Where did all the good games go :(

[Diabowlique]

I would say a few factors.

1/ Primarily I point the finger at Piracy and its effect of hollowing out the market by making all but the most popular categories/stories unprofitable. As long as pirating a game is easier than getting the paid-for version this process will continue.

2/ F95 and other similar sites not wanting to take responsibility for the unintentional role they play in the 'industry'. I'm not necessarily talking about Piracy as that's their thing but the way discoverability and success on the site work. It rewards legacy games, scamming, and/or milking rather than making good consistent content.

It's fair enough that they won't and I'm not saying they should but these sites which are primarily how most people access adult games have a massive effect is just the reality.

3/ People, if they do support creators will only do it on Patreon. Patreon is a cancer but unfortunately, it's also the easiest and safest way to pay for adult games. Not only does Patreon create a chilling effect on the types of games that can be made but they also kill all discoverability making creators rely on pirate sites. This multiplies the effects of 1/2.

Now it's not that there aren't good games. It's just they are fewer, and new ones are less likely to see long-term success. If they do manage to survive the first few months it's nearly routine now that updates start to slow down (or the creator gets chronically 'ill') and you'll be lucky to get one update every 3-6 months.

 

[anne O'nymous]

u no what i mean :'D they is so many renpy/vns that are so similer

Well, languages have so large vocabulary in order to facilitate communication by offering to the person speaking, or writing, a wild enough range of words to express his thoughts. So, when you mean something, write it instead of writing something with another meaning...

1/ Primarily I point the finger at Piracy and its effect of hollowing out the market by making all but the most popular categories/stories unprofitable.

As if more people would pay for the umpteenth "Big Brother" clone if they hadn't the possibility to pirate it... They wouldn't even know that it exist, how the hell would they pay for it.

2/ F95 and other similar sites not wanting to take responsibility for the unintentional role they play in the 'industry'. I'm not necessarily talking about Piracy as that's their thing but the way discoverability and success on the site work. It rewards legacy games, scamming, and/or milking rather than making good consistent content.

What the fuck are you talking about ? It's not the responsibility of F95zone, nor of any site, if it happen that a big part of the public is composed of pure idiots who don't care to search for interesting content, just blindly following the herd.

Plus, you are contradicting yourself. F95zone can not be responsible to the games' lack of profit, and in the same time be responsible for the abusive profit made by some games.
Be consistent ! Either people do not care to spend a buck because they pirate the game, or they spend bucks on games they shouldn't supports (accordingly to your sole own criteria). But it can't be both.

3/ People, if they do support creators will only do it on Patreon.

Patreon exist since May 2013, indie adult games exist since... Well, there's probably no one who know the effective date, but the first one I played it should have been in the late 80's. And in the 2000's, internet made the market explode.
During all those years before the creation of Patreon, adult games creators still, punctually, received money for their creation. So, perhaps should you also reconsider that assertion, like you should reconsider they two preceding ones.

 

[Deleted member 827972]

Depends on what u talking.
If is the assets, a good asset game can do a shit gameplay, as almost all japanese titles showed us.
If is a good game, mostly likely it will have shitty assets bc of the time spend on.
Im doing a game, firstly a GAME, secondly porn, so is a porn GAME, the assets are kinda bad bc of my skill, i dont have money to contract someone to do good assets to enchance the game aspect, neither im willing to spend 24hrs full zombie mode to improve my drawing skills +0.1%

So yeah, i doubt there will be good games, with good asset, in hentai game community.

 

[qwoppe]

most of them like the same story. is geting boring

This is the most preposterous thing I've read all month. ALL the Ren'Py games have similar stories? Are you trolling?

 

[Brine_Basilisk]

As an adult game player who never uses the exclude tag and looks for adult games from different websites, I don't think it's about excluding tags or some games becoming invisible due to the increasing number of adult games.

Back in 2018, games like Summertime Saga, Dating My Daughter, Acting Lessons, Sisterly Lust, Dreams of Desire, and Parental Love were revolutionary for adult games. The first adult game I played was Parental Love, and it blew my mind.

