question Adult content and AAA game dev/publisher

[Ethereal Fox]

I think it's safe to say that currently there's not a single game devs studio/publisher in the AAA sphere that is willing to touch the idea of a game with adult content (At least in the NA and European market, don't know about Asia as there's a lot of adult games made in Japan). However, it's also fair to assume that because of that very fact there's a lot of money to be made if one of the juggernauts were to decide to make such a title. Historically these games were never even considered by said parties because of the huge implications of a AO rating. It basically meant game consoles wouldn't touch them and brick and mortar stores wouldn't take them either, essentially  financial suicide.

 

Now I believe that the situation as partly changed now that brick and mortar stores are less relevant by the day and with digital retailers like steam are allowing for game that feature adult content or straight up hentai game to be sold in there store without so much of a fuss. 

 

With that said my question is why as not a single AAA game dev studio/publisher decided to make a game with adult content in it? There's clearly a huge market ready for the taking. Just look at Wild Life revenue on Patreon, an adult game that got a huge amount of support since day 1 of it's pie in the sky youtube video pitch. Also the countless other indie adult "games" that are arguably glorified animation players. And lets not even talk talk about the deluge of Virtual Novels.

 

I can clearly see one of the big reason being a question of morality. But it's not valid in my opinion seeing that AAA game publishers are willing to do to get your money. (Ie: Loot box (Glorified casino slot machine), Day 1 paid DLCs, Day 1 Season pass, Loot box marketed to children, etc). 

[Alter Native]

Yeah, there are american NSFW standards where softcore boobies of TW3 are a big deal... so anything beyond that just won't happen.

Also the market is just not as big as you want it to be. 

[Ethereal Fox]

10 minutes ago, Alter Native said:

Yeah, there are american NSFW standards where softcore boobies of TW3 are a big deal... so anything beyond that just won't happen.

Also the market is just not as big as you want it to be. 

I'm having a hard time believing that the market is not that big.  Sex sells and it sells a lot, much of the internet bandwidth is porn. The average gamer age is 31 in the US and only about 21% of the gamers are under 18 if we are to believe some absolutely credible stats I found on the internet. Now those 21% are not lost market because they were dead weight anyway because they probably don't have access to a credit card to buy your "surprise mechanics" you've implemented in the game. ?

 

[megamantaray]

You're not gonna see a AAA budget on a porn game, the reason is because by design Triple A games are like movies. Unless it's indie, they're just gonna be regurgitated committee-approved, sanctified, blessed and tested products. As far as the market itself goes just like with visual novels, story-driven walk-and-talk games, and David Cage's asshole, most people aren't interested. Porn about characters is neat but that's because those characters became popular on their own and then fans made stuff of them. A big publisher isn't gonna drop a ton of money on a group of people so they can make an unsafe product, to a niche market, that won't return that investment immediately within a week of release, and may in fact just fail outright or end up cancelled because the SJWs sniffed it out and it's offensive to be sexually active and have preferences. It's literally offensive to be gay because it means you're discriminating the other gender right now. I also don't want Todd Howard's fetishes standardised in my games, thanks.

 

Would you want microtransactions for dildo textures anyway? Capcom released DLC costumes for characters that aren't playable in DMC5, they're costumes that only show up in cutscenes, and cost $3.99. I'd rather keep the game porn in mods and content made by the users as opposed to a big company totally out of touch with people trying it and bringing a bigger magnifying glass on the modding communities that do it. It'll just give game jornos more shit to burn us with despite their increasing irrelevancy and distrust.

[27X]

1 hour ago, Ethereal Fox said:

as there's a lot of adult games made in Japan

none of them are AAA.

 

also in the vein of devil's avocado, wild life is literally the opposite of skyrim; you can turn tesv into fetish fappasaurus you have to give my stupid fetish validation because my self esteem is a garbage fire edition, wild life has all the fetish boxes checked, but there's not a game there yet, not even kind of. The current 'quests' (i use the term in the literally vaguest sense of the word) are literally go to NPC A and click, not now go to NPC B and click, now go back to npc A and click, yay a 'quest'.

 

There's no game there yet.

 

If you're expecting code vein with also sex and a set of systems to get to sex also being gamified, modded skyrim is the de facto standard, and skyrim as an action game and combat mechanics go is laugh out loud bad.

 

Your premise has merit under the guise of one company could get the resources corralled and done, but see the problem with fetish games are the fetishes, don't satisfy the fetish? welp x person isn't buying your game because their literal creative life revolves around it and you're not validating it in your product good enough.

