Recommending Story-first games

[NukaCola]

I'm checking out the list at #1 and like half of them are abandoned games

 

[Mravac Kid]

I have almost 400 games on my disk, I don't think there's more than 20-30 finished ones. A category that only has half of them abandoned is inordinately successful.

 

[fitgirlbestgirl]

Don't try to write your magnum opus on your first try. Write one story, finish it, "publish" it, and then write the next one. Don't try to write a serial that can continue forever.

I think that's terrible advice based on a very unique career that most people won't be able to duplicate. I agree with the part that your VN shouldn't be the first thing you have written and that you should know the basic plot outline of where your VN is going, but no, you don't need to release multiple games before you finally unlock hard mode and can do a big game. Most popular games are first time dev efforts.

 

[scutterhutdev]

I think that's terrible advice based on a very unique career that most people won't be able to duplicate. I agree with the part that your VN shouldn't be the first thing you have written and that you should know the basic plot outline of where your VN is going, but no, you don't need to release multiple games before you finally unlock hard mode and can do a big game. Most popular games are first time dev efforts.

I know what your getting at. I would guess a lot of devs get stuck because they bite off more than they can chew and get overwhelmed with what to do next.

I think you learn a lot by actually finishing something from start to finish too, because you learn about the steps involved in putting out something finished and how to neatly finish a story. If you have tons of branching narrative, that's really hard in itself, without all the dev work that needs to be done.

I've just started working on Casting Director which was abandoned in 2022 (I think), one of the first comments was "I hope the new dev continues the branching/free choices of the original game". Fair enough, that makes a good game but I'd say it's a huge reason why so much gets abandoned.

I really just want to write a really good fucking story in the style of the original dev and conclude the great story the original dev started.

 

[Finuee]

Long ago, when I was trying to break into the paper novel field, I attended a writer's seminar taught by a husband and wife team, both of whom were established Science Fiction novelists who were also the co-editors of one of the SF magazines of the time. They told me (us) something that was really uncomfortable. (Paraphrased) "Your first story isn't going to be very good. Write it, finish it, and move on to write your next. It'll be better. Keep doing this until you're good enough that people like us want to publish you."

Naturally, I didn't want to hear this. I had put a lot of work into my first story. And it was an idea that I had thought about for a long time. I didn't have enough ideas for the number of stories that they were suggesting it would take. But, while there were professional publishing opportunities back then, you had to print your manuscript and send it by mail to each one, and you had to do it in serial. You couldn't send it to the second magazine until the first one rejected you. Etc.

So, while that first story slowly worked its way through the system, getting rejected each time, I had nothing better to do than write other stories. And, yeah, they got progressively better...

I learned that, while the advice from the pros was uncomfortable, it was also correct.

So I repeat this advice to every new VN dev that I meet. Don't try to write your magnum opus on your first try. Write one story, finish it, "publish" it, and then write the next one. Don't try to write a serial that can continue forever.

This is a solution to "I'm better now, I should redo the early chapters." Finish the story and take your improvements to the next thing you write. It's also a solution to, "I've written myself into a corner and can't figure out how to move forward." If you know the end of the story before you start, you're not going to get stuck. You get stuck when you're seven chapters into your serial and you haven't figured out the end yet.

People rarely listen to that advice, but I don't really mind. I know how it feels to receive it.

Tlaero

It reminds me of the movie "Tick, Tick, Boom". That's basically what happens to the protagonist. And considering it's the true story of the guy who wrote "Rent", you realize how true it is. If he had fallen down the "rework" rabbit hole, we would have never had one of the best musicals of the last 30 years.

 

[jufot]

Jezebel has a new bonus scene out on

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. Bonus scenes are canon compatible side stories. Though they result in sex, they are well-developed and largely self-contained, entirely in line with the game's quality of writing. This is the fifth such story, and revolves around two women - Cheshna, of the nobility, and Nathalée, of the gentry. They both have scandalous pasts with Duvessa and are angry with her, which help spark a wonderful friendship on the road to some long-overdue payback

Nathalée: How long after you married your husband did you start bedding his son?
Chesna: Oh, I don't know...a month?
Nathalée: A month!?
Nathalée: You're shameless, girl.
Chesna: Oh, don't give me that! And don't call me 'girl', child. You ought to respect your elders!
Nathalée: Right...because you're giving me so much to respect, right about now.
Chesna: Stop being a sarcastic twit and try to see it from my side!
Chesna: We've only one go of this life! I had a chance to find true love and I saw fit to take it! Can't you understand that?
...yes. I suppose I can.
Nathalée: Hm...
Chesna: What?
Nathalée: Nothing, it's just...perhaps you're right.
Nathalée: I've been alone for so long...maybe I'd do the same, were I in your shoes.
Nathalée: But, then, how did Duvessa enter the picture?
Chesna: ...take a guess.
Nathalée: How?
Chesna: No, I meant that. Take a guess. If you really knew her well, back then, you probably have an idea, yourself.
Nathalée: ...
Nathalée: ...she found out about your affair and blackmailed you with it.
Chesna: Mm. Precisely.

