Thoughts on the state of the industry and its future

[aruisbored]

Over the years I feel like there have been many ups and downs in the quantity/quality of adult games, but it has always been a niche genre. There have been some attempts at larger budget/production value adult games, but I feel like none of them have really had much mainstream success (especially in the west). With Subverse 1.0 coming out I've been wondering what the community's general thoughts on the industry are? Do you guys think the market is growing/declining? Do you think we'll get more 'AAA' or high budget adult games? Will there every be a place in mainstream media for adult games in western culture or elsewhere?


Some of my thoughts:
I think there could be more of a market for more adult focused games, since AAA games with adult content like the Witcher 3 and Baldur's Gate 3 have been very successful. Fifty Shades of Grey was also a movie that was wildy successful, but questionable in terms of quality.

Recently there have also been a ton of new indie games, but a lot of them are pretty bad. AI art and LLMs have probably contributed to this in a big way.

I think it'd be cool if there was more of a place for adult games in mainstream media, but I feel like there's a lot of reasons it probably won't happen (adult content in general being somewhat taboo, pirating seems a lot more prevalent for adult games/eroges, sites/platforms not wanting to monetize/support adult media etc.).

Japanese culture seems to be more receptive to adult games in many ways and imo, their games often seem more polished than western games. I wonder if something similar could ever happen in the western market.

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

Do you guys think the market is growing/declining?

Growing at a rapid rate. You can check Steam for new adult titles, there's more of them by the day coming out.

 

[Geigi]

Fifty Shades of Grey is successful because women are starved for erotic content written only for them. That's why they want their version of Geralt with a harem of male love interests. So, they are playing Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Baldur's Gate instead. Telling that adult games for men are a niche genre is absurd, every day there's a new porn game.

 

[OGloc_420]

As an indie "adult" scene, I think it's cooked. A lot of people making adult games are doing it as a cash grab. You see it all the time people bemoaning not making enough money through patreon or whatever so they can't continue production and jump to making something else trying to grab cash. The amount of abandoned projects is ridiculous.

Meanwhile in traditional gaming an indie dev will slave over a title without any income stream, working years and years until maybe they try releasing it early access. And they do it because they have a passion for their idea. They have a passion for games. You still get a lot of shovelware and shit, but you also get things that because of the passion for development really turn into something great. This doesn't always translate into cash for the dev, but imo the product is often greater.

I'm not saying all the adult devs are this way. But it is very common. I don't like the Patreon model that is so prevalent. I think it leads to so much scamming.