Aleema wrote:
We "lose"? Lose what? What was lost when someone completed a KN and was proud of it?
Everybody! Stop making KNs! It has been officially announced that KNs hurt the visual novel community! You there! With the story! Knock it off, some people are trying to wage war here!
First off. Slow your roll. Calm down. Take a breath. There is no reason for you to flip out. No one is saying that they -hurt-. Free games are free games, no one cares or has to care what they're about except the creator. We're not talking about stopping that, but instead to largely consider games with more appeal.
That's actually the unfortunate opposite of reality. Unless something becomes viral or a hallmark for a certain fetish, of course. But then, I don't want VNs to embody anything specifically. Not even "gay games." It's stories. Stories can be anything.
Have you considered that your desires are not what everyone wants? Just saying. Breathe. We're not talking about what
Aleema wants for the VN market. We're talking about how to get VNs popular enough that there are more made in better quality, which several people obviously want.
Because more translated games meant that people are tired of it and the people buying them desperately crave something new, is that what you're saying? Wrong deduction again, if so. If something is being imported more, that means there was a demand for it. Matching what people demand seems not only right on track, but a better way to attract followers than doing something even more niche. A lot of what's being done in these forums are VN fans making VNs. If what they're making seems like "more of the same" to you, then maybe people want more of the same. And not everyone has access to "the same."
Once again, you're committing an accident fallacy and saying things that no one else has said. What WAS said:
Why will people support EVNs when there are much better alternatives? You're definitely wrong if you think that ANIME fans who already have a serious JP fetish will seek out low-end mediocre EVNs over translated JVNs that are repeatedly coming over.
Matching what people demand isn't getting us very far, if you haven't noticed. The point is not to attract only VN fans, but to get the VN fans who don't even know they are yet VN fans. Therefore, everything you've postulated is effectively useless.
Originality is an awesome thing, but I wouldn't discourage anything but what you personally consider original. What we need are more games. That's really the long and short of it. One really awesome game would be beneficial ... why? What's the goal here? To get people to recognize this as a respectable medium. What would be the result of that? MORE GAMES. Which leads to more exposure, which leads to more games. Filtering games out seems a step backwards.
Once again. Breathe. This is not "what Aleema wants out of everyone". Free games can do whatever they like. Commercial games, if they have an interest in actually expanding the genre, need to pay attention to these things. I wouldn't begrudge people doing free games in their spare time the chance to do whatever they want. No one is filtering anything. Calm down. Relax. No one is against you.
The EVN community has been ever-changing and growing. How long have you been involved? If you think this is stagnant, probably not that long. I'm amazed by how much progress has been made in the last year alone. People are writing articles about visual novels (like in the OP), and not by us. This is progress. My sister told me today that her damn roommate knew what Ren'Py was, and she doesn't even make games. Amazing!
I'm not against being passionate about promoting VNs, but I'm against bashing what is currently being done.
The VN community can be ever-changing and "growing" but it hasn't grown very far yet. People who could be buying these games still have no idea where we are, who we are, or why they should care.
There is a difference between "bashing" and stating facts. The fact is: Lemma is not a quality pool overall. That's okay, it's mostly hobbyists The fact is: Lemma loves otome games and focuses primarily on them. If that's bashing, then please report me because seriously.
@LateWhiteRabbit
No wonder it was so awesome! I will check out that story.
@Pondrthis
No one is saying to eliminate the free hobby games. It's silly to begrudge hobbyists the ability to do whatever they WANT to do. They're working for free, giving it away for free and expect nothing. No one is saying "they should disappear". Even some of the commercial people on here work upfront for free, and spend their OWN money to get their games to a high level. That's another part of devotion. Do you think that the smaller groups who make commercial games put NOTHING into their work and get paid? Get paid by WHO? Very few (and likely no) VN groups get an upfront investor to just PAY them to make their own games. They work for free just like every other hobbyist on this site, but they've decided to try to put their money in as well and take an even bigger risk.
The point is not "stop making hobby games everyone needs to do it this way~!" The point is that variety breeds variety. Quality breeds quality. There are still people out there making really bad RPG Maker RPGs and the commercial RPGs are just fine. Saying to bring out more of Y, or that X doesn't necessarily expand the market is not "stop making X". It's "perhaps we should get more Y around here because X isn't doing what we need it to do."
@Da Fool
I've been involved in 13 freeware projects over the course of a few years. I'm also starting on my first steps going pro. It is an entirely different mindset and approach; they do not compare to each other. Professional VNs are no threat to most free releases and vice versa. The reason I decided to go pro is I realized most people won't even bother playing freeware downloadable releases to give them the time of day anymore, especially at a time when there's many free-to-play MMOs. By putting a pricetag to something, you create more perceived value. People will part with money when they perceive that something has value, usually something they can't get elsewhere.
Do you know what's a threat to professional releases? Massively popular free releases from crowdsourced teams such as Katawa Shoujo.
Thank you for explaining this. Because hobbies are hobbies, there's something expected from them. But in that same tone, people outside the genre looking to get in aren't looking at hobby projects and saying "yeah, I like that hobby project, lemme make my own". Most of them are saying "hey, I just played this amazing JVN and what? There's a Ren'py thing so I can make my own? COOL!" Professional VNs that do different things than the mainstream are what lure people who aren't already here...here. xD Hobbyists don't breed popularity...popularity breeds hobbyists. As long as SOMEONE is making a commercial VN, somewhere, people will be hobbyists. But if the point if the point is to get -EVNs- popular, then we need to start bumping up that level.
It's disheartening to see how little comes out of so much work. Hobby pursuits, especially over the internet, seem to take far more time and effort than work at a desk with a team for money... precisely because you have other, more important, I daresay more all-consuming responsibilities.
I will disagree that hobby pursuits seem to take far more time and effort. Time maybe, but pro definitely takes far more effort. I'm currently managing a team of freelancers and it feels like a full-time job to me. I barely even have time to draw my own sprites. I never had that stress while making freeware. Back then I slept at 4am every night after closing Photoshop and Ren'Py. Nowadays I sleep at 6:30am every night after answering a dozen emails. So I have more things on my mind, and my bank funds are draining -- and I'm essentially still working for free with the vague hope that I'll somehow recover my capital. It's like running a business for the first 3 years using your own capital -- everyone is getting paid EXCEPT you, while you work the hardest since it's your project. On top of that you're eating away at your savings. Totally unfair, but that's the way it works. (I can see why venture capitalists are popular, you risk someone else's money.)
Making games is only fun in the beginning. It always becomes a chore until you start seeing results.
This is particularly from Seira:
I am not sure where people get this idea that commercial groups on here sit around getting immediately paid for their games, and thus, since we work for money, it's different. I can say that I haven't made a dime. My group takes art to help pay for any extra outsourcing costs for things we couldn't finish/do. None of that money actually goes into a pocket, and any money that we can't get from taking commissions (taking commissions on TOP of our own work for our games) we pay personally. Christmas week, I worked 120 hours. I am constantly up until 5am because I have to take Skype calls in Japan for the voice actors, a job I can't split with anyone because no one else on the team speaks Japanese. I can't quit, or stop the momentum, unless I want to lose thousands of hours of work and the initial money. I fight with myself to take breaks because my own art starts to suffer after 16 hours of staring at the same exact piece. It is not easier. It is not less time. It's just not mentioned, because when you expect people to pay for something that you provide, you have to deal with the fact that they don't care about all that. They care about what you are giving them. And people are much more critical of things they have to pay for, as well. It's like DaFool says; you're running a business that every moment of free time is spent on, paying for the privilege of doing that much work, and can only pray that you recover your costs.
