"I would totally play your game if I had the time and money"

[Caveat Lector]

One thing I'd like to add: Some of us saying this ("I'd play your game if I had the time and money") are VN devs ourselves investing a LOT of money and time into our own projects. We'd love to be able to buy every single new VN that came out every month if we could, but this is not always feasible for us. I tend to have terrible and impulsive money-spending habits myself, which I've had to curve. This means I can't buy every single new VN release out there, and this is fine by me. Not every VN immediately appeals to me offhand, and this has nothing to do with any failing on the dev's behalf (on the contrary, quite a few of them come with good trailers, appealing imagery, and solid premises)--it's simply not my cup of tea. If I AM going to spend my saved-up allowance on a VN, it needs to be something I've either had my eye on for the longest time and can bear it no more, or something I'm really really excited about to the point where I'm willing to go "screw it!" (which is a bad habit in and of itself), or something I'm saving as a special "treat" for reaching a certain milestone in my own VN development.

Oh, and also, this x1000:

Honestly, this entire post comes off as very judgmental.

Not everyone has the spare cash for a cup of coffee.
Not everyone has the spare cash for a game.

Not everyone has a stable income and the exposable income to spend. Not everyone is "middle class and makes a decent wage". Some people however, want to put in a good word, to let developers that they've done a good jobs.

Shame on you for promoting this bs.

Thank you. One's own class and privilege is important to bring into perspective: Five dollars isn't a lot to me, but for some people, it is, and that money needs to go into buying cheap and affordable food at the supermarket or buying a bus ticket to make it to and from work, instead of a small luxury item they can live without (that they also face a lot of harsh judgment on the rare occasion they ever do decide to treat themselves just once doesn't help, but to discuss that angle is veering dangerously close into violating the forum's "no talk about politics" rule, so I'll leave it at that). It's important to consider someone else's life circumstances and walk a mile in their shoes before making assumptions and judgments.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

You can express interest in a completed game in a lot of ways. If you're not planning to play the game but still want to comment, you can also tell the creators honestly why you are not going to buy the game - the theme's interesting but a little generic and overdone in your opinion, you prefer titles with more individual endings, you think it could be a nice story but only play games where you can choose the gender of the protagonist. Each and every one of these comments will help a creator more than "I would so play this if I had the money". We all want constructive criticism, don't we?

There is a reason why the Honest Critique button exists...it is because by and large people on this forum are loathe to give honest feedback. "I would totally play your game it..." may be just another manifestation of LSF people being reluctant to give actual critique.

Getting beyond the money issue - I really think Trooper6 has pointed out the real reason this phrase is deployed here on Lemmasoft. Lemmasoft is kind of weird / rare/ wonderful / horrible as a creator community, because unlike many of them, the criticism isn't harsh and isn't often deployed either. It's a consequence of being one of the cradles of Western indie VN development - we didn't want to discourage ANYONE from making games because they were rare snowflakes back in the day. Compare that to communities like ArtStation, or Polycount, where the community is nice, but will absolutely critique your work at the drop of a hat, often en masse.

All THAT said, I do want to address something no one else has - the TIME part of that response. Some of us have genuinely limited time (I'm typing this reply in spurts in-between clients at work). I've got a new movie on iTunes I want to watch - but I'll have to wait until this weekend to have the 1.5 hour time chunk to do so. Sure, 30 minutes isn't a lot of time, but it is competing with a LOT of other demands on my time. There are still several of Papillon's and Jack Norton's games I want to play, and haven't found time for yet. I'm not flush by any means, but I have a lot more discretionary income than time here in adulthood. So indie games end up competing with AAA releases for me.

And the price thing isn't trivial. Eastern Europe, Russia, Greece, Southeast Asia are all facing varying levels of financial crisis, where dropping $5 American dollars on something feels like dropping $50 for us. It wasn't so many years ago that I myself only had $40 of food money a week, and everything else was budgeted so tightly that any "fun" money had to come out of my grocery fund.

