AT what Rating Should a DEV Seek Help?

[The Rogue Trader]

Another thing to keep in mind is that not everyone has the talents to do a good job <snip> It is a rare individual who can do all of these things.

And yet instead of pooling their resources, bringing to the others what they're actually good at, developers insist to work only on their own projects.

I haunted like a creep the Recruitment and Services for what, 9 months? Some babies are made faster than I could find somebody to make the renders because I haven't the skill, the time nor the hardware to bother. And at the same time I watched with envy new games, some not too dissimilar in concept, with wonderful visuals but that seemed (and probably were) written by a hormonal teenager that never opened a book in his short life.

But think of all the great things we could make if we could achieve if writers, artists and coders, instead of each one chasing their own ideas trying to be one-man-bands, worked together in teams.
View attachment tumblr_pagtlbGTB31vx02uso3_400.webp
(And no, this isn't a hypocritical rant: I abandoned my own game to join somebody's else project. Then everyone else left and I was left alone to continue.)

- Coding: (depends on the game concept - interesting to me is that some games with very simple linear mechanics are actually successful, more so than many complicated gameplay concepts)

Actually, studying various threads, I came to the conclusion that I had to tone down the mechanics to avoid them "getting in the way of narration". For the most vocal part of this forum, the ideal game is a pure VN, any deviation a chore to endure.

However some developers that made it to being successful told me that building Momentum was far more important than having a big first impact, meaning it could be better to release an average lengthy (but still polished) Game and keep some ressources (money / time) aside to follow up with updates than to try to make an initial big splash.

Yes, it makes sense not to shoot all your cartridges in the first release, then have to wait 4 months to release the new chapter.
I saw it happen (and 4 months isn't an exaggeration). Subscribers were pretty unimpressed.

One thing i took away from checking the thread was Futa is the shit.

Yes, I noticed it too: as surprising this is to me, futa is one of the most popular kinks.
After a year I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that the sexual fantasies of the people playing lewd games aren't the sexual fantasies of the rest of the population.

 

[The Rogue Trader]

You should have checked Patreon too. It's not abandoned.

You must be registered to see the links

Or to say it better, I should've checked more often.
Thanks!
That's very good news for me, but it doesn't change my argument, as Battle for Luvia still isn't a successful game, making only a few hundred each month.

 

[Gwedelino]

Yes, it makes sense not to shoot all your cartridges in the first release, then have to wait 4 months to release the new chapter.
I saw it happen (and 4 months isn't an exaggeration). Subscribers were pretty unimpressed.

4 months isn't that much if you want to have meaningfull release.

 

[coffeeaddicted]

4 months isn't that much if you want to have meaningfull release.

Some games have an even larger release gap and thrive.
I don't think it's that.
It seems to me that it has to do with burn out.

In general if the first release is smaller (Playtime around 30 minutes maybe) i think it's ok to have smaller releases in a shorter order. One month, maybe two.
When you say "Any release will be huge but i don't release often" that's ok too.
I know that Light of my Life does it like that and it didn't damage him.

I think mostly it has to do how invested players are and how committed the developer is. If your honest, people tend to be forgiving. Everyone understands that you are only a human. Especially if you can make the case because you work alone or whatever reason.

To me patterns are important. If i play a game and like it and like to continue, i am ok with waiting. There are other titles i can play in the meantime. But the creator has to be upfront to i understand why it will take longer or if i can expect quicker releases but small in playtime.

At least that is what i am thinking

 

[Synx]

And yet instead of pooling their resources, bringing to the others what they're actually good at, developers insist to work only on their own projects.

I haunted like a creep the Recruitment and Services for what, 9 months? Some babies are made faster than I could find somebody to make the renders because I haven't the skill, the time nor the hardware to bother. And at the same time I watched with envy new games, some not too dissimilar in concept, with wonderful visuals but that seemed (and probably were) written by a hormonal teenager that never opened a book in his short life.

But think of all the great things we could make if we could achieve if writers, artists and coders, instead of each one chasing their own ideas trying to be one-man-bands, worked together in teams.

It sounds nice on paper, combining several people talent to great a good game, but in reality it never works out. I cannot think of a single decent game that started out as a team fild with strangers.

Most new developers jump into this thinking to make an easy buck, or as a fun hobby, but realise quickly it's a shit ton of work and honestly can get very tedious and annoying sometimes. You really need to like doing this to not burn out quickly. A team with mismatched mindsets from the beginning will never work out, and even if they line up it more often than not will crash long before a first release gets out.

