DEVGRU_P Posted March 1, 2016 Share Posted March 1, 2016 Hello everyone, I am posting on behalf of DEVGRU-P. We're an American Visual Novel Development Team, and have a big release coming up next week. As a team, we very interested in putting our money back into the community, and want to help other developers get their projects off the ground and on Steam. As such, we are looking for Visual Novels that are currently early to midway in the development cycle, who are aiming for a commercial release in the future. Because we have worked with Valve on getting our game onto Steam, we have a pretty good handle on how to actually use Valve's software (SteamPipe) to handle game builds and keys and whatnot. Specifically, what we want to do is, Kickstarter -Pre Campaign advice, helping you pick a good funding amojnt, designing reward tiers. -Building the campaign, writing the pitch, laying it out to make an attractive and professional looking campaign. -Contacting gaming websites to drive traffic to your campaign. Steam -Building your Steam Greenlight page. -Submitting the game to Steam Greenlight (this costs $100 the first time an account submits to Greenlight, our account already has gone through the process, which our account has). -Managing customer questions on Steam, monitoring the page. -After the game has been approved by Valve, we'll build the Steam Store page, and handle actually getting the files on Valve's server. In addition, depending on the funding goals and our level of interest in the project, we would also be interested in footing some of the development costs. Our primary interests are in games that really set themselves apart concept wise, and bring something new to the genre. Specifically some general things we have an interest in, Comedy Military/War [BxG, GxG] (So no Yaoi) Non-Romance Games Please feel free to contact us with any questions, or to discuss working together on your project. If you want to make it easier, please let us know this about your project, How far along in the development process are you/When do you expect to finish? How much money do you need (at the very bare minimum) to make your game, and what do you plan on spending it on? Do you currently have any funding? Do you have a full team already? Does your team have much prior experience? Also we'd love to see the art you have so far, so that we can get a style idea. Thanks for your time! DEVGRU-P Hanako, Jason_OCE, Diamon and 1 other 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkZedge Posted March 1, 2016 Share Posted March 1, 2016 Nice to see more OELVN publishers around..best of luck with your project Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diamon Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 Indeed, very nice of you to offer an alternative to OELVN projects! Best of luck, I do believe that healthy competition between publishers is a good way to make the EVN scene grow! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEVGRU_P Posted March 2, 2016 Author Share Posted March 2, 2016 1 hour ago, DarkZedge said: Nice to see more OELVN publishers around..best of luck with your project 15 minutes ago, Diamon said: Indeed, very nice of you to offer an alternative to OELVN projects! Best of luck, I do believe that healthy competition between publishers is a good way to make the EVN scene grow! Thanks to both of you! We really want to expand the OELVN market and community, and show that VNs are a lot more than just Nukige, but a new artistic medium. Also, if either of you know of any projects that might benefit, definitely let them know to contact us. We don't know what's out there yet, and the only way we can work with them is if we actually know that they are there, hah. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diamon Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 If I'm not mistaken, I think the developers for Nostalgia might be looking for a publisher, especially since they started their campaign recently. Possible I'm confusing them with another project though. Anyway, here is their kickstarter page : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/magnastudios/nostalgia-two-worlds-one-soul Two other projects that I've stumbled upon and that do not have any publishers associated yet, and which seem to be of rather good quality : - http://bloodychronicles.com/ - http://void.vifthfloor.moe/ Not sure if they'd be interested in collaborating with you, but it's still worth a shot messaging them I believe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Sands Entertainment Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 Where is your official site? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diamon Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 Just now, Black Sands Entertainment said: Where is your official site? Yeah, it would definitely help if you could provide a website. At least it's much easier for people to link your page, and it gives the impression that you're doing legit and serious business, and that you're professional about it. DEVGRU_P 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Sands Entertainment Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 3 minutes ago, Diamon said: Yeah, it would definitely help if you could provide a website. At least it's much easier for people to link your page, and it gives the impression that you're doing legit and serious business, and that you're professional about it. I only mention this because anyone can say "i can get you on steam" but that really means nothing and selling 15 to 35% of your revenue for such a thing is bonkers. I like seeing publishers bring their own well established market and press contacts to the table.If I am giving up 35% of my revenue, i need an over 50% return on investment for it to be worth the time. DEVGRU_P 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEVGRU_P Posted March 2, 2016 Author Share Posted March 2, 2016 37 minutes ago, Black Sands Entertainment said: Where is your official site? 35 minutes ago, Diamon said: Yeah, it would definitely help if you could provide a website. At least it's much easier for people to link your page, and it gives the impression that you're doing legit and serious business, and that you're professional about it. Good idea, we should get one of those up. Today is when I finally formalized my idea of how this is going to work, so you're definitely right that we should get a team website out there. 