Commercial Worthy Visual Novel

[Cybeat]

What makes a visual novel commercial worthy? What does it need to be a commercial game? How long should the game be? I was thinking about this. Before I could get to this, my story skills really needs to change. Anyway, can anybody share some ideas?

[Hime]

Well, it never has to be commercial. Many games can be commercial-worthy, but not commercial. And many people find free games nicer. For example, little girls who can't buy their games on the Internet. -cough-

But anyway, what makes a VN commercial-worthy would be being worth of buying, which usually means having at least a couple from these: 1) Epic length 2) Good writing/story 3) Great graphics 4) Ero 5) Something special in the gameplay system. Of course, what's worth buying differs from person to person, but the overall quality should be good in all factors. Very many people appreciate awesome graphics, but not many will buy a 1-hour game for tens of dollars. As visual novels are mostly based on text, the writing should be fluent and enjoyable as well. Making a commercial-worthy VN would most likely mean having a group of very talented people.

For a commercial game, the length... Well, I'd say that it depends a bit on the price too, but I wouldn't buy a couple of hours game for 10$. If we're talking about the general price for Japanese VNs, which would be about 40$ I think, the game should have at least 10-15 hours average playing time. But these are just my opinions, I remind you.

[Mirena (lazy mode)]

There are good commercial games, and there are bad commercial games.

What I expect from a commercial game is:
-Graphics, they need to be good
-Great story or fun gameplay (both at once are good too =p)
-A certain lenght. if it doesn't take long to complete I easily feel cheated (that's why I mainly stick to rpgs lol >.<)
-PROPER GRAMMAR AND SPELLING

That doesn't mean I don't enjoy free games. It's just that I expect more from games I actually pay for. But I love free games. They can be just as great as commercial ones.

[papillon]

There's also a difference in where and to-whom you're trying to sell. Selling games at school is different from selling games on DLsite is different from selling games on Yahoo is different from selling games in an anime store...

[sake-bento]

I look for the same thing in free and commercial games. The graphics are always what catch my attention first, because that's what I get to see. Obviously. So good graphics really are necessary. After that, I want to know if it's a story I haven't heard before. I've played so many dating sims and visual novels, I'd really like to hear a story that I haven't heard before. The game system doesn't have to be innovative, but it's always fun to try new things out.

[Cybeat]

10-15 hours of gameplay? How many pages is that? 200? The reason I asked is because I'm not a guy with lots of money. I thought about making money with my ideas. Thing is, how will I do that if I have no experience? Well, it takes time.......lots of time. Since I'm going back to Japan soon, I'll form a group there.

[Hime]

10-15 hours of gameplay? How many pages is that? 200?

Well, if Project Nattsu was 20 minutes with 8000 words... If I counted this right, 10 hours would be about 240000 words, which would be about 860-960 pages depending on how you count it, whereas 15 would be over 1000 pages.

[Cybeat]

10-15 hours of gameplay? How many pages is that? 200?

Well, if Project Nattsu was 20 minutes with 8000 words... If I counted this right, 10 hours would be about 240000 words, which would be about 860-960 pages depending on how you count it, whereas 15 would be over 1000 pages.

Man. This is a mission. How long you think it will take? I work by myself.

[Samu-kun]

Decades. It takes a team of professionals years to make a commercial game... One amateur probably doesn't have a real chance of making something on that level.

If you're looking to make money off of visual novels though, I don't think you actually need to make something that big...

[Cybeat]

Decades. It takes a team of professionals years to make a commercial game... One amateur probably doesn't have a real chance of making something on that level.

If you're looking to make money off of visual novels though, I don't think you actually need to make something that big...

I was thinking too big? How big should my visual novel be(commercial)?

[Samu-kun]

Well... It depends on whether it's legal for you to make H-games or not... I think that it's very, very difficult for non-H visual novels to find a viable market through the Internet... Although it is certainly possible, it often takes years of practice and work to find a reliable source of profit from doujin game making. Papillion, as I know it, has been making commercial non-H visual novel games for some time now, although her games generally incorperate gameplay as well.

[Cybeat]

So hentai games are easier to sell than non-hentai games? I knew it....Fate/Stay Night had a good story, but I guess hentai was added so people could buy it.

[Wintermoon]

Visual novels are still novels - the visual part is incidental. First you need to write a novel. Looking around at some paperback novels, they seem to have around 400 pages for the most part. Of course, most novels only have a single path. Having a high branching factor would increase the amount of text needed to maintain a constant length reading time.

Then you need to make sure your novel is good enough to publish. Most novels aren't. You need writing skill, and you need something to say. The former can be learned, the latter is a question of inspiration.

Don't bother if you can't write a novel of publishable quality.

You also need pictures, music, and preferably voice acting. If you're doing this commercially, you can outsource those aspects that you cannot handle yourself.

Then you can start to sell your visual novel. Most professional authors just make enough money to survive. You'll reach a much smaller audience, because people go to book stores for their books instead of the internet. On the other hand, you'll face less competition because visual novels are relatively rare and have a bigger novelty factor. You won't have to worry about printing costs, but you will have to pay off any contributors for your project. Hopefully you'll make enough money to recover your costs at least. Don't bet on it. Instead, keep your day job and keep trying until you succeed. Persistence is a much more effective strategy than gambling on instant success.

Stay away from stories with incidental explicit sex scenes. By including explicit sex scenes, you will lose most of your potential market and most of your potential sales channels outside Japan. Most of the remaining audience will expect pure porn and will be disappointed when they have to read to get to the porn. In fact, I would stay away from sex entirely. It sells, but everybody and their dog is doing it, so you will be up against a nearly saturated market.

Most visual novel fans even in the USA won't even look at OEL works. Don't sell to them. Find a new audience.

[Mikan]

All you really need is a lot of good pictures. If the pictures are pretty enough, the player will be too stunned by the pictures to care about the story part.
As long as it's a reasonable story, people will play it for the pretty pictures.

[papillon]

So hentai games are easier to sell than non-hentai games? I knew it....

This is NOT necessarily true AT ALL. It's a matter of what you're selling and who you're selling it to, like I already said.

For instance, me adding porn to my games would not make them sell better. It would mean that I couldn't sell them at all anymore, 'cause I'd get banned from all the places I currently sell at and yelled at a lot.

On the other hand, a really terrible game could probably sell at least a few copies on DLsite if you put enough porn in it. But selling them from anywhere other than DLsite will be tricky unless you already have a huge amount of traffic, because you won't be allowed to advertise them in most places. Even the places that are already interested in hentai games won't be interested in YOU, because you're not originally Japanese.

No one here can tell you how good a game needs to be to sell, nor is there any magic yardstick to tell you how good a game IS. You can get a general idea by looking at what's already selling and comparing what you can make to those things. Or you can just try it and see what happens. Sometimes people surprise you.

I tend to shy away from giving advice because (on other forums I'm on) there are a lot of kids who want easy answers about how to step-by-step make lots of money, and it just doesn't work that way. If I tell you that "20 hours of gameplay and 500 CGs!" is the 'right' amount for a commercial game and you go off and make a game that does that and it doesn't sell, you'll probably be upset with me.

Level up your skills first.