Sex related games aren’t made often even though pornography is a booming industry. Shouldn’t games covering the same themes be just as successful? Would making a well designed sexual game have monetary rewards?
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I feel like they don’t appear to be prevalent because many stores like Steam are not accepting them. If I recall correctly @Ony (who I haven’t seen on here lately) was making adult themed games and was fairly successful at it.
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I can barely find anywhere that sells quality adult games. So many are free but that’s not exactly what I’m looking for. Would it be viable to have a censored version of the game to pair with it? Same gameplay and mechanics but the sex is an optional component.
Well, mature games have their own audience (which isn’t restricted to merely pornography btw. but that’s beside the point).
Regarding what @Ryiah said:
It’s not that Steam doesn’t sell adult-only games, it’s just that the conditions aren’t really clear. Hatred was rated AO and is available on Steam. HuniePop is an adult game and is available on Steam (and GOG).
I really wish Valve would do something to clear this up. (Ideally resulting in adult-only games generally being allowed on Steam.)
@Tsukubane :
I think that the best option would be to do it exactly as the HuniePop developers did it. The Steam version is censored, but they offer an official uncut-patch through their website which is also linked in the Steam community’s FAQ.
The best of both worlds so to speak.
Is there money in it? HuniePop is a very good example in more ways than one. The game is basically bejeweled with sex. It’s a casual game being sold on Steam, a store mainly for core games. With that in mind, the game…
- …made it into Steam’s top 10 at launch
- …has - at the time of this post - sold 326,573 ± 12,317 copies (according to SteamSpy)
- …has a user rating that’s 96% positive
All of that despite…
- …getting flak from the progressive dipshits because of “muh representation of women” (even though the development team was 50-80% female depending on whether you count voice actors or not)
- …not getting coverage from Kotaku, Polygon and the other usual suspects
So, is there money to be made? Of course.
It’s a niche market though. So the two most important aspects are to a) deliver quality and b) budget your game accordingly.
I haven’t played the game, but I know that it’s a high quality product. Simply adding tits to a cheap game won’t cut it.
Hope this helps.
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Also worth noting that there’s a pretty significant range in what’s “adult” - all the way from PG-13 to XXX. Each of those audiences have very different kinds of requirements and boundaries.
There is a tremendous amount of money to be made with adult games. But I wouldn’t suspect it either easy to do, or easy to learn to do.
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Huniepop is either an outlier or the start of a trend to which there has been no follow up, and I don’t know which. The adult games “scene” has been around for a while, but outside of Japanese eroge, there really hasn’t been much of an english speaking market for it (not that eroge has had much of a market either). That leads me to think Huniepop is either a freak of nature that will never be repeated, or the gaming populous is now mature enough that we can now talk about porn without giving a shit.
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iOS (and google) doesn’t allow sex/adult-ish stuff (but hey sorry, I think it’s clear)
IDK, but to add something to the discussion, I would say something that is original, something that manages it to satisfy (hehe) many players/customers wishes, fetishes etc. in a way, that doesn’t feel …ridiculous, or makes the audience more like feeling ashamed than having fun, could be successful. Sure this genre will stay in a niche market, but I can imagine that this could change (a bit!).
and more open minded, I think that counts for Asia, europe, north america…etc.
USA has strange stance on all things sexual and is part of gaming market.
You could make the games, but you’d have hard time getting them known. Steam, gog and google play don’t accept that kind of content.
Japanese markets.
People don’t like buying “incomplete” content.
And if adult content is so optional that it can be easily removed with zero impact, why bother putting it in to begin with?
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I think that the answer is, of course you could make a boat load of money. But sticking naughty bits into a game doesn’t make it a good game or good adult entertainment.
People do make this stuff, and it has been around a while, but it obviously hasn’t caught on in any mainstream way.
You still would need to make a good game, and most people can’t do that much. So, adding AO content will just further limit your audience. The adult entertainment audience is extremely well served as it is.
Also, as someone who prides himself on knowing a little about games… what about a game can make it specifically sex-related? Seems to me like you got your wires crossed on this one.
Maybe he’s making an adult version of ring toss?
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The game I’m thinking is an RPG that has sex as a plot, and as a reward in the game. Censoring the game isn’t hard to do, lots of games do it in small ways. Rewarding a player with something more conventional like a weapon or cash seems fine. Changing the plot seems tough but it could be possible to make two parallel stories if it’s planned at the beginning.
