How does a project die?

[curry nochi rice]

I've been asking this to myself...

1.) How would I prevent a project from dying?
2.) How could I prevent other people's (interesting) projects from dying?
3.) Of the many WIP threads... only a few end up appearing again in the completed games forums.
4.) For every WIP, how many out of those will be released?... I need some-kind of number/ratio
5.) When would you consider a project dead?
6.) How long does it take for an average HQ VN to be completed?"

[shahab96]

......All of those are......excellent questions.

[LVUER]

I've been asking this to myself...

1.) How would I prevent my project from dying?
2.) How could I prevent other people's (interesting) projects from dying?
3.) Of the many WIP threads... only a few end up appearing again in the completed games forums.
4.) For every WIP, how many out of those will be released?... I need some-kind of number/ratio
5.) When would you consider a project dead?
6.) How long does it take for an average HQ VN to be completed?"

1. Just keep making it until it's finished.
2. Continuously spamming and bugging that people until they finish the project... or just take over their project and make it your own.
3. Yes it is... is this a question?
4. I don't know since I never researched, and the ratio could vary depending on the forum... but just like "999 failures before 1 success" or the probability on finding only 1 good stuff from 100 junks. There are only very few WIP that could enjoy the status of being finished/completed.
5. When you never and won't touch it anymore? Or when you get a COD letter from some big company.
6. I don't know... perhaps several months to 1 year?

[DaFool]

For every 999 failures there is one success,
and of those success stories, 99 out of 100 are crap. That leaves 1/1000 * 1/100 = 1/100000 or .001% chance of a successfully completed noncrap project.

Look at the successful creators and notice they often finish a short 5 min piece before becoming more ambitious. That's the people factor.

For the ideas factor, good ideas tend to write themselves. So if u find yourself in project limbo it means it's time to move on.

[Jake]

1.) How would I prevent my project from dying?

My best advice would be to make sure of three things before you start:
- it's something you care about finishing, not something you're just doing because you feel like you should do something
- you have a plan: a story outline with a beginning, middle and end, an idea of how many background images, character sprites etc. you need. Do this before you put too much work in elsewhere, so you know exactly how much you have left to do before you release. If you want, you can keep adding new stuff later which wasn't in your original plan, but it'll give you the sense that you're actually making progress instead of just treading water.
- you've accepted that the project won't live up to how cool it seems in your imagination, so you won't be disappointed and disheartened when you produce something sub-apocalyptically-awesome.

2.) How could I prevent other people's (interesting) projects from dying?

You can't, and most of the time it's probably a waste of time trying. As Lvuer possibly said, you could ask if they mind you taking on the rest of the project for them, but practically this isn't likely to happen often. By all means encourage people to finish, but don't bet on it.

It's my opinion that a lot of projects probably fail for one of two reasons:
- The people doing them didn't realise how much work it was going to be, or
- they never had a plan and they've got to the point where they don't know what to do next or how to resolve their story or whatever.

If it's the latter, then you often can't really tell from the outside - they'll have put their WiP thread up with an interesting-looking premise and a couple of character graphics or whatever, but that's all they have; their project isn't really as interesting as the post they've made makes it seem. And in those cases it's probably not worth continuing the project anyway.

4.) For every WIP, how many out of those will be released?... I need some-kind of number/ratio

Well, there's an easy place to look to find some approximate numbers... :P

You'll never know for sure, though. Not all completed games threads ever had a corresponding WiP thread either, and of course you'll never find out how many WiP projects never get shown to anyone. And what would you consider a WiP anyway? An idea someone had and decided to make, regardless of how far they got? A project that's had at least 25 man-hours of work put into it (which would probably exclude a significant proportion of the WiP threads on this forum)?

5.) When would you consider a project dead?

When no work is being done on it. When else?


If you're talking about when I'd consider one of my own projects dead, I'd say: whenever I feel there are so many things wrong with it that fixing them all would result in something so different I might as well start a new project, or whenever I feel like I don't care if the final version gets released any more.

I have a few long-standing projects of my own (which I've never mentioned in WiP) - one I had going on in the back of my head for a long while but eventually decided that it was really just a vehicle for a particular story idea I kind of like, and abandoned it. In a way, bits of it kind of turned into Each Uisge in the end, but I'd killled it a year or two previous. Another one I've only done a couple of designs and a loose plot overview for, and haven't really touched in months, but I'm just just as enthusiastic to finish it, so I wouldn't call it dead.

6.) How long does it take for an average HQ VN to be completed?"

Answer A: A Long Time.

Answer B: There's no such thing as an "average HQ VN" in the English-Language amateur sector. There are very few releases which I would consider above average (and none of my own), and none I can think of that I would call consistently 'High Quality', for one reason or another. I would guess that it would take about a year, but obviously that depends significantly on the people involved (and the number of people involved), their timetables and what they're trying to do. In terms of man-hours, I have literally no idea.

[F.I.A]

1.) How would I prevent my project from dying?

Simple. Stop posting such threads for starter.

2.) How could I prevent other people's (interesting) projects from dying?

Build them altars. Slay naysayers and give offerings.

3.) Of the many WIP threads... only a few end up appearing again in the completed games forums.

See #2.

4.) For every WIP, how many out of those will be released?... I need some-kind of number/ratio

Number/ratio == "nothing"

5.) When would you consider a project dead?

When you see such thread...

6.) How long does it take for an average HQ VN to be completed?"

Example


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Whoever dissing this post will just be fools clinging to bliss and ignorance. This is from a guy who once loved this place, and he's not pleased with what it has changed to.

[curry nochi rice]

You got me there. Lord F.I.A

... with your wisdom, you should be worshipped even if it's considered blasphemous...
I guess working in a clandestine way is the safest... not mentioning the element of surprise when a project just comes out of nowhere as a game.