I know it's frustrating, but this is one of those pleasantries you kind of have to take at face value. They might NOT have the time or money. Or they may just be trying to be polite and lend support. Either way, Taleweaver, it's pretty rude to call them on it. As Indoneko said, a lot of forum-goers just ignore the threads. Silence can be pretty frustrating too.

[Kuiper]

@Kuiper: Your point is basically that there are people who actually cannot even afford buying games that are cheap by western standards. Point taken.

Do you honestly believe that what I described above is caused by that?

I don't know. When someone says that what I'm selling is too expensive for them, absent any other information, I don't know if they're someone in eastern Europe living on the equivalent of $300 a month. I also don't know if they're an affluent person living in the United States making the equivalent of $300 per day. And in light of that, it seems unfair for me to make assumptions about that individual's situation and conclude that they're "not being sincere" and "not being honest." My point is that there are a number of things that could lead to someone saying, "Sorry, this is too expensive for me," and not all of those reasons involve the person being disingenuous. While it is possible that these kinds of remarks could come from a place of insincerity and dishonesty in the way that you describe, I personally prefer not to immediately assume the worst of people, especially when it comes to dealing with people who were at least interested enough in my project to take the time to remark on it.

[Taleweaver]

I see the economic argument repeated by quite a few people here. It's interesting that so many of you consider it the most important issue here, especially since I don't deny that there are people who cannot afford games. My problem is with people who could afford a game, decide not to and still feel the need to make the grand gesture of telling the creator that they would absolutely play it, if only...

It's dishonest since it causes undeserved sympathy, and your reaction in this thread shows me how much sympathy. So many people here scold me for "calling poor people out" while I'm doing the opposite and call people out for feigning poverty in order to appear more supportive than they actually are.

So LateWhiteRabbit, Caveat Lector and especially "shame on you" Rinima: Do you actually prefer a "polite" lie to an honest opinion?

@Kuiper: I wouldn't have started this thread if I hadn't seen the argument used by people living, by their own admission, in Germany, France, the UK and the United States.

[Godline]

It depends on the price of the "coffee". Would I buy a game for $5? Yes. Upwards of $10? Probably not.

The conversion rate is a big thing because us Aussies get royally screwed every time in US$.

Recently there was a game on here that was over $40AU! Of course, the creators didn't get that because people literally have no understanding of how the US$ is always vastly overpriced when buying online.

[Selidor]

I think the issue here isn't whether or not a person can afford a cheap game or why, but rather their decision to announce it to the game creator in their thread. Obviously it's going to come down to the individual, but to some people this will look like an encouraging gesture of appreciation from someone who can't offer financial support, and to others it's unhelpful and unnecessary.

I've been in situations as a player where I couldn't justify buying a game (even a really cheap one), but I would feel too uncomfortable to go and tell the developer that. As a developer, I wouldn't be offended by someone saying that, but I wouldn't feel happy/encouraged by it, either. Feedback from people who have played the game, or people who have deliberately chosen not to buy it because something put them off is more helpful.

[Rinima]

So LateWhiteRabbit, Caveat Lector and especially "shame on you" Rinima: Do you actually prefer a "polite" lie to an honest opinion?

No. What I'd rather prefer is not to see classism on here.

[Taleweaver]

I didn't mean it as classism, and I explained it. I honestly do not quite understand why you still seem to insist it is.

[Rinima]

Intent is not the same as impact. That's why I am insisting it is, as to why am I focusing on it, I'm from the UK, a country that is practically ran by a class system, so classism is rafe here, I know what it can do to people. So I yes, I will *always* call it out online.

[SundownKid]

In my opinion I don't think that's an insulting statement at all.

It still means they like the idea of the game, and I would add that they should hopefully tell their friends about it, and maybe one of them has the time and money to play it, or perhaps add it to their wishlist for later. I still like the fact that they took time to TELL me that they enjoyed it. The worst thing is just being silent.

So I don't feel like it's disingenuous to say something like that. "How dare they not have the money" in this economy things are very tight so it makes sense people can't afford a ton of games.

