Why Are Dating Sims/VNs for the iOS so expensive?

[applegirl]

http://digitalbattle.com/2012/01/31/let ... ng-piracy/

Sales were decent throughout the years, enough to support us and ensure that we could keep updating our games. Then our entire catalog of games was posted on The Pirate Bay and spread to other torrent sites. We didn’t think much of it at first, piracy affects everyone in this industry, and we believed that sales wouldn’t be affected too much and that gamers would appreciate supporting the devs and buying DRM free games. Then sales went down. A lot. The “bundle” of games hit the torrent sites in January 2011, and by March, sales were down 50%. By May, they were down 80%. We tried to respond to the piracy of our games in several ways. We lowered the price on Steam by 33%. Sales picked up a tiny bit, but it’s impossible because you’re competing with free. We had Steam sales, bundle packs, everything we could. It wasn’t enough, and by October of 2011, I had to let go half of my team — 6 people. We’ve restructured now to focus entirely on iOS games. I dunno how it’ll turn out, but developing on PC and supporting our PC games is not an option any longer. We just can’t afford it.

I agree that piracy is often pointed to as the sole reason for lower sales. The bad economy, changing consumer taste, and a variety of factors do contribute. However, I personally had a few indie pc groups die out on me because of piracy related issues (like Iron Lore Entertainment). I don't particularly regard the mainstream view of movies/AAA games and piracy towards niche games because the profit margin and audience size is far different (you go from millions to a few thousands, or hundreds--based on a previous twitter of an indie group I can cite if someone wants me to look this one up)..

But eh, just my two cents. I always buy the games I play, but a lot of my friends love to pirate despite having the money to pay. They're pretty much on the whole "copying isn't stealing and ease of access makes it the game devs' fault." It became common actually, they expect a lot of things for free. Since I don't makes games, I don't have a financial investment. It's more of an annoyance to me because it actually makes it harder for me to buy the niche games I want.

http://www.siliconera.com/2012/01/13/th ... al-novels/

One primary example is a visual novel group in JP whose work is basically horror/mystery. Their translated VN was pirated heavily and boom: all of a sudden, I read the group is

"...skeptical of actual sales opportunities in the west."

That sucks. I want to buy the visual novel but the group doesn't believe the audience is there. But hey..that's life I guess. I know people go on about fan translators, but there aren't that many for all the VNs I want to read. Not to mention, I like the idea of having the VNs priced reasonable and available easily to a wider audience.

So anyways, I don't make games nor do I ever want to. But I want to play them and I want to buy them. Unfortunately, that sometimes isn't an option I get to have. So yeah, that sucks.

[Dollywitch]

For myself, I have stats, so I'm pretty sure piracy has damaged me.

That's really not good enough. Because of the hysteria around piracy, people's rights and media experience is being affected. We need to see those stats and some reasoning as to how they're related to piracy.

- Heileen 2 cracked on day 0, result=disastrous launch that almost made me stop making VNs. First game was uncracked for 1 month or more and on launch month sold twice. Then after some months, they both sell the same amount, yet another proof that having the game pirated on launch day damaged me a lot

Correlation does not equal causation. There is no reason to believe this was because of piracy, there could be any number of reasons for it, though some may come off as insulting should I list them. It's possible those buying it initially were from a supportive community so nobody from there bothered to crack it. Sometimes interests wanes for a sequel, but at the same time the success of your first game brought it up on the radars of filesharers.

- Heileen in android: first 4 sales all refunded, and on same day appeared on thousand torrent sites (just search Heileen android). Bionic Heart isn't cracked yet, and sells x2 on Android vs Heileen. Coincidence ? (Heileen sell more than BH on desktops)
I could go on, have lots of more examples that lead me to think that way.

Correlation does not equal causation. Also I see 11 seeds on Pirate Bay(which seems to have the most), and not one of those is a verified lost sale. Telling people your game is easily accessible through torrents if piracy is a problem probably isn't a good idea either - something these big companies especially don't seem to get.

I agree that for BIG sites, piracy it doesn't really hurt (Steam or other big portals) but for small indie devs like me, it really does and is not just my imagination.

If anything it's probably the opposite. At least with regards music, most studies done show that file sharing only hurts the very large artists, and can be beneficial to the smaller ones. This makes sense if you think about it.

