I think it's very easy to create a good game.

[OsamiWorks]

Triple AAA is more of an unfortunate story. Nobody talented wants to stay in an industry where you are overworked and underpaid,. On top of that you lose your job after the project is over. No sane person would stay in that kind of industry. Its not really about passion for the people making it, its just about surviving. Passionate people become indie devs now, where their skill development gets inhibited by needing a full time job to survive. Triple AAA games are rushed out to make money and video games as an artistic medium is just in a poor spot because it mixes technical and artistic skills, people only gravitate towards one on their own. Finding someone who can do both is a feat itself, then add writing+filmograaphy on that

Moral of the story is everything is bad, dont do game dev

 

[Deleted member 1952336]

People are talking past each-other because they have different definitions of the word "good."

You can make a game you love by iterative development, but that doesn't mean any one else in the world will have anything good to say about.

You can make art, story, gameplay, and animations that you love by iterative development, but again that doesn't mean any one else will like any of those elements in your game or have anything good to say about them. You will have made a game that is considered good by exactly one person.

Making a game that other people think is good, is hard. If you listen to what other people want you'll start creating a grotesque Frankenstein of mish-mashed elements, and every one will think your game is 'meh', and if you ignore them then only person who likes your game may becomes you. If you listen to just one guy/gal you can make a game that they personally like, but again you'll only have one person in the world that thinks your game is good, and now it's not even you.

The hard part is making a game that many people consider good, aka making a popular game. It's not as simple as having the right tags or cloning an existing popular game. I've been there done that, trying to make a game with all popular elements, failing and learning my lesson. There's so much more that goes into it. A game that started out a year or two ago, would not succeed if it were released today but can continue off it's own existing momentum. The collective consciousness of mankind is always drifting in disconnected clusters, culture always changing and preferences swirling and changing in a sea of chaos existing largely in an unknowable black box distorted by the loudest voices.

 

[Pr0GamerJohnny]

In my limited experience developing these kind of games is half skill, half having the neccesary tools that make it easier - and thats the case with a lot of development - the amateur just doesnt have access to the programs and workflow that the 'professional' does.

 

[Ambir]

In my limited experience developing these kind of games is half skill, half having the neccesary tools that make it easier - and thats the case with a lot of development - the amateur just doesnt have access to the programs and workflow that the 'professional' does.

True, but I think it also comes down to 'do you have the time to make the game you want'.

Most medium to large size projects are massive undertaking that can take years even with dozen of people working on them.
And while some projects are being made solo, usually the person who does it is quite skilled, and they spend years making those games.

So I think time is also a significant factor.

 

[Domiek]

I agree, making good games is super easy. All the devs got together in a secret Telegram channel and decided that we'll make bad games as a prank.

 

[MyLewdForm]

since when gameplay in H-games is a thing and who cares about that? i dont think anyone goes to play a H-game coz of its gameplay lol, also do we even have any good gameplay game?

 

[gunderson]

For most people who make indie porn games, it's a side hustle they do instead of taking on an unskilled job full-time. They want to do it, which is a good motivator, but ultimately the calculation is whether it's a better use of their time to work at McDonald's or make an indie porn game (and usually McDonald's is a better call financially). The skill floor, compared to a full-fledged Steam game title, may be relatively low; but these are most frequently people for whom anything more complicated than downloading Honey Select, writing a complete sentence, and coding two different dialogue choices in Ren'py is the limit of their game development skill. Relatively few of the people currently making indie porn games have a background in art or making porn stories or in computer science, let alone two or even three of those things.

So. Is it 'easier' to make a successful porn game than a successful Steam game? Probably, yeah. But the people with the spare time and let's say 'living conditions conducive to spending all their resources on making a porn game that is at best going to make them $300 per month for the first few months of its existence if they get lucky' are generally not people with a lot of useful career skills in computing.

 

[M$hot]

I had this mindset at first, but 2 years in and many restarts and changes, many many iterations abandoned I feel a bit different. Though I put it down to being a 1 person team. The longer I've spent on a game, the more polished I want it, and I'm actively fighting against scope creep. So I keep delaying putting something out because you only get 1 chance at a first impression.

So I've decided to shelf my bigger game idea and go for a smaller one but the scope still turned out pretty big, and with fewer characters to focus on my attention to polish becomes bigger yet. I can't speak for others, but I'm doing it to myself really.

Main problem is that I know factually that for a first game, it's easier to go with MC + LI and the romance takes place in just your street than to have a larger cast and larger scope. But that scares me, because if there is only 2 characters the writing needs to be a lot better and I enter the doubting myself area again.

I think it's somewhat easy to get a bootable exe (or .html) that works relatively bug free. But 'good' is so subjective. And then there is the good vs. appealing thing. I've seen some games with decent visuals and writing getting good ratings because it's good at what it set out to do. But if what it set out to do is something I really don't find appealing, I still won't play it. Inversely, I've downloaded and played a fair number of 2.5+ star games that had their flaws but otherwise appealed to me.

I don't think any variation of making a game that can satisfy at least 1 person is easy, and making one that is considered good by the dev and by a chunk of the community AND is appealing? Really hard.
But that's just my non professional 2 cents. If you can hire people for certain aspects it becomes a bit easier, but then you need to put a lot more time into communication and QC which is its own skillset. Anyway, this message is getting far too long.

 

[Mad_Doc]

It's not easy especially as solo dev. It also takes up ridiculous amount of time.

To make a single decent scene you can spend many hours of posing characters, experimenting with shaders, adding and tweaking random objects on screen etc. and the player sees the scene for like 10 seconds.

Then writing part also takes hours upon hours of work if you want somewhat decent dialogue and narration.

And of course planning the whole thing from game mechanics(even if they're fairly simple) to story, to character relations etc.

I have been playing h-games for over 15 years but only recently started doing this as a hobby and yea - not easy... but satisfying and sometimes fun ^^

 

[Omae wa shinda]

I mean if you have a great understanding of coding, astounding imagination, good writing skill with correct grammar and always test play your game for bug and error
Then go for it.
Bonus if received translation training or high skill in certain language and high funding
It is not easy to do 4-5 men work alone but it is easy to create a good game. If you decided to fuck the time away.
That's why you don't set a deadline for your first work. No one will know until you put it out! YANDEV

 

[Kurumi Tokisaki]

since when gameplay in H-games is a thing and who cares about that? i dont think anyone goes to play a H-game coz of its gameplay lol, also do we even have any good gameplay game?

I play H-games mostly for the gameplay and I care about it. I play them for their story too since some games have good stories that keep you interested. I get that it's more rare for people to care about gameplay for H-games though.

Some games with good gameplay would be Evenicle, Amayui Castle Meister, Kamidori Alchemy Meister, Dohna Dohna ~ Let’s Do Bad Things Together, EiyuuSenki, Rance series and VenusBlood series.

 

[woody554]

since when gameplay in H-games is a thing and who cares about that? i dont think anyone goes to play a H-game coz of its gameplay lol, also do we even have any good gameplay game?

since the first porn games in the 80s they were ALL about gameplay, the dirty stuff was a single pixelated image at the end of the game IF you survived. even VNs used to have ~5 sex renders per game for the first decades, with mosaic.

 

[nulnil]

since when gameplay in H-games is a thing and who cares about that? i dont think anyone goes to play a H-game coz of its gameplay lol, also do we even have any good gameplay game?

Some of us actually wanted a game, cause you know, H-Game. And yes, we do have H-Games with good gameplay.

It's alot easier to tell if a game is good early on, but with a story you have to read half-way or so through.