The thing is, I have already played a lot of games. At this point, most of the games feel like old Hollywood movies, with the same models and plots repeated over and over again.

The sameiness is a bit of an inevitablity given the nature of VN production. Most VNs are made by just a few people so there's only so much one can do. Add that to the convenience of DAZ preset models and scripts and its really hard to justify making unique models from scratch. The problem would disappear if you started expanding teams and started hiring dedicated professional modellers. I wish realistic unique models would be the norm and looked this, but that's just not a reasonable expecation for the majority of titles.

 

[Brine_Basilisk]

most of them like the same story. is geting boring

How many games have you actually played on this site? Not to completion, but with at least 2 hours or so of playtime?

 

[Deleted member 827972]

I would say a few factors.

1/ Primarily I point the finger at Piracy and its effect of hollowing out the market by making all but the most popular categories/stories unprofitable. As long as pirating a game is easier than getting the paid-for version this process will continue.

2/ F95 and other similar sites not wanting to take responsibility for the unintentional role they play in the 'industry'. I'm not necessarily talking about Piracy as that's their thing but the way discoverability and success on the site work. It rewards legacy games, scamming, and/or milking rather than making good consistent content.

It's fair enough that they won't and I'm not saying they should but these sites which are primarily how most people access adult games have a massive effect is just the reality.

3/ People, if they do support creators will only do it on Patreon. Patreon is a cancer but unfortunately, it's also the easiest and safest way to pay for adult games. Not only does Patreon create a chilling effect on the types of games that can be made but they also kill all discoverability making creators rely on pirate sites. This multiplies the effects of 1/2.

Now it's not that there aren't good games. It's just they are fewer, and new ones are less likely to see long-term success. If they do manage to survive the first few months it's nearly routine now that updates start to slow down (or the creator gets chronically 'ill') and you'll be lucky to get one update every 3-6 months.

This, one of things that mostly disapoint us is the fees, fees everywhere, i will share mine to set an example

Is small numbers i get it, but i got less than 50%
In bigger numbers i would get at least 65% of what i made, but cut the paypal fee -3~5%, and brazillian governament fee that idk how much is.

In my example i would willing accept crypto, that would cut all those fees, and would be easier for someone that just want to spend a dolar.
A dolar with NANO is easy to pass, and i wouldnt lose 40~50% of this dolar, so it would help me a lot.

Incentives are for what will give more money in one shot or over time.
So idk, things are hard to think, and my brain is smol.

 

[Diabowlique]

What the fuck are you talking about ? It's not the responsibility of F95zone, nor of any site, if it happen that a big part of the public is composed of pure idiots who don't care to search for interesting content, just blindly following the herd.

I literally say that in the next paragraph, you cut out. No need to get aggressive over it.

I was merely making the point that websites like F95 are the main gateway to discoverability for adult games (with the exception of steam but that has its own issues). How that content is presented affects the conversion rate of a user to a paying user. It's just the truth, it's the same in any sales. It's why Ads on the internet are everywhere.

When you're trying to get people to buy what you're selling. More people seeing it is almost always better EXCEPT when they can get it easier and free somewhere else.

Plus, you are contradicting yourself. F95zone can not be responsible to the games' lack of profit, and in the same time be responsible for the abusive profit made by some games.
Be consistent ! Either people do not care to spend a buck because they pirate the game, or they spend bucks on games they shouldn't supports (accordingly to your sole own criteria). But it can't be both.

As shown in multiple studies of the effects of Piracy. Piracy is a net negative EXCEPT when the discoverability of the product is low. In those cases there is a benefit as you are able to potentially sell to more people than 0 since no one knows your product exists.

But that intersects with how many eyeballs in total you can convert into supporters. That's why it's not a contradiction. Any eyeballs are better than none but how many does matter how many you ultimately get to pay you that goes into the cost/benefit analysis.

An easy example is that there is no discoverability reward on F95 for updating every month. It's really hard to determine that, I usually have to go to their Patreon and look up post history to work it out.

If F95 made that a sorting or filtering category are you saying that wouldn't affect the success of certain creators and punish others? It woudn't overall improve what kind of content is available? I believe it would.

