Word Minimum

[clannadman]

Is there a minimum amount of words for you that consitutes being willing to download a game? For me it would be something like 8000-10,000 words but might alter depending on premise, artwork etc.

[KomiTsuku]

I have no minimum or maximum. Now, if the game is only 1,000 words and the file is 100MB, I'm going to consider it long and hard because there is a low likelyhood that it is going to make me happy, but other than that situation, I'll take whatever. Doesn't matter how long or short, just how good it is.

[manga_otaku]

I have no minimum or maximum. Now, if the game is only 1,000 words and the file is 100MB, I'm going to consider it long and hard because there is a low likelyhood that it is going to make me happy, but other than that situation, I'll take whatever. Doesn't matter how long or short, just how good it is.

I agree - though I'd request a sequel if it's too short for my satisfaction :3

[Kura]

I don't think I have any minimum. Ripples was pretty tiny, for instance, and it's still one of my favorite visual novels.

[shylock]

I think maximum is more relevant. I'd probably skip over anything that wanders into six figures unless it has rave reviews about the production quality, the story is interesting and not in a cliche setting, and it has gameplay.

[Applegate]

Like shylock, I would be more wary of a longer piece than of a shorter piece; a short piece is unlikely to ever be a big download, and it is easy to read through in one sitting. It can stay closer to its theme without a lot of distractions along the way. If it is not a good story, you will reach the meat of it soon enough to see if it gets better later on.

With a long story, you may end up yearning for that special moment whereupon you think, "This is it!", and then be left waiting the entire read. If you don't like the story at all, you'll have spent more time acquiring it, too, and I would think filesize correlates to product cost, given the items in a larger product are likely more numerous.

I'll never read any story that takes more than 3 hours to read, as a visual novel, unless I have been persuaded by screenshots of well-written scenes, and have been made interested either by word-of-mouth or by the author's advertising and selling of their product. I would take a short work on a whim even if the onset doesn't look promising, but I would never do that with a larger product.

[yummy]

I have recently chosen not to take a look at any novels with less than 70k words. Maybe it's just wrong, maybe not.
I consider that it is the difference between a first try and a relatively well rounded short story.
It's a fact: there aren't a lot of VNs or rather kinetic novels, with more than 70k words.

I prefer stories with a solid setting, even if the action takes a long time to settle in, because most of the time everything gets rushed and looks unnatural.
You might have awesome music or awesome art, but in the end, if the text does not bear its own atmosphere, it looks quite dull.
I think it's a means to check the writer's style. And to not feel too bored.

[shylock]

I have recently chosen not to take a look at any novels with less than 70k words. Maybe it's just wrong, maybe not.
I consider that it is the difference between a first try and a relatively well rounded short story.
It's a fact: there aren't a lot of VNs or rather kinetic novels, with more than 70k words.

Can you elaborate on this a bit? I would consider 70k a lot more than a short story -lots of Asimov's most classic works were in the 20k to 30k range. The Great Gatsby is 50,061 words. Further, visual novels understate the word count - the music and especially the art replace a lot of the words that a plain text work often needs to devote to description. I don't know how much the difference is, but as a wild guess I think a 70k visual novel is approaching a 100k word book, but of course this varies wildly in terms of the styles involved. Throwing away less than 70k because you feel it signifies lack of effort seems like a way to miss a lot of good stuff.

[HotLimit]

I'm cool with anything, but just remember that shorter = more difficult. You have less time to develop plot, characters, etc.

Personally I'd be cool with 2000 words, especially if there was a promise of more to come (like another 2000 word game, or more chapters of the same length). Plus I'm all about stuff like branching paths and multiple endings. If you can make branching paths and multiple endings work in that short a space, bring it on.

[Camille]

Unless the story sounds really simple from the premise and/or is a kinetic novel, I generally won't bother with anything that's less than 20,000-25,000 words. You need at least 10,000 to establish characters/setting in a detailed enough way for my tastes, I think, and much more than that to establish the plot. (I just finished the parts where I'm introducing all the characters and plot in Machina Jewel and it's just over 31,000 words orz) I mean, to write a short novel for NaNoWriMo, you need 50,000 words. Obviously, the images and whatnot in a visual novel make it harder to have a lot of description and mood-setting while not being redundant, but I still think that a comparable-sized visual novel should be at least 25,000 words, especially if there's lots of different endings and story possibilities.

