Get that thing off your chest... Now...

[KomiTsuku]

...

I had a lot of retorts, none of them being civil, most of it that should be discussed somewhere other than a public forum. So I'm settling with this. This does confirm why nobody ever did get back to me when I sent out the note that I was letting everyone go for Rising Angels. I didn't find out that none of you got it until DarkSpartan asked me months later what was going on. If you show so little interest that you never asked what was going on, what was I to think? As for the development days, I had more spam bots than viewers by a ratio of 30 to 1.

Either way, I'm going now. I bid you all a very fond farewell.

[DaFool]

I'm kind of debating whether or not to charge for my game. I'd planned for it to be free for some time now but more and more just charging 3$ seems like a good idea. Mainly because I want to use the money to make more games and hiring people.

Though the downside it's probably going to get a lot less exposure and I don't have a track record of decent games yet. And if they thought it sucked they'd activate my 'well it was free' trap card. Gah lots to think about.

Your first game should be free. I think sake-visual set the precedent with Re:Alistair++. When you're ready to set your standard of quality which is representative of succeeding works, that's the approach to do.

@Camille
Well your comment sort of applied to me somewhat, I'm just so against the idea of me taking the role of a 'marketing manager' and cold-emailing the movers and shakers of the indie game industry.

I live in a country where the advertising industry is too big for its own good -- roving mobile billboards worsening the traffic situation -- billboards stacked sky high so that when a typhoon comes they fall down and impale people -- LCD TVs playing looping advertisements inside taxis, e-jeepneys, and at the light rail train stations. It's such a cacophony. That's what you get when you have a market overpopulated by 100 million people who only import goods so you treat them like consumer cattle. So I sure as heck don't want to contribute the equivalent in the digital space.

And there's also the fear that my game isn't really that good to deserve that much marketing muscle behind it... that the relative popularity of a game is proportional to its inherent quality.
I believed in the philosophy "Those who seek shall find" and the Long Tail. I got into the fandom precisely because I was actively seeking something different -- I wasn't swayed by word of mouth and the newfound fad-ness of it.

I was hoping that most consumers of content out there are intelligent people who seek what they want by themselves and don't just try something because their friends recommended it. I actually wanted to sit towards the far end but still reachable enough space in the long tail... those who venture will discover something, but I won't force it on their faces, which all this advertising approach seems to do.

Don't get me wrong... your approach works well, not laced with "business-speak" and other errors people make when trying to appear professional. But it will feel insincere if I follow what you do -- but yeah I'm thinking of other 'marketing strategies' or techniques that will work better for the particular projects I'm a steward of. Some techniques only work once though.

[Camille]

And there's also the fear that my game isn't really that good to deserve that much marketing muscle behind it... that the relative popularity of a game is proportional to its inherent quality.
I believed in the philosophy "Those who seek shall find" and the Long Tail. I got into the fandom precisely because I was actively seeking something different -- I wasn't swayed by word of mouth and the newfound fad-ness of it.

Oh, I completely understand. Not everyone will be able to succeed using the same approach every time, after all, but you still have to make an effort if you want more than a little attention. It's impossible for people to see and find everything so if you only release in one or two places and do nothing to promote, you can't blame the fandom when nobody realizes your game exists. D: Katawa Shoujo didn't have a popularity boom simply because it was a good game (being a "good game" is debatable, anyway)... There is a lot to be learned from how they approached their "marketing".

Also, if you don't believe in your game, nobody else will. You have to approach it like it's the best thing since sliced bread.

[Razz]

I don't think that our game was the best out of the NaNoRenO lot at all. It's just that we did a good job at promoting our game. I mean, I think we did a great job on our game itself, of course, but there's always a shinier, better-written game out there. That's life and you can't focus on all the people better than you because that won't get you anywhere. PyTom says this a lot, but building up a following outside of LSF is very important. Nowadays, we actually get more hits to our sites from sources outside of LSF--overwhelmingly so. Of course the support from LSF is very important, but the people here aren't the only VN players in the world. We've actually gotten a very good response from a lot of people who'd never played a VN before RisAmo. Veteran VN players tend to be more picky, harsh and stuck to their ways like Final Fantasy fanboys who want every RPG they play to be like a Final Fantasy game--why market and/or aim towards people who are naturally predisposed to dislike most everything you do?

How did you promote your game anyways? Was it like posting stuff on social networking sites or paid advertising? Both?