People are not going to bother pirating your game if it's relatively unknown. And if it's relatively unknown, you're not going to get sales. Making any kind of money through VNs is difficult.

[applegirl]

I have a lot of friends who pirate "unknown games" because they can. They can afford it and want to play it, but the temptation of a free game is too much. So I suppose that is my basis in believing piracy affects smaller games. The above articles in my previous post also cites statistics linked to piracy (sites and sales data).

Here's a blog that Jack may have been talking about:

http://www.winterwolves.net/blog/2007/0 ... ome-facts/

Result: after august 2005, when I applied Armadillo protection, my sales for that game went up by 35% PERMANENTLY. Not just 1-2 month. AT time of writing, after almost 2 years, the increase in sales is still here.

What is the lesson of this story? Fighting hardcore piracy is futile – fighting “casual” piracy can help your business a lot!

Since I constantly see sites where people beg for free full version downloads of a lot of indie games and visual novels...I can believe there are a lot of people wanting to casually pirate a game.

Also as Dollywitch mentioned:

...people's rights and media experience is being affected.

Yup. My right to get the games I want are affected. I can't get them unless I pay a heavy price, import tax, and read through with my broken comprehension of JP. Or if I could somehow revive dead groups that won't develop for PC because of bad sales.

I don't believe 1 pirated copy is 1 lost sale. But it can have huge ramifications:

http://nukezilla.com/2011/06/18/indie-g ... evelopers/

We’ve always turned a blind eye to pirate copies, even on occasion recommending people who had problems with the legit version try a pirate version until the issues are resolved. We realise the potential viral benefits of pirate copies, and while obviously we’d prefer people to purchase our issue is not with those.

However, these ‘auto updating’ versions of the game could screw us completely. We have a cloud based distribution model, where the files are copied all over the world and are served to players on request, which means we are charged money for people downloading the game.

Anyways, this is probably an issue where people just won't change their mind.

But these two sites again were quite valid in my eyes:
http://digitalbattle.com/2012/01/31/let ... ng-piracy/ Title: Indie PC developer regarding Piracy
http://www.siliconera.com/2012/01/13/th ... al-novels/ Title: Effect of Piracy on English Visual Novels

Also legit:
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk ... hp?t=42663

One, there are other costs to piracy than just lost sales. For example, with TQ, the game was pirated and released on the nets before it hit stores. It was a fairly quick-and-dirty crack job, and in fact, it missed a lot of the copy-protection that was in the game. One of the copy-protection routines was keyed off the quest system, for example. You could start the game just fine, but when the quest triggered, it would do a security check, and dump you out if you had a pirated copy. There was another one in the streaming routine. So, it's a couple of days before release, and I start seeing people on the forums complaining about how buggy the game is, how it crashes all the time. A lot of people are talking about how it crashes right when you come out of the first cave. Yeah, that's right. There was a security check there.

So, before the game even comes out, we've got people bad-mouthing it because their pirated copies crash, even though a legitimate copy won't. We took a lot of s--t on this, completely undeserved mind you. How many people decided to pick up the pirated version because it had this reputation and they didn't want to risk buying something that didn't work? Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecy.

[sciencewarrior]

For myself, I have stats, so I'm pretty sure piracy has damaged me.

That's really not good enough. Because of the hysteria around piracy, people's rights and media experience is being affected. We need to see those stats and some reasoning as to how they're related to piracy.

Yes, there is moral panic and witch hunts funded by Big Media, but what we are talking here is something in a completely different scale. Nobody here is shouting "Let's bring back SOPA! Think of the poor game devs and their starving children!" We are just saying that whatever factors are in play in the Android market, and piracy seems to be a big one, make it completely economically unfeasible for indie devs. Jack isn't the first to report this. Every indie game developer reports a piracy ratio of 4:1 to 10:1. They can't be all in collusion with Big Evil Media.

You may have found Hikkipanda's comment snide, but it's true: you and I are playing armchair coach, here. You are dismissing the experience of real devs, whose decisions define if they will pay this month's rent or not. Jack didn't put DRM in his RPGs because he likes making people jump through hoops: he did it because he saw an immediate increase in the bottom line. As much as I hate DRM, I can't fault his reasoning.

