Anyone else notice that the quailty of games decreasing?

[HerbertIronsides]

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.

Sorry but no those renders are mediocre at best. I understand you said your guy is learning and getting better and thats fine everyone starts somewhere its fine for your first game to not look amazing or even good. I have played 100s of games on the site over the years and I am sorry but the renders in your game from the screenshots on your game page and the ones shown here are pretty dull and not too great. With time hopefully the guy that does the renders can get better. The reason your game makes little money may be in part because of oversaturation but a major part is people see the renders, go "meh", and then move on because it does look meh.

 

[yihman1]

Sorry but no those renders are mediocre at best. I understand you said your guy is learning and getting better and thats fine everyone starts somewhere its fine for your first game to not look amazing or even good. I have played 100s of games on the site over the years and I am sorry but the renders in your game from the screenshots on your game page and the ones shown here are pretty dull and not too great. With time hopefully the guy that does the renders can get better. The reason your game makes little money may be in part because of oversaturation but a major part is people see the renders, go "meh", and then move on because it does look meh.

I'm gonna have a quick look at what you have said in your comments in regards to visuals on other games:

These are direct quotes from you about visuals on other games, and some other gems from you gathered from search:

"Looks nice enough but none of them got enough ass for me to be interested. Good luck"
"dear god what are those faces. My eyes are burning"
"also would rather just have stills will dialogue then those weird jerky frame by frame things for the sex scenes"
"Wow these models are nightmare fuel"
"Wow that's absolutely horrible"
"Wow the quality is somehow getting worse."
"I don't even blame the dev, I blame the idiots who pay him for nothing."
"This guy really hates his fans"
"Don't want to waste a download"
"TBH I am not a fan of the anime girls either because they all look the exact same except for hair and skin color. "
"its impossible to find a good futa protag game. They are all either bad or unfinished."
"well that was boring and disappointing. oh well should not have gotten my hopes up."

Judging by many of your previous comments on numerous other devs... Well thank you for your glowing praise. Your approval is noted. To be mediocre in your book is to be glorious in reality.

 

[Helmeted Smith]

I'm gonna have a quick look at what you have said in your comments in regards to visuals on other games:

These are direct quotes from you about visuals on other games, and some other gems from you gathered from search:

"Looks nice enough but none of them got enough ass for me to be interested. Good luck"
"dear god what are those faces. My eyes are burning"
"also would rather just have stills will dialogue then those weird jerky frame by frame things for the sex scenes"
"Wow these models are nightmare fuel"
"Wow that's absolutely horrible"
"Wow the quality is somehow getting worse."
"I don't even blame the dev, I blame the idiots who pay him for nothing."
"This guy really hates his fans"
"Don't want to waste a download"
"TBH I am not a fan of the anime girls either because they all look the exact same except for hair and skin color. "
"its impossible to find a good futa protag game. They are all either bad or unfinished."
"well that was boring and disappointing. oh well should not have gotten my hopes up."

Judging by many of your previous comments on numerous other devs... Well thank you for your glowing praise. Your approval is noted. To be mediocre in your book is to be glorious in reality.

Don't mind the trolls, Sin's renders are great! From a technical standpoint they're almost flawless.
One think I would recommend is a bit of stylization. Not too much, just simple things like, color matching and tones. Sometimes is not about how photorealistic a render is, but how it makes you feel.

 

[GottaLust]

I'm gonna have a quick look at what you have said in your comments in regards to visuals on other games:

These are direct quotes from you about visuals on other games, and some other gems from you gathered from search:

"Looks nice enough but none of them got enough ass for me to be interested. Good luck"
"dear god what are those faces. My eyes are burning"
"also would rather just have stills will dialogue then those weird jerky frame by frame things for the sex scenes"
"Wow these models are nightmare fuel"
"Wow that's absolutely horrible"
"Wow the quality is somehow getting worse."
"I don't even blame the dev, I blame the idiots who pay him for nothing."
"This guy really hates his fans"
"Don't want to waste a download"
"TBH I am not a fan of the anime girls either because they all look the exact same except for hair and skin color. "
"its impossible to find a good futa protag game. They are all either bad or unfinished."
"well that was boring and disappointing. oh well should not have gotten my hopes up."