[LateWhiteRabbit]

I live in a country where the advertising industry is too big for its own good -- roving mobile billboards worsening the traffic situation -- billboards stacked sky high so that when a typhoon comes they fall down and impale people -- LCD TVs playing looping advertisements inside taxis, e-jeepneys, and at the light rail train stations. It's such a cacophony. That's what you get when you have a market overpopulated by 100 million people who only import goods so you treat them like consumer cattle. So I sure as heck don't want to contribute the equivalent in the digital space.

I totally understand that. But the fact is, all that advertising exists because it works. You say you don't want to contribute to the equivalent in the digital space, but think ABOUT the digital space for a moment. It is huge. Mind-blowing huge. There are millions - billions - of things and products competing for people's attention on the internet, and you want them to stumble across your stuff like they are shopping at a flea market? You have to get your name and game out where it is visible.

To paraphrase Game of Thrones - "The high road is very pretty, but you'll have a hard time reaching your destination on it."

And there's also the fear that my game isn't really that good to deserve that much marketing muscle behind it... that the relative popularity of a game is proportional to its inherent quality.

Like Camille said, you need to believe in your own work first and foremost. You have to be its biggest cheerleader. Enthusiasm is infectious. And think about it, would you trust a salesman that seems nervous about his own product? Make a game you love completely, that you find fun, and chances are someone else will enjoy it too.

And NEVER confuse popularity for quality. The two so rarely correlate that it isn't worth mentioning.

I was hoping that most consumers of content out there are intelligent people who seek what they want by themselves and don't just try something because their friends recommended it. I actually wanted to sit towards the far end but still reachable enough space in the long tail... those who venture will discover something, but I won't force it on their faces, which all this advertising approach seems to do.

Most consumers are NOT intelligent people. They just aren't. Otherwise the gobs of advertising companies spend billions on wouldn't work and the whole practice would have died out long ago. As Henry Mencken said, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public." I.e. always assume people are more stupid than you think and you'll always come out better than assuming they are smart. Sadly, history and 100 years of marketing research bear out the truth of this.

And like I said earlier, people can't venture and discover something unless they know the option exists. And here's the "BIG THING". If you grab someone's attention and "force it in their faces", they will FORGIVE you if they like and enjoy what you showed them. Because ultimately you HELPED them. Yes, you helped yourself too, but that shouldn't make you feel dirty or guilty. It is as simple as this: "I have something you'll like! Look at it!" and then they'll say "Oh, I DO like this!" or they won't. If they don't, you wasted a minute of someone's time. If they do like it, you've given another person hours of happiness and enjoyment. I think it all balances out in the end.

[Camille]

How did you promote your game anyways? Was it like posting stuff on social networking sites or paid advertising? Both?

We didn't have any kind of paid advertising, haha. This is a list of the sites we plugged ourselves on that I can remember, though most of these are social networking sites that we've been active on before releasing anything. (you can't just sign up for a new Twitter account and expect people to follow you immediately, after all)

- Twitter; my dev account is fairly quiet but I have personal/fandom accounts that have around 400 followers each.
- Tumblr; Auro has one. Though I don't use the site myself, I have a number of friends who are very active on it and they all helped promote RisAmo on Tumblr. To this day, we've gotten the most hits for the RisAmo site from Tumblr.
- DeviantArt; We both use DA, though it's kind of quiet for both of us? Every little bit helps, though.
- Cyanide Tea dev blog; Prior to this, I had a dev blog I just used myself and it helped drum up interest in BCM, at least.
- Cyanide Tea forums; We don't have that many actual members, but the numbers show that our forums have lots of lurkers that just never bother registering accounts.
- LSF; Posting diligently to our WIP threads with our progress helps to let people know that the project is active. We got the most interest the closer we got to completion. (this goes for our in-progress thread at our own forums, too)
- LiveJournal/Dreamwidth; I'm very active on both of these sites (not so much on LJ anymore).
- Desura; Well.... Obviously, to be fair, they did approach us first. But ultimately I had to polish the game up a bit and submit it. I constantly check the site to see how it's doing in terms of downloads, as well as read and respond to reviews/comments.

A lot of the list seems like common sense... But the key is to stay active and consistent with your promotion on all sites you choose to promote it on. You can't just plug your game in one forum post and leave. Like LWR said:

Networking means having lots of places to submit your game to, and lots of people to help push it for you. It comes from being involved in multiple communities and making yourself well-known BEFORE your game comes out.

