Some curiosities I have

[Silvz]

So guys, there are some questions I always ask myself when I read about Steam, VN sales and related stuff, so I decided to make a thread asking about it.

1) Everybody says that voice acting is very expensive, and that is why some VNs cost a lot. Kara no Shoujo didn't have voices in the beginning of its English release and most of Liar-Soft games only have it partial. How much does cost a full voice pack for a VN? I'm asking about general numbers, like 10 dollars a line, or 100 dollars for a minute. Which means you don't need to answer that "Clannad is bigger than Planetarium, so it costs more" because that is easy to get. Even the percentage of the price of a whole game would be clarifying.

 

2) People say that Steam is helping a lot in VN sales, increasing both the fanbase [or at least the new steam fanbase] and the money raised by VN companies. In this situation, I have two questions:

a) How many copies [being hardcopies or digital] does a VN has to sell to be considered a "VN Bestseller"?

b) Is Steam really helping? Are Steam sales working as they should, or are they just a plus to the old numbers?

 

3) Following the theme of raising money, how much is Kickstarter useful? I see that it helps in the development of the game [most of the times, the English version], but every people who fund it gets the game """""for free""""", which count as a lost sale, right? Is it worth it to have a game funded and have the majority of old fans not buying the game after its official release?

 

4) The last question, I promise. When people say that the VN market in Japan is becoming slow and it could die in a near future [yeah, some say this], how bad are they talking about? Are VNs really going to die? Are Japanese really stopping their reading? Or is it more like "Nintendo is doomed even though they have some billions in Wario's safes"? As an English-only reader, these comments really scare me.

 

I really hope you guys can answer all my questions and, even if you don't know how to answer all, at least start playing Pokémon - that will make me happy

 

 

[SupremeTentacle]

1) Depends on how famous the voice actresses are. Some are paid upwards of $200 an hour, though this is for anime.

[AaronIsCrunchy]

For number 3: most Kickstarters don't throw in a copy of the game until at least $10 have been donated (or £10, or whatever). It's likely that they've run some costing models through to see what kind of figure is the minimum they can sell it for and rounded it up or something. If they get their sums horribly wrong then, yes, they can make a loss, but as long as they don't burn through every penny of the fundraising money then most should have something resembling profit.

Also, +$200 an hour?! Bloody hell. I suppose the acting work isn't a sure thing though, so it needs to be higher than usual.

 

[InvertMouse]

Yeah, with those stats from SteamSpy, I think they include keys from bundles, so the numbers can be misleading. Money wise, my newer titles are performing way better than Bermuda. I did a horrendous job of managing Bermuda. It deserves the bad reviews and does not deserve to be on that list :(.

As for Kickstarter, I am not all that smart with money, but I have done a few back when it was a newer thing for visual novels. When you take the physical printing and shipping costs into account, your finance can quickly spiral into a disaster, even if things feel great at first.

[Dergonu]

Steam now has Clannad, If my heart had wings, G-senjou no maou, Princess Evangile and more

1 hour ago, Palas said:

2a) If SteamSpy is anything to go by, the 10 best-selling VNs on Steam are:

1. Sakura Spirit (276,603±12,953)

2. Hatoful Boyfriend (245,110±12,194)

.... What is wrong with the world?  

[Meat_Bun1]

For a concrete example of question 1, G-senjou no Maou has a voiced and a voiceless version on Steam. The voice pack is the same price as the voiceless version, making it worth 50% of the full version. Though I couldn't really find any other VNs with a deliberate separation for voices.

In terms of KS VNs, the ones I checked vary from 10%-40% with most being around 30% (really rough estimates since VA is sometimes a stretch goal).

As for question 2, I can't say anything about part a. For part b, I think it is definitely increasing sales since it is a marketing platform that engages a wider variety of people (Steam as a whole, not necessarily the VN fanbase there). Whether it is helping in other aspects of VNs is another discussion. But I digress.

Question 3: As others have stated before, it is like a pre-order although it is important to remember that it is not actually guaranteed, just very likely. In terms of localization, the developers can probably afford to put a lower price (like the $10 mentioned above) and still make a profit, albeit a smaller one as a reward for supporting the work early. As for creating a VN from scratch, those can be a lot more risky.

