What happened to the lesbian only games?

[khumak]

The main market for lesbian porn are straight men, simply because there are more straight men than lesbian women. Even if only half or merely a third of us, prefer lesbian porn, we are still more numerous than lesbian women. MFF threesomes, though I think, are about equally annoying to lesbian women and straight men on average, though I personally certainly hate those anticlimactic scenes more than any lesbian woman here does.

A major problem might be that many developers still think, a game has to have a "relatable" protagonist for the main male audience.

MFF is just an example I used anyway. You can pick whatever other fetish you want that has fairly broad appeal. As an example I have a mod for Babysitter that started out purely as an expansion centered around the male MC but got so many requests for NTR that I decided to add an NTR path as well even though I personally hate playing that path and in fact started the mod specifically because I found the base game's NTR somewhat annoying and forced. Ironically I actually found that while I hate playing it I actually don't mind developing for it. If I hated both I would have refused to do it. That's what I'm getting at. Give your customers what they want but only if you enjoy developing it as well yourself.

If everyone wants foot fetish stuff I'll take a stab at it. Doesn't do anything for me personally but it doesn't repulse me. By contrast if everyone was demanding MM, Futa, tranny, or some other fetish that I find repulsive, forget it. Not happening no matter how many people want it. So it doesn't necessarily have to even be anything involving any guys. Maybe there's unmet demand for bondage or toys or cosplay or something while still being pure lesbo. Pick something that your customers want that you're not opposed to. Or just accept a small, niche market...

 

[215303j]

Because it's an untried market, unlike vanilla/harem/incest/maledom, female in rape town, NTR, furry, gay games that have been well tested in the last years and known to have a sizeable market, games with a female lead that is not a cock-hungry whore have not really been tried that extensively. Sure there are a few games like that, but they are the exception, especially for games that let you play a lesbo route.

I have to disagree that it is an untried market. You are right that it's a minority, but there are / were games which were purely lesbian. But for one reason or another, none of them were particularly financially successful.

One potential problem that I see is the mainstream lesbian porn markets seems divided in:
- lesbian porn for lesbians
- lesbian porn for heterosexual males

For example, Bright Sun used to be an example of lesbian porn for lesbians:
Blooming Love [Bright Sun Studios] /
Rosie's Innocence [Bright Sun Studios
But that market turned out a bit limited. She / he then shifted to lesbian porn more catering to men but that was also not successful and those games were never finished.

 

[ItsEricBoi]

Supply and demand happened

 

[215303j]

The main market for lesbian porn are straight men, simply because there are more straight men than lesbian women. Even if only half or merely a third of us, prefer lesbian porn, we are still more numerous than lesbian women. MFF threesomes, though I think, are about equally annoying to lesbian women and straight men on average, though I personally certainly hate those anticlimactic scenes more than any lesbian woman here does.

A major problem might be that many developers still think, a game has to have a "relatable" protagonist for the main male audience.

By that logic, there should also not be any gay games.

I would think that although most straight men have no problem playing a lesbian game, a lot of straight women would not play a gay game. And I guess that the majority of adult game players are male, so the lesbian game market should be way bigger than the gay game market.

 

[おい！]

This why there is a drop in lesbian only games https://f95zone.to/latest/#/cat=games/page=1/sort=likes if a dev wants to make money, then they follow the tried and tested genre of financially successful games. Incest seems to be the way to go with a male protagonist, I can understand why. Most devs want to earn as much money as possible from their games and the market wants incest and male MC, it just economics.

 

[recreation]

*hints to his signature*

 

[khumak]

By that logic, there should also not be any gay games.

I would think that although most straight men have no problem playing a lesbian game, a lot of straight women would not play a gay game. And I guess that the majority of adult game players area male, so the lesbian game market should be way bigger than the gay game market.

I would think the lesbian market would be bigger than the gay market personally. I think most straight guys either like lesbian content or are at least not opposed to it. I can't think of too many pornos I've seen that didn't have any lesbian scenes even if it was mostly MF. I suspect most lesbians are at least grudingly resigned to the idea that most of the lesbian content they're going to find is also going to include some MF content unless they are willing to dramatically shrink their choices down to only pure lesbo stuff. By contrast I don't know any straight guys who would go anywhere near anything with MM content in it even if there was other stuff they did like in there.