Also, every little bit helps. You may think you'll only attract 2-3 people if you plug your game on X website, but every one person is connected to a multitude of other people and you shouldn't underestimate the power of word-of-mouth. You should also never assume that nobody will be interested in your game. I submitted RisAmo to Desura very cautiously because I expected that the site, mainly full of RPS-loving guys and whatnot, wouldn't receive it very well. It's not like it became a huge hit there or anything, but I was pleasantly surprised at the response we got and at how many guys played and enjoyed the game. (in fact, I daresay that it feels like guys enjoyed the game more than girls did, as a lot of girls felt "cheated" by the plot twist)

Re: charging for a game... More people will play your game if it's free. That's obvious. However, when the game is free, nothing is stopping them from hitting alt+F4 (or command+Q, hehe) if they feel your game sucks. In a way, that's how you can get the best feedback--because people aren't obligated to finish your game or even try it if they don't like it. Obviously this is somewhat true of commercial games, as well, but if people don't like the way a game looks, they just won't buy it. They won't play it at all (since you have to buy it to play it, generally speaking) A lot of times, once someone has made a commitment to purchase something, they will psychologically trick themselves into liking it more just because they paid for it. ("I paid for it, so it must be good otherwise my decision to buy it was a bad decision!" humans are psychologically vain creatures, haha)

Personally I think it's best if you try releasing a free game first just so you can test the waters a bit. And my personal philosophy is just that I want more people to play my games, so I will never make only commercial games... We'll probably release at least 1 or 2 free games per commercial project. The free games also help drum up interest in your commercial work (I heard quite a few comments along the lines of "I liked RisAmo so I'm now excited for BCM!") so I suppose that's a method of marketing your work, though it's probably not the most time and cost-effective. XD

/tl;dr I am not a business person, so take my "marketing advice" with a grain of salt, but I am a psychology major. A lot of what I do to help promote my work is based on what I know about human nature and how people respond to certain kinds of advertising and whatnot.

[applegirl]

I have to say, Camille and LateWhiteRabbit pretty much summed up my thoughts on this topic perfectly.

Dang, nice job guys.

Also, I have yet to read a VN that made it big where I didn't think "Man...the creator(s) deserves all the acclaim they've received." Not just the quality of the art/story/writing, but a lot of times the effect the VN had on the me. I remember finishing on famous VN, sitting back, and thinking about it for a long time. Amazing feeling and I have to admit, I'm always looking for that moment as a reader. I want to pick up a VN and fall in love with it, regardless of genre. So I don't personally mind the advertising (I'd love it if it leads to reading an excellent VN).

[LateWhiteRabbit]

/tl;dr I am not a business person, so take my "marketing advice" with a grain of salt, but I am a psychology major. A lot of what I do to help promote my work is based on what I know about human nature and how people respond to certain kinds of advertising and whatnot.

::raises hand gleefully:: I'm a business person! Well, I have a degree in it. I must have the weirdest degree combination possible. One degree in business and commerce, and one in fine art and graphic design!

I think this pretty much explains my career path:

[Camille]

::raises hand gleefully:: I'm a business person! Well, I have a degree in it. I must have the weirdest degree combination possible. One degree in business and commerce, and one in fine art and graphic design!

I'm a... I don't know. Education-wise, I'm sort of a jack-of-all-trades. I've studied geology, psychology, neuroscience, mathematics, astronomy, physics, economics, biochemistry... I just hopped around all over the place and switched as soon as the subject bored me. XD;; I've changed my major way too many times. Anyway, it's psychology for now. 8Db If they had just a plain "science" degree, I probably would have earned one already.

And now I'm writing visual novels and giving questionable marketing advice. >_> Funny how things end up. We should team up and take over the world by pummeling it into submission with our tl;dr walls of text! *bad idea* Anyway, anybody who quotes Game of Thrones when giving advice is pretty cool in my book.

I want to pick up a VN and fall in love with it, regardless of genre. So I don't personally mind the advertising (I'd love it if it leads to reading an excellent VN).

I wish all fans were like this! XD I'm glad you're so supportive of the VN medium in general. I personally love being told that our VNs make people think or that people can relate to this or that character. Those are my favorite kinds of praise.

[Auro-Cyanide]

I have artist angst. Well, I always have artist angst but anyway.

Basically, I always want to be better in a time span that is physically impossible, by which I mean right this minute. There are so many things I want to be better at, so many things I need to study, so many things I just want to be able to draw with grace and fluidity. All that is standing in my way is years of concentration and constant practice. This makes me angsty, though I do acknowledge it's importance as part of an artist's psyche. It's all part of the process.

