Yuuko Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 37 minutes ago, Rooke said: Anyway, this is one of the reasons why voice acting spoils games. They greatly increase the development cost of the game (more in Japan than in the West,) which therefore requires the studios to move more units, it can also increase the price, the studio needs to play it safer to appeal to a wider audience, it can limit the amount of writing in a game, it limits the flexibility of the writing (because now if you want to add a line it must be recorded) - all in all I'd prefer games WITHOUT voice acting. Writing doesn't matter as long as the game is cute On a more serious note I believe that voice acting is good getting character's emotions and personality through on charages. More writing heavy VNs could do without voice acting but narrative/protagonist's thoughts are almost never voiced right? Narrative/protagonist's thoughts are more important in telling a heavy story than some characters' lines, right? So there should be a lot more actual text describing shit than characters talking? Also I believe that people appreciate the voice acting in chuuniges. Who the hell would understand what they are saying without voice acting? Just some random thoughts. Feel free to ignore it if it doesn't make sense. ホアー ビち 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ホアー ビち Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 4 hours ago, Nosebleed said: It's the market size. Visual novels are a niche within a niche and they can't afford to be priced too lowly or they won't return the investment at all. isnt it the contrary? isnt it niche cuz its priced high? i thought the whole vn decline and small market was cuz theyr expensive (CGs and VA especially), meaning teens cant afford like they buy manga and LNs, limiting the market to adults (the reason there is H in vn is cuz the market is ruled by the grown-ups) 1 hour ago, Rooke said: Anyway, this is one of the reasons why voice acting spoils games. this is wrong, yo. good voice acting can enhance the vn experience. even if the writing's bad, theres the va to make up for it (it wont be able to heal it magically, but still makes better). i mean, whatd be of vns without the cute loli voices or the teasy oneechan voice? or the moe tics voiced? graceless. va is one of the reasons vn is a diffrent medium, cuz it adds what a book doesnt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
solidbatman Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 4 minutes ago, ロル ビち said: this is wrong, yo. good voice acting can enhance the vn experience. even if the writing's bad, theres the va to make up for it (it wont be able to heal it magically, but still makes better). i mean, whatd be of vns without the cute loli voices or the teasy oneechan voice? or the moe tics voiced? graceless. va is one of the reasons vn is a diffrent medium, cuz it adds what a book doesnt. but VNs suck Deep Blue 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ホアー ビち Posted February 22, 2016 Share Posted February 22, 2016 23 hours ago, solidbatman said: but VNs suck suck what? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CeruleanGamer Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 3 hours ago, Kiriririri said: Writing doesn't matter as long as the game is cute Oh you.... Imagine if nobody pirated VNs. Bet VNs woulds would be cheaper than gas. Well, investing on VNs is not a hobby for jobless/poor people unfortunately. You will need a job if you want to get a nice shelf of them or being able to buy several dozen of them a year. Arcadeotic 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conjueror Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 Most VNs retail at 80-100$ in Japan, so you're already getting them super cheap on steam. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 18 minutes ago, Conjueror said: Most VNs retail at 80-100$ in Japan, so you're already getting them super cheap on steam. Actually it's the other way round - it's super expensive in Japan, like most things actually. (Japan is well known to be a pricey place, it historically protecting its markets from competition is one of the more well known reasons.) The average VN costs about 300,000 dollars US to make. The indie game, Divinity: Original Sin cost many times that. Both are indie studios. The average VN is priced close to a hundred dollars US in Japan, Divinity was priced at half that. So it has little to do with expense. It has little to do with 'amount of time spent within the game' because Skyrim, Fallout, all offer a lot more. Voice acting isn't an excuse because everybody has voice acting in their games. There is really no justification for these games to be priced at 80-100 dollars American, other than possibly 'hardly anybody wants to buy them', and the natural counter-argument for that is maybe 'nobody buys them BECAUSE it costs an arm and a leg.' I also tend to blame the inefficient manner in which Japanese devs tend to go about the creation of their games, but that may not apply to VNs specifically (other than some studios habit of creating an engine for each game they release. Needlessly.