I have read that the biggest market for lesbian content is actually straight women (wish I could remember where I heard that), presumably because it focuses on the woman getting off instead of the guy. So maybe adding MF content that focuses on getting the women off rather than the guy would actually expand your market the most even if some of the people looking for pure lesbo stuff were somewhat annoyed by it.

Have never seen any gay content (and never will) so can't comment on that.

 

[redknight00]

I have to disagree that it is an untried market. You are right that it's a minority, but there are / were games which were purely lesbian. But for one reason or another, none of them were particularly financially successful.

One potential problem that I see is the mainstream lesbian porn markets seems divided in:
- lesbian porn for lesbians
- lesbian porn for heterosexual males

For example, Bright Sun used to be an example of lesbian porn for lesbians:
Blooming Love [Bright Sun Studios] /
Rosie's Innocence [Bright Sun Studios
But that market turned out a bit limited. She / he then shifted to lesbian porn more catering to men but that was also not successful and those games were never finished.

That's a really bad example, Bright Sun tainted any game they made with the content abandons and relaunches, you can't point at it and say people don't like lesbo games any more than you can point at Death Star Trainer and say people don't want a Star Wars game.

 

[215303j]

That's a really bad example, Bright Sun tainted any game they made with the content abandons and relaunches, you can't point at it and say people don't like lesbo games any more than you can point at Death Star Trainer and say people don't want a Star Wars game.

Incorrect, Blooming Love was finished first. But was underperforming financially. Then Bright Sun had a number of other games, most of which were rather quickly abandoned. My point was that these later games seemed more aimed at male audience then Blooming Love and Rosie's Innocence. That didn't mean that they were succesful though, unfortunately.

Let's not make this thread about Bright Sun, as it was only an example but I used to be fan to be honest. I especially liked BrightSun's Card Adventure [v0.2] [Bright Sun Studios] and High School Crush Simulator [v0.6.1] [Bright Sun Studios]

 

[CboyC95]

Because it's an untried market, unlike vanilla/harem/incest/maledom, female in rape town, NTR, furry, gay games that have been well tested in the last years and known to have a sizeable market, games with a female lead that is not a cock-hungry whore have not really been tried that extensively. Sure there are a few games like that, but they are the exception, especially for games that let you play a lesbo route.

Like I said, it's a real shame because I would've loved to see more lesbian only games.

 

[Ataios]

By that logic, there should also not be any gay games.

I would think that although most straight men have no problem playing a lesbian game, a lot of straight women would not play a gay game. And I guess that the majority of adult game players are male, so the lesbian game market should be way bigger than the gay game market.

Not my logic, the obvious logic of many developers. I'm a straight male non-immersive player, who prefers lesbian porn to any sort of straight porn. Developers overestimate players' desire to immersive themselves in games.

 

[pootin]

Just recently, one game I have been following, Seraphim Academy, had just been 'tagged' abandoned. The last post from the developer's patreon page was far back as May. Maybe the developer have fallen off the radar or else, I don't know. It seems to be an ongoing trend lately. Most lesbian games, especially the ones in 3D and made in ren'py, either take too long to update and the iron cools or get abandoned by the developers, and there many other games like this. Most games now only focus on playing as female with focus on B/G with some lesbian thrown in, or focus on the male MC with lesbian scenes in it. All I wanted was a lesbian only game with a female protagonist. It's like nobody seems to care about this sort of genre anymore. It's a real shame because lesbian is my favorite sex genre.

lesbian stuff dont work for kickstarting. remember, porn is from guys, for guys, to enjoy guys (aka. identification )
did see too much developers fail with lesbian projects, because the audience primary demand penises, and thats not what lesbian means. *shrug*
its bitter, but thats is how the things are.

 

[ShamanLab]

But what if you look at it from the side of psychology? A good lesbian story requires knowledge of female psychology, but most developers are male. It seems to me that it is not easy for an ordinary man to come up with a convincing lesbian story, so this is a difficult niche for the developers.