In the words of one of my favourite artists, Tracy Butler:

Step 4. Agonized Self-scrutiny
As anyone dwelling in the artist's milieu could tell you, this is a vital and, one might say, defining characteristic of the artistic process. There are a number of methods to be utilized here: long brooding walks in the rain, pensive posturing atop cemetery monuments, LiveJournal updates, or simply spending some time crumpled in a heap, face down on the floor. "I'm a creative cipher - a husk empty of meaningful expression!" and "What am I doing? I'm such a hack!" are some of the more popular platitudes for this state of mind.

[Dollywitch]

Hmm... I dunno what to think about this but might as well do good on my promise to bitch about this... I usually let things like this slide under the bridge and get it over with like the spamming of hate mails and flooding my inbox with gay porn or any of those KS devs talking behind my back... but not this time... for you have been constantly doing this to me for some time in every channel where you and I happen to cross paths while taking every damn insult you toss at me... might as well bitch back about it eh?...

So I was chatting with the guys at vn-devs and DOOMFEST (the artist for Juniper's Knot) invited me to join their channel... of course, being naive I came in Good Faith perhaps maybe to discuss a bit of VN's here and there but what do I get?...



An instant Ban for no apparent reason... While as an artist I respect you and your godly amount of talent, something a mere mortal like me can only dream about but as a person you certainly are a jerk... I'm pretty much insulted by what you did but of course knowing how high and mighty you are now due to your new found fame which probably inflated your ego a bit too wide... I'm not expecting any apologies from you... I mean, you are Doomfest while I'm just a lowly Uncle Mugen, the scum of the internet who cannot even speak or write fluent English!...

I certainly don't know if you really are a jerk or simply being a jerk on me... If you are... I don't know the reason and I do not want to know because it will not be in my best interest. If you find this amusing then good for you... I am very grateful that I made your day Sir... Please Enjoy...

Whatever...

"POOF" (It was such a long night)

Mugen, I have your back bro. For what it's worth while Doomfest has some cool art, you're a much cooler guy than him, even if you give annoying advice sometimes. You're a real character, you're getting too upset over internet tough guys who think IRC bans, >implying and AHAHAHAHA as responses are somehow funny to anyone who's not 12. They're nobodies, man. People will actually remember you in 10 years time.

[Crocosquirrel]

People will actually remember you in 10 years time.

Yes. Yes they will. Soem of us even worry about you now

[redeyesblackpanda]

Keheheh... in a couple days, Uncle Mugen... in a couple days... You will see how many of us think you're absolutely amazing... (foreshadowing? Yup...)

[papillon]

I'm kind of debating whether or not to charge for my game. I'd planned for it to be free for some time now but more and more just charging 3$ seems like a good idea. Mainly because I want to use the money to make more games and hiring people.

Though the downside it's probably going to get a lot less exposure and I don't have a track record of decent games yet. And if they thought it sucked they'd activate my 'well it was free' trap card. Gah lots to think about.

You do not have to make your first game free. It is absolutely possible to make decent money with your first game.

It can be useful to make your first game release free, particularly if you're targeting a market slightly different than what already exists. There's not a whole lot of pure GxG out there. Releasing a free game might help you to organise a yuri fanbase - but it will be a lot of work.

This can also help you gather a lot of player feedback and get their excitement up for future projects.

Going the commercial route, if you accept affiliates and your game is up to a reasonable standard, means that you'll be able to get some cheap easy 'advertising' as other people mail your game out to their existing customers. However, it's still your game and not theirs, so while you'll get a quick boost that way, you'll still want to do a lot of cheerleading on your own to get good results.

It's not a good idea to charge $3 IMO. Without a wide distribution net or an existing perception of quality, a low price gives the impression that your game is actually worth nothing but you're hoping to beg a few dollars off people. Unless you're plugged into a big system like an appstore, don't try to sell anything for less than $5 no matter how modest and short it is. You could ask for donations, possibly with some sort of bonus CG for people who did pay $3.

[Razz]

It's not a good idea to charge $3 IMO. Without a wide distribution net or an existing perception of quality, a low price gives the impression that your game is actually worth nothing but you're hoping to beg a few dollars off people. Unless you're plugged into a big system like an appstore, don't try to sell anything for less than $5 no matter how modest and short it is. You could ask for donations, possibly with some sort of bonus CG for people who did pay $3.

Wow I didn't think of it that way. I figured 3$ would be cheap enough to not scare anyone away from buying it, not say it was crap. Thanks for the advice, i'll probably keep it free.

And I think the yuri fanbase would be/is pretty receptive to OEL visual novels. There's not much in terms of japanese ones let alone translated ones, and I think it's a bit of an untapped market.