Why is there not a bigger industry around adult-themed game? [Possible Answers Inside]

[shahbaby]

I think there is a huge untapped market for Skyrim+LL type games. Most other adult-themed games at the moment just don't compare. I think the main reason for this is that Skyrim is actually a decent open world game to begin with and adult content is usually more fun as an extra feature / mod rather than something around which the entire game is built. Another big factor is customization, there's really something for everyone.

 

Making something better than Skyrim+LL would be a pretty significant technical challenge but it could be done and there's definitely a market for it, so why has it not been done? Is it because it's too taboo?

[Guest]

I'm gonna quote myself in a similar thread (under spoiler because it's kinda long):

 

Spoiler

The thing with the Patreon model is that, despite its susceptibility to scams, it's the best we've got.

 

In order to enable people to actually put in the time and effort required to create a quality product, people need to be paid. Someone needs to invest in the production of the content. Adult content is high-risk due to the social stigma surrounding it, so you aren't going to get big, central investors. The crowdfunding model is the means currently available to us of solving that problem. 

 

Certainly there are indie developers, both in the adult realm and outside of it, who manage success without a prior investment because they have the good fortune to be able to work on their game without pay for a long period of time. (Along with exceptional perseverance - again, a blessing more than anything else...) This cannot, however, be treated as the norm. Quality content requires quality developers. There are numerous creators of various types of adult content out there who are quite talented! There is quality content out there in individual skillsets - art, writing, code - but not so much put together. You need a team. But then team dynamics become an issue, as we've seen in ... honestly, too many projects to name. It seems that a highly-functional team is about as exceptional as the fortunate indie dev. Another paradigm is needed.

 

The best thing to do, then, is to create a studio and hire people on to use their skills for a specific project, the way mainstream games are made. This avoids a huge friction-generating problem in teams, of each individual feeling like they have ownership over the project and thus encountering "differences in creative vision". But then, again, you run into the issue of investment. Who is going to fund a studio to hire a team - probably multiple teams - to produce a game over the course of multiple years, like is necessary for a high-quality experience? When it comes to adult content, it's just too risky. And crowdfunding runs into the same scammability problem.

 

I do want to say something else positive about the crowdfunding model as we use it today, though. It shows that people are willing to pay for adult content. That wasn't necessarily the case a few years ago - people are very, very used to free porn catering to their preferences whenever they want it. But a lot of us want a more interactive experience that we are willing to pay a premium for, clearly! Seeing that the market exists is important for any potential investors. I think we've done a good job of showing that interest.

 

Another issue, on the topic of paid content, is a strange phenomenon I'm still trying to understand... but basically, I think people are less likely to spend money on an experience if it has to be private. They're embarrassed by paying for porn, and I'm not entirely sure why. My guess is that you simply get less value out of an inherently solitary experience. Pornography consumed in community - whatever that means - would help circumvent this issue. Both the issues of investor attraction and consumer willingness to pay, honestly, trace back to a cultural issue. Shift the cultural taboo on sex and pornography in particular, and you have a healthy market. 

 

 

I think the scene has drastically improved over the past five years and love how the Patreon model has given us multiple living, updating quality games to play. Unfortunately they're still few, and they can't cater to everyone's preferences. I'd love to see an explosion of sex content but the labor just isn't there & willing right now. Hopefully seeing these successful projects will encourage others. I just also think that these games being labors of love - generally one or two people's "pet project" - might be holding them back. We need an injection of cold capitalism!

[Mud]

There's all sorts of reasons that contribute to the whole, I think. A few would include...

 

1. It's difficult to advertise adult media. You can't exactly have reviews, commercials, and banners for Fuckmaster 7000: Return of the Fuckener playing anywhere minors could run into them, nor are people going to blowing up social media about how much they loved Level 69 in The Adventures of Sexy Sally 2: Sex Harder.

2. It's difficult to actually design a good porn game, by which I mean one that can seamlessly integrate sex content and actual gameplay. In most adult games, the sex is either completely disjointed from the actual gameplay, making the game just a staggered delivery method for porn, or the sex happens in the middle of gameplay by bringing everything to a screeching halt while it plays out, or worse, as seen in many amateur H-games, the sex content is outright detrimental to the gameplay by having it cost health the longer you let it run or similar.