Judging by many of your previous comments on numerous other devs... Well thank you for your glowing praise. Your approval is noted. To be mediocre in your book is to be glorious in reality.

I can't say I'm an expert in visuals but despite them being very blunt about what they think about your content, maybe take their criticism into consideration and then start finding out how to be better in Daz or game making. But if there's one thing I will say, don't praise yourself and advertise. To say "my game is really good and we deserve more money" and then proceed to advertise your game in the same message when this is supposed to be just a general discussion just comes off wrong. Your game is picking up pace but if you want to make more money, you should be making your game more appealing.

 

[yihman1]

I can't say I'm an expert in visuals but despite them being very blunt about what they think about your content, maybe take their criticism into consideration and then start finding out how to be better in Daz or game making. But if there's one thing I will say, don't praise yourself and advertise. To say "my game is really good and we deserve more money" and then proceed to advertise your game in the same message when this is supposed to be just a general discussion just comes off wrong. Your game is picking up pace but if you want to make more money, you should be making your game more appealing.

One of my biggest flaws is that I am too honest. I won't lie to appease people, nor will I fake being nice if someone is being a dick for no reason. Yet, I remain level headed.

This aint my first rodeo. I have been forum whoring for a very long time. There are people who give genuine well thought out feedback. I love when people do that be it praise or areas where improvement could be needed. Those are good people, I always enjoy hearing from them and interacting with them even if they don't say the nicest thing.

There are also people who give no fucks, and like to shit all over everything.

Also, if you read my previous post or did more research you would realize I'm not the daz artist. I'm the author, and programmer.

Sin is a talented daz artist. Sometimes yes a few very gifted people do it a little better than him. He is competent, gets the job done without grain and it looks good almost every time. The guy earlier was complaining about when a room divider fell it didn't look realistic enough when falling. He thinks it would have folded flat, but maybe the joints were welded together, and it was stuck like that? It's called "Nitpicking". It's giving too much attention to an unimportant detail. It's not about being perfect, it's about being better than you were yesterday.

I'm not going to let pessimistic cynics full of nothing with negative energy piss on my parade. There are people out there that just love to tear creative people down. They get a sick and twisted joy out of it. When I was a teen my drunk piece of shit step father smashed my guitar on the ground because he didn't like the noise it was making. That slowed me down, but eventually I learned the guitar anyways. That is the mentality of a lot of people. They just want to destroy because they produce nothing beautiful.

Most devs don't take trolls serious. I have more troll experience than most of the folks that try to troll me... For trolls who do want to level up their trolling and be taken more seriously then I suggest this technique:

Mix a compliment in with a negative, and try to add a little bit of humor.

Example: Rose normally looks like a hottie, but her face looked like it was dipped into a deep fryer in this shower render.

Then you get a laugh out of the dev if they got a good sense of humor, and they are more likely to actually fix it.

 

[fitgirlbestgirl]

"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose."

It's also possible to buy into a victimhood narrative where the only reason you aren't succeeding is because you are being kept down by outside forces, when in actuality your game might not be that great.

I haven't played Damaged Goods, but I've seen it on the Latest Updates before and quickly moved on without playing it. And it wasn't because I went "No lolis or incest? I'm out!" Nothing really stood out in the renders and the story summary reads like a generic romance novel. Your game doesn't really have a hook. It might be really good, but I couldn't be bothered to find out.

Would your game be making more on Patreon two years ago? Possibly, but that's not so much about "oversaturation" as it is about there actually being a healthy field of competition now, so "just" having decent renders and content alone doesn't help your game stand out as much.

