Can you live from indie VN?

[Chu-3]

Just wondering... since if it's in Japan, the answer will be nearly NO. Unless you're very lucky and talented like TYPE-MOON or ryuukishi07. I read in an article somewhere that usually a doujin VN game will only give you profit around $200 in a year there (not included the first month of the release).

Well let me to be frank.

I was working in a Japanese game company before, but since I can't really make a game there (there were so many problems that I hard to describe here), I quit and decided to make my own doujin circle.

and then my current problem is.... quite personal. I need to prove that I can make money from my game or I will be forced to be a shop-manager (can't say the detailed here though). Really, I'm not a person in the marketing field. I already have a sketch of my next game, and I really love to make a game. (design the web/draw/make the story's idea etc, i'm used to be a comicker years ago) So I'm really stress now and I need more info about the indie VN market (since I'm blind with the indie games).

So back again, can you live from indie VN?

[DaFool]

I have utmost respect for jack_norton and papillon for being full-time indies. Jack's games for instance even consistently outsell those from Mangagamer. I still have a day job so I will be approaching the commercial market as a hobby. I hope to at least break even on the thousands of dollars I spent so far.

The reason why doujin VNs only net around $200 a year is because they were made for only a few hundred bucks and receive only a dozen or so downloads on DLsite. Heck, even the first commercial Ren'Py hentai game, the Sexual Fantasy Kingdom series, got 1500 downloads despite it essentially being Poser porn!

I don't know why I used to look at the Japanese market with rose colored glasses. It's an overpriced and oversaturated market, not to mention insular; the competition is fierce since the quality of the best doujin VNs are topnotch. People may brush off the EVN market, but at least there's still room here.

Also, I actually think the Japanese are a bit backwards with regards to marketing their products. I know it's tradition but limiting releases around Comiket is a bit shortsighted. They have DLsite but that's not taking full advantage of digital distribution. The makers of Recettear couldn't have foresaw that their game would reach 100,000 sales once translated and on Steam. They saw hardly anything before Carpe Fulgur approached them. Similarly, the group that made the Eustrath SRPG dove right into obscurity when they first released the game a decade ago. Fast forward today on the iphone and I think they're doing pretty well. Japanese may know the art and craft but I think the west still knows the markets.

[DaFool]

Also since everybody knows everyone else in this market it would help to trade services. You're a Japanese speaker so you can sell translation services if we wanted our VNs in Japanese.

[yummy]

Unfortunately... Not really.
Creating a visual novel is pretty much like writing a book (not really but I will explain why I made this comparison).
What is required is experience in all the fields required in making games, even if it's text based.
You also have to consider logistics, distributors and retailers, even producers if you want to make something big.
Unless you're extremely lucky like the author of Harry Potter, you're not going to be millionnaire soon.
These are only he basics.

Also for a decade, voiced only games are preferred over text based games, because people are just getting lazier about reading walls of texts (even on forums).
There's also the issue of gameplay since VNs tend to have more and more some sort of mini games because of the influence of western games.
Plus there's also the issue of piracy, that will seriously influence your income since you're going indie. Unlike big companies, your game income is pretty much like a lifeline that is easy to cut, provided there's someone out there with too much time in his hands.
Now, these were only the facts about the general VN sector.

Indie gaming is pretty vast. You might want to have diversity, not only catter to VN but do action games, platformers, etc.
Rather create your own brand and develop around it than create a company only based on VN (that will shut down after several months).

[Chu-3]

@DaFool
I can speak Japanese but I'm not really a native (I lived there for more than 7 years and I did some english>japanese translation too in my previous company)
Yet my translation still need to be proofread I guess. (I asked 3 japanese friends to help me now)
But if you fine with that, I'll be happy to help (but let me know when will you need it first. I need to arrange the schedule)

And thanks for the info. At least I know there are people that can live from VNs.

Yeah I know the foreign market is big. Much bigger than inside Japan sometime...
Actually I've told the company to not forget the foreign market, but they don't trust it. Well they have their own reason.