3. As a sort of offshoot of the previous, sexy games are preceded by a notorious reputation of being terrible, because they try to carry themselves on the sex appeal part without caring about making an actually good game. So this only gets worse when you go from fanservice games to the full-on porn game market, which features a sea of mediocre games hiding a few good gems in its depths.

[Cynical Misanthrope]

As @Mud already pointed out, making a more hardcore sex game is difficult to promote and advertise to the mainstream because sex still carries a stigma.

A few games do indeed have a few sexy times shown, but it's often very cinematic in nature and do not offer much input from the player. Unless you have the tools to mod it in yourself.

 

It reeks of double-standards because most kids and many of us has played one murder simulator after another, but the moment when nudity is shown or presented, we all loose our shit.

[worik]

I think it's a niche ...and by that not deemed worth to invest in it ... not enough to be gained from it. And too much to hassle with.

Sad but probably true. You can't get anywhere with it...

 

You make porn films... in any halfly-liberal country no problem... exhibitions, market places, advertisment places .. all there

You make computer games .... again everything there ...

You make porn computer games ..... ugh .... just imagine this:

• There's the unattractive corner at the porn exhibition for your nerdy booth... where there are no stars to attract attention. And all you can offer is ..... a look at a computer screen ...  have fun
• There's NO corner for you at the games exhibition at all ... children everywhere. No one has a problem if those children are influenced and indoctrinated with military simulators to later willingly donate their body to some army or the other.. (national pride it's called, if I remember that crap-talk right) But it is of utmost importance in 99,9% of all countries in the world to keep them as far away from any sexually connoted topics for as long as possible in their livespan.

I havn't yet heard of any country that makes selling a book about person-to-person violence to an adult a criminal offense in itself. It's just a question of who kills who and why.

At the same I havent heard of a single country that has NO limiting rules on selling a book about sexual person-to-person encounters to adults.

 

And at least where I live, the lawmakers prove everyday, every public speech, that they still havn't the slightest clue about computer games at all.

 

Why would I (as a company) want to burden myself with that stupid setting? I'd rather stick to selling lawn mowers ... 

[clj602]

In the US, these games would be rated AO (adults only) by the ESRB. An AO rating is not a ban, but it means a game can't be advertised or sold in physical stores. Most big platforms, publishers, and retailers refuse to sell AO material as it is usually controversial. A lot of stuff on this site, which is distributed for free/for patrons, would cause too much of a PR problem for companies. 

Part of why video games can't get away with this is because they are not seen as a valid artistic medium. Plays, books, movies, and now TV are considered culturally significant and true 'art' forms. Art that pushes the boundaries is more easily accepted by mainstream culture in comparison to video games. A.S.O.I.A.F./Game of Thrones and 50 Shades of Grey (not saying it's art, but it is mainstream smut) are sexually explicit but still acceptable because they are part of 'higher' mediums. I mean, the Best Picture this year was a movie about a woman who has sex with a fish monster. 

For publishers to be willing to broaden their horizons (and the ESRB to loosen restrictions the way the MPPC had to), video games need to be accepted as high culture or art, and not just entertainment for children. The gaming community may view certain games as art, but the majority of the world either doesn't know about them, or doesn't agree.

 

Content from LL makes my gameplay much more enjoyable. But I also know I would be against it if some of the things on this site were mass distributed. While violence in video games has been shown not to cause real-world violence, there is evidence showing how sexually explicit and violent games can lead to harmful beliefs when it comes to sexual assault and domestic violence, from both men and women. I have faith that people here know how to separate digital fantasy from reality, I'm not that confident with the general public.

[Phelps1247]

Patreon probably. Overstaurated with questionable quality games built on someone else's engine often with nothing to play while trying to charge $5 a month for it. Which is $60 a year so, the price of a full AAA game release that cost millions of dollars to make...that people don't buy anyway and wait for sales on these days because there's one every 3 months. I usually hit that X fast as possible the second I see Patreon mentioned on a game page. At least those assest flips/card & achievement generating machines on Steam only charge 50 cents.