 

[ddakkal]

I think if you are new to the site it's is probably a golden age but if you've been here a while you've kind of seen it all at this point. So another dead father, a shitty older sister, a naïve younger sister, and a MILF who just needs to see your magic dick YET AGIAN is just not f'n doing it anymore lol.

Exactly, it feels like all of it has been seen already.
Of course it comes together with the growing popularity of the adult games genre. I'm not sure since when Steam allowed adult games on their site, but these days you can find tons of adult games on steam which lead people maybe to search it more in google and find out about sites like F95Zone and find a full world of easy access adult games.

Moreover, you can find tons of gameplay videos of the top games on this site in Pornhub, which bumps the popularity of this genre even more and leads to more people try it out and get into development because of how "easy" it is to grab some models, create few scenes, write some lame ass dialogue and post it.

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

I think the renders in your game are fine compared to what people here say. And like you said, for sure in the the top 5% from all the games on this site.

I also agree that the market is over saturated, but not the adult game market, more precisely the adult VN market.
Its hard to get money in this market because there are thousands of VNs here because how low the barrier of entry today and how "easy" (for a good one, not really) it is to make a RenPy VN.
Most of the people here probably played hundreds of them already, so if you are not standing out like, BY FAR from all the other games, you have little chance to get a serious income because people will just brush off your game. (sure, you can get some income because there will always be people that never get tired from the same stuff)

For developers to stand out they need to innovate, like in almost any other industry, with new systems, new stories, new gameplay mechanics and new ideas.

Or if you want to go for the old VN renpy, I think you still can make it big but you will need some hell good of a story, deep characters, put some time in creating new props, environments and world for your game.
But IMO most importantly in the above case is marketing - if we didn't play the game we can't know about all these stuff you put in, and for us to play, you need to lure us in.
Sometimes badly written description and few preview renders won't make it (not talking about your game, but in general) - I think those aspects need to be chosen wisely, because this is the only "marketing" most games here do.

That is why IMO porn is so boring today, people are looking for new kinks, new crazy stuff, drowned and bored from all the same things again and again.
People today just don't trust (maybe its just me) to spend even a little of our precious time and try new VNs if they are not standing out by some way.

 

[yihman1]

It's also possible to buy into a victimhood narrative where the only reason you aren't succeeding is because you are being kept down by outside forces, when in actuality your game might not be that great.

I haven't played Damaged Goods, but I've seen it on the Latest Updates before and quickly moved on without playing it. And it wasn't because I went "No lolis or incest? I'm out!" Nothing really stood out in the renders and the story summary reads like a generic romance novel. Your game doesn't really have a hook. It might be really good, but I couldn't be bothered to find out.

Would your game be making more on Patreon two years ago? Possibly, but that's not so much about "oversaturation" as it is about there actually being a healthy field of competition now, so "just" having decent renders and content alone doesn't help your game stand out as much.

I'm not trying to play a victim at all. Pointing out the window and saying "There a foot of snow now. It's not like it was in summer time." That's just pointing out facts. In the 50s a man could have worked 1 job at a factory with the wife staying at home and feed 10 kids (my grandpa). It's not like that anymore. That factory moved to Mexico, the wife has a job now too, and they can only afford 1 kid (my brother and his wife). It's like when a boomer says something like "you just gotta work harder" People who started in adult games 4 years ago are equivalent of Boomers to new developers. They got in when the getting was good.

You say a "Healthy field of competition", but at the same time it's completely unregulated. (I'm not advocating for regulation, just saying. There is no barrier to entry.)