[Dollywitch]

The problem is the devs "experience" is irrelevant because nothing in their "experience" tells them whether or not they're suffering because of piracy. It's not like discrimination, privilege etc. that many people experience based on their individual lived experience, which are more tangible things to that person. Piracy is only an explanation for those experiences.

Many of us who care about things like artists rights, copyright legislation etc. are tired of hearing these lines becaue they're never really backed up with anything. You can "Experience" a loss of sales, but you can't "see" the effects of piracy no matter where you are - it's an invisible thing and you most certainly cannot see a "lost sale" as a lived experience. The best thing to tell us this are well researched statistics, the social scientists etc. and most of it is at best critical of the numbers these devs are reporting.

It's little more than an emotional appeal.

Even the Indie game devs; where are they getting these numbers from? A lot of indie devs often blame piracy for not being able to make it into "The Big Time". Regardless of why they come up with these numbers, there is a misconception behind piracy that is causing this argument to become very slanted.

What's important to remember is that there's no concrete evidence behind any of this.

DRM generally isn't effective, either way, and generally just punishes the paying customer. I can and will fault his logic, because regardless of his intent that's probably the sole effect of what he did.

[applegirl]

Actually, I do see concrete proof. I was writing a paper on video games and piracy for a class in the past in college and once searched a few pirate sites to see the comments of various "users":

Here's a section of my paper:

After this certain game was uploaded for free, a user on the comments section posted this quote:
"....i bought this game rm manga gamer yesterday arghhhhhhhh"
Which highlighted an interesting point that anti-piracy people often ignore. Having DRM, at least initially, help prevents the people who want the game, can afford the game, but want to get the game for free. Unable to wait for the game to be provided free for cost, they buy the game and thusly, give monetary support to the developer and the company. Had the game been uploaded earlier, the person would not have bought the game and thusly fallen in line with the other numerous commenters who were gladly boasting about getting the game for free and thanking the individual for uploading the game for the enjoyment of the internet.

(Sides: It was an elective class for me, but I enjoyed what I learned in the class.)

This does not claim that this one user represents the majority of the internet. But dismissing the experience of developers of games, statistics as being "biased", and then insisting that data must be tangible is kind of an odd excuse in my eyes. I'll accept the argument that there are other factors besides piracy and a bad economy, but not the above 3.

1. Developers have an invested interest in tracking the data and advanced technology allows an increasing ability to do so. While this isn't perfect, quite a few devs already have taken different stances on piracy and cannot be assumed to have the same fallacy of analysis.
2. If you claim the stats from the devs are biased, cannot the same claim be made from the anti-piracy groups? How do they track these numbers?
3. Tangibility is an ambiguous standard, especially for the digital medium. It isn't like a scientific procedure that has a clear directive nor can we completely isolate a group that would be accepted as more than a random sample. Depending on background--social and economic--there are a lot of factors to consider.

I don't want an emotional appeal nor will it work on me. I want a well researched appeal that doesn't pick media items that do not belong to the same spectrum or reach the same size audience. It is similar to pointing to a well known celebrity and then applying the same barriers to regular individual. There are different considerations that must come into account and I have yet to see an argument that takes that into consideration.

I pointed to the above quote as an example because I read later quotes from that same individual where that experience eventually led to lost sales--the individual was quite happy to wait for the release to get a free game instead of paying. Again, it is a controversial issue that isn't entirely black and white. But while I agree that piracy is not the complete villain that many in the mainstream insist upon, I won't accept the stance that it is completely innocent unless there is proof. Show me the data and reasoned argument and I'll gladly accept that viewpoint.

Also: warning, I hate strawman arguments (http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html) which is indeed the extreme. Which I feel like piracy has become, a huge strawman argument that ignores the valid arguments in both stances. Which is easy when people want to justify one side, but apply such justifications to the entire group. I have no doubt that certain pirates buy games, but I have no doubts that certain pirates don't. So even claiming that all people respect the devs is wrong as I can easily link pages upon pages where people gleefully tell the devs to go away because they want the game free anyways.

But it won't change things and again, I'm just more annoyed this negatively affects me as a buying consumer.

[jack_norton]

DRM generally isn't effective, either way, and generally just punishes the paying customer. I can and will fault his logic, because regardless of his intent that's probably the sole effect of what he did.