Then if you add massively different workloads between each part, no upfront payment in 95% of the cases, revenue share without any regards of workload, people different time schedules, etc. to it and I'm not surprised barely any team gets to a first release.

 

[coffeeaddicted]

It sounds nice on paper, combining several people talent to great a good game, but in reality it never works out. I cannot think of a single decent game that started out as a team fild with strangers.

Most new developers jump into this thinking to make an easy buck, or as a fun hobby, but realise quickly it's a shit ton of work and honestly can get very tedious and annoying sometimes. You really need to like doing this to not burn out quickly. A team with mismatched mindsets from the beginning will never work out, and even if they line up it more often than not will crash long before a first release gets out.

Then if you add massively different workloads between each part, no upfront payment in 95% of the cases, revenue share without any regards of workload, people different time schedules, etc. to it and I'm not surprised barely any team gets to a first release.

Do we a have a guess how many games are made by a team vs solo?
I am just curious.
There are some big titles like... AWAM (or was that the other way around).
Usually i appreciate creations by individuals. Can't expect too much but the ones i played were really good.
I think a game can be really basic. There is so much work that goes in if it has to be detailed. And you mostly played it once. That's it.

I am not sure if i would like to work in a team. Not because i am not a team player but i think it's really hard to find people that are chemically like you.

 

[jamdan]

You don't need a big first release, in terms of content quantity, to be successful. The first release(s) are important though.

By that I mean, whether the updates are big or small, you need to be regular and consistent early on to grow a base. Games like Corrupted Kingdom have grown to nearly 5k patrons, and all their releases are very small weekly releases. Early on, WVM took off because Braindrop posted smaller bi-weekly updates.

Interestingly, most on here vote for "Big release, but less frequent" when given the option. However, that is for people that already know about the game. Early on, you need the opposite. Nobody is going to play your game (not literally, figuratively) if they don't know it exists. And the best way to show people it exists is to keep it in the headlines, so to speak.

I think the ideal early-game update schedule is to...cheat. Yep. Cheat.

Hypothetical example:

Update 1: This is the premier update. Make is big, but not too big. Maybe 15-20 or so minutes of content.

But...don't release it. Keep working on a few more updates first. This is where you "cheat". Creating more content that won't be initially released. Thus, allowing you to have a backlog of updates ready to go when needed. To keep the headlines.

Update 2: Smaller than the first, 5-10 minutes of content.
Update 3: Another 5-10 minutes.
Update 4: Another 5-10 minutes.
etc.

When you've gone deep enough and accumulated enough updates, release Update 1. Then a couple weeks later, update 2. And so on. Doing it this way allows you to "get ahead" of where the game is while keeping it in the headlines. When Update 2 is released, you're working on Update 5. When Update 3, you're on Update 6 etc. This is what NLT does, I think.

For a bonus, make a thread in the development forum and post spoilers (of things in the first update). You can get feedback this way if needed, without an actual game being released.

 

[osanaiko]

And the best way to show people it exists is to keep it in the headlines, so to speak.

This is the nut of truth: keeping visibility on F95 is keeping yourself in the first page of the Latest Updates section regularly - once every 2 weeks would be perfect.
Interestingly, to prevent gaming the releases section, this is the reason that F95 mods (some of them at least) refuse to put a game to the top of the latest releases if they deem the change to be "insignificant".

As an aside, this has frustrating consequences - one of the developers I work with did a patch release containing the result of a dozen hours of my text editing work and the dev's rework of the story text to clean up plot holes. This was posted as an update 1 week after the major release... and in my mind was a significant improvement to the game quality. But the Mod who got the update request refused to post it, saying there was no new content... technically true but was frustrating, especially as there were reviews posted complaining about the spelling and grammar errors!

 

[coffeeaddicted]

You don't need a big first release, in terms of content quantity, to be successful. The first release(s) are important though.

By that I mean, whether the updates are big or small, you need to be regular and consistent early on to grow a base. Games like Corrupted Kingdom have grown to nearly 5k patrons, and all their releases are very small weekly releases. Early on, WVM took off because Braindrop posted smaller bi-weekly updates.

Interestingly, most on here vote for "Big release, but less frequent" when given the option. However, that is for people that already know about the game. Early on, you need the opposite. Nobody is going to play your game (not literally, figuratively) if they don't know it exists. And the best way to show people it exists is to keep it in the headlines, so to speak.

