I've created this thread to discuss Seinarukana release and marketing strategy. I've previously posted a response to Peter Payne's comment that RPGs are a lot of work and don't sell very well, endangering our chance for future releases. I'm also working on a blog post that goes into a bit more detail on this subject, and which will direct people here to comment and provide feedback to JAST. I'll post it here once it's finished (ironically I can't edit this post because JAST still hasn't seen fit to enable that feature yet).
I’m currently reading a course on marketing, and if you’ve read my rambling posts, should be aware I’m on the same cause as you. Marketing visual novels is not easy, and I agree that these games, as well as Japanese anime/hentai in general, need thoughtfully crafted strategies and professional execution.
I don’t want to talk too badly about JAST USA, though I do see significant problems plaguing their conduct. It looks to me like they have 1) their hands full and can’t dedicate effort into planning marketing campaigns, and 2) are slightly too focused on numbers, which while ultimately the deciding factor in business, should ALWAYS be taken as indicative of a need for improvement in your own approach.
Segmentation is one of the most useful concepts I’ve come across in my studies. Segmenting is the act of dividing consumers into groups who respond similarly to a specific marketing effort. These “segments” are often divided by gender, ethnicity, social class, etc. It is important not to make the mistake of thinking that people are similar. At our core, yes we are, but in terms of our actions, buying behavior included, we differ substantially. You cannot market similarly to men and women for example, you simply will not succeed, just like you cannot market “low price, high value” products to rich people, because they don’t give fucks about price, nor can you hope to sell luxury items to poor people.
I’ve been blogging on Tumblr for almost 6 months now, gathering as much data as I can about people’s interests. It’s taken me this long to realize just how many compromises must be made to appeal to people. For instance, as Tumblr is heavily a female-dominated platform, coarse sexual language in will not appeal to them, since they already suffer enough catcalling in their lives. Similarly words like “rape porn”, “whore”, or to some extent “horny slut” may get search results from certain male demographics but alienate most women. In an effort to appeal to females better, I’ve taken to changing my language substantially, replacing words and topics or avoiding them altogether. This process is still ongoing.
In the topic of your comment on improving marketing for Japanese RPGs, you are correct. Visual novel fans are not enthusiastic about having abundance of gameplay (myself included). While RPG fans will care about things like battle systems, crafting, loot system, game length, etc., visual novel fans want easy emotional fun; just enough stimulation to have your brain working while the body relaxes. I don’t mean just eroge here, I mean games like Hanachirasu which are nothing but feels and story.
Marketing requires countless hours of amassing raw data, studying people, and the extensive analysis of results. Getting people to tell what they want is very, very difficult. According to my books, and my own observations, people are very guarded about revealing information. Finding the right tools to gouge people’s answers, like the survey Mangagamer ran recently, are a requirement of success.
The customers are out there. They are flooded with information and offers on a daily basis. They ignore most of those offers - if they didn’t, the world economy would be in fantastic shape, which it isn’t. Reaching those people is a challenge. Bringing the right products to the right customers is what business is about. Failure to sell product should be taken seriously, it should be analyzed carefully, and the assumptions tested.
Marketing is a puzzle. It’s not supposed to be easy.
I don't see this as a puzzle; I think there's concrete steps JAST can take to make this release a success. JAST isn't operating in a vacuum; it's surrounded by successful companies marketing games to their target demographic. They don't need to pioneer--they simply need to imitate. Their target demographic is the readership of sites like RPGFan and RPGamer, the customers of NISA and Atlus, the gamers on Steam who play games under the JRPG tag. To reach this demographic, they simply need to imitate their competitors. JAST has an awesome game that people will buy--but only if they realize it exists and they're properly convinced to give it a chance. And for the most part, that means convincing them that the gameplay is interesting.
Sure, they'll have to carefully choose how they want to promote the game to these audiences. Seinarukana is an eroge with minimal H-content. That presents a challenge and an opportunity: do they want to promote this virally like Aksys promoted Agarest by emphasizing the ero factor? Do they want to focus on the intriguing setting? The novel gameplay system? The school life comedy mixed in? I don't have answers for all of these questions. Playing the ero card is risky, because it could alienate the mainstream review sites and JAST *needs* those to succeed. JAST really needs to get in touch with JRPG customers and figure out what they want to see, and really pitch that aspect of Seinarukana.
"visual novel fans want easy emotional fun; just enough stimulation to have your brain working while the body relaxes."
I’m not sure that’s quite what you meant. I would never describe books or movies that way, nor would I describe Demonbane or Kara no Shoujo in those terms.
I posted an updated version of my personal blog post on Fuwanovel's Fuwazette:
JAST's failure to market Seinarukana as an RPG could doom English H-RPGs
I’m with Dark_Shiki on this. Marketing really is important if you want to get noticed, and a good Steam release could make all the difference - and I say this as a person who bought a physical copy of Yumina.