I get lots of emails from REAL CUSTOMERS saying how happy they are about my new "DRM" because they don't have to remember passwords or find the receipt email with the download links, but they can just redownload the demo from my site and use their own email address to activate it. In 2 years I'm using that method I didn't receive one single complaint. So no, I didn't piss off my customers, more like the opposite.

[applegirl]

DRM generally isn't effective, either way, and generally just punishes the paying customer. I can and will fault his logic, because regardless of his intent that's probably the sole effect of what he did.

I get lots of emails from REAL CUSTOMERS saying how happy they are about my new "DRM" because they don't have to remember passwords or find the receipt email with the download links, but they can just redownload the demo from my site and use their own email address to activate it. In 2 years I'm using that method I didn't receive one single complaint. So no, I didn't piss off my customers, more like the opposite.

Yeah, exactly I love the new system with Winter Wolves. It makes downloading the games I bought a lot easier. All I have to do is activate it once and I can use it on my computer forever.

EDIT: Not to mention, it fixed a problem I had before with BTMicro. If I accidently cleared my computer and didn't save the game anywhere else, the link would usually be dead at that point. So I'd have to go through all the steps to get my game back, which would take time. Now, all I have to do is redownload the demo and play the game. So much easier and better for the paying customer.

[Dollywitch]

Actually, I do see concrete proof. I was writing a paper on video games and piracy for a class in the past in college and once searched a few pirate sites to see the comments of various "users":

Here's a section of my paper:

After this certain game was uploaded for free, a user on the comments section posted this quote:
"....i bought this game rm manga gamer yesterday arghhhhhhhh"
Which highlighted an interesting point that anti-piracy people often ignore. Having DRM, at least initially, help prevents the people who want the game, can afford the game, but want to get the game for free. Unable to wait for the game to be provided free for cost, they buy the game and thusly, give monetary support to the developer and the company. Had the game been uploaded earlier, the person would not have bought the game and thusly fallen in line with the other numerous commenters who were gladly boasting about getting the game for free and thanking the individual for uploading the game for the enjoyment of the internet.

(Sides: It was an elective class for me, but I enjoyed what I learned in the class.)

This does not claim that this one user represents the majority of the internet. But dismissing the experience of developers of games, statistics as being "biased", and then insisting that data must be tangible is kind of an odd excuse in my eyes. I'll accept the argument that there are other factors besides piracy and a bad economy, but not the above 3.

This is not concrete proof. It is still making assumptions. First off, that this demographic even exists, that this demographic won't then buy the retail version(since it's easier to get updates that way), etc.

It's a suggestion. It's not proof.

1. Developers have an invested interest in tracking the data and advanced technology allows an increasing ability to do so. While this isn't perfect, quite a few devs already have taken different stances on piracy and cannot be assumed to have the same fallacy of analysis.

They also have an invested interest in misrepresenting the facts if they believe piracy is the issue.

2. If you claim the stats from the devs are biased, cannot the same claim be made from the anti-piracy groups? How do they track these numbers?

Most of the studies I'm referencing aren't from anti-piracy groups which is the important difference.

Morever, the claims of the developers(usually publishers not developers) haven't been verified in the first place.

3. Tangibility is an ambiguous standard, especially for the digital medium. It isn't like a scientific procedure that has a clear directive nor can we completely isolate a group that would be accepted as more than a random sample. Depending on background--social and economic--there are a lot of factors to consider.

Which is why assuming it's piracy without evidence is a stupid idea.

[Dollywitch]

DRM generally isn't effective, either way, and generally just punishes the paying customer. I can and will fault his logic, because regardless of his intent that's probably the sole effect of what he did.

I get lots of emails from REAL CUSTOMERS saying how happy they are about my new "DRM" because they don't have to remember passwords or find the receipt email with the download links, but they can just redownload the demo from my site and use their own email address to activate it. In 2 years I'm using that method I didn't receive one single complaint. So no, I didn't piss off my customers, more like the opposite.

If you had no DRM at all they could do what they like with the file. I haven't played your game so I don't know how restrictive it is. But I'm going to avoid any DRM unless I absolutely have to. You're missing the point here - people such as myself aren't going to email you complaining. They just won't buy your game. I'll do Steam because it's convenient, but in general, I Dislike the concept of DRM and don't want to endorse it because I know how frightening it can become.