I think the ideal early-game update schedule is to...cheat. Yep. Cheat.

Hypothetical example:

Update 1: This is the premier update. Make is big, but not too big. Maybe 15-20 or so minutes of content.

But...don't release it. Keep working on a few more updates first. This is where you "cheat". Creating more content that won't be initially released. Thus, allowing you to have a backlog of updates ready to go when needed. To keep the headlines.

Update 2: Smaller than the first, 5-10 minutes of content.
Update 3: Another 5-10 minutes.
Update 4: Another 5-10 minutes.
etc.

When you've gone deep enough and accumulated enough updates, release Update 1. Then a couple weeks later, update 2. And so on. Doing it this way allows you to "get ahead" of where the game is while keeping it in the headlines. When Update 2 is released, you're working on Update 5. When Update 3, you're on Update 6 etc. This is what NLT does, I think.

For a bonus, make a thread in the development forum and post spoilers (of things in the first update). You can get feedback this way if needed, without an actual game being released.

This is genius.

I like that strategy already.

Though, are the 5-10 minutes player skipping dialog or without?

But that seems very reasonable as a release. That gives you, the dev, time to relax and refocus again. I would favor that approach over any other.

 

[osanaiko]

It sounds nice on paper, combining several people talent to great a good game, but in reality it never works out. I cannot think of a single decent game that started out as a team fild with strangers.

It's incredibly hard to get people to work together well even in a corporate environment where they are literally paid 10000s of <currency> per year to do so. This is why "management" and "team leaders" exist and are paid a premium over the "workers" - they are the ones who cajole and pull and coordinate the individual contributors together and keep the wagon moving.

 

[anne O'nymous]

We'd be able to gain a lot of understanding about what it is that makes an adult game succesful if we compare a lot of data. If it's possible to make sense of it, then we'd have our answer, and god forbid if we can't make sense of the data, then I'll be, albeit reluctantly, ready to accept that adult games succeeding is just like rolling a die.

I fear that it's mostly really is like rolling a dice. Like I said, if you release your game at the wrong moment, you'll be doomed. After years you'll perhaps achieve to have the support you deserve, but you have to be strong to wait this long.

Now, it doesn't mean that there's nothing you can do to counter this faith.
WVM succeeded because braindrop was active in the game thread, and because at first he was releasing an update every two weeks.
The first point showed that he was seriously involved in his game, it also helped to generate content on the thread, what was regularly putting it on the game section first page. It's something that shouldn't be discarded too easily, I see it with the like for my mods, every time there's a new message on the thread, I get two/three likes in the following 24h. Therefore, being on the first page give some visibility to my mods, and attracts new users. If it works for mods, that are linked in the opening of the game thread, it works even more for games themselves.
As for the second point, it regularly put the game on top of the latest update list. Not only it mean that more people will have a chance to see that the game exist, but it also works as cognitive bias. The version number advance, making us believe that the game exist since a long time, and we regularly see the name, what will make us want to try it. And once on the thread opening, the rating and the number of pages on the thread do the rest.

But globally it's the only thing that can be done. You can make the perfect game, the one that everyone was waiting, and still be unnoticed.

I think it's the biggest platform, at least I haven't ever seen anything bigger than it.

It is the biggest, yes. And most sites, including some forums, that provide pirated version of adult games get them here. There's others communities on the scene, but they are all specialized on a kink or a particular kind of game0

If we couple data from f95 and steam, we'd probably get something interesting.

Yes and no.
They are mostly two different communities. There's of course people who get their games in both, but globally steam users are more "casual adult gamers". They'll play an adult game to change from their gaming habit, while F95 members do it more regularly.
In the end, crossing the data would give us a good view of the scene, since it would include its two sides. But I doubt that it would tell us why a game is successful. Or, more precisely, it would give us two different sets of reasons. Even if it was allowed, I doubt that a male dom harem incest game with some loli and futa would be successful on Steam, it's too hardcore. But here he would fall on the average and have way more success.
There's another difference, on Steam the users will judge more on the visual presentation. Show them some marvelous screenshot, a short movie as trailer, and they'll want to have your game. Since they do it occasionally, they want something that will looks good. Here it's more the description of the game that interest us, mostly because we play tons of games like that. We will not care this much if the CGs are made with SIMS 4, as long as the story is interesting.

