Do you think these kinds of games will ever get the same treatment/respect as more mainstream games?

[Ratrio]

What I mean by that is you rarely see adult games getting the same kind of coverage as non adult games and mostly only see them talked about on websites specifically about them rather than general games sites. I totally get that for a decent amount of these games the sex is the main reason you play it and if you got rid of the sex scenes a lot of them wouldn't be much fun, just like you wouldn't expect your typical porn film to get much coverage, but I think we're reaching a point where there's a growing amount genuinely good and very popular games that have adult themes/sex as part of them. A good example of this would be Summertime Saga which is one of the highest earning and most popular games on Patreon and at least imo is a pretty fun adventure type game with good writing and artwork, yet it barely gets discussed or covered outside of websites like this, it didn't even get brought up on Patreon's own "best patreon games of 2020" list.

Do you think this will ever change? I kinda think it should, especially if we continue to see more and more adult games that are genuinely good or even great games.

 

[thatguy49]

Doubt it, just in the past decade there was controversy over the sex scenes in Mass Effect, The Witcher and GTA. If these mainstream adventure games drew ire for barely visible romantic paths, then actual adult games have little to no chance.

From one perspective, I understand the concern of it "becoming too mainstream" due to presumed influence it could have on demographics that shouldn't be consuming it. However, I'd argue the prevalence of graphic violence in mainstream games(general media too) is another disturbing influence that several downplay.

While I enjoy plenty of the mainstream games that are on consoles, sometimes I want to escape from the graphic violence that is common in them. Adult games(not all of them obviously) are a good alternative that provide the "relatively safe" settings where majority of the controversial content pertains to sex and fetishes, as opposed to homicide and despair.

Maybe there will be masterpiece games in the future that have solid overall gameplay that the sex is a non-factor.

 

[Avaron1974]

Nope.

Never going to happen, in fact it's probably going to get worse for them as time goes on.

 

[Deleted member 1684328]

I don't think so, because which famous AAA game have you played where you can see the characters having sex? I am not talking about sex scenes where the characters are naked, but have you ever seen a scene in a game where you see the penis entering the vagina? I can't think of one.

 

[desmosome]

Subverse ruined it by being so shitty.

 

[jamdan]

No. These games are a niche, not a mainstream source of entertainment.

Even if they did become more mainstream (It won't), they still wouldn't get coverage of any kind outside of what they get now.

IGN are not going to cover porn games, just like all the different entertainment websites don't cover real porn (outside of a random scandal every so often). There are a lot of porn award shows, they don't get covered outside of the niche either.

Non-Porn outlets covering porn would alienate too much of their audience. The same goes for AAA game companies, we aren't going to see real pornographic content in those games. GTA stippers are as close as we're gonna get to that.

 

[baka]

without sex most games are quite bad.
and its understandable, the main purpose is the sex.
gameplay is usually not the most important aspect for the game.
our own project maple.x contain a "free-mode" thats sfw, but its just for fun, but the gameplay is quite elaborated so it could be a bit fun to play.
but theres couple of games that are quite good, like: Sengoku Rance
this has a quite nice strategy part that I enjoyed playing, more than the sex actually.

 

[Agent HK47]

Gonna jump on the wagon here and say "No."

Porn always has been a frowned upon part of the world, despite it being a ingrained part of our nature. Looking at how the adult games industry has evolved in the last decade, I would say it has been both ups and downs. The technological aspect of the games have vastly improved (better graphics, better gameplay, ect.) but much of this can simply be chucked up to better hardware and software.
The important areas are pulic reception and censorship, which is where we encounter the "downs" part. Porn has become increasingly more censored over the years, making it increasingly harder to work with this industry. Will it be better at some point? Maybe, but there is no way to tell for sure.

 

[Dushniy]

Gonna go against the grain here and say - yeah, one day our society will be degenerate enough for that .
Steam already publishes the game's off the ass. The popularity of subverse will show that a good porn game can attract a lot of people. Currently a lot of things that were embarrassing to even think about 20 years ago are trying to be normalized today.
So yeah.
Plus, triple AAAAAAA studios will go where the money is. If it's in porn. Well. Off we go then, crunching another week working on the pimples on a large milf titties.

 

[Deleted member 577678]

I think also it will be no. It will remain as a niche.

 

[Dicks McKenzie]

Not in our lifetime, amigo.

You can't expect a joe shmoe off the street to openly admit to being into regular porn movies, let alone a porn videogame where you can impregnate your own family. Maybe one day, hundreds of years from now. But not today.

But hey, silver lining, the fact the adult games are niche and somewhat of a wild west cottage industry allows them the freedom to do whatever they want creatively. And that's pretty cool.

 

[Doorknob22]

Nope. For years the porn industry waited and hoped for porn to become mainstream and acceptable and that pornstars could move from porn to mainstream films/TV but other than very very rare examples, there's a huge wall separating porn from the "legitimate" world.

