Drowning in Ren'py VNs and Daz Renders. The death of genres, innovation and saturation

[Akatriel]

(Disclaimer: It's not my intention to be a downer or in anyway dismiss the work indie developers are doing, using these tools. I want to share my ideas about genres, our emerging niche of Western Adult Indies and what we can expect, looking at patterns from the wider gaming industry history)

We all know the Adult Indie game scene has been blowing up over the last couple of years. Pateron, free middle-ware engines (Ren'py, Twine, Unity, etc), Daz3D and the Triple-As shyness to adult content (Violence = Entertainment, Tits = an AO rating and no Steam sales) have created a low barrier to entry and a thirsty, underserved audience. A new genre has emerged, Western Adult 3D CG VNs? (I'm bad at naming things)

Genres are a powerful force, they create audiences and demand for particular styles of games. But they don't last forever, just like a fashion trend, we cannot assume that a genre will always exist, or that a genre will have competitive room for our latest title. A genre in decline is a dangerous market where past success is no indication of future success.

So:

- What are the stages of a genre lifecycle and where are we now?
- What are the common success strategies associated with each lifecycle stage?

• Introduction: A new and addictive set of game mechanics are created. If you are the trendsetter, the chances of you getting an early Genre King is high, there's no competition and no audience expectation for AAA quality.
• Growth: The game mechanics are experimented with and genre addiction begins to spread. Costs are low, there's this new underserved audience that is finding out it likes this jelly, but this is a gold-rush. Competitors are popping up all over the place.
• Maturity: The game mechanics are standardized and genre addiction form a strong market force. Product differentiation occurs primarily through higher layer design elements like plot, license, etc. To be the Genre King, you need to throw money and time to be better than anything that came before. Customers demand more, better graphics, voice-overs, cut-scenes, etc.
• Decline: The market consolidates around the winners of the king-of-the-genre battles that occurred during the Maturity phase. New games genres begin stealing away the customer base. With less financial reward, less games are released.
• Niche: A population of hardcore genre addicts provides both the development resources and audience for the continued development of games in the genre. Quality decreases.

Selling innovative and new games early on can be dramatically more profitable and less risky than selling commodity products, the early market is small, but the money is much better. Nintendo sells less but makes more money. Sony and Microsoft sell more, but make less profit. Nintendo made a killing with Mario, and then left that genre, knowing they couldn't compete in a mature genre with the likes of Prince of Persia, Jax and Daxter, etc.

I think we're at the end of the Growth phase and heading to Maturity. look at the Game Dev forum and see the number of posts about Renpy and Daz3D. Look at TFGamesite and the explosion of HTML Sugarcube clones. The growth stage is about experimentation and the gold rush. Maturity is about the clones and incremental improvement. How many BattleRoyale games were announced at this years E3? Notice the similarity?

If you are starting development of a game, do you Nintendo or Microsoft? Do you innovate early and potentially make a new genre or do incrementally polish in the booming market? Both can be successful strats if you time it right.

Making clones of Renpy games using the same Daz3D marketplace of assets is fine in the Intro or Growth stages. It's suicide in the Maturity and Decline stages.

Where do you think we are now? Do you think whatever we are seeing now can be classed as a genre? What should we call it? Will we see an evolution and mixing of genres or just more incremental polish? Can you spot a Daz3D render from a 100 yards?


Thanks for reading.

 

[DarthSeduction]

I might argue that we hit a decline stage already with a lot of things. Big Brother was the growth of the Life Sim, Man of the House and Summertime Saga its maturity, more recently Life Sims have seen a decline, many of them contrived and useless, though with some diamonds in the rough that might still be in the Maturity stages. Dating My Daughter was a growth from the already started genre of the traditional Japanese VN, an adaptation that brought that idea to the western market. Games have copied it, I'd put games like Sisterly Lust and Sister Sister Sister in it's maturity, though many of them did ok, they haven't innovated much and just kinda coast on simply having better developed characters than the likes of Daughter.

As a Result in decline, ICSTOR both abandoned it's incredibly stale RPGM format and adapted to Ren'Py as well as hiring a better writer, it seems, as their characters in Milfy City seem to have depth and motivations of their own, a huge subversion of the typical life sim in which the women are seemingly just waiting for your dick to save them from banality. We see the same in Mythic Manor which actually has you go through and court these girls in ways that don't feel like "go do this to have this happen" even though that's exactly what you're doing, because it added a story and character development. I think Summertime Saga might have paved the way for these, though I personally consider it a maturity to the old style, because it's characters are still very flat and underdeveloped (odd since they are often so voluptuous).

Babysitter and Parental Love have taken what DmD did, and brought it to parody in some aspects, improvement in others. Both have more character depth and stability, with a much better paced story and progression, subverting the dedication to the stairway to heaven that DmD made the standard, by using it in a realistic fashion. Both also take certain aspects of it to exremes. The be a gentleman trope that permeated DmD is taken to task. Babysitter puts you in the persona of a skilled programmer who's quite adept at spyware, taking the spying mechanics DmD and life sims everywhere popularized up to 11 and giving almost no consequences to them, but then also using these to impart necessary information. Parental Love has made the Perversions of the father accepted, even desired by his eldest daughter and to an extent his younger as well, and what makes him a gentleman is his willingness to literally fight for his daughters' honor with a short turn based fighting mechanic allowing him to kick the shit out of other men who attempt to do to them the same things he intends. Babysitter takes what I'll call the "The 5th Element" approach, as that movie is what happens when you turn die hard up to 11 and put it IN SPACE. Meanwhile, Parental Love is taking the "Deadpool" approach to parody, winking and nodding to an audience that has seen its fair share of these games and letting us laugh at its over the top antics, while usually giving us a pretty well thought out, if utterly simple story.

