Do you think that the "market" of indie porn game is saturated?

[tomcire]

Guys, so many game as released almost everyday, what's going on?
There is tons of VNs.
Will this competition increase the quality or it will destroy the production (and the developers)?

 

[fitgirlbestgirl]

Neither. People see how much money some games make on Patreon and decide to try their hand. Most suck and will never go anywhere, some will find their audience and become moderately successful if the dev sticks with it. And a small minority will go on to become hits.

I don't think competition is really a big thing with adult games, at least not to the same extent as in other areas. People who support one adult game usually end up supporting more and it's a pretty easy sell to throw five more bucks at some new game if it looks promising enough.

 

[Avaron1974]

Yes, very much so and you get a hell of a lot of incredibly similar ones that don't need to exist.

The biggest issue is the funding. Most of them want to earn money but won't, there are only so many people willing to patron these games and more coming out every week.

The biggest issue with over saturation is repetition. How many incest games are out that are so similar to each other?

A lot.

And a lot of them are low quality.

There was a time you could release a H game and make money with it but those days are long gone. Most devs will never make enough to do it full time for a living and those that do could lose it pretty quickly.

Take devs like BrightSunStudio. He kept abandoning games to make a new one on the premise that if he didn't have enough financial support by the time he launched 0.2 of that game he'd leave it and try a new one. A few of us told him it was a shit idea, he was growing slowly, but he played it incredibly stupidly and now he's pretty much blacklisted and no one will ever support his work again. At one point he was close to 1k a month but after abandoning a few games he was down to 400, one game after that and he was dead in the water and because he tried alt accounts he ended up just getting his shit deleted.

If i've said it once i've said it a thousand times, devs get into this for the wrong reason. Do it as a hobby, sure, don't come in expecting to make a living from it because even if you get insanely lucky you'll still only probably make 1k or less because there are so many games and far less money to go round.

I see a lot of Patreon stretch goals that if they earn a certain amount they will quit their job and work on it full time. Those I don;t even bother downloading, they will be abandoned in a few months. Quitting a steady job with a certain income to try and make a living in the uncertain field of H game development, idiocy.

Yes, the market is oversaturated but I can't see it changing any time soon.

 

[Deleted member 1370694]

If the developers have patience and put love into their games to make them high-quality, then I think there is no oversaturation. But there are quite a lot more mediocre adult games out there, those developers might have a hard time or vanish as quick as they appeared. But those who provide quality, either be it the writing style, a thrilling and original story, the gameplay, the art and graphics or just the whole package, then I think there is a lot more room for more developers, especially in comparison with non-lewd games. But that is just my guess. Actually I have no Idea what the situation really is like.

 

[polywog]

Market saturation is when all the players are satisfied with what's available.
If you read comments on this forum, it's obvious some players aren't happy, and aren't getting what they want.
That's not just a small niche to be filled, there are multiple categories of games that aren't even being made.
For the past 30 years this industry has never even come close to meeting the demand.
It has never even been competitive. Developers aren't fighting for a piece of the pie.
Possibly 5-10 years from now, we'll see developers trying to one-up the next guy like it is with AAA games, but it isn't happening now. Most devs are just skating by, and not even trying. Kudos to the ones who are.
No offense to the noobs, trying to make a go of it. I seriously wish you all the best of luck with your games.
With so many new developers, you might think that nobody is playing your game because they are playing another game, but that's not the reason. They haven't even herd about your game. You have to market your game, get it out there so people can play it. Once they play, if they like it they look for more, if the find more they become fans.
When you have fans you make money.

 

[215303j]

I think the market isn't saturated, but it is swamped.

It has become pretty difficult to pick the "good" games out of a host of "bad" ones, because there are just way too many to play.

A site like this could play a role in this, and in several ways it does, but sadly, I find that neither the number of replies to the main thread, nor the amount of likes in the OP nor the star-amount of reviews is a great predictor, although I like the reviews the most of the available options.

Part of that can be explained by the differing definitions between "good" and "bad" because it can not always be measured objectively. If a game ticks off all *your* personal kinks and fetishes, you may choose to overlook poor visuals or bad writing.

Still I think it would be great if more people would collaborate on games rather than make a rather poor version of the (in the eyes of the dev) "perfect game". That could be a way to really raise the standard as well as to stand out from the crowd.

 

[SeventhVixen]

I mostly think there is no market to be saturated. This is not Steam, Patreon is not Steam. It's not like in some easy to find games place, you can't find the game you're looking for because they're too many. That is quite some of saturation.