 

[kamti]

Just recently, one game I have been following, Seraphim Academy, had just been 'tagged' abandoned. The last post from the developer's patreon page was far back as May. Maybe the developer have fallen off the radar or else, I don't know. It seems to be an ongoing trend lately. Most lesbian games, especially the ones in 3D and made in ren'py, either take too long to update and the iron cools or get abandoned by the developers, and there many other games like this. Most games now only focus on playing as female with focus on B/G with some lesbian thrown in, or focus on the male MC with lesbian scenes in it. All I wanted was a lesbian only game with a female protagonist. It's like nobody seems to care about this sort of genre anymore. It's a real shame because lesbian is my favorite sex genre.

Game, I develop, has "convincing" lesbian story line and lesbian arts. Game is almost finished and will be released within next 30 days. Currently we work on translation to english. Show some paitience and you'll play it.

 

[polywog]

There are countless reasons why a woman might choose to be homosexual. Writing a true story about a real-life Lesbian, is sure to receive criticism from other Lesbians who have different reasons.

Sexuality is complex, we all have our own preferences, there's no normal, no black and white, it's a very gray area.

People often try to simply things, stereotyping. Shallowly, lumping groups of people together, putting labels on them.

The field of Psychology is the worst offender. Trying to explain what's wrong with you, why you aren't "normal"
implying that homosexuality is a disease. They say all people should like blue cars, if you like red cars there's something wrong with you, if you like white cars there's something wrong with you. There are pills that will make you like blue cars more. Hogwash. You aren't normal for liking blue cars, that's ridiculous. You don't have to justify your favorite color to anyone, it is what it is. Same for your sexual preference.
You might like small dicks, big dicks, or no dicks. All anal, some anal, no anal. Sucking lots of cocks, sucking some cocks, or sucking no cocks. There's no right or wrong answer, it's a matter of preference.



If a woman hates dicks, she has her reasons. That doesn't mean there's something wrong with her.
She doesn't have to justify her reasons, she just hates dicks plain and simple. There's nothing wrong with hating dicks. Hating dicks doesn't mean she's a lesbian, it just means she hates dicks.

tags are for bigots

 

[215303j]

porn is from guys, for guys, to enjoy guys

That sounds pretty gay to me...

 

[ShamanLab]

The field of Psychology is the worst offender. Trying to explain what's wrong with you, why you aren't "normal"
implying that homosexuality is a disease.

There is such thing as developers psychology. No matter what is wrong or "normal" it's not easy for developers thinking like lesbian to elaborate really convincing lesbian story. In other side working in straight niche is much easier.

I would think that although most straight men have no problem playing a lesbian game,

So why most straight men have no problem looking at lesbian porn?

 

[215303j]

So why most straight men have no problem looking at lesbian porn?

Eh? Two hot girls kissing?

Unless I'm missing your point.

 

[ShamanLab]

Eh? Two hot girls kissing?

Unless I'm missing your point.

I'm just confused by lack of lesbian games in comparison with abundance of lesbian porn. It seems like in porn video niche nobody struggle with problem to find audience for lesbian porn.

 

[215303j]

I'm just confused by lack of lesbian games in comparison with abundance of lesbian porn. It seems like in porn video niche nobody struggle with problem to find audience for lesbian porn.

Absolutely correct, although as I think I said before, in mainstream porn you can clearly distinguish between lesbian porn created mainly for lesbians and lesbian porn created for straight men. There is a noticable difference, especially in the story and conversations, which tend to be much better in the lesbian-for-lesbians version. Also the models in the lesbian-for-men version are often more beautiful, where the ones in lesbian-for-lesbians are often more "real" and/or alternative looking.

I also think one big difference between video porn and game porn is the length and importance of the narrative. In many male protagonist games, there are a few scenes featuring lesbian sex. I think this falls in the lesbian-for-men category, while increasing the attraction for lesbian players. Purely lesbian games on the other hand *might* alienate some male players, due to the length and tone of the narrative ("who needs men?"), while the target group (lesbian women) is relatively small compared to the straight male target group.

But the secondary target group (i.e. people who are not primarily interested in the content, but will play anyway) for lesbian-only games is I think still fairly large. E.g. straight men and bi-sexual / bi-curious women.

So, bottom line: a MM gay game will have a smaller target group, but especially a much smaller secondary target group, compared to a strictly FF lesbian game.