Then you have the true new kids on the block, experimenting with the actual storytelling aspect to the industry. Depraved Awakening, Long Live the Princess, Dual Family, my own game Seraphim Academy, are all trying to tell a real story, something to get invested in, almost like a Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, but with more breaks for hardcore porn rather than some softcore scenes and gratuitous violence. We are hoping to draw you into a continuing drama with escalating action and making use of our monthly release format to leave you little tidbits and cliffhangers so that you can't wait for more. And what's more is each of us are doing this in our own way. Depraved Awakening plays more like a traditional VN, Long Live the Princess is a Pseudo Life Sim, Dual Family is exploring the mechanic of telling the story from two perspectives, and my own is attempting to mimic more mainstream story based games, like Life Is Strange, or Dreamfall. And all of these, including my own, are using Daz characters that you haven't seen in every game, mixtures of multiple models to create new and interesting characters, environments that have been customized or even built from scratch, etc.

So, I think many of us have seen the decline coming and started something new, my first game release was a direct parody of Big Brother, using their characters and making jokes, deadpool style, 4th wall breaks and all, at the expense of both Dark Silver and often jokes at things fans get stupidly ourtaged at (like shots of Max's Dick where I 4th wall break and say something about how I was forcing them to look at it). My second game, Seraphim is exactly what I mentioned there, a mystery unfolding in a very similar style to mainstream story based games, and I also have one that is gonna release soon, just waiting for the final bit of art on the first release, that's gonna tell a real story with incest and romance, not some contrived fantasy, but a drama wherein you grow to care for the characters and their outcomes. So yes, we've seen the need to evolve, and many of us have. Others are hoping to make a quick buck mimicking what they've already seen, kitbashing tropes and bits of code to rehash old stories in their own way, they are the decline, or stagnation, depending on what they've got going.

 

[GuyFreely]

[I think I veered a bit off topic, but it still stands.]

I am no expert, but here are my thoughts anyway. Adult games may very well have reached maturity in Japan where the culture is there to support it. I'm not very close to the japanese eroge scene, so I can't say conclusively. I do know that Illusion has been making adult games for years and they seem to be a decent sized publisher. I haven't played all of their games, but most of them boil down to rape simulators or very light dating sims with rapey sex. I think people would like a little more from their games, I know I would.

I don't think the adult games market can truly reach maturity in the west until a large publisher starts putting out games consistently. We have had a handful of risque western games, some bobs and vagene here and there, but I can't point to company and say "these guys are making triple AAA adult games." This doesn't have to be an existing publisher, mind you. The problem becomes where to sell such games. We don't have the little otaku stores with nude figurines, hentai, and adult games (at least not in large numbers) in the west. The supposed changes to Steam's policy may open some doors for people to get serious about making adult games. As of right now, I don't think we're there yet.

So what we have is largely an indie market. The people making these games have varying degrees of talent and skill. I think a lot of people get into making these games because they want them to exist. Sure there are some people milking their patrons rather effectively, but I think in large part people want to build a game they want to play. Renpy and Daz are the shortest routes to that vision for most people. Speaking for myself, I would love to make a fully interactive adult game in a 3D engine with intricate game mechanics, but I can't. I don't have the skill set and I don't have to time it would take to acquire them. So we do what we can with what's available.

When someone puts out a game like the Witcher 3, but with a stronger focus on the sexy parts and doesn't shy away from showing everything, then I'll say the market has matured. I don't think it's impossible, but there are many roadblocks in the way of such an event. If you are purely talking about VNs, then that's slightly different, but I still feel we are short of maturity. The main reason is quality. There is a severe lack of truly excellent VNs. There are some decent and even very good ones, but so many fall short in various ways discussed elsewhere on this forum. Again, I don't know if we have any truly professional development teams with an actual budget putting games out. Successful, sure, but that's a bit different.

 

[HopesGaming]

If we look at the overall adult market of this kind, I do not know which stages we are in for certainty, but I do not believe that we are in a declining state.
In my opinion, we are still strong on the growth phase with ren'py games. Of course, after the initial success of some of the big ren'py games (and daz3d games), a lot of copy paste and reuse of asset type of games came into the market which probably led to a thread like this.
However, slowly people are stepping outside of what the big league guys did, and trying to experiment for themselves.
And it is working. By using my own game as an example, I made a story based game. And not a porn story. The story has absolutely nothing to do with sex or sexual subjects, nor is it a way to build up to it.
It has not even been a month since release, and it has received very well with many great reviews (26) and my patron have gained support faster than I could have dreamed of.
The same is true for many of the other newcomers who stepped out and tried something new.

The Point is, the market is still here and growing, they just waiting for something fresh. Not necessarily story-based games, but people that dare to step into the unknown and go for the risks. (Be it minor or big, they'd just like something fresh)
And unless another engine comes out and becomes free like Ren'py, then this will not change. Same as with daz3d. It's not about changing what is already in use, but practicing and perfecting it, so it differentiates from the rest.

Rpgmaker is a good example of an engine once with a good rep but ruined by the amount of 'not so great games'. But that was not in the adult market, and the amount was far superior to the number of adult games that are being released. Combined with the fact that any games could be sold in steam (before the change) which added to the fuel.

Something else that could maybe make this market go in decline is if big AAA games step into this world or highly skilled devs who have experience in game making. But there is no prestige in the adult marked, so I do not believe it will come to that.