Patreon exist since May 2013, indie adult games exist since... Well, there's probably no one who know the effective date, but the first one I played it should have been in the late 80's. And in the 2000's, internet made the market explode.
During all those years before the creation of Patreon, adult games creators still, punctually, received money for their creation. So, perhaps should you also reconsider that assertion, like you should reconsider they two preceding ones.

I don't know what point you're making? Patreon censors doesn't it? Creating a chilling effect on multiple categories from incest to non-con. That affects the market. If everyone supported on Subscribstar for example we wouldn't have that problem but Subscribestar sucks imo. And getting a merchant to do adult transactions without running into Patreon-type issues is basically impossible or someone would've done it. That's all I was saying. It's a factor.

If you don't consider those games 'good' that's your preference I was merely talking about the generality. More games of different types will result in more instances of good games.

 

[Deleted member 6928841]

Why the hell would you block out Ren'Py? That's a thing you don't need to do no matter what you're into, man.

It's also not a valid source for your woes considering the sheer variety of content available on Unity and RPGM.

Some of the people don't see visual novels as games, and most of the Ren'Py games are either visual novels or mixed visual novels.
However, they are not entirely wrong, as visual novels are scarcely considered games, much like how darts is scarcely considered a sport.

1/ Primarily I point the finger at Piracy and its effect of hollowing out the market by making all but the most popular categories/stories unprofitable. As long as pirating a game is easier than getting the paid-for version this process will continue.

Whining about piracy is meaningless if the dev is not well-known in worldwide.
Piracy can only hurt big players like Capcom & Rockstar, not underground adult game creators.

3/ People, if they do support creators will only do it on Patreon. Patreon is a cancer but unfortunately, it's also the easiest and safest way to pay for adult games. Not only does Patreon create a chilling effect on the types of games that can be made but they also kill all discoverability making creators rely on pirate sites. This multiplies the effects of 1/2.

Patreon is the reason we can enjoy adult games of today's quality, but it is also the reason why we don't have more. The monthly subscription model has its drawbacks. Most developers are openly against to complete their games as long as the money keeps coming in. Their concern is valid. Why should they finish a project when they have already received funds? What if their next project turns out to be a failure?

If is the assets, a good asset game can do a shit gameplay, as almost all japanese titles showed us.
If is a good game, mostly likely it will have shitty assets bc of the time spend on.

 

[Deleted member 827972]

I don't know what point you're making? Patreon censors doesn't it? Creating a chilling effect on multiple categories from incest to non-con. That affects the market. If everyone supported on Subscribstar for example we wouldn't have that problem but Subscribestar sucks imo. And getting a merchant to do adult transactions without running into Patreon-type issues is basically impossible or someone would've done it. That's all I was saying. It's a factor.

I dont think this is true by a business eye.
If a game do 1mi, liquid.
It should have money to expand/suport itself to a new dlc.

The thing with patreon is that rewards lazyness, there is plenty PLENTY of one CG update, or bugfix update here, and the guy is with idk 1000 patrons with minimun of 3 dolars a sub.
Subscription is the best model for one that want to monetize doing less.

But again, the fees, 1mi of sellings, isnt 1 mi liquid, there is cuts, many cuts, fucking hell cuts.

 

[Brine_Basilisk]

This, one of things that mostly disapoint us is the fees, fees everywhere, i will share mine to set an example View attachment 3275548

Is small numbers i get it, but i got less than 50%
In bigger numbers i would get at least 65% of what i made, but cut the paypal fee -3~5%, and brazillian governament fee that idk how much is.

In my example i would willing accept crypto, that would cut all those fees, and would be easier for someone that just want to spend a dolar.
A dolar with NANO is easy to pass, and i wouldnt lose 40~50% of this dolar, so it would help me a lot.

Incentives are for what will give more money in one shot or over time.
So idk, things are hard to think, and my brain is smol.

