I’m an ex-employee at a porn game company; any questions?

1 2010/01/12 18:40:23.72 ID:2oLm8F690

I’m gonna be quitting my job at the end of the month.
I got no savings and no gig next, but I wanna take some time off anyway.
Probably going right back to eroge, but…

7 2010/01/12 18:43:04.87 ID:sqeFXSaR0

What was your job?

Director, planner, that sort of thing.

9 2010/01/12 18:43:31.40 ID:VwTpnoC00

How much did you get?

About 200,000 yen/month after taxes. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less.

10 2010/01/12 18:43:44.87 ID:JUtwD+2d0

Royalties?

No, just a set monthly salary.

14 2010/01/12 18:45:41.63 ID:5dr8m2+30

Did you live entirely off of eroge?

Not originally, but it’s been nothing but eroge for the past few years.

15 2010/01/12 18:46:32.25 ID:4X7i+AQ90

>>1

You gonna go freelance? Or to some other company? I did the former, but…

I dunno about going freelance… If you’re gonna do directing full-time then you better be able to write stories too, so I think that’s pretty tough right now.

16 2010/01/12 18:47:33.52 ID:bCUM9XdZ0

How many copies do you have to sell to make it back?
How many copies did your stuff sell?

Depends. If you got online distribution then some projects sell as low as 100-200 copies; with some projects you’d consider it nice if you got up to 1500. Really big-name titles and things like salaries and long-term costs come into play so estimating it is difficult, but somewhere between 3000 and 5000 copies is the norm. Some games sell beyond that, of course.

42 2010/01/12 19:06:39.47 ID:FQy8a1Wc0

5000 copies can’t be enough to make your money back on large titles, is it? Was your company pretty small?

I meant 30k-50k. I can’t tell you about the size of the company, sorry.

37 2010/01/12 19:02:39.77 ID:rT9r/MgM0

How’s employment work? I was kind of curious. I don’t have any real skill so I guess I’d be in sales.

You mean how easy is it to get a job? If you aren’t in development (concepts, story, art, music) then I guess it comes down to how nice you are and how hard you work. Sales departments do everything — They know how to make games sell, how to make users pick them up, sales strategies, etc. PR gets involved in it, too, and it’s kind of a unique industry. Experience doesn’t matter as much as how capable you are of reading user trends and staying one step ahead.

43 2010/01/12 19:06:54.88 ID:/T41pJk10

How much do voice actors get?

That also depends a lot. If they’re famous outside the industry, some actresses can take over 1 million yen when you add in the costs of reserving their time. With new girls, sometimes they work for all but free because you negotiate it that way with agency in exchange for getting a veteran actress at a discount.

72 2010/01/12 19:32:58.33 ID:/T41pJk10

What was the hardest part?

When I help with checking the voices and had to listen to dozens, hundreds of moaning voices in one go. I had trouble following the script after a while and I started hearing moaning wherever I went. Lying down in bed and hearing “ahh, ahhhhh” in your mind is tough.