When this 'trend' will fade down, I do not know. But I feel like it still has many years in it. Just that the entrance for gaining success has increased and it will only keep increasing.

 

[Paranormal erection]

I am sure if there is other software easy and "free" (you know what I am talking about) as daz3d a lot of people will switch to it. I am bored from the same characters in every single game but with RenPy being one of the easiest engines, I think this is normal. Most games even have some blatant story (you already went easy on everything else just put some effor on this one...), that will take like 5 min of writing. RenPy on default without any changes, just using the text, option (yes/no) and the image tags + renders that are coming from "the basic" daz3d and for a week (renders take time) you have a very basic game.
This might be the reason why we are on "Decline" I can't remember last time when I played a game and couldn't wait for an update to see how it continues. Actually, most of the RenPy games for me are just pressing tab and watching renders and a lot of RPGM games are even worst - you cannot load previous saves, bugs, crappy maps etc...

I actually bought a Humble Bundle with books about game development (tips, engines etc) 3 months ago but I don't have time to check them. If there is interest I can share them.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I disagree with you. I've seen adult gaming already come to maturity then decline two times in my life.
The first one was in the 90's/00's, with adult games made by the traditional porn studios. The porn industry was at its top and the only way to sell even more was to make games. So the studios made them. The peak was around 100 new games each month. Then came the grown phase of Internet. They had hard time to adapt, and later what is now know as MindGeek destroyed the industry. It declined quickly, but it was too late, people discovered that they can fap and play in the same time.
Before it declined enough to become a niche, the scene started to grow again ; 00's/10's. This time with flash games. Pornholio, newsground, and some other, were the new providers. But the scene came to saturation and it started to decline a second time.
But once again, before it became a niche, the scene restarted to grow. This time with more adapted engines like RPG Maker, Tyrano Script and Ren'py by example, and better quality CG with Poser, Daz, MakeHuman and others, as well that with 3D games made by professional studios.

What you don't take in count is the nature of the content. Not the fact that it's for adult, but the fact that it's numerical, that it can be done with free tools and that making adult content don't needed real knowledge. Anyone can awake one morning and say, "alright, starting now I'll made adult games".
Look at what we have actually. You're bad at drawing ? You use pictures stolen from porn sites ? You only know modded SIMS as 3D engine ? You code like shit ? You don't even bother with a story ? Who care about all this ? You'll find players even if your game is pure shit. And the less there's available content at this time, the more players you'll found.
There were a whole world of difference between the POV with real characters games made by the porn studios and the poor drawing flash games that followed them. Looking at a real dick entering a real woman is not the same than looking at a badly made flash puppet. Still, like it was all we had, we played them. In the end, the second ones had more players than the first ones ; and not only because most of them were free.
What matter isn't the quality but the availability. And there will always be someone to make them. If it's not for the money and/or pleasure to make them, it will be because they don't find games to fap with. So, due to the evolution of the technology, it's more a sinewave that you should use. It will grow for some times, then become underground before growing again and, later, return to the underground. And yet, when I say "underground", it's more that it will be difficult to find them with google, not that you'll have to know THE site where you'll able to find them.

As for the actual state... Well, we are near to the saturation. Many games will have hard time to exist, while in the same time we start to see a raise of quality. Still one year ago, you could achieve to find a strong fan base with an average game, but now you need to differ if you want to really reach your public.
In one way it can be seen as maturity, but it don't really have sense here.

The growth stage is about experimentation and the gold rush. Maturity is about the clones and incremental improvement. How many BattleRoyale games were announced at this years E3? Notice the similarity

No, I don't see the similarity. Especially because the scene is like that since 30 years now. You see the clone effect because there's more actors now, that's all. But it's not especially due to the success of a specific game. It's more due of the laziness and lack of knowledge of the authors. They don't copy a game because it as success, but because it's easy to do the same. Why so many incest games ? Simply because it's easy.
Everybody live under the same roof, so no need to give them a life. The world exist as seen by a baby, "mom is here, mom is somewhere behind the door", this while the player either go to school or go to works with a big blank screen to fill the time during which "mom is behind the door".
Everybody know everybody since many years. So, no need to come with a reason for the encounter, no need for a phase when each character discover the other , which also imply that there's no need to give them a background.

That's why there's so many incest games. It's not because "incest sell", it's just because when you can't write a story, you chose something where you don't need a story...
And the same apply for each clone you can see. There isn't many clones of Super Powered by example. Hey, obviously, look at it... Half of the actual games authors don't have the ability to write a code good enough to handle a game like this. But at the opposite, the average "walk around the house and grind/talk to raise the affection" is easy to do and have many clones.

Making clones of Renpy games using the same Daz3D marketplace of assets is fine in the Intro or Growth stages. It's suicide in the Maturity and Decline stages.

Seriously, who care ? Yet you base your thinking on a wrong base.
Professional studios are a minority in the adult scene, especially the western part of it. Yes, there's authors who make games for the money. But most of them do it for the fun, for the pleasure they take will doing it and the ego effect when people like what they do.
So, no, it's not a suicide, it's just a less successful case. They don't care if the don't make money. As long as they don't loose some it's good. And like I said above, whatever the game, you'll find players. Probably less than you could have found if you made your game one years ago, but it's the only difference.

Do you think whatever we are seeing now can be classed as a genre? What should we call it?

