Porn games Dying

[Ceadmondo]

Porn games aren't dying at all.

But I think we're in a lull simply because the top games of 2-3 years ago are mostly complete, and the next generation of top games are still in production. And since that new generation of games are generally higher quality that leads to more of them being abandoned or stuck in a prolonged development hell. Which makes it feel like games are "dying".

And on the "getting out of bed" stuff. I don't think, in general, that applies to adult games. The "hook" in adult games are the renders/art 95% of the time. People who play these games for the story aren't going to not play a game because the opening scene is MC getting out of bed. Getting out of bed is just a convenient way to start, since most of these games are character based and don't have an overarching plot.

That's what kills me, most games are situations that do everything wrong in the book and on top of it all go abandoned when the creator get 2000 dollars a month...

Littrealy you could start a game with a cop asking your name and about your family so you can implement names and aliases for characters before entering the home, the worst part is all games are about a guy in a family in a house in the suburb I mean if it was not for the art change all games would seem the same to an AI and in the end of reading 90% of games here he would learn nothing new!

 

[flarigand]

A lot of ego, mixed with greed, mediocrity, people who call themselves artists for doing little things with Das3d, others who launch a product without a soul and want to have patrons and earn 10k a month overnight.

Before things were different, yes, everyone made a VN with the hope of being able to live on it for a while, therefore they tried harder, now, you don't need much to make 2k a month in Patron, the public of the VN has grown a lot, the quality is low and the demand is high.

I'm getting off topic, but I think there is a connection to your question, a couple of years ago this phenomenon was born in this community called "fanboyist", people who love a product for no logical reason, do not accept criticism, and always see enemies everywhere, It is enough to see these communities in the most popular VN, which by "chance" when you read them and see them from a critical point, turn out to be mediocre at best.

 

[Grozar]

The market is saturated, many people participate in the hope of quickly becoming the 2nd Dr Pinkcake, but the harsh reality makes them quickly discouraged and give up )

 

[DouglasCosta]

Out of ideas and play safe. Look at the flood of College themed games about normal guy and his harem, too much cliché and vanilla.

 

[flarigand]

The market is saturated, many people participate in the hope of quickly becoming the 2nd Dr Pinkcake, but the harsh reality makes them quickly discouraged and give up )

If you start to analyze, Dr.Pinkcake developed a quite "easy" formula to simulate, let me explain my self, the VN has to be organized by chapters, create two decision paths at the plot level, be consistent with the decisions made by the character, a simple but coherent script, place sounds and music that connect with occasions, scenes, moments, etc, good renders, decent lighting (all this is the most basic).

I think Pinkcake's success to sum it up is consistency, simplicity and love for what he does, you may like his scripts more or less, he can give you cringe certain characters or scenes, sometimes he is too simplistic, but I think that his dedication to what he does, tends to cover up his flaws a bit, i can say the same for the developers of "City of Broken Dreamers".

Many start a generic project, fill it with cliches, release a couple of updates, and when they see that in a few months they are not making 2k a month, they abandon it, i'm not saying that people like Pinkcake or PhillyGames are not unoriginal, and use cheap cliches and all that, what I'm saying is that if you want to have any success in this world, you have to be constant and forget about making money, if you are good at what you do, eventually the profits will come.

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

Maybe my post in perspective came out wrong, what I mean is that alot of games are coming out but content or quality wise never stay, they either abandon ship cause they realise that its alot of work. Or the money isnt coming in fast enough which are the ones that mostly abandon ship.

You just answered your own question.

Also, 10 years from now people will be bitching that they missed the porn game industry back when it was in its infancy. We're all still super early, and there's still plenty of time to build a good product and a career from all this while the bar is low. Just wait 5-10 years when ex-Blizzard or ex-CDPR devs start getting into the space, they'll blow most current titles out of the water. I wouldn't be surprised to see legit studios opening adult divisions staffed with seasoned professionals once they figure out how much potential money there is in the porn-game market, especially as VR matures and all the meta-verses come online.

Interesting times ahead.

 

[Rafster]

The mistake a lot of people make is that often they don't realize that while the hook is primarily used to grab the readers attention, if you use a hook you also set the tone of the story, one of the most famous and best examples of a hook is the opening scene in Indiana Jones, where he goes through the cave, grabs the gold idol, then runs away from a big rock. Imagine if after that it was a Romantic Comedy that takes place on campus without any action scenes. The incongruity between the hook and the rest of the movie would have broken your suspension of disbelief and you would have lost interest. So, if you start out with a sex scene you're basically telling the audience that there will be a lot of sex and it will occur often, so if you start with a blowjob then there isn't another scene for several hours then it is unlikely anyone will bother finishing your VN.