Of course, I'm not the type that makes games that can be finished in one sitting. (unless it's a very long sitting) I don't want to spend hundreds of hours working on something that only takes people half an hour to finish.

[yummy]

@Shylock:
I don't generally read novels for the greatest great I could find out of them, but mostly because in the end they provide me with something to do in my idle time. This is why the kind of novels I read are mainly slice of life genres or adventures, or stories with long developments.
I don't think it's a waste of time because it's time I use for my own entertainment.

I'm not fond of classics either, I'm not saying that they are bad or anything, it's just that they tend to annoy me. So when I find a novel that is quite long, I tend to be happy and go for them.

The thing is, when you're talking about visual novels, there is a correlation with text size and a certain approach of narration content. It does not mean that there is quality though, but somehow, for the few ones I've come to read, the quality I yearn for is simply there.
It's really a subjective point of view. I agree that there are novels with less words that could be great to read and all, but I tend to dislike them because they are so short they feel like some evanescent dream. They don't last enough for me to become infatuated with them.

The media are important but the text is a major part. If you imply that images can fill up for everything, then I'd answer that you can put lots of text variations to either describe a situation, or either describe actions related to the said image and even actions not directly related to it.

What I was talking about when I said "first try" and "rounded short story" wasn't to be taken as someone peeking on the top of a cliff over peasants.
I meant that I had my share of reading ultra short stories that were created as a first try using any VN engine.
They don't make me dream anymore because they just lack the immersion I'm longing for.

70k words is to me, a story with at least several chapters (or episodes), that make me want to continue reading, even if I take several days to finish reading everything.

[Snow Blossom]

I generally play any game as long as it has tolerably good art, regardless if it's long or short. However, I prefer longer games (30,000 words or more) because their length usually implies that they have more depth, drama, character development, CGs, obtainables (very important! XD), replayability, ect.
I actually like it when a game cannot be finished in one sitting, 'cause then I have something to look forward to once I'm done with, for example, homework.

[EternalDream]

I generally play any game as long as it has tolerably good art, regardless if it's long or short.

^ That explains my view on this perfectly. I never look at file size... since I don't think it's a problem for me. I just download every game that has nice art in it OuOb Though I might not play it for the next month since I'm busy and stuff but I probably will get around to doing it. I guess the nicer the art, the more likely I'm going to play it as soon as possible after downloading it X)

[LateWhiteRabbit]

You all seem to be missing the point. Word count isn't indicative of anything. A short story may be awesome and a long story may be dull.

Each story has an optimal length, which is "like a girl's skirt":

Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting.

Planning to hit a certain word count is ridiculous. Mark Twain, Asimov, Hemingway, etc. none of them sat down and said, "Okay. This story is going to be 70,000 words, no matter what!" Hemingway wrote very short novels, like the Old Man and the Sea (one of my favorites) and long epics like For Whom the Bell Tolls. Mark Twain and Asimov likewise wrote both short stories and novels. Hell, Hemingway wrote a single sentence story, which I shall present here in its entirety: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Simply put, you can ruin a good story by forcing it to be too long. It is much harder to ruin a story by making it too short - at the worst, you'll just leave the reader wanting more, which is never a bad thing.

WORD COUNT MEANS NOTHING.

[lordcloudx]

You all seem to be missing the point. Word count isn't indicative of anything. A short story may be awesome and a long story may be dull.

Each story has an optimal length, which is "like a girl's skirt":

Long enough to cover the subject, but short enough to be interesting.

Planning to hit a certain word count is ridiculous. Mark Twain, Asimov, Hemingway, etc. none of them sat down and said, "Okay. This story is going to be 70,000 words, no matter what!" Hemingway wrote very short novels, like the Old Man and the Sea (one of my favorites) and long epics like For Whom the Bell Tolls. Mark Twain and Asimov likewise wrote both short stories and novels. Hell, Hemingway wrote a single sentence story, which I shall present here in its entirety: For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Simply put, you can ruin a good story by forcing it to be too long. It is much harder to ruin a story by making it too short - at the worst, you'll just leave the reader wanting more, which is never a bad thing.

WORD COUNT MEANS NOTHING.

You said it better than I could have. I'll just second this:
WORD COUNT MEANS NOTHING... as far as the quality of the story goes.

Of course, most agents nowadays do look for at least 70k to 120k on minimum from writers who are looking to get published, but that's only if you want to break into the fiction industry as a career choice. I believe that these requirements are merely industry-set standards to ensure that everyone makes a profit and should not be used as an indicator for actual quality.