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 Quote Eroge should also move towards making good but short titles, not whooping epics like before. The 8,800 price range is what is killing many potential customers. Young people can only afford 1000yen-and-under items. And so manga and LN fit that category. As for anime it is free to watch when aired… yet Bishoujo-ge sticks to the 8,800 yen price bracket. Young people cannot afford that price point. http://blog.fuwanovel.net/2013/02/the-unstoppable-downfall-of-the-bishoujo-ge-industry-interview-with-nbkz-producer-at-minori/ All common sense points. I should point out, that while TWD and Life is Strange aren't technically VNs, they are VERY close, adopt the points mentioned above, and have sold a bundle. Episodic content is probably where we're all headed toward. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conjueror Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 1 hour ago, Rooke said: It has little to do with 'amount of time spent within the game' because Skyrim, Fallout, all offer a lot more. I dunno, I like my visual novels a lot more than fallouts or skyrims, and would rather pay more for them. But if you manage to make them sell like Divinity, then they'll become cheaper, sure. No one's making VNs pricey just because -- it's what the developers have to do to survive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hayashi Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 30-60 USD is already really cheap for Vns. Look at the JP hard copies. 5000-10000~Yen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decay Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 3 hours ago, Conjueror said: Most VNs retail at 80-100$ in Japan, so you're already getting them super cheap on steam. Well, no, them being that expensive in Japan doesn't suddenly make the Steam prices cheap. VN prices are still very high in the west. This conversation reminds me of wargaming in the 2000s. I'm not saying the wargaming and VN scenes are directly analogous, but it's interesting food for thought. Sites like Shrapnel Games and Matrix Games were the sole publishers of PC wargames. The audience was considered super niche, and they got by selling their humble indie projects for $60+ a piece to the thousand or so people who bought them. Then a few like the Dominions devs tried to break the trend. They thought to sell their games for a cheaper price on Steam. Turns out, their games were capable of pulling in WAY more customers than they ever imagined. By lowering their prices and opening the door to a wider audience, their sales multiplied over ten times and they started making a lot more money. The same thing happened with Spiderweb Software's RPGs. Niche "hardcore" PC RPGs with crude artwork, like the kinds Spiderweb made, were thought to have a very limited audience. Jeff Vogel, the president, always ardently supported the philosophy behind his games' high price points. But one day he decided to do an experiment, and bundle a few of his older games together at a very cheap price point, and it was a huge success. Again, this niche was much bigger than anyone imagined. He ended up being swayed completely and started preaching the opposite, that many niches are niches simply because the people behind them refuse to open the doors to outsiders. I think VNs on Steam are proving this again. It is very evident that one of the primary concerns of Steam customers is price. Practically all of the most successful VNs on the platform are inexpensive. If Sakura Spirit was twice as long and cost twice as much, offering the same value proposition, I guarantee you that it would have sold a fraction of what it did. Some companies get it. Gaokao is a chinese VN (poorly) translated to english and sold for $10, and is a VN/Dating Sim hybrid of surprising length, and has sold tens of thousands of copies. I'm not sure what all of this means. I do think VNs could actually benefit from lower price points across the board. But can I prove this? Hardly. I'm not saying that everyone should start selling their 60 hour epic stories for $10, but I think there's evidence to support that VNs may be overcosted. Darklord Rooke 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WinterfuryZX Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 2 hours ago, Rooke said: Actually it's the other way round - it's super expensive in Japan, like most things actually. That's not true, japan is quite cheap compared To northern european countries for exhample. