Speaking only for myself, as a customer, Vatina pretty much hit the nail on the head for me. When I buy a product that is restricted in some manner then I expect there to be something on offer to offset the negatives of that restriction.Vatina wrote:The idea of online vn's is novel and interesting, but I never make use of those already made, since it offers nothing new that makes them more interesting than what I have on my harddisk. I was talking with some others about this and we pretty much came to the same conclusion - we don't particularly hate the idea, but we don't see us making use of it either.
For example, with Steam the restriction is that an individual copy of each game has to be registered with each Steam account. I.e. you can't share your game disk with other live-at-home family members, unless you're prepared to share your Steam account. In which case I'm guessing that would mean only one person would get to play at a time, short of trying to fiddle around with the offline mode. Also there's the non-zero risk that Valve might go bankrupt and Steam disappears. However, the upsides to Steam are:
- Not having to worry about the game disk. If I lose it, I can download the entire game again.
- Discounts on pre-orders.
- Being able to download a pre-order to hard disk before the game is released. Then when it is, I only have to download a decryption key. This means I can be playing at soon as the clock ticks over to midnight on release day, so I don't have to wait for a copy to arrive at my door (online ordering), or visit a shop to buy the game there.
- I'm still able to play the game whilst offline.
- Some miscellaneous features, such as friends lists, chatting across games, etc. but I don't really use those.
When it comes to online only visual novels the downsides are:
- No way to play the game offline. Single player games (and books) are one of the things I turn to when my connection goes down. An uncommon event, but it can happen.
- No way to keep playing the game if the company should go bankrupt. I'd be relying on their goodwill to release the games for offline play, and if they didn't then I wouldn't be able to play said game again.
--edit--
It turns out I should actually spend some time reading about online-only solutions (e.g. NovelStream) :p Hmm, about the only upside (for me) that I can see would be cross-compatibility with various Internet devices (e.g. Android, iOS, etc). I'm not sure if that's sufficient though... I suppose I'd have to try a game or two on my phone to see what I thought of the experience.