It's as most a genre as Science-Fiction is one. You've Sci-Fi polar, Sci-Fi historical fiction, Sci-Fi romance novel, and so on ; Science-Fiction is a movement if you want, but it isn't a genre. And it's even less a genre when it come to adult games. Not only because you've adult polar, adult historical fiction, and so on, but also because you've adult date sim, adult Choose Your Own Adventure, adult platform games, and so on.
Like @DarthSeduction said, adult date sim aren't the hit they were, but it doesn't mean that adult games aren't still a hit.
It's not because "incest adult historical fiction date simulator" (by example) aren't at their top right now, that the adult scene know a decline phase. A niche of the scene isn't at its top, that's all. Meanwhile, "rape adult polar Choose Your Own Adventure" (still by example) can be at their top...

So, what it should be call is simple: It's a scene.

Will we see an evolution and mixing of genres or just more incremental polish?

None of the above. We will see an increasing number of games, with both a loose in quality and an increase of quality. More people will start to make games (in part because of the assert section here), and among them some will come with a good game. Once again it's because none of this is a question of money, but a question of pleasure.
And even on the money side of the scene, there will be no change. You can't expect for professional authors (whatever it's a real studio or someone living on his Patreon income) to raise the quality of their games. They've their fanbase, and they'll not switch to another author/studio.
The only change was when icstor switched to Ren'py. Then his game improved significantly. But he's the only one. All the other who came from RPG Maker to Ren'py still make average games. They don't understand the potential of their new engine and still write games like if they were using RPG Maker.

 

[thecardinal]

I'm going to say this in the least bitchy way I can.

But it seems a bit hypocritical to complain about overused free programs devs make games with on the forums of a piracy site.

You want a better market? Make porn games profitable. Fund high quality games, and don't promote shitty daz3d vn's like mine.

But also remember that it's porn. You can film a shitty vertical video on a flip phone and get to front page of pornhub. Quality porn is quality porn, regardless of the medium.

 

[Volta]

This is an incredibly interesting topic, I've got a huge amount to say that will take plenty of time to write up but for now i'll simply say that i don't fully agree with your model of the stages in a genre's life. Your graph suggests that interest tends toward 0 at the end of the niche phase, i would suggest that this is only one option. I would consider it far more likely that instead it will follow the following development stages: Intro, growth and maturity as you suggest, followed by:

Stabilisation - which will almost always be in part a decline, this is where the "buzz" leaves the genre, however this won't necessarily mean the end of an era or the genre passing it's prime, simply that the sparkle will wear of, leading to:

Platue - rather than interest tending toward 0 and ending in purely niche markets or eradication i think that the genre will evolve with the times, in a similar way the AIF gave way to Rags, which gave way to Ren'py and twine, the format will change, the medium will change but the genre itself will continue.

I think we need to make the distinction between a genre and a medium, people still play shooters on PS4, Xbox and PC just the same way they did on the PS2, shooters are a fairly reliable genre, as for the console they are played on, well that is always subject to change.

basically the games the GoblinBoy was making for Tads over 10 years ago are not all that different in terms of content to what the modern VN creator is doing, just that they have easier access to 3DCG software.

in short, porn games are here to stay, the delivery method is always changing and will always continue to change, as is the nature of tech.

 

[Paz]

Most of the aspects of this discussion have been eloquently explored, but to me it boils down to 2 things.

Ease of access + monetization.
Each of the previous booms anne O'nymous mentioned, lacked either or both of those aspects for the general public. In the pre-Patreon era the vast majority of the games being made were "amateur" projects (in the sense of not asking for a monetary support) with the exception of the odd Paypal donation button or sub website for some of them.

Also, there is a big influx of a younger audience that recently discovered the world of Western H-games, with a significantly bigger spending power compared to older times as e.g. streaming platforms have taught me (read that with an old grumpy voice) and that is sometimes a hindrance to innovation.
Why invest effort in something for a dubious return on investment, when you could very well cash in with relative ease?

Let's be real, many projects are made with passion (and the newer tools allowed for a greatly lower entry barrier) but many are just here for a quick buck. Which is not something I disagree with -after all they exist because someone somewhere supports them- but assuming they will be ground-breaking or mildly innovative is daft.

Then there's the herd mentality. People tend to create in ways they're accustomed to consume. That's why DAZ3D is so prevalent (I guess a few creators haven't even explored or know alternative tools), or Ren'Py for that matter.
TFGamessite is a prime example of this, between RAGS and the en masse move to Twine. Creators are used to it as consumers and it's easy to use it so why not?
I do believe that is also the reason of the abundance of incest games. The fetish audience is there, yes, but the actual logistics of making an incest games vs a non-incest are vastly smaller (after all, you just need a house when most of the action takes place).

All in all, I don't think it's down to a conscious or deliberate choice by the creators about when there will be a paradigm shift in Western H-games (as there will always be a prevalent genre/style), and as such you cannot define "Growth stages". It will just naturally evolve driven by the consumer community when a critical mass moves away from the current state.

 

[OhWee]

On the Daz thing...

What Daz Studio has done is democratize 3D computer art a bit, by offering it and a number of starter assets for free. Plus there's more free stuff in the Daz ecosystem if you know where to look (Google helps).

The fact that it's free helps a number of people decide to take the plunge into 3D art, to see if it's for them. Myself included.

Certainly, the fact that the really cool assets, well you usually have to buy those, well that's part of Daz's marketing model. But it's certainly possible to go the free route. Or the Bucaneer route.

This has made Daz Studio a lot more accessable than say 3DSMax, Autodesk, etc.. People like to be able to try before they buy, and not having a 'trial period' with limited functionality just helps Daz's appeal even more.

Which is why you see more and more people jumping on the Daz bandwagon every day.

Certainly, there's Blender and some other free options out there as well (Honey Select, etc.), but Daz has created a perfect storm of sorts for 3D art, and especially for interactive Visual Novels (with game elements). It produces quality renders (when you take the time to learn how), that are visually appealing to most people.

