Do you ever feel that good games are becoming less and less available?

[ilikechong]

Some good games always stop midway or the author disappears.

 

[Meaning Less]

Statistically ~50% of all western games are bound to be abandoned or never be finished.

If you don't like the disappointment focus on completed games, this is probably a healthier way in general to enjoy western games.

 

[OsamiWorks]

The majority of people make games in their spare time and have to work a full time job. The gap between knowing how to do a little of something like art or programming and actually finishing a game is pretty massive. If you feel an author isn't putting in time proportional to however much you support them monetarily, then stop supporting them. If you dont give them a reason to continue, then can you really blame them for burning out or choosing to work their job over catering to you?

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

I'm more worried about creativity and imagination becoming more and more sparse.

 

[Deleted member 160064]

I do agree with OsamiWorks in the general development conditions being shitty for this scene. However, as OP noted I have noticed a gap in the games I play. I usually enjoy female protag JRPG style stuff like third crisis and Detective Girl of the Steam City. I felt a year ago they were being released fairly steadily (usually by Kagura Games) and now they've sort of patterned off.

 

[Doorknob22]

My theory: In 2016-2018 the Renpy AVN scene started to explode and some developers started earning big money. Many of them cleverly invested resources into increasing the quality of their AVNs which further increased their profits. This "gold rush" created an (false) impression that anyone with access to Daz and basic grasp of coding can make easy money and this drew many copycats, seeking to make a quick buck with minimum effort.

Once these cash grabbers (who are driven by greed and not passion) see that the money doesn't actually start falling on them from the sky, they give up, leaving their games incomplete. I believe this period will end as well, and the developers who will survive are the ones with an actual desire to tell a (porn) story and patience to see their seeds bear fruit.

 

[GingerSweetGirl]

My theory: In 2016-2018 the Renpy AVN scene started to explode and some developers started earning big money. Many of them cleverly invested resources into increasing the quality of their AVNs which further increased their profits. This "gold rush" created an (false) impression that anyone with access to Daz and basic grasp of coding can make easy money and this drew many copycats, seeking to make a quick buck with minimum effort.

Once these cash grabbers (who are driven by greed and not passion) see that the money doesn't actually start falling on them from the sky, they give up, leaving their games incomplete. I believe this period will end as well, and the developers who will survive are the ones with an actual desire to tell a (porn) story and patience to see their seeds bear fruit.

Similar to this, I think the current AVG economy based on Patreon is set for a crash and/or reevaluation. There's definitely a market for AVGs, both on the high-end and low-end, it's the middle that I think is going to get squeezed. Amateur, one-person, operations that are attempting ambitious games are going to fall by the wayside as the market professionalizes. Smaller or easier games that require lower-end systems or simpler coding will thrive, as will teams with larger more complex games. But games with months long development, with inconsistent releases, and uneven content, will fall out of favor. I don't see the market supporting games that cannot give a consistent high return on investment.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Similar to this, I think the current AVG economy based on Patreon is set for a crash and/or reevaluation.

We ear this prediction every year, but it will probably never happen.

Amateur, one-person, operations that are attempting ambitious games are going to fall by the wayside as the market professionalizes.

Amateurs are what created the scene in the early 70's, and what maintained it when professionals left it in the late 90's. I can assure you that they'll not disappear more surely now than they did in the past. As for the professionalization of the market, I really doubt that it will happen in a near future ; at least not more than it already is.
There's already professional studios on the scenes (Winter wolf and Winged Cloud to only name the two most known western studios, and there's obviously most of the Asian scene), and their situation is not good enough to really attract more actors. While many young players think that the scene is at the end of its golden age, people who knew it in the 90's know that it's still in stagnation.

Smaller or easier games that require lower-end systems or simpler coding will thrive, as will teams with larger more complex games.

Have you see the games that studios have to release in order to survive ? Winged Cloud made one marvelous and innovating game, Sakura Dungeon. It's one of their best sell, and one of the favorite games on the scene, yet they felt back on easy going VN and never made another one after this. Peoples want more games like this, but there's not enough potential buyers for them to be cost-effective.
Even Illusion, that is the biggest professional studio on the scene, do not really innovate, mostly because they can't afford to do it.