[Rossfellow]

Erm, not sure if its just me, but there's a bit of overreaction in this thread... Both ways.

For one, the statement itself is comparable to what artists get in their comments section here and there. "I wish I could draw like that, but I suck! XD". They're comparable because they both bring attention to themselves, they're both not very helpful, but at the same time, they're also both not at all harmful(Just awkward... There's really no good response for it).

On the other hand, I'm not really sensing any sort of classism here. From Taleweaver's first sentence of OP alone he categorizes the opinion as a "pet peeve", meaning its already acknowledged that it may or may not be logical or reasonable (like a phobia, only it causes irritation), so second opinions would be appreciated. So slow down a bit with the pitchforks.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

So LateWhiteRabbit, Caveat Lector and especially "shame on you" Rinima: Do you actually prefer a "polite" lie to an honest opinion?

Of course I'd prefer an honest opinion to a polite lie. A few years back on Lemmasoft I was arguing against the "compliment sandwich" approach to critiques. Having a background in the military and at production studios, I'm used to moving in more brusk circles. I also understand that society runs on niceties as social glue, even when they are lies. I'm from the Southern United States, and we ask total strangers on the street, "How are you today?", but we don't care. You're supposed to say, "Good." or "Fine." even if a bear mauled you an hour previously. You're the rude one if you actually start telling us about your day.

And I bet your age and mine skew older than most users on Lemmasoft. Heck, we've been here a long time as is. But you I and both know the demographic of the forums skews younger and into the teens. They don't have decades of hearing the same niceties repeated often enough to get sick of them.

[Zelan]

Some perspective on me: I'm a teenager living in America. I'm of working age, but due to a combination of lack of positions and my own schedule, I haven't been able to find a job, so my "income" is my allowance, $5 a week.

If we immediately start from there, then yes, I CAN afford a $3 game. The issue here comes from the fact that I don't have a way to use this money online except through my parents - meaning, I have to go up to one of them (preferably in a good mood), explain that I would like them to purchase something online for me, show them said item so that they know that they're okay with me playing the game/owning the item/whatever, and THEN I have to walk them through the site used to pay for the item, which might cause them to back out of it if they feel that the site is unsafe. Once all of that's done, I have to pay them back with the allowance money that I've gotten from them (meaning that they won't just pay for a $20 game if I ask; I have to wait the 4 weeks to get that allowance money. It's not the same as being legitimately poor, of course, but the point is that I myself don't have the money to use). Considering that the game that you're referring to begins with me waking up after a one-night-stand, I feel that my chances of having my request rejected are fairly high.

The exception to all of these hoops to jump through is sites which are available on sites like Steam, which I can buy gift cards for that can be applied online. And look! The $3 game in question is coming to Steam soon. So, although I'll still have a problem with anything not on Steam or another similarly accessible platform, I can't make any more excuses for this game. Right?

Not quite. Here's the bit about time. I mentioned above that I've been unable to find a job in part due to my schedule. Time is something that is a limited resource for me. For the most part, I'm in school five days a week. There's 35 hours in an average week, taken up. Add to that a 2-hour extracurricular which I go to for 2 days each school week, and we've got 39 hours at school. Sleep is something that I need to function; who knows how much I get, since it fluctuates, but I'll go ahead and say it's probably 6 hours on a weekday and 10 hours on weekends. There's another 50. Then there's homework. Oh, God, the homework. It's tough. It takes up a lot of my time. I'd say it averages 3 hours a day, sometimes more if I've got a huge project, but we'll forget about those for a bit and go with 21 hours as the estimate for homework. Those three combined leave me with an average of 58 total hours remaining in a week - a little more than two days straight.

I'm not going to bother with average times for how long it takes me to eat meals, shower, get dressed, do my chores, etc., but suffice it to say, those take up time, too. I am a teenager, as mentioned before, which means that, to an extent, I'm subject to the whims of my parents. Just last weekend, I went on a backpacking trip with my dad and sister, and so was without an Internet connection (or even an electronic device to play downloaded VNs on) for nearly the whole weekend (the rest of it was spent on that dang homework). I try to have at least something of a social life on top of all of this, aka I try to hang out with a friend for a bit at least once a week if possible. (Believe me, if any of my friends were into VNs, I'd use this time to play more of them, but thus far I haven't been able to drag anyone to my computer.)