 

[AetherL]

Perhaps the problem is believing that the money the best developers in the market make is important, it's nothing at all for mainstream companies. Certainly there may be a few streams, a few somewhat hidden shows, open sections but in a small, well-protected, corner for this kind of content like on steam etc ... But it really does not bring in anything in reality and no company that gives access to the mainstream (twitch / youtube / steam etc ...) will open to this. They would lose more than anything else.
That's why patreon started to cut some games, reputation and bank pressure are more importante than just some fews dollars. Of course they lose some cash but not as much as what's can appen if then start to openly accept porn (degenerated at least)

No ... Even if it seems to stir up a bit of a lot of money in reality no. It's nothing at all. For a developer or a small team that does not aim for popularity yes it is sometimes a lot of money. But here we are talking about a company that brews billions.
They don't care about a few guys who win 50k.

 

[khumak]

Definitely not. I do think they will eventually serve a market closer to the size of the regular porn market though, which is MUCH bigger than the current adult games market.

 

[claus001]

Nope - never.

But, that is not all. Right now we are living time when every major institution will lose their credibility and from ruins of old institutions new institutions will be established. Newspapers are dying, movies are dying, TV is dying, political parties are dying and so on. These legacy institutions will never acknowledge anything that challenges their power, this means if you are a youtube star with +10 million subscribers your local newspaper will never interview you in positive light. This alienation from reality is killing them, just look how they are trashing pewdiepie or Jordan Peterson.

The quality of porn game is constantly increasing, and as there is little censorship creators are quite innovative and creative. I see it is only a matter how time before the damn bursts and wider public becomes aware of this underworld.

 

[CocoVC]

No, but I think porn games will be up there with other adult entertainment. The trend for adult entertainment is shifting towards a more interactive experience (camshows, onlyfans, VR) and that's a void that adult games can fill. It just requires a bit more on the development side than the art side.

 

[rk-47]

Not really, its kinda like extremely gory or disturbing movies, steam seems to be allowing a giant range of h games so its a step in that direction but never mainstream

 

[TrashGods]

I don't think they will. Because regardless of your niche the games will be always games. Either it be adult games, indie games, AAA games, and so on, they will be always just games - and as long they keep being games the most important thing for a player will be how fun / enjoyable the game is, this will be the most important deciding factor.

The only way to have your game be treated as a good game at the same scale as mainstream games, is for your game to be a mainstream game too before an adult game, not the opposite. (E.g.: Witcher 3)

 

[woody554]

I'd be shocked if porn isn't already bigger than non-porn. not everybody consumes the disney stuff, but everybody watches porn whether they admit it or not. especially the people making the biggest stink about the 'immorality of porn', those are always the guys who get caught dressed in a gimp suit while 10 oiled guys take turns shitting in their mouth.

things like the oscars or top10 charts are not the yardsticks for popularity, they're run by the marketing departments of 5 big media companies. they're ads, and ads do nothing but lie to sell a product. and as the same people own all corporate media everywhere in the world, they also dictate what is the 'public opinion'. if you don't agree, your opinion won't be shown anywhere outside small independent media. (and even some of the indy media is already bought off. I mean when was the last time you saw a 'game reviewer' making actual reviews instead of just uncritically selling the product like any other corporate drone.)

imagine if there were only 5 giant porn companies producing ALL porn in the world, distributing all of it, owning every single porn site? dividing ALL the global porn revenue between them. can you even imagine what kind of crazy loot they'd be making? more than the GDP of many nations.

now imagine rupert murdoch was behind or closely tied to those 5 porn companies, deciding how porn is portrayed in media everywhere. it would be his financial interest to publish sex positive views and bury moralist views, and he would 100% do it. there would be no way for any moralists getting their voice heard, just like 8 billion people jerking off to online porn daily is in no way visible in the media right now.

porn won already, and maybe it's always been the biggest market. it's just that the mass media controlled by a very few people makes a lot of money pretending everybody isn't into porn. also its tied to political theatre, many parties control people by upholding the same moralist views regardless of left-right positioning. so there's a symbiotic relationship between them and the media giants upholding this status quo.

I don't think that whole system is in any way invulnerable. maybe it's already beyond their control because of the global online anarchy and their lack of control over online people. sex positivity and rejection of 'traditional' moralism seems to be everywhere online, and very few people even consume the old controlled media run by rupert et co. maybe the old guard will find a way to control our media consumption again, but frankly it doesn't seem like they even understand what's happening.

 

[gunderson]

Honestly, it probably depends on how things go in the future. I don't want to say that I know for certain that people won't get more accepting of porn games as time passes. There will be cultural revolutions and cultural counter-revolutions, ebbs and flows, but things do change. I doubt that many people a century ago earnestly thought gay marriage would become legal and acceptable, but that happened. So who's to say that, once people see that they can make porn that gets them a decent and fairly steady profit over a long period of time without having to pay real people to have sex in said porn, it won't become a more mainstream thing to do? Once you separate pornography from prostitution in a conceptual sense, I think it could quite easily become a much more socially acceptable profession.