Anyone else notice that the quailty of games decreasing?

[ereet]

The quality of games are getting better, I don't think there's any doubt about that.. and there are lots more games being made. When I do a search for games and don't specify that it must be [Completed], I get tons of 0.1's that were started recently and it wasn't always like that. I only noticed this recently so maybe the pandemic caused a whole bunch of people to start making that game that they had been thinking about for a long time but I doubt it's just that.. I think this genre is just getting more popular as the game quality is improving and the tools for creating the games are getting more powerful and easier to use. It may make it more difficult to sift through all of the games, but I think more people getting involved in erotic VN's is almost certainly a good thing because it will eventually mean higher quality content for everyone to enjoy. Speaking of making it more difficult to sift through all of the content.. the search tools that we already have here seem to be really good, but maybe the board admins will need to consider making them even better if this trend continues.

 

[GottaLust]

I would say that we have more crap games, but that's to be expected. As more and more people find this genre of games, more people will produce more games, and we're going to be seeing an influx of top-notch games and really shitty ones. One thing I've noticed, though, is that as more game producers try to churn out content, they drown out many high-quality games that could've had an opportunity to thrive but instead were canceled due to not being profitable. It's pretty sad, in my opinion.

Take some time to donate to game creators if you can; it can be the difference between whether a game lives or dies.

 

[Majordeathwish]

Considering the games from 2018 are still being developed and are never going to finish aren't they also the games from now?
Also the Best Vn's by rating tend to be a bit old, just go see on VNDB or erogamescape, also Teaching Feeling is still one of the best seller and highest rated on games on dlsite.

That's because Teaching Feeling is based.

 

[yihman1]

I am a game developer and I study the adult game industry in depth, and here is my analysis of the current situation:

More games are released overall similar to the

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. The current adult game market is much like how the regular video game market was in the early 1980s. Back then anyone could call them self a game developer and there would be like 50 pong clones. We have 50 big brother clones.

I will use the game I am working with Sin to develop as a case study as it is the game I am the most familiar with, and I may as well do a little bit of shameless self promotion.

Solid new games do exist. Damaged Goods for instance. We released December 25th, will be making another release soon. That update will bring our video total over 30, and render total in the 1600 range. There is no Engrish lots of meaningful choices pretty girls good and original story lots of positive reviews. We got a discord, are active in the forums, got a twitter, and instagram, and game jolt, videos are made on youtube, gamejolt ect. Solidly pushing as hard as we can. Still we are only making like $104 a month. 1,461st place on

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.

There are many others in worse shape than us who are also talented developers. A game of Damaged Goods quality and quantity released 2-3 years back would be making $2-3k already instead of $100. We would have shot up way further way faster. The market is extremely over saturated.

For instance when AWAM was released on day1 it banked over $300 from day 1 and grew up ever since. It was a very friendly market for new developers in that era. That era is gone.

This over saturation leads to a high number of abandoned games. People start a game as a get rich quick plan, they realize how much time and money goes into it, then they vanish like a fart in the wind.

Meanwhile some older games that have done NOTHING for years make bank.

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... The guy has been in the game for like 4 years, and done shit since his 1st year. Still has 242nd place and 649 patrons with a minimum $5 buy in. Then guy goes and releases a piano simulator like it's an adult game.

So the existence of a guy like Gumdrop (Clear villian), and many small devs that don't know what they are getting into that give up shortly after the starting gate (Risk takers that roll the dice and take their ball and go home if it's not payday yet) lead to people being very hesitant to spend money supporting devs.

Occasionally there will be a new game that does hit several hundred bucks or even a couple of thousand dollars pretty soon nowadays. A lot of times when it comes to a new and successful game it's not because the devs are harder working or release more content or tell a better story or make a better game. It's because they go after "pedo bucks" by using underage loli characters, often times also targeting the incest crowd as well.

Real world factors also make new developers have a harder time as well. The whole Covid thing has been a curse on the adult game industry. Way fewer people have extra money lying around as everything is shutdown. People don't have money for rent and food, and adult game budget is like number 123 on people's list of shit to spend money on.

Furthermore, because of covid many people are at home sitting on comp all day thus figure fuck it I'll make a game then abandon it in a few months after having not realized the difficulty of getting in to the market now.

The whole patreon crackdown also brought a lot of games to be abandoned thus further reducing confidence in the players to support devs.

3-4 years ago if you released a game it would sit on latest update for 2 sometimes 3 days drawing you attention now it usually doesn't last 24 hours.

There are all kinds of devs. Most are cool, there are only really a handful of dicks.