@yummy
I'm thinking to sell other digital goods too, but maybe for a while I need to concentrate to the VN.

[rinrin]

How do you intend to distribute your games?
It might be tempting to put them on a portal, but if you're in this business long term, it's important to build your own audience (bring the traffic to your own site).
Another really important thing is affiliate sales - a considerable part of our own sales come from various affiliates, not to mention we also make some money from selling other people's games. But this is only possible if you publish your game through a service with a decent affiliate program such as BMT Micro or Plimus, otherwise other indie developers won't be able to affiliate your game even if they want to.

I need to prove that I can make money from my game or I will be forced to be a shop-manager (can't say the detailed here though). Really, I'm not a person in the marketing field. I already have a sketch of my next game, and I really love to make a game. (design the web/draw/make the story's idea etc, i'm used to be a comicker years ago) So I'm really stress now and I need more info about the indie VN market (since I'm blind with the indie games).

So back again, can you live from indie VN?

Not to be overly pessimistic, but it will probably take more than one game for you to make a living out of it in a relatively expensive country like Japan. As for whether it's feasible at all - only you know. It's relatively easy to calculate how many copies do your games have to sell to cover the cost of their making (your time at a wage you're willing to work for, other expenses like buying assets for the game, and business-related costs like taxes) and then budget accordingly (well, this last part isn't easy - you'll have to decide which corners to cut). I won't even start about making a profit - that's another big topic.

In any case, I wish you the best of luck and hope to see a finished game soon ^^

[Mirage]

I share an eerily similar situation to you. I used to work on an animation/game company in US 3 years ago, and quit the job in order to create my own games. I returned back home and had to face my parents who wanted proofs that I can live off just by selling games.

The biggest challenge I have in game making is always the lack of time. Even if 1 game managed to sell well, at most it can give me about 2-3 months of my previous job's salary. But there's just no way for me to be able to finish a game in 2 months! I really think the only way to survive is by having a large arsenal of games. Winterwolves and Hanako Games had created a long list of games, thus they have successfully built their own fan base. Of course I wish I have half of their marketing talent, because I have none. =P

Btw, have you thought of selling hard copies in conventions? From my experiences, they sell much better than soft copies. Also, I second the idea of affiliates. They are a very good source of income, especially when you are unknown.

[Ionait]

I think living off of making VNs could be made easier if game maker's had access to more stores to sell their content. For instance, if you put a good VN on the Playstation Network or Xbox Live, where there is no such thing as of yet, I'm sure it would sell like hotcakes!

I just have no idea at all how to get a game on XBL or PSN. And, now that I think of it, if you're using Renpy to make your game, I don't think the game could be ported. At least, not yet.

We've take a step forward with being able to sell the games on the Android market.

[papillon]

Can you? Sure, we're doing it.

Is it easy? No. And most people starting out in indie need a lot of resources to tide them over while they can try to build up enough customers and income to be sustainable.... or they get by making games that they can finish in a month! (Not likely in VN unless you manage to master the Flash sponsored-games market.)

Or you get lucky and manage to land a Hit. It happens. Just not something you can exactly count on.

(As for marketing, Mirage - you do get decent traffic through deviantart, no? I would assume that X-Note is selling reasonably well, but I obviously don't know your figures, nor what you need to break even...)

For instance, if you put a good VN on the Playstation Network or Xbox Live, where there is no such thing as of yet, I'm sure it would sell like hotcakes!

There aren't an VNs for sale in a shoe store either, that doesn't mean that putting them there would be a huge hit. Just being ON a market isn't necessarily huge results, it depends on a lot of factors... I wouldn't personally expect a VN to do well on Xbox Live, although you never know. What happened with that guy who WAS selling one there? The scary horror bloody one?

