discussion Absolute game drought ?

[whisperpuppy]

Yeah it's a shame but after all the crackdowns and switching laws depending on were you live it's understandable why.

The only viable way will be to make any game+ as a hobby and not advertise anywhere. Then share it anonymously on forums like ours.

Shared with secret handshakes.

 

[kullthebarb]

I wouldn't say the worst, but we are definitely in a huge sink, new games nowdays almost always play safe or take forever to make, there is still a few good ones that come out from time to time, but are scarce

 

[Penitus]

Some people need to get together and figure out a good alternative system to pay/fund the stuff we like without big brother payment processor watching.

 

[blublubloblo]

Very sad to see how freedom of artistic expression is regressing. With AI to express itself in your place and to bring the uninformed attention of the masses to the "abuse" of fictional characters, with filthy tourists infiltrating every niche online space and trying to bend the rules of those spaces to accommodate them, with the unwritten rules of the market nudging creators towards imitation, with credit card companies up to antics similarly evil to those of the Combine, with DLSITE blocking western ip addresses from accessing "problematic" media, with kemono dying... Many circumstances conspire against lovers of erotic art. Strange how killing is more accepted than fucking. So strange.
Considering the poll results, you're not alone in holding the sentiment that this subculture is going through a dry season.
These are dark days. Not just for erotic gaming, but for gaming as a whole. Though regular violence-oriented gaming does have a few lights shining through the darkness, as far as I'm aware, the situation for love-oriented gaming is pure grimdark. I fear darker days await still.
What do you say? Do you believe that brighter days are ahead of us?
As much as I despise nostalgia, I want to reminisce about my days of stumbling upon erotic games, earlier on itch.io's free section, then discovering superdeepthroat and later on finding the goldmine that is fff as a dumb horny teenager and having my mind (and loads) absolutely blown by that new world. Before that, I'd been jerking to hot characters from ps2/ps3 games for years but when I found out that you could play games that were all about sex... What a sense of discovery, of wonder, of euphoria was found there in that new world. I was in love. I was especially enamoured with interactive sex simulators from the start but that subgenre, which has always been somewhat of an underdog (by my perception), has gotten so dry in recent times. Or maybe it hasn't, maybe it still is seeing consistent releases but those are being drowned out by the torrent of shit. Or maybe I'm too specific with my tastes nowadays, once past the initial exploration stage, knowing what to look for closes many doors.

 

[Dingelbarry]

There are some good projects but alot of crap projects out there.

Im not sure if i would call it a drought

 

[mistereme]

Wouldnt say there is a drought, there is, however, a whole lot more very low effort games tho (mainly with ai pics/animations).

 

[hugh mungus]

So much is just AI generated photos and stories. They're just lazy and bad.

 

[Abere Lucifer]

Thanks for the insight - hard agree.

I would basically summarize it as overinflation of adult games market (thanks to the COVID) and conversion to a business focused endeavor. I very much so viewed the devs as hobbyists from 2017-2020 which does explain the broader variety of past games, unique ideas and fetishes instead of catering to a "modern audience" (for a lack of a better term). That also explains the decimation of fetishes. incest and also loli games.

Meaning business = money, money = payment processors, payment processors = surveillance and censorship.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting adult games to be affected by this so quickly. It does seem that COVID very much hastened the progression to the business side of things which ultimately ruined majority of the adult games for me.
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Very true. In my view the population of this site is rapidly growing as does the interest for these games, but ironically as the interest grows - these games cease to exist.

More interest and fundamentally no new games or updates to the existing ones.
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Furthermore, as a person who has previously tried tinkering with DAZ3D in the past years - the barrier of entry into the creation aspect is absolutely huge. I would say this is absolutely the biggest factor that most people don't think about, as none of them have used DAZ3D before.

I do find that it takes extreme amount of time to put out one rendered image and after 6 or so finished renders I gave up on creating any games myself. Don't even get me started on animations... one second of animation took like 30 minutes which is absolutely crazy to me.

So imagine, as a dev - you have to:

1. Finance the needed hardware
2. Learn all the required skills
3. Have the patience to wait for these renders which also means you can't use the computer during this time
4. Takes a toll on your hardware = shorter lifespan = more investments

And as reward your product is extremely hard to monetize and has to be vanilla themed to succeed and be allowed on most sites.

If you put all these things together, the current state of adult games is not that shocking anymore.

Oh, the "Modern Audience." Don't get me started on them. They're not really fans of mine. I like taking their "Sacred Cows" and make BBQ with them. Apparently they don't like it when ya do that. It's mighty tasty though. LOL!

 

[SammyJ27]

The patreon scare combined with the AI NTR meta has really destroyed the market. more games than ever are being made just so many are cash grabs or AI slop. Its easy to make slop and to make money with slop. If patreon or the morality police come for your slop its ok because you put minimal effort into it and you can just make more.

 

[Takota]

Hello everyone !

I want to hear everyone's opinion on this topic that has been on my mind for the last few months. I have been active in the adult game community since 2017 and in my opinion it's currently the worst it's ever been in terms of game releases, abandoned games, game/fetish variance and AI slop.