Some work harder than others. Some got better skills than others. Some are more honest than others. We are all people with lives just like everyone else. They don't grow us on some other planet, we got bills to pay and mouths to feed.

I would never discourage a person from becoming a game developer if that's what they want to do. However, if someone does decide to become a developer and join this heavily saturated market please do the following things:
1) Think about it for a long time and make sure you 100% want to get into the business.
2) Realize 99% of devs make less money than if they were flipping burgers many go in debt even to make their game
3) There is A LOT of competition and competition is getting stronger
4) No matter how good you make your game not everyone will like your game. You will get trolls.
5) If you release a new game, please make it worth playing for the player. Nobody want to play a 2 minutes demo where nothing happens.
6) Play the games before you make your own, and not just the best games. Play 100 different games.
7) Modders & Fan art makers are also needed if you are not serious about making a whole game

 

[HandofVecna]

3-4 years ago if you released a game it would sit on latest update for 2 sometimes 3 days drawing you attention now it usually doesn't last 24 hours.

I agree with a lot of what you wrote but what you put into words most eloquently and for which I could not was the above. That dynamic is killing quality games right now. There are so many games fighting for the front page of latest updates. Games are lucky to stick there 24 hours before they are swept away by the deluge of bad cash grab games.

 

[F4C430]

Reading the replies here, it feels like your perspective depends on what genre you're into. Many claim that there are more better games now than there used to be and yet my DLSite coupons keep expiring because i can't find anything worth buying. I feel like if you're into VN or games that are VN-ish, you probably think there's more good games than there used to be. I have VN and Ren'Py in my ignored settings so it looks different to me. Sometimes i see something interesting but it's always in early development like the OP says. While i know that more games = more garbage, i have not seen an increase in good games. I'm still playing the same games i played years ago because of that.

 

[MoolahMilk]

I don't know but I feel the exact opposite. I think the lewd game industry has gotten way more competitive with really high quality games coming out and it takes a lot more to get to the top vs few years back. I think what changed is people are starting to get desensitized and have higher expectations. Many games that achieved tremendous success few years back would probably be less successful if released now.

 

[sexypeanut]

I don't know but I feel the exact opposite. I think the lewd game industry has gotten way more competitive with really high quality games coming out and it takes a lot more to get to the top vs few years back. I think what changed is people are starting to get desensitized and have higher expectations. Many games that achieved tremendous success few years back would probably be less successful if released now.

I agree. Some years ago, when I've started dabbling into ero games, I would only play 2 or 3. Now, I have played more than 20 since November - and only 2 or 3 weren't interesting enough for me to keep watching for updates.

 

[Vengel]

Yes the quality is very low. This argument about them being much more in quantity and that's the reason for the general negative outlook is balanced by the fact that no new game is picking up with something better.
There is way more assets on the market ... the tools have become better but you can still see the shitshow all over the place ...
All the games that are currently famous hold no quality that reflects the time they are created.
BADIK - bad 2d looking renders ... general looking assets ... recognizable assets ...
MilfyCity - mediocre assets ... zero environment quality
TON - plastic wax characters - look like weird dolls ... slapped assets for environment ... low res renders
Where the heart is ... looking shitty as fuck and so on and so on ...
... one can go on like this to the last IP ... with a few exceptions here and there from very small developers ...

And those are from people that somewhat know what are they doing or at least are aware of their working environment. Imagine now all the lazy scammer that fly in for a quick money. Russia is on constant attack on that front.

Some of the creators that have been discussed as very "talented" - simply found out that lighting your scene properly is making a big difference. And there they go the fanatical fans proclaim it as the NEXT GEN .... and that's how you know they are dumb and there will never be something that is really good.
The so called corona virus stopper ... is non existent. Adult industry is a billion dollar one. The things that made money - are still making money now.
To the game "developer" above ... dude ... your game has nothing to catch the eye ... nothing specific ... or charming ... maybe that's why your making no money! Have you ever looked at it from that perspective. From the side of design and art ... light setups are bad and bland ... models are the same boring plastic looking stuff ... and I can recognize some of assets > that's bad in general.

 

[Rafster]

I think it's a combination of high quality on games that have over 6months-1year around, with several updates on their backs, and an increasing number of games that gets released as soon as they got the intro passage/screen and hoping to develop it while they gain attention.

 

[ShamanLab]

I think quality in adult games is stable crappy copy-paste from old crap.

You can't decrease quality in situation where all game niche based on half dozen overused plot cliches, overused prerender DAZ plastic dolls sitting and smiling in dinning room and Python provided """game play""".

 

[rf96]

"Latest update page is flooded daily with 0.1s and really low quality and buggy games."

That's because we have an uploader who buys all the crap on Patreon and DLsite. He is the only patron of some devs.

