What is the cost of creating a visual novel roughly?

[Darbeli Matkap]

I would like to know the cost of a visual novel renpy game for someone who doesn't know much about programming and graphic designing. My first story contains 7 or 8 characters at most, and the gameplay will be around 2 hours or so. I will have to work with professionals in making this into a game, as I know almost nothing about it. I don't really want to make a lot of profit out of my future game(s), but I don't want to make loss as well. Therefore,

Would it be worth it to even try?
Assuming my game is liked and will become popular, would I get satisfactory financial return out of it?
How long does it take for developers to reach the break-even point for their projects?
What are the components (programming, art design, music, etc.) required to create a visual novel on Ren'Py?
What would be the cost for each of these components?

I get the sense that the adult game market is in decline. Is it so? What dou you guys think? Once again, my main focus will not be to make loads of money out of it. I am only asking this because I already have several full stories completed. I am trying to determine whether I should go ahead and make games out of them, or just post them on other paltforms as plain text, which wouldn't cost me anything? I need to know the average cost of a game from scratch in order to get an insight.

I would be more than glad if you could answer these questions. Thanks in advance.

 

[Meaning Less]

Either you look for someone interested in working with you, or learn how to create the game yourself.

There is no rough cost of making vns because most people do it out of "love for the game", hiring professional help will almost certainly result in you not being able to make your money back.

 

[Xandyr44]

Depends on how you want to go about it but I wouldnt go into it thinking of making money at all but a hobby. You can pretty much make a simple VN out of Daz/HS/KK for basically free. For a simple VN learning RenPy is pretty easy once you learn a few pieces of code you can pretty much do anything and then theres a ton of tutorials online.

Get your feet wet with a small project dosent even have to be a full game just to get a feel for it see if its something you have a passion for.

 

[Nagozo]

If you outsource any of the work (assuming you hire someone instead of finding a partner who works for free), it's very unlikely you're going to make your investment back.

Doing the work yourself will cost you a lot of time, but will allow you to (at least in principle) make the game for free.

Your best bet is probably to keep things simple; try releasing your stories and if any become very popular, maybe consider making that into a game. On the other hand, if you're passionate about your work, you could just treat it as a hobby and develop it into a game, spending time and money at your discretion.

 

[Ambir]

Well, it depends.
What kind of art are you using? Will it be 2d or 3d?
And are you comissionning the entire thing, or are you open to do some of it yourself?
Is your game going to be voice acted?
Is it going to contain gameplay mechanics?

The components of a visual novel are:
1. The programming.
2. The characters
3. The background art.

Optionally, you can also have:
4. Music
5. Sound effects
6. Voice acting.
7. User interface.

Generally, the more efforts you put in a VN, the more you will get attention for it. That being said, a VN is fundamentally a game, and just as with any other games, you can get any result between losing your entire investment and getting a wild number of people interested in your game and making huge bank.

I can't answer when it comes to the cost of each of the things, I would need to know more about your project before I can give you a reliable estimate.

As for whether the adult game market is on the decline, we don't really have global data on it. However, I have the intuition that there was a huge bubble where people invested a lot in projects via patreon, and once a couple of big projects failed (Breeding season to name one), people got disillusionned, so I think we're reaching a point where people won't wildly invest in anything that comes around, but if your game is solid enough, you should be able to make some money, either via patreon or via direct sales on itch.io and steam.

Is it worth it to even try? Well, I'm a game dev, so I feel like my answer would be biaised. So instead, I'm just going to ask you this: Is this something you want to be doing? Are you passionate about making games?


I'm going to stop there. Please answer my questions, and I can offer you further help.

 

[Count Morado]

I would like to know the cost of a visual novel renpy game for someone who doesn't know much about programming and graphic designing.
I will have to work with professionals in making this into a game, as I know almost nothing about it.
Would it be worth it to even try?
Assuming my game is liked and will become popular, would I get satisfactory financial return out of it?
How long does it take for developers to reach the break-even point for their projects?

I'm just going to touch on these.

It's either going to take time or money. If you don't have enough of either to invest without being able to accept a loss in those investments, you should probably just post the stories on a website for people to read and ask for tips through ko-fi or similar.

About 2/3rd of all the adult game creators on Patreon make less than 100 USD per month and/or have less than 30 subscribers.

Now, if you are wanting to learn how to design and program, or are willing to lead up a couple of creative people who have little/no work experiences in the business - knowing that unless you get extremely lucky there will be little to no financial gain, but you'll earn a wealth of experience and - hopefully - enjoyment, then you should go for it.