But games with months long development, with inconsistent releases, and uneven content, will fall out of favor. I don't see the market supporting games that cannot give a consistent high return on investment.

Yet all the successful games on the scenes fall under this "months long development, with inconsistent releases, and uneven content" category. Those games exist and are successful precisely because of Patreon business model ; what is also the reason why it's not near to collapse.
It's a simple mind trick used since age in marketing. You don't present the cost as a whole, but as a small fraction payed regularly, and suddenly it become a good and profitable investment. Patrons do not realize that they gave US$ 30 for a 1 hour update of their favorite game, only seeing that they pay US$ 5 for something they like to play.

 

[SpoiledPrince]

It's the magic of not paying for things you like: people tend to lose their incentive to provide them.
...Unless it's a passion project, of course, but those are usually a part of specific niche categories, and whilst they sometimes manage to win the support of a loyal fanbase, they run on the Dev's own money, free time, and patience in the majority of cases.
The moment they run out of them you can wave the game goodbye. How inconvenient, right?

There still are big bucks to be made, in the shape of all those things real-life pornography can't provide: Futa, furry, mtf transformation (none of them to my liking, btw)... because there are no passable substitutes for them. No matter how poor their quality, those will always find some financial backing due to alternative material scarcity.

Then we've got the idea that Patreon, Subscribestar... etc fees are actually a payment-per-finished-part and feel scammed when there are months without a release, disregarding the fact that many people are solo developers or small teams with RL jobs they can't afford to quit because the support for their games is so small and full of patrons prone to throw fits and ragequit a subscription whenever they feel they are not getting their money's worth. And they can't give them their money's worth because they have to maintain their jobs, because they don't get enough support.
It's a vicious circle many studios can't break.

 

[_tewi]

Define good games. There's a lot of good games with a pretty consistent release pattern. If you mean those really high production, super crisp render games, then yeah. They abandon or stagnate more often than not, or get to the point of 1-3 updates per year. Kinda becomes a waste of time at that point, I can't stay interested in something that long. It's a catch-22 really, if they get enough support to continue, they got enough support to stagnate and milk subs. Oftentimes, the games that get absolutely ridiculous sub counts (tens of thousands/month) also become the slowest releases, probably not a coincidence. BUT, there's a shitload of absolutely fantastic games in the middle of the shit and amazing quality index, and they usually have more sex too.

 

[Deleted member 440241]

Indie creators crapping out halfway through a project is nothing new. Very few people realize how much work it actually is to make a game, and as a result go into the process with plans far too grand for one person. This has been normal since I first started looking at porn games... longer ago than I'm willing to admit to.

Now, if you were talking about mainstream/AAA titles I'd totally agree that good games are getting rarer. Used to be I'd get excited for at least 5 or 6 games a year. Now my "newest" console is 2 generations old and I'm lucky if there's even 1 game a year that makes me consider upgrading.

 

[yihman1]

My theory: In 2016-2018 the Renpy AVN scene started to explode and some developers started earning big money. Many of them cleverly invested resources into increasing the quality of their AVNs which further increased their profits. This "gold rush" created an (false) impression that anyone with access to Daz and basic grasp of coding can make easy money and this drew many copycats, seeking to make a quick buck with minimum effort.

Once these cash grabbers (who are driven by greed and not passion) see that the money doesn't actually start falling on them from the sky, they give up, leaving their games incomplete. I believe this period will end as well, and the developers who will survive are the ones with an actual desire to tell a (porn) story and patience to see their seeds bear fruit.

It's not so much that most newer devs are "Cash Grabbers". Some are sure! As is true with all groups. If you are just looking for a quick buck go flip burgers. That is a better bet than game development.

The oldschool developers are not some holy group descended down to us coomer mortals from heaven with higher morals either... It's not like they only ever do things 100% on "Passion".

Game developers have two main motivating factors. "Profits", and "Passion". You won't find many that are 100% Profit or 100% Passion, but many are some shade of gray in between.