I mean, I’m a big fan of JRPGs… but in my case, the majority of my interest in this game comes from the presence of a certain character who first showed up in Aselia the Eternal. I don’t actually know much about this game, even though I want to know more and it’s by far my most anticipated title from JAST USA. I do believe that Seinarukana will sell well if it’s marketed properly and you work to make sure it gets the attention it deserves.
Outside of a Steam release, I’m in particular agreement with giving (digital) copies to reviewers and allowing them plenty of time to play through at least the first part of the story. Tie that to a Steam release page and I honestly believe you will get many more sales than you’re currently likely to. If the original creators are a bit hesitant to change the release plans you’ve probably already talked about, point out that other Japanese game creators - such as Idea Factory - have already tested the release of JRPGs on Steam and found it to be an excellent platform for distribution and getting attention.
I agree I own Brave Soul. There is so many VN’s getting bought on Steam that isn’t even good translations or gameplay. But it is on Steam so it gets purchased! Many games we are now seeing that we would never have seen if it was not for Steam!
I'd like to point out that Rednal hails from the NISA forums. Give that some thought. There's JRPG fans all over the place that might be interested in Seinarukana, if you can simply get their attention.
I hadn’t even heard about this being translated until I read it on Fuwa. Had a similar problem with Yumina too. I just wasn’t aware of it so I ended up buying it really late.
Well at least I can try and help support this one.
Arent, one of the people commenting on my article, had another suggestion: approaching popular Let's Play bloggers on YouTube and giving them a trial or pre-release version. That's another great way to achieve exposure, and such bloggers would also be easier to approach and convince than review sites who might have a "reputation" to uphold.
Dark_Shiki, leaving aside the extreme and unlikely "bigger than Final Fantasy and Disgaea" or "catastrophic flop that bankrupts JAST" scenarios, what are your honest expectations for what a "very good" release would look like? Not so much in raw numbers, but comparing it to some existing title in mainsteam RPG gaming that you think Seinarukana might attain to in terms of similar popularity?
I get what you're saying, and completely agree, that without proper exposure and public awareness this could be a bit of a disaster, and that's bad for everybody. However, I have this vague, nagging doubt in the notion that you can market a game like this just as a JRPG or just to fans of that genre and not expect a bit of backlash. Even if the gameplay elements are stellar and widely-distributed, if this game has enough elements of a visual novel present (hours of reading to static images, you aren't physically piloting a character around at all times, etc.), it's going to appear as a very strange animal to the audience you hope to target. Now, with that said, since visual novel elements seem to be getting less and less niche as time goes on (even weirdly popping up in Persona 4: Arena, a fighting game!), it's possible that Seinarukana could be a game-changer in introducing much broader audiences to the virtues of this setup. That would be *awesome*... but it's sure a tall order.
Well. Finer points of marketing aside, I agree wholeheartedly on one point, which I guess is the point in such a discussion, which is that getting the word out will be crucial. Regardless of what market ultimately eats this up the most (whether it's a smash hit just among the H-game crowd to an extent that turns a decent profit, or manages to be the "breakthrough crossover" to dedicated mainstream JRPG gamers), having it "out there" and easy to find is 90% of the battle. A quality game will find its own audience provided the audience can find it.
Also, I really like that last idea you had about getting review copies out to “Let’s Play”-ers on YouTube. On that note, one specific person I would be sure to contact about this is a guy named PhantomZwei. He has made reviewing and doing "let’s play"s for visual novels his “thing”, and I always appreciate his reviewing style: neither amateurish nor snobbish nor sensationalistic, but always thoughtful and appreciative of the genre. He did full playthroughs for both Aselia the Eternal and more recently Littlewitch, and he seemed to be a big fan of the former. The fellow’s up to 1,375 subscribers at the moment, not counting any casual viewers who might be looking for gameplay videos, so I would definitely suggest JAST reach out to him at some point in the lead-up if they make any review copies available.
Having paid attention to JASTUSA’s twitter account from before the days when it updated regularly, it looks like they’re at least acknowledging that there’s a lot of opportunity to be had. Better yet, games like Littlewitch got a ton of review support early on though admittedly pre-release reviews might have helped a bit. I’m hoping the Steam release gets more attention.
For Seinarukana, I’m actually not sure how this would fly. It’s an H-game, for one thing, and that closes off a significant portion of the RPG fanbase. Honestly if Seinarukana got a Steam release I feel like it would perform fantastically with the right level of attention. Even getting featured on the Store homepage would be enough to garner a fair share of curiosity clicks.