The remaining time goes to enjoying myself. And yes, this does include playing VNs. However, it also includes writing for a VN project that I'm a part of (which I've been unfortunately neglecting due to the very reasons listed here), browsing the forums here to find other VNs and to discuss them, reading books from my backlog of them (I've got at least 20, probably more, and I haven't touched them in months), and trying to watch some shows that I'm interested in (I've been watching Doctor Who and Danny Phantom with my mom), among other things. So let's assume I've set some of this time aside for those VNs.

Which of the 40 that I've been wanting to play should I boot up?

That's not an exaggeration, either; I legitimately have a list of visual novels that is 40 VNs long in my Google Docs, waiting to be played. Three or four of them are NaNoRenO games that I still haven't been able to get to - and I only downloaded about a third of them. Once we get down to here, it's simply a matter of priority. I've got to choose something to play or they'll never get played, but it may not end up being that game that I bought on Steam for $3 a little while ago.

Admittedly, the game in question is very short and I could probably play it quickly in my free time. You'll also notice that I conveniently neglected to mention "randomly browsing the Internet" in the whole paragraph about things that I do in my free time, which is definitely something that I do far too often and for too long. But even still, even a game that only takes around 1 hour might be difficult for me to just pick up and finish in one sitting.

I know this is probably an awful lot of words and information to get across the idea of "I don't have enough time to play VNs!" and I'm also being something of a hypocrite as it probably took me an hour to write this post (could've played one of the shorter VNs in that amount of time), but I wanted to show just how tight my time ends up being just for that free time - in fact, I myself was surprised after doing the math at just how little time I had; I had thought that it would be closer to 4 days rather than two after the Big Three.

An idea:

If you want something that would usually come cheap, and you really cannot afford to buy it, but you do have a little time, why not ask the creator whether they are willing to give you free access in exchange for, say, a 200-words-per-dollar-review on any of the sites where they are active? Or where they are selling it, in the case of Steam? In that case, you'd be essentially "working your debts" off, could play the game you so desperately want to play and help the creator at the same time.

TheJerminator15, firecat and everybody else currrently in the proverbial dire straits: Is that something you would consider?

It's a good idea in theory, but I think a problem could arise if I was less than satisfied with the game. Let's assume that I cut a deal like this with the creator of the game. I play the game, but I'm not as impressed with it as I thought I would be; in fact, I realize that I really didn't enjoy the game much at all. At this point, I can either lie and give the game a glowing review that I don't really believe in, or I can give it an honest review and risk the creator being angry about it and accusing me of swindling them out of a copy of their game.

That wouldn't matter if the creator is okay with a not-so-great review, but it would have to be made very clear between both of the parties involved that it would be an "honest review" (aka it might well say "this game is truly a piece of crap"), and the creator would have to be okay with this possibility.

Plus, it feels a little bit too much like begging for me personally. :/ I'm just not sure that I'd feel comfortable asking about it unless I had some history with the creator.

[Caveat Lector]

So LateWhiteRabbit, Caveat Lector and especially "shame on you" Rinima: Do you actually prefer a "polite" lie to an honest opinion?

No--in fact, a good beta reader/friend of mine recently gave me a good, strong, harsh critique on a recent project, and it has been immensely helpful, since it has caused me to reconsider how to market it and what around. I just prefer people use basic human empathy to consider other peoples' financial situations is all. Everyone has their reasons for buying or not buying a product. It's not up to me or anyone else to question those reasons. Perhaps my definition of "cheap" is another person's "expensive", or vice versa.

[firecat]

everyone stop we been doing this wrong, look at this video first before reading on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

so its not an economic problem more about Taleweaver trying to find answers to which we can not help.