A person 100% Profit would be someone like gumdrop... Piano simulator really guy? Milk much? Any passion that dev had is long gone.

A person 100% Passion would be someone like 88michelle88... Never gets more than 1 or 2 supporters but has been making sevral games for years on top of the fact a lot of people give them bad reviews and say they suck.

VERY FEW developers are one of these two extreme points.

Almost every developer is in some gray area. They have a passion for things, but also need to be making at least some money at some point to be able to continue development. Some have more of a tolerance for the hard times than others. It may not be because of a lack of passion, but because of a real life situation. If your living situation is tough and you gotta work for a living it is a lot harder to have a "Passion" than if mommy and daddy own a yacht and have been feeding you with a silver spoon your whole life.

I have seen some developers clock out of development after almost a year of development filled with several updates, and they couldn't even reach their first goal of $100 a month! Does it mean they have no passion because they can't afford to make the game anymore? NO!

Sometimes things don't go according to plans. As a developer you are always rolling the dice and gambling with how much you are going to make. There is no guaranteed payday.

There is no "Fairness" in game development. When you are several thousand renders deep into your project making nickels and dimes, and someone new shows up with a 200 render demo and starts making WAY MORE THAN YOU... What do you think that does for morale and self-esteem?

Why should a developer continue to develop if they can't get even the bare minimum of funding?

Why should a developer continue to develop if only pirates exist and almost no patrons?

 

[Deleted member 229118]

Some good games always stop midway or the author disappears.

This is true for all things in life.
I think its because quality doesnt sell.
When stuff like fifa and fornight makes millions it kinda kills any motivation to put effort into anything.
Food prices go up, income goes down, nations wage war, politicans lie, water is wet and people will buy crap over quality due to marketing.

I mean i tryed my hand in coding.
The sheer amount of searching for what caused the error is mind numingly boring.
It killed all motivation to even try to create something.

Let me give you a simple example of something that bugs me.
Older rpgs you had the ability to craft and deploy traps.
It was mostly useless as you can just slaughter the mobs anyway.
Trapping was more of a self imposed challange then anything else.
Modern day rpgs dont have traps anymore.
To much work for too little people.
Likewise magic is getting increasly weaker as programming in a power that rewrites reality is hard.
Harder if you want your meatsheilds to be more then wasted space.

Skyrim is a good example:
Oblivion(Already water down from morrowind) had a lot of spells that where usefull outside of combat.
Water walking, water breathing, increase carry capacity, make enemy unable to move due to lowering there weight capacity.
In skyrim its only ever used for attacking.
You can not make people like you more with magic, You can not make a heavy armor weigh nothing.
You can not even summon armor like you could in oblivion.
And the reason is simple:
To much work.
I mean why put in all the awesome stuff if making a goat similator gets massive amount of money.

Quality is indeed getting worse.
Because people will fork over money for crap.

Standerds.
We shoud encourage them.

 

[Jonboy80]

Statistically ~50% of all western games are bound to be abandoned or never be finished.

If you don't like the disappointment focus on completed games, this is probably a healthier way in general to enjoy western games.

This is basically what I do. I've gotten burned too many times, helping fund promising looking games, only for progress to slow to a crawl or stop completely. I can't afford to just throw money at work-in-progress content in this recession. Edit: I do help fund the handful of devs who have a track record of producing and completing content such as Mister Dots, Doctor Pink Cake, and Sierra Lee. Others, I've just had to stop, such as ICSTOR, Gumdrop Games, SweGabe, Kompas and Arvus Games. They're just not consistent enough to drop money on, especially when they waste money on non game development projects such as cosplay shoots and physical merch *cough*SweGabe*cough*

Now, I'm only grabbing completed titles because if it's done, I know to not expect more content. The downside, of course, is that I've severely limited how much content is available to me, especially when I'm looking for titles with a story that is also well written. I don't find much enjoyment in playing an incomplete story-driven title in little chunks at a time. Moreso, I'm limited to Ren'py and RPGM engines since I don't use a PC much, anymore. So it has to be Joiplay compatible. There's a handful of Unity titles but those are rarely ported to Android.