Question 4: I can't really say anything confidently, but I could bring up some points for consideration. Perhaps VNs continue to reuse the same tropes so much that people are becoming weary of them. Will the VN market die because of this (and other factors)? I don't really think so, or if it does, it is probably farther off than people speculate. After all, VNs have stories and people, regardless of time period or age, love stories. Maybe VNs just need to try out new things.

[Dergonu]

2 minutes ago, Palas said:

Clannad sucks and is like 5x the price of an average VN; Konosora is still a butchered version maybe? Even if it's been fixed, its price tag is still double that of Sakura Spirit's; G-Senjou no Maou is a very recent release and Princess Evangile is expensive as fuck too. So nothing wrong with the world.

 

Well price tags shouldn't matter. 

1. Complete garbage that is cheap?

2. Good games that are a little more expensive?

 

OH shit, give me the garbage!!! 

Yup. Nothing wrong with that way of thinking at all  

[Dergonu]

Just now, Palas said:

Well you're free to buy everyone in this thread a copy of Clannad to boost its sales figures since price doesn't matter to you.

Ewww, Clannad is trash though

Erhem! I wont step on my own point! Fine, 7 copies of Clannad, coming right up!  

[littleshogun]

1. About eroge seiyuu, I'd find this article was quite interesting. And definitely will answer some question like why Mangagamer need to ripped the voice from Kara no Shoujo and Koihime Musou. I didn't know the licensing cost for those 2 VN back when translated version was released, but at least I knew that the seiyuu cost for Kara no Shoujo and Koihime Musou should be a lot there. I said that because in Koihime Musou, we had some top seiyuu like Wakamoto Norio and Midorikawa Hikaru. As for Kara no Shoujo, I think it's probably more on Kawashima Rino who had many word said there (If we based on the article, eroge seiyuu was paid per word and if we look at Kawashima popularity, my guess the payment at that time when Kara no Shoujo was in making would be around 110 or so yen). Hope it would give you some basic, although I didn't knew about how the seiyuu payment system in Clannad though (But since KEY at that time was tried to make all age VN after making 2 eroge before, maybe they adopt same system for Clannad ie payment per word).

4. I didn't knew about that, but hopefully it was just Nintendo thing instead of Japanese stopped their reading. Although if we look from economic perspective, it's quite complicated issue though since it was probably involving the economic capability of Japan people right now (ie probably decreasing, so they probably decided to limit buy the VN) and some in regard of heavily decisive pirating. Keep in mind that this is my speculation though.

For question 2 and 3 I couldn't answer, but hopefully I could answer OP question for point 1 and 4 here.

[Jun Inoue]

2b: It is "sort" of helping. Steam does the same as the cheap, popular anime. It introduces and breaks in the genre for many people. Attack on Titan is kinda mediocre, and SAO is one of the worst anime of history, yet those 2 have done a lot in bringing people that used to be just slightly interested in anime, to the "herd". Same thing for Steam and VNs, except that on a much smaller scale.

3: It's not a lost sale at all. If instead of taking money from a bank or investors, you directly get it from the public, this means you have sold a copy of your game even before having finished it. Anything more that you sell after you finish the project is extra revenue for making a profit. If a project is funded, then (generally) it means you are not going to lose money no matter how sales go.

[AaronIsCrunchy]

Quote

I legit thought that you meant the wrongdoing was Hatoful Boyfriend being under Sakura Spirit for a moment there

6 hours ago, Dergonu said:

Ewww, Clannad is trash though

Erhem! I wont step on my own point! Fine, 7 copies of Clannad, coming right up!  

You better fucking go through with this :3

Kinda related to question 4, it'll be interesting to see how/if OELVNs shape the direction of future VNs made globally. I suspect @Meat_Bun1's assertion that people are becoming bored of the same tropes is likely true... and perhaps some new ideas from different places can shake things up a little.

Who knows.

[Jun Inoue]

47 minutes ago, AaronIsCrunchy said:

I legit thought that you meant the wrongdoing was Hatoful Boyfriend being under Sakura Spirit for a moment there

You better fucking go through with this :3

Kinda related to question 4, it'll be interesting to see how/if OELVNs shape the direction of future VNs made globally. I suspect @Meat_Bun1's assertion that people are becoming bored of the same tropes is likely true... and perhaps some new ideas from different places can shake things up a little.

