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Topagae

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#1 Post by Topagae »

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Last edited by Topagae on Thu Aug 25, 2011 3:02 pm, edited 5 times in total.

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DaFool
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Re: Looking to buy/license complete VN scenarios.

#2 Post by DaFool »

Hello well it's nice to see a representative from one of the aggregator sites. You'll have to excuse me since I don't quite have a good opinion of them due to some of them just stealing content (the ones from China).

To answer your concerns, there's another VN making forum here:

http://teacup.lunaen.com/

and probably another one in Novelty (another VN engine) forums.

But I think your target market is slightly different. It does intersect with this community though, since many here also played games on newgrounds or other Flash sites. I'm fairly certain that a lot of people here are more into the 'story' / 'plot' type rather than pure dating sims, otherwise there would have been more games that utilize the DSE (dating sim engine plugin in Ren'Py).

Many of the games released on http://www.renai.us are 30 minutes to one and a half hours long, so there's no problem with regards to length. If you're just interested in porting games, then it may be better to just scour for the type of games you might think will fit your site then contact the game maker directly.

You might be interested in porting Magical Boutique, but you'll need to contact my partner in that project, monele via PM or angelushappyfm at evc dot net. I had expressed an interest in wanting to port it for the iphone (it was released before the App Store boom). It's very python-intensive, though. Plus, you probably won't be able to get higher-res art assets then what's already included in the package since the computer used to make most of them has long died and I lost the backup CD.

My current project, however, an RPG which I'm aiming to hit 4-6 hours so that puts it squarely in the 'downloadables' category.

Topagae

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#3 Post by Topagae »

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Last edited by Topagae on Thu Aug 25, 2011 3:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Topagae

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#4 Post by Topagae »

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Last edited by Topagae on Thu Aug 25, 2011 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Looking to buy/license complete VN scenarios.

#5 Post by Vatina »

As for the link DaFool posted - nah, it's just an event-based community. Which means there are events held here and there that the members can participate in, but other than that it is a creator community just like this one.

Oh, and interesting project you have going there. I'll keep an eye on it, will be fun to see what games are released there.

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Re: Looking to buy/license complete VN scenarios.

#6 Post by jack_norton »

Engine seems nice, my bet is that you used this to make it: http://www.appcelerator.com/
Just a head-up, in your site I see adult games, this might scare away people that don't play them. Simply having adult on your sites can make people think all games are like that, or simply they won't visit it (I know this well since I have NON adult games, just slightly sexy, and some people think this way).
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Topagae

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#7 Post by Topagae »

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."
Last edited by Topagae on Thu Aug 25, 2011 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Topagae

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#8 Post by Topagae »

"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."
Last edited by Topagae on Thu Aug 25, 2011 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Topagae

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#9 Post by Topagae »

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Last edited by Topagae on Thu Aug 25, 2011 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Looking to buy/license complete VN scenarios.

#10 Post by kinougames »

Okay so, I looked through your licensing agreement and site and whatnot, and I think you've got a fair bit of oddities going on.

1) As you've already sort of caught on to, not all VNs will be sellable. Most VNs that come off of this site would not make back labor costs even selling at a cheap price. You should assume as the opposite that VNs that have a stringent care of quality will "sell themselves", as in, people will see the demos and production art and know it is something they will buy regardless. You should also assume that all persons on a project of that quality will be more skilled than your basic amateur (amateur in this case only meaning that they have not yet put out a massively successful game with a huge budget, not that they do not have professional level talent).

2) Your service is less necessary than you think. Your project can make the games portable, but any programmer can do the same thing with some know-how, and the games that will be worth it to license will likely already have programmers who can do so. Your service can be used to make it easier for the programmer on the project already, but in that case, it becomes a matter of speed, and speed is not always a necessity (and especially not for the indie market). It certainly is not a luxury worth 50% of sales. If you were a company with a reputation for making indie games popular and selling thousands of copies, then your service becomes very worth it. As of now, it's not.

I would personally suggest that you reconsider tailoring your percentage agreement to how well you think you would be able to market a game. Those that will be most interested in this project will be projects that are less sellable, which I assume is not what you're looking for.

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Topagae

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#11 Post by Topagae »

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Last edited by Topagae on Thu Aug 25, 2011 3:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Looking to buy/license complete VN scenarios.

#12 Post by Aleema »

Actually, you could become a freakin' millionaire with this, as proven with iPhone's 99 cent apps. People will buy any crap to keep them entertained on the train ride to work. So good crap would make you one rich duck. I see what he's doing here, and it is not just a pipe dream.

Topagae

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#13 Post by Topagae »

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Last edited by Topagae on Thu Aug 25, 2011 3:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Looking to buy/license complete VN scenarios.

#14 Post by fortaat »

I'm pretty much with kinougames.
The service you offer is of very little value. Importing VNs to browsers isn't such a hard job as you make it out to be. The reason Renpy is such a complex project is because it needs to allow people to write projects. If it only needed to interpret games (AKA run the executable in a browser), it could have been done in a month. It really isn't all that complicated, especially when you consider most VN are extremely simple, and barely scratch Renpy's complex functions.