Also... I'm not certain that many universities would accept a research project about porn games

Well, apparently they accept it, "

You must be registered to see the links

". It's near to 2AM here, so I'll not read it now, but it can be interesting.
This said, I'm not sure that it can help to make a game successful. They seem to focus more on the content itself than on the quality, frequency of the updates, and what finally make us prefer one game to another. And we all know that clone games tend to fail.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Interestingly, most on here vote for "Big release, but less frequent" when given the option. However, that is for people that already know about the game. Early on, you need the opposite.

Yeah, it's a variation of what ambir was saying regarding the difference between what people want and what they need. People effectively want bigger release, but your game need small frequent one to be known.

 

[jamdan]

This is genius.

I like that strategy already.

Though, are the 5-10 minutes player skipping dialog or without?

But that seems very reasonable as a release. That gives you, the dev, time to relax and refocus again. I would favor that approach over any other.

Without skipping. Although, playtime obviously depends on the player/reader. Some read quickly, while glancing over the renders. Others analyze the renders and read slowly. And some take a 2-minute break every so often, if you know what I mean .

For me, 5-10 minutes of content is like 150-200 renders. Maybe 5k words or so at most. If you go by the average WPM (words per minute) 5k words is actually around 20 minutes of reading. The average WPM is 250. In these games, how many words will depend a lot on how many lines those words are in. Keeping the dialogs shorter is more readable, thus people are more likely to actually read everything. Whereas games that have longwinded dialog, people will eventually get tired and skip it.

Another way to kinda sorta cheat playtime is "choices". The appearance of having "choice" is more important than actually having it. Many games on here are pretty linear, despite having lots of "choice". Because the choices just change dialog, or offer small alternative scenes. Keeping the game more linear also allows you to make plot progress quicker and the updates will feel bigger, because most players do not play multiple routes. Even if the game has them. They just see a portion of the content, not the rest.

For example, using my 200 render count above.

In a more branching game. 200 renders, with 4 "branches" to cover, means each branch only got around 50 renders. Not much of anything. Especially if you only play one or two of the branches. So many games go the route of having route-specific updates, but that is bad because people have no reason to play if their preferred routes don't get updated often enough.

In a more linear game. Same scenario as above, but only 1 main story route, that has little optional events on the side. 150 renders for the "main" branch + 50 extra renders for the variations and side-events. Same as above, not everyone will bother with that stuff. But everyone will get at least 150 renders. Thus, it feels longer. Even though, technically, it's the same amount of content.

 

[coffeeaddicted]

Without skipping. Although, playtime obviously depends on the player/reader. Some read quickly, while glancing over the renders. Others analyze the renders and read slowly. And some take a 2-minute break every so often, if you know what I mean .

For me, 5-10 minutes of content is like 150-200 renders. Maybe 5k words or so at most. If you go by the average WPM (words per minute) 5k words is actually around 20 minutes of reading. The average WPM is 250. In these games, how many words will depend a lot on how many lines those words are in. Keeping the dialogs shorter is more readable, thus people are more likely to actually read everything. Whereas games that have longwinded dialog, people will eventually get tired and skip it.

Another way to kinda sorta cheat playtime is "choices". The appearance of having "choice" is more important than actually having it. Many games on here are pretty linear, despite having lots of "choice". Because the choices just change dialog, or offer small alternative scenes. Keeping the game more linear also allows you to make plot progress quicker and the updates will feel bigger, because most players do not play multiple routes. Even if the game has them. They just see a portion of the content, not the rest.

For example, using my 200 render count above.

In a more branching game. 200 renders, with 4 "branches" to cover, means each branch only got around 50 renders. Not much of anything. Especially if you only play one or two of the branches. So many games go the route of having route-specific updates, but that is bad because people have no reason to play if their preferred routes don't get updated often enough.

In a more linear game. Same scenario as above, but only 1 main story route, that has little optional events on the side. 150 renders for the "main" branch + 50 extra renders for the variations and side-events. Same as above, not everyone will bother with that stuff. But everyone will get at least 150 renders. Thus, it feels longer. Even though, technically, it's the same amount of content.

Hey thanks.

That gives me an idea.
5K words. Oh wow.

Well, i am not sure if you are a coder, dev or just a player but i never thought about that way.

As i am trying to craft something myself this is helpful.

a) different path's
Now that you mentioned it. I originally had planned a game where you would have a romantic and naughty route.
Of course this means more renders total but then less for each path.
Most of the time if there are choices it seems to revolve around "you are now a slut" or "you are in love".
So merely a statement than actually something meaningful.
In Dating my Daughter you can chose "Love" or "Naughty". I forgot how it was coined.
Anyway, this appeared to me as something meaningful. Though i only concentrated on the other which invalidates the need of the other.

b) Dialog
I would not say i struggle with it as more that i have struggles with grammar. And believe me, i am living in the US for 20 years. Bad me.
I am not sure if there is a ratio dialog per slide that is feasible so that a player doesn't get tired and bored and just skips missing the entire story.