I think the current situation is quite different.

Also, by definition, I don't think "an indie market" can be saturated. Wait when thousand of small enterprises begin making complete cookie cutters VNs every two months... Wait.. isn't that japan? xD

 

[BrokenDreams]

A site like this could play a role in this, and in several ways it does, but sadly, I find that neither the number of replies to the main thread, nor the amount of likes in the OP nor the star-amount of reviews is a great predictor, although I like the reviews the most of the available options.

I still think the no. of views is the best way of knowing which games are preferred by the common mass.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Take devs like BrightSunStudio. He kept abandoning games to make a new one on the premise that if he didn't have enough financial support by the time he launched 0.2 of that game he'd leave it and try a new one. A few of us told him it was a shit idea, he was growing slowly, but he played it incredibly stupidly [...]

When you see that devs like @HopesGaming or @Nottravis make incredible games and still struggle to have the support they deserve, how can he'd seriously believed that blackmailing people will make him earn more ?
It's a shame, but he should have been a dick, like Slonique and his never effectively finished games.

If i've said it once i've said it a thousand times, devs get into this for the wrong reason. Do it as a hobby, sure, don't come in expecting to make a living from it because even if you get insanely lucky you'll still only probably make 1k or less because there are so many games and far less money to go round.

Yeah. Fund it with you own money. Then use Patreon to pay back part of it and, who know, perhaps that one day you'll be successful enough to spend the money you earn with Patreon for more projects. And if really you are short on money, there's a ton shit of assets available for free here. Use them, and buy one of them each time you've earned enough for it.
But expecting to earn enough to fund a whole project with Patreon is looking at the top 100 adult creators, without seeing the 2600 other ones.

I see a lot of Patreon stretch goals that if they earn a certain amount they will quit their job and work on it full time. Those I don;t even bother downloading, they will be abandoned in a few months. Quitting a steady job with a certain income to try and make a living in the uncertain field of H game development, idiocy.

I agree.
It's something possible, but contrarily to what these people think, you need more than their $2K/month (sometimes it's even less) for this. You need to earn at least $5K is you want to put enough on the side to face the future, and to have reached a stable situation, a state where you already know what will be your next game and that it will not cost you too much support when you'll release it at first. So, in short, you need to see it as an effective job, you now own your own company, you, and need to make it live until its natural death.
But those devs don't thought about this, and here come the problem for me. It's not even a question of abandoned game, it's more practical ; if they aren't able to plan correctly something as important as their own future, how can they plan correctly their game ? So, they'll rarely earn enough, because the game don't worth this much.

Yes, the market is oversaturated but I can't see it changing any time soon.

Yeah, as long as there will be guys thinking that they could have made better that "this dev who abandoned his project", it will not change.
I use the "updated thread" feature to follow the market, so I rarely see the first release, but each month there's, more or less, the same number of new games, than updates of an already know game. It say it all... 2 over 3 projects are abandoned before the fifth update.
And the worse part is that it's a vicious circle. The more there's games that never pass the fifth update, the more there's people waiting for the sixth one before giving their support, and so the more there's devs who stop for lack of support.

 

[SeventhVixen]

Possibly, the more games a "maybe I can do it" new dev view, more he thinks he can do it without worries, of course without having into account how many of those "more" games, are abandoned.

It have been the same with indie SFW games, because in the end, SFW or NSFW, they're games, and need uncountable hours to make beyond a shinny demo.

 

[Joshua Tree]

Just about any game creator, whether its adult games or more stream line games. Hope their game will become the next big thing, whether they start out as a hobby project or for the purpose of making money. Just look at mobile games and such, how many chase the dream of become the next candy crush and crap like that. A lot of these games end up not even break even, with creators that might take up loans on their house to chase their dream and what not.

A lot of the games out there end up more or less a blue copy of each other. But once in a while you have the occasional gem show up and draw attention. When it come to adult games, it's not exactly a lack of fetish's and niches to try cater for.

When you look at what creators on patreon make etc. You will always have those that think it so unfair because X creator make more than Y creator, and deserve more and so on. Patreon is not a promoting platform. It doesn't advertise your product. It's a monetizing platform. How good you as a creator end up reach out to the public and market yourself, come down to the individual creator.

Imho, if you want to success as a creator of these games, your passion need to burn for more than the money alone though.

