Rants...

[Bloodpool88]

I am a writer. I am this because of a line from "Sister Act 2". (Not going to explain that cause you should know.) I have been writing for 3+ decades and am yet to have anything published. There are reasons, of course, but ultimately it comes down to follow through. And that pervs and pervettes is the topic of this particular rant.

Several years ago, I was browsing through google play for some interesting games to play on my newly acquired smart phone. I discovered interactive fiction with a catch. In order to make all the best choices in the stories, I had to spend in game currency called gems. I could earn gems by playing the stories, but never enough. To have enough, I had to spend money, more money than I felt the gems were worth. In the end, I would have to pay out more to play the game than most PlayStation new releases cost for the whole game.

I took my money and my newfound love of interactive fiction (and really it wasn't new, I used to read cyoa books as a kid) and search the internet. I found a game there, not really sure where I downloaded it from for the first time, but that game was GGGB by Eva Kiss. And I got hooked. I took some coding classes at university, and this combine my love of writing, my passion for games, and my deviant Juggalo thoughts and rolled them all into one neat little package. I played through that version of GGGB in one long marathon session (hadn't really done that in ages), but it wasn't finished. I don't remember where that version ended, all I know is that I wanted more.

Eventually, I found F95 and through this site Itch.io. I was loving it. I started discovering that I wasn't the sickest kid on the block with writing skills and a penchant for gaming. I started playing/reading other story/games. That's when I discovered the painful truth about them...they were nearly as bad as the google games. So, most of the games I like I can download and play for free thanks mostly to F95, however I did kinda get sucked into the trap of a patron. Don't get me wrong, I understand that these stories/games take a lot of work, and most devs are small teams or single individuals trying to make a dream come true. But I spent about $40 U.S. over the course of 6 months for nothing. And now that game is abandoned at the same point in the story that it was at when I began funding it. And that is how it happens. A dev or devs start a project, get so far, and release it before it is complete. I understand that to get funding for these projects, the creator(s) have to get it out there, and that there are always bugs that have to be addressed, but game companies are successful not because they are huge with a large staff and money for expensive equipment. They are successful because they put out completed projects that people pay for ONE time and come back for the next game.

I have watched so many games, some pretty good others doomed to fail from the gate, die because the dev maybe should have waited to finish the project before releasing it. I suppose that now that it is out here, you could say that dev is published, but what good is it if the story remains unfinished? That'd be like Stephen King dying before completing "The Dark Tower" series.

Having said all this, I do respect the time and effort of ALL of the devs that put their work out there. I just hope that some of those that bit off too much will reevaluate and just finish the job before re-releasing.

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

I understand that to get funding for these projects, the creator(s) have to get it out there, and that there are always bugs that have to be addressed, but game companies are successful not because they are huge with a large staff and money for expensive equipment. They are successful because they put out completed projects that people pay for ONE time and come back for the next game.

You're missing the forest for the trees. Game companies can afford to pay their dev staff a full-time 40h/week salary, plus overtime during pre-launch crunch. On the other hand, how many erogame dev teams do you know that have a fully salaried crew of at least 5 people? You're basically comparing apples (salaried professionals) to oranges (erodev hobbyists).

Having said that, I do agree with you it'd be better for players to get a finished adult game, than having to watch for months (and sometimes years) as content is slowly produced for it. You can count on the numbers of one hand the amount of adult Patreons that make enough money to cover the salaries for a team staffed with semi-professional part-time developers... and that's probably like only the top 1-2% of adult Patreon, most projects there make less than $200/month.

There's no easy solution to this problem, it mostly comes down to funding (or lack thereof).

 

[tooldev]

You're missing the forest for the trees. Game companies can afford to pay their dev staff a full-time 40h/week salary, plus overtime during pre-launch crunch. On the other hand, how many erogame dev teams do you know that have a fully salaried crew of at least 5 people? You're basically comparing apples (salaried professionals) to oranges (erodev hobbyists).