Once you've figured out if this 3D modeling thing is for you, and if you've then decided you want to take a crack at telling a story, well there you go!

So I'm not seeing any real decline in porn games, if anything it's been quite the opposite. At this point, we are so unundated by so many offerings now that it's becoming a bit harder to pick out the good ones from the mediocre ones. But then that's what sites like this one are for. To help you find the good ones...

The difference (if there is one) is that most of the offerings these days are better described as visual interactive novels, not true 'games'. Almost all games are visually interactive, but 'choose your path' is a bit different than puzzle solving, real time battling, etc...


The big 'hiccup' we are currently experiencing relates to Patreon. A number of people like getting paid to do stuff, and Patreon threw a huge wrench into the works with Adult Content Creators recently, so people are having to adapt to that.

Sure, you can adapt to the latest Patreon guidance, but this limits what some people want to to with their stories. There are nudge nudge wink wink workarounds r.e. the Patreon situation of course, but it's certainly caused some issues with some developers.

Sure, there are some people out there that are getting tired of looking at Daz models at some point, but there are other games out there, that use other types of artwork (hand drawn, other 3D rendering engines, etc.) to appeal to that audience.


I'll close this post as I opened it - Daz Studio has democratized 3D Rendering more than any other program out there currently, and I think that's a good thing.

 

[CavDaKnight]

The problem with Daz models is that everyone seems to be focused on remaking a few of the popular ones. Most of the ladies from Big Brother, The Daughter from Dating my Daughter and Tracy from Dreams of Desire. And its easy since the developers or someone have put up the stats on how to make them the way they do. They are great models and I like seeing them, but this leads to cookie cutter games which starts to get tedious. Why I don't bother playing the games until I grab the CG's to see if its interesting enough to warrant a game play. But to be fair, looking at CG's doesn't always help. Sometimes I'm more confused than anything

Ren'py is used most because its seems to be the most stable program for low end computer users/laptops, so more people can play and maybe even support the game. Unity and Unreal need ram and graphics to run smooth, while RPGM crashes more than Danica Patrick...

Patreon putting the squeeze on incest based games isn't a game ender as people seem to make it out to be. Most developers rolled with the punches and dealt with it without really skipping a beat. A few decided to take their ball and go home, since it seemed like too much work to make the changes needed to make Patreon happy.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Patreon putting the squeeze on incest based games isn't a game ender as people seem to make it out to be. Most developers rolled with the punches and dealt with it without really skipping a beat. A few decided to take their ball and go home, since it seemed like too much work to make the changes needed to make Patreon happy.

This rant is not exactly relevant to the overall thread, hence the spoiler, I just think it needed to be said.

Spoiler: off topic

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[groove888]

Why so many incest games ? Simply because it's easy.
Everybody live under the same roof, so no need to give them a life. The world exist as seen by a baby, "mom is here, mom is somewhere behind the door", this while the player either go to school or go to works with a big blank screen to fill the time during which "mom is behind the door".
Everybody know everybody since many years. So, no need to come with a reason for the encounter, no need for a phase when each character discover the other , which also imply that there's no need to give them a background.

Imma keep this somewhere because you articulated it far better that I have ever been able to (and god knows I tried).

 

[Akatriel]

I might argue that we hit a decline stage already with a lot of things. Big Brother was the growth of the Life Sim, Man of the House and Summertime Saga its maturity, more recently Life Sims have seen a decline, many of them contrived and useless, though with some diamonds in the rough that might still be in the Maturity stages. Dating My Daughter was a growth from the already started genre of the traditional Japanese VN, an adaptation that brought that idea to the western market. Games have copied it, I'd put games like Sisterly Lust and Sister Sister Sister in it's maturity, though many of them did ok, they haven't innovated much and just kinda coast on simply having better developed characters than the likes of Daughter.

As a Result in decline, ICSTOR both abandoned it's incredibly stale RPGM format and adapted to Ren'Py as well as hiring a better writer, it seems, as their characters in Milfy City seem to have depth and motivations of their own, a huge subversion of the typical life sim in which the women are seemingly just waiting for your dick to save them from banality. We see the same in Mythic Manor which actually has you go through and court these girls in ways that don't feel like "go do this to have this happen" even though that's exactly what you're doing, because it added a story and character development. I think Summertime Saga might have paved the way for these, though I personally consider it a maturity to the old style, because it's characters are still very flat and underdeveloped (odd since they are often so voluptuous).

Babysitter and Parental Love have taken what DmD did, and brought it to parody in some aspects, improvement in others. Both have more character depth and stability, with a much better paced story and progression, subverting the dedication to the stairway to heaven that DmD made the standard, by using it in a realistic fashion. Both also take certain aspects of it to exremes. The be a gentleman trope that permeated DmD is taken to task. Babysitter puts you in the persona of a skilled programmer who's quite adept at spyware, taking the spying mechanics DmD and life sims everywhere popularized up to 11 and giving almost no consequences to them, but then also using these to impart necessary information. Parental Love has made the Perversions of the father accepted, even desired by his eldest daughter and to an extent his younger as well, and what makes him a gentleman is his willingness to literally fight for his daughters' honor with a short turn based fighting mechanic allowing him to kick the shit out of other men who attempt to do to them the same things he intends. Babysitter takes what I'll call the "The 5th Element" approach, as that movie is what happens when you turn die hard up to 11 and put it IN SPACE. Meanwhile, Parental Love is taking the "Deadpool" approach to parody, winking and nodding to an audience that has seen its fair share of these games and letting us laugh at its over the top antics, while usually giving us a pretty well thought out, if utterly simple story.