Most games feel very same-ish (models, lighting, environment, game ideas/story). We could definitely argue that the amount of games has increased, but with a substantial decrease in terms of quality. Unique looking models, coherent story and fetishes like incest are basically dead.

Futhermore, new "Plus" games are basically non-existent (other than Blackheart Games). Most of them are abandoned or have virtually no content with 0.1 release. I consider this "genre" dead, meaning we get possibly one interesting update or a new game release per 3-4 months.

Could we attribute this to credit cards companies, more strict laws and the rise of AI and surveillance ? What is everyone's opinion ?

I want to say it started with the death of Flash. Everything else is just setback after setback. Flash gave us games and interactable animations. Most adult games and videos were free; few were monitarialy linked to a patreon account. Google drops Flash. Creators had to find new engines to work with. Sites tried to make their own flash players (NG)(HFlash), others died (Comdot). Tumblr bans nsfw; causing artists to migrate. PornHub bans animations, later allows it. All goes to x-video before they ban it. Sites get monetized and start banning fetishes, then the card companies force them to ban more. To quote Born-To-Die; "It's not feasible to make a living anymore". Unity scare. More restrictions, AI takes artist's art and jobs. Everything is being bottlenecked.

Summarize; more restrictions less quality stories, less models, less artwork (ai taking more)

 

[savetheworld30]

I agree with most of the people here. There is a GOOD game drought. I will also clarify that while my answer to the poll is "No," I say that as I believe that things CAN get worse than now. I envision the scene to be getting worse in the next couple years due to more laws, which leads to less dev effort, which leads to more saturation of low-effort games, and it goes on. Right now, I am just enjoying what we have in the present, even when it may have been better before my time. There's no use clinging to the past.

 

[Deleted member 255038]

Quick answer: Yes.

tl;dr: I have so much tinfoil in my blood, I just can't participate without going full "innawoods anarcho-libertas".
All the major moving parts of our sleezy drought are cited clearly in the previous posts.
I'mma let y'all talk it out by yourselves. I just can't. Uncles Ted and Marvin are calling....
Fight now, fap free, flat is justice, hose the clankers, publish everything.

 

[SiimonBaz]

I don't want blame AI...
but I really feel like some creativity has been lost since then. plus, conservatism is on the rise while control and monitoring tools are everywhere, forcing devs to play it safe, if you know what I mean...

 

[Dediug]

Hard to create games when they keep getting censored because someone doesn't like the content

 

[scizzer12]

Completely mixed bag.
Some games are more creative than ever and breaking into mainstream. Publishers entering the space legitimizes and give us opportunity for uncensored and translated versions we'd never get otherwise. Even with AI cash grabs on the rise, it doesn't seem like there's much difference in the absolute amount of people trying to make something nice.

On the other hand, the complete shitshow that is censorship (not just games) has made everything but the most sanded down boring versions of everything a pain to find. Just the other day I had to switch to 6 different VPN countries for a doujin because each country had different restrictions on which versions were available to buy, where and how. And I couldn't even buy it legally if I wanted to still.

But if discoverability is down, it puts negative pressure on the people who actually want to make cool stuff. Or take cool stuff and make it even cooler.

tl;dr, I don't think there's a game drought but it sure looks like a game drought, and that may be a distinction without a difference...

 

[surmurnthur]

i've been diving more into 2d games and feel like there's actually been a nice, steady output in that realm. not much in the "plus" realm, but i haven't noticed too much of a dip in that sphere. thankfully it seems like most genAI 2d slop is generated along very similar artistic stylings so it's even easier to spot in the wild. found some really great art styles and usually there's unique and engaging story to go along with it. i've also dipped more into written smut that doesn't have as much visual porn in it, which expands what i'm able to enjoy within the same kind of space (obviously not the same as what people love from porn games, but i thought worth a mention). a refrain i see pretty commonly is that work and life has gotten in the way, and a lot of the time it's not so much a lack of ambition as a lack of energy and time. i hope that the amount of quality 2d games i'm starting to see is a hint at a resurgence in well-done porn games is coming in the next 2-4 years or so.
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i've been diving more into 2d games and feel like there's actually been a nice, steady output in that realm. not much in the "plus" realm, but i haven't noticed too much of a dip in that sphere. thankfully it seems like most genAI 2d slop is generated along very similar artistic stylings so it's even easier to spot in the wild. found some really great art styles and usually there's unique and engaging story to go along with it. i've also dipped more into written smut that doesn't have as much visual porn in it, which expands what i'm able to enjoy within the same kind of space (obviously not the same as what people love from porn games, but i thought worth a mention). a refrain i see pretty commonly is that work and life has gotten in the way, and a lot of the time it's not so much a lack of ambition as a lack of energy and time. i hope that the amount of quality 2d games i'm starting to see is a hint at a resurgence in well-done porn games is coming in the next 2-4 years or so.

I'll also say that the more genAI BS that floods the scene, the harder it is for anything from someone actually creating art to make it to where people will more readily see it. if the ratio of genAI starts to tip the scale (or has by now, idk) then finding anything other than highly anticipated or old and high-rated standards gets difficult and time consuming. nobody wants to go to page 40 to find something new to them and actually worth a try.

 

[Cunny Lord]

All you gotta do, my good brethren...

... is know where to look.