Category Archives: indie life

Why you shouldn’t compare adventures with other kind of games

Was talking by email with Dave Gilbert of WadjetEyeGames yesterday about some complaints from players for the length of story-based games like adventures or visual novels. Some would say that for $20 they expected at leat 8-10h of “gameplay”, since most other games you find (especially in portals) offers you that.

As I wrote already a few weeks ago in my “how long is it” post, you can’t really compare such kind of games with other games. Take a look at the Hidden Object Games you see in portals: they offer usually 4-5h of gameplay, but they do that using several tricks:

first of all, there’s much less text/narration. This isn’t necessarily bad: many people don’t like to read much texts, and that’s why I want also to make some more classic adventure games alongside my actual Visual Novel and Dating Sims. But is much easier to write a story with less dialogues, than come up with a long story rich of plot twists and interesting situations, as you can imagine
then they’re filled by minigames. Many minigames are mini-puzzles, so it depends also how skilled you are. But should that count towards the gameplay length? If so, the problem then is not the actual story/plot length but the kind of minigames that are in it. Also the risk is of breaking the narration by putting too many minigames, so there will always be someone unhappy
reusing content. Many games reuse locations, for example the same background, but you have to find different set of objects. That’s ok of course, as a game designer I know perfectly that you often have to find a compromise. But is the player really happy about that? I mean, why stretch the story/gameplay recycling stuff, just to “reach 5h of gameplay”?

I understand the complaint of some people, but you need also to understand the amount of work that’s behind those games. Is much easier to come up with a new “reskin” of time management games or even strategy games (unless you put something different). Many RPG made with RPGMaker XP uses all the same tilesets/sprites! So you need to understand how hard is to make adventures, since you can’t recycle/reuse stuff, but everything needs to be drawn from scratch, a interesting story needs to be written, and so on. There is a reason if mainstream AAA companies left adventure games a few years ago. Now they’re coming back a bit because with 3d content is indeed possible to re-use many assets (a new character can be easily created starting from a old 3d model as base).

I really think that the only solution in this case would be recurring to microtransactions but also some online game. If I was selling my Vera Blanc games for $9.99 I probably would sell more copies but would almost for sure make less money overall (believe me I tried so many times to lower prices but I simply couldn’t survive with the revenues).

So I was thinking that a webgame made like an adventure, at a very accessible price (price based on game length) should make everyone happy and at same time being online could get more viral and known, so get more exposure (needed because if I set such low pricetag I need to shift much more copies).

Though I’m sure there still would be someone who complains about price 😀

How all indie developers can get their games on Steam

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Today was talking with some other developer friends about a “hot topic”. Steam, and the difficulty to get in it.

If you’re an indie developer, at least once in your life you got a forum/post comment saying “you should get your game on Steam!”. It sounded almost as an insult, like saying “you fool, why don’t you just use that?”. Yeah, like if Steam was an OPEN platform.

Getting on Steam is really HARD, and for most indies they represent the main source of income, a bit like casual portals are for casual game developers.

There’s really no rule (for Indies) to get on Steam. Many games look very similar, yet “some” are accepted, and others not. Their selection criteria aren’t really clear to be honest.

Now, I came with a solution that I hope the Steam people will at least consider: why Steam doesn’t allow any indie to sell their games through them, as a sort of shareware vendor? We could add “Buy on Steam” button beside our usual vendors like BMT Micro, Plimus, Regnow, and so on.

And those games wouldn’t appear on Steam. They would need absolutely to do NOTHING, except create an interface for developer so they can setup their products. They could even get away with a submission fee or a yearly subscription like Appstore does.

Advantages would be for both sides: indie devs would finally be able to tell to the users who ask if they can buy from Steam “Yes, here is the link.”

Steam could get “free money”, and honestly they would get the most advantages from this idea. They could also be surprised by how some apparently unknown games sells, and maybe “promote” the best selling “underdogs” on their main games catalogue.

I see really no downside to this idea. Now I hope someone at Steam looks at this post, and at least takes in consideration this suggestion 😉

Minisurvey about VN/Dating sims results

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Disclaimer: speaking with some friends who knows more about statistics than me, they said that the data collected might be not really reliable. I know, I made it mostly for fun with no intention of providing the “ultimate guide to make visual novels” for game developer 🙂

However, from my personal experience (I’ve made many VN/Dating Sims in past 3 years) I have to admit was quite surprised by the results, because they match completely my experience regarding which games sells more. The data collected comes mostly from Lemmasoft, Amaranthia, my own twitter, my forums, and indiegamer forums.

The total people who answered is 126, but recently has been progressing of only 1 new person a day, so I guess is time to draw conclusiong and post results.

