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Bizarre idea.


Happiness+

Should we have a platform dedicated to selling visual novels?  

9 members have voted

  1. 1. Should we have a platform dedicated to selling visual novels?

    • Yes
      2
    • No
      7
  2. 2. If yes, should Fuwanovel be that dedicated platform?

    • Yes
      1
    • No
      8

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  • Poll closed on 04/14/18 at 03:49 AM

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(Long post alert. I apologize in advance.)

I am not sure if this a good idea or not. I am going to try my best to explain this idea and my reasoning but here it go.

Why is Steam the de facto Visual Novel marketplace?

Fuwanovel should be the new marketplace for VNs!

CONTEXT:

My friend and I were discussing this earlier today.

Let's call them M.

It's weird because I didn't have VNs on my mind, but they brought it up out of nowhere. Because M was upset by the trash he had to plow through to find the good stuff. Their taste is different from mine, I can tolerate the anime aesthetic. I like that a lot, but they prefer more of the western aesthetic. They told me that there should be a dedicated platform for visual novels. This is really odd to me because this is somehow related as to why I joined this community. The argument that VNs are one day going to be real art is a belief that I hold, and even debated with against all the fatalistic VN subbreddit bros.

 

I argued that with M that we haven't had a true English language kamige yet. Almost like it's a prophecy :lol:. But in reality, a lot of VNs are trash. We all know that. Mainly because it suffers from the same issues of that of the anime industry. There is this spectacular video why anime sucks now. Interestingly enough, VNs are suffering from the same problem. Always appealing to more and more of weebs. Not people who could be interested in it. Anime is copying more and more from itself. VNs are doing the same thing over and over again. They all look kinda similar, especially from the JVN side of things. Another problem, I brought up was that I learned that JVN usually have porn in it, as a selling point. (I did not realize this until the reddit argument, but when I looked up the first VN I was saddened.) Visual novels need to break away from this porn-riddled past. We need more and more great porn-free VNs

The true EVN kamige will need to be more western in an effort to make visual novels popular in the west.

OBSTACLES:

If there's going to be platform for VNs. There would have to be some quality content.

I thought about for a but, because knowing this if there were a dedicated platform for VNs of all kinds. Russia. Korea. Europe. I mean there's a whole world but most of the VN market is split between America and the land of the rising sun.

Another thing about this hypothetical platform is that it has to treat it's creators better than steam. Because we read VNs and some make VNs. I told him that I will use my power as regular on fuwanovel to ask to community their thoughts.  M was really stoked about this. So that's why I am here :sacchan:

M also mentioned pricing like could it be audible? Personally, I think that's not good model, because well VNs are harder to make than audiobooks. I don't know what would be a good pricing model at this moment, other than the one that steam offers.

The purpose of the EVN kamige, is that it'll be the reason for why people purchase games on this hypothetical platform. You see, software sells. Not hardware. That's why PSP vita failed. What makes a platform good is the content. End of story.

 

ACHIEVABILITY:

So, is this possible? Well, I know web design decently. Making a marketplace though, ehhh, I will need to learn NodeJS, mongoDB and Express. It sounds like a lot, but promise me I actually learned this stuff in my web authoring class already, I just want to get into a bit deeper. Like how people get into the Spring and Hibernate frameworks in Java after they master the basics. MongoDB is a database program. Express is a NodeJs framework. NodeJS a javascript framework that does sexy server side stuff. Javascript is an object-orientated programming langauge. A language that I spent little over a six years programming with.

Skill-wise, I can only make static sites and a few dynamic stuff. My best work at the moment is this bootstrap page over here

M and I were working on a app for our school last semester. It was close to being a startup, but the school decided to buy the app to a different company instead. <_<I wrote like all of the code for it. My ragtag team of devs did some graphic work for it. So the fuwanovel VN marketplace can be a marketplace akin to the Google Play Store and/or iOS store. Since Ren'py has mobile compatibility for both iOS and Android.

