Does story really matter in an adult VN when it comes to making money on Patreon and alike?

[Deleted member 1957140]

Let me answer my own question first. Yes it does; but I think it's very limited. I've been on this site for over 2 years now and have gone through hundreds of games. I think it's safe to assume that most people who first found this site were just looking for porn of a different flavor just like me. But like me, once you get into it, you find out that there is a lot more to it than fluid animations and top notch renders. The thing that hooked me the most was the Novel part of an adult VN. Once you've been here for as long as I have or longer; you kind of have seen almost everything all the VNs on this site have to offer. Same repeating stories, good looking overused models, tropes that offer zero surprises or try to do things differently in any capacity.

All of that being said; I can't deny how amazing a lot of games are when it comes to Visuals and as a Novel. But then it comes to money which is the main motivation for the majority of the Devs. I think F95zone has a good rating system. There are some flaws in the system that allow dummy accounts to make a bad game have higher stars or a good one have lower stars because a small group of people don't like certain aspect about the game(I'm looking at you NTR game devs). But overall it's still good because when I check the reviews, those fake reviews are quite apparent and I can just read the ones that have a lot of likes from different people. I've played quite a few very bad games that have tons of 5 star reviews that have almost no likes but someone has a 1 or 2 star review that has tons of like. So in the end it kind of balances things out although a fake higher rating means that the game will have more views and that definitely translates into more money.

So now that I've talked about the star system; let's dive into how much that matters when it comes to making actual money. When it comes to monetary revenue, I've seen that graphics play the biggest role if not the only role, majority of the time. Obviously they hook me with their flashy visuals at first; then I play it and find it trash(mostly in Novel department). I check the reviews and find that most people agree with me about how I felt about the game; but I also find tons of 5 star ratings that only simp over the renders or animations. Then I check the Patreon link and BAM! If the game is anywhere over a year or more old, most games like that are making over 5-10K a month.

I can't stress how many games I've gone over like that in the past year that were a terrible experience. Using popular themes/tags (I'm looking at you School-setting and Incest) and doing absolutely nothing new in that category; characters that have no back stories or development and they jump on the mc the first chance they get; MC being a Mary Sue who has zero personality and character growth throughout the entire game etc etc. But none of these stop the Dev from making a massive amount of money.

Let me make one thing clear. I'm not criticizing the Devs, absolutely not. A lot of them make their game for themselves or just like to share a story that they've created and they feel good about it. It's their personal preference and choice; if other people like that and give the Dev money then that's great. But there are also some Devs who only make games by doing research on what's most popular and can generate money fast. Very little to almost none of these games have any capacity to hold my interest past the first H-scene. After that I know the game has nothing more to offer me. It'll just continue like that until MC has porked all the virtual meats that have beautiful skins but rotten in the core.

It's the audience who are to blame. I know I can't say that. Everyone has their personal preference and I can't dictate where they flush their bucks. But it ruins the community. More and more people will keep making games that are just good looking and devoid of a soul. And people who are new to this site will only see it as just another porn site. I'm already seeing this in many recent posts where the users only ask for games with top notch visuals. The number of people who care about a solid story(it doesn't need to be oscar winning); characters with depth, progression; is dwindling outside the active people in this community who know and care about the Novel part of a VN even if it's adult themed and the sex is what draws you in the first place.

 

[Meaning Less]

The way I see it almost all adult game stories suck, I've played thousands of them and I couldn't put any of their stories above any non-adult game I've played. Some bigger japanese games get close, but they still don't manage to reach the same level of quality and the sex content tends to derail the story frequently.

Some people love to claim that story is what matters but let's be honest it isn't, when people talk about story in adult games they just mean decent pacing and buildup applied around the adult content, almost everything else is excusable.

That's why these games exist in the first place, if you have something that isn't good enough to stand on its own try adding some tits and people will click on it.

 

[Deleted member 229118]

There is a saying.
Get the idiots on your side and you can get elected for anything.

This is the problem with a lot of stuff.
Not just porn games.
The vast majority of "people" are just that dumb.
They all they need to be enteriant is pretty lights/tits/whatever-as-long-it-is-pretty.

My personal take on it is that people have gotten to spoiled.
Like they feel there gods gift to this earth and everything shoud bend over backward(Pun intented) for there pleasure.
Despite having done nothing to earn it.

See: The increasing amount of people who want to cut in line(It is a good thing i look scary or they might accauly try. And i really dont want to go to jail for beating someone half to death for cutting in line)
Driving like crazy.
Thinking the police is so incompetent you can murder someone in full view of a crowd and not get caught.
Etc.

General speaking the vast majority of people are stupid.
Really, god damm stupid.
And for the longest time i didnt believe it.
I thought they where just dismissing people with different views.
Then i met some of these idiots they where talking about.
And i kid you not.
They are compleetly unaware of just how much they are living in a fantasy world where they can do no wrong.
There not even aware there assholes and think you are for not letting them get away with being an asshole.

