You ever worry your work won't be taken seriously?

[Fawn]

Woo go Sapphi haha, your "soapbox" was quite refreshing.

@Mink/Sapphi I agree, I have yet to find that "magical place where people will pay attention to you" on 4chan. Just try to post one thing on any of the anime-related boards... As soon as you post, your post is on the 3rd page. And it only goes back farther the more other people bump popular threads, create popular threads- It's a miracle to get noticed at all. People are always posting there it seems, every single second...
And, if you do get noticed, you probably won't get the response you want... and, then, it will be buried once again. I don't know if this is just my bad experience or not. People who actually frequent those boards would know more about it, since I just took one look and walked away. (though I do frequent /ck/ (cooking) and /an/ (animals) occasionally)

[Kura]

To be honest, I'm a bit bothered by the idea that the OELVN community as a whole ought to get more serious, or that we ought to focus on focus on how to help everyone improve. The assumption seems to exist that all of the OELVN community is actively trying to improve and that all of the OELVN community aspires to great regard or popularity, but that just isn't true. Some of us just want to tell a story and put it out there in case anybody else likes it (even if it's just a few people), and are here to have fun discussing the process.

I guess I want to say that even a hobby, even if it's 'just for fun', deserves to be taken seriously. To me, calling ourselves "hobbyists" does not give us the excuse to have a poor work ethic. Besides, a hobby is not always fun and easy; in fact most of the time hobbies are hard work, because it's the drive toward a mastery of something that makes them appealing to people in the first place.

I need to disagree strongly with that idea of a hobby. What makes hobbies appealing to me is specifically that they don't need to be taken seriously! You don't always need to be striving toward something.

But I'm fully aware that there are many people here who take VN creation quite seriously, whether they consider it a hobby or work, and who pour tons of effort into it--and yes, that effort and that desire for improvement should definitely be appreciated, but everyone shouldn't be expected to conform to that attitude.

So ideally I'd like to see a system that gives outstanding OELVNs the recognition they deserve, and that provides a sense of competition and a standard to strive toward for those who want it, but without shoving the whole community into a competitive mindset. Awards systems are great! Especially because those who aren't concerned with competing and earning acclaim don't need to try to win anything. I'd definitely love to see more OELVN awards.

Then again, I guess that even with a universal rating system, creators are free to not pay any attention to their games' ratings, and players who don't care about ratings are free to ignore them and decide what games to try out by reading Completed Games threads (as I presently do) or whatever other means.

[lordcloudx]

I don't really have anything productive to add to this conversation, because a lot of things have already been said. I'd just like to state my conformity with Kura's sentiments. Yes, not everyone in the community is striving towards improvement or getting serious or getting more perfushenal, or writing the one VN to rule them all. Some of us are just here to kick back and have fun with it as a hobby. This does not mean, however, that we take this hobby any less seriously than others who have this "driven towards perfection mindset," or that we hold our VNs to lower standards than the commershul, perfushenal pplz.

In the end, I'd just like to say that some of us view VN-making as creation and not competition - and while these two are not necessarily incompatible with each other, I'd just like people to accept the fact that some of us don't want to be pushed towards competition for our own reasons.

[applegirl]

Hmm...that is true actually. I don't want to disregard the hobbyists, this is meant also to be fun. Like a writing web-site where people can spread their ideas/dream projects. But I guess I'm just saying: for the people who do want to be taken seriously...things do have to change.

I know money is an issue, but you know what? I'll easily spend money supporting the teams that make good VNs. Heck, I probably got every single Winter Wolves, Sakevisual, and Zeiva Inc game there is. I spent a ridiculous amount on getting legit VN from japan (100 bucks a pop...sigh) because I wanted to support them too. I picked the best out there due to the rating systems on vndb and I feel like I got my money's worth. But there isn't that system in the OLEVN community, so it's a gamble. I had one OLEVN commercial game that I bought for 20 bucks and deleted after 10 minutes of starting (yes, it was that terrible. Even though the art was exceptional.) I've had friends who paid over 2000 for VNs to show support. There is an audience there if the right advertisement and quality is there. People cannot buy VNs if they don't know they even exist.

I mean, I do understand the difficulty that comes with affording beautiful art. But there are a lot of stories out there that rely on minimalistic art. Digital: who hasn't heard of that VN? Heck, that got a lot more reviews on mainstream sites than a lot of the VN here filled with beautiful art. Why? Exceptional story and writing. I think getting beautiful art helps draw attention, but it sure doesn't mean people will think the VN is automatically spectacular. I won't name the VN (and please, don't try to guess it), but the beautiful art did not save a poor story/writing. It was simply terrible and I honestly thought the art was just wasted on the VN.