So imagine going to the fuwanovel marketplace where you can buy all the VNs you want. Share. Rate. Give feedback. etc.

I usually spend my summers binge reading VNs and hanging with friends with a part time job. My friend said he's willing to put money down on the idea. Because he offered to put money down when we were about to start signing the LLC charter.

 

 

But Happiness+ aren't involved with translating Mahoyo right now?

I asked the guy who actually translating if I can help. he said he was fine. So yeah.

But what about the VN that you're working on?

Oh, that'll be released before I were to do anything tangible on this idea. That is if people actually want this to happen. I am weird so I work best when I am accountable for something. Like if I had people expecting results from me or if I was in a team.

 

 

CONCLUSION:

I am just spit-balling here.

If you guys think that I am silly and that this idea is too bizarre to work, then let your vote show it. Explain why it won't work.

I am looking for a simple majority and if the gods of Fuwa don't like they can say it here or message me privately.

I hope I did my best explaining this bizarre idea.

Thanks for reading my post and thanks even more for replying to this idea.

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Fuwanovel is a volunteer site. Introduce payment processing, licensing, distribution servers, etc etc etc, the costs would be unreal. There is zero need to do this when other sites already do this and do it better than fuwanovel can do.A

Bear in mind, that the powers at be on this site are mostly in a status quo mode due to many real life issues. At the very best, Fuwanovel could provide links to other places to buy VNs, which VNTS already does. As far as EVNs are concerned, there was a project in the works similar to VNTS for EVNs but the sheer amount of work that would be required for it was overwhelming for me. 

So to get this done, you need some good investment for start up, and you need an actual paid staff that can at the very least work part time for the site. Then the infrastructure of the site itself would need a massive upgrade. It'd just be silly to do this. 

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As much as I love this idea, I suspect it will be problematic. Steam offers two major benefits. One is people trust it for payments. They are less likely to trust say the-vn-cave.ng (ng is Nigeria). The other is that there are so many people using steam that people browsing random titles and then buying whatever they come across by chance might actually beat the VN community in numbers. This mean from a business model point of view, steam is attractive even if it's somewhat flawed for users searching for proper VNs.

 

If you open a webshop kind of thing, then you need to make agreements about distribution with copyright holders. This mean the real issue is why should JAST, MG or similar pay you to sell what they can sell in their own shop? Those who publish on steam will have even less motivation to switch to something, which random steam users will not encounter.

 

VNDB has a database where you can search for VNs. Often each title will have a link to where you can buy it, meaning the platform you are talking about will have to compete against VNDB as well.

 

I have to say that regardless of what I think of the idea personally, the business model seems to be screwed and very unlikely to succeed.

Edited by tymmur
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If you'd said this six years ago, there are those who would have jumped on the idea.  However, too much has changed since then for this to work.  Not to mention that it would have inevitably failed.

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If we can get one dedicated platform for selling visual novels, that isn't host to takedowns and morality police, then I'm all for it. But since those factors aren't going away anytime soon, then I don't want anything that could possibly monopolize visual novels. This world already has too many abusive monopolies as is, across various industries....

All we need is a portal that lists all the visual novels out there, and where and how to buy them.

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My vote is no as well for reasons solidbatman mentioned; there is no reason to choose Fuwanovel over other similar sites

How the hell is Fuwanovel gonna attract investment when other sites have a far larger user base, and do the same thing as what you have suggested but have a huge head start with a professional business model in place?

To get this idea going and attract investors , at the very least Fuwanovel have to show that it can offer something different, and the only thing I can thing of is a platform which sells VN from all over the world and not just from a specific conutry / of a specific language. The potential problems are numerous and self-evident though. It would take a mammoth effort to overcome them; Anyone here interested in that? lolz

Edited by phantomJS
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I kind of feel bad for @Happiness+. Clearly a lot of time and thinking went into this and not a single supporting reply. I want it to exist and be good, but I'm convinced it's doomed out in the real world. We can't always get what we want.

