Hours of gameplay

[Applegate]

Typically, I echo that a story need only be as long as it's meant to be to run from its conclusion to its end. When I read manga, I end up dropping a lot of them; the moment a story seems to run around in circles just to extend its duration, I tend to lose interest. I do not want to know how everyone had a blast at summer camp if, at its core, the story is a romance story and the entire summer camp didn't even have the love interest in it!

I typically don't even start reading Visual Novels with a high word count, for fear of literary dilly-dallying. This extends itself to professional works as much as amateur works.

[kaleidofish]

I expect commercial games to be longer, or have some type of feature that warrants me buying the game in the first place. I'm not going to buy a visual novel that only has 5,000 words, for example. I expect at least 6 hours of game play, whether that's hours spent reading & replaying it or hours spent playing some type of minigame that's included. If the game is commercial, it really has to "call out to me" with an interesting story, graphics, music, characters, presentation, etcetera. No filler text, either, please.

Non-commercial games...the length doesn't matter as much as to whether or not I'll play them. I usually don't finish games that are extraordinarily long, unless the story is engrossing from the beginning all the way to the very end. I like getting lost in stories. But yeah, as long as the story is told well, the length of time it takes to finish playing it doesn't matter.

[LVUER]

I expect commercial games to be longer, or have some type of feature that warrants me buying the game in the first place. I'm not going to buy a visual novel that only has 5,000 words, for example. I expect at least 6 hours of game play, whether that's hours spent reading & replaying it or hours spent playing some type of minigame that's included. If the game is commercial, it really has to "call out to me" with an interesting story, graphics, music, characters, presentation, etcetera. No filler text, either, please.

That also depends on the price, right? a 5$ VN shouldn't be compared with 15$ one.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

I expect commercial games to be longer, or have some type of feature that warrants me buying the game in the first place. I'm not going to buy a visual novel that only has 5,000 words, for example. I expect at least 6 hours of game play, whether that's hours spent reading & replaying it or hours spent playing some type of minigame that's included. If the game is commercial, it really has to "call out to me" with an interesting story, graphics, music, characters, presentation, etcetera. No filler text, either, please.

That also depends on the price, right? a 5$ VN shouldn't be compared with 15$ one.

Exactly. I don't want fluffed up or stretched out VNs. I want concise and great storytelling. If a game is very short, it should be cheaper. If it is very long, charge more. Just don't inflate the word count for no reason. If a game is only 2-3 hours long and I only paid $5 for it, so what? That's good value, especially if the story was great. But don't charge me $20 for 2-3 hours. Price your games reasonably and no one will have cause to get upset at length.

[Anna]

Exactly. I don't want fluffed up or stretched out VNs. I want concise and great storytelling. If a game is very short, it should be cheaper. If it is very long, charge more. Just don't inflate the word count for no reason. If a game is only 2-3 hours long and I only paid $5 for it, so what? That's good value, especially if the story was great. But don't charge me $20 for 2-3 hours. Price your games reasonably and no one will have cause to get upset at length.

I agree to some extent, but I think pricing also depends on the contents of the game, such as: quantity of sprites/CGs, music etc. Voice actors can make a game a lot more expensive too, for example.

[DaFool]

Exactly. I don't want fluffed up or stretched out VNs. I want concise and great storytelling. If a game is very short, it should be cheaper. If it is very long, charge more. Just don't inflate the word count for no reason. If a game is only 2-3 hours long and I only paid $5 for it, so what? That's good value, especially if the story was great. But don't charge me $20 for 2-3 hours. Price your games reasonably and no one will have cause to get upset at length.

Had I known there was a business case for this I could have embarked on shorter commercial work ages ago. It's just that it's such a struggle to come up with enough content to reach the $20 value, which was a minimum standard for indie games 5 years ago. Thus my attitude towards short games were that they should be freeware no matter what, simply because of length.

I suppose this new development for shorter games was influenced in a way by the larger indie scene and its sub-$10 games. It'll be also much easier for writers to get to the meat of their story instead of filling it with days where nothing occurs except the protagonist being waken up by his little sister and eating breakfast with his childhood friend.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Exactly. I don't want fluffed up or stretched out VNs. I want concise and great storytelling. If a game is very short, it should be cheaper. If it is very long, charge more. Just don't inflate the word count for no reason. If a game is only 2-3 hours long and I only paid $5 for it, so what? That's good value, especially if the story was great. But don't charge me $20 for 2-3 hours. Price your games reasonably and no one will have cause to get upset at length.

I agree to some extent, but I think pricing also depends on the contents of the game, such as: quantity of sprites/CGs, music etc. Voice actors can make a game a lot more expensive too, for example.

There is an argument to be made for volume. It takes you less time to write a 2-3 hour game, etc. and at $5 you will probably move more copies than a $20 game. But again, it all depends. When it comes down to it, you just need to charge a fair price. Length, quality of art and music, it all factors in. Just don't treat length or hours of gameplay like some "holy grail" where longer=better.