 

[215303j]

And the worse part is that it's a vicious circle. The more there's games that never pass the fifth update, the more there's people waiting for the sixth one before giving their support, and so the more there's devs who stop for lack of support.

To be honest, I even often wait until the 5th or 6th update before even considering playing it, let alone supporting it...

It have been the same with indie SFW games, because in the end, SFW or NSFW, they're games, and need uncountable hours to make beyond a shinny demo.

There is a difference though.
With a VN, at least you have a few ready-made engines that you can use, so you can immediately focus on content.
The content on the other hand is a much bigger part and takes more work than in a regular game.

 

[SeventhVixen]

With a VN, at least you have a few ready-made engines that you can use, so you can immediately focus on content.
The content on the other hand is a much bigger part and takes more work than in a regular game.

You can say the same for RPMaker, or any Complete Asset for other engine like Unity or Unreal that let you make a game without coding following the exact structure provided by the engine.

Problems is when you try to make something more complicated. As far as I know, in renpy for example, anything than just a very linear VN already means lot of coding.

But sure, using a default engine to make default things is more easy; But even in that case, projects get abandoned.

And even more, a usual problem is that the unaware new dev wants to make it bigger than the default engine, so try to put features like the "winners" do. Then problems arise.

 

[SeventhVixen]

The content on the other hand is a much bigger part and takes more work than in a regular game.

But I don't quite agree with this. Any game that is just not an arkanoid clone with pretty to none graphics requires lots of work for content.

You can make a VN with static backgrounds and character "expressions" that will have lot less work value than a regular point and click adventure with 2d graphics. Or 3d graphics.

Myself, the conversational part of my game, is "VN like", fullscreen renders, render per 2-3 lines of text, and even then, with more than 1000 renders for not much more for 1 hour and half of gameplay, and even then I've spent more time on coding menus and gameplay.

What I'm saying is, that Not necesarilly needs more work on content. (graphics, writing, or wathever)

 

[Winterfire]

It depends... You should look at this from other perspectives as well.

I am sure there are other people like me that simply do not care and do it just for fun, almost like watching a movie or playing a game, it is a form of entertainment and expression.

If you count those people out together with people having this "super amazing idea" which lasts a few weeks and people that give up if they do not make 10k within a month then you will see that the market is relatively the same.

 

[おい！]

 

[polywog]

Patreon isn't a store, it's a tip jar for artists. This is what adult game stores look like:

A few months ago I said "selling adult DVD games is allowed in Paypal TOS" (in the US)
you can start a website online store, and sell your game, dealers will buy cases of DVDs (discount) and put them on store shelves. The market for western games is there, you just have to do it.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Problems is when you try to make something more complicated. As far as I know, in renpy for example, anything than just a very linear VN already means lot of coding.

Not necessarily a lot of coding, but clearly a lot of knowledge.
By example, you can do a Ren'py game that will use 2D puppets models like with so many Flash games. It's (relatively speaking) not difficult and you can do it without a single line of Python. But for this you need to know that there's a whole part of Ren'py dedicated to transformation of the images, which seem to be unknown from too many devs.
The problem of Ren'py is that it's a really powerful engine, but also a really easy to use one. And most of the indie devs just go to the easy part, looking at some already done code without opening the doc. Even more advanced devs sometimes seem to not even know that there's a doc. I've seen some puts lots of Python in their game... to do what could have been done with an already existing Ren'py statement.

 

[ulamog]

I think its saturated with abandonware. That's a defining characteristic of the genre, there's not too long a list of games that are generally agreed upon to be good. Anyone into to this type of stuff has likely learned of all of them. I can't say that about other genres. This is the only one I think people can pretty confidently say "I found everything worth my time at the moment" about.

 

[khumak]

I don't think it's even remotely close to saturated. I think the real problem with the adult games industry is that there's really no well established distribution platform for them so they're difficult to find for people who aren't highly motivated to do so. Something like Patreon but without the content police and easily searchable would dramatically expand the market IMO. Same if searching for adult content on Steam was easier.

I also think we're only just now getting to the point where Daz and other graphics software is good enough for non artists to produce renders people want to see. I think as the software improves so we can get things like automatic collision and deformation handling based on how rigid the 2 objects are, better support for creating animations, etc, we'll have more people jump into developing and further expand the market.

This also assumes that none of the big game studios ever create an "adult division" and produce any games with a real production budget. I don't see that happening because companies don't want their brand damaged by the association, but I could maybe see the porn industry branching into games at some point.