 

[Johnny Dough]

Not specifically about those (or any particular) games, but it feels like most VNs start not with a plot but with "I'll design girls in Daz because it's fun" which lends itself so easily to scope creep and burnout once development kicks in. Suddenly, you're three chapters in, looking at the same models you've seen thousands of times, and all that's ahead of you is thinking, writing and coding, none of which are as appealing as playing with the boob sliders or shopping for new assets. You start procrastinating. You look at your earliest renders from the first chapter, trying to recapture some of those feelings, but hold on, what's that? Why does her hair look like that?? Oh my god, did you really clip that guy's finger into her thigh? And hey, wouldn't it be sexier if said thighs were thicker? Oh, I know!, you go, I'll remaster the first 5 chapters and make it twice as good! Motivation surges through you and development is fun again. Sure, your planned 2-month remaster of the first episode took 6 months, the number of renders doubled even though the script has barely changed, but so what? You learned your lesson and for the next chapter's remaster you will Do It Right™. But eventually, you find yourself back at the same point - looking at the same models you've seen thousands of times, with nothing but writing and coding on the horizon. You start procrastinating. 6 months later, someone messages you - your game has been marked "Abandoned" on F95. Bollocks!, you say, and go back to scrolling on social media.

I guess it's mostly "I'll put virtual girls to fuck because it's fun," because, by the large amount of out-of-the-box Daz models used in most AVNs, most devs don't seem to either enjoy or have the capacity to design girls in Daz...

But, indeed, since most AVNs are usually one-man-army things, and, since there's a lot into making an AVN (the person has to be cinematographer, writer, director, costume designer, set designer character designer, graphic designer, etc. -- even if "designer" here only means assembling pieces, it's a lot of work and hard to do well), there's a huge chance that the dev will find some parts enjoyable but others not so much. When it starts to feel like a job, but the payment is not enough, it's no surprise they jump the boat.

 

[Tlaero]

I think that's terrible advice based on a very unique career that most people won't be able to duplicate. I agree with the part that your VN shouldn't be the first thing you have written and that you should know the basic plot outline of where your VN is going, but no, you don't need to release multiple games before you finally unlock hard mode and can do a big game. Most popular games are first time dev efforts.

There's nothing unique about my career. Whether you're creating novels, short stories, video games, software, tv shows, art, music, poetry, or, really, anything else, it takes practice to be good at it. If the first thing you do is create a seven year effort, then that practice and improvement is going to happen over the course of the production. So, unless you're naturally perfect at it (talk about unique!), the beginning of your big game won't be as good as what you're doing in the 5th year. That leaves you with either reworking the start or leaving it alone and possibly turning off potential customers who start with the first thing you ever wrote and don't know that a few hours of playtime in it'll get to be acceptably good.

Sure, there are popular long games that were the first thing that dev team did together. But they're a small percentage of a vast sea of abandoned games that never got finished. How many great games did we never get because their creators bit off more than they could chew and washed out before they got good? How much potential was squandered? How much raw creativity was kept from us?

And of those popular long first games, how many didn't have someone with already learned skill on the dev team? Maybe an artist who went to art school and sold her work on Etsy, then joined a just starting out VN crew. Or the professional software developer who finds the coding for these games to be very simple and easy but knows how to keep it clean and doesn't let the team paint themselves into a corner. Or the writer who had a career writing ad copy for commercials and had a dream of getting into erotic fiction.

I'm sure there are examples of successful games created by people who didn't have any of the skills required to make a good AVN, but holding them up as proof that you don't need to practice your craft to get good at it is a disservice all the non-superheroes who are thinking they'd like to try their hand at something creative.

Tlaero

 

[Jaike]

I just realised that the majority of games that jufot listed in the original post are tagged as abandoned. That's quite a sad state of affairs for us story admirers, isn't it. Shoutout to all the story-oriented developers who defy the odds.

I'm checking out the list at #1 and like half of them are abandoned games

So, earlier I intentionally went with just a positive twist, but I think the fuller story is that a lot of non-Japanese games that get pirated here get abandoned, and I don't think story-oriented ones are abandoned more often than the rest, and I feel developing a game, even a small KN, is like a massive undertaking that I don't feel entitled to, certainly not to the end product. Many devs totally don't get the money where I think the supporters can "expect" to see a complete result either.

So my expectations are pretty low, well, overall and the sadness of the state of affairs doesn't hit me much. I like Éama's phrase "defying the odds", because I see devs who complete their projects as finishers in a long distance race.

Anyway, I don't have time now to redo it but here's an old edit of the list I made, look for the ones marked as completed and you won't see an abandoned game.