Then you have the true new kids on the block, experimenting with the actual storytelling aspect to the industry. Depraved Awakening, Long Live the Princess, Dual Family, my own game Seraphim Academy, are all trying to tell a real story, something to get invested in, almost like a Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad, but with more breaks for hardcore porn rather than some softcore scenes and gratuitous violence. We are hoping to draw you into a continuing drama with escalating action and making use of our monthly release format to leave you little tidbits and cliffhangers so that you can't wait for more. And what's more is each of us are doing this in our own way. Depraved Awakening plays more like a traditional VN, Long Live the Princess is a Pseudo Life Sim, Dual Family is exploring the mechanic of telling the story from two perspectives, and my own is attempting to mimic more mainstream story based games, like Life Is Strange, or Dreamfall. And all of these, including my own, are using Daz characters that you haven't seen in every game, mixtures of multiple models to create new and interesting characters, environments that have been customized or even built from scratch, etc.

So, I think many of us have seen the decline coming and started something new, my first game release was a direct parody of Big Brother, using their characters and making jokes, deadpool style, 4th wall breaks and all, at the expense of both Dark Silver and often jokes at things fans get stupidly ourtaged at (like shots of Max's Dick where I 4th wall break and say something about how I was forcing them to look at it). My second game, Seraphim is exactly what I mentioned there, a mystery unfolding in a very similar style to mainstream story based games, and I also have one that is gonna release soon, just waiting for the final bit of art on the first release, that's gonna tell a real story with incest and romance, not some contrived fantasy, but a drama wherein you grow to care for the characters and their outcomes. So yes, we've seen the need to evolve, and many of us have. Others are hoping to make a quick buck mimicking what they've already seen, kitbashing tropes and bits of code to rehash old stories in their own way, they are the decline, or stagnation, depending on what they've got going.

Your knowledge of our little sub-genre completely dwarfs my own, it seems like your own trio of games follows the genre lifecycle, your early games being very similar to the big hitters that came just before. That sounds like the Growth stage, where costs and expectations are low enough for this kind of quick piggy-backing. But your own personal development means you've evolved maybe quicker then the rest of the Genre has. Ahead of the curve is a good place to be.

I'm slowly working through everyone's comments, there's definitely some grain of truth here, but there's alot I haven't considered. I lifted the genre lifecycle idea from Daniel Cook, who was analyzing the decline of the Text Adventure Genre (And it's morph into the Graphic Adventure, and then resurgence as other Genres and the Indie scene ate all the good ideas and applied it to their own fields, where we now get Action-Adventures, Puzzle Platformers and RPGs etc) and trying to use it to predict our genre.

 

[Akatriel]

[I think I veered a bit off topic, but it still stands.]

I am no expert, but here are my thoughts anyway. Adult games may very well have reached maturity in Japan where the culture is there to support it. I'm not very close to the japanese eroge scene, so I can't say conclusively. I do know that Illusion has been making adult games for years and they seem to be a decent sized publisher. I haven't played all of their games, but most of them boil down to rape simulators or very light dating sims with rapey sex. I think people would like a little more from their games, I know I would.

I don't think the adult games market can truly reach maturity in the west until a large publisher starts putting out games consistently. We have had a handful of risque western games, some bobs and vagene here and there, but I can't point to company and say "these guys are making triple AAA adult games." This doesn't have to be an existing publisher, mind you. The problem becomes where to sell such games. We don't have the little otaku stores with nude figurines, hentai, and adult games (at least not in large numbers) in the west. The supposed changes to Steam's policy may open some doors for people to get serious about making adult games. As of right now, I don't think we're there yet.

So what we have is largely an indie market. The people making these games have varying degrees of talent and skill. I think a lot of people get into making these games because they want them to exist. Sure there are some people milking their patrons rather effectively, but I think in large part people want to build a game they want to play. Renpy and Daz are the shortest routes to that vision for most people. Speaking for myself, I would love to make a fully interactive adult game in a 3D engine with intricate game mechanics, but I can't. I don't have the skill set and I don't have to time it would take to acquire them. So we do what we can with what's available.

When someone puts out a game like the Witcher 3, but with a stronger focus on the sexy parts and doesn't shy away from showing everything, then I'll say the market has matured. I don't think it's impossible, but there are many roadblocks in the way of such an event. If you are purely talking about VNs, then that's slightly different, but I still feel we are short of maturity. The main reason is quality. There is a severe lack of truly excellent VNs. There are some decent and even very good ones, but so many fall short in various ways discussed elsewhere on this forum. Again, I don't know if we have any truly professional development teams with an actual budget putting games out. Successful, sure, but that's a bit different.

Most Genres get there biggest developers and the most amount of dev investment (money and man-power) in that maturity stage, and Illusion is the perfect example for the Eastern market. Could the SummerTime Saga team be that for us? See this is where the genre life-cycle breaks down. Usually the Indies come in right at the end of the lifecycle, when all the money has left for greener pastures. But for us, no AAA company has swooped in to dominate the market. So we have this vacuum where in theory, we should have a longer time in the early stages of low costs, low expectations and a lot of experimentation. Experimentation does take time to appear, as you're often going to fail early and often.

The Witcher and Dragon Age are definitely the genre kings of the Action-RPG, There the only ones that could make a better Action-RPG (CyberPunk 2077 hello) but it feels like they just sprinkled a tiny bit of the Adult genre into theirs to appeal to the widest possible audience, enough to pull in people from other spheres. The games don't deeply integrate sexy times, it's almost like an extra layer of polish, or a marketing bullet point.