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ironstorm Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 Whilst it can be possible to target specific countries to hire your artists/staff. Look at Huniepop for example most of the artists were from Indonesia or Poland with the exception of one. You still go through the same mindfield to find someone reliable with good enough materiel that people will approve in general. Then they need to be able to produce content reasonably within a timeframe it is very common for even artists that produce great stuff on their own terms to struggle to work towards a deadline. Then who knows if you're able to communicate easily and wherever you want someone you can communicate with easily. There is a fine line between being solely a business or having something with a semblance of a team. With online being the way it is even someone in a country where the exchange rate may look beneficial to you, might infact be earning higher/charging higher then the standard of their economy cause they know they can within a internet climate. This is not globally the case and it easier to pay someone their entire wage if you can afford to do so. A Evn priced at $5 is pretty low even for devs/publishers if we consider that steam nets 30% a publisher nets another % , company taxes take a %(if you are one) then personal taxes if you make enough. By the end there isn't much left. Even if the game theoretically sold 10,000 copies you'd be lucky to make $17-22,000 out of it. If you a 2-3 man team and you took 3-4 months to make that you'd probably ok at the lower end of the average wage. Though not many Vn's sell that many copies on average. If however you were a Japanese Team that also had to get their title translated and it took you a year or two to make it you'd be in a serious state of loss bringing the title over here at least until the title had been on sale for a while. This applies differently to publishers that translate stuff cause the production time is taken out of the equation. Then it becomes about paying your translators sorting out licenses and paying a preamuim on some more voice acting along with possibly resolution changes. Then they have to make a profit somehow in doing so whilst the developers still get some of the money(depending on the deal) Can anyone name any current $5-10 20-30 hour long Visual Novels on sale with voice acting that are Japanese Ip's ? P.S I took so long thinking about this response that what I was saying became erratic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred the Barber Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 22 minutes ago, Ironstorm said: Can anyone name any current $5-10 20-30 hour long Visual Novels on sale with voice acting that are Japanese Ip's ? Sure: If My Heart Had Wings is usually on sale for either somewhere in that range, though it's currently full-priced at $15. SteamSpy estimates it has about 4x as many owners as Clannad (with its $40-50 price range, though admittedly somewhat longer) on Steam... But interestingly, G-Senjou sells for only slightly above that price range, and has even vastly fewer owners than Clannad. Unlike Clannad, G-Senjou has no name recognition in the west, but If My Heart Had Wings certainly doesn't either. The only explanation I can think of for that vast a discrepancy is that people who might have bought G-Senjou didn't bother because of the more-or-less-identical fan translation, to be honest (which doesn't apply to Clannad since it was a retranslation of a known problematic project). At any rate, it makes me wonder if Sekai Project even recouped their licensing costs on the G-Senjou release. Ironstorm 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graah Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 There's also market saturation to consider. The first sakura game sold a lot more than later ones did (according to http://steamspy.com). Pretty sure it's the same for nekopara. The danger with episodic game releases is that your sales might collapse completely for part 2 when you don't have that new and interesting factor giving you publicity. And of course if someone still has your first game on their ever expanding backlog they might not buy the second until they do manage to finish it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Okarin Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 I think that Clannad is expensive, and really not worth the price. With its sheer length I would probably end up bored, because lengthier isn't more fun by itself. So I didn't buy it. I'm better off playing other Key titles that are mostly more of the same. On the other hand, I decided to support SonoHana with its first ever Steam release. 8 euros and the game barely covers for it. But it's an assumable price. For me assumable prices go up to 20 euros/dollars, but I'm not an student anymore, it should be harsher for them. For me, it's all reduced to how bad you wanna play it, not the nature of the game. Likewise I consider a blatant ripoff to charge 18 euros for a HD movie download on Google Play, but I'll probably crack the piggy bank open to buy Zootopia in due time, because I loved the movie, and want to support the product and the people who made it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChaosRaven Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 4 hours ago, Fred the Barber said: Sure: If My Heart Had Wings is usually on sale for either somewhere in that range, though it's currently full-priced at $15. SteamSpy