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I'm a big fan of eroge games. They really get my rocks off more than any other format of porn. Because of this, I'm always trying to find new, fun, games and thus I'm always lead back to patreon, where most games are advertised/held.

On Patreon I see these games making a significant amount of money. I'm talking 5-10 grand a month.

This gave me an idea. I should make my own game and create a good source of revenue.

I've never done anything close to this before. I'm a junior Computer Science student so all I really know is some java. However this seems almost too easy?

The entire engine is free to use even commercially. The art can be commissioned pretty cheaply. The story is not all that important and I think I can bang out a decent one.

Am I wrong in assuming I can make a decent game with around a $2000 investment into an artist and get a nice return? Talk some sense into me?

EDIT: I made this post almost exactly on this date three years ago.

Three Years, $15,000 dollars, and an incomplete college degree later, turns out nope, its not that easy.
But it was fun.

Depends on how freaky you're willing to be. Furries in particular are known to pay handsomely for porn.

RotGtIE wrote:Depends on how freaky you're willing to be. Furries in particular are known to pay handsomely for porn.

I'm willing to sell my soul as long as I can find a buyer

(I suspect there are aspects of production that might be harder than you think.)
(Content warning: More than one f-bomb.)

It does seem like eroge is the most popular type of visual novels. But those people who are making 10 grand a month, are constantly making games, and they have the skills at art direction and project organization (well, maybe not writing).

So if you think you can develop a good game then go for it. But I'd hesitate to call any kind of gamedev easy.

Marketing. How do expect people to know your game even exists? Can you consistently update social media pages on several different sites and reach out to reviewers/news sites? Can you make good trailers?

Game distinction. What are you going to do to convince others to buy your game instead of the many, many other options?

Commissioning. How are you going to find an artist/artists to do everything you need who won't take forever/bail partway through?

Charm. If your first thought is making easy money are you certain your game will win people over and not come across as just a cheap/quick cash in?

Negativity. Can you take people insulting your work and you? Can you keep going if there are problems or if not many people care about your game for longer than you expected?

Writing. Have you ever finished a script? Even if you're not intending to make it your master piece, taking a script from 0 to 100% is a large task that should not be underestimated. Do you have time to set aside hours each week to write and can you motivate yourself to actually go and do it? Very few people who intend to write a script/story end up finishing it

I'm not expecting you to actually type out answers for each of those. They're just a few things that go into game making that are worth considering.

I do think you'd have an easier time selling a VN with porn than trying to sell a VN that doesn't have porn, but I can't imagine it'd be a super breezy experience regardless.

Good luck if you do try to go for it though :].

I think this thread can slap some sense into you. It's a thread where developers show the profit they made from the itch.io tips.

If you're willing to make a $2000 investment into art then I can imagine you making a visual novel that can look appealing enough, and that's the minimum probably. Eroge with art that looks like stick figures or way out of proportion won't get anyone excited and I think that this would be an even greater issue for eroge than anything else. Or not. I don't play eroge so I wouldn't know.

However, art alone won't cut it. If it would, the artist would cut you out of the equation and just do it themselves. I think Googaboga lists the other facets pretty well. You'll be an upstart, you can't just make the same crap as the big names and expect the same kind of success. You'll need the reputation, the marketing, the story, etc. And before you get to a number with 3 zeroes you'll have at least a game or two released already, each having to be better than the last. According to others who posted here people are more willing to pay for eroge than non-eroge, but even then you'll need the reputation and audience to get those purchases.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to become a farmer. Apparently you can just shear the wool of a sheep and it just grows back. It's like a cheat code for infinite profit!

PyTom knows what's up (same with most everyone that's posted in this thread). I recommend that you try making a very short, but high-quality VN. When you complete it, you'll have a great metric for determining how much work/money it'll take to make a full game. It'll also help attract others to your project, and it'll serve as a great starting point for the real deal.

To me, if you're asking people to slap some sense into you, it would seem you already know that your ideal is too good to be true. Some of the people on this thread are experienced devs. I, on the other hand, am not. I haven't completed any projects yet. In fact, I'd say that my story isn't finalised to a point where I should start working on assets.

Let's compare it to farming, using the video that PyTom linked. As we all know, you can make plenty of money selling eggs which you get from the chickens daily. Throw some grain on the ground and they won't starve. That's good. Sheep and cows eat grass, so if there isn't a drought you'll have milk and wool to sell as well. Living the dream, right? But when you're milking cows at 5:30 in the morning and your neighbour shows up unannounced to say that he broke your fence and he'll pay for the repairs but now he needs your help getting all of your sheep off his property and fixing the fence in the dark so they don't keep escaping, will you really be able to say you'd planned for it from the start? I don't think so. Not as easy as you thought, huh?

