Has this section of video games fallen off?

[Gwiffin]

It feels like compared to 2-3 years ago, the games quality has immensely dropped. I know there are some decent games now, but it feels like for every 1 decent one there's 20 bad ones. I remember 2-3 years ago when I first joined this forum, there were a lot more games of higher quality, with more frequent updates, and you used to have a decent game to play almost every 12 hours, and look forward daily to what is gonna be uploaded.

Now its 90% RPGM, RPGM NTR, AI CG, HTML SMARTPHONE CUCKOLDRY, and other stuff that (in my opinion) 95% of people 3 years ago wouldn't click.

Are the people just growing out of this section of videogames? Have the old creators simply moved on? Or am I expecting too much? I know that these games have never been top notch or anything like that, but the quality was much better compared to now.

 

[peterppp]

you forgot to say "is it just me... ?"

 

[PTGames]

I think it's a combination of things.

With any genre of gaming, you eventually get bored. The things you saw as "good" before become the normal, which means they're not as interesting as before. So your expectations get higher and less games can meet them. Take WoW back in the day, it was absolutely amazing, but many modern games are more impressive than vanilla wow was, but don't seem so because we've got used to a certain level of quality being the baseline.

Add onto that, that as this genre of games grows in popularity (with places like Steam now selling them), you'll get more people wanting to make them. So you get a lot of new devs who are just learning how to make games which means a lot of lower quality ones.

Then finally, you have AI, which is letting people do and make things they could never do on their own, but the vast majority of it is low quality and drags down the average.

Which all together results in a flood of games that range in quality from terrible to just okay, with a few good ones mixed in. So, the overall quality is dropping, but the number of really good games is still the same. It's just harder to find those really good games in the sea of mediocre ones.

Same thing is happening with books, thanks to AI and self publishing. As well as the indy game market.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

I won't stand for this RPGM slander!

 

[Waterthose]

I won't stand for this RPGM slander!

That's because you're sitting for this RPGM slander!

 

[MissCougar]

From what I've seen, a lot of the first porny games were Japanese based. A lot of the Japanese style was present and they made a lot of that content.

There wasn't really a dedicated way of making them or a standard, so you had stuff like old RPGs but they didn't use RPGMaker and had their own uniqueness, and then you had a variety of VNs that used different homebrew engines.

Western developers got more involved, they brought their own art style to the table. I'm not a big fan of it but some do good art, and I prefer the more classic anime style.

Over time even that changed, like an anime from the 90's looks much different than ones today.

RPGM was made, Ren'Py was made, and suddenly what didn't have a standard had a generic starter. More and more games fall into these categories, and porny games got less popular with bigger studios and you had more indie stuff happen.

More people, more ideas, but less options for how to make it, in that most people pick one of the pre-made standard engines and do art for it.

Soon you had Daz3D and Koitsu (sp?) 3D renderers and you styles and differences took another nosedive.

Now today we have all that plus AI art and the cost to entry is pretty low.

Also I think stuff like Patreon has hurt it as well because people are sometimes not building for passion but also building for money. Once you add in the money aspect it changes things. You might want to never complete a project, or you might give up if the money isn't there like you had thought.

This results in a deluge of unfinished projects, a smattering of art styles you have seen a million times, and standing out amongst all that is very tough to do.

how can my "NTR Phone" stand out from the other "Phone NTR" game? How can my Daz3D characters look unique? All the good artists who maybe once would have done work on my game are now on their own Patreons and do their own commissions and don't need a game to make a lot of money.

I think it's not any one single thing but a whole lot of things that combined together to make it both easier to be a game developer, but much harder to stand out and be noticed as fun and different and unique.

 

[Geigi]

Quality is not in demand anymore but quantity, not just games.

 

[Lerd0]

 

[Geigi]

View attachment 4633835

Lerd0, how is developing your game going?

 

[Lerd0]

Lerd0, how is developing your game going?

..isn't....too busy.....

 

[Waterthose]

..isn't....too busy.....
View attachment 4633843

You're developing a game?

 

[Gwiffin]

I won't stand for this RPGM slander!

I don't mind rpg at all, its the repetitive low effort copy pastes that I find worthless. 95% don't look appealing enough to even try out at this point.

 

[Gwiffin]

From what I've seen, a lot of the first porny games were Japanese based. A lot of the Japanese style was present and they made a lot of that content.

There wasn't really a dedicated way of making them or a standard, so you had stuff like old RPGs but they didn't use RPGMaker and had their own uniqueness, and then you had a variety of VNs that used different homebrew engines.

Western developers got more involved, they brought their own art style to the table. I'm not a big fan of it but some do good art, and I prefer the more classic anime style.

Over time even that changed, like an anime from the 90's looks much different than ones today.

RPGM was made, Ren'Py was made, and suddenly what didn't have a standard had a generic starter. More and more games fall into these categories, and porny games got less popular with bigger studios and you had more indie stuff happen.

