Lemma Soft Forums

Hey guys,

As the previous thread was shut down (due to veering too far off topic) and I'm still in need of all the advice/assistance I can get in order to utilize my time out here, I was keen to keep a thread on the subject open, in case anyone else has anything they'd like to add - it should also help others in my situation too of course! Instead of copying and pasting everything relevant here, I urge you to read the previous thread first before commenting here.

Cheers,

Really saw the debate on the previous thread. That was actually sad.

Anyway, like the others said, find some DLsites to upload it. ^_^
(Yup. I didn't really helped. :3)

EDIT:
Okay! So I read websites and researched a bit. ^_^
I read this.
- A game shoud have an innovative concept.

- Find a local publisher.

Aaand I saw this!
http://www.gamedevmap.com/index.php?que ... mit=Search
It's a game dev map (thingy..)

Hope it helps.

MimirollCookie wrote:Really saw the debate on the previous thread. That was actually sad.

Anyway, like the others said, find some DLsites to upload it. ^_^
(Yup. I didn't really helped. :3)

It's been on DLsite for a week or so now, literally 0 downloads. I've spoken to support about it, and they think it's likely due to their users seeking adult content.

Would a site like Playism (http://playism-games.com/) be relevant to you? I know they had Fata Morgana No Yakata in their catalogue, which is a doujin visual novel and they currently have Lucy, which I believe is a Korean VN?

I think it would still be a better option to edit your first post to have the relevant bits, though, as you want to give people easy access to the info (instead of having to look into your post history and then find the thread) and avoid them a headache with the previous thread. As you're looking for help, you want the barrier of entry to be as low as possible.

I edited my first post! Check it out!

My advice, for what it's worth (disclaimer: I avoid actually doing marketing work whenever possible, so I may well miss Very Important Things. And this will mostly focus on your websites because that's what I can see):

The big thing you're lacking is any clear indication of the status of the Japanese version. Your DLSite page has English screenshots; your devblog mentions a Japanese version coming soon over a month ago, but no subsequent status updates. Almost all the text on your site is in English; the only place I found any non-English text was on the purchase page.

What I personally would do:

The front page of alwaysthesamebluesky.com needs a prominent language switcher, probably at the very top of the page. It should be something along the lines of (English) (Deutsch) (日本語), not a pulldown menu - you don't seem to have enough translations to need to compact them, and you want the languages you do support to be obvious.

Page navigation is currently confusing - the 'purchase' link goes to a page with a giant logo, an animation, a bunch of marketing copy, and then a link to go to your devblog. To actually buy the game I have to scroll through a bunch of stuff in languages I can't read - and the top store
is the Google Play store, which AFAIK is only for Android. If I'm not paying attention it's easy for me to get the idea that the game only runs on smartphones. I'd move the animation and marketing copy to the front page, split the marketing copy so the English text is on the English page, the Japanese text on the Japanese page, etc. I'd also shrink the logo way down.

You can use some Clever CGI tricks to try to make sure players see the most relevant content first - for example, someone browsing on an Android tablet probably does want Google Play at the top of the list, while a desktop user probably would prefer any of the others. A player visiting from Japan would generally be happy if the language defaults to Japanese. However, be careful to make sure the visitor can always easily access all of the content regardless of what the automation guesses they might prefer - sometimes your automation WILL guess wrong.

Other notes: Publisher contracts need to be treated with extreme suspicion. If you sign a bad contract, it can end up costing you huge piles of money or locking your game in some sort of legal limbo. For example, I once reviewed a contract which, if signed as originally written, could have easily cost the developer about USD$20,000 (as it required the developer to repay the entire advance if the contract was not renewed, the developer would have paid taxes on that advance, and the publisher released the game free.) This isn't to say 'never do business with a publisher' - but you actually need someone both paranoid and clever to review your contracts.

Spiky Caterpillar wrote:My advice, for what it's worth (disclaimer: I avoid actually doing marketing work whenever possible, so I may well miss Very Important Things. And this will mostly focus on your websites because that's what I can see):

The big thing you're lacking is any clear indication of the status of the Japanese version. Your DLSite page has English screenshots; your devblog mentions a Japanese version coming soon over a month ago, but no subsequent status updates. Almost all the text on your site is in English; the only place I found any non-English text was on the purchase page.

What I personally would do:

The front page of alwaysthesamebluesky.com needs a prominent language switcher, probably at the very top of the page. It should be something along the lines of (English) (Deutsch) (日本語), not a pulldown menu - you don't seem to have enough translations to need to compact them, and you want the languages you do support to be obvious.

Page navigation is currently confusing - the 'purchase' link goes to a page with a giant logo, an animation, a bunch of marketing copy, and then a link to go to your devblog. To actually buy the game I have to scroll through a bunch of stuff in languages I can't read - and the top store
is the Google Play store, which AFAIK is only for Android. If I'm not paying attention it's easy for me to get the idea that the game only runs on smartphones. I'd move the animation and marketing copy to the front page, split the marketing copy so the English text is on the English page, the Japanese text on the Japanese page, etc. I'd also shrink the logo way down.

You can use some Clever CGI tricks to try to make sure players see the most relevant content first - for example, someone browsing on an Android tablet probably does want Google Play at the top of the list, while a desktop user probably would prefer any of the others. A player visiting from Japan would generally be happy if the language defaults to Japanese. However, be careful to make sure the visitor can always easily access all of the content regardless of what the automation guesses they might prefer - sometimes your automation WILL guess wrong.

Other notes: Publisher contracts need to be treated with extreme suspicion. If you sign a bad contract, it can end up costing you huge piles of money or locking your game in some sort of legal limbo. For example, I once reviewed a contract which, if signed as originally written, could have easily cost the developer about USD$20,000 (as it required the developer to repay the entire advance if the contract was not renewed, the developer would have paid taxes on that advance, and the publisher released the game free.) This isn't to say 'never do business with a publisher' - but you actually need someone both paranoid and clever to review your contracts.

Spiky Caterpillar is right. :3