Sorry for the rant.
So yeah in order to make money all you have to do is exploit the idiots.
They outnumber the rest of us a billion to one.
This has been the way of life since roman times.
And it is not going to change.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

Some people love to claim that story is what matters but let's be honest it isn't, when people talk about story in adult games they just mean decent pacing and buildup applied around the adult content, almost everything else is excusable.

Maybe it's fairer to say that the writing matters a ton, including the believability of the characters and dialogue, and of course how well various fetishes are handled ingame. The plot is rarely very important, but I have seen games where a lot of the fans absolutely play it for the story (e.g. The Last Sovereign).

If you fail at writing, well, all that's left are the graphics and gameplay. I've yet to see a western ero-game with great gameplay, but there are some games that brute-force their way to the top with their graphical fidelity (e.g. Fallen Doll).

 

[Doorknob22]

Stories and believable characters are powerful erotic multipliers to the art. If the dev manages to make the player suspend their disbelief that the mature woman sucking the younger man's cock is actually his mother/boss/married neighbor then the player's experience will be much stronger than if none of the characters had any statuses or they were poorly executed.

Humans are more complex than what we sometimes perceive and if the secret to what make us tick was so easy to figure out, everyone would be a millionaire. But the truth is that creating a successful erotic game requires more than just good art, it requires extra something to make the players care. And that extra something is good writing.

And I'll finish with a little quote from one of my fans:

 

[Meaning Less]

If you fail at writing, well, all that's left are the graphics and gameplay.

Some games are pure gameplay/interaction with minimal writing and they do the job imo (eg. Rogue Like).

Some of these games effectively give you the tools to develop the relationships with each character at your own pace and write the events in the order you wish, instead of force feeding the player generic scenarios that most people are tired of reading about.

And I'll finish with a little quote from one of my fans:

Now ask if he would play your game if it didn't had any erotic content. Writing isn't more important than ero, at least when it comes to erogames.

 

[Deleted member 229118]

Some of these games effectively give you the tools to develop the relationships with each character at your own pace and write the events in the order you wish, instead of force feeding the player generic scenarios that most people are tired of reading about.

I wish more games did this.

Full offense to everyone but:
I want to play a porn game.
Not read a porn story.
I got better sites for that.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

So now that I've talked about the star system; let's dive into how much that matters when it comes to making actual money. When it comes to monetary revenue, I've seen that graphics play the biggest role if not the only role, majority of the time.

Good graphics catches the eye, and web is well-suited towards displaying them upfront. Graphics are like shiny wrappers in that regard. There's a lot of thought that goes into designing product packaging, because it attracts the buyer, that's unfortunate, but that's the reality. People generally like when their food looks good, even if that's pretty dumb, if you think about it. The moment you actually eat it, you chew it into a ugly slimy mush.

That said, writing matters a lot, and can bring monetary success. Sierra Lee and Hreinn Games is a good example. When Sierra Lee left Hreinn, the quality of their game dropped sharply, and yes, they slowly, surely lost money. Meanwhile Sierra has focused on her own game (text-only at the time, now with some comissioned art) and now earns more money than Hreinn. Even though Nomo is still a very good 2D artist, one of the best in the adult games space, it's not enough to redeem the wreck that is KoD. And that's not the only example, I've seen a lot of poorly-rated games that have good art but shit-tier story (and I rate them poorly myself).

But I don't remember a game that awed me with its story, and that was review bombed because of bad CGs, or lack thereof.

So my take on your question is that there's simply very few good writers, and even fewer good writers that can make a decent game. Counterintuitively, writing turned out to be harder than making attractive art, and that's why when we take patreon, there's more graphics-focused games than writing-focused ones.

 

[Doorknob22]

Now ask if he would play your game if it didn't had any erotic content. Writing isn't more important than ero, at least when it comes to erogames.

You could ask the same question about action movies or computer games. You can make a great action movie and/or computer game without a good story but a good story helps in making the game more memorable and connect better with the viewer/player.

I want to play a porn game.
Not read a porn story.
I got better sites for that.

I'm curious to what do you consider a good porn game, which is not the storytelling or the art. What gaming elements are you looking for in a good porn game?

 

[Deleted member 229118]

Doorknob22


Heavly depending on the mood but general speaking.
Stat management.
I am far more interested in games like lab rats 2, superpowered, free city, hentai highschool+ etc.
Because i know what the rules of those game are and how to exploit them.

In comparision i have grown to hate corrupted kingdoms and corruption(the game not the tag)
Because it is just trigger hunting.
You could remake those games and remove all the "gameplay" and it would be an improvement.

A good game give me options, tools and a system you can exploit.
A bad game makes me geus what is the answer the dev wanted and what leads to a game over.