More people, more ideas, but less options for how to make it, in that most people pick one of the pre-made standard engines and do art for it.

Soon you had Daz3D and Koitsu (sp?) 3D renderers and you styles and differences took another nosedive.

Now today we have all that plus AI art and the cost to entry is pretty low.

Also I think stuff like Patreon has hurt it as well because people are sometimes not building for passion but also building for money. Once you add in the money aspect it changes things. You might want to never complete a project, or you might give up if the money isn't there like you had thought.

This results in a deluge of unfinished projects, a smattering of art styles you have seen a million times, and standing out amongst all that is very tough to do.

how can my "NTR Phone" stand out from the other "Phone NTR" game? How can my Daz3D characters look unique? All the good artists who maybe once would have done work on my game are now on their own Patreons and do their own commissions and don't need a game to make a lot of money.

I think it's not any one single thing but a whole lot of things that combined together to make it both easier to be a game developer, but much harder to stand out and be noticed as fun and different and unique.

Nice answer. I agree with you that it is a combination of things. I don't really understand the whole NTR Phone appeal, but of course that's someone's taste since they keep making them.

I don't even mind the similar looking models that keep being reused. It's more so the low efforts towards the stories. I assume the games still take effort to make, so what I don't get is why so few try to make some unique fun cool stories that actually work, and not try please people's random niche kinks. And when they try do unique stuff, they come up with the most braindead story, rarely good. And I don't mean that maybe I'm just not into that kink or type of story, I mean that this shit isn't coherent. If you've got the ability to code and put together a game (something I never could do), surely you have some type of creativity that you want people to look at, and not make the lowest effort games with 0 creativity and awful plot.

Could even copy movie plots and add in your own twists. Anything but copy pasted stuff. Hate when I see a game updated, only to find out its the game that was sorta mediocre, and I can't remember the point of 98% of the characters.

Like PTGames said, it could be me having high expectations, but idk I still feel like old games were of much higher quality story/animation/models wise. And that they (decent games) were a lot more common (updates/releases wise) 2-3 years ago than now.

Then again, it could be that it's simply me losing interest in these type of games. I do check f95 frequently and give a good few games a try each time, rarely coming out wanting an update for the games though. It's also easy for me to sit and judge while devs try make games they think are good. Oh well, not like I'm leaving this section of games any time soon.

 

[MissCougar]

Nice answer. I agree with you that it is a combination of things. I don't really understand the whole NTR Phone appeal, but of course that's someone's taste since they keep making them.

I don't even mind the similar looking models that keep being reused. It's more so the low efforts towards the stories. I assume the games still take effort to make, so what I don't get is why so few try to make some unique fun cool stories that actually work, and not try please people's random niche kinks. And when they try do unique stuff, they come up with the most braindead story, rarely good. And I don't mean that maybe I'm just not into that kink or type of story, I mean that this shit isn't coherent. If you've got the ability to code and put together a game (something I never could do), surely you have some type of creativity that you want people to look at, and not make the lowest effort games with 0 creativity and awful plot.

Could even copy movie plots and add in your own twists. Anything but copy pasted stuff. Hate when I see a game updated, only to find out its the game that was sorta mediocre, and I can't remember the point of 98% of the characters.

Like PTGames said, it could be me having high expectations, but idk I still feel like old games were of much higher quality story/animation/models wise. And that they (decent games) were a lot more common (updates/releases wise) 2-3 years ago than now.

Then again, it could be that it's simply me losing interest in these type of games. I do check f95 frequently and give a good few games a try each time, rarely coming out wanting an update for the games though. It's also easy for me to sit and judge while devs try make games they think are good. Oh well, not like I'm leaving this section of games any time soon.

I think there is always rose colored glasses too.

Even the original Final Fantasy 7 delivered a confusing as hell story as told by characters who couldn't even manage to deliver dialog longer than old Twitter posts.

The old porn games were pretty bad too. The games that were games first and threw in nudity later were the best, but as a female it was a whole lot of playing the guy to bang the women. I'm kind of glad we advanced some into more fem protagonist games because when the art was good, it was not really things I dove into unless the gamey part was okish.

I'm glad a lot of people can make games now, and it inspires me to try too.

You just got to be patient and wait for the one that hits your buttons. It won't be all of them, and that's ok!

 

[DuniX]

That's not what is happening.

It's simply that most projects are now in development hell simply because their update progress is so glacially slow.

It's simply what both the developers and customers have chosen.

I have been vocal before in my criticism of developer bad habits and the current state is the inevitable result.
All Projects being [In Progress].
Forever.
Till the end of time.
And anne O'nymous dies of old age.

 

[Ponyob4]

this man gave out the base. I totally agree.

 

[anne O'nymous]

All Projects being [In Progress].
Forever.
Till the end of time.
And anne O'nymous dies of old age.

There's no need to worry. I'll come back to haunt the forum until the games I care for are finished...