Maybe Pateron is just a stronger force, so much so that it's shaping the lifecycle of the adult game.

 

[Akatriel]

I disagree with you. I've seen adult gaming already come to maturity then decline two times in my life.
The first one was in the 90's/00's, with adult games made by the traditional porn studios. The porn industry was at its top and the only way to sell even more was to make games. So the studios made them. The peak was around 100 new games each month. Then came the grown phase of Internet. They had hard time to adapt, and later what is now know as MindGeek destroyed the industry. It declined quickly, but it was too late, people discovered that they can fap and play in the same time.
Before it declined enough to become a niche, the scene started to grow again ; 00's/10's. This time with flash games. Pornholio, newsground, and some other, were the new providers. But the scene came to saturation and it started to decline a second time.
But once again, before it became a niche, the scene restarted to grow. This time with more adapted engines like RPG Maker, Tyrano Script and Ren'py by example, and better quality CG with Poser, Daz, MakeHuman and others, as well that with 3D games made by professional studios.

What you don't take in count is the nature of the content. Not the fact that it's for adult, but the fact that it's numerical, that it can be done with free tools and that making adult content don't needed real knowledge. Anyone can awake one morning and say, "alright, starting now I'll made adult games".
Look at what we have actually. You're bad at drawing ? You use pictures stolen from porn sites ? You only know modded SIMS as 3D engine ? You code like shit ? You don't even bother with a story ? Who care about all this ? You'll find players even if your game is pure shit. And the less there's available content at this time, the more players you'll found.
There were a whole world of difference between the POV with real characters games made by the porn studios and the poor drawing flash games that followed them. Looking at a real dick entering a real woman is not the same than looking at a badly made flash puppet. Still, like it was all we had, we played them. In the end, the second ones had more players than the first ones ; and not only because most of them were free.
What matter isn't the quality but the availability. And there will always be someone to make them. If it's not for the money and/or pleasure to make them, it will be because they don't find games to fap with. So, due to the evolution of the technology, it's more a sinewave that you should use. It will grow for some times, then become underground before growing again and, later, return to the underground. And yet, when I say "underground", it's more that it will be difficult to find them with google, not that you'll have to know THE site where you'll able to find them.

As for the actual state... Well, we are near to the saturation. Many games will have hard time to exist, while in the same time we start to see a raise of quality. Still one year ago, you could achieve to find a strong fan base with an average game, but now you need to differ if you want to really reach your public.
In one way it can be seen as maturity, but it don't really have sense here.




No, I don't see the similarity. Especially because the scene is like that since 30 years now. You see the clone effect because there's more actors now, that's all. But it's not especially due to the success of a specific game. It's more due of the laziness and lack of knowledge of the authors. They don't copy a game because it as success, but because it's easy to do the same. Why so many incest games ? Simply because it's easy.
Everybody live under the same roof, so no need to give them a life. The world exist as seen by a baby, "mom is here, mom is somewhere behind the door", this while the player either go to school or go to works with a big blank screen to fill the time during which "mom is behind the door".
Everybody know everybody since many years. So, no need to come with a reason for the encounter, no need for a phase when each character discover the other , which also imply that there's no need to give them a background.

That's why there's so many incest games. It's not because "incest sell", it's just because when you can't write a story, you chose something where you don't need a story...
And the same apply for each clone you can see. There isn't many clones of Super Powered by example. Hey, obviously, look at it... Half of the actual games authors don't have the ability to write a code good enough to handle a game like this. But at the opposite, the average "walk around the house and grind/talk to raise the affection" is easy to do and have many clones.




Seriously, who care ? Yet you base your thinking on a wrong base.
Professional studios are a minority in the adult scene, especially the western part of it. Yes, there's authors who make games for the money. But most of them do it for the fun, for the pleasure they take will doing it and the ego effect when people like what they do.
So, no, it's not a suicide, it's just a less successful case. They don't care if the don't make money. As long as they don't loose some it's good. And like I said above, whatever the game, you'll find players. Probably less than you could have found if you made your game one years ago, but it's the only difference.




It's as most a genre as Science-Fiction is one. You've Sci-Fi polar, Sci-Fi historical fiction, Sci-Fi romance novel, and so on ; Science-Fiction is a movement if you want, but it isn't a genre. And it's even less a genre when it come to adult games. Not only because you've adult polar, adult historical fiction, and so on, but also because you've adult date sim, adult Choose Your Own Adventure, adult platform games, and so on.
Like @DarthSeduction said, adult date sim aren't the hit they were, but it doesn't mean that adult games aren't still a hit.
It's not because "incest adult historical fiction date simulator" (by example) aren't at their top right now, that the adult scene know a decline phase. A niche of the scene isn't at its top, that's all. Meanwhile, "rape adult polar Choose Your Own Adventure" (still by example) can be at their top...

So, what it should be call is simple: It's a scene.




None of the above. We will see an increasing number of games, with both a loose in quality and an increase of quality. More people will start to make games (in part because of the assert section here), and among them some will come with a good game. Once again it's because none of this is a question of money, but a question of pleasure.
And even on the money side of the scene, there will be no change. You can't expect for professional authors (whatever it's a real studio or someone living on his Patreon income) to raise the quality of their games. They've their fanbase, and they'll not switch to another author/studio.
The only change was when icstor switched to Ren'py. Then his game improved significantly. But he's the only one. All the other who came from RPG Maker to Ren'py still make average games. They don't understand the potential of their new engine and still write games like if they were using RPG Maker.