I’ve made a PNG image of the final result, so anyone can link to it or share it easily, look on the right side of this post for the clickable thumbnail. As you can see, the standard Otome and Bish?jo are the most popular genres (well, no surprise here). As for art-style, detailed manga (I suppose like Heileen, Bionic Heart) wins hands on over all other art genres. People don’t like american comic style and cartoon style (I wish I did this survey before making Vera Blanc, I would have used manga art for that game too!).

As for setting, again no surprise: fantasy settings are always the most popular in any kind of games, not just VN/Dating Sims, so really I expected that. The other settings are more or less equivalent, only the modern drama/slice of life is slightly more popular (and yes, sci-fi isn’t much popular!).

Sexyness in games is a bit surprising, and probably the result less reliable IMHO. From my experience is always safer to go with family friendly (if you’re interested in maximizing revenues) for the simple fact that most big portal/sites wouldn’t accept your game otherwise. If you are making the game just as hobby or with direct sales in mind only, then you can ignore it 🙂 So far most of my games fall into the 2nd category from top, sexy stuff, but I have many family friendly games coming out next. One day I would like to make a very sexy, almost erotic game though. Maybe when I have enough funds to make Bionic Heart 2 as I have in mind of doing it.

The extras question is really a surprise. And I believe is very accurate: Most people don’t want to mix genres. If they want to play a minigame, they can find plenty of them in casual games. I really think VN/dating sims should focus more on typical dating sims elements and statistics. Or just let the players to read the story. You can also argue that if you put too many minigames in a VN, then it isn’t a real VN anymore but a “game with a story” 😉 It’s somewhat hybrid territory here.

“What is most important” result is also interesting. The most important thing is WRITING! Not art, as I was always thinking. Also, the starting idea, and I agree completely. If the starting idea is good, and the writing too, you have all the elements needed for a good VN. That’s the reason why I’m not personally writing my future games anymore 😀
Also is interesting that most people don’t care about voice overs. I had already given up on that because of too many unreliable voice-artists, and the result somehow comforts me. People don’t seem to care too much about the number of endings as well. Maybe better to make a more linear story, but longer to play ?

Based on the next question, “Do you really replay dating sim/visual novels to see all the possible endings?” it really seems so. Not many people are obsessed about unlocking all endings, apparently. I sort of agree since I do the same. I did the same also for AAA titles like Dragon Age / mass effect 2. I simply went to youtube and looked for videos for the other possible endings 🙂

About the remaining results, people seems to like game series (after a slow start I am now getting good results with Heileen 1+2 bundles), most people use a PC to play, and they don’t seem too much enthusiast about the idea of having to be connected to play a game.

That’s all! Again, this is not the holy-bible-of-VNs, but I found the results quite interesting and in many cases matching my own experience.

It means that you should all make fantasy based VN with stats and RPG elements? Well no, I believe that any game that is GOOD can sell: is your choice if you want to try to appeal mainstream (but have more competition) or niches (smaller market but much less competition). Personally I’d like to see more horror VNs, for example! 🙂

How long is it?

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Today many other indies like cliffski are making a post about the “game length” problem. Indeed, a question I often heard in forums when talking about games is “How long is it”? Like if long=good!

I know this well because I make games that, typically, are very short to play, since they’re story-based and are very similar to books, movies, comics. I think it’s totally absurd to judge a game by the length (unless it lasts 15 minutes of course!!!). For several reasons, most of them already very well explained by Cliff.

Making some comparison: you’d rather watch a dull, boring long movie, or a short but exciting, innovative, interesting one? This might look like an idiot question (and, it is) but then, why some people complain about games length, IF the game story is good? (I’m talking specifically about VN/dating sims).

One of the best recent examples is the game Jisei by Sakevisual. The game IS short. If you play it all at once, will last an hour or so. Yet, has an interesting plot, has high production values and good voice acting. You would rather play a very long but banal visual novel instead? Of course I know you might say: I want an interesting AND long story. Well, that’s what everyone would like to play, but since writing VN is like writing a book or a comic, you can well imagine that is not easy at all to make a story at same time interesting AND long.

On the opposite, there are many examples in tv-series that insisted on length (starting a new season when they should have stopped) and the result was that they produced a very crap result, reducing the overall interest of their fans.

Beside, most new games that comes out are based on the MMORPG/social system. Basically to make each action you must wait several minutes, or repeat certain tasks. While those games are fun, especially at the beginning (I played a lot Everquest for example), after a while they’re super boring, and really would be better shorter but with better gameplay/variety.

Just yesterday I wanted to buy a game on steam. I browsed all the various FPS, but I found really nothing interesting and ended up buying an adventure game (Alter Ego) because I enjoyed the atmosphere, description, the quality. I am still playing it so not sure how long it is, but for sure I’m enjoying it much more than any of those all-identic FPS games that comes out today.

The revenge of point’n’click adventures

Computer Games

Development diary of Celso Riva