"Dark_Shiki, leaving aside the extreme and unlikely "bigger than Final Fantasy and Disgaea" or "catastrophic flop that bankrupts JAST" scenarios, what are your honest expectations for what a "very good" release would look like? Not so much in raw numbers, but comparing it to some existing title in mainsteam RPG gaming that you think Seinarukana might attain to in terms of similar popularity?"
I can only speak for games that I'm aware of, but I think Seinarukana compares favorably to games like Agarest War and Ar tonelico. I also hear that The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is very text heavy, showing that there's a mainstream audience for very text-heavy RPGs (I've never played it so I can't say how Seinarukana stacks up to it in any other regard). I think sales of those games show the potential Seinarukana could achieve with stellar marketing. With just competent marketing, I still think it'd do quite well.
Much of my argument is that whatever you call Seinarukana, if you want RPG fans to consider it you have to have promote the gameplay on the website, show attractive gameplay videos, and make a trial available that allows people to sample the combat. Otherwise RPG fans and reviewers won't even consider it. Then you have to get it out to RPG review sites. RPG fans not only buy games based on reviews, but review sites are often where they get their game news.
I really enjoyed Aselia the Eternal, so I will be sure to buy this game as well once it becomes available. And hope that more Visual Novel/JRPG Hybrids will become available in English like Aselia and Yumina the Ethereal.
Not sure if it has been brought up before, but gog.com might be another place to consider releasing visual novels alongside steam. It doesn't have many jrpgs right now, however more will likely become available in the future seeing as it already has Trails in the Sky, and Agarest: Generations of War that Dark_Shiki mentioned in the previous post. The Ys series also very recently came out on gog as well which means there will be more jrpgs there in the future as well. Their DRM-free policy also helps to support the Non-DRM policy on JAST as well.
@Aurora3500 Thanks for the advice, we'll check them out.
@Jacksprat1, yes, that is one thing we can do a lot more of.
@Dark_Shiki, you are right about this. RPGs are hard because they're 3x harder to make than a normal game and it's then hard to communicate why the game play is good to fans who expect that any Japanese game will be a straight VN, no gameplay. One thing we've been doing better in is the game trailer we've been making, have you seen them?
I took a look at the Hanachirasu trailer. It looks very good, and the JAST store links to the website where it can be viewed. However, the store link to the website isn't clickable; that's enough of a barrier to deter the casual browser.
For Little Witch Romanesque, there's no link to the official website at all on the JAST store page. On the Steam page, there's a video showing gameplay segments, but these segments are buried in the video and it's difficult to figure out how the gameplay works. Featuring what appears to be the same 4 screenshots from the video with no explanation, the official website doesn't do any better. That's a problem if you're trying to pitch this as a game with good gameplay. Aroduc (who translated Littlewitch Romanesque and is also working on Seinarukana) is a game reviewer, so I'm a bit disappointed that he didn't point out the need for clear gameplay explanations on the main site. Did you solicit his feedback on the marketing and promotional materials?
I think you have a basic idea of how to promote VNs, but I'm not sure you know how to effectively promote RPGs to the "mainstream". People who review RPGs would be an immense help to you I think, as they know what RPG fans are looking for when they're browsing. I would also try to engage people like me who are excited about your games and ask them what sort of marketing materials would be useful. Aroduc is an RPG fan that you're lucky enough to have working for you. I would definitely engage with him and put his knowledge of RPG marketing to work for you. I think he really wants these releases to be a commercial success, but may not feel that his voice is being heard, or that he has the authority to do what he thinks needs to be done.
Also, I just noticed that I don't see a game trial for Littlewitch Romanesque on Steam or the official website. For gameplay titles that's a kiss of death, especially for titles on Steam. You'll have great difficulty appealing to new audiences without a free trial to convince them to give these strange new VN thingies a try. That's the difference between trying to appeal to VN fans, who typically started as pirates, and mainstream gamers, who probably don't pirate and simply won't give a game a try if there's no free trial.
A free Steam demo for LittleWitch would be a phenomenal boon. Giving curious gamers a shot would be hugely beneficial, if only to help them overcome the mental hurdle of spending a few bucks on a game that looks great but is also one from a genre and/or medium they’ve never tried.
That being said, I’m not sure how much work is required to slice a demo off of a game. Might be fairly intensive - and possibly restricted by a licensing agreement. And I think the topic of Xuse’s games on Steam i.e. Aselia the Eternal has come up before, and in the negative at that.
As for media outlets - particularly reviews - having a widespread review base might be beneficial, but especially for up and coming sites (like my own) reviews don’t generate as much traffic as other features. It can sometimes be a hard sell (though for Twinfinite.net, a couple others and myself love making sure that the latest visual novels get airtime). Steam presence and the availability of a demo would do wonders, I think.