The important thing is to not fluff up the game with pointless things as DaFool pointed out. If you look at movies or a perhaps a better example, a TV show pilot episode. Think of all a 40 minute (1 hour with commercials) TV show covers, how concisely it tells a story and even introduces characters. All in a 40-60 page script. And those pages aren't like novel pages. They are in a good size font with lots of white space and line breaks every time someone talks or the scenery changes.

Here is the pilot script for the first episode of Dexter. In those 60 pages they introduce a cast of characters for the first time, their personalities and relationships with each other, their jobs, have Dexter stalk and kill somebody, introduce Dexter as a serial killer, solve a murder through detective work, introduce ANOTHER serial killer, etc.

Or take the movie script for Donnie Darko. 99 pages. It has slice of life, a time warping plot and theme, etc.

I would recommend all VN writers and creators study movie scripts. In the movie business, 1-2 pages (depending on dialogue) is considered 1 minute of screen time. By studying movie scripts you can see how famous and successful movies concisely told their stories and adapt that for visual novels.

[Anna]

There is an argument to be made for volume. It takes you less time to write a 2-3 hour game, etc. and at $5 you will probably move more copies than a $20 game. But again, it all depends. When it comes down to it, you just need to charge a fair price. Length, quality of art and music, it all factors in. Just don't treat length or hours of gameplay like some "holy grail" where longer=better.

I don't think anyone here has been saying longer = better, except for the consumers so far - and even they say it shouldn't have filler text. I fully agree with that as well, because filler text is really annoying and pointless.

What bothers me is this whole '$20 is too much for a relatively short game'. While I agree $20 is much for just 2/3 hours of reading, it's still something for the developer to decide. I actually think $5 is ridiculous unless a VN takes half an hour to an hour or something.

Furthermore, they might have had much costs and needed much time to make the game or they might even be running a business/life on this whole thing.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

There is an argument to be made for volume. It takes you less time to write a 2-3 hour game, etc. and at $5 you will probably move more copies than a $20 game. But again, it all depends. When it comes down to it, you just need to charge a fair price. Length, quality of art and music, it all factors in. Just don't treat length or hours of gameplay like some "holy grail" where longer=better.

I don't think anyone here has been saying longer = better, except for the consumers so far - and even they say it shouldn't have filler text. I fully agree with that as well, because filler text is really annoying and pointless.

What bothers me is this whole '$20 is too much for a relatively short game'. While I agree $20 is much for just 2/3 hours of reading, it's still something for the developer to decide. I actually think $5 is ridiculous unless a VN takes half an hour to an hour or something.

Furthermore, they might have had much costs and needed much time to make the game or they might even be running a business/life on this whole thing.

$5 was just an example. I do think it is up to the developer. But if the developer is running a business or making a living off of making commercial VNs, they need to do the research and budget planning that major companies do. Namely, if you know your VN is so short that people won't pay $20 for it, you need to budget what you spend on art and music and other things accordingly so you can sell the game for less.

It is a hard formula to arrive at, but there is a "sweet spot" for every game in terms of price. This is almost an intuitive decision on the part of the consumers, based off graphics, gameplay, perceived value, etc. When a game is priced at this sweet spot it moves the most copies. If you price a game too low it can actually hurt sales, and if you price a game too high it will obviously hurt sales.

It depends on platform as well - even if a game is identical on iPhone or Android as the PC version, you can't charge as much for those versions as you can the PC one. Volume usually takes up the slack on those platforms, with the $1.99 version moving a LOT more copies than the PC version.

But again, it is all about proper budgeting by the VN developer. Market research and study of similar games' sales will tell you a lot. For instance, if major VN companies consider 5000 copies sold good, and 10000 great, then you know that is your upper ceiling threshold. You can also figure you won't sell near as many copies as a major VN company because you don't have a marketing department. So you settle on something more conservative, like expecting to sale 800 copies. Okay, now you figure out how much you can reasonably sell the game you are planning for. Let's go with your figure - $20. So if you sell the 800 copies you are planning on moving, before taxes and portal fees, you will bring in $16,000 dollars. Now you know that you cannot spend over 16K on your game if you wish to see any profit.

Even more realistically, let's say you decide you should be able to move 200 copies, and it is a pretty short game, so you really can't charge more than $5. Simple formula - $1000 is your max estimated profit before taxes and fees, so you have to plan your game development spending to be less than that to turn a profit.

Check out VN sales figures HERE, and then realize you won't move anywhere NEAR those numbers. Then plan accordingly. If a developer spends so much on what should be a $5-10 game that they must charge $20 for it, then they have only themselves to blame when it doesn't sell well.

[Anna]

Ah, like that. You're right, that's something to remember for people who're trying to run a professional business in it or want to sell as much as possible. I just got reminded of someone who included voice acting in their game to make it cooler, and then people started complaining that it became more expensive because of the studio-costs, which I found a little sad ^^;.