I have to play some "top" games to get a better idea really.

And i am not a fast reader really. So if there is a dialog i usually read if i can understand it. That is sometimes actually a problem. Oh my.
These games are indeed very linear. Wouldn't fly if that would happen in Skyrim.
But perhaps this is something that only a studio can accomplish as this involves more, or extremely more work.

 

[osanaiko]

I am not sure if there is a ratio dialog per slide that is feasible so that a player doesn't get tired and bored and just skips missing the entire story.

I recommend you do some research about writing Movie Scripts. There is great advice and examples about how to write "snappy" dialogue. The brevity, interaction between characters and conveying the information quickly is key.

There is a difference of course: in a VN you don't have the luxury of being able to SHOW the player as much because it would result in too heavy a burden of creating images.

So you need a middle path:

1. use expressions on the faces of the character during dialogue to help show the emotion, and also body language/posture changes. Even in the sample Renpy game "The Question", they use the example of different facial expressions for the character bust. Humans are hardwired to look at faces to understand the truth about what a character is saying. A simple shift of the eyes, a slight wince, a quickly supressed smile, a frown and head tilt... all of these will present so much more emotion than can ever be represented with simple text.

2. notwithstanding the above, for any given scene you will need to have MORE text than a movie script (even if it is not dialogue - e.g. narrator or internal monologue) to give the full details to the player, because there is little ability to show all the action by just visuals.


Anyway, to answer your question: it seems like at most 3-4 lines of dialgoue between image changes is the sweet spot. Note that you don't need a new image every time, just cycling between smile->neutral-> blink-> smile (as appropriate to the scene) is enough to bring them to life.
Another thing is to have the characters move around a little / move the camera as you go through the scene.

 

[Gwedelino]

You don't need a big first release, in terms of content quantity, to be successful. The first release(s) are important though.

By that I mean, whether the updates are big or small, you need to be regular and consistent early on to grow a base. Games like Corrupted Kingdom have grown to nearly 5k patrons, and all their releases are very small weekly releases. Early on, WVM took off because Braindrop posted smaller bi-weekly updates.

Interestingly, most on here vote for "Big release, but less frequent" when given the option. However, that is for people that already know about the game. Early on, you need the opposite. Nobody is going to play your game (not literally, figuratively) if they don't know it exists. And the best way to show people it exists is to keep it in the headlines, so to speak.

I think the ideal early-game update schedule is to...cheat. Yep. Cheat.

Hypothetical example:

Update 1: This is the premier update. Make is big, but not too big. Maybe 15-20 or so minutes of content.

But...don't release it. Keep working on a few more updates first. This is where you "cheat". Creating more content that won't be initially released. Thus, allowing you to have a backlog of updates ready to go when needed. To keep the headlines.

Update 2: Smaller than the first, 5-10 minutes of content.
Update 3: Another 5-10 minutes.
Update 4: Another 5-10 minutes.
etc.

When you've gone deep enough and accumulated enough updates, release Update 1. Then a couple weeks later, update 2. And so on. Doing it this way allows you to "get ahead" of where the game is while keeping it in the headlines. When Update 2 is released, you're working on Update 5. When Update 3, you're on Update 6 etc. This is what NLT does, I think.

For a bonus, make a thread in the development forum and post spoilers (of things in the first update). You can get feedback this way if needed, without an actual game being released.

The big brain strategy is to actually start and complete the game without talking about it, and then release it part after part to simulate a game development, only working on minors updates to catter to the reviews your game get.

 

[Synx]

Do we a have a guess how many games are made by a team vs solo?
I am just curious.

Dont think there is. There was a post a while ago that analysed the top 100 earners or something, and it was mostly teams at the top, and the lower you got it turned into individuals. But most of the teams didn't start out as one. They have already created several games, and the team often grow over time. Being payed is a massive stimulant in joining a team. Much easier to find somebody that does what you want if you just pay them .

I think the ideal early-game update schedule is to...cheat. Yep. Cheat.

Hypothetical example:

Update 1: This is the premier update. Make is big, but not too big. Maybe 15-20 or so minutes of content.

