Sad state of adult indie games.

[red phantoms]

True but then again there is material to compare. As young as adult developer practice in croudfunding is, there is an short era that start them all. back when the crowd still not catching the practice, there is lot of interesting project. This situation is actually proven ironically effective since most of the project are passion project. Even tho the title is limited you can see the the developer put them all to their project.

 

As for now the crowd already aware that such a practice made money they started to make it money maker project. Thus the practice of make money fast scam started to reach adult indie industry. Not only they often made only rudimentary game they started to burry the better project by sheer number alone. With some of them turned out to be scam

 

On the other hand for a good indie developer who still treat their project seriously often find out their game do not reach their targeted pledge and got discouraged. But can you blame them ? specially since crowd trust starting to weaver thanks to other bad developer shenanigan.

[cypress_z]

1 hour ago, red phantoms said:

True but then again there is material to compare. As young as adult developer practice in croudfunding is, there is an short era that start them all. back when the crowd still not catching the practice, there is lot of interesting project. This situation is actually proven ironically effective since most of the project are passion project. Even tho the title is limited you can see the the developer put them all to their project.

 

As for now the crowd already aware that such a practice made money they started to make it money maker project. Thus the practice of make money fast scam started to reach adult indie industry. Not only they often made only rudimentary game they started to burry the better project by sheer number alone. With some of them turned out to be scam

 

On the other hand for a good indie developer who still treat their project seriously often find out their game do not reach their targeted pledge and got discouraged. But can you blame them ? specially since crowd trust starting to weaver thanks to other bad developer shenanigan.

Those things didn't stop happening. To be quite frank I don't think people often understand how much those things turn out to be mini-miracles. Getting a group of skilled people together for a collaborative passion project is tough, keeping them together is near impossible. But they happened then and still happen now because those types of people didn't just up and disappear. 

 

I made my first game as a five year long free passion project paid out of my own pocket, then I made it a job once patreon became a thing because I'd rather do this than work at a corporate hospital. When I started nobody had a choice but to work free - none of this could be paid for online and it was the recession so nobody had any money anyway. I remember quite distinctly paypal freezing my account for accepting donations at one point before patreon existed. I also started on RPG maker before moving onto visual novels. There's nothing wrong with the system if you put real effort and talent into it. 

 

You still get a lot of people doing fun useful stuff for free all the time. There are still people making free games just for fun, but just like before they're rare and miraculous when they happen. It's just that now they're not the only ones around that things seem muddled. But people forget just how many of them fall apart, or what it was like to stare out at an empty landscape devoid of games or mods save those made by the rare miracle. When they were made they were often made into news stories and publicly derided. 

 

There are scammers and scummy people out there. There's also decent hardworking people who put out real work. Look to developers that have finished big games and mods and have credible histories to keep yourself from getting ripped off if you want to support people, and don't if you don't. Putting out a lot of adult games reliably does require money, though. It's why the Japanese have long had a lot of games and we haven't - they could actually sell things in their stores. We couldn't, save for old school porn stores, and those were starting to go out of business at the time we all started. 

[Choppytehbear]

Funnily enough, the best adult inde games I have played in the last couple years are made on twine. The authors also seem to care a lot more about their audience. 

[cktan100]

2 hours ago, cypress_z said:

Those things didn't stop happening. To be quite frank I don't think people often understand how much those things turn out to be mini-miracles. Getting a group of skilled people together for a collaborative passion project is tough, keeping them together is near impossible. But they happened then and still happen now because those types of people didn't just up and disappear. 

 

I made my first game as a five year long free passion project paid out of my own pocket, then I made it a job once patreon became a thing because I'd rather do this than work at a corporate hospital. When I started nobody had a choice but to work free - none of this could be paid for online and it was the recession so nobody had any money anyway. I remember quite distinctly paypal freezing my account for accepting donations at one point before patreon existed. I also started on RPG maker before moving onto visual novels. There's nothing wrong with the system if you put real effort and talent into it. 