11 hours ago, Happiness+ said:

So, is this possible? Well, I know web design decently. Making a marketplace though, ehhh, I will need to learn NodeJS, mongoDB and Express. It sounds like a lot, but promise me I actually learned this stuff in my web authoring class already, I just want to get into a bit deeper. Like how people get into the Spring and Hibernate frameworks in Java after they master the basics. MongoDB is a database program. Express is a NodeJs framework. NodeJS a javascript framework that does sexy server side stuff. Javascript is an object-orientated programming langauge. A language that I spent little over a six years programming with.

I suspect you are underestimating what it would take to make this. Let's for a moment ignore business model issues and say it's a huge success and the platform will get all the VNs in English. You will end up with a few problems.

First of all, you can't just open a store and accept credit cards. You need a company, which is approved by a bank to do so. This requires some security certification, which I suspect you won't get. Alternatively you can pay a different company with a certificate to do the actual money transfer, but they won't do it for free.

Next is security. You don't want somebody to find a string to write in the browser, which will add VNs to their library. You also don't want people from the outside to look at money changing hands or what other people have in their libraries. In other words you need more than basic server security.

Last, but not least: a database of that size is tricky to make. It's not uncommon that politicians decides to make a platform for something and then it ends up dead slow. It's almost always a database issue. It's easy to code something, which works for 10 users at once. However when released on a server with way more users at the same time, the database can easily need hundreds of % of the CPU time. This forms a queue and the page loading freezes. VNDB has had issues in that regard, but with the last performance update (out of multiple), it seems to run nicely. I _think_ I read something at some point about VNDB being made by a university student, who has learned more about databases than most of us will ever know, yet it still took years to get the database to handle the load.

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Well, this breaks my heart a bit. But, I understand. :vinty:

On 4/11/2018 at 11:33 PM, solidbatman said:

Fuwanovel is a volunteer site. Introduce payment processing, licensing, distribution servers, etc etc etc, the costs would be unreal. There is zero need to do this when other sites already do this and do it better than fuwanovel can do.A

Bear in mind, that the powers at be on this site are mostly in a status quo mode due to many real life issues. At the very best, Fuwanovel could provide links to other places to buy VNs, which VNTS already does. As far as EVNs are concerned, there was a project in the works similar to VNTS for EVNs but the sheer amount of work that would be required for it was overwhelming for me. 

So to get this done, you need some good investment for start up, and you need an actual paid staff that can at the very least work part time for the site. Then the infrastructure of the site itself would need a massive upgrade. It'd just be silly to do this. 

VNTS? What happened to that project.

 

On 4/11/2018 at 11:36 PM, tymmur said:

As much as I love this idea, I suspect it will be problematic. Steam offers two major benefits. One is people trust it for payments. They are less likely to trust say the-vn-cave.ng (ng is Nigeria). The other is that there are so many people using steam that people browsing random titles and then buying whatever they come across by chance might actually beat the VN community in numbers. This mean from a business model point of view, steam is attractive even if it's somewhat flawed for users searching for proper VNs.

 

If you open a webshop kind of thing, then you need to make agreements about distribution with copyright holders. This mean the real issue is why should JAST, MG or similar pay you to sell what they can sell in their own shop? Those who publish on steam will have even less motivation to switch to something, which random steam users will not encounter.

 

VNDB has a database where you can search for VNs. Often each title will have a link to where you can buy it, meaning the platform you are talking about will have to compete against VNDB as well.

 

I have to say that regardless of what I think of the idea personally, the business model seems to be screwed and very unlikely to succeed.

Well yeah, I am just trying out could be a business model.

On 4/12/2018 at 10:45 AM, tymmur said:

First of all, you can't just open a store and accept credit cards. You need a company, which is approved by a bank to do so. This requires some security certification, which I suspect you won't get. Alternatively you can pay a different company with a certificate to do the actual money transfer, but they won't do it for free.