Having said that, I do agree with you it'd be better for players to get a finished adult game, than having to watch for months (and sometimes years) as content is slowly produced for it. You can count on the numbers of one hand the amount of adult Patreons that make enough money to cover the salaries for a team staffed with semi-professional part-time developers... and that's probably like only the top 1-2% of adult Patreon, most projects there make less than $200/month.

There's no easy solution to this problem, it mostly comes down to funding (or lack thereof).

This is simply the wrong approach. Making a game - whatever genre - is like making any product. It requires an upfront investment in both tools and manpower, a clear project plan and some form of market research.

So in terms of investment there is still a strong believe that Indie (how most around here like to call themselves) means no 'real' investment. Which is simply not how this works. Indie developers that plan on publishing something either take their investment from past earnings (that is often a prior paid job in the industry) or by collecting funds from uncommon sources like crowd-funding, family &friends and so on. Due to the nature of not being a known commercial entity (thus Indie as in independent), access to regular financial means is very limited, but not completely of the table.

So financing via special means comes with additional responsibility that differs from that of a regular commercial entity. The commercial one has to fulfil payment plans towards a bank or an outside investor. This outside investment comes with certain downsides as well, as flexibility in terms of publishing dates, functionality etc is often limited by the fixed expectations of said investors and detailed agreements usually exist to make this very clear. The Indie group has often either very widely formulated agreements with their investors or none at all but have to rely fully on their own discipline and project abilities. The latter point is what is often both underestimated by Indie devs and also over-estimated (capabilities in particular).

Patreon is not a financial instrument to finance a team. It is foremost exactly what the name says: a means for people to support an individual independent from an actual outcome. Thus a subscription model was chosen. Once an individual turns their projects into the pipeline of a subscription model they have to deliver more than a commercial entity, that is still in development phase. All they (the commercial ones) have to report and bow to are their investors - in a subscription model like Patreon all your subscribers now became your investors, if you make it your project's financial tool.

Economics 101 will always tell you, that financing a team by relying on a subscription model comes with extra risks. This refers to actually having a finished product or service. Most, if not almost all, projects for adult games are in the development phase. No finished product at all. Funds are not subscriptions and vice versa. This is why real Indies dont finance projects via Patreon, but pool funds via other means. Patreon for an Indie is at best a supplement but never the base.

 

[anne O'nymous]

They are successful because they put out completed projects that people pay for ONE time and come back for the next game.

Yet it's been now near to two decades that the biggest games come with pre-orders, while EA earn more from their in-game micro-payments than from their game sales.

[...] but what good is it if the story remains unfinished? That'd be like Stephen King dying before completing "The Dark Tower" series.

It wouldn't be like that, because King give a reasonable end to each one of his tomes. Strictly speaking there's no incentive in the series to reach another conclusion than the one at the end of each one of the said tomes, because the story is about the quest, more than about its achievement.
A better comparison would have been, by example, Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings, where the whole story resolve around it's conclusion.

This being said, publication by episodes is nothing new.
In the US most authors from the Golden Age of SF started that way, without forgetting Pulp magazines; and it would be foolish to believe that all of them had the full manuscript prior to the publication of the first episode. This while in Europe and Japan many comics have their first publication done that way, especially for newcomers. Still in Europe, most stories from the 19th and early 20th centuries now seen as classical books have also seen their first publication done by episodes.
The difference is that authors aren't payed directly by the readers. But this doesn't change the fact that when readers weren't responding favorably, the publication was just stopped and no editors would then take the relay, because there were clearly no public for that story. Something that continue to exist in Japan for manga.

I just hope that some of those that bit off too much will reevaluate and just finish the job before re-releasing.

As Crimson Delight Games implied, you clearly underestimate what it need, in terms of time, personal sacrifices, and cost, to make a game.
In Japan by example, it's not rare that creators whore their ass out for years, having near to no life, just to put enough money aside to be able to later works full time on their game/manga. In the West, the mentality is different and, anyway, most creators of adult games being pure hobbyists, they don't see their idea to make a game as worthy enough for such sacrifice; in their eyes it's a side project, not a goal in their life.