I've never been a farmer or a VN dev, but I've seen both up close and I can say that I don't underestimate either job. I could copy/paste all the usual stuff people will tell you about their struggles in developing games, but what good would that do? You'll run into countless problems along the way no matter how much advice you're given. And believe me when I say that if you rush into it (and quite possibly even if you don't) you will most likely find yourself in the Ren'Py Questions section asking something that either receives an embarrassingly simple answer or nobody seems to be able to answer. If that happens, PyTom will probably show up and say something about Python and version numbers and just leave you wondering why you don't just hire a coder. After whittling away which aspects of the game you can work on yourself, maybe you'll settle on just the writing part and pay other people to do the rest. A small community forms just to create theories about your game! The main one being that your characters are so poorly written because they don't have souls. But hey, at least that means you're gaining a following.

Life is hard. People are mean. If eroge was exploitable enough to get rich easily, I would've drawn some large circles on a chest and bought myself a better computer by now.

Electricity is freeeeeeee, right?
Well.. no.
Somebody has to pay for it.

That PC you're making your games on is freeeee, right?
Well... no
Somebody bought it, and it won't work forever.

The internet is freeeee, right?
Maybe if you live in the Netherlands.


Everything you do, will cost you money.
Take time off work to dev? There's a loss of the money you'd have made at work, plus whatever small costs pile up from working on your game.
You need an artist because your drawings look awful? He wants a share or an upfront fee, usually not cheap.
How will you advertise your game? You know those ads you see on TV, yeah you know the ones, they're 30 seconds long and show up 3 times an hour? Those cost anywhere from $200 to $350,000 for THIRTY SECONDS. It depends which "slot" you want, and how often, what you're advertising, etc.
The internet you say? Well.. Good luck not getting buried by a million new posts on Twitter by tomorrow and everybody forgets about you.

You can try, there's no harm in it, but if it was that easy, do you really think nobody else has quit their day job in order to do it?

Folks, we don't need to turn this into a pile on. And while VN dev is hard, it's not exactly a moon landing. So while it's not easy to make money here, people seem to be doing it - while it's important to be realistic, it's also important to not be overly discouraging, either.

Imperf3kt wrote:The internet is freeeee, right?
Maybe if you live in the Netherlands.

Nope, we too have to pay for that. Well, it's possible to never pay for internet by using free wifi spots in restaurants etc. but I guess but that goes for many western countries, right? We do have nearly free healthcare ensurance and extremely low fees for college and university degrees though. I only work one day a week for about 4-6 hours at minimum wage and I still have a small surplus after paying both those things. Jealous?

But, to give a counteractive sound to all the negativity, developing a game can be rewarding. It's a fun hobby, one can really put their heart in it and thanks to Creative Commons, todays' internet's abilities to learn and do everything yourself, and there being people willing to work on your project for free/sharing the profit, does allow you to make games and stories without investing tons of money into it. Lots of people here are doing what they do not to make a living or an extra buck, but because they like doing what they do.

So don't ask yourself if you want to make some cash by doing this, ask yourself whether you'll like doing it. If you don't, there are plenty of other ways to get money and your game probably won't get a lot of attention because you never poured your heart into it.

Mammon wrote: But, to give a counteractive sound to all the negativity, developing a game can be rewarding. It's a fun hobby, one can really put their heart in it and thanks to Creative Commons, todays' internet's abilities to learn and do everything yourself, and there being people willing to work on your project for free/sharing the profit, does allow you to make games and stories without investing tons of money into it. Lots of people here are doing what they do not to make a living or an extra buck, but because they like doing what they do.

Exactly. This pretty much covers it. And as PyTom said, it's not an impossible task to create a visual novel, and software such as Ren'Py really does make it so much easier to do. You can even make money from it. The only real issue here is rushing into it headfirst because money is the main motivator. That should never be the case when it comes to something like this. But if you put some more thought into it and decide that creating visual novels might be something you'd like to do regardless, then it's a great thing to get into.

"You'll never make anything good if all you think about is how well it would sell."

Give it a go if you want to. I've seen some folks here on the forum get their projects off the ground and flying. I think you may need to have a strong interest in the creation/development side though and not just in the money in order to keep your enthusiasm going.