The ZIL Organization
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Proposal for Crowdsourced Agent Aika game (1 Viewer)
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SimulatedOunce
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- Aug 30, 2020
Game developer here (programmer, scripter, coder, whatever you want to call it). I usually just lurk but okay I'll play.
I just want to be upfront with you right now. This is entirely constructive criticism. This is not to slight you or your ideas. This is not to shut it down. And this is especially not to discourage you from pursuing that idea. But I'm not going to lie to you and give you some feel good story about how such and such is a great idea. Or how you can do this and a million people will come running to your doorstep. I won't hype you up just for the sake of it. And I won't tell you to blindly pursue something.
With that out of the way, I'm sure you already have an idea of what comes next. These are entirely based on personal anecdotes from my time as a game dev.
First off, don't use Flash. Flash is deprecated and scheduled for "End-of-Life," meaning Adobe does not recommend new projects to be built using Flash. Adobe will stop support for Flash at the end of 2020, Chrome and Firefox will likely follow shortly. If you want something in that ballpark, HTML5 is a suitable replacement, supported by all modern browsers and THE reason why Flash died.
I don't know what you have in mind but so I can't "recommend" a game engine but there enough varieties of game engines out there that will fit almost anything you had in mind and budget.
GameMaker Studio 2 deserves a mention. One of the major features of GMS 2 is its drag-n-drop interface that does not require any coding knowledge. While many a people view it as a beginners engine, many big games such as Hotline Miami and Hyper Light Drifter were made using GMS 2.
Mobile is absolute garbage and that's all I have to say about that.
But more importantly, the two big stores, Apple App Store and Google Play, have big restrictions against lewd games. I'm not familiar with their exact wording but if I recall, such games are outright banned, even free games. It might be a good idea to familiarize yourself with their terms and restrictions now if you're thinking about shipping an app or game on their platform.
Once again, I'm not familiar with what you have in mind so it's hard to gauge the volume or cost of what art and animation might look like for you. Just for reference, the previous game I worked on, we commissioned an artist for a set of custom textures and texturing of some 3D characters; for just those the bill game out to over $3,500. Art isn't cheap. And good art, even more.
If you're trying to do something like a visual novel, you're gonna need a lot of art for a "fan service" type game. If your game if more oriented toward something like a fighting game, something like Skullgirls, or a beat-em-up with Skullgirls' mechanics, you're gonna need a lot of animation and good animation at that. Like art, animation isn't cheap and good animation is even less so.
My point is it sounds like you have pretty big ambitions for this. Even with $10k in crowdfunding, that is unlikely to cover the cost of just the art or animation if you're looking to make a quality game.
Now you might try to look for artists or animators willing to work for low to "modest" pay. The thing I've learned is that you get what you pay for. I've never gone the cheap route but being in dev circles, there are not shortage of horror stories about low pay developers. The emergent theme always seems to revolve around any combination of the following:
When a large number of devs collab, they usually agree before hand, at the very least, the central theme or style absolutely adhere to. If you have to hire a new artist halfway through development because your previous one fell into a well, it's gonna cause you a nightmare trying to get your new artist up to speed on the intentions and style of the previous. And if you choose to ship it with seriously differing styles, the quality of the game will only go way down.
No. Just no.
Probably the most well known fan service beat-em-up game series is Senran Kagura (fighting games like DOA are a whole different ballgame). Senran Kagura: Estival Versus is the best selling in the series. Although they've never released recent sales figures on Steam, we can do the old "guess-by-review" method for a ballpark estimate. So by that method, as of right now, it has 3,554 reviews on Steam. That puts us at a low estimate of 106,620 sales and a high estimate of 355,400 sales. This is for a game that cost millions of dollars to develop, utilizing a team of at least several tens or more of developers.
So while I applaud you for the optimism, the realist in me says selling 500,00 copies might be a bit far fetched. It'd be great if you pulled it off and I would absolutely love for you to prove me wrong. That would just make my day. But as of right now, just from what you've let on so far, I'd wager the chances are rather slim.
The thing is, I don't know if the entire Agent Aika series including Zero even sold that amount during its time. And most of what's circulating around nowadays is from pirated copies or clips and images.
Don't get me wrong, I...uh, love the Agent Aika series but Agent Aika and Najica are niche. And 100,000 is a big number.
Undertow Club doesn't have 100,000 members. Ryonani forum didn't have 100,00 members when it was around. While I think there are far more than 100,000 people who would be interested in a porn re-imagining of Agent Aika, we are sparsely populated. The problem is that marketing to 100,000 people in a sparsely populated area is rather hard.
And so here we are.
Now that I've completely shot your post down. Don't take it as attack on your ideas. Don't take it as an attempt to discourage you from pursuing it.
This is niche subject. And as with all very niche subjects, when someone is into said niche subject, they are really REALLY into it. I'm into it. I'm on board with you. On board enough that after years of lurking, I made an account just to respond to your post.
I'm still learning a lot of new things but if you have any other game dev questions, throw them up and I'll answer as best I can.
With that, good luck to you on this. And also good luck on the 1,000 project. I hope you do decide to go for it. Both of them. Build it and make it happen. Because you know, if you build it, they will, uh, come.