Yeah, I saw a game that did exactly this. Dead Dating (a gay game). It used an extremely hot sex scene, complete, at the intro but the game became a blue ball fest later. It was so bad that, the only complete sex sequence on the game, is that scene right at the start. (The dev is also crazy, focusing on DRM tricks instead of advancing the story or his game, but that's an entire different matter). If I remember correctly the dev even admitted to use that sequence as a hook for the players, but the game itself is really far from what is shown there.

EDIT: Now that I think of it, my game also have a boring first hour, with a character creation screen, a short dialogue intro and brief tutorial... and bam, out on the game's world like that. I should rethink a bit to improve it.

 

[HerbertIronsides]

As someone who has been on this site for a long time I Do think lately I find it hard to find quality new games to try and it seems like most of the ones I like are either complete/abandoned/milked. I think we had a golden era in the pandemic with so many people at home creating. Right now its pretty slow for nsfw games and the ones that are being created are cookie cutter or low quality.

 

[Ceadmondo]

You just answered your own question.

Also, 10 years from now people will be bitching that they missed the porn game industry back when it was in its infancy. We're all still super early, and there's still plenty of time to build a good product and a career from all this while the bar is low. Just wait 5-10 years when ex-Blizzard or ex-CDPR devs start getting into the space, they'll blow most current titles out of the water. I wouldn't be surprised to see legit studios opening adult divisions staffed with seasoned professionals once they figure out how much potential money there is in the porn-game market, especially as VR matures and all the meta-verses come online.

Interesting times ahead.

Back in 2000s and 2010s the adult game industry was in it infancy I believe with those flash games and devs like "meet and fuck", it seems like we are in the dark ages and believe me if it wasn't for daz3d, kitako and honey select 99 percent of games would simply not exist!

But yes I can see that happening secretly or openly.

 

[chainedpanda]

I haven't read anything related to this thread, but I simply wanted to jump in and share a theory I developed about this not that long ago.

I DON'T think that quality is decreasing. In fact, I think it's increasing at an alarming pace. Additionally, due to this increase in quality has caused a sharp increase in both quantity and people who play adult games.

Games that were once the exception such as The DeLuca Family has become the expectation. While at one point this game was all the rage, it was talked about in general, in other game threads and plastered all over people's signatures. You couldn't avoid this game if you wanted too. Hell, there was even a theory thread at one point! Regardless, despite how popular and loved this game was, and in some ways still is, It's become just another great game in a seemingly endless pot of games filled with similar quality.
(That said, I haven't played this game in forever. So, the quality may have dipped. Either way, you can swap this game with just about any top game like Eternum or My New Family and it'd be the same result).

In addition, games the general consumer claimed were "decent" has increased so severely that we see them so much that we can't really recognize them as decent anymore. Why would we play one of the 500 decent games when there are 50 that are good? As a result, the good would eventually become known as the "decent" and the original decent would become just another part of the "trash" collection.

Then there is also the individual to think about. When I first got into adult games, I'd try just about anything regardless of tag or kink, mostly due to my inexperience and relatively young age (early 20s). Yet, as time went on my tastes began to develop, I learned what I liked and what I didn't. I realized what tags to avoid and which to search. By now, it's basically a science as I have various presets of sorts that I use to discover games.

This has basically created a bubble shield around myself blocking various types of games from my view. This even further changes my viewpoint on what I see and what I deem is "good". Even if you aren't as extreme as I am in filtering, that doesn't necessarily mean that you aren't filtering, because you are. Maybe you judge or search tags, maybe read the summary, maybe the comments, maybe you just play the intro before abandoning the game. Either way, you are filtering games that you may have loved simply because of the filter you placed around yourself.

Lastly, I'll point out that this filter you create isn't bad or negative. It's natural and does help you weed out the undesirables and saves significant amounts of time. But, some tags or fetishes don't always get a lot of love. If you like Male Dom games, your gonna find fewer games than someone looking for Femdom. Or if you search Harem like I do, the amount of quality games is abysmal. However, just because there aren't that many quality harem games, doesn't mean there aren't a lot of quality games in general, but since I search for harem games, it does feel that way at times.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Games that were once the exception such as The DeLuca Family has become the expectation.

I remember having said, few months after its initial released, that it was redefining what people expected from an adult game. And like you said yourself, it's what happened and it have a downside.
The same happened for "regular games" in the late 90's/early 00's. Half-life changed what players were expecting from a video game, and for some times it felt like games were mostly lame, because too few were 3D FPS. The quality and interest was still the same, but it didn't matched anymore the public expectations.
In top of that, any author, whatever already established or newcomer, that can't match this level of quality become noticed. One month ago they were making average games, and suddenly their game became way below the average, what made them negatively stand out of the crowd.