I swear payment processors are a cancer to society.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

The thing with patreon is that rewards lazyness, there is plenty PLENTY of one CG update, or bugfix update here, and the guy is with idk 1000 patrons with minimun of 3 dolars a sub.
Subscription is the best model for one that want to monetize doing less.

Patreon doesn't support laziness. Patrons do.

 

[Deleted member 827972]

I swear payment processors are a cancer to society.

Yeah thats why i was a crypto boy, but realistic the average guys isnt willing to buy some nano, btc, xmr or idk what coin u want, for have better transactions for both sides.

I maded comission even with my low hability in drawing, all comissions was crypto, and was amazing i got 100% of what the guy send me.
Im really sad that there isnt any steam, or itchio, that embraces crypto, and if there is will be hiden in shadows so you will need to be know to sell, if this is the case, is better to beg the buyer to buy p2p.
Like i want to do with voidborn, sell a vip tag in my discord with acess of what im doing, fully by crypto or if the guys is brazillian our payment system called pix.
I doubt i can do it, but if i can would be a huge profit and would motivate me a lot.

 

[Deleted member 827972]

Patreon doesn't support laziness. Patrons do.

Indeed

 

[Deleted member 6928841]

(or the creator gets chronically 'ill')

Who was the guy who suddenly quit gamedev after finding jesus

 

[Deleted member 827972]

Who was the guy who suddenly quit gamedev after finding jesus

The milfy city guy

 

[Deleted member 6928841]

Patreon doesn't support laziness. Patrons do.

The thing with patreon is that rewards lazyness, there is plenty PLENTY of one CG update, or bugfix update here, and the guy is with idk 1000 patrons with minimun of 3 dolars a sub.

I don't believe they became lazy; instead, they engage in a bit of trolling by extending update times and reducing the content.

An even more important factor is the pressure imposed on developers to create longer games, particularly the successful ones. Because otherwise they can't really benefit monthly subscription formula.

That's why your average "good" game tends to include 67478648468 side love interests, while leading to delays in delivering the main content.

During discussions about why developers struggle to create impressive graphics, captivating stories, and so on, they often attribute it to being a one-man team, all the while developing their long-ass games without even knowing how they will ended it.

 

[Deleted member 827972]

I don't believe they became lazy; instead, they engage in a bit of trolling by extending update times and reducing the content.

An even more important factor is the pressure imposed on developers to create longer games, particularly the successful ones. Because otherwise they can't really benefit monthly subscription formula.

Forgive my french but this is literally lazyness.
They do less but isnt lazy? wtf.
The only way i can see this not being lazyness is if they accept our lord and savior jesus.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

I don't believe they became lazy; instead, they engage in a bit of trolling by extending update times and reducing the content.

There is another plausible reason to increase update time. I'll use myself as an example. My game has maybe 2-3 hours of content (heavily dependent on reading speed, combat on/off) BUT those 2-3 hours took over 1400 hours to make. I could easily see developers increasing update time to give more content per update. Not saying this is the norm, just a possibility.

During discussions about why developers struggle to create impressive graphics, captivating stories, and so on, they often attribute it to being a one-man team, all the while developing their long-ass games without even knowing how they will ended it.

I never could wrap my head around this one. One of the first things I did was come up with an ending. I can't believe people just start making games without even wondering how they're gonna end it.

 

[Deleted member 6928841]

Forgive my french but this is literally lazyness.
They do less but isnt lazy? wtf.
The only way i can see this not being lazyness is if they accept our lord and savior jesus.

They may not be reducing their efforts; rather, they choose not to share everything at once.
This approach is not necessarily a negative thing, as it can be advantageous to be one or two updates ahead, especially if the developers respect their deadlines.

Or worse, removing content like Lust and Power [v0.63 Regular] [Lurking Hedgehog]

There is another plausible reason to increase update time. I'll use myself as an example. My game has maybe 2-3 hours of content (heavily dependent on reading speed, combat on/off) BUT those 2-3 hours took over 1400 hours to make. I could easily see developers increasing update time to give more content per update. Not saying this is the norm, just a possibility.

But they are generally minority like Light of My Life [Ch. 1-7 v1.0.0] [Naughty Road].