Next is security. You don't want somebody to find a string to write in the browser, which will add VNs to their library. You also don't want people from the outside to look at money changing hands or what other people have in their libraries. In other words you need more than basic server security.

Last, but not least: a database of that size is tricky to make. It's not uncommon that politicians decides to make a platform for something and then it ends up dead slow. It's almost always a database issue. It's easy to code something, which works for 10 users at once. However when released on a server with way more users at the same time, the database can easily need hundreds of % of the CPU time. This forms a queue and the page loading freezes. VNDB has had issues in that regard, but with the last performance update (out of multiple), it seems to run nicely. I _think_ I read something at some point about VNDB being made by a university student, who has learned more about databases than most of us will ever know, yet it still took years to get the database to handle the load.

You're right. I didn't mention about SSL certification that is needed to process payments. Which doesn't expensive if you use Let's Encrypt. Which is ironically what the Fuwa uses already.

So for the database problem, I could always use a server rig. M actually had two which is really good for hosting thousands of visitors at once.

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On 4/12/2018 at 12:24 AM, Clephas said:

If you'd said this six years ago, there are those who would have jumped on the idea.  However, too much has changed since then for this to work.  Not to mention that it would have inevitably failed.

Dang, I was only a junior in highschool back then.

On 4/12/2018 at 9:02 PM, UnlimitedMoeWorks said:

Long story short, it wouldn't be practical and feasible. The costs would be exponentially high for a basic community site like this, and there are other sites like mangagamer that do a far better job at marketing VNs. Plus, it would be really redundant and pointless in the end, since Fuwanovel would have a hard time competing against other large publishers. It'd be a recipe for disaster.

So, I know we would be competing against mangagamer. But it seems like they are the only one's in the field right now with their own marketplace site. Everyone else is busy translating VNs so they can be sold on steam, and what if steam goes under for whatever reason.

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4 minutes ago, UnlimitedMoeWorks said:

Well, I highly doubt Steam will go under very soon because Valve makes a lot of money from distributing all sorts of games, not just VNs. The only way that Steam would go under is if Valve suddenly went bankrupted, which seems very unlikely considering how successful they are. And Steam is pretty notorious for VNs anyway because of their censorship policies, effectively rendering eroge marketing completely pointless. It's generally agreed upon that sites like mangagamer and JAST are the best sites for VN distribution. All in all, I don't think Fuwa is quite fit for this.

Okay.

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17 minutes ago, Happiness+ said:

Well, this breaks my heart a bit. But, I understand. :vinty:

It's better to give you a broken heart now than a broken heart and wallet later.

3 minutes ago, UnlimitedMoeWorks said:

Well, I highly doubt Steam will go under very soon because Valve makes a lot of money from distributing all sorts of games, not just VNs.

3 minutes ago, UnlimitedMoeWorks said:

And Steam is pretty notorious for VNs anyway because of their censorship policies, effectively rendering eroge marketing completely pointless.

Steam is very unlikely to go down and if it does, VNs will not be my major concern. The part about rendering eroge pointless is true and Valve is actually against their current setup in that regard. The thing is they want to distribute to all countries in the world and adding 18+ titles is a legal nightmare in that regard. Apparently they are looking into making a steam system, which allows 18+ titles. The issue is that unlike the other titles on steam, 18+ titles are treated very differently in different countries and the one rule fits all countries approach will not work. Imagine apply to Japan with pixel blur, another country banning loli, another banning yaoi and yuri, one banning.... you get the idea and in the end they will not have much left to release. Apparently they are trying to figure out how to solve this problem without having the problem that everybody claims to be in country X where everything is allowed and then download to country Y, Valve is caught distributing something illegal and fined.

If we will ever actually see steam for adults is an open question, but based on what has been leaked in that regard, it is possible. 18+ titles could be profitable for Valve and they know it. They just need to make sure it will not backfire on them.

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