(That said, I haven't played this game in forever. So, the quality may have dipped.

You should give it a try, the 0.8 was just released. The mission changed and now the player is way more implicated in them.

Then there is also the individual to think about. When I first got into adult games, I'd try just about anything regardless of tag or kink, mostly due to my inexperience and relatively young age (early 20s). Yet, as time went on my tastes began to develop, I learned what I liked and what I didn't. I realized what tags to avoid and which to search. By now, it's basically a science as I have various presets of sorts that I use to discover games.

It's not a question of age. Anyone who enter the scene, including me who came back to it when I was already past 40yo, come here for the same reason, spicing their gaming times. Therefore, like you they play almost any kind of games, before the moment their taste matured. Then, they expect some level of quality and prefer a genre to another.
Once again it's exactly the same with "regular gaming". When we start we play everything we found, because we are excited by the discovery. A platform game ? "Hey, look mom, if I make the character stand at the very border of the platform, I can jump further". A racing game ? "Hey mom, you know what, I won the race". A RPG game ? "You see, mom, it's my character. Really mine, it's me who made him like that". And so on. Then past this pleasure of the discovery, we start to prefer some games over some others. Not because the said others are bad, but because we like them less. And them come the usual bias, since we like them less, they feel cheap ; "pff, what lame studio, platformers are so 2000 !"

 

[nanayabusiness]

Denial is not a river in Egypt.

 

[eosar]

Yes. The era of porn games is at an end!

It is time now for the true rulers of humanity's groin to RISE! All hail the advent of robot sex dolls!

The revolution has cum!

 

[ChaosOpen]

Yeah, I saw a game that did exactly this. Dead Dating (a gay game). It used an extremely hot sex scene, complete, at the intro but the game became a blue ball fest later. It was so bad that, the only complete sex sequence on the game, is that scene right at the start. (The dev is also crazy, focusing on DRM tricks instead of advancing the story or his game, but that's an entire different matter). If I remember correctly the dev even admitted to use that sequence as a hook for the players, but the game itself is really far from what is shown there.

EDIT: Now that I think of it, my game also have a boring first hour, with a character creation screen, a short dialogue intro and brief tutorial... and bam, out on the game's world like that. I should rethink a bit to improve it.

If you'd like my idea, this is only going by your synopsis and the few pictures, you may want to consider showing the character 10 years ago leaving his parents house. Maybe show the fight with his mother, humanizing the protagonist and showing that he isn't the same insecure boy anymore. It also adds tension and conflict right at the beginning, plus it meshes well into the overall narrative.

 

[NRFB]

It has never been easier as an amateur to start developing adult games. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but it has various implications resulting in the sentiment in this thread. Whereas 5-10 years ago a person deciding "I'm gonna make a porn game!" might start looking into what they actually need to make that happen and realize how many gaps they have in their knowledge, ability, or resources, now many of those gaps can be bridged. There are general solutions for things like asset creation and game engine that you see all over the porn game market today (daz3d, koikatsu, honey select2, random stolen porn gifs, ren'py, rpgm, twine, etc). That's not to say that any of those things are easy to use, but the resources around them are ubiquitous enough that the barrier to entry has been lowered.

While this has the benefit of allowing more games to reach a playable state, there are costs associated that new individual hobbyist developers often may skip over or just not think about. In using general, common solutions to many aspects of their games, they end up left with a product that can only really be differentiated by its writing. The problem then becomes that writing is hard, and many people are just as much amateurs at it as they are amateurs in game development. Thinking "fetish is hot" (or even more generically "sex with pretty lady is hot") doesn't mean anything about the ability of the developer to actually present that hotness to the audience. There are plenty of developers who get over this and are able to make competent or even high quality games with the tools that are out there. As for the ones that don't...

Well, imagine you're a new adult game developer who put together a decent looking, low commitment idea into a v0.2 release of your game. It's dawning on you how many more hours this will take to actually finish. Months of hard work to finish writing out a story you only really had the premise and a few hot scene ideas planned of in the first place. The models you're using have long since stopped being hot and are more irritating in how long it takes for them to properly render the scenes you have conceptualized in your head. You could upgrade your computer to speed up your workflow, but the amount your patreon is drip feeding you is basically peanuts. WAY below poverty wage and not rising fast. You could try to advertise to drum up more support, but you have no experience doing something like that, and it's difficult to elevator pitch your game when the only selling point you can think of is a story of "uhhh you're a dude and there are pretty girls, go do as many sex as you can". Also your f95 thread is calling you a cuck because you've dared to imply that one of your female characters may have had sex with someone other than the main character at some point. You kinda have to stop and think about what you're doing with your time.