But the main issue is the confusion regarding what platform like Patreons are. There's a reason why pledgers are named "patrons" and not "consumers". They do not pay for the game, they spend some bucks to support someone in his desire to create something. It's a sponsorship, not a purchase.

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

This is simply the wrong approach. Making a game - whatever genre - is like making any product. It requires an upfront investment in both tools and manpower, a clear project plan and some form of market research.

I agree with you, but good luck trying to bankroll an erogame dev team by traditional means. It's hard enough securing a loan or investment from a publisher for a regular game... pretty much impossible for an adult game, unless you're living in Japan and manage to tap into the industry there.

Which is simply not how this works. Indie developers that plan on publishing something either take their investment from past earnings (that is often a prior paid job in the industry) or by collecting funds from uncommon sources like crowd-funding, family &friends and so on.

Those are best-case scenarios. Most adult game devs aren't gonna toil in obscurity for years on end to produce a finished product that they can't even show their friends & family, let alone monetize successfully if the market doesn't embrace it. If you want some depression fuel, go read any of the indie gamedev subreddits and you'll see how much they struggle with not just gamedev but also marketing. Now add another layer of difficulty on top of that for NSFW games, which can't be marketed via regular channels, and which get cockblocked by payment processors and platforms at every turn.

Patreon is not a financial instrument to finance a team.

It is in practice tho. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but you have to look at the reality of the situation.

This is why real Indies dont finance projects via Patreon, but pool funds via other means.

You can't finance a NSFW game through traditional means. It's a whole different ballgame.

In Japan by example, it's not rare that creators whore their ass out for years, having near to no life, just to put enough money aside to be able to later works full time on their game/manga. In the West, the mentality is different and, anyway, most creators of adult games being pure hobbyists, they don't see their idea to make a game as worthy enough for such sacrifice; in their eyes it's a side project, not a goal in their life.

Yup. Japan also has the benefit of a mature erogame industry, which bankrolls a large amount of adult games.

 

[tooldev]

I agree with you, but good luck trying to bankroll an erogame dev team by traditional means. It's hard enough securing a loan or investment from a publisher for a regular game... pretty much impossible for an adult game, unless you're living in Japan and manage to tap into the industry there.

Red Barrel, Take-Two-Interactive, Rock Star and others have published adult games that have been commercially successful. Steam as a platform is more of a hurdle than payment processors too, as they dont list games in regions that have age restrictions. Instead of adjusting their platform to cater to this properly, they simply dont show them at all which limits commercial opportunities. The market is there, the publishers and investors are there but most will simply fail due to inability of providing sound business figures and not because there is no one willing to fund.

 

[Dryme]

the US

Here we go again

 

[anne O'nymous]

Red Barrel, Take-Two-Interactive, Rock Star and others have published adult games that have been commercially successful.

Take-Two interactive is a publisher, not a creator, while RockStar, that is owned by Take-Two interactive, make games for an adult audience, not games with actual lewd content; it's even the opposite since the famous Hot Coffee mod for GTA was initially nothing more than the enabling of content that was cut prior to the release of the game, but still present in it. Same for Red Barrel, they don't do lewd but horror.
Must also be said that Take-Two Interactive have

You must be registered to see the links

. I'm sure that every creator on the adult gaming scene would release their games once finished, if they were billionaires. But the fact is that the vast majority surely don't have more than US$ 10,000 in bank; yet I'm generous.

The market is there, the publishers and investors are there but most will simply fail due to inability of providing sound business figures and not because there is no one willing to fund.

Yet CD Projeckt is the only published that put actual lewd content into its games.
How come a publisher as greedy as EA haven't yet created a subsidiary company dedicated to games with lewd/porn, if the investors are here and the market ready?
Why XXX studios haven't came back to making lewd/porn games, like they did during (more or less) the 95-05 period, if there's investors and a market?