I just want to be upfront with you right now. This is entirely constructive criticism. This is not to slight you or your ideas. This is not to shut it down. And this is especially not to discourage you from pursuing that idea. But I'm not going to lie to you and give you some feel good story about how such and such is a great idea. Or how you can do this and a million people will come running to your doorstep. I won't hype you up just for the sake of it. And I won't tell you to blindly pursue something.
With that out of the way, I'm sure you already have an idea of what comes next. These are entirely based on personal anecdotes from my time as a game dev.
First off, don't use Flash. Flash is deprecated and scheduled for "End-of-Life," meaning Adobe does not recommend new projects to be built using Flash. Adobe will stop support for Flash at the end of 2020, Chrome and Firefox will likely follow shortly. If you want something in that ballpark, HTML5 is a suitable replacement, supported by all modern browsers and THE reason why Flash died.
I don't know what you have in mind but so I can't "recommend" a game engine but there enough varieties of game engines out there that will fit almost anything you had in mind and budget.
GameMaker Studio 2 deserves a mention. One of the major features of GMS 2 is its drag-n-drop interface that does not require any coding knowledge. While many a people view it as a beginners engine, many big games such as Hotline Miami and Hyper Light Drifter were made using GMS 2.
Mobile is absolute garbage and that's all I have to say about that.
But more importantly, the two big stores, Apple App Store and Google Play, have big restrictions against lewd games. I'm not familiar with their exact wording but if I recall, such games are outright banned, even free games. It might be a good idea to familiarize yourself with their terms and restrictions now if you're thinking about shipping an app or game on their platform.
Once again, I'm not familiar with what you have in mind so it's hard to gauge the volume or cost of what art and animation might look like for you. Just for reference, the previous game I worked on, we commissioned an artist for a set of custom textures and texturing of some 3D characters; for just those the bill game out to over $3,500. Art isn't cheap. And good art, even more.
If you're trying to do something like a visual novel, you're gonna need a lot of art for a "fan service" type game. If your game if more oriented toward something like a fighting game, something like Skullgirls, or a beat-em-up with Skullgirls' mechanics, you're gonna need a lot of animation and good animation at that. Like art, animation isn't cheap and good animation is even less so.
My point is it sounds like you have pretty big ambitions for this. Even with $10k in crowdfunding, that is unlikely to cover the cost of just the art or animation if you're looking to make a quality game.
Now you might try to look for artists or animators willing to work for low to "modest" pay. The thing I've learned is that you get what you pay for. I've never gone the cheap route but being in dev circles, there are not shortage of horror stories about low pay developers. The emergent theme always seems to revolve around any combination of the following:
- Not meeting deadlines
- Not being up to par in quality
- Lack of contact or communication (contractors will literally disappear for weeks or months)
- Asset leak or asset theft
- Toxicity or disinterest
- Just outright disappearing from the face of the earth.
When a large number of devs collab, they usually agree before hand, at the very least, the central theme or style absolutely adhere to. If you have to hire a new artist halfway through development because your previous one fell into a well, it's gonna cause you a nightmare trying to get your new artist up to speed on the intentions and style of the previous. And if you choose to ship it with seriously differing styles, the quality of the game will only go way down.
No. Just no.
Probably the most well known fan service beat-em-up game series is Senran Kagura (fighting games like DOA are a whole different ballgame). Senran Kagura: Estival Versus is the best selling in the series. Although they've never released recent sales figures on Steam, we can do the old "guess-by-review" method for a ballpark estimate. So by that method, as of right now, it has 3,554 reviews on Steam. That puts us at a low estimate of 106,620 sales and a high estimate of 355,400 sales. This is for a game that cost millions of dollars to develop, utilizing a team of at least several tens or more of developers.
So while I applaud you for the optimism, the realist in me says selling 500,00 copies might be a bit far fetched. It'd be great if you pulled it off and I would absolutely love for you to prove me wrong. That would just make my day. But as of right now, just from what you've let on so far, I'd wager the chances are rather slim.
The thing is, I don't know if the entire Agent Aika series including Zero even sold that amount during its time. And most of what's circulating around nowadays is from pirated copies or clips and images.
Don't get me wrong, I...uh, love the Agent Aika series but Agent Aika and Najica are niche. And 100,000 is a big number.
Undertow Club doesn't have 100,000 members. Ryonani forum didn't have 100,00 members when it was around. While I think there are far more than 100,000 people who would be interested in a porn re-imagining of Agent Aika, we are sparsely populated. The problem is that marketing to 100,000 people in a sparsely populated area is rather hard.
And so here we are.
Now that I've completely shot your post down. Don't take it as attack on your ideas. Don't take it as an attempt to discourage you from pursuing it.
This is niche subject. And as with all very niche subjects, when someone is into said niche subject, they are really REALLY into it. I'm into it. I'm on board with you. On board enough that after years of lurking, I made an account just to respond to your post.
I'm still learning a lot of new things but if you have any other game dev questions, throw them up and I'll answer as best I can.
With that, good luck to you on this. And also good luck on the 1,000 project. I hope you do decide to go for it. Both of them. Build it and make it happen. Because you know, if you build it, they will, uh, come.
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