Does it really seem so weird that people abandon projects rather than stick through months to years of work like this? The lowered entry barrier just means more people can get to this step and have their decision to quit publicly visible, rather than quitting before getting anywhere that anyone else would end up seeing.

 

[Rafster]

If you'd like my idea, this is only going by your synopsis and the few pictures, you may want to consider showing the character 10 years ago leaving his parents house. Maybe show the fight with his mother, humanizing the protagonist and showing that he isn't the same insecure boy anymore. It also adds tension and conflict right at the beginning, plus it meshes well into the overall narrative.

I've just copied your idea on the ideas text file I keep for future updates. I'm definitely looking on to this after my next update. I would start now but the current update is big and important. Ironically, right now I'm doing the re-encounter between the mother and the MC.

Thank you for the suggestion

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

but these NSFW porn games or VN games seem to be dying out

 

[Vanderer]

I remember having said, few months after its initial released, that it was redefining what people expected from an adult game. And like you said yourself, it's what happened and it have a downside.
The same happened for "regular games" in the late 90's/early 00's. Half-life changed what players were expecting from a video game, and for some times it felt like games were mostly lame, because too few were 3D FPS. The quality and interest was still the same, but it didn't matched anymore the public expectations.
In top of that, any author, whatever already established or newcomer, that can't match this level of quality become noticed. One month ago they were making average games, and suddenly their game became way below the average, what made them negatively stand out of the crowd.

While I agree, that level of quality has a downside: the updates are very slow to come out. More than a year for the last one, who was not very long, 7 events if I am not mistaken. It's good quality, don't get me wrong, but...

For a dev, achieving that level of visual alone can take a lot of time.

Talothral, for example, do not make game so well produced, but the updates are regular and quite big...to be honest I prefer that.

 

[anne O'nymous]

While I agree, that level of quality has a downside: the updates are very slow to come out. More than a year for the last one, who was not very long, 7 events if I am not mistaken. It's good quality, don't get me wrong, but...

For a dev, achieving that level of visual alone can take a lot of time.

That's a problem, but also a choice. Like you said, 7 events, what also mean that during this year he could have released three updates, two of 2 events and one of 3. It's the same for a game like Heavy Five, each chapter having a morning scripted part, a free roaming day, then a free roaming night. What mean that it could be split in three updates.
They both decided to follow the constancy of the content instead of the constancy of the schedule. HopesGaming decided to release a full story arc (Isabel seduction, and now Gracie plot to enter the family business), while Nottravis decided to release full in game days. While this obviously need more time, it also, at least from my point of view, give a better feeling when playing. You're obviously left in the middle of the main plot, but you had a full secondary one, what is rarely the case with games that have a frequents updates.
And, while you're more likely to forget about the story while waiting, you also have less to remember, because you're not left in the middle of something. It doesn't matter if you don't remember why you made this or that choice, or what you were trying to achieve, because you already achieved it. You just have to remember that Cordia will not be happy, and that it's all Gracie fault.
Finally, like the story arc is completed, it's easier to insert a "previously in"-like scene without breaking the feeling for those who haven't played the game before. You'll enter Cordia office, she'll be really angry and by telling you what she think of the last few weeks, you'll know all you need to remember the story.

Not that I advertise for slow updates, just that, while they obviously have their cons, they also have their pros. At least when they are done right.

 

[ChaosOpen]

While I agree, that level of quality has a downside: the updates are very slow to come out. More than a year for the last one, who was not very long, 7 events if I am not mistaken. It's good quality, don't get me wrong, but...

For a dev, achieving that level of visual alone can take a lot of time.

Talothral, for example, do not make game so well produced, but the updates are regular and quite big...to be honest I prefer that.

I'd have to say it has more to do with the growing opinion of people that "the plot doesn't matter because it's a porn game" when time and time again it has shown that a story will make or break a game. It's okay for porn movies to not have much of a plot because the actual "story" is only 2-3 minutes long and from then on it's an hour of fucking. However, that is not the case with VNs, even the more raunchy ones the majority of the run time was focused on plot and characters, and when people hate the characters and the plot doesn't make sense people aren't going to finish your game and certainly aren't going to donate to your patreon. People do want an interesting story with likeable characters regardless of what they say.

The problem today is people have taken this "we don't care about plot" to heart and given people what they said they wanted, boring unrealistic plots, vapid characters, with the only focus on making the girls as physically appealing as possible.