BaldrSkies said:
Basically companies are facing rising costs due in part to the increased complexity expected out of game systems, as well as the shift in long time standard from small resolutions to HD resolutions requiring more time for the artwork. Also full voicing has become the industry standard so there is a need to hire voice actors and actresses to read large amounts of dialogue. Combine this with the fact that sales are not improving and you have same income with higher costs = lower profits. The industry has never been a huge seller and visual novels are commonly considered a big success if they can sell even 10k copies. Low sales means they have to charge higher prices, which results in lower sales in a vicious cycle that really is unsolvable. Piracy is also a massive issue that plagues such small developers, as they can't afford proper DRM (which is easily cracked anyway because it's PC) or charge lawsuits on the uploaders. There are a few companies that I will not name that actively "leak" virus ridden copies of their software onto P2P networks in a desperate attempt to discourage pirates from targetting them. I recently read an article that found the average salary for the visual novel employee is around 3 million yen, or $30,000 in simple conversion. This is very low, but companies really cannot afford to pay more because of such low profits. So there are developers, and expecially scenario writers and artists, are leaving the industry en masse. The writers often end up writing light novels, which are currently booming in Japan. |
Actually sounds dreadfully similar to the state of the Video game industry in general.
But that's actually really interesting.
http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/profile/92109/nintendopie/ Nintendopie Was obviously right and I was obviously wrong. I will forever be a lesser being than them. (6/16/13)