 

[おい！]

I would like to know the cost of a visual novel renpy game for someone who doesn't know much about programming and graphic designing. My first story contains 7 or 8 characters at most, and the gameplay will be around 2 hours or so. I will have to work with professionals in making this into a game, as I know almost nothing about it. I don't really want to make a lot of profit out of my future game(s), but I don't want to make loss as well. Therefore,

Would it be worth it to even try?
Assuming my game is liked and will become popular, would I get satisfactory financial return out of it?
How long does it take for developers to reach the break-even point for their projects?
What are the components (programming, art design, music, etc.) required to create a visual novel on Ren'Py?
What would be the cost for each of these components?

I get the sense that the adult game market is in decline. Is it so? What dou you guys think? Once again, my main focus will not be to make loads of money out of it. I am only asking this because I already have several full stories completed. I am trying to determine whether I should go ahead and make games out of them, or just post them on other paltforms as plain text, which wouldn't cost me anything? I need to know the average cost of a game from scratch in order to get an insight.

I would be more than glad if you could answer these questions. Thanks in advance.

Costs for example:
Ren'Py = Zero
Honey Select = Zero
Gimp = Zero

Total cost = Zero.

 

[Vinyard]

Electric bill and your sanity.

 

[E_O_N]

I would like to know the cost of a visual novel renpy game for someone who doesn't know much about programming and graphic designing. My first story contains 7 or 8 characters at most, and the gameplay will be around 2 hours or so. I will have to work with professionals in making this into a game, as I know almost nothing about it. I don't really want to make a lot of profit out of my future game(s), but I don't want to make loss as well. Therefore,

Would it be worth it to even try?
Assuming my game is liked and will become popular, would I get satisfactory financial return out of it?
How long does it take for developers to reach the break-even point for their projects?
What are the components (programming, art design, music, etc.) required to create a visual novel on Ren'Py?
What would be the cost for each of these components?

I get the sense that the adult game market is in decline. Is it so? What dou you guys think? Once again, my main focus will not be to make loads of money out of it. I am only asking this because I already have several full stories completed. I am trying to determine whether I should go ahead and make games out of them, or just post them on other paltforms as plain text, which wouldn't cost me anything? I need to know the average cost of a game from scratch in order to get an insight.

I would be more than glad if you could answer these questions. Thanks in advance.

Take Ambirs offer and do research.

 

[Atemsiel]

I've spent $0 making Stormside so far and I've made more than 1,000,000 times that from it.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I would like to know the cost of a visual novel renpy game for someone who doesn't know much about programming and graphic designing. My first story contains 7 or 8 characters at most, and the gameplay will be around 2 hours or so.

Unless you do everything yourself, it will cost you more than you'll earn with it. Nowadays "2 hours or so" is too short, except perhaps for a pure kinetic novel. This said, you've "several full stories completed", therefore with time it can pay due to the volume. But in between you'll have to cover the costs by yourself.

Assuming my game is liked and will become popular, would I get satisfactory financial return out of it?

If it become effectively popular, yes you'll have a satisfactory financial return, but there's less than 5% of the games on the scene that become popular. It's a happy hazard, not something that you should have as goal.

I get the sense that the adult game market is in decline. Is it so? What dou you guys think?

The scene is saturated, but not in decline. Still, the saturation make it more difficult for a good game to gain the visibility it deserve.

 

[E_O_N]

If it become effectively popular, yes you'll have a satisfactory financial return, but there's less than 5% of the games on the scene that become popular. It's a happy hazard, not something that you should have as goal.

Sadly it's far less if you start now. Someone did the numbers in the dev forum. I am trying to forget them. But 0.5% were financally successful. Not saying that there isn't more that get their money back. But time invested is also something.

The scene is saturated, but not in decline. Still, the saturation make it more difficult for a good game to gain the visibility it deserve.

9X% make one release. We all feel like there are tons of games. But how many games are really getting developed over time, with devs that stick to it? How many devs have a finished game?

 

[MissFortune]

How many devs have a finished game?

Using F95 as the bar, 5736 are completed. That's including everything from RPGM to Unity, along with Japanese games (which are often completed upon release anyways). Now you can exclude the Japanese games via excluded tags. If you remove the Japanese games, that number is 3000 exactly. I'm excluding the Japanese games as they often don't work off the Patreon/Subscriber model.

So, with Japanese games removed, there's 9,225 games of varying stages - including abandoned. 3,000 of 9,225 is somewhere around 32.9%, I think? My math is pretty rusty, so I could certainly be off there.