 

[tooldev]

How come a publisher as greedy as EA haven't yet created a subsidiary company dedicated to games with lewd/porn, if the investors are here and the market ready?
Why XXX studios haven't came back to making lewd/porn games, like they did during (more or less) the 95-05 period, if there's investors and a market?

Because of EA's portfolio and owner structure. EA has always rebuffed everything that was even slightly 'lewd' and will do so for the foreseeable future, unless there is a sudden swap of ownership all around. A subsidiary is no option for EA either as it will still be in the same reporting structure. Business and economics again...

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

Red Barrel, Take-Two-Interactive, Rock Star and others have published adult games that have been commercially successful.

That's like saying if Bill Gates and Elon Musk can get a line of credit worth $50mil. then anyone can. Sure *they* can, but *we* regular people can't. Same as with no-name indie devs, even moreso if they're making adult games. Again, it's apples vs. oranges - not at all comparable.

Steam as a platform is more of a hurdle than payment processors too, as they dont list games in regions that have age restrictions.

AFAIK that's only in Germany and Brazil (and Russia for gay content if I'm not mistaken). It's only a tiny minority of territories compared to the global market. China's a huge one, but their players tend to use VPNs to get around the firewall. My point is that Steam is a godsend for adult game devs, without it the scene would be a lot worse.

The market is there, the publishers and investors are there but most will simply fail due to inability of providing sound business figures and not because there is no one willing to fund.

I dunno man, I don't share your optimism. Try and get funding for a 5-man erogame dev team IRL, it ain't gonna be pretty.

 

[Winterfire]

I am a writer. I am this because of a line from "Sister Act 2". (Not going to explain that cause you should know.) I have been writing for 3+ decades and am yet to have anything published. There are reasons, of course, but ultimately it comes down to follow through. And that pervs and pervettes is the topic of this particular rant.

Several years ago, I was browsing through google play for some interesting games to play on my newly acquired smart phone. I discovered interactive fiction with a catch. In order to make all the best choices in the stories, I had to spend in game currency called gems. I could earn gems by playing the stories, but never enough. To have enough, I had to spend money, more money than I felt the gems were worth. In the end, I would have to pay out more to play the game than most PlayStation new releases cost for the whole game.

I took my money and my newfound love of interactive fiction (and really it wasn't new, I used to read cyoa books as a kid) and search the internet. I found a game there, not really sure where I downloaded it from for the first time, but that game was GGGB by Eva Kiss. And I got hooked. I took some coding classes at university, and this combine my love of writing, my passion for games, and my deviant Juggalo thoughts and rolled them all into one neat little package. I played through that version of GGGB in one long marathon session (hadn't really done that in ages), but it wasn't finished. I don't remember where that version ended, all I know is that I wanted more.

Eventually, I found F95 and through this site Itch.io. I was loving it. I started discovering that I wasn't the sickest kid on the block with writing skills and a penchant for gaming. I started playing/reading other story/games. That's when I discovered the painful truth about them...they were nearly as bad as the google games. So, most of the games I like I can download and play for free thanks mostly to F95, however I did kinda get sucked into the trap of a patron. Don't get me wrong, I understand that these stories/games take a lot of work, and most devs are small teams or single individuals trying to make a dream come true. But I spent about $40 U.S. over the course of 6 months for nothing. And now that game is abandoned at the same point in the story that it was at when I began funding it. And that is how it happens. A dev or devs start a project, get so far, and release it before it is complete. I understand that to get funding for these projects, the creator(s) have to get it out there, and that there are always bugs that have to be addressed, but game companies are successful not because they are huge with a large staff and money for expensive equipment. They are successful because they put out completed projects that people pay for ONE time and come back for the next game.

I have watched so many games, some pretty good others doomed to fail from the gate, die because the dev maybe should have waited to finish the project before releasing it. I suppose that now that it is out here, you could say that dev is published, but what good is it if the story remains unfinished? That'd be like Stephen King dying before completing "The Dark Tower" series.

Having said all this, I do respect the time and effort of ALL of the devs that put their work out there. I just hope that some of those that bit off too much will reevaluate and just finish the job before re-releasing.