A great example with regards this is the strategy game "Sins of a Solar Empire". It had no copy protection yet the week it went on sale, was one of if not the the highest grossing PC games. People appreciated that 1) They didn't try to punish paying customers, 2) Actually made a game that could run on most people's computers. How do you explain things like this?

Unless it's part of a wider distribution service like Steam(in which case, it's the service - not the DRM itself), DRM always makes things less convenient.

[Dollywitch]

It seems to be impossible to find any decent statistics on software/games, but -

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news ... -bogus.ars

There are good things to read about piracy in general.

This one's more specifically about games, and raises a good point - http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010 ... siness.ars

[applegirl]

Ok, I'm not sure how a quote like "lulz, i dtn have to buy this now!! thx bro" could not be interpreted as not being a lost sale from the same guy who admitted to buying an earlier game from the same company. I didn't post my whole paper because it was 17 pages long, single spaced.

Anyways, the concrete proof I was referring to was from the people in person who I knew pirated games and did so because they could. But if you question the demographics, you could look to a similar company in a similar medium with a similar fanbase and see:

http://www.nitroplususa.com/demonbane-goes-gold/

Visual novel demographic. Wanted JP VN in English. Bought the VN in question. Now: more VNs like that will be translated and brought to the west.

Which is why assuming it's piracy without evidence is a stupid idea.

Evidence in real life? I know people who do so, but I guess I could ignore that. I could pull up a message board where a pirate site owner mentioned hundreds to thousands of downloads for a game, but I could ignore that. I could ignore the experience of the developers because they don't agree with piracy the way the gaming community likes to view it...I could ignore everything, but...

Anyways, it exists. I'm annoyed by it, but I'm not claiming it as the end of games. It is an annoyance and one that isn't completely innocent, but it may spread word of mouth and entertain quite a few individuals. Sometimes it can increase sales! Yes, it can be positive!

Super Meat Boy creators love it and so do Minecraft creators. So, there is evidence of some positive effect here. But a key problem is that this doesn't apply to all creators and I have yet to see one from a visual novel creator who advocated it.

Not to mention, in the interest of fairness: there are other things that apply to poor sales: game quality, lack of advertisement, etc. I'm not saying those don't exist. I'm not even saying the numbers are completely accurate for both sides. I'm just saying it exists and has an effect.

Anyways, this already isn't going to work. People won't change their minds. So, let's agree to disagree. I personally like buying indie games and will continue to do so in the future.

[Dollywitch]

Ok, I'm not sure how a quote like "lulz, i dtn have to buy this now!! thx bro" could not be interpreted as not being a lost sale from the same guy who admitted to buying an earlier game from the same company. I didn't post my whole paper because it was 17 pages long, single spaced.

Because he sounds like an obvious troll? I mean seriously. Also, even if there are some individuals that do it, it's unlikely to be enough to have a serious effect, especially against potential positive effects.

[applegirl]

Actually, I highly doubt that was a troll. Trolling is meant to flame arguments and on that pirate site, that means basically 99.9 percent of the postings were trolls (ie, thanking for the uploader for the free game). Unless those 5 sites I used as reference examples in my paper had a huge amount of trolls as members, it was just someone being honestly happy to play the game. Excusing the grammar, there was a bit of discussion in which the poor economy/restricted livelihoods of the users came up which again is why I usually agree that the poor economy factored into game sales (and why I doubt the whole troll argument). So it is a complex issue with negative and positive implications, thusly making it difficult to pin down for both the users and developers' standpoint.

Anyways, it'd be nice if VNs became more wide spread. If you look on Steam, one already popped up and the sales increased quite noticeably (even with lower price). I really hope this means more VNs pop up on Steam, quite a few commercial groups have games that I believe deserve to be on there and deserve recognition.

EDIT: Probably also should mention that I didn't post the rest of the discussion b/c the following text speech/poor grammar made my eyes bleed. But it was surprisingly sympathetic in terms of how worse the other parts of the world has it. So again, complex issue.

[Dollywitch]

To be honest I think you're a little naive with how people act online. Most of the 1337 h4x0rz downloading their warez have a kind of tough guy image to uphold, so they say stupid shit like that all of the time. That's not really how people were honestly doing that would talk, regardless. Just because they say that doesn't mean that it's correct.