Thank you for your insight Anne, you've seen this genre rise and decline three times, it's undeniable, the usual genre model doesn't fit. I was struggling with why we have indies at the beginning instead of the end of the lifecycle. It's because it's a repeating wave. It can't ever fade away completely, nor can it quite reach the same mature competition as other gaming genres, due to it's very nature. It's Porn.

I want to listen to the

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and hear the story around MindGeek before I comment any further. Thanks again!

 

[Ignazzio]

Interesting topic. If you put it like that Patreon market is surely on its decline. That's troublesome as Japanese market is doing great as always and constantly evolving while ours is on a verge of death. Few devs who were there on its first days are huge, later devs are mediocre and newer devs struggle to reach anything. Seems like small market is different than real one and it's hard to predict what will happen next. Patreon is clearly oversaturated with Renpy incest games with the same daz models and gameplay but no other platform or solution for more ambitious projects emerged. Steam became more open when it comes to porn so it might be a glimpse of hope but for now market is locked on 1-2k at most for vast majority of devs. Most won't even reach 1k (or even 500$) but they will still do the very same incest VNs making situation worse. Old devs who are renomous enough will keep making the same thing they've been doing since their initial popularity makes them above normal rules. They will all cater to incest fanbase (DMD - Melody, DoD - Eden etc.) making smaller devs think that these ideas are still popular while it's not ideas which are popular but devs themselves. This market is worth observing for sure but if it's now in its decline it will surely evolve somehow. For me that's a good thing as it was annoying as hell last year

 

[anne O'nymous]

It can't ever fade away completely, nor can it quite reach the same mature competition as other gaming genres, due to it's very nature. It's Porn.

The fact that it's porn will always limit it's maturity (no AAA studios will produce it) and it's decline (there will always have someone to produce it and someone to consume it), but I think that the repeating wave model apply for way more things nowadays. This because if a thing, whatever it is, is numerical, it mean that anybody can produce it ; with obviously more or less success.

To stay in the adult content, back in my horny youth, end of the 80's, I obviously read a lot of adult magazines. And who produced them ? The big money companies. You couldn't awake one morning and say, "hey, I'll launch my own version of Playboy". Even if your many girl friends agreed to pose for you, you still needed to find someone to print it, someone to distribute it, and many people to sell it. And anyway all this cost a lot of money that you didn't had.
But look at what we have now ? Finding the tumblr of some horny teenage girl is (relatively speaking) easy, same for the blog of a exhibitionist couple. Those kind of sites are the equivalent of the adult magazines of my youth, and anyone can make them ; really anyone. All you need is a camera (hey, if you have a phone, you have a camera now), a model (you by example) and a site (there's tons of free blogs hosting site). And that's all. In less than one day you can make your own "adult magazine".

And more or less the same apply for any kind of numerical content. I think that we reached an era where a topic/subject/thing can not totally disappear ; it can just become more difficult to find. Whatever if the mass media and/or the public don't care anymore about it. As long as there's a handful of people caring about it, it will be somewhere on the net.
And like we are now more than 7 billions on Earth, with an estimated number of 4.05 billions using internet (not necessarily everyday), there will probably always be "a handful of people" to care, whatever the thing they care about. So, if it's something numerical, so that can be created (by default) by anyone, it will continue to exist.

 

[redknight00]

While this or that genre might be in decline or the quality of product may be falling, the Patreon data indicates the industry is quite healthy. It seems to be a plateau going on with the actual earnings, meaning more people are paying, but in smaller amount.

Also interesting to notice that every month more people are pledging, and more people are everything an entertainment industry could ask for.

 

[overenhancedlowlife]

[I think I veered a bit off topic, but it still stands.]

I am no expert, but here are my thoughts anyway. Adult games may very well have reached maturity in Japan where the culture is there to support it. I'm not very close to the japanese eroge scene, so I can't say conclusively. I do know that Illusion has been making adult games for years and they seem to be a decent sized publisher. I haven't played all of their games, but most of them boil down to rape simulators or very light dating sims with rapey sex. I think people would like a little more from their games, I know I would.

I don't think the adult games market can truly reach maturity in the west until a large publisher starts putting out games consistently. We have had a handful of risque western games, some bobs and vagene here and there, but I can't point to company and say "these guys are making triple AAA adult games." This doesn't have to be an existing publisher, mind you. The problem becomes where to sell such games. We don't have the little otaku stores with nude figurines, hentai, and adult games (at least not in large numbers) in the west. The supposed changes to Steam's policy may open some doors for people to get serious about making adult games. As of right now, I don't think we're there yet.

So what we have is largely an indie market. The people making these games have varying degrees of talent and skill. I think a lot of people get into making these games because they want them to exist. Sure there are some people milking their patrons rather effectively, but I think in large part people want to build a game they want to play. Renpy and Daz are the shortest routes to that vision for most people. Speaking for myself, I would love to make a fully interactive adult game in a 3D engine with intricate game mechanics, but I can't. I don't have the skill set and I don't have to time it would take to acquire them. So we do what we can with what's available.

When someone puts out a game like the Witcher 3, but with a stronger focus on the sexy parts and doesn't shy away from showing everything, then I'll say the market has matured. I don't think it's impossible, but there are many roadblocks in the way of such an event. If you are purely talking about VNs, then that's slightly different, but I still feel we are short of maturity. The main reason is quality. There is a severe lack of truly excellent VNs. There are some decent and even very good ones, but so many fall short in various ways discussed elsewhere on this forum. Again, I don't know if we have any truly professional development teams with an actual budget putting games out. Successful, sure, but that's a bit different.

yes, getting to Witcher 3 quality would be excellent.