30 minutes ago, Black Sands Entertainment said: I only mention this because anyone can say "i can get you on steam" but that really means nothing and selling 15 to 35% of your revenue for such a thing is bonkers. I like seeing publishers bring their own well established market and press contacts to the table.If I am giving up 35% of my revenue, i need an over 50% return on investment for it to be worth the time. It's also the funding aspect, in that we'd be backing them monetarily, in addition to, or in lieu of, crowdfunding. I wouldn't expect someone to be giving up a large chunk of their revenue just for "advice", the goal here is creating a publishing group that is fair to developers, and doesn't wrangle them into exploitative contracts, a publisher by devs, for devs. Getting on Steam is, as long as you have a reasonable product, not terribly complex, it's making sure you keep the fanbase growing while you're working on the game, and not releasing to a bunch of people who have already lost interest. Black Sands Entertainment 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diamon Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 I think black sand was merely wondering about what would be your rate / price, since you don't have a website and are not talking about them in your first post. The fact that you're only aiming at commercial releases tell us that you are not really interested in publishing games that won't make a profit, so it'd be only natural for us to ask about how much such a service would cost us. Outsourcing a service for a price is always a risk for us dev, so we need to know if the ratio risk / benefit is good enough. If your goal is to eventually create a business out of this, we need to know why we should pick you over another publisher (or even over self publishing). Either a guarantee that you will bring results, or either a cheap price that makes the investment not something too risky. Ioruko 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEVGRU_P Posted March 2, 2016 Author Share Posted March 2, 2016 11 minutes ago, Diamon said: I think black sand was merely wondering about what would be your rate / price, since you don't have a website and are not talking about them in your first post. The fact that you're only aiming at commercial releases tell us that you are not really interested in publishing games that won't make a profit, so it'd be only natural for us to ask about how much such a service would cost us. Outsourcing a service for a price is always a risk for us dev, so we need to know if the ratio risk / benefit is good enough. If your goal is to eventually create a business out of this, we need to know why we should pick you over another publisher (or even over self publishing). Either a guarantee that you will bring results, or either a cheap price that makes the investment not something too risky. Ahh, I misunderstood, I thought he was asking 'what do you actually plan to do' as opposed to the specific revenue split, and amount of funding. In terms of specifics, it's one of those things where it's almost entirely dependent on the project itself. What we evaluate the risk as, how popular we believe it will be, our personal interest in the project, and if we have any experience with the team behind it. Obviously (actuarial science powers activate here) teams with no games under their belt, or who are earlier in the development process are riskier, so the revenue split would be a higher amount, than if we were working with an experienced team that was 70% of the way to completing the game (as they are lower risk). I know that "it depends" is probably not the answer you want to hear, but that's the most honest answer I can give. I'd have to take a look at a project before I could actually determine what the rates would be. Some things that I can guarantee though, is that we don't have any plans to, Lock developers into a multi-title deal (where they have to work with us if they want to do a sequel) Become IP holders, developers would retain the rights to use their characters and art in other projects how they see fit after completing the game And other such practices that are rampant in the publishing industry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diamon Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 1 minute ago, DEVGRU_P said: Ahh, I misunderstood, I thought he was asking 'what do you actually plan to do' as opposed to the specific revenue split, and amount of funding. In terms of specifics, it's one of those things where it's almost entirely dependent on the project itself. What we evaluate the risk as, how popular we believe it will be, our personal interest in the project, and if we have any experience with the team behind it. Obviously (actuarial science powers activate here) teams with no games under their belt, or who are earlier in the development process are riskier, so the revenue split would be a higher amount, than if we were working with an experienced team that was 70% of the way to completing the game (as they are lower risk). I know that "it depends" is probably not the answer you want to hear, but that's the most honest answer I can give. I'd have to take a look at a project before I could actually determine what the rates would be. Some things that I can guarantee though, is that we don't have any plans to, Lock developers into a multi-title deal (where they have to work with us if they want to do a sequel) Become IP holders, developers would retain the rights to use their characters and art in other projects how they see fit after completing the game And other such practices that are rampant in the publishing industry I see, that does seem fair, I don't have any particular objection on the matter to be honest. However, I'm curious about what could push a developer to choose you over someone else? Let's face it, your two current big competitors are Manga Gamer and Sekai Project. I'm not extremely familiar with how MangaGamer advertises their projects as a publisher, but I do know about Sekai. While I can't say (from an external point of view) that their PR and marketing is