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I've been meaning to buy both the Flowershop games, but the 19.99 prices killS me....So, my question is, why are the games made by Winter Wolves so expensive ( is due to time it takes to make them or something?). Sorry if this has been asked before, but its been on my mind lately.

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$20 isn't that expensive :/ That's about an hours wage. It's what he does for a job, so as far as I know, there isn't a secondary income. Add to that the time that goes into them and the amount of money needed to comission people, it's a fair price. If he charged less, he probably wouldn't be doing it full time at all. It's the way the world works. For people to earn fairly, they have to charge fairly.

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I'm not saying its a terrible way to price I was just wondering.... (^_^;) Gosh I feel so dumb right now. (TT-TT) I didn't know it was his only source of income, now that I do the prices make more sense. Sorry...(TT^TT)~

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That's a good price for a lengthy VN imo.

Other indie games, like shooters and stuff, they don't take as much work as VN when it comes to the artwork and storyline. Often there's hardly any story at all and artwork is re-used often.
For example, Angry birds- All they have to do is set up the pre-drawn birds and pigs in a certain way each time, the graphics are relatively simple so new graphics don't take a lot of time. And like I mentioned, it has a very minimal story- no script, no plot twists, ect. The writing is the most important part of a VN.

There are similar games out there that you can get for cheaper, but that's because a huge company makes them and that company can mass-produce copies to sell in Walmart and other stores.

Not to mention the average price of a commercial VN in Japan is about 40$ (if I recall correctly) and up to $150 for an imported eroge.

I think "expensive" really comes down to your own personal values as a consumer of games

If you look at a $19.99 game compared to some of the $9.99 or less offerings out there, say pre-owned at GameStop or on smartphones, it can seem expensive. The questions to me are:

1) Can I find a better gaming use for $19.99?
2) Do I care about supporting indie development versus the cookie-cutter game factories out there?

If the answer to 1 is "no" and/or 2 is "yes", you'd probably say that $19.99 for a game you (hopefully) enjoy isn't expensive. If one or both of your answers are different, you don't place as high of a value on the product offered (nothing wrong with that) and will say $19.99 is expensive for the game.

(btw, you can usually find some promo or coupon code for his games - he's pretty good about that)
(or you can hop over to mangodrop for a great $9.99 game hee hee hee /shamelessselfpromo)

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Niche market = more expensive.

I can also tell when commissioning people which ones were the ones that needed to make a living (more expensive) and which ones didn't.

The first commercial Ren'Py game (some Jeopardy thing) was going for $35.

Sure, as a potential commercial creator I could release a game next year and only charge $0.99. You'd love it! But then I'd crash what little market we have and Sake, Hanako and everyone else will hate me for it. Look how the Apple Appstore devalued everyone's efforts so the only way to earn from it now is to be the biggest, most popular fish in the pond... be the top 1% earning millions compared to the 99% earning at most $50 for 3 months of full time work.

Really, I can't wait for this gaming generation enjoying the best, cheapest, highest production quality games today be inspired to work in the game industry: the only employer left will be Bobby Kotick since nobody except the biggest will be able to take such a loss in revenue.

Haha other people replies are good, so I just want to add that $20 is the standard price for most other OELVN anyway, so you could have titled "why English VNs are so expensive?". (and they're still cheaper compared to Japanese ones!)
If you follow me on twitter/FB I do regular promotional sales, sometimes alone, sometimes with other indies, since I know that not everyone can afford to pay $20+.

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If you want some real pain, try ordering a VN from Japan (not a licensed english translated one, an actual Japanese one) - they're like $100! No surprise that my collection of Japanese titles is very small.

But yeah, chiming in with the above - this is my sole income (and I'm the family breadwinner), but I do discounts and giveaways at times.

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I got curious after reading this thread, so I tried looking up some prices for japanese vns. on play-asia (don't know if that a good reference or not...) the prices for commercial vns ranged from 40-80$, and seems to depend entirely on which console you're getting it on (psp games costed more). I also checked the price for witch hunt's umineko download, which is 30$ for each half.

looking at the difference in the amount content between japanese and english vns, it doesn't seem like the japanese ones are more expensive, so much as just bigger. jack_norton's 20$ prices are for games that can actually be finished 100% in a reasonable amount of time

rather than saying evns or whatever are expensive, I'd say video games in general are expensive, unless you what for steam sales or somthing like that.

More like $80-$110 for full-length new releases with the current exchange rate.