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Will these types of formats work for visual novel games? For instance, let's just say one publishes a game for free and locks a "deluxe" version for people who pay five dollars for the game. Or a person puts a game online for anyone to pay whatever amount to play.

Will you pay for these?

Too vague a question.

The workability of PWYW depends a good bit on your ability to market it. Some people will still steal it even if they have the option to buy for a penny. Many others will pay as little as possible. Your average amount of money per person goes way down, so you need to be sure you can get as many eyeballs as possible onto your game or you're shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to income. The game being a VN has less to do with it than your marketing ability.

The ability to sell deluxe upgrades depends on what those upgrades ARE and how interested people are in them. Can't really be answered in a generic "would you pay for this" way.

PWYW is a bit like free-to-play MMOs... And the fact that most of them sink eventually is probably a good indication of how that worked out for them. You rob yourself on two counts: people who might have been willing to pay more will now have the option to pay less. Two, the people who might have stolen your game will still steal your game... Or pay you peanuts for it.

As for the deluxe version, Papillon is right. It's very subjective and depends on how much I like your original game, and what the extra content is.

I think it depends what your end goal is. I kind of like Pay what you like as a way for getting a game out there and getting some income to cover minor expenses or just as a reward for your time. But then I don't really have to worry about making an income from games. For those that are trying to make an income or are trying to cover higher expenses, like if they had to hire artists, then it's a much risker method.

The bonus content would depend on the game itself and what the content is. In most cases I would say that a demo would do this job for a full game. In a way, that is what that model is.

I know a lot of cellphone dating sims have you pay per route. So if I want to date Mr. Fancypants, that's $5. If I want to date Mr. Glassesman, that's another $5. If I have no interest in Mr. Glassesman, I can just never buy his route. It's a system that probably only works for something like romance where everything is divided up into equally "good" endings. I can't imagine selling a mystery game where you have to pay $5 for the true ending, then another $5 to see what happens if the hero dies a miserable death.

A while ago, I was toying with the idea of making a free game, then selling a deluxe version with extra CGs, voices, and other things. A lot of people said they'd be willing to pay for it, but I also got quite a few compelling arguments against. Mainly, that in order for the deluxe version to really be worth it, I'd have to add so much content (like another character route) that it would make the free version essentially an incomplete game. I decided against doing the free/deluxe route because of that, but there were people who said they'd pay for a deluxe version IF it contained enough extra content.

On the other hand you need to remember the rule that "the people more vocals are usually those with more free time and less money"
I listen to all the suggestions but sometimes the only thing to do is try and see if works or not. If I had to listen to some people making quite some noise in my forums and privately, I should have never done otome games or homosexual romances in my games but they were both successful ideas, so...

Putting out a demo or free version is good marketing. This was the basis of the old shareware model and is still around in how most major games have some kind of demo for free. I would frame it more in terms of a free trial and a full version than deluxe though.

But while I think a free and full version is great... locking content in a product you've purchased has always seemed silly to me. If you want to put a bunch of currently unused art on the CD for future use that's one thing. Including fully-fleshed out, locked, hidden features just strikes me as cheap and trying to eek out every penny. I don't care much for the major companies now doing this. Make a full game, release it and then make the add-on.

If you want the free game to be something complete than you might consider an episodic structure and the first game includes a small complete story which itself sets up a large arc.

PWYW I think works best as a promotional thing. It gives you an opportunity to spread the word and make money from people who wouldn't have bought it otherwise without totally shooting yourself in the foot.

I'm dubious about pay what you want's effectiveness, but I have no problem with pay-to-unlock as long as it's not a rip-off. If you can get the demo for free and unlock the regular game with a single transaction, that's fine.

PWYW seems a lot like offering free game and asking for donations, except that you are locking out anyone with no method of paying online at all. I think a free game+donations would work better, because it would spread more and you can count on more "word-of-mouth" promotion.

You could try the Humble Bundle route with it? PWYW but if you pay x amount you get something extra. Though I guess that just makes it a pay-for-bonus game anyway.
Ppppersonally, between the two I'd do PWYW, but I haven't got to worry about making an income via VN.

I think the DLC approach would better serve you then the "pay me $5 to finish the game" model that the FTP games keep pushing.

Having downloads that you can simply add to your game works better and makes people feel less cheated.
A good game I play called Disgaea does this in droves. you have the main story line and about 16 sub story lines plus another 40 or 50 DLC characters, stories and classes. none of them are needed to finish the game and most just make things worse (Story wise) but they are also so much more fun.

There was a vn game that was PWYW but they had it so if you payed $1 you would get an added bonus but honestly that didn't really attract me into buying it and i passed over it. There are certain things ill buy on a good deal like manga but when something with out a reputation starts as low as .01 cents meh must not be high quality.

Okay, anyone mind if I take over the thread for a bit? I have a question that's a bit more detailed than the original poster's question, but I wanted to know if what I'm doing is a good idea.

...Er, anyway, I have a friend on the internet that is working on a game that will have some DLC in it. Now, the problem I'm going to mention is that he's making the game a fan game of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, and it has some things about it that are based off of other products (like Mobile Suit Gundam, because he has an actual Char clone in-game, down to the fact that the guy has a sister that also escaped death by evil family).

Would it be wise to put DLC in a game like this? I mean, even though I'm helping him with the actual game itself, I want to do what is right and not what is going to end up being illegal for something like this.

...Do I need to elaborate?

It's definitely illegal to sell something unlicensed based on an existing series, as long as you use their characters and plot.

Well, thing is, it's set some time after the original series and is more focused on original characters (with a few expies). I just wanted to know if this would still be considered a bad idea for my friend to work on.