 

You still get a lot of people doing fun useful stuff for free all the time. There are still people making free games just for fun, but just like before they're rare and miraculous when they happen. It's just that now they're not the only ones around that things seem muddled. But people forget just how many of them fall apart, or what it was like to stare out at an empty landscape devoid of games or mods save those made by the rare miracle. When they were made they were often made into news stories and publicly derided. 

 

There are scammers and scummy people out there. There's also decent hardworking people who put out real work. Look to developers that have finished big games and mods and have credible histories to keep yourself from getting ripped off if you want to support people, and don't if you don't. Putting out a lot of adult games reliably does require money, though. It's why the Japanese have long had a lot of games and we haven't - they could actually sell things in their stores. We couldn't, save for old school porn stores, and those were starting to go out of business at the time we all started. 

Who do you think are the up and coming people/ studios that are worth investing in? In your opinion that is. 

You are obviously one of the more experienced people when it comes to this, anything we should look out for? 

[cypress_z]

13 hours ago, cktan100 said:

Who do you think are the up and coming people/ studios that are worth investing in? In your opinion that is. 

You are obviously one of the more experienced people when it comes to this, anything we should look out for? 

1: Look for anyone with a complete game. Complete games are hard, and complete games take time, effort, and dedication. Even just finishing a crappy game puts you above almost everyone. Finishing an average or good adult game puts you in the top tier.

 

2: Up and comers still need support, so support the people relevant to your interests without a serious expectation of return. For instance if you really liked, say, Warhammer 40k and wanted a 40k porn game with hot Eldar on Sister of battle action, it's fine to support a new guy doing that thing if they look serious. If someone is starting out and you want to see if they're reliable, look for any history at all. Avoid people with a history of dropping projects before they're finished, but have a bit of mercy for first timers still learning to plan a game. 

 

3: Support modders making games you like that are relevant to your interests. Modders can transition into people making or working on a game much more easily than a lot of others. 

 

There's a few people making adult games that have shown themselves to be reliable. The Huniepop dev, Swegabe, Hentaiwriter, etc. A few other forums like Legend of Krystal, ULMF, Hypnopics-Collective, and the transformation game site specialize in games that cater to certain fetishes or styles of game, just like how this place is primarily about game modding. You'll learn about games that interest you most in the communities that interest you most, but there's plenty of hidden gems scattered throughout the forums depending on what interests you. 

 

As for up and coming people doing interesting things, I suppose I'd point to people like LewdFraggy, who is making an MMD based VR game, BBBen, who makes twine games, Changer, who makes mind control games, the free cities dev and plenty of others. Speedapple is doing RPG Maker but posted here recently and looks pretty promising to me. Original art always sets you apart. Those are just some promising people from off the top of my head. There's plenty out there. 

 

 

 

 

[Valaska]

Well, at the same time a lot of us are trying hard to make something that is worth playing. I tend to skip over any and all visual novels for the same reason OP but it ends up making me miss some real gems out there etc...

 

In the end it is definitely because people who begin these projects often have large names or hit certain fetish queues that catch on. The hardest thing for a new project which I am experiencing right now is getting even a few people to just... Talk about it. There are as you said so many big arists that simply plop in and drop a couple scenes in a lazily written visual novel or RPG maker and then just rake in the cash and people go nuts and crazy for it. But you put in real concerted effort into making a narrative and mechanics and go about building the foundation of the game and you get a wall of silence essentially.

 

Just getting one or two people to go "Oh this looks neat" is like pulling teeth without a massive huge artists name behind you or just pandering to one certain fetish to gain notoriety. So at the same time it is extremely disheartening to get into this community at first for someone actually attempting to put effort behind their product. It almost seems lewd gamers want less quality in a product but quick and easy turn overs and asset flippers who literally trace each others artwork across multiple games and re-use it over and over again... Which is a huge thing adult game studios do.

 

So while we are going to stick this out and build this game here at Team Dead Deer, I can perfectly see why so many people just give up in the formative stages of making a good game with adult content. And all I can say is you, the audience, just talk to these projects that seem to be making an effort. Your words mean a lot more than you could realize. Support them on pateron or the lewd kickstarter thing if you feel like it but I mean in the first place just start talking and commenting on their projects!