But...don't release it. Keep working on a few more updates first. This is where you "cheat". Creating more content that won't be initially released. Thus, allowing you to have a backlog of updates ready to go when needed. To keep the headlines.

Update 2: Smaller than the first, 5-10 minutes of content.
Update 3: Another 5-10 minutes.
Update 4: Another 5-10 minutes.
etc.

Thats actually a really good way to build an initial audience. 5K words is a lot though for 10 minutes. I'm a relatively fast reader, but reading VN's I read much slower. You got to click between slides, and there is visual aid as well to 'distract you'. Even if its just for a second or two, it slows you down by a lot. I would say 1500-2000 words is more than enough to hit the 10 min mark per update.

I would not say i struggle with it as more that i have struggles with grammar. And believe me, i am living in the US for 20 years. Bad me.
I am not sure if there is a ratio dialog per slide that is feasible so that a player doesn't get tired and bored and just skips missing the entire story.

I have to play some "top" games to get a better idea really.

My own rule is 1 long or 2 short sentences per slide. This seems to be correspond with what most (top) games do here. But skipping isn't much about the dialog per slide, but how long dialogs last and what its actually doing for the story. From my own experience in most games you can literally skip 90% of the dialog and still follow the story without a problem. It doesn't help most game stories are very simple as its all about getting in everyone's pants. You learn what a character has a problem with, then have 2000 'filler' words, before reaching the conclusion where you fix the characters problem and get rewarded.

If you want to look into games with I would say good writing (for an adult game) I would look into Caribdis two games. There current game Eternum and finished game Once in a Life time. Both games have an overlapping non adult story that keeps the story interesting and flowing. The conversations between characters is in most cases is short and snappy.

 

[Gwedelino]

My own rule is 1 long or 2 short sentences per slide. This seems to be correspond with what most (top) games do here.

How does it translate for games with traditional 2D art ?

It's way easier to switch renders in 3D games than to switch graphics assets in 2D games.

 

[Synx]

How does it translate for games with traditional 2D art ?

It's way easier to switch renders in 3D games than to switch graphics assets in 2D games.

Ow maybe I wasnt clear, I ment per slide not per render. Like only have 1 long sentence or 2 short sentences on the screen at a time. I thought that was what he was asking.

For 3D renders I would properly limit it to maybe 2 or 3 scenes with the same render background. Its fairly easy to just switch some minor thing around to keep it feeling alive. Much less for 2D art yeah, I dont really mind if the same drawing is used for most of a conversation. Would still like some minor changes (like expression or something) but I understand it requires a lot more effort.

 

[The Rogue Trader]

From my own experience in most games you can literally skip 90% of the dialog and still follow the story without a problem. It doesn't help most game stories are very simple as its all about getting in everyone's pants. You learn what a character has a problem with, then have 2000 'filler' words, before reaching the conclusion where you fix the characters problem and get rewarded.

That's something that irked me a lot when I was reading the old Japanese VNs. Pages over pages of the MC droning about either nothing or how much of a loser he was. When I started experimenting with writing VNs myself, I went at midnight to a lonely field, under a blasted oak, and took an awful oath before witnesses to never write lines in excess.
It's not limited to Japanese media (although they are repeat offenders: for how many minutes the protagonist of Gate hammers the audience with the notion that he is, indeed, an otaku?) lately I helped a guy from here with his script. The starting scene dragged for 700 words saying basically nothing but how cool and successful the MC's co-worker was, and contained no less than 28 lines just about pull-ups. In the end, my reduced version of the same scene was only 7 lines long. And I don't pride myself for concision, as you can see from my posts.

That said, "in excess" is a very subjective term. A writer might be under the impression he's giving useful information (theme, setting, atmosphere) with his "filler" lines.

Visual novels are more or less in the middle ground between movie scripts and old style novels. I suppose the most appropriate comparison would be graphic novels. Often you need to describe what's going on, as your visual aids are going to be limited, but just as often when I have the final renders in hand, I see that I'm telling something that's already shown and it's time to prune the script if I don't want to screw the pacing.
I found sex scenes particularly difficult in this regard: scripts that sounded very good when read all in one breath, suddenly turned out to be unreadable crap when they were in a textbox under some pictures.

I would say 1500-2000 words is more than enough to hit the 10 min mark per update.
<...>
You learn what a character has a problem with, then have 2000 'filler' words, before reaching the conclusion where you fix the characters problem and get rewarded.

That's... a grim picture you're painting