Who knows.

That last thing is very much true. ACE Academy, for example, is a Kickstarter VN made by a small , new team in Canada (I think?), and while the story is pretty simple and straightforward, the characters break the cliches and tropes of the anime-related world. They actually feel like humans, like students. Their friendships feel like something that could indeed happen, not an orchestrated meeting by some writers. The romantic parts with the available female characters actually feel realistic, cute and interesting. It makes you sympathize and root for it.

Although the game is (for now) very short, and the story quite simple, just the characters, events and relationships are enough to make it far superior to pretty much almost any JP VN of the school life genre. Not cringing even a single time... that was something almost new to me, in VNs.

[Silvz]

I didn't expect so many answers! Thank you all.

About Kickstarter, I used to think that the game was actually a bonus, while the total of the campaign was what was needed to develop it. What I mean is, 150k would be meant for development and people who helped it were receiving a bonus. What I understand now is that the goals are actually more than the necessary, but at the same time they allow players to get the game before - and cheaper.

Although I see that Steam is helping, mostly towards advertisement, I still doubt it is really the promised land for VNs, but the information you guys told me helped a lot.

And about voice acting, I'm going to read the article Shogun linked.

Thank you guys again, and you can keep adding information if you want!

 

ps: Clannad is good. Not perfect, but it is best than the majority of fan translated VNs

[FrozenRaven]

On 6/3/2016 at 3:40 PM, Dergonu said:

 

Well price tags shouldn't matter. 

1. Complete garbage that is cheap?

2. Good games that are a little more expensive?

 

OH shit, give me the garbage!!! 

Yup. Nothing wrong with that way of thinking at all  

Unless you are really well informed in the vn community you wouldn't know that sakura spirit is bad because the steam reviews are very positive. But I think the most important factor in sakura spirit selling so well is it's price tag.

[Narcosis]

13 minutes ago, FrozenRaven said:

Unless you are really well informed in the vn community you wouldn't know that sakura spirit is bad because the steam reviews are very positive. But I think the most important factor in sakura spirit selling so well is it's price tag.

I'd say boobs, but each to his own

[Qrqe]

On 03 Haziran 2016 Cuma at 6:22 AM, Silvz said:

 

4) The last question, I promise. When people say that the VN market in Japan is becoming slow and it could die in a near future [yeah, some say this], how bad are they talking about? Are VNs really going to die? Are Japanese really stopping their reading? Or is it more like "Nintendo is doomed even though they have some billions in Wario's safes"? As an English-only reader, these comments really scare me.

 

 

Yep, its unfortunately true. Eroge industry (or more like sales) is falling a little more with each new year accourding to most of vn companies, and they cant reduce the price of the games because of the VA cost etc. In short they have to do something. This is the reason why are they started to releasing more games at western, they are searching for new markets, and this is the reason why Akabesoft has gone mad with the "Denuvo" thing, all of them are trying to solve this problem without going bankrupt somehow.

Japanese didnt stop reading, they just stopped buying games. Currently an average eroge sells only 5000-10.000 copies at japan, while best seller of the month usually gets 20-25k.  2015's best seller was Sanoba witch and even it got only 45.000 sales, while 2014's was Sakigake ⇒ Generation with 50.000. 2016's first 4 months are even worse, only Eushully's Sankai Ou no Yubiwa managed to get 20.000 sales.

Now lets just look into torrents; ウィザーズコンプレックス sold only 6600 accourding to TG, while it got downloaded more than 25.000 "JUST" from sukebei's torrent. Its kinda sad, really.

Well I'm pretty sure Yuzusoft's new game will get 40-50.000 sales again, but yuzusoft cant carry entire industry by itself for sure.

Of course these are just TG examination so they might have selling more than this, TG cant get information from ソフマップ or オフィシャル通販 etc. In short those are definitely not the "exact" numbers, but I'm sure they can give us some ideas about the current situation. Its not death yet and I dont think they'll let this industry die easily, but its going slowly towards to that direction.