[ShiroiKaze69]

Nutaku has been probably one of the more successful platforms for adult PC games- although something on the budget of Skyrim is kind of wishful thinking in this space.

[Bloodly]

I'm old enough to remember the various Lula games, which were....an effort, and did get into mainstream stores with an 18 rating.(Lula:The Sexy Empire somehow made it to GOG.com, if you're interested.  How, I don't even know.)  Other than that, there's been little with any real kind of strength behind it other than Japan's efforts.  The other posters have gone over most of the reasoning.

[alcurad90]

American and western game makers are not hard core enough to play those dirty games(most of them don't play games, I feel).

Japanese game makers are thought as Lolicon and Rapers.

Chinese makers can't make even sexy char due to the ... law?

[FauxFurry]

Judging by how many free-to-play adult games there are out there, it would not be worthwhile to attempt to put a high quality product out there to compete with all of the free games only to have someone steal one's game to put on their site if one chooses to follow through on one's plans,anyway, hoping that one will be too ashamed to take the case to court.

 

Many of the adult games and visual novels have taken to releasing toned down versions of their games on Steam these days, leaving bread crumb trails leading back to the 18+ version of the game (which may or may not be sold at a premium). That way, their copyright will be indisputable and their first impression won't be as unfavorable to the generally sexually reserved general public. Sex only sells as well as moral guardian types allow it to.

[cypress_z]

I've been doing this since 2008 and I make a comfortable living off of it. It's much as everyone has said - this was not a living before patreon, it was something you did for free as a hobby. Without money we could only make what we personally could make. I made a game out of my own pocket for about four years and few people have the luxury of being able to put time and money into something like that. The quality of everything went way up once patreon came along and you could make money, within one year I did better than I did in the previous four and finished it. I was able to swap from my dayjob to this. But that by no means makes it a done deal. Assembling a team for my next game was hard, getting everyone working in the same way was hard, building a community is hard, etc. Starting a business means facing difficult problems and overcoming them or sinking.

 

Sales across various sites are possible now but are still new, everything is very unstable and uncertain and you never know if pornographic games will get banned somewhere. Simply put this is the wild west of our industry and it is building up quite a bit but little has been built and the market is not tamed. There IS an industry now, which is great. Now we just have to basically build the infrastructure and reliability of any other industry from scratch for ourselves. We're probably going to suffer a few starts and stops along the way, too - once the wider public actually realizes there is an industry there'll be pushback. We have to make sure we can get money to people who want to make things and get games to people who want games. 

 

Also, try to make some SFW money if you can too or when the next round of porn bans and censorship come around you might find things rather tough. No part of this is stable enough that anyone should stake their entire life on this yet. I can take this risk because I can go back to work in my previous field at any point. Most people can't. 

[lorm42]

Some Reasons:

a) 99.99% of all porn games are extremely bad .... ruining the market for the scare jewels.

b) It's nearly impossible to find a reliable download gateway.

c) It's hard to get the money .. most trustworthy payment gateways don't allow porn.

d) Advertising your game is nearly impossible.

e) Patreon .. it seeded an endless slow development cycles for promising games that never reach a worthwhile state as it's so nice to get monthly income for nearly no development. It's the platform for lazy bums harvesting idiots money.

f) Endless books of laws that can get you into prison quite fast for even "harmless" stuff.

 

 

 

[myuhinny]

There are many reliable download gateways the ones that are not reliable or seem shady are the ones that are not uploaded by the author and they use those ones so that they can get money from each download.

 

The industry isn't bigger because of places like patreon which makes half of or more of the adult industry not allowable on their site so many can't use it some use it and others use it but have to make it patreons way to pass their rules then off site there will be a patch for the game to turn it back to what it was suppose to be.

[Dark Thoughts]

First off, most devs try to target as much people as possible, so a teen type of rating is more common than strict adult ones.

However I think the biggest reason is that there's not really a platform to distribute this type of games, Steam allows for adult content but doesn't really provide a good platform for it.

