Hello everyone, my name is Spence. I've been an active user on f95 for around 4 years now and have enjoyed curating a large collection of diverse adult games on my personal hard drives that whole time, partly to enjoy much of them, but also to see what is out in the environment in terms of game content, game mechanics, writing, art, etc. I've watched the adult game development community and market explode in size and popularity, noticing it myself for the first time with games like the original Artificial Girl by Illusion or flash game projects like SuperDeepthroat. I have been astonished (in a good way!) at how far the community has come in sophistication despite a constant seemingly insurmountable resistance by modern internet infrastructures, such as where to publish your game, how to get funding for it, etc. This resistance is especially true for more fetish-friendly games.
I really want to start contributing to this community by developing a game myself, and hopefully, a series of games if my vision is well received. But first, a bit about myself. I've been a gamer all my life and am currently in a PhD program where I do biomedical research, predominantly in regenerative medicine. But aside from my love for science, my early academic career included creative writing. I've published mostly short stories, and mainly science fiction, but I've also published creative nonfiction, poetry, and even co-authored a fairly successful novella. I feel I have talent for writing and no shortage of interesting ideas for stories to write about. Apart from writing, I deeply love all things tech and am an early adopter of many technologies like VR, but have always loved building my own gaming computers for instance, and more recently have enjoyed building cryptocurrency mining rigs as a hobby. I enjoy having my hands in multiple pots so to speak, and believe it makes me relatively well rounded in terms of talents and skills.
Currently, I lack a few skills that would take me time to develop if I chose to develop them myself rather than outsource them to someone I can share my projects with. I'm a fairly decent artist, but my art style and experience is in realism and in graphite, pencil, and pen mediums. I've never done anything that even resembles a style of art in popular adult games, and not only do I think my art style would be poorly received in adult games, but I personally would not enjoy a game with my style of art in it for sexual pleasure. It would be amazing to find an artist willing to share my projects with, but I imagine finding adequate talent in art for these games is something that comes with time and requires building my own reputation as someone artists want to work with first.
So given that fact, I'm curious what people think would lead to a more successful introduction into the adult game developing community, with the priority being attracting artistic talent and allowing for the most technical growth from the original published game:
1) Developing a text-based game alone and branching out into games that include art and animations after completion of that game. (something like CoC or TiTS)
2) Developing a flexible game framework that allows for later inclusion of art and animation, though I imagine this would make finishing this first game much slower.
3) Developing a game with very subpar art, in the hopes of attracting an artist to then "retcon" the previous art once included in the project. (something I see often in other games)
4) Developing a game with art and animations which are outsourced to another adult game. (something like Koikatsu or Honey Select 2)
I'm aware all of these are seen by the community as less than ideal, and some are even judged as lazy and subpar in quality as a result, especially option #4. I want to avoid this staining my early introduction to the community and preventing me from branching out into including more content like decent art, animations, voice acting, more interactive game mechanics, etc.
So I thought I'd ask the community itself what their thoughts on all this was. For an idea of what kinds of games I'd eventually like to produce, I'd prioritize good writing (both story and character development), decent art, inclusion of voice acting, and giving as much choice to characters for the direction they take their own games as possible. I'd like to cater to as broad a selection of fetishes as possible, and believe I have ways to include fetishes frowned upon by Patreon in ways that can allow for using Patreon without needing a "separate patch" for instance, and in cases where that is impossible, I will always prefer to publish every ounce of code or original files I can along with the games while making my game as moddable as I'm able to allow for anyone to include said fetishes at their own discretion. As a personal rule, I despise all forms of censorship, even when that comes from private businesses, and wish my products to reflect that.
To summarize, I have writing skills, and can learn game developing skills, but lack artistic talent in the style wanted for adult games. I'd like to make incredibly interactive and story branching games which cater to a wide variety of fetishes. Is there a proven path for people like me to begin contributing to the adult game development community, or is it literally just "work with what you have until you attract more people to being included in your projects?"
As an aside, I think the right game engine to work with would probably be Unity, but I'm interested in other's opinions on this too.
So, any thoughts?
-Spence
I really want to start contributing to this community by developing a game myself, and hopefully, a series of games if my vision is well received. But first, a bit about myself. I've been a gamer all my life and am currently in a PhD program where I do biomedical research, predominantly in regenerative medicine. But aside from my love for science, my early academic career included creative writing. I've published mostly short stories, and mainly science fiction, but I've also published creative nonfiction, poetry, and even co-authored a fairly successful novella. I feel I have talent for writing and no shortage of interesting ideas for stories to write about. Apart from writing, I deeply love all things tech and am an early adopter of many technologies like VR, but have always loved building my own gaming computers for instance, and more recently have enjoyed building cryptocurrency mining rigs as a hobby. I enjoy having my hands in multiple pots so to speak, and believe it makes me relatively well rounded in terms of talents and skills.
Currently, I lack a few skills that would take me time to develop if I chose to develop them myself rather than outsource them to someone I can share my projects with. I'm a fairly decent artist, but my art style and experience is in realism and in graphite, pencil, and pen mediums. I've never done anything that even resembles a style of art in popular adult games, and not only do I think my art style would be poorly received in adult games, but I personally would not enjoy a game with my style of art in it for sexual pleasure. It would be amazing to find an artist willing to share my projects with, but I imagine finding adequate talent in art for these games is something that comes with time and requires building my own reputation as someone artists want to work with first.
So given that fact, I'm curious what people think would lead to a more successful introduction into the adult game developing community, with the priority being attracting artistic talent and allowing for the most technical growth from the original published game:
1) Developing a text-based game alone and branching out into games that include art and animations after completion of that game. (something like CoC or TiTS)
2) Developing a flexible game framework that allows for later inclusion of art and animation, though I imagine this would make finishing this first game much slower.
3) Developing a game with very subpar art, in the hopes of attracting an artist to then "retcon" the previous art once included in the project. (something I see often in other games)
4) Developing a game with art and animations which are outsourced to another adult game. (something like Koikatsu or Honey Select 2)
I'm aware all of these are seen by the community as less than ideal, and some are even judged as lazy and subpar in quality as a result, especially option #4. I want to avoid this staining my early introduction to the community and preventing me from branching out into including more content like decent art, animations, voice acting, more interactive game mechanics, etc.
So I thought I'd ask the community itself what their thoughts on all this was. For an idea of what kinds of games I'd eventually like to produce, I'd prioritize good writing (both story and character development), decent art, inclusion of voice acting, and giving as much choice to characters for the direction they take their own games as possible. I'd like to cater to as broad a selection of fetishes as possible, and believe I have ways to include fetishes frowned upon by Patreon in ways that can allow for using Patreon without needing a "separate patch" for instance, and in cases where that is impossible, I will always prefer to publish every ounce of code or original files I can along with the games while making my game as moddable as I'm able to allow for anyone to include said fetishes at their own discretion. As a personal rule, I despise all forms of censorship, even when that comes from private businesses, and wish my products to reflect that.
To summarize, I have writing skills, and can learn game developing skills, but lack artistic talent in the style wanted for adult games. I'd like to make incredibly interactive and story branching games which cater to a wide variety of fetishes. Is there a proven path for people like me to begin contributing to the adult game development community, or is it literally just "work with what you have until you attract more people to being included in your projects?"
As an aside, I think the right game engine to work with would probably be Unity, but I'm interested in other's opinions on this too.
So, any thoughts?
-Spence