Narcissu still had only a few CGs (maybe 1-2) and one female voice actress. Based on resources, it required a lot less than your typical VN. I don't really care about the 3rd one because I haven't read it, but I know the 1st one had a huge impact despite having such little art and money presumably spent. I don't think you can say a lot of art=great visual novel. Maybe it helps, but the story is what matters to me. It matters to a lot of people too, if you look at a few threads here (I don't want to point out a particular VN, please lets not get into a debate. I'm actually referring to a different one than I had mentioned earlier.)

Regardless of that debate: I think there are capable OLEVN makers who can make those exceptional kinds of VNs too. If we don't recognize them, who will?

EDIT: I do want to say, I understand I pointed out the very best as comparison. Honestly, I think there are a lot of amazing OLEVN out there. It's just a pity that there is so much trouble getting brilliant art + writing when there is such talent. I've seen amazing writers and amazing artists struggle and I understand that money is a big issue. But haven't you ever searched the web for reviews on the OLEVNs? I'm disregarding the obvious hater filled threads who only think jp VN =acceptable. I'm talking mainstream sites. They ignore a lot of the visual novels here and isn't that a pity? That the only advertisement for newbie VN is a thread on this forum? I mean, yeah...some people read. But it might not get any more than a "hey...you had a typo here and cute boy sprites" response. Or even worse, no response at all. I mean, even as hobbyists...I'd find that very frustrating. I guess I just don't understand why we wouldn't bother shaking up the situation in an attempt to improve.

[jack_norton]

... I have to admit being confused as what metric you're using for 'popular' that somehow includes Cinders while excluding dozens of other games. This is not an attack on Cinders in any way. But it's not publicly available, and as far as I know, it doesn't yet have thousands of fans beating down its doors.

Tigsource and Indiegames blog mention. That's already "mainstream" or "making it big" to my eyes.

Summer Session was on indiegames, gamesetwatch, gamasutra, macNN. Heileen on all of those, and even on RPS. That was in 2008!

Speaking of more recent times, Vera Blanc was on gamezebo (the main game review website for casual games) and got top review. It was also on RPS, and the review was quite funny: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/09 ... stle-demo/ but still one of the few games of mine they bothered to cover (they hate me).

And still I made no secret that Vera is one of my worst selling games. I prefer not to be mainstream then, if that means a commercial failure!
Never underestimate the word of mouth power, and the fact that in practice from my experience, popularity != success.

[TeeGee]

... I have to admit being confused as what metric you're using for 'popular' that somehow includes Cinders while excluding dozens of other games. This is not an attack on Cinders in any way. But it's not publicly available, and as far as I know, it doesn't yet have thousands of fans beating down its doors.

Tigsource and Indiegames blog mention. That's already "mainstream" or "making it big" to my eyes.

Getting mentioned on TIGS or Indiegames is nice and drives some traffic, but it's hardly "making it big". If anything, it's the outcome of us coming from the general indie scene rather than the VN niche, and having more connections within that community. Also, a single mention on two indie game blogs is anything but "mainstream".

And papillon is right. Our game is not out yet, and it has been delayed a lot. We can judge its popularity or success only after it's finally released.

I'll still prefer it over casual style though, since Cinders has the look of a Story Mode of an extremely expensively produced hidden object game.

I always wondered where this connection is coming from. I mean, I've heard it several times already, so there must be something to it, but it was never our intention to mimic HO games art style. We wanted it to look like book illustrations. I guess it might be just that casual games claimed the more realistic illustrative 2d art style as their own, so anything that's not anime, vector or pixel art will look like a casual game.
As for the "extremely expensively produced" -- well -- it's made by a single artist, working for a percentage of sales.

[jack_norton]

I think because of Phantasmat huge success among the HO community, and yes anything not anime makes a big difference for VNs. I think because is just the "tradition" to use anime art, nothing else. Personally I welcome a change of style, or better expanding beyond anime

[Pugfarts]

A note about 4chan. Some of their smaller boards can actually be pretty supportive. The only ones I go on are papercraft and /tg/, so when I made a tabletop game using papercraft models I designed, I actually got some really good feedback and support.
I think that's only because /tg/ and /po/ are more mature however. I'd imagine anywhere where VNs would be relevant would have a very different demographic. Cute Male might be okay though. They seem pretty mellow there. could start a 'ARE THESE CUTE HUSBANDOS?' thread