It has lead to the following situation:

It's the market equivalence as if I went outside and wanted to go for a walk to the corner store to grab something real quick. Along the way to the corner store there is a lemonade stand. Okay... some nice kids I stop to buy a lemonade real quick. I walk another 10 feet and it's a little stand of some girls selling girl scout cookies... Then the next house has another lemonade stand. This one has pink lemonade though... I'm not that thirsty anymore I continue along the way and 10 feet later it's another girl scout cookie stand. Ignore this one and keep on walking. Next house there is a mime with a hat on the ground doing him mime stuff for money... Next house I see a kid with a rake asking if he wants to hire him to rake my leaves... Alright keep on going another 10 feet and a kid is selling magazine subscriptions. And it just goes on and on all these small businesses. After doing this a few times it grew tiresome and the people just drive to the corner store instead or put their head down and run.

Back in the day when it was just 1 or 2 of the small businesses along the way to the corner store people would stop to buy a lemonade or some cookies, and those were good times. Now it's different. It's like you said a lot of games don't stand out and have a "hook" it's not that there is no hook it's that you have seen 9,536 hooks as we all have along the way and hooks tend to not have the same effect they once did. People saw others being successful and tried to emulate that.

So what happens nowadays is a lot of people don't walk to the corner store anymore. They get in the car instead and put the blinders on and floor it to that corner store. A to B as quick as you can no distractions along the way rarely stopping along the way.

As many folks take this method the little stores along the way start putting up "out of business" signs. They get little or no support and get abandoned often times. This makes it even worse for the little stores that stay open.

That is the state of the market now.

The best solution is more informed consumers, and for aspiring developers to plan things out better and only get into it if they plan on sticking it out even in hard times. If you are not prepared to develop for a loss for the first year or two then you are not prepared to develop.

 

[fitgirlbestgirl]

Back in the day when it was just 1 or 2 of the small businesses along the way to the corner store people would stop to buy a lemonade or some cookies, and those were good times.

No, they weren't. They were a good time for the few people making what is considered by today's standards barely decent quality games and raking in cash because there was no other choice. It wasn't a good time for the consumer. It's like saying "we had it better when there were only three TV stations." Yeah, it was better for those stations, not for the guy who could only choose between two or three things to watch.

It's like you said a lot of games don't stand out and have a "hook" it's not that there is no hook it's that you have seen 9,536 hooks as we all have along the way and hooks tend to not have the same effect they once did.

Sorry, but no, you don't get to excuse the lacking presentation of your game with "oh, you're just jaded and want more extreme things now." Even if you're telling the most vanilla story in the book, you can present it in a more enticing and interesting way.

So what happens nowadays is a lot of people don't walk to the corner store anymore. They get in the car instead and put the blinders on and floor it to that corner store. A to B as quick as you can no distractions along the way rarely stopping along the way.

That makes no sense. There are more adult games than ever before, but there are also more successful adult games than ever before. You can't make the point that there are too many choices but then also claim that people only flock to the big games.

 

[yihman1]

No, they weren't. They were a good time for the few people making what is considered by today's standards barely decent quality games and raking in cash because there was no other choice. It wasn't a good time for the consumer. It's like saying "we had it better when there were only three TV stations." Yeah, it was better for those stations, not for the guy who could only choose between two or three things to watch.



Sorry, but no, you don't get to excuse the lacking presentation of your game with "oh, you're just jaded and want more extreme things now." Even if you're telling the most vanilla story in the book, you can present it in a more enticing and interesting way.



That makes no sense. There are more adult games than ever before, but there are also more successful adult games than ever before. You can't make the point that there are too many choices but then also claim that people only flock to the big games.

There were some good games back in the day. The bar was much lower at the time. Most of the players are not really "consumers", less than 1% of players actually support development. Almost all are pirates developers included. Everybody pirates each others games. You do have a point that their is more variety nowadays.

Fair enough on the hook, the overview could have used work so I just rewrote the Overview.

More successful games does not mean more successful on average games. If you take a group of 10 guys and 2 got laid that's good for 2 guys. If that group rises to 100 guys and 10 got laid, yes 5 times more guys got laid but 1/2 as many got laid on average. There are a lot of developers making practically nothing. A lot... more than you can imagine. Not only that it's a momentum game. Whereas a developer that has many patron has a hard time losing them, and a developer with few has a hard time earning them.

