General Dev Question - When do you decide between whether to make your game H or not?

[Iron Cunny]

I'm in a bit of one of those dilemmas you see.

I'm making an H-game, but there's another part of me that feels that I could remove the H and allow it to reach a wider audience (while keeping ecchi elements), especially since I am making a very story-centric piece. Yet I want to anchor myself to the H.

Overall this game is meant to be my first run of game-making in general. As my practice run of game-making, I intend to make it freeware as a gague of my abilities.

I want to hear from you - how do you decide whether your game should be porn or whether it should be... uh... open to people who were just born?

 

[anne O'nymous]

I'm making an H-game, but there's another part of me that feels that I could remove the H and allow it to reach a wider audience (while keeping ecchi elements), especially since I am making a very story-centric piece.

Answer this question: When was the last time you played a pure indie game other than the one you found here ?
And by "pure indie", I mean with a total lack of budget and made by a real amateur.

There's 95% chance that your answer will be "never", and there's a reason for that. While those games exists, they are present in a scene that isn't different from the adult gaming scene ; relatively confidential in regard of the whole gaming world.
What mean that removing the adult part will not really open you to a bigger market. It would be easier to find places to distribute it, but the number of potential players wouldn't be significantly higher.
And if you keep it ecchi, you would limit again the number of places where you can distribute it, while also limiting the number of players ; adult game players would be less interested, and players who dislike adult-like content wouldn't be interested at all.

Plus, I don't see what the "very story-centric" part is doing here. Games like The DeLuca family or Heavy Five, by example, are story heavy, low in sexual content, yet they exist and have a public and their success.

 

[Winterfire]

I want to hear from you - how do you decide whether your game should be porn or whether it should be... uh... open to people who were just born?

Legally, all indie games are for 18+ audience. I think there is a rating service specifically aimed for indies, but I do not know much about it, just heard it once many years ago.

I'm making an H-game, but there's another part of me that feels that I could remove the H and allow it to reach a wider audience

I used to be in the sfw scene before making nsfw games, so I can tell you from personal experience that wider audience simply means your game will be much harder to discover and have anyone playing it unless you get very lucky, or have really good marketing skills.
If you want more players, making a nsfw game is a much better idea, besides, one doesn't exclude the other... You can always make two builds (NSFW and SFW) or a patch, as many do on steam.

while keeping ecchi elements

SFW communities, generally speaking, are much more sensitive to that content. I've seen people getting banned on SFW servers because their version of "innocent funny memes" was not really so.
Even the word "Harem" raises an eyebrow or two, despite being an actual tag in anime.

 

[Satori6]

In the case of the one I'm doing, it's mostly for the eye-candy: I'm making a game that I'll enjoy playing, and which will also offer a nice view.

Kind of like having a good TV show that also happens to have a bunch of hot actresses/actors. Or a (non-porn) videogame with hot characters.

Given the option between a fun game with standard art and the same game with some booties showing up once in a while, I'll always take the latter.