the best, it is currently easily counterbalanced by the fact that they have a huge reach, to the point that even if what they are only doing is retweeting stuff for my own project, I get instantly big visit spikes on my website. Do you have any guarantee that you can provide better than them in terms of visibility (because in the end, it's really what matters the most in publishing and advertisement)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEVGRU_P Posted March 2, 2016 Author Share Posted March 2, 2016 17 minutes ago, Diamon said: I see, that does seem fair, I don't have any particular objection on the matter to be honest. However, I'm curious about what could push a developer to choose you over someone else? Let's face it, your two current big competitors are Manga Gamer and Sekai Project. I'm not extremely familiar with how MangaGamer advertises their projects as a publisher, but I do know about Sekai. While I can't say (from an external point of view) that their PR and marketing is the best, it is currently easily counterbalanced by the fact that they have a huge reach, to the point that even if what they are only doing is retweeting stuff for my own project, I get instantly big visit spikes on my website. Do you have any guarantee that you can provide better than them in terms of visibility (because in the end, it's really what matters the most in publishing and advertisement)? To be entirely honest, I don't know what Sekai Project's contracts or internal practices are like. That's something that's typically kept private, but I know that for us at least, we are going into this with a completely transparent model. The publisher-developer relationship is often one of antagonism, and we want to get away from that. More like a collaborative effort, than the "pump and dump" strategy that a lot of publishers use, to try and exploit game developers. So while I have no issues with Sekai project, I always think that competition is good, and bringing visual novels that might fly under their radar to Steam, definitely can't hurt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Black Sands Entertainment Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 Well I know when I get my publisher, i will not under any circumstance settle for a large cut going to my publisher on my sequels. I am building a franchise and any deals I make will definitely diminish over time. Getting 50% of Kanye before anyone knows him is just fine but getting 5% of today's Kanye is damn good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Diamon Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 Well, since you seem to be dodging my question, I won't pursue the matter any further. Though with all due respect, I don't think it's a very sensible marketing argument to say that you can provide a better collaboration environment than others while not actually knowing how your competitors are proceeding. Hope you will succeed in finding people interested, and hopefully you can become a big publisher in the EVN world as well! MoonStar 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEVGRU_P Posted March 2, 2016 Author Share Posted March 2, 2016 7 minutes ago, Black Sands Entertainment said: Well I know when I get my publisher, i will not under any circumstance settle for a large cut going to my publisher on my sequels. I am building a franchise and any deals I make will definitely diminish over time. Getting 50% of Kanye before anyone knows him is just fine but getting 5% of today's Kanye is damn good. Absolutely, multi-title contracts are the bane of the publishing industry from the developer perspective. We want to be super clear up front that we have no intention of locking people into contracts for intellectual property rights or sequel rights. Our contracts are for one game and one game only, the development team retains all of the rights to make merchandise, produce sequels, etc. 5 minutes ago, Diamon said: Well, since you seem to be dodging my question, I won't pursue the matter any further. Though with all due respect, I don't think it's a very sensible marketing argument to say that you can provide a better collaboration environment than others while not actually knowing how your competitors are proceeding. Hope you will succeed in finding people interested, and hopefully you can become a big publisher in the EVN world as well! Sorry that I couldn't be of much more help on those specifics. Our interest is a mix of building a sustainable business model, and allowing for other developers to bring something new and thoughtful to the OELVN genre. Thanks, take care! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IGRASILSTUDIO Posted March 2, 2016 Share Posted March 2, 2016 19 hours ago, Diamon said: If I'm not mistaken, I think the developers for Nostalgia might be looking for a publisher, especially since they started their campaign recently. Possible I'm confusing them with another project though. Anyway, here is their kickstarter page : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/magnastudios/nostalgia-two-worlds-one-soul Two other projects that I've stumbled upon and that do not have any publishers associated yet, and which seem to be of rather good quality : - http://bloodychronicles.com/ - http://void.vifthfloor.moe/ Not sure if they'd be interested in collaborating with you, but it's still worth a shot messaging them I believe. Thank you for kind words about us but we will team up with MiKandi Japan ^^" Wish you best of luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ironstorm Posted March 3, 2016 Share Posted March 3, 2016 Monetary investment will mean something to some developers and more to those from certain countries. I make a living marketing and do public relations for those with or without publishers and generally non of them would ever discuss publicly what their rates are. Its best to approach developers directly or look for those that are looking for some sort of funding. Whilst my knowledge goes further cause of my previous involvement with at least one of the two named publishing companies I can't really say. I know for some devs they don't like the potential idea of taking $5000 to lose $30,000 or whatever amount they end up earning. But generally you need the money from somewhere.When