 

[woody554]

The majority of people make games in their spare time and have to work a full time job. The gap between knowing how to do a little of something like art or programming and actually finishing a game is pretty massive.

also the amount of work is just guaranteed to surprise people. I've written 5-6 shitty books for my own entertainment, and writing a book is just nothing compared to making a VN. I've used more time making a single event than writing a book. VNs are exhausting to make even when you love what you do.

 

[OsamiWorks]

also the amount of work is just guaranteed to surprise people. I've written 5-6 shitty books for my own entertainment, and writing a book is just nothing compared to making a VN. I've used more time making a single event than writing a book. VNs are exhausting to make even when you love what you do.

I think writing is the hardest skill. It took a while before I could comfortably poop out 200+ pages but the amount of effort that goes into setting yourself up for it is one of the hardest and most satisfying parts. Then edits are a nightmare, you just rewrite and rewrite, check against your outline, and rewrite more. Edits take the longest but its mostly the easiest work imo

 

[Jonboy80]

I think writing is the hardest skill. It took a while before I could comfortably poop out 200+ pages but the amount of effort that goes into setting yourself up for it is one of the hardest part and most satisfying parts. Then edits are a nightmare, you just rewrite and rewrite, check against your outline, and rewrite more. Edits take the longest but its mostly the easiest work imo

As an avid reader and regular NaNoWriMo participant, writing comes fairly easily to me. However, I know jack about coding and living in a pretty rural farm area, I don't have access to high speed internet, To upload something with images (which is how I'd like to do it), it would take hours. It takes me an hour to download one gig and around five or six hours to upload that same amount.

I really don't want to go down the text-only route but DAZ3D is expensive and I have zero artistic ability so I've just been put off on even starting.

 

[OsamiWorks]

As an avid reader and regular NaNoWriMo participant, writing comes fairly easily to me. However, I know jack about coding and living in a pretty rural farm area, I don't have access to high speed internet, To upload something with images (which is how I'd like to do it), it would take hours. It takes me an hour to download one gig and around five or six hours to upload that same amount.

I really don't want to go down the text-only route but DAZ3D is expensive and I have zero artistic ability so I've just been put off on even starting.

lolol I started a story at the beginning of the month, did nothing then saw it was the end of novembe. I spent 2 days writing my outline, 3 fleshing it out into a vomit draft, and another 2 in edits before throwing it at my writing group. I cope through stressful cram sessions with heavy drinking and I was not happy by the end. It was only 34k words tho and no one reads submission anyway (probably)

You should look around this site for DAZ 3d assets before deciding its too expensive Coding is about seeing the plan before you fill in technical details and the technical stuff is a base skill. Art is the opposite from my experience, the big parts are the base skill and your details when processing become what matters.

 

[MarbleCrown]

I feel like we're in the opposite of a golden age.

There are tons of low quality cash grabs, but what's worse is the devs with plenty of supporters who eventually end up milking their supporters with zero accountability to deliver. Now that money is involved, its become feasible to do game development for more than just passion for the craft and that creates this kind of environment. At the same time, it's good that the opportunities for financial rewards exist. We're in this weird middle ground being indie and professional, but the quality of both is lacking even with respect to their revenue/budget.

In the non-adult game industry there are differences in expectation from what is delivered from a AAA dev vs. Indie, but there are seriously good games being made constantly in both of those spheres. In adult games, the higher budget games still have poorly made animations with very poor gameplay design (NLT games and Wild Life) while the indie space is mostly clogged with zero effort VNs using the most basic DAZ models for renders and cookie cutter setup.

I'm not saying we should expect every game to be completely unique, and there are diamonds in the rough. Only, the rough is looking really thick right now.

 

[NukaCola]

This could be said the same about the general current gaming industry as well. Not just adult games. Many new released AAA games is just a cash grab filled with microtransaction and DLC. Not to mention the censored and forced western political bullshit that got shoved in to so many games. All the games from big western developer is trash now. Ubisoft, EA, Activision, Microsoft...etc. Occasionally we got some something good like Elden Ring and that is it.