So I have a philosophical gaming question for you.
Visual novels are admittedly pretty niche in the gaming market as a whole.
If they don’t sell well enough sequels don’t happen.
So, as a patient gamer, do I pay full price for these games to support further development even though that means buying less games.
Or do I wait till they go for deep discount like I have been and have therefore been able to spread my limited support around more.
If my end goal is making sure these games keep being made as much as possible, what’s my best option?
I am all for the patient gaming mentality and typically wait until games are 50%+ off before I think of purchasing.
Looking for opinions on my best course of action. Thanks!
It’s a dichotomy. You have to decide what’s more important. Showing support for a niche game maker, or saving money and getting a stable version of the game.
That’s a great point and I never looked at it as a dichotomy.
However, bugs aren’t something I typically run into due to the nature of the simplicity of VNs. It’s more of a question of do I give max support to my favorite developers or spread the support around in hopes of finding new projects from different developers besides my favorite.
The way you laid it out though helps me ask the question of which of those two is more important to me.
Asking the real questions!
I mean, visual novel games are VERY hard to make them unstable. In the case of a visual novel, it will probably have the same stability whether you buy it at release or 20 years later (if its even still for sale). It might only get one or two updates that entire time, and probably to correct typos.
In general, it isn’t about waiting for prices to drop, though that’s definitely a part. It’s more about avoiding early adoption, imo. Waiting until there’s some degree of information about the game that isn’t marketing, then deciding.
The goal is to make sure the game is stable, that it’s something you actually want to play, and avoiding hype based playing. If the price drops, or there’s a sale, that’s icing on the cake.
In the case of visual novels, I don’t really think it applies. The only thing you’ll really avoid by waiting is any bugs that need fixing, and they aren’t prone to a lot of bugs that break the enjoyment of the story. It does happen, but it isn’t like the usual mobile game bugfest at launches.
I agree, this is why I consider myself a ‘patient gamer’… I don’t want to reward releasing half-done games, or trickling out DLC that should have been included in the original release.
I had to re-evaluate my stance on this when Baldur’s Gate 3 was released because I really wanted to play it, but was going to wait until it went on sale. Then the reviews starting coming in saying that it was a full game, no major issues, and no planned DLC. I immediately purchased it because **THAT **is the behavior I want to reward, and I’m very glad that I did.
Just to say that the question might not only concern niche games. Any game that you do not buy shortly after its release might have a negative impact on the franchise (because most sales happen in a few weeks, with rare exceptions of course).
Personally I am very willing to pay full price and even occasionally buy pointless extras I don’t care about if it helps reward their passion for a project I see as a valuable contribution. I’ll even pre-order or provide them some free advertising in some cases. Especially if its the sort of dev where it seems like their long-term survival might be in question.
I feel like you can usually tell when the dev needs money or doesn’t.
