed, and are not working at other jobs in order to spend time on your game development, your time is an extremely important expense to take into consideration when considering whether or not something is financially viable. It doesn't help if you can make the game for a cash spend of $250 if you go bankrupt in the process.

If you're jobless, it doesn't matter so much.

The time to MAKE all the content also goes into why RPGs are such a slog. Long devcycle is rough on the budget.

Whereas something like a hidden object game, the coding doesn't take all *that* long AFAIK, but the art expectations are very high. People are definitely shelling well over 10K on art for the big names.

[Topagae]

All assets can get VERY expensive as you go up in experience of creators/quality. There are plenty of tiny games made by big name studios that cost hundreds of thousands. That flash tie-in game to Dragon Age was like 300k

[LVUER]

Usually, the person who own the company (or the person who own the game in indie case) is the writer, so we could omit story from the list. We could get decent music (and sound effects) for free, or perhaps buy them in a bundle and reuse them over and over again. And I bet almost everyone could do their own script (or you could learn it by yourself, especially if you're already using engine like RenPy) except if you're striving for games with heavy and complex gameplay.

So that leaves art. I agree that art would be one that cost the most. I've read somewhere that if you use popular artist, even a single piece/CG could be very expensive.

But, if you want to add an opening movie with music and vocals or/and add voice acting, they could be expensive too... especially if you want to use popular singer/voice actor.

[Topagae]

Voice acting is REALLY expensive, just the equipment, even renting, is ridiculously expensive.

[LVUER]

Like I said ^_^

Though we (indie company) could cut corner by using normal PC equipments (albeit the low quality) and hiring unprofessional VA.

[Topagae]

Easiest way would probably be to raid an A/V club at a college/school. They're equipment is high enough quality to pass as okay. Then with unprofessional VA it just takes a lot longer to get correct takes. Something of a time sink but you can get good VA on the cheap.

And hey, everyone can do at least ONE voice.