Would a great, short, horror IF be worth anything financially?

[forthewins]

I had a nightmare last night of me playing a well designed IF (old school text adventure game). But sometimes horror games get too scary for me, so though I really respected what the game was doing I quit playing. Which forced me to wake up.

My thoughts were still on this game though, as I lied in my bed in my post-dream stupor. I thought the game concept was very clever and well done. It seemed like the type of game that would win awards and the like. But it was too scary for me, so I wasn't going to play it anymore. Then I realized the game doesn't exist in real life.

I'm not a programmer, but I'm sure I could make this game without it taking too much time. All it needs is simple IF commands (look, walk, choosing between options). It could be incredibly short and still be very good. Something you beat in under an hour. The dream ended well before the ending, but I got the gist of it, and was able to come up with ideas of where to go from there. I still don't think there's a need to really drag out the experience into a longer game though. It would make it more marketable, but also likely lessen the effect. And I think adding graphics would also make the experience less scary and less powerful.

Which brings me to my dilemma. I feel the idea behind the game is really good. Kind of perfect in its simplicity, and it'd be somewhat of a shame to just throw it away. But what value would there be in a very short IF game, even if it's the type that wins small IF awards that very few people have heard of?

The only value I can really think of would be to use it to gain name recognition for the next game I developed, which would be something that would be a lot more marketable. But I'm not a game developer, and there's no guarantee I'd ever have an idea this good again. And again I'm not really a horror guy, so even if I did make another game after it it likely would be something completely different.

And the concept wouldn't really work in a medium that wasn't interactive, so turning it into something other than a game wouldn't make much sense. Except maybe a short story of someone playing a game ... but then the question still remains: is there any money in making one good short story? Would any of this be worth the effort?

 

[toolkitxx]

You are actually asking 2 distinct different questions that dont correlate well with each other.

1. Game design - would a game based on your idea be enjoyable and playable?
2. Is a game financially viable and profitable?

Lets begin with answering question 2 first:
Rarely a first game has ever been financially viable - even less so profitable. Why? Because if you start from scratch with no knowledge at all you need to invest quite a lot of time and energy into some basics that you will never be able to charge for. Those are the usage of design/programming tools, research into various stuff and so on. In business theory you would need to calculate those hours into your overall calculation and that would probably make your game unaffordable for what it actually delivers. Is there money to be made at all? Of course as tastes are vastly different and people play games out of violition to satisfy a certain need or wish. And there will probably be people who would like to play something like it. But how many is the more important part of the question. Now we need to address marketing, visibility, quality of your product and so on. Based on all those aspects you will come up with some kind of market share. And as before - since it is your first game all those aspects will have to compete with the same ones of more seasoned developers or companies. Many think of indie as in: Whatever money i make is profit. Which is wrong in business terms and you need to be paid for all your efforts. Man hours are no joke in indie development and unpaid work in indie is more common than the opposite. So in the end you will probably end with a calculation that either requires a lot of non-paid work and effort but will still yield some kind of income or a product that is unsatisfactory in terms of finances.

Answer to 1:
Absolutely. There are no limits to what people enjoy playing. After all even things like a goat simulator attracted a huge crowd. There are people still enjoying very simple games like Pong to this day and just taking something like D&D as an example will show you that a good game can spread over centuries of player bases.

 

[forthewins]

I'm actually not asking the first question at all. Of course it's possible I could try and fail. But if there's no possible financial benefit in it than I'm not really interested in putting in the effort to make it, as this wouldn't be a passion project whatsoever.

I'm just wondering if there's any way a story / game that short with no graphics could actually make money. I don't even know if any IFs make money.

 

[toolkitxx]

Think of Sorcerer. The mother of all interactive fiction. If it is well made it can make money. But you phrase all those important aspects too wide to give any absolute answers. Make money in what period of time? How much?

 

[forthewins]

Think of Sorcerer. The mother of all interactive fiction. If it is well made it can make money. But you phrase all those important aspects too wide to give any absolute answers. Make money in what period of time? How much?

It's not 1984 though, lol. I know if text adventures were still a mainstream thing this could work. 40 years later though?

It's not about getting rich or anything. But I'm just asking simply, if you were not a game developer but had what you thought was a great idea for a very short IF do you think you'd see a financial benefit to making the game? And how would you go about trying to make a profit off of it?

 

[toolkitxx]

From a developer point of view: A simple phone app. That would allow you to get paid via ads and apps on a phone need to be short or simple. There are tons of tools that allow you to make such a thing relatively easy and people like to play all sorts of simple stuff while commuting etc. Downside: You cant really calculate any form of income for it - everything is highly dynamic.
Any other form will require more flashy approaches or a lot more marketing work.

P.S. in case you are wondering why a phone app - just watch this

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and you will understand

 

[anne O'nymous]

It's not 1984 though, lol. I know if text adventures were still a mainstream thing this could work. 40 years later though?

Well, 40 years later, there's more than

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available on itch.io. They evolved since the 80's and nowadays they aren't anymore 100% textual, but games like TiTS still have plenty fans and

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.
But obviously, for one Fenoxo, there's hundreds who don't make more than 10 bucks.

 

[woody554]

no.

why? because you're here asking, and not doing it. clearly the idea isn't even good enough to get you yourself over the lowest bar of lifting one finger.

 

[OsamiWorks]

It's not 1984 though, lol. I know if text adventures were still a mainstream thing this could work. 40 years later though?

It's not about getting rich or anything. But I'm just asking simply, if you were not a game developer but had what you thought was a great idea for a very short IF do you think you'd see a financial benefit to making the game? And how would you go about trying to make a profit off of it?

I've been taking more serious steps towards turning my ideas into a reality. It's not easy and if you really want to be successful you need to put effort in, at least have a design doc to show people when you need help. Right now you're scatterbrained, and need something to show for feedback.

If your idea is great then make it real, but you can't just assume that your idea is the best because its what you personally find ideal and you need to ask yourself some questions:

• How do you expect to make money when a lot of amazing VN's from this site, people who are better writers, with better art, and better stories than your idea are making less than minimum wage from their games?
• Why do you believe your first idea will be your only idea?
• Why does your idea need to be profitable for you to put in effort?
• Why are you even asking for help making money on a site thats focused on piracy and pornographic content ?
• Who are you marketing to?
• How will your marketing reach those people?
• How will you make money off your target audience?
• Do you have the self discipline to come home from work everyday and put 3 hours into the skills you need to make your idea a reality and how long will it take for you to see progress? Can you actually hit your deadlines or will you need to re evaluate?

That said don't answer these, these are questions you need to ask yourself. I'm about 60 hours into really committing and learning game dev after the last 2 weeks and its really difficult for me at this point, I'm looking at another 4 months on programming and technical work at minimum if I keep at this pace.

I don't expect to make money, I just want to produce art and stories that I enjoy or that are missing from what I see in the world. If you want to make a game and make a liveable wage from it, start treating it like a job now and build yourself up to working 40 hours a week on it.

 

[Multy2k]

It's not 1984 though, lol. I know if text adventures were still a mainstream thing this could work. 40 years later though?

It's not about getting rich or anything. But I'm just asking simply, if you were not a game developer but had what you thought was a great idea for a very short IF do you think you'd see a financial benefit to making the game? And how would you go about trying to make a profit off of it?

Why not just build your vision in your spare time? Just walk it simple and let it flow?
If it is viable it will bear fruit. If it is not then it will be a hobby or your private collection... There is no loss there...

The protagonist is you in this game of life...

 

[toolkitxx]

Took me a while to recover that from my bookmarks - but

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was the best talk i ever watched about this topic in general