 

[HerbertIronsides]

I think if I see one more 0.1 incest game with 2 min of content with generic daz models then I might break my keyboard.

 

[Liam the Handyman]

I think if I see one more 0.1 incest game with 2 min of content with generic daz models then I might break my keyboard.

If i see another 0.1 NTR game with 2 mins of content with generic daz models then I might break my keyboard.

But to reply to OP, i think there are quite a number of new good quality games, its just that there are many many less "refined" games being put out as well.

 

[Diconica]

Not sure the percentage of bad games has increased it might have. What I do know has increased is the number of games.
So think of it as a larger hay stack. While you might think that is the same concept of random number probability it isn't.
Think of it as a large area with a bunch of doors. 1 in 15 doors is a way out. You could find that door if you are really lucky on the first try but depending on the path you choose and the you could potentially walk the entire day trying doors and miss all the exits.
This issue also becomes compounded when you look at the fact the distribution of good games isn't random. And your starting point also isn't random as you are looking for a specific type in most cases. So if all the good games are of one type or simply of a type you are not looking for then you aren't going to run into it. If we were looking a the door example lets say all the exits were marked with red doors and you decided to only look at blue doors to exit.

 

[yihman1]

The reason you only make $104 per month is because your renders look like this:

View attachment 1062630 View attachment 1062631 View attachment 1062632 View attachment 1062633 View attachment 1062634 View attachment 1062635 View attachment 1062636 View attachment 1062637

Hovering, bad lightning, plastic-looking skin, boob shrink wrapping, lifeless characters that don't move at all between renders, defying gravity on several occasions, and just a general lack of realism. For example, room dividers don't fall like that. I happen to own that exact same room divider in real life, and I can tell you that it would lay completely flat against the ground. Maybe you don't think details like that matter, but they do. And that blanket - come on. There's no excuse for not using dForce in that scene. 1600 renders, but based on the quality it doesn't look like you know your way around Daz very well at all.

You want to call yourself a talented developer? Then act like one. Learn. Learn how to dforce, learn how to fit clothes, learn how to apply shaders properly, learn how to light a scene without relying on the headlamp... Because until you learn all those things and more, you are not a talented developer. You are just a developer.

Seeing as I am the author of the game, and not the animator you are correct in that I'm not talented with Daz. Sin is not perfect with his renders, and is still learning to some degree. To say that he is not talanted at Daz is not factually based and is just an opinion. He is getting better every day with a lot of practice.

You specifically took some of our "trouble renders". These were not chosen at random. The blanket render was not even included in the actual game, but was left in the image folder.

Rose's face in the shower looks greasy, yes that was a difficult one and I complained about it too.

The physics of how a falling room divider in a dream lands would not be a major selling point. To complain about something so minor is just being overly critical.

The cumshot 2 images look good on my end, not sure what your complaint was there.

The one of Alice and Mary looking down submissively when being scolded... Not sure what your issue on that one was?

Sin uses way more than just head lamps for lighting. He doesn't always get it perfect but it's great most of the time.

I have played hundreds of adult games. To be fair, there are Daz artists more talented than Sin, but he is definitely up there in the top 5% or so. Occasionally I will see a game with renders that may go a little above and beyond Sin, but he is still up there. Not every image is going to be perfect for any artist.

 

[yihman1]

I don't know but I feel the exact opposite. I think the lewd game industry has gotten way more competitive with really high quality games coming out and it takes a lot more to get to the top vs few years back. I think what changed is people are starting to get desensitized and have higher expectations. Many games that achieved tremendous success few years back would probably be less successful if released now.

Very true, a lot of older games are still in 720. If you try making a new game with 720 good luck. It takes significantly more effort to reach for the stars nowadays than in the past. A lot use old gen 3 models not gen 8 as well.

It's not just more strong competition though, it's also true that there is more lower quality games as well. I don't know how many times I have seen a 2 minute demo released with almost no content, then right in the abandoned pit or maybe 1 more update then abandoned.

Luck is also a really big factor. Sometimes a dev will get lucky early with a few big loyal supporters.

 

[Adabelitoo]

yihman1

Dude no offense but if I see a dev talking that good about his own game like in WhiteRat's quote, then I'm 100% ignoring that game. Then if I see that same dev talking shit about other genres/games, I'm probably playing that game only because I love crappy games and usually devs who act like that make the crappiest game I've seen and like to talk shit of other to compensate for their own flaws.

That aside, if you think that grabbing "pedo bucks" or targeting the incest crowd is what makes money and not the hard work to do a good game or tell a good story, then who is forcing you to do the hard work instead of grabbing those "pedo bucks" or doing incest? You have the same options than those devs, it's up to you what you do at the end of the day.