But yes, I agree. I also think it's wise in general to look around at 'what's normal', in other words the prices of similar VNs. Japanese sales figures or prices won't tell us much, but if you look at the OELVN pricing range, you can see it's somewhere between $10-$25 in most cases. So, unless your VN is really short (< 2 hours), I think going below $10 isn't worth it if the other aspects of the VN such as the music, contents and art are fine.

[DaFool]

$15 is now too expensive.

Le Sigh. Especially nowadays when you need a team of specialists to even get acceptable quality.

[J. Datie]

$15 is now too expensive.

Le Sigh. Especially nowadays when you need a team of specialists to even get acceptable quality.

I wouldn't be too concerned about it. There were only 2 commenters who complained it was too high, and the overblown sarcastic response to the first one got 10 likes.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

$15 is now too expensive.

Well, some people thought $15 was fine, others that it was too expensive. It will always depend on a consumer's personal feelings.

Visual Novels do have a lot to compete with now for consumer money. With Carpe Fulgar and other companies releasing games like Fortune Summoners or Recettear, which have anime graphics, storylines, and lots of deep gameplay on top of it all for the same price point, some consumers will be hesitant or unwilling to spend the same amount of money on a VN with minimalistic graphics and a storyline that may not last as long.

It is why I've always pointed out that the most successful games we see in this community have strong gameplay elements in addition to story and choices. We can get story from so many types of games today that it is hard to stand out on the basis of just story alone. I'll admit that this is a sticking point for me personally on a lot of Visual Novels. I recently purchased My Girlfriend is the President from JAST for $40, and after playing it I'm pretty sorry that I did. For it's length it has depressingly few choices (only 4,5, or 6 depending on route). The story was cute enough, but it wasn't 40 dollars cute. Most gamers want to play games, not read novels. I think that is an important distinction VN developers need to remember - when consumers are buying a game, they want gameplay. Most will buy a book or manga if they want story without interactivity.

So that influences consumer opinion on price point - people are used to spending $10 on a book or manga. Naturally some of them will think negatively of VNs that have the same or less content as a manga or book when they are charged "game prices" for that content.

Developers must budget and price as they see fit, and the market will judge whether their decisions were correct.

Le Sigh. Especially nowadays when you need a team of specialists to even get acceptable quality.

Maybe. It shouldn't come as a surprise. The market is constantly changing. Back when OELVN games were rare with fewer stand out hits, acceptable quality was naturally lower - beggars can't be choosers after all. But with the recent flood of quality OELVN games the acceptable quality will naturally start to creep up higher and higher, as "survival of the fittest" takes over, since it takes a higher and higher quality to be noticed in the crowd. A sort of natural market evolution if you will.

It may eventually become like the Japanese doujinshi market, where strong titles from dedicated specialists or groups seeking to go pro come to dominate the scene. I don't know - that's a discussion for a different day.

[Applegate]

I think the problem with prices is that a Visual Novel developer needs to balance the cost of developing the Visual Novel with the price of selling it; I see artists offering themselves for $5 to $15 per sprite with 3-6 emotions, one outfit and one pose. Selling one Visual Novel would afford one character's basic set of six. If you have multiple characters, CGs, drawn backgrounds, composed music tracks and more besides, you'll find that it's very difficult to earn back your investment through sales alone!

You also need to know how to market it, and of course, you have to have an interesting enough story hook to get people in the first place. Definitely understandable people'd price the VNs high when selling a few at high cost is less risky than selling a bunch at low cost, given the limited (paying) VN audience... and then worry about piracy!

[DaFool]

Kay, I'm getting off-topic but I really enjoy LateWhiteRabbit's contributions to the discussions.

I'm reminded of the people complaining why there aren't any more traditional crpgs anymore. Well? Because practically every game nowadays has RPG elements!

So it would make sense if the VN format won't be enough in themselves if almost every game out there now has a campaign mode with multiple endings anyway.

Even the motion comics movement which I praise so much, I realize they mostly come as ancillary media that accompanies a larger AAA game or blockbuster movie -- they're only meant to whet the audience appetite.

I think one of the reasons otome games may be so popular is because "date this guy" is a viable gameplay element not found in more traditional games. Whereas heavily plot-based non-romantic stories can viably be executed within the gameplay of other types of games.

It may eventually become like the Japanese doujinshi market, where strong titles from dedicated specialists or groups seeking to go pro come to dominate the scene. I don't know - that's a discussion for a different day.

I think we're already there. Most of the prominent, if commercial, titles, come from people with the advantage of time: they either do this full-time, or part-time. (I'm talking about sustainable EVN groups, not anomalous one-shots like 4LS). As a former lone wolf developer I feel I have to latch onto entities with a full-time art staff at their beck and call or else I'll fade out of the scene entirely.