This burns...(on manufacturing)

[molitar]

All I can say is I wouldn't purchase a single hanakogames. Too expensive for such lousy graphic design. I would rather go fork out $40 or so for a game from PP or G-Collections with excellent graphics. But $15-20 for a game that's graphics look worse than alot of the free games released by some of the author's here is just plain NUTS. The games are worth maybe $5 for them but that's it with the amateurish art work in them.

So if you plan to sell games make sure the are reasonably priced since you will actually be competing with the big companies that release professionally designed games so if you release a high quality product with packaging you will probably get around $20-25. But I would recommend going a bit cheaper and do the buy to download method with a demo of the product so they can see what they are buying. Even PP is doing download methods also now. It's cheaper for everyone on both sides and you only need a good e-commerce site package which you can get pretty reasonable nowadays.

[lordcloudx]

people who are brutally honest enjoy the .... uh well y'know what I mean.

[papillon]

*shrug* That's your opinion, luckily for me thousands of people say otherwise. And those purchases allow me to have the budget to pay for better art in future projects.

If you only want to make games that have million-dollar budgets, well, I hope you have a million dollars seed money to start with.


(I'm not totally sure what the point of bumping a two-year-old thread that wasn't even ABOUT me in order to bash me was. What's physical distribution got to do with me anyway? I've never done it. I'm still working on my first big retail contract.)

[Enerccio]

And why not only buy covers and boxes and burn cd at home or buy special autoburner machine) and burn only when someone orders it?

[RedSlash]

Yes, I don't see the point reviving an old topic, going off topic, then bashing. Molitar does present us with a good example of "judging a book by its cover". Hopefully, we'll get some more insightful comments after Molitar has actually tried playing one of the games.

[mikey]

To be fair, one probably has to get accustomed to the idea of shelling out a full game price for a non-game. There's no recipe for this though, and it's perfectly understandable that people are unwilling to give money out for things that they don't consider worthy - and IMO the commercial VNs are never really good value for money. And if you go commercial and ask money for your work, you need to be prepared for criticism, that's normal.

One thing about this though, calling PP games as having excellent graphics is a bit too much IMO, honestly Will and Crowd games are often too sterile and several of the former G-C ones were downright composite budget titles. So if papillon's $10 game is worth $5 or less, then I'd have to be fair and say that PP's $40 games are more or less worth $10.

Plus, there's one more way of seeing it - some people actually enjoy playing a title that doesn't have ultra graphics and symmetrical character faces - and some even like to support beginning outfits. And, to give credit where credit is due, to this day Hanako have been the only one who have succeeded in creating and selling a OEL VN - and there were many attempts, such as the one by the original starter of this thread.

[Jake]

And, to give credit where credit is due, to this day Hanako have been the only one who have succeeded in creating and selling a OEL VN

I know what you mean, but just to be picky - I have a [CD-case] boxed copy of When I Rule The World that I bought at a con...

[musical74]

Jake: Was is personally handed to you by chronoluminare? =)

Regarding Molitar's complaint...some people look for graphics as a guide whether or not to get a game. That's not a great way to make a decision, but a lot of people do it. Me? I look for the whole package. If everything else is great and the graphics may need a little work, I'll take it because everything else is so good. Would I purchase something from papillon? YES, because she does a great job with everything When I get enough money...look out, Cute Knight, I'm getting ya! =)

*Looks at original topic* Wow...we sure drifted a looooooong way from the original topic!

[Jake]

Jake: Was is personally handed to you by chronoluminare? =)

It was personally handed to me by some guy on the Sweatdrop booth at Amecon, so... perhaps? It wasn't a guy I recognised as specifically not being chronoluminaire, but I don't know what he looks like.

[F.I.A]

I don't do accounting, so I will never guess how much is enough for a box of cd. But it is up to the vendor to set the price for al the work they put in. Surely papillon has done research in the market before setting the right price.

PP and G-collection worth the money? That is if you don't mind the ridiculous amount of typos and the mess up fonts in general. Only a few of the titles end up in my good list.

Something tells me that Molitar is mad over papillon, since there is no way to get a "free" version of her games.

[papillon]

hey, I'm the first to admit the graphics on SS generally suck. it was an experiment, it gave me the information I needed, and as soon as I have my current project ready to replace it...

(As for Cute Knight - there are things afoot. I cannot legally tell you any more than that. But there may be upgraded graphics somewhere, someday. Maybe.)

ANYWAY. CDs! To answer the question:

And why not only buy covers and boxes and burn cd at home or buy special autoburner machine) and burn only when someone orders it?

Most people don't have the equipment at home to burn a lot of discs rapidly or to make burned discs look nice. You don't want to be selling something that looks like a home backup CDR, people will think you're a pirate. Obviously you can buy the equipment if you want to, but if you're not sure how much you're going to use it....

[molitar]

You can now purchase a CD/DVD printer for around $100 bucks. A good DVD Writer is around $35.00 and their is CD/DVD towers if you need more than that. But a 16X burn takes around 7 minutes tops.. around 13 with data verification.

[Jake]

You can now purchase a CD/DVD printer for around $100 bucks. A good DVD Writer is around $35.00 and their is CD/DVD towers if you need more than that. But a 16X burn takes around 7 minutes tops.. around 13 with data verification.

This still really comes under the heading of "looking like a backup CDR". Home disc printing will still be obviously just that, and not up to the standards of a professional job, and while we've come a way from the old days of bright gold/gunmetal CDRs they're still distinctly a different hue from professionally-pressed CD/DVDs. Not to mention that they often have a noticably shorter lifetime...

(Another potential factor is that when you're paying a third party to do your production, you're paying them for the time taken as well as just the materials used - 13 minutes a disc, plus five minutes printing the top, plus a few minutes printing inserts and assembling the case means you could get - say - 3-4 discs done in an hour. If you're selling a couple of hundred copies, you could spend weeks of work time doing nothing but making discs!)

But it is up to the vendor to set the price for al the work they put in. Surely papillon has done research in the market before setting the right price.

Moreover, the price that something is 'worth' is the price that the market is willing to pay for it, so if papillon is getting significant sales at her price point (and I'd call the lazily quoted 'thousands' significant) then her product must by definition be worth that much.

[RedSlash]

Yes, DVDRs are actually quite unreliable as a permanent storage medium. Not to mention if you try to mass produce on your burner, you'll shorten its life pretty quickly. This is why you would want to pay someone to get you pressed DVDs, which are much better in terms of professionalism.

[DaFool]

Moreover, the price that something is 'worth' is the price that the market is willing to pay for it, so if papillon is getting significant sales at her price point (and I'd call the lazily quoted 'thousands' significant) then her product must by definition be worth that much.

It already sounds like Hanako games is outselling Hirameki (2K-3K for something like Ever17), then again, it is a different audience, more diversity of game genres, more casual, more female, and less japanoholic.

Back to topic,

I did a similar thing with discmakers http://www.discmakers.com/, so the pricing seems reasonable. These professional replication houses cater to independent filmmakers.