And if you think this is getting oversaturated and that's a problem, why are you releasing your game in the middle of this oversaturation? Why are you even making a game in the first place?

I'm also a dev, I share some of your frustrations and thoughts, I think every dev felt that way at least once, but at the end of the day what we do is our problem and our fault. Feeling that way is one thing but actually speaking about that in public as if we were innocent hard-working victims and even shitting on others? There is a huuuuge different.

 

[yihman1]

yihman1

Dude no offense but if I see a dev talking that good about his own game like in WhiteRat's quote, then I'm 100% ignoring that game. Then if I see that same dev talking shit about other genres/games, I'm probably playing that game only because I love crappy games and usually devs who act like that make the crappiest game I've seen and like to talk shit of other to compensate for their own flaws.

That aside, if you think that grabbing "pedo bucks" or targeting the incest crowd is what makes money and not the hard work to do a good game or tell a good story, then who is forcing you to do the hard work instead of grabbing those "pedo bucks" or doing incest? You have the same options than those devs, it's up to you what you do at the end of the day.

And if you think this is getting oversaturated and that's a problem, why are you releasing your game in the middle of this oversaturation? Why are you even making a game in the first place?

I'm also a dev, I share some of your frustrations and thought, I think every dev felt that way at least once, but at the end of the day what we do is our problem and our fault. Feeling that way is one thing but actually speaking about that in public as if we were innocent hard-working victims while even shitting on others? There is a huuuuge different.

Play whatever games you want it makes no difference to me.

Nobody says no offense when they aren't trying to be offensive. It's cool though, I don't mind I'm not easily offended I'm not mad at you or anything.

When someone talks smack about my bro I stick up for my bro. If someone said "your wife is ugly" are you gonna hang your head in shame and put a bag on her head to appease the man, or say "I know she isn't a super model, but she looks beautiful to me."? You gotta back who you are with.

Show me 1 game with a male protagonist that fucks lollis that are his daughters (or sisters if going for shota protagonist) that is not making bank. Just 1. I'm not saying no work goes into these games.

I'm sure someone interested in getting into game development is reading this thread. I'd for this aspring developer to prove a point for me on this one with a small experiment. Maybe someone new to developing who is looking to start a game, and wants maximize money. Please do this experiment for me.

Make 2 new accounts. Release 2 new games. Have 50-100 renders in each, but the same number for both games. Write them the same or very similar story. Keep them both equal but only change what I say to change and release them on the same day.

Game 1 = All characters are adults and not related
Game 2 = All or most of the characters look a bit under age and are a family

Here is my prediction:

Game 1 probably won't make shit. Even if it's good quality maybe hit 10 or 20 bucks.
Game 2 on the other hand... Oh boy that's gonna hit 100 or 200 dollars.

If you think otherwise you haven't looked at how fast many of these loli incest games sky rocket up real quick, and need to do more research.

As for why I am working on game development. Well, I love it, and I am pretty good at it too, made a good friend doing it, and hope one day it'll start making money instead of costing money.

Not playing a victim at all, just stating facts about the industry.

It's not that I'm shitting on a developer if they choose to make a loli game game route. I'm just pointing out that they chose to go on the easy road to success not the hard road to success by making that choice.

Then there are certain kinks that make very little money. You probably won't see much support for a game if it goes on some path like "Elderly Gay Scat" even if it was produced at level of quality similar to Being A DIK or other top quality game. Raw superb production quality will not escape the doomed fate of the chosen fetishes. It may even get a couple of hundred supporters... Not 10,000 though.

There is an old picard saying that goes: "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose."

 

[Adabelitoo]

I could say a lot of things about this but I'm gonna keep it short.

Hi, I'm Elfonobody. I'm not really into lolis so I don't know which ones are making bank and which ones not, I'm into incest and I could definetely show games making bank and other who don't get past 200-300 bucks but if you really need someone else to show you examples about the thing you're talking so much then I think you aren't even interested in watching reasons in the first place. There is a big difference between defending something yours and putting it on a pedestal while shitting others and playing the victim, and yes, you're definitely playing the victim here. I just want to say this once again and I think it would be it for me after this:

It's not that I'm shitting on a developer if they choose to make a loli game game route. I'm just pointing out that they chose to go on the easy road to success not the hard road to success by making that choice.

Dude, the "easy road" is open for you too. No one is forced to take the "easy road" in the same way that no one is forcing you to take the "hard road". If you decide to do things in a way that has proven to be harder, less appealing to others and less profitable when you know there are better ways, that's nobody's fault except yours.