[Ionait]

I don't know much about it but I assumed VNs would do well in a PSN/XBL environment. Consumers of both online stores tend to buy quickly when games have low price points, they are accustomed to purchasing mini games for the most part, and even have a bad habit of mass purchasing pretty bad games too just because they're right there to download, sound alright, and are on sale. Many purchasable games on the stores are also split into parts (specifically thinking of the Siren here or the game from Penny Arcade) which some VNs are as well.

VNs in such a place would be a breath of fresh air for gamers, I thought, as I consider VNs as much of a game as any other genre in the industry.

Of course, this is totally untested waters. I've never heard of the person selling VNs on XBL. I will have to google!

[Mirage]

@Hanako This is the time that I wish I know how well other indie developers sell, because I have no data to compare with. lol~ If the comparison is with OASE, well, yes, X-note did so much better. Though it's nothing to brag about considering that's only as good as 2 months salary back when I was working full time. Definitely not enough to make a living.

I think this is VN you are talking about: http://vndb.org/v5470
It was made for Xbox.

[Chu-3]

@.@ soo many replies at once...
@rinrin
>>How do you intend to distribute your games?
I've contacted some Japanese online store. And maybe at events there too, but I'm not pretty sure yet at now.
And I'm not living in Japan now. I moved back to my country after I quit, though I still go there for once or twice in a year. I still have some of my staffs there though.

@Mirage
actually what I got in japan is not so good. My salary might sound high, but the living cost there is not cheap too. About the affiliates, I'll be surely joining it. It's really nice to have someone with similar experience.

@Ionait
PSN is hacked @.@ so I'm not thinking to port it now OTL (i don't know in future though)
about porting to other devices, I was thinking about it too, and maybe I'll need to recode the game if I find any engine that can handle it.

I got an offer from my friend at old company to port my game if it can make a Hit in Japanese market, but I'm not too optimist about this.
I also got an offer to colaborate with a local game magz...but I'm a bit afraid since VN is not a popular genre at my home country. And the country has a high risk of piracy OTL

@papilon
your post really encouraged me.
>>What happened with that guy who WAS selling one there? The scary horror bloody one?
I want to know about that too OTL

@Mirage
Actually I searched lemma for the VNs sell result, but I can't find it.
I know how many pieces the Japanese commercial ones sold, but not for the doujin.

[DaFool]

It was some months ago but I saw the creator of Chaos Gateway recruiting artists from deviantart for his next project. I'm assuming it's just a hobby for him. It was a game for XBLIG and sold for 240 microsoft points ($3). That is not a good pricepoint for a niche product. PSN and XBLA are out of the question.

Now these are numbers I picked up (which were publicly disclosed), so you know the size of the niche markets:

Koihime Musou (direct) > 800 copies
Planet Stronghold (direct) > 1000 copies
art game on Steam ~3000-3500 copies. Since there are no visual novels on Steam, I was looking at the next niche, art games.

Most games average 100 copies. Of course you can only do so much with a sub-1K or even 2K budget. The rule I'm using based on questions I asked before is to keep budget to 10K and under and try to break even at less than 1K copies.

[sake-bento]

It's definitely POSSIBLE. Just really difficult, especially at the start. I make the bare minimum for my living expenses right now. About three fourths of that is income is from games I've written (I consider myself a professional writer, not a professional indie, but the idea is pretty close in this case). The last fourth of my income is from professional acting, which usually pays more, but is not reliable as a steady source of income. Oh! You can tell the people in need of proof that at least you're not trying to become an actor. XD

[cantstraferight]

It was some months ago but I saw the creator of Chaos Gateway recruiting artists from deviantart for his next project. I'm assuming it's just a hobby for him. It was a game for XBLIG and sold for 240 microsoft points ($3). That is not a good pricepoint for a niche product.

As someone thats been involved in xblig for over a year, I have to say selling an xblig game for $3 can be a death sentance for it. Ideally you want to sell as many copies as possible in your first few days so that you get on the top selling list. Once you're there you might be luckly enough to stay on the list for weeks or even months. Most games that sell for higher than $1 do not get enough sales to get a good place in the top selling list.