I hate the thought of it, but I want to make the game I want but I also want to make money.
I’ve played a few adult games and most are simple or copies of others. While their are a few that are just good game designs, that I’d love to see a full game of. Even a non-adult equivalent would be nice. Adult games are more of a novelty than anything.
The adult content could bring in players interested, and solid gameplay will let players enjoy themselves. A combination of sex appeal and gameplay has been used to sell games before, but usually by lying through their teeth with empty promises of sexual content that gamers obviously want.
I guess that’s the difference between an adult themed game & a straight up XXX game.
I think you’re not very familiar with existing products in this part of the industry. Also, you expect to profit from it, seem to think that sexual content is an easy way to do it and it appears to be your first project?
IMO, the best idea would be to either do it for fun (forget about money), or drop the idea completely (forget about project).
Adult-themed or not, an RPG, requires massive amount of content. Adding adult themes will require more content and better artists.
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Seriously, track down @Ony and ask her for her thoughts. This is totally her domain, she made a couple of very successful games in this area. Even going through her post history will give you some insight into that market. From memory her comments were that the area had been very lucrative in the past. But it is now becoming a saturated market. As such its becoming less profitable then it had previously been.
I haven’t seen her around for a while. But she shared her twitter details in this thread. http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/twitter.12003/page-8#post-2242303
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Do you like and play adult themed games? If not, how do you think you could make a good one? Do you have a top notch artist for this kind of art, or an art budget that allows for at least a 5-figure sum spent on freelancers? Do you have a writer that can write erotic fiction on a level that doesn’t make people cringe?
To me the whole thing sounds like you are looking for a magical get-rich niche that just no one has thought of yet, but I’d rather consider it an unpredictable market where you can’t start out with low production values, so it’s a high risk investment or you better don’t even start, if it is financial success you are after.
You would probably be better off producing straight up porn videos and trying your luck in that market. At least I’d imagine the financial risk to be way lower.
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Spot on.
The difference between adult and non-adlult RPG is that “adult” version will require several dozens additional high quality 2d art stills and more text.
Also, typical decent visual novel (regardless of having or not having adult content) takes about 40 hours to finish it.
So, it is not a “magic shortcut to fame and riches”.
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Sex changes your audience. My app, Good Sex, Great Marriage, has a sexy title, it discusses sex, and yet, is completely safe for children. Sort of how National Geographic can cover it. As such, it has large possible audience, specifically couples looking to improve their relationship.
Most times, ‘sex’ actually shrinks the audience, particularly in America. At the same time, the audience that remains is more likely to be interested in your game. So you get a more motivated niche audience - which from a marketing perspective, is a great place to be. Quality still matters.
Gigi
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I think the majority opinion has already been expressed, but I’ll throw my two cents in as well.
There’s quite a difference between the game you seem to describe in your first post vs a few posts later. First, let’s discuss the second version (Sex-themed RPG)
Consider Leisure Suit Larry (the newer ones) and The Witcher.
Leisure Suit Larry has never backed down from the subject of sex, but it approaches it in an infantile manner. This approach is generally targeted towards your recently pubescent males or adult males with… impaired social skills with the opposite gender. Flashing breasts, potty humor, sexist undertones… All accompanied by generally poor quality all around and questionable taste in the first place.
The Witcher, on the other hand, is a finely-crafted RPG intended for audiences who want a more mature take on fantasy. Everything from the visceral and graphic violence (that still isn’t over-the-top or overly glorified) to the nudity and sex scenes (albeit, only nude women as far as I ever saw) suggests the experience is targeted at adults. While the peeks of areola and camera pans to women’s backsides are still intended to be titillating, it’s handled in a manner closer to cinema than that of a poorly produced pornography.
My wife loves watching me play The Witcher 3, and while she’s commented on some of the sillier or unnecessary nudity occurrences, it never felt trashy or pornographic. Conversely, I’d be very embarrassed to play a Leisure Suit Larry game around her (or even by myself, for that matter).
In summary, quality and intent makes a world of difference when approaching sex as a subject of a game.
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I’m surprised no one’s mentioned this yet, but from a purely business perspective look into VR. Early adopters of VR hardware have proven they’ll spend money, and in terms of VR content in general there’s more demand than supply.
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I read something about porn/xxx/adult stuff being the biggest area of software developed for VR once oculus & Google cardboard started gaining traction. It wasn’t an area that received a lot of publicity, maybe because people were worried that it would become the main story & detract from the technology gaining wide acceptance.