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as an example is making lots of money still having nearly 500 patron with $5 minimum buy in having released nothing in about 3 years with 6 self imposed missed deadlines and releasing a laughable piano simulator followed up by 1 star average on 19 votes flop remake that is a complete dumpster fire. He is even quoted at saying he has "lost enthusiasm for game development." Yet he still holds that large number of patrons. Those with big snowballs have a very hard time melting their snowball.

You can call me jaded or whatever, but the existence of guys like Gumdrop grind my gears when hundreds of developers work their asses off, and make very little or no earnings and that guy literally sits on his ass for about 3 years breaking promise after promise making over a hundred grand in the process. What do you think it does for Morale of a hungry hard working developer to see a sloth like that living it up unpunished for his gluttonous fraud? That being in a market where 99+% of players play for free because of pirating. It's bad enough that he earn money for nothing, but lies and bullshit but he also ruins the reputation of honest hard working devs. His fraud makes potential game supporters more cautious before supporting any developer. Thus making all devs a little bit more broke.

Gumdrop is still almost twice as big on patreon as s relatively newer guy like NaughtyCaptain with an extremely popular and very well made game Summer Scent. That is the power of momentum. The market aint always fair.

 

[fitgirlbestgirl]

...

I didn't say the system was fair or equitable, but you don't help yourself by nurturing your obvious hang-ups about certain niches you perceive as being unfairly profitable (lolis, incest) or specific devs. Are there lazy devs coasting on past glory? Sure. But that has nothing to do with your game. And even if there is a hypothetical person who gives money to such a dev and therefore won't give money to you, there is literally nothing you can do about that, so stop thinking about it.

All you can do is make the game you want to make and do it the best way you can. Fixing the summary is a start, though I still think it's bad. But it's a step in the right direction.

 

[Lemonkeygames]

Don't usually comment much but this topic struck a chord - It's definitely harder now. Like previously mentioned, every release gets a couple hours on the front page and then drops off the radar. It's unfortunate, quality work just gets lost from the sheer volume, I'm still randomly downloading games to find that gem every now and then though. (And there are gems! Just hard to find em.)

 

[After Colony]

I'm just developing my first game, I actually posted a pre-release in the thread about development for this reason. I don't want to release a 0.10, I want to release a quality product that is the first part of a fully flesh out game. There is nothing more I hate than going through content in less than 2 minutes or the content being full of "COMING SOON".

 

[baka]

I don't agree, the quality has not decreased at all. but our expectations and demands have increased.
of course, as we get used to a standard, we get more critical. the experts that makes games, they push the standard all the time, after that its hard to go back. especially with 3D, as it tries to be as real possible and the quality and resolution is what we want to see.
a couple of years back, animation where rare or really bad, today we almost expect that all 3D games has it.
its tough to be a 3D dev today.

 

[Droid Productions]

Quality bar goes up, number of competitors go up, but the available pool of devs also goes up.
Yihman's right that it's not a 'blue ocean' any more, but the *total* size of the market keeps growing and increasing. Good games still largely get supported, and with Steam opening up you're also looking at a *huge* new market of normies that's never heard of F95zone and Patreon.

 

[Deleted member 167032]

I take it this TOPIC is for Games, meaning choices you can make with different outcomes or Kinetic novels, no choice or very few that have any different outcomes?

There is a vast difference. Most players in the AVN world want choices and easy fap material. Too much complicated reading/story and it's skipped just to get to the porn parts.

I personally think the AVN world must be separated into two parts.
Fap VN
Story / character driven VN

Too many clone games are released and original games are lost by the way side. College theme and NTR seems to be the trend now.
"You are a young boy, returning home after so many years now on your way to college" - etc...