 

[Ambir]

Using F95 as the bar, 5736 are completed. That's including everything from RPGM to Unity, along with Japanese games (which are often completed upon release anyways). Now you can exclude the Japanese games via excluded tags. If you remove the Japanese games, that number is 3000 exactly. I'm excluding the Japanese games as they often don't work off the Patreon/Subscriber model.

So, with Japanese games removed, there's 9,225 games of varying stages - including abandoned. 3,000 of 9,225 is somewhere around 32.9%, I think? My math is pretty rusty, so I could certainly be off there.

Calculator says 32.52%.
That's more than I was lead to believe, honestly.

 

[MissFortune]

Calculator says 32.52%.
That's more than I was lead to believe, honestly.

Figured I was off a bit, mostly just quick head math because I was too lazy to pull up a calculator. Surprised by that number myself, honestly. Figured it was closer to 20-25% at most.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Sadly it's far less if you start now. Someone did the numbers in the dev forum. I am trying to forget them. But 0.5% were financally successful. Not saying that there isn't more that get their money back. But time invested is also something.

Yeah, I tend to forget to look at the instant and not over the times. 5% are successful, but 90% of them started years ago.

9X% make one release. We all feel like there are tons of games. But how many games are really getting developed over time, with devs that stick to it? How many devs have a finished game?

Last time I checked, around 10% have a finished game, but it's mostly because there's a lot of one timer. They release a short/half long game, then disappear. Perhaps because it was their sole idea, but I believe that for the majority it's because it was way more works, for way less reward, that they expected at first. They were dedicated enough to finish their game, it's already something.
Edit: What match more or less with MissFortune numbers since around a third of the devs have more than one game.

This said, I don't think that there's 9x% of one release only. It's just a feeling, I don't anymore have time to follow closely the evolution of the scene, but it seem that there's less 0.1 that during the last two years. But with the scene being saturated, it's difficult to tell effectively. Especially since it seem that authors finally decided to care less about a monthly schedule, what make it more difficult to notice the games that just disappeared.
But, it don't change much to what you said, whatever if they stop at the 0.1 or the 0.5, last one month of six, the number of abandoned project is high, too high.

A good time to remind "wanabe dev" that making a game have a cost. Not necessarily in term of money, but it's an investment. You'll pass most of your free time working on it, see your friends less often, and be too tired for your family. This for nothing more than doing something you like.
It's only after some times, and therefore some updates, that you'll be able to gain back some times for you. You've you fan base, whatever how big or small it can be. They'll do part of the communication for you, catch the bugs that you missed, find the typo, and a lot of small things that you add to do before.

Do not starts if you're not ready to live at 100% for your game during at least the first year.

 

[GreenGobbo]

5 resse's peanutbutter cups, 2 hookers, a bottle of Jack, any dignity you have left, and a carton of camel reds.

 

[E_O_N]

Figured I was off a bit, mostly just quick head math because I was too lazy to pull up a calculator. Surprised by that number myself, honestly. Figured it was closer to 20-25% at most.

Did check as well. First 6 entries in a row were demos. Then finally came a game.
There is huge inflation going on there. You can definitely reduce the number further.

Still higher than I thought.

 

[Deleted member 5189987]

This might be a generic answer, but it depends on your game and skills. The most important part of a game (for me) are the visuals. I can't draw, so I need to commission an artist. He asks around $70 per image, which is a great price for the quality he delivers.

I write the story myself, but if you can't write, you need to hire a writer. I can't program, but RenPy is easy to learn, so I will make my game linear for now. When I am more experienced, I might make branching storylines.

I think that if I finish my game, I will have invested around 2K in it. I do it for fun, not to make money per se. It would be cool to get my investment back, but I create this game because I can practise writing.

 

[Ambir]

This might be a generic answer, but it depends on your game ans skills. The most important part of a game (for me) are the visuals. I can't draw, so I need to commission an artist. He asks around $70 per image, which is a great price for the quality he delivers.

I write the stort myself, but if you can't write, you need to hire a writer. I can't program, but RenPy is easy to learn, so I will make my game linear for now. When I am more experienced, I might make branching storylines.

I think that if I finish my game, I will have invested around 2K in it. I do it for fun, not to make money per se. It would be cool to get my investment back, but I create this game because I can practise writing.

Your answer to his question was actually one of the better answer that was given in this thread. Most other people went like "just do it yourself and it'll cost you 0 money", which, while it is an answer, completely sidesteps the issue outlined by OP which is that he has no skills and wants to get help from professionals.