If you read the difference between "Buyer" and "Patron", everything would be much more clear.

If you only want to support the dev by purchasing the game once, look into SHOPS (Itch.io, Steam, and so on), CROWDFUNDING PLATFORMS (Patreon, Subscribestar, and so on) aren't shops, they're a way to support the dev and you get rewards back (99% of the times), which may include the game, but it's not a sale. You're not buying the game.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

This is like those online recipes that give you the person's life story before finally getting to the recipe.

 

[morphnet]

Because of EA's portfolio and owner structure. EA has always rebuffed everything that was even slightly 'lewd' and will do so for the foreseeable future, unless there is a sudden swap of ownership all around. A subsidiary is no option for EA either as it will still be in the same reporting structure. Business and economics again...

Just going to throw this in so you can adjust it slightly, Mass Effect...

They have stayed away from being graphic or overly graphic, but the romance arcs as they did them were steamy and hot just not graphic, so count as more than slightly lewd.

 

[tooldev]

Just going to throw this in so you can adjust it slightly, Mass Effect...

They have stayed away from being graphic or overly graphic, but the romance arcs as they did them were steamy and hot just not graphic, so count as more than slightly lewd.

You could make the same argument for many other products, that came out of that house. The Sims being probably the more famous example. Yet there is a clear distinction between 'clean' stuff and 'lewd' stuff, when it comes to EA.

EA follows the rating system that is common for all media in the US, up to a point that they sometimes harm their own consumers (parents in particular) that try to provide certain games or access to an EA service. EA simply decided years ago to rather be more literal than necessary to avoid any kind of lawsuit. Their legal department dwarfs that of many other companies.

Taking the most implausible publisher in terms of 'lewd' material as an example is not going to net any results in terms of the argument, that there are publishers and investors: Toy manufacturers, content providers like IStrip - one can make a long list who actually invests in material that is oh so not fund-able. These investors require figures, a proper plan, which the majority of creators simply cant provide. There are always investors for everything, as long as one can provide decent figures that show how something nets a profit for them.

 

[morphnet]

You could make the same argument for many other products, that came out of that house. The Sims being probably the more famous example. Yet there is a clear distinction between 'clean' stuff and 'lewd' stuff, when it comes to EA.

That does not change the fact that your statement was and is factually incorrect. I only pointed it out so you could amend it.

There are always investors for everything, as long as one can provide decent figures that show how something nets a profit for them.

Theory and practice are different, different people / groups apply theory to practice in different ways. Making a sweeping theoretical statement does not make it a reality and it is also not supported by the math.

Before making sweeping statements it helps it take into account the reality of the situation, the reality of the market and the reality of the climate. Without doing that, one can not apply theory of normal markets to specialized or niche ones.

Again, I just posted so you could change the "slight lewd" part and not stick your foot in it but if you are going to reply with dubious statements....

 

[Bloodpool88]

Ya know, I'm surprised that the porn industry hasn't invested in these kinds of games, what with twine and other web based game engines, they could film a whole games worth of content...

 

[Count Morado]

Ya know, I'm surprised that the porn industry hasn't invested in these kinds of games, what with twine and other web based game engines, they could film a whole games worth of content...

Because it's cheaper, quicker, and more profitable to simply put the video online than to create a game using the video and images from their shoot.

If it was lucrative, the porn industry would be all-in.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

Because it's cheaper, quicker, and more profitable to simply put the video online than to create a game using the video and images from their shoot.

If it was lucrative, the porn industry would be all-in.

1000s of hours of work, vs maybe two days of work. Easy to see which has more ROI.

 

[woody554]

1000s of hours of work, vs maybe two days of work. Easy to see which has more ROI.

also no story required, not even a bad one.

 

[morphnet]

Ya know, I'm surprised that the porn industry hasn't invested in these kinds of games, what with twine and other web based game engines, they could film a whole games worth of content...

They tried awhile back but it didn't really catch on, some bad interactive ones, you can still find them on archive.org somewhere. Since then they seem to have stuck to strip card games.