 

[yihman1]

I didn't say the system was fair or equitable, but you don't help yourself by nurturing your obvious hang-ups about certain niches you perceive as being unfairly profitable (lolis, incest) or specific devs. Are there lazy devs coasting on past glory? Sure. But that has nothing to do with your game. And even if there is a hypothetical person who gives money to such a dev and therefore won't give money to you, there is literally nothing you can do about that, so stop thinking about it.

All you can do is make the game you want to make and do it the best way you can. Fixing the summary is a start, though I still think it's bad. But it's a step in the right direction.

There is so much incest saturation in the market it doesn't make that much of a difference anymore as it used to to be fair. You can take any game, and mod it to be "landlady" or "roommate". Modders can turn even non incest games into incest games. Such as "Where the heart is". To be fair it's only a tiny boost.

Loli on the other hand... That's more of the illegal blackmarket. f95 shuts a lot of it down, patreon shuts it down, subscribe star even occasionally shuts it down. It's much higher risk and a developer has a great chance of facing shutdown but it yields tons more money because the market is much less competition and much higher risk. They have their own legal troubles too as they can actually face prison time depending on what country they live in.

Don't usually comment much but this topic struck a chord - It's definitely harder now. Like previously mentioned, every release gets a couple hours on the front page and then drops off the radar. It's unfortunate, quality work just gets lost from the sheer volume, I'm still randomly downloading games to find that gem every now and then though. (And there are gems! Just hard to find em.)

Amen brother keep on working on Mirror Mine love that game you are doing a good job. I try to play as many of the games as I can but there are only so many hours in the day, always love finding a hidden gem I know that feel.

I'm just developing my first game, I actually posted a pre-release in the thread about development for this reason. I don't want to release a 0.10, I want to release a quality product that is the first part of a fully flesh out game. There is nothing more I hate than going through content in less than 2 minutes or the content being full of "COMING SOON".

That's what I love to see in new devs. Releasing more than a short tech demo when they make their debut. Good luck I'll check your game out later when it's released.

I don't agree, the quality has not decreased at all. but our expectations and demands have increased.
of course, as we get used to a standard, we get more critical. the experts that makes games, they push the standard all the time, after that its hard to go back. especially with 3D, as it tries to be as real possible and the quality and resolution is what we want to see.
a couple of years back, animation where rare or really bad, today we almost expect that all 3D games has it.
its tough to be a 3D dev today.

On average quality has definitely gone up for sure. I look back at older games from the era that has come and passed. Even ones I really like that hold a lot of nostalgia value such as AWAM. It's in 720 with only 1 animation. Don't get me wrong I have played that one forever. I eagerly play every single update, but if L&P was new and he released a 720 with no animations last month 1st release... He wouldn't have started at $300 on day 1. It just wouldn't have played out that way. He would get bomared with "720 sucks" and "Female protag pass...." and "Needs animations" which instead of what he gets bombared with now which is "muh balls are blue!"

Quality bar goes up, number of competitors go up, but the available pool of devs also goes up.
Yihman's right that it's not a 'blue ocean' any more, but the *total* size of the market keeps growing and increasing. Good games still largely get supported, and with Steam opening up you're also looking at a *huge* new market of normies that's never heard of F95zone and Patreon.

Very true things grow on both ends. I seriously should play your game some time soon. It's on my to play list, but got some coding and writing to do first. I think normies have heard of patreon, but not f95.

I take it this TOPIC is for Games, meaning choices you can make with different outcomes or Kinetic novels, no choice or very few that have any different outcomes?

There is a vast difference. Most players in the AVN world want choices and easy fap material. Too much complicated reading/story and it's skipped just to get to the porn parts.

I personally think the AVN world must be separated into two parts.
Fap VN
Story / character driven VN

Too many clone games are released and original games are lost by the way side. College theme and NTR seems to be the trend now.
"You are a young boy, returning home after so many years now on your way to college" - etc...

Yup, I agree and would even go one step beyond that. Saying they fall into 3 categories.