A simple example of a game idea i came up with:

You play a rapist who has target a household.
4 woman 1 man(1 mother, 1 father, 3 daughters)
You only have 1 chance to rape before you have to flee and go underground to avoid the cops.
The gameplay loop is that every single character has a routine.
You as the player need to learn those routines to get the best time to rape your choice target.

For example: The mother goes shopping every thuesday from 13:00 to 17:00.
The eldest daughter goes to visit her boyfriend.
The youngest is visiting grandma.
The middle child is alone for 4 hours every thuesday.
Now you know that you need to plan how to break into the house, Make sure she can not flee and pay attention to the time so that you flee before the rest gets home.

The gameplay loop is learning the npc routine and exploit it to get your conquest.
It is simple.
And it is fun.
And the reason it is fun is because you feel smart for finding the best moment to strike.

Most games just have you walk in and rape them into submission.
No preplanning.
No getting the right tools for the job.
No risk of getting caught.
Lame, boring, and honestly Anime.tv has better stories.

 

[LustFight]

This topic seems interesting. I recently played a couple of games that have huge earnings on patreon ($8k+) I was wondering why that was, where that money came from and I downloaded them. Unfortunately I didn't get through more than half an hour. Because it is very boring. You went to university and started making acquaintances there to fuck someone. How unusual!

But there are games where you get to a new university just the same and you start to find it interesting. That's because of the unique chips that only this game has. I think some people know what I mean, some twist on the game that keeps you playing and makes you even more interested in it. I think that's what games are all about. It's not necessarily the graphics, not necessarily the story or the way the author writes dialogue. It's something unique that hasn't happened anywhere else.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Story matters only if you can actually write, otherwise you may as well not bother.
At the very least, if you are a newbie, i'd expect you to go to places like this one:

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And read up a little before you even attempt to bore me with your text soup.

 

[MomaySauce]

I think for a new user story doesn't really matter that much, but after playing some games and getting accustomed to the general plot of the most porn game, you start to crave story, background, and character development. I mean, some of the games have a vaguely similar plot, play enough of it and you basically become an oracle, knowing what's going to happen and the result of said prediction. But the important thing that you need to understand is, at the end of the day we're still playing PORN game, so sex always comes first and porn logic doesn't translate well story-wise.

 

[anne O'nymous]

When it comes to monetary revenue, I've seen that graphics play the biggest role if not the only role, majority of the time. Obviously they hook me with their flashy visuals at first; then I play it and find it trash(mostly in Novel department). I check the reviews and find that most people agree with me about how I felt about the game; but I also find tons of 5 star ratings that only simp over the renders or animations. Then I check the Patreon link and BAM! If the game is anywhere over a year or more old, most games like that are making over 5-10K a month.

Knowing that the two most successful games, clearly over standing all the others, are either 2D (DarkCookie), or realtime 3D (Adeptus steve), I have some difficulty to agree with your analyze.
Especially when, over the top 10 creators with the highest number of patrons, only two effectively use 3D renders (three if you count Koikatsu). Plus, in all the recent history of adult gaming, the two games to reach the 5K/month in their first year was WVM, so a game that have both below the average writing and renders, and FreshWomen, which effectively have way better renders. There's also the creator of Photo Hunt, but he cheated. While his actual patreon account is 10 months old, his game is 3 years old ; he changed his account in between.
The two games that fall the much under your "good visual, bad writing" are Fashion business, and A Wife and Mother. Yet they stand at the bottom limits of

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. And still, only for 71 of them we can be sure that they are earning more than 5k/month. For the other half it's a guess based on their number of patrons. And like shown by the duel between DarkCookie (30,210 patrons for $73,207/month) and Adeptus Steve (12,995 patrons for $123,081/month) this guess mean absolutely nothing.

The truth is that, even if effectively the story part is overrated when it come to the success of the game, people here tend to be even less able to judge the visual, than they are to judge the writing.

But none of these stop the Dev from making a massive amount of money.

Ok, now it's clear that you're either just projecting your thoughts, or talking based on a really low sample of games, but absolutely not talking about the reality.
There's more than 5,000 adult games creators on Patreon, and less than 400 who potentially earn enough to live from their game in a Western country. The first one for which we know for sure that he earn less than 2K/month (what is already not a living income, because it's correspond to the raw salary without taxes and useful things like Health insurance, and obviously the devel cost) is XFiction, ranked 131 in number of patrons. And there's surely at least one other above him, among the creators who mask their earning.
Syvaron, ranked 378, is more or less the last one who can pretend to earn enough to quit his job if he live in a Western country. Yet only if he's really successful (what happen) and only have pledges over US$ 5/month, since he have 500 patrons. There's less than 10 exceptions after him. Yet, none of them will have an amazing life in a Western country.