 

Sex games are the literal rote definition of niche, never mind saving the childrens from the society crushing evil that is the exposed nipple.

 

There's definitely money there, but not as much as you think there is, and you have to go through people's ridiculous hang ups to get there.

[Darkpig]

Honestly I don't know how many answers I can put down before I get bored. Morality is a big one and quite a few others.

 

It would make sense in Japan as they could really use the company considering their abysmal birth rates but the United States on the other hand are total shitheads simply are too focused on their families to really care about pornography. You said that 21% of gamers are under 18. Well for AAA that is a big chunk-a-cash and with AAA in the metaphorical shithole I could honestly care less considering I have Indie games and dare I say life to keep me busy. Besides many AAA developers get overworked and underpaid for what they do.

 

PS. Life sucks. I prefer comedy and sometimes romance❤️

[Resdayn]

I doubt we gonna see an AAA porn game.

 

 

[Ethereal Fox]

2 hours ago, megamantaray said:

A big publisher isn't gonna drop a ton of money on a group of people so they can make an unsafe product, to a niche market, that won't return that investment immediately within a week of release, and may in fact just fail outright or end up cancelled because the SJWs sniffed it out and it's offensive to be sexually active and have preferences.

I'll agree with you on this one and add that another problem I can see now is that such a game has never been done before by a big studio so it adds another element of uncertainty. It would definitly solve that issue if one big studio would do it and be a huge success, that would definitly inspire the risk adverse and creatively bankrupt AAA industry. It could basically be the PUBG effect with the battle royale genre. Nobody was interested in making a battle royale game until the fuckers at bluehole opened the floodgate. Same goes for the survival game genre. Maybe if we get a sacrificial lamb to do it first it will open a brand new hentai genre.

 

As for the SJW and the moral panic that would enssue you got to realise that the vast majority of these big game companies are immoral assholes only interested by money and profit. When ever you see a game company (or any corporation motivated by profit) cave to the SJW Mob It's either because they believe that the PR fiasco will cost them more money than caving or they failed to make the rational calculation that these very people aren't the ones that are going to buy what ever their selling, be it a game or a razor blade. 

 

2 hours ago, 27X said:

If you're expecting code vein with also sex and a set of systems to get to sex also being gamified, modded skyrim is the de facto standard, and skyrim as an action game and combat mechanics go is laugh out loud bad.

 

Your premise has merit under the guise of one company could get the resources corralled and done, but see the problem with fetish games are the fetishes, don't satisfy the fetish? welp x person isn't buying your game because their literal creative life revolves around it and you're not validating it in your product good enough.

 

Sex games are the literal rote definition of niche, never mind saving the childrens from the society crushing evil that is the exposed nipple.

 

There's definitely money there, but not as much as you think there is, and you have to go through people's ridiculous hang ups to get there.

You do have a point when you say that such a game couldn't possibly meet all the sick fetish possibly conceivable the sick sick diseased brain of the average human being. However, I believe that people would still buy it as long as the sex wasn't the ONLY mechanic that the game had in store. Just think of skyrim even thought you could turn the game into fapposorus attraction park, there's still the vast majority of people who bought the game for the combat alone or the story. My expectation from a AAA budget would be exactly like you portay it, a code vein (Code Vein have some of the worst combat I've had the displeasure to experience lately) witcher 3 with maybe some porn mechanic in as an option if you're so inclined to it. 

 

"But will somebody think of the childrens?" if video game companies really gave a fuck they wouldn't be selling marketing loot boxes to kids on mobile games and what not. It's all about the money.

 

 

1 hour ago, Darkpig said:

You said that 21% of gamers are under 18. Well for AAA that is a big chunk-a-cash and with AAA in the metaphorical shithole I could honestly care less considering I have Indie games and dare I say life to keep me busy. Besides many AAA developers get overworked and underpaid for what they do.

 

PS. Life sucks. I prefer comedy and sometimes romance❤️

Do you really think that these a game will lose all it's under 18 player just because of some rating on the box? I don't recall GTA V rating stopping the horde of teens buying it by all mean necessary. Just because porn is 18+ doesn't stop a bunch of under age from consuming it.

 

[27X]

35 minutes ago, Ethereal Fox said:

will lose all it's under 18 player just because of some rating on the box?

yes, this is a known thing. Getting an AO rating means no mainstream venues will ever sell your game.

[Ethereal Fox]

Just now, 27X said:

yes, this is a known thing. Getting an AO rating means no mainstream venues will ever sell your game.

That's a given, but what about digital stores like steam? What's stopping little jimmy from taking mom's credit card and buying the game?