1) Porn
2) Erotica
3) Erotic Porn

A successful example of each would be:

Porn = "The visit." Good sex renders and models and animations. Great job there... Story wise it's not much of a story at all. The booty is too easy and it's good booty too got multiple angles on most animations and variable speeds.

Erotica = "A wife and mother" They build characters more and show more thoughts and such. It's been around a while and can sometimes have a lot of talky talk between erotic moments that don't so often lead to porn more often to a teasing. A bit more "Soft core" compared to the visit.

Erotic Porn (hybrid) = "WVM" for sure... You have a lot of run around and chit chat, and character building and development not unlike a game such as AWAM. On the other hand it's not so much a teaser in the sex department either. There is plenty of sex to be had. I'm sure some players jump from sex scene to sex scene skipping dialogue.

One of the reasons why so many games are "Clones" is there are popular fantasies that are profitable, and sometimes when a hit a lot of them you form certain "mold" I'm going to describe a game for you real quick, then you are gonna realize it's a shit ton of games that have the same description.

"You play as a young well hung man. You are a bit shy at first until you get out of your shell. Dad is gone, and the family has money troubles. Your little sister is sweet, and your older sister has a bad attitude (for now). Mom is working hard to hold the family together, and it's time for you to man up and take care business. In the end you will fuck all 3 of them, and others such as sisters friends, and the aunt that comes to visit."

That is the exact plot (or very similar) for more games than I can think of. Don't get me wrong sometimes it is a successful game. Such as "Sisterly Lust" or "Man of the House". Two completed projects that made good money, and had tons of fan support. More often than not it's "Big Brother Clone #36"

 

[Deleted member 167032]

Ask this of any game... Remove the porn and what do you have left? Will it stand on its own?

Devs write either story with porn elements, I know i am one as i like porn but greatt chracters/story comes first.
or
write only for the porn, to fuck women as many as you can in a fantasy world which doesn't have to have any meat to it.

 

[Staimh]

Ask this of any game... Remove the porn and what do you have left? Will it stand on its own?
...

I think this is a very pertinent question
There is an ever increasing availability to access porn
Certainly for me the games I enjoy most have strong game elements (otherwise might as well go to porndude -enter favourite porn gateway here).

I'm sure there are more games available than there were and I'm fairly sure that means there are more good and bad games. It is probable that certain practices (deliberate milking?) may cloud the picture a little but overall there are still a lot of cracking games to enjoy.

Thanks to all of you who dedicate weeks/months of your time developing stuff so indolents like me can find a way of enjoyably passing time during lockdown.

 

[kytee]

You can call me jaded or whatever, but the existence of guys like Gumdrop grind my gears when hundreds of developers work their asses off, and make very little or no earnings and that guy literally sits on his ass for about 3 years breaking promise after promise making over a hundred grand in the process. What do you think it does for Morale of a hungry hard working developer to see a sloth like that living it up unpunished for his gluttonous fraud? That being in a market where 99+% of players play for free because of pirating. It's bad enough that he earn money for nothing, but lies and bullshit but he also ruins the reputation of honest hard working devs. His fraud makes potential game supporters more cautious before supporting any developer. Thus making all devs a little bit more broke.

Gumdrop is still almost twice as big on patreon as s relatively newer guy like NaughtyCaptain with an extremely popular and very well made game Summer Scent. That is the power of momentum. The market aint always fair.

Honestly, it sounds a lot to me like you concern yourself too much with how you compare to other people, especially people who do jack shit and profit. I know because I'm that way too. I used to have the biggest ego out of everyone I know. I was the smartest, the most hardworking, the most badass, and people would look up to me like I was the shit. Everyone thought that out of all my buddies, I was definitely going to be the most successful one. Then a couple of my buddies got lucky on the crypto hype train and all of a sudden, those motherfuckers were millionaires and living the lifestyle I was supposed to live. Afterwards, no one gave a shit about me and I'm stuck here wondering how the fuck that's fair when I work my ass off for a CompSci degree and make $60k a year at my 9-5, while those motherfuckers worked at McDonald's and poured their cash into crypto and got more out of it than me. I was bitter for a long time, hated myself but I hated them more because I felt they didn't deserve it or maybe because I would have made more than them had I done the same. That jealousy didn't help me at all though. It drove me to break those friendships and what time I could have used to make myself better, I used to find more ways to hate them. It didn't matter to them, they were laughing all the way to the bank, the few who weren't didn't even realize I was bitter about it. Anyways, long story short, focus on yourself. Nothing good ever comes out of being jealous of someone else's success, not even if you think you can use it as motivation to succeed yourself.