[Darklord Rooke]

Part of the reason is also over-saturation. That is, more games released every month, same amount of money going around, thus less for each company. But people can't justify chucking 100 bucks at a glorified novel, not unless you have a fair bit of money. I really do believe Japan companies will come around to shorter, cheaper, installment type games.

@Silvz http://forums.fuwanovel.net/topic/14393-eroge-sales-201604/

Check out how few units 10th place moved.

[Yuuko]

To expand a little on this:

21 hours ago, Qrqe said:

Now lets just look into torrents; ウィザーズコンプレックス sold only 6600 accourding to TG, while it got downloaded more than 25.000 "JUST" from sukebei's torrent. Its kinda sad, really.

Few thousand people probably only got the game the game because it's new and checked the CGs or something but still really sad that at least 20k people played it without paying. Many people also probably from outside Japan so buying it is little tricky. But still sad. (Also Softmap had tokuten of the most popular character.)

21 hours ago, Qrqe said:

Of course these are just TG examination so they might have selling more than this, TG cant get information from ソフマップ or オフィシャル通販 etc. In short those are definitely not the "exact" numbers, but I'm sure they can give us some ideas about the current situation. Its not death yet and I dont think they'll let this industry die easily, but its going slowly towards to that direction.

Numbers can vary A LOT from those because of the shop tokuten. See here (nsfw) for example tokuten that decides the real sales.

Also your normal guy will buy the game 2 weeks later used for 50% off the price which doesn't do good for sales  

[Qrqe]

11 minutes ago, Kiriririri said:

To expand a little on this:

Few thousand people probably only got the game the game because it's new and checked the CGs or something but still really sad that at least 20k people played it without paying. Many people also probably from outside Japan so buying it is little tricky. But still sad. (Also Softmap had tokuten of the most popular character.)

Numbers can vary A LOT from those because of the shop tokuten. See here (nsfw) for example tokuten that decides the real sales.

Also your normal guy will buy the game 2 weeks later used for 50% off the price which doesn't do good for sales

Yeah second hand sales definitely doesn't do good for sales, but its something like a necessary evil because without it people will just pirate games this time instead of buying it. The best way to prevent that is making really "good" tokutens, for example Koihime Eiyuutan's this; http://www.getchu.com/soft.phtml?id=899605&gc=gc . Hell even I may buy this even though I already played the game itself, look at that delicious Karin's tapestry.

 

Also sofmap usually releases the best Tokutens so games are definitely selling more than those numbers, but still its good enough to give us some ideas.
 

[trickzzter]

You make like it or not, but Steam is a main marketplace for all-ages visual novels. Even MangaGamer admitting that their Steam releases outselling their most popular titles:

http://blog.mangagamer.org/2015/01/26/look-back-at-2014/

Quote

Interestingly enough, however, has been the performance of our games on Steam. Go Go Nippon would clearly check in at #1, having sold several times more copies than Imouto Paradise. Meanwhile, Cho Dengeki Stryker, and eden*–despite its brief accidental launch–would both easily rank in at #2 on their Steam sales alone.

 

[xelloss]

35 minutes ago, trickzzter said:

You make like it or not, but Steam is a main marketplace for all-ages visual novels. Even MangaGamer admitting that their Steam releases outselling their most popular titles:

http://blog.mangagamer.org/2015/01/26/look-back-at-2014/

 

Well, games like Imouto paradise, Eroge and Euphoria would probably sell very well on Steam, if the platform didn't have these restrictions about adult content. Given the large amount of erotic scenes in those, it's (obviously) impossible to make a "censored version" in order to bring them over here without ruining the games. By the way, i've heard games with an "adult" uncensored release like Gakhtkun are vns which only feature mild erotic content (suggestive poses and showing the breasts but not going further). I've came across various topics on Steam forums and some people over there don't know Mangagamer or don't go to their website. The success of some games like Sakura i think, is related to the aformentionned fact: users want games with erotic content but check only those available on Steam.

[Okarin]

About #4, any market is unstable and particularly Nintendo could end up like Sega if they aren't careful with their new console (coming home March 2017), so imagine a much lesser market like VNs.

In general, all console making companies are committing a lot of bad deeds recently. Like saving up the Zelda for the new console, thus killing away the Wii U. Or those 70 $ games for the PS4. Or the rumoured multipart remake of Final Fantasy VII for PS4.