[Guest]

AAA porn games... too expensive to dev..
None of any company having the possibilities to make such investement could take the risk.

A indie B(maybe +) game like subversve needed 1M$ to dev the game, they generated 2M$ on kickstater.

Another indie (no porn) game much more popular like shenmue 3 generated a bit more than 6M$ on kickstarter, not so much considering the popularity and the amount of fans of this game, but they probably get few others M$ from investors and deal with Epic.
However even if for shenmue 3 they've got 15 or even 20M$, it's still far to be enough to make a AAA game.

Look at how much cost to dev some AAA games...  
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_jeux_vidéo_les_plus_chers_à_produire

Again as exemple for Shenmue in 1999, cost of dev 47M$, marketing 23M$, Total 70M$, with inflation today for the same 100M$...

So believe that a company is going to put at least 50MS for a A+ porn game, I do not think so..
Best bet it's small indies, who can do their best for 10x less but be patient and do not expect AAA either...

 

[27X]

13 minutes ago, Ethereal Fox said:

That's a given, but what about digital stores like steam? What's stopping little jimmy from taking mom's credit card and buying the game?

The fact steam won't sell it. "Home site patches" exist for a reason.

[Ethereal Fox]

17 minutes ago, komotor said:

AAA porn games... too expensive to dev..
None of any company having the possibilities to make such investement could take the risk.

A indie B(maybe +) game like subversve needed 1M$ to dev the game, they generated 2M$ on kickstater.

Another indie (no porn) game much more popular like shenmue 3 generated a bit more than 6M$ on kickstarter, not so much considering the popularity and the amount of fans of this game, but they probably get few others M$ from investors and deal with Epic.
However even if for shenmue 3 they've got 15 or even 20M$, it's still far to be enough to make a AAA game.

Look at how much cost to dev some AAA games...  
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_des_jeux_vidéo_les_plus_chers_à_produire

Again as exemple for Shenmue in 1999, cost of dev 47M$, marketing 23M$, Total 70M$, with inflation today for the same 100M$...

So believe that a company is going to put at least 50MS for a A+ porn game, I do not think so..
Best bet it's small indies, who can do their best for 10x less but be patient and do not expect AAA either...

 

Yeah I think that's the expanation that make the most sense to me.

Looking at the numbers it's clear to me now why it will probably never happen from the AAA game dev. There's no way any sane publisher would accept to spend that much without the assurance of a good return on investement.

 

On that note it's truly fascinating to see that some of these publishers sometime spend just as much, two or even three time the developement amount on marketing alone.

 

 

 

[Ethereal Fox]

19 minutes ago, 27X said:

The fact steam won't sell it. "Home site patches" exist for a reason.

It's been a while now since steam fully allow literal porn games in there store. Game devs don't have to use home sites patches anymore. There game can have full nudity or sex in it. What they don't allow on the other end is illegal shit, or content designed to be trollish.

https://www.cnet.com/news/steam-says-it-will-stop-censoring-games-publish-anything-that-isnt-illegal-or-trolling/ June 6 2018

https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/24/20708786/koikatsu-party-steam-sex-game-patch-valve-sales July 2019

[Darkpig]

32 minutes ago, Ethereal Fox said:

Do you really think that these a game will lose all it's under 18 player just because of some rating on the box? I don't recall GTA V rating stopping the horde of teens buying it by all mean necessary. Just because porn is 18+ doesn't stop a bunch of under age from consuming it.

 

You are on to something. The American moral system which is ass backwards not that other countries don't have problems. Take Japan for example whose fear of genitalia have indirectly created the sensation known as tentacle hentai:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentacle_erotica

 

Things like violence get a pass at least in the American view of things. Meanwhile Japan is trying to fix that loophole that is tentacle hentai.

 

The rest is just speculation but I dare say people hate themselves. Love makes babies and babies make people and people are just rude and just plain bossy. People live in a world of bosses. Like in order to live in society there has to be a string of bosses to the point of becoming a loop. There is your boss and then your boss has a boss and that boss has a boss and so on. People are just bossy. How far into society are you willing to look? Will you reach the inner depths of the CIA who have people in power all over the world or will you reach madness? This is exciting stuff *rubs hands together*

[Ethereal Fox]

4 minutes ago, Darkpig said:

You are on to something. The American moral system which is ass backwards not that other countries don't have problems. Take Japan for example whose fear of genitalia have indirectly created the sensation known as tentacle hentai:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tentacle_erotica

 

Things like violence get a pass at least in the American view of things. Meanwhile Japan is trying to fix that loophole that is tentacle hentai.