30% for a professional product? You have no idea how much time and effort it costs to make such a product, which usually involves professionals too.
Let's take Soundcloud as an example - this site provided distribution and publicity for musicians for a couple of months for free, and only this week changed it's terms of use to entitle them to 15% of the profits. The artist retains all rights to his music otherwise. Music forums world wide are calling that an outrages price to ask from people who often make zero profit.
Now you:
Distribution - Iphone is quite negligible as it only requires a partner who has an Iphone developer license (Footprint will be glad to help, as others). Android can run Renpy games as it is. Different browsers support is definitely a plus, but as I said before, you're blowing the coding efforts way out of proportions.
Publicity - Nada. You can't really help in that department.
Comparing you to a service like Soundcloud makes you sound like a total scam, and had posted one post with a link and your offer, that's what I would call you. But you aren't, you seem sincere to make it work.
So, what's your offer, really? Try to be reasonable.

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Re: Looking to buy/license complete VN scenarios.

#15 Post by kinougames »

Topagae wrote:@1 You're right. If I wanted a lot of money, I would NOT be in the games industry, and I WOULD NOT be in the VN games industry. The only money we're trying to make back is cost of living and keeping our site running. The people I have making games for me right now are NOT amateurs, but I'm reaching out to as many people as I can because I'd like our site to have all walks of genre and quality for any sort of skill level.
I'm not saying you are trying to make bank, or only hiring amateurs, or anything like that. But despite wanting to make back cost/pay your bills, you have to provide a service that people will want to give up that 50% for. If this were me, thinking about it, I would be like "why should I license my game with these people for 50% of the profit? What are they providing my group that my group cannot do, or replicate feasibly?" It's a question that you need to think carefully about as far as people who put more professional level games out there. This is a perfect deal if a group has an amateur programmer who can only do basics, or no private programmer at all. Not nearly so much of a deal if they have a great programmer, and programmers (as far as this sort of work dictates) will work for free on games that look good.
@2 Did I ever really say it was necessary? I don't think I ever made such a bold claim.
Excuse if I was unclear. You mention in the FAQ for licensing that "we need you, and you need us, so 50/50 is fair." When truthfully, this is not necessarily the case, hence me mentioning that you might want to change percentages based on projected game sales.
I do refute however, that ANY programmer can do the same thing with "some know-how", the technical challenges of having a VN engine that runs simultaneously on any modern browser was pretty staggering, to the point I believe we're the only ones at the moment.
Again, I might've been unclear. I am not talking about creation of a VN engine that runs on all modern browsers. I was referring to the creation of a game itself that runs on all modern browsers. The game my group and I are working on now is 100% portable and has full language support. So far, the VNs I have seen in English that get sold are also portable. I'm not sure why a VN engine that does the same thing would be useful in those cases...
Maybe I'm taking that a bit personal because I poured so much sweat and tears into the damn thing, but if it really is so simple, why isn't anyone else doing it?
I don't mean to make it personal, and I understand having a pet project, but VN engines aren't an absolute necessity to make a VN, and those with enough skills to completely forego a VN engine or tweak a VN engine to do whatever their want anyway are likely to be the best selling games.
As for the "Programmer on the project" you misunderstand, I don't want or need ANY programmers. We'd be porting a game with or without code into our engine. I appreciate the candor with the percentage, which at this point is completely negotiable depending on what the other party has to offer, but there is a flaw in your second argument.
I wasn't saying you needed programmers. I was saying that generally VN making groups will have someone doing programming already. In cases that a group doesn't have any programmers, your service will be of much more worth; but at the same time, who doesn't know they'll need a programmer if they want to make a game? Programmers are one of the first things it's recommended that someone wanting to make a game will look for.
That being: If I already had a company with a reputation of making indie games popular and selling thousands of copies, I certainly wouldn't need to be making this thread, I'd probably get 10-20 emails a day of people asking me to do it.
Obviously, I agree with this. xD
Edit: We'd probably go as low as 20-30% if the content offered was SUPER top notch, but any lower then that and we'd probably not even break even =(. Programming is long, hard, and expensive work.
Trust me...I'm aware of this, and I agree, but unfortunately, markets like this are based only on how much you can get for it. A lot of amateur artists with mediocre to decent work are seen complaining all over deviantart and whatnot about how people don't want to pay fair price for their art. And the fact is that "fair market price" is only "however much someone will pay", and yeah, sometimes that's going to be little to nothing.
As for your last statement I'm a bit confused. I just said we're more then willing to port free games for free, and then sell them for free (Or next to free, like 10-50cents maybe to cover costs..).
I actually was in the middle of posting my comment when this comment came up, so I ended up not seeing it until after I posted. I think that, of course, is a good idea.
Check out the new interactive media project, Mitsumata(c). Follow 8 colorful characters in a story full of drama, horror, all sexualities and exciting gameplay~!

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