your self funding sufficient you can then chose to go forward with or without your publisher for some the difference is enough. Not everyone is cut out to do their own PR/Marketing either. In general if your big release next week really is a "big" release then you'l have a easier time garnering attention because you'l be able to show off the success of your own title and convey the potential that you can market a studio as effectively. On an alternative note Mangagamer doesn't publish western Evn's currently with one recent exception that doesn't mean they won't either its just that they are not right now. But they do act as a distribution store for mostly adult titles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PAscension Posted March 3, 2016 Share Posted March 3, 2016 (Well, I might as well try...) I'm a writer who's been working on a script for a visual novel that's very important to me. It is about war/military. I want it to have comedy, but I'm not sure if I'm good enough at comedy for that, so I might need help in the casual scenes. But I am very good at character development, plot development, and drama. Where I am in development... is a little pathetic, honestly. I have 8,000 lines typed and most of my plans mapped out. I don't even have a team yet because I have no idea how I could ever pay them... But what I do have is a project that I believe in. The story is called "Project Ascension". The story takes place in a future where a man named Odaen Lunira has created a project to gift people with superhuman abilities for the purpose of bettering mankind. But like with any power, fear was soon bred, and all one million of the Gifted were imprisoned, never to be seen again by the society that has forsaken them. That is, until sixteen years later, when Odaen finds a way to free them all at once. This is where our story begins. When the Gifted are released, all chaos ensues. As a visual novel, you will follow several different routes that can help shape the destiny of Earth after this fateful day. Can there ever be a peace in a world where there are Gifted, or will the progression of mankind ultimately lead to its downfall? Through a journey of danger and deep philosophy, you will wonder, who is the real enemy? And how will you ever defeat them? I know I'm inexperienced and a risky investment, but just knowing there are people who believe in me would push me forward to make the best story possible. I hope you can help me make my dream come true. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEVGRU_P Posted March 4, 2016 Author Share Posted March 4, 2016 On 3/3/2016 at 7:42 PM, Ironstorm said: Monetary investment will mean something to some developers and more to those from certain countries. I make a living marketing and do public relations for those with or without publishers and generally non of them would ever discuss publicly what their rates are. Its best to approach developers directly or look for those that are looking for some sort of funding. Whilst my knowledge goes further cause of my previous involvement with at least one of the two named publishing companies I can't really say. I know for some devs they don't like the potential idea of taking $5000 to lose $30,000 or whatever amount they end up earning. But generally you need the money from somewhere.When your self funding sufficient you can then chose to go forward with or without your publisher for some the difference is enough. Not everyone is cut out to do their own PR/Marketing either. In general if your big release next week really is a "big" release then you'l have a easier time garnering attention because you'l be able to show off the success of your own title and convey the potential that you can market a studio as effectively. On an alternative note Mangagamer doesn't publish western Evn's currently with one recent exception that doesn't mean they won't either its just that they are not right now. But they do act as a distribution store for mostly adult titles. Yeah, I don't expect it to be the perfect formula for everyone, but I know that it definitely will work for some people. It's just about getting in touch with the right people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ka-Aniki Posted March 19, 2016 Share Posted March 19, 2016 Hey all, I just wanted to put some advice out here in terms of publishing a game etc. I have published a game along with making multiple games but im a super pro at it. But here are some things to take into consideration while you are looking for a publisher: Can they effectively communicate with my audience and help with updates, help with the game when needed etc. Can you share every aspect of your game with that publisher and feel safe? Do they have a broad knowledge of the market? And the most important question: Can you get along with your publishers? One of the worst things iv saw is a publisher and dev breaking up after not agreeing on certain things. Another thing is miscommunication. Note to publishers: While i was publishing my first game i learned a couple things, you cant push anothers game like you can push your own. This is not because you dont like it or anything like that, this is because you dont know it as well. So if you are looking to publish a game publishers, one tip is to familiarize yourself with the story and attempt to immerse yourself in it as you would your own. This will allow you to push the game further since you are on a dev level with the game. Another tip is to keep up with the game you are publishing and to stay up to date no matter what, if they progress to far and you have missed golden updates that you could have used to push their game further that would be horrible. But this is about all i have to say im not to good at giving tips Ah if you want to check out my games here is my site http://unwontedstudios.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manhae Park Posted March 25, 2016 Share Posted March 25, 2016 Hi, Devgru_p I would like my games to get published in Kickstarter. Where should I contact you to? You can contact me through Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and Email Thanks, Manhae Park @ Mikazuki Production Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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