The american morality model in media and video game is really a fascinating one indeed. It is very prudish  in regard to something as mundane and natural as sex or nudity. But if your game contain extreme violence, gore and everything that would pretty much land you in a jail cell in real life it's all good. Some true major league level mental gymnastic.

 

The japanese people are also very peculariar in the morality regard as well. They're one of the country that produce the most sickest hentai porn imaginable (truly the best kind of hentai , who the hell want vanilla bullshit anyway). They also produce a metric ton of loli hentai every year but god forbid you lay your eye on some bare genitalia! This is the kind of olympic level mental gymnastic we're dealing with here. ?

 

[Storms of Superior]

It's best to just depend on mod communities. 'Nuff sed.

[27X]

1 hour ago, Ethereal Fox said:

It's been a while now since steam fully allow literal porn games in there store. Game devs don't have to use home sites patches anymore. There game can have full nudity or sex in it. What they don't allow on the other end is illegal shit, or content designed to be trollish.

https://www.cnet.com/news/steam-says-it-will-stop-censoring-games-publish-anything-that-isnt-illegal-or-trolling/ June 6 2018

https://www.polygon.com/2019/7/24/20708786/koikatsu-party-steam-sex-game-patch-valve-sales July 2019

Except three games have been pulled since then. What valve says and valve does is two different things. Also you clearly didn't bother to actually read the Polygon article, because it reiterates what I already said.

[espguy]

Well while not AAA subverse will be AA

[megamantaray]

5 hours ago, Ethereal Fox said:

As for the SJW and the moral panic that would enssue you got to realise that the vast majority of these big game companies are immoral assholes only interested by money and profit. When ever you see a game company (or any corporation motivated by profit) cave to the SJW Mob It's either because they believe that the PR fiasco will cost them more money than caving or they failed to make the rational calculation that these very people aren't the ones that are going to buy what ever their selling, be it a game or a razor blade. 

Well yes, that's my point. You can't win with these people, every inch you cave in they'll move the goal post and come up with something else that's wrong. It'll be too costly to develop a game based around sex because they'd have to keep changing it and redesigning it from the ground up over and over. The market for this kinda thing is small, and the backlash will be big because people leech on to this kinda thing so hard. It's not worth it, it never will be for a big publisher unless the entire planet, SJWs, religious groups, whole continents and especially China, becomes a lot more sexually open-minded and accepting, or at least tolerant. Literally impossible. Niche market, unsafe product, morally ambiguous, politically indefensible and far too costly.

[Mr. Otaku]

30 minutes ago, megamantaray said:

Well yes, that's my point. You can't win with these people, every inch you cave in they'll move the goal post and come up with something else that's wrong. It'll be too costly to develop a game based around sex because they'd have to keep changing it and redesigning it from the ground up over and over. The market for this kinda thing is small, and the backlash will be big because people leech on to this kinda thing so hard. It's not worth it, it never will be for a big publisher unless the entire planet, SJWs, religious groups, whole continents and especially China, becomes a lot more sexually open-minded and accepting, or at least tolerant. Literally impossible. Niche market, unsafe product, morally ambiguous, politically indefensible and far too costly.

The way i see it, it's best if it's kept as a niche. It stays good that way anyway. Stuff that goes mainstream too much tends to lose what made it good in the first place. "But you're gatekeeping bro" Am i? Looking at video games that's exactly what happened. Remember when they put an image of a girl in a micro bikini armor on the cover of Arena? Try that shit today as a AAA publisher and the moralist no-lives will blast you on social media.

 

The thing is, SJW's are on a very fundamental level moralists and puritanical in nature, and these aren't exclusive to SJW's, religious puritans for example are another group just like that, they just happen to hate each other over different petty shit. You're right that they'll take a mile if you give an inch, it's because they're not looking for any reform to begin with. There's a reason it's said "Don't bend the knee", because that's what they want, they want you defeated, shamed and broken. So it doesn't matter how much you try to appease them, they'll find something else to bitch about the next second because that's the ultimate goal, complaining. I mean, they were complaining that batwoman wasn't gay enough, even though it's already a wokefest burning heap of landfill trash. There's no line for them, they're bottomless pits of oxygen wasting.

 

I'm looking at the anime/manga industry which is rapidly succeeding as the comic book industry is killing itself slowly due to this kind of pandering while thinking that it's about time they'll start coming after it with full force. They've already started attacking it and the pressure is getting higher, right now the creators of these japanese mediums are just telling them to fuck off but for how long? Netflix is already trying to cement itself as a Disney-esque figure in anime, creeping it's money into the industry, streaming platforms like Crunchyroll has started to go hard on pandering mode. And don't even get me started on funimation.