I'm pretty sure there's a huge demand but so far no one is really taking the risk of investing into it. I still think Valve would be the best candidate but they would really have to up their game with a dedicated platform.

[FauxFurry]

For as many proponents of the games industry and of freedom of sexual expressions as there are, there is an almost equally large number of groups dedicated to banning and all games and/or sexual content in fiction as it is. When you combine the two, it brings the would-be defenders of children and/or the 'purity' of the medium of video games (the same type of folks who think that the Furry Fandom ruined anthropomorphic animals stories of all kinds by merely existing in the same media as the 'family friendly' fare), it looks to be a losing proposition for anyone who would have pumped any money into it.

 

This could potentially be circumvented by a coalition of companies which already produce content exclusively for adult audiences. For example, an alcoholic beverage manufacturer, a condom brand and a casino could bankroll an adult game that would no doubt feature product placement promoting their brands.

Of course, this could itself come with a risk to their own industries as someone could accuse them of trying to sell their products to children by playing to the idea that all games are for kids so it may have been considered but dismissed previously. 

[duck666]

Sex and fetishes/kinks are still highly taboo topics in many highly conservative countries around the world.

[Guest]

On 4/22/2018 at 3:50 PM, cypress_z said:

Also, try to make some SFW money if you can too or when the next round of porn bans and censorship come around you might find things rather tough. No part of this is stable enough that anyone should stake their entire life on this yet. I can take this risk because I can go back to work in my previous field at any point. Most people can't. 

This is a good point. Organizing your life around NSFW content is a terrible idea because your livelihood can be taken away from you at any moment, and if you were public/visible then you may never work again outside of the adult sector due to the stigma. These acts can bring down giants - FOSTA for example...

[ReMeDy]

On 04/29/2018 at 3:45 PM, zexari said:

This is a good point. Organizing your life around NSFW content is a terrible idea because your livelihood can be taken away from you at any moment, and if you were public/visible then you may never work again outside of the adult sector due to the stigma. These acts can bring down giants - FOSTA for example...

I dont understand why people say this. So let me get this straight: I try getting a job at McDonalds,  and the interviewer says, "Hey, I recognize you. Arent you the guy who made that online RPG Maker porn game?"

 

Come on, guys. Lets be real. We arent famous. Now if any of us were celebrities or in positions of power, then yes, getting caught doing this would be quite embarrassing.

[Guest]

It's more that, if it ever comes out, you can be fired for it, and at many places would be. But I work in education, so that's coloring my perspective. I don't know how Average Business Joe would fare in that situation, to be fair.

[FauxFurry]

11 hours ago, ReMeDy said:

I dont understand why people say this. So let me get this straight: I try getting a job at McDonalds,  and the interviewer says, "Hey, I recognize you. Arent you the guy who made that online RPG Maker porn game?"

 

Come on, guys. Lets be real. We arent famous. Now if any of us were celebrities or in positions of power, then yes, getting caught doing this would be quite embarrassing.

Businesses with Morals Clauses can and do fire people who worked in pornography. It isn't about the employer recognizing the person from porn at a glance, it is about them turning up those results in a routine background check.

[ReMeDy]

On 5/1/2018 at 7:29 AM, FauxFurry said:

Businesses with Morals Clauses can and do fire people who worked in pornography. It isn't about the employer recognizing the person from porn at a glance, it is about them turning up those results in a routine background check.

Yea, but if they search by name, they'll come up with your user name, so I don't see how that can be traced to a real name. Even so, I guess the only real solution then is to have two user names: One for porn, another for everything else.

[Dusk_]

1 hour ago, ReMeDy said:

Yea, but if they search by name, they'll come up with your user name, so I don't see how that can be traced to a real name. Even so, I guess the only real solution then is to have two user names: One for porn, another for everything else.

And when they ask you what you've been doing for the last 5 years and examples of your work?  Either answer of "making extreme porn games" or "I have done absolutely nothing" are equally terrible.

[dds3000]

I remember trying to buy some H-games on dlsite 4 years ago, was worth it, now I look at the site, SO SO MANY bad games with low effort its kinda sad