More on topic (still offtopic), a lot of "story-driven" VN's fail in one or both, of the following compartments: Make it relatable and make it exciting.

Relatability to your characters is more important the more complex your story is. Take for example The Lord of the Rings trilogy (the films). There's no doubt in my mind that that trilogy is what paved the way for the popularity of fantasy movies and video games in the 21st century. None of it would have ever happened if the story didn't take casuals, who knew nothing about the fantasy genre, and got them to immerse in a world completely different than their own. And the way you do that is to bridge the gap by creating relatability. The Lord of the Rings starts us off with the Hobbits to establish that these people are much like us, innocent, fun loving, unaware of the bigger problems in the world, and have doubts that they'd ever have any impact on that world. It's why we have such a long, peaceful opening in the movie, to establish the connection of what home means to the Hobbits with what home means to us. This allows casual audiences to immerse themselves in a fantasy world because they follow someone who they understand, it's putting a twist on something familiar.

I've played games like Heavy Five and Deluca Family, both touted as prime examples of good storytelling in adult games, and the one thing both those games failed to establish for me was relatability. As opposed to those examples, what the majority incest games have going for them is that their settings are relatively grounded in reality, plot notwithstanding, and as such, not much effort is needed in creating that relatability. To me, Heavy Five, a scifi game, and Deluca Family, a mafia game, both fail to establish a human connection from their audience to their main characters and this must be done almost immediately off the bat. The longer you go without that connection, the less the audience gives a shit about your characters and the more the drive to continue diminishes. Heavy Five starts you off meeting with your crewmates and Deluca Family starts you off with a talk with your cab driver before you meet the two love interests of the story. Both games kinda just thrusts you into their respective stories without establishing why you should give a shit about any of their main characters other than because you'll be making decisions as them. There's nothing to link you, an average dude from average town, to ship captain from Heavy Five or mafia member from Deluca Family. If you don't already like the scifi genre, you'll be hard pressed to continue Heavy Five, same as if you don't already like the mafia genre, you won't like Deluca Family either. Maybe the human element comes in later, but first impressions are extremely important and I think they both fail on that front. I think right now those two are doing okay for the same reason as incest games were doing good a couple of years ago: People are hard pressed for a decent variety of story-based adult games and these are your only two halfway decent choices.

Making something exciting should be self-explanatory but for some reason, it's more difficult than it seems. You generate excitement from conflict, stakes, and irony. Incest games have it easy because incest in itself has all three of those built in from the get go. Conflict: You want your sister's pussy. Stake: If you fail, you get disowned from the family, from society, and you get kicked out. Irony: There's millions of girls in the world yet you want the only one you can't have. If you don't have a story that routinely has more and more conflict, stakes, and irony being cycled in and out, you have a boring story. Hell, a lot of incest games have this problem where after family members fuck, the story dies because the writer has no clue how to create new conflict, stakes, and ironic situations and shit gets boring. The hard part is interrelating all these things with your main character that your audience self-inserts to because you will still have a boring story if your conflict and stakes are meaningless to your characters.

If you have a non-incest story, you get none of these things handed to you on a platter. You have to be a competent enough writer that you set up your own conflicts, stakes, and ironic situations all the while placing all of it under a lens that is relatable to your audience. Still, you can have all of that and still execute it poorly, but no one said writing a good story was ever easy.