 

So i can't see why i would even want full on porn videogames to be on AAA level in the first place, where every moron will have their eyes on it and have it potentially ruined? It's better if it stayed under and retained what makes the concept good.

[megamantaray]

13 minutes ago, Mr.Otaku said:

The way i see it, it's best if it's kept as a niche. It stays good that way anyway. Stuff that goes mainstream too much tends to lose what made it good in the first place. "But you're gatekeeping bro" Am i? Looking at video games that's exactly what happened. Remember when they put an image of a girl in a micro bikini armor on the cover of Arena? Try that shit today as a AAA publisher and the moralist no-lives will blast you on social media.

 

The thing is, SJW's are on a very fundamental level moralists and puritanical in nature, and these aren't exclusive to SJW's, religious puritans for example are another group just like that, they just happen to hate each other over different petty shit. You're right that they'll take a mile if you give an inch, it's because they're not looking for any reform to begin with. There's a reason it's said "Don't bend the knee", because that's what they want, they want you defeated, shamed and broken. So it doesn't matter how much you try to appease them, they'll find something else to bitch about the next second because that's the ultimate goal, complaining. I mean, they were complaining that batwoman wasn't gay enough, even though it's already a wokefest burning heap of landfill trash. There's no line for them, they're bottomless pits of oxygen wasting.

 

I'm looking at the anime/manga industry which is rapidly succeeding as the comic book industry is killing itself slowly due to this kind of pandering while thinking that it's about time they'll start coming after it with full force. They've already started attacking it and the pressure is getting higher, right now the creators of these japanese mediums are just telling them to fuck off but for how long? Netflix is already trying to cement itself as a Disney-esque figure in anime, creeping it's money into the industry, streaming platforms like Crunchyroll has started to go hard on pandering mode. And don't even get me started on funimation.

 

So i can't see why i would even want full on porn videogames to be on AAA level in the first place, where every moron will have their eyes on it and have it potentially ruined? It's better if it stayed under and retained what makes the concept good.

Washed out boring pandering garbage with no personality isn't good. At best AAA porn would just look like normal porn, boring, mechanic, and likely badly acted. Individual creators like people who make animation packs, mods and stuff here, or those who make games on Patreon(although that's its own can of stupid scamming) have vision, voices and personalities they add to their art and products. I can't imagine a porn game published by a board of directors being anything remotely related to sexually satisfying.

[Mr. Otaku]

21 minutes ago, megamantaray said:

Washed out boring pandering garbage with no personality isn't good. At best AAA porn would just look like normal porn, boring, mechanic, and likely badly acted. Individual creators like people who make animation packs, mods and stuff here, or those who make games on Patreon(although that's its own can of stupid scamming) have vision, voices and personalities they add to their art and products. I can't imagine a porn game published by a board of directors being anything remotely related to sexually satisfying.

Exactly what i was saying, when a concept goes really mainstream it loses what made it special in the first place, it starts to become more square and vanilla. So i don't mind the idea of deviant porn games staying a niche, where only people who have the desire for it will find it.

[Darkpig]

31 minutes ago, Mr.Otaku said:

Exactly what i was saying, when a concept goes really mainstream it loses what made it special in the first place, it starts to become more square and vanilla. So i don't mind the idea of deviant porn games staying a niche, where only people who have the desire for it will find it.

I'd say make it mainstream so I can wag my glorious piggy ass at naysayers who say otherwise. They made something as boring as guns mainstream in America so why can't they do it with sex? There are plenty of ways to make it weird and exciting. Women's wrestling over a mud pile, BDSM chariot races, Finding Love With Jesus (Uncensored Edition), shoot anime girls with orgasms or something, an ero guro themed mystery novel, the possibilities are crazy. Finding something mainstream is not going to tear down the value of a product unless you're like me and find life er moving on. A good product is a good product. Therefore any porno game that gets an award should get a round of applause.

[Mr. Otaku]

22 minutes ago, Darkpig said:

They made something as boring as guns mainstream in America so why can't they do it with sex?

Puritanical moral grandstanding. But everything that goes mainstream does have diminished quality. Music, movies, video games, you name it. I know "normie" is a really cringey word now but this applies here, the vanilla people will always have it against more niche stuff until it becomes bigger and gets incorporated into normie sphere of more blandness. I'm not saying be a hipster or some other shit, but going full on mainstream means making it a product of mass appeal, and mass appeal comes at the cost of dumbing down. It's simply a matter of demographics and according marketing.