How long should a first release be?

[Kolossum3D]

Hey guys, I've been lurking in this website for some years and now I finally decided to create my own avn. I'm gonna use ren'py and daz and I was wondering how long a first release should be. Luckily I have quite a lot of experience with other 3d programs so i've been finding daz quite easy to work with, especially with tutorials haha.

Edit: Other tips for newbie devs are also appreciated!

 

[Kuviragames]

I think that is one of the forbidden questions that got asked a lot of times already.
But I would suggest around 20-30 of game time.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

RPG, so a bit different, but my first release was something like 2 hours I think?

 

[Kolossum3D]

Oh okay, so it doesn't need to be that long. Thanks for answering!

 

[someyoungguy]

This question doesn't really have a correct answer. There are loads of games all across this site that released with wildly varying first release lengths that are all doing fine, in terms of both following and continued development. Far, far more important than initial release length is what the content in the game is like and what development communication is like.

The mere existence of this thread is going to be a bit of a problem for you in creating expectations which don't exist. Almost every answer posted is going to vary, sometimes wildly, and you're going to just end up favouring the answer(s) which you like best and ignoring the rest anyway. There are only three other replies, and that's already started to happen. It would be better to put the energy that you would be using to monitor this thread and create those false expectations for yourself into creating your game and putting it out there when you feel that you and it are ready for the criticism that will inevitably follow

 

[Kolossum3D]

This question doesn't really have a correct answer. There are loads of games all across this site that released with wildly varying first release lengths that are all doing fine, in terms of both following and continued development. Far, far more important than initial release length is what the content in the game is like and what development communication is like.

The mere existence of this thread is going to be a bit of a problem for you in creating expectations which don't exist. Almost every answer posted is going to vary, sometimes wildly, and you're going to just end up favouring the answer(s) which you like best and ignoring the rest anyway. There are only three other replies, and that's already started to happen. It would be better to put the energy that you would be using to monitor this thread and create those false expectations for yourself into creating your game and putting it out there when you feel that you and it are ready for the criticism that will inevitably follow

Thanks, I really appreciate this in depth message. I posted this during a break of working on the game/learning ren'py and daz3D and it was mostly to get a feel for what people typically do for a first release. I do wanna be consistent when I finally release it so I'll see what best fits me as I get more used to these new tools.

 

[Ashira13]

I think that is one of the forbidden questions that got asked a lot of times already.
But I would suggest around 20-30 of game time.

i agree 20-30 hours of play-time sounds awesome for a first release

well, as long as the content released is enough to show what the concept of the gameplay is, and long enough to get "the player" hooked for more. any length will do. but yeah, 20-30 minutes to begin with sounds good to me. although the more the better, even if it is just character introductions and developing relationships between npc's, mc('s) and FMC. i also advise to post in the description of the op of first release, estimated length, or at least a word count. so the player will know what to expect

 

[aereton]

Imho it's less about playtime and more about wether or not the first release will demonstrate what the player can expect during continued development going forward.

To put it differently: You can have 4 hours of playtime but when 3.5 hours of them are just worldbuilding slop with generic ai background scenery, it's probably not gonna be recieved well by the majority. While the opposite can be true when you have 20 minutes of playtime but already fleshed out some characters that people can emotionally attach to.

 

[mrbigchungus]

I'd take a look at demos of games you think are well done to get a sense of what a first release should include - since most, if not all, demos you can find on Steam of games are essentially the first release.

From seeing a lot of games here in my ~9 years of game development, things generally are longer, more robust now than back then, but generally you're still going to want to include say, 10,000 to 20,000 words, maybe 500 - 2,000 images or so, and if you're doing animation, include that as well.

Years back when Iray was new, people would include say, 200 images and call it a demo - I'd say that's much too short now.

 

[Kolossum3D]

I'd take a look at demos of games you think are well done to get a sense of what a first release should include - since most, if not all, demos you can find on Steam of games are essentially the first release.

From seeing a lot of games here in my ~9 years of game development, things generally are longer, more robust now than back then, but generally you're still going to want to include say, 10,000 to 20,000 words, maybe 500 - 2,000 images or so, and if you're doing animation, include that as well.

Years back when Iray was new, people would include say, 200 images and call it a demo - I'd say that's much too short now.

Yeah I don't think that's gonna be much of an issue. I did some coding today and worked a bit on the script for the story and I'm already at 2000-ish words. And I have plans to write quite a bit more at least since I'm only at the beginning of the game hahaha. I also got some renders of the girls I'm gonna have in my game. Not sure why there's a gradient on Brianna's portrait, but it might be because i forgot to turn off the hdri for that one.

 

[synthian10]

Density is a more important metric than time. If you make the game overly verbose and redundant it will get boring.

 

[Synx]

You shouldn't worry much about length of your first release. You should way more worry if your game can grap and hold the attention of anyone that plays it. Looking at other media's a max of an hour seems to be somewhat the standard; in the anime community 3 episodes is standard (20m per episode), Tv-shows is most often one (since they test initial interest with a pilot episode), and steams return policy is 2h max playtime.

For your first release I would way more focus on making it somewhat snappy/interesting, and clearly set the tone of further releases, than trying to meet some arbitrary word/image count. What does your game offer in the first hour compared to the dozen/hundreds other games released every year; Does it have interesting characters or relationship, an interesting setting or story, just a lot of sex scene, or is it another overly wordy high-school/college game with bland characters, a story that comes down to giy wants to fuck all the girls, with a sloppy BJ at the end as a reward for sitting through 20k words of meaningless utter garbage?

You only got 1 chance to make a first impression, make it count.