How can you tell how Long your VN is based on word count?

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recarmdran
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How can you tell how Long your VN is based on word count?

#1 Post by recarmdran »

Hi! I have a question that's been bugging me, and knowing how people approach this will help a great deal.

I'm wondering how much time normally passes in reference to lines of renpy dialogue? Is there a way to measure this? For example, in screenplay writing, one page is normally about one minute of screen time. So I want to know what the equivalent of this is in a visual novel. For example, maybe 1k words = 15 minutes? I hope I'm explaining this well enough. Thank you for your time.

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Re: How can you tell how Long your VN is based on word count?

#2 Post by gamerbum »

It's hard to calculate because everyone reads at a different speed and, even if you search for an average reading speed, you'll get different results from different sites. It's hard to know which rate is the correct one.

I personally like to calculate a rough time frame based on the slowest & fastest average reading speeds I've found. 10,000 words is 45 mins (fastest) to an hour (slowest), so I would mark a 50,000 word game (for example) as "3 to 5 hours" in length, time-wise. I've found that this way of calculation tends to be pretty accurate for the average VN player.

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Re: How can you tell how Long your VN is based on word count?

#3 Post by recarmdran »

Thank you so much, you've got no idea how helpful that is.

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Re: How can you tell how Long your VN is based on word count?

#4 Post by Imperf3kt »

The "official" average reading speed is considered 125 words per minute, but that is for novels. Reading a Visual Novel may take longer as a player absorbs more than just text.

If we convert that to math, 125wpm = 7500 words per hour (125*60)
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Re: How can you tell how Long your VN is based on word count?

#5 Post by Errilhl »

So, using that average, and accounting for the added benefits of visual guides, events and such, I would say that you could probably create a semi-accurate timeline for a full game, with different methods of engaging the player, based on that. If you average 100 wpm (to keep it simpler and account for other events happening), and you take that and add all the non-skippable content (videos, and such), then you will have a fairly decent estimate to reach an end to the game (if it does have one). However, the matter gets complicated very quickly when you have to account for loops, multiple endings, and non-ending games (where you can basically play forever, just increasing stats and repeating events).
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Re: How can you tell how Long your VN is based on word count?

#6 Post by Imperf3kt »

From what I'm aware, in commercial games, only the longest route is accounted for, or all routes combined, with loops cut out of the math.
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