Also note that I talk about a living income, what is far from "massive amount of money". Less than 100 adult games creators potentially earn more than 10K/month, and so can be seen as having this "massive amount of money". This make less than 2% of the creators, what is really few.

But there are also some Devs who only make games by doing research on what's most popular and can generate money fast.

And absolutely none of them is making money (I mean effectively more than 1K/month). While some can be really average, there isn't a single successful adult game creator who's making a generic game. Some of those games can feel generic, but they are the originals, not one of the many copies.

 

[OsamiWorks]

Some bigger japanese games get close, but they still don't manage to reach the same level of quality and the sex content tends to derail the story frequently.

I dont think this is true, the problem is very few people play kinetic novels and vn's. A lot of stories written for commercial games, tv shows, films, have bad writing and awful writers who will use abstraction as a crutch to be brainless throughout film school and their professional career. They have more to think about than making a good story, because that doesnt directly translate to being profitable. I think the core issue is that if writing is good, people are afraid to read it, they will think "oh its too heavy" or something and they refuse to be introspective and face aspects of themselves which they may or may not like. There are just very few people interested in that kind of thing or they need mental preparation. Ultimately great writing gets ignored by the general public and only weirdos who actually enjoy reading occasionally become writers.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

And like shown by the duel between DarkCookie (30,210 patrons for $73,207/month) and Adeptus Steve (12,995 patrons for $123,081/month) this guess mean absolutely nothing.

No, it means that quality wins over quantity, at the very least.

I think the core issue is that if writing is good, people are afraid to read it, they will think "oh its too heavy" or something and they refuse to be introspective and face aspects of themselves which they may or may not like.

Sorry that sounds like bs, i love good writing personally. I love it to pieces.
But it's freakin' rare to find something good and also appealing to my tastes.
Like White Flower for example, that one was like a balm for my weary soul.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

I think the core issue is that if writing is good, people are afraid to read it, they will think "oh its too heavy"

That's not a sign of good writing or more broadly good storytelling. Just the opposite.

A good story hooks you, entertains you, and only then guts you, leaving you wondering what the fuck just happened.

 

[DisMel]

id like to think story matters, but in the grand scheme of things the vast majority of people who play these games wanna get their rocks off. admittedly when i first started getting into these games a few years ago, id skip/skim text of whatever im playing just to get to the good stuff. ive gotten better with reading and immersing myself with whatever im playing now, but honestly when you actually try getting into the story, you notice alot of flaws and inconsistency with some stories/characters.

 

[Meaning Less]

You can make a great action movie and/or computer game without a good story but a good story helps in making the game more memorable and connect better with the viewer/player.

I'm aware, just to be clear I'm not saying that noone enjoys good writing, just that there are several things that makes an eroge decent and good writing can be completely overlooked depending on how well developed other elements of your game are.

Afterall different people look for different things when choosing what to play and support in the firstplace.

I mean, one of the

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from graphteon is Savin creating a text-based game (Corruption of Champions II), if anything this already goes against OP premise that people just care about visuals. I'm sure many do, it's just that there are several factors that influence in something popularity and it is never solely about either visuals, writing, gameplay or luck. But actually a combination and balance between all of them and how well applied around the erotic content they were.

 

[aura-dev]

I think it's important to keep in mind that niches exist. When we talk about Story, then it being relevant or not isn't even an issue limited to adult games. John Carmack (Creator of Doom) once said about video games that "Story in a game is like story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important."
Now, what's funny here is that he's drawing the connection to porn (albeit in movie form) and now here we are and talking about the relevance of story in porn games!

Also when it comes to "good writing", that by itself is such a hard to define term, because the standard for good writing varies so much. I read a lot of Light Novels, in other words, something that's purely written, so only the writing can matter. And while fun, a lot of them aren't exactly well-written and it kind of depends on what standards you apply. When I discuss "good writing" with some other people, it very often comes down to the their absolute minimum acceptable level of writing being Dostojewski. Well yeah, I don't think you will find writers on that caliber writing adult games. Although I somehow doubt that is the level of writing the other posters here refer to hahaha.
Anyways, just wanted to point out that video games and "good writing" are already at odds even outside of adult games.

When it comes to the big adult games making like 10k/month, they are usually games focusing on appealing to as many people as possible. Each girl may not be particularly well-written, but there exists an interesting girl for nearly everyone. It's difficult to put as much writing effort into each character, when you have a huge cast.

On the other hand, I see story focused games more as a niche - one where I personally also belong to. And I think there are some creators who show that it is indeed possible to create a monetary successful game in this niche. I define monetary successful here as being able to go fulltime on your game. The most popular one probably being Sierra Lee. I hope that I can also count myself among there before the year is over.

Of course, it being a niche also means that a lot of people will say that story is not that important, and they wouldn't be incorrect with that. If the majority of people would find story and "good writing" that important, then story focused adult games wouldn't be a niche.