estimates it has about 4x as many owners as Clannad (with its $40-50 price range, though admittedly somewhat longer) on Steam... But interestingly, G-Senjou sells for only slightly above that price range, and has even vastly fewer owners than Clannad. Unlike Clannad, G-Senjou has no name recognition in the west, but If My Heart Had Wings certainly doesn't either. The only explanation I can think of for that vast a discrepancy is that people who might have bought G-Senjou didn't bother because of the more-or-less-identical fan translation, to be honest (which doesn't apply to Clannad since it was a retranslation of a known problematic project). At any rate, it makes me wonder if Sekai Project even recouped their licensing costs on the G-Senjou release. Don't forget that If my Heart had Wings is available for quite a long time now. It went through several Steam sales and was also available through several destributors who also offered Steam keys like MangaGamer, J-List, etc. Ironically, the huge amount of negative press it got also brought it a lot of attention. And it's still a quality title with some stellar production values. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Okarin Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 If my Heart had Wings is also available for Android on Play Store. You can even play it for free, but it has a point system that will probably get on your nerves. Still, the very real possibility of playing it on your medium-priced tablet, if you drop the bucks, is there. This fact is independent of its Steam sales, but it probably has added more popularity to the title. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silvz Posted February 23, 2016 Share Posted February 23, 2016 I couldn't read everything, but, you are thinking about pricing as if to write a whole novel, to program it, to voice it, review, check for problems, etc etc was an easy and cheap job, which is not. You are brazilian, right? We pay in a book - which is something relatively different, but still similar because of story-telling - 40 reais, which nowadays would be what, 10~12 dollars? This to a book that has, in general, only words and the work in it is usually "easier" At the same time, kindred spirits on the roof, last time I checked, was 65 reais, something like 4 dollars more than a book. Although not full voiced, it still have voices, text, backgrounds, sprites, music, people who write the story, people who translate the story, people who check for problems, etc, etc. For just 4 dollars more. There are exceptions like Clannad, which was 90 and so reais [90 / 4 = the value in dollars], but in general, I think the price is allright for what it is, and complanying about it is bad [to not say stupid]. And yeah, sekai project is a problem, but at least we have seen results Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted February 24, 2016 Share Posted February 24, 2016 23 hours ago, Silvz said: There are exceptions like Clannad, which was 90 and so reais [90 / 4 = the value in dollars], but in general, I think the price is allright for what it is, and complanying about it is bad [to not say stupid]. You guys are getting a discount (I don't know how Valve charges differently for each region.) The price in the US (and in Aus) is 50 USD, which is equivalent to 200 Brazilian Reals. Silvz 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ホアー ビち Posted February 24, 2016 Share Posted February 24, 2016 On 2/23/2016 at 9:54 PM, CeruleanGamer said: Imagine if nobody pirated VNs. Bet VNs woulds would be cheaper than gas. jap producers dont rly see piracy as a major issue, tho Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silvz Posted February 24, 2016 Share Posted February 24, 2016 2 hours ago, Rooke said: You guys are getting a discount (I don't know how Valve charges differently for each region.) The price in the US (and in Aus) is 50 USD, which is equivalent to 200 Brazilian Reals. Really? THAT is expensive. Clannad is right now 90.99 reais [23 dollars] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yuuko Posted February 24, 2016 Share Posted February 24, 2016 I still think that $50 is totally okay price for Clannad but it depends on what you are used to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decay Posted February 25, 2016 Share Posted February 25, 2016 1 hour ago, Silvz said: Really? THAT is expensive. Clannad is right now 90.99 reais [23 dollars] Historically, most major western VN releases are around the $50 USD mark. I believe MG has lowered their prices on new games a tad, recently. Silvz 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WinterfuryZX Posted February 25, 2016 Share Posted February 25, 2016 I see what's happening here, steam is doing massive discounts for people living in countries with weak currencies. AAA Games costs way more if You purchase them in europe, and of course small publishers can't do the same as steam and regionalize their stores. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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