discussion Does it feel like there aren't very many "new" games that are good?

[Dario]

The clothing store changing room scene is also becoming routine, but still fun if the girls are hot. It going to be tougher to get more creative since many premises are being replayed slightly differently.

 

[MattShizzle]

I notice a lot with stuff that sucks - cartoony - including koishitsu, kinetic novel (which aren't games at all), ntr, futa, sandbox, blackmail, etc.

 

[LewisCarroll]

Might be just that I'm getting old or something but it seems like a few years ago, you'd check the various sites and almost every week there'd be a new game or an update to a game that was incredible. Like 2-3 games a week being updated that were just really good, really decent stories that had good renders and animations, tolerable writing, etc.

And some of those games are still out there and still being worked on, with updates periodically.
But for the last few months it feels like there's so many games that are following the fetishes/trends that I'm not really into, or that just don't spend any real time on animations/renders, or that just follow the same templates as all the other popular games.
I mean, I like Harem games for example but it seems like almost every Harem game is copying the most popular few harem games and I can't even tell you how many "Dad that's fucking his daughters, wife, sister, nieces, their friends, etc" games that follow almost exactly the same plot.

1. Get seduced by daughter #1.
2. Hide it from wife.
3. Sister comes back into life due to a divorce from her husband.
4. Fuck sister like you always used to.
5. Find out sister's daughter(s) are your kids, fuck them with sister's help.
6. Sister helps you fuck your daughter #2.
7. Wife finds out you're fucking niece, gets mad.
8. Easily talk wife out of her anger with the power of dick.
9. Fuck wife, daughters, sister, nieces, some of their friends.
10. Daughters ask you to impregnate them constantly.
11. Sister talks you into impregnating her daughters.
12. You're a very wealthy businessman who also fucks his assistant.

It's like...this could describe half a dozen games I like. But why?

It's like that "you're a college graduate and your dad just died so you moved home but now you have to fuck your mom and sister, or they lose the house to gangsters!" type of plot.

Why isn't anybody coming up with unique stories anymore? Why are all the games feeling the same?

Is it just me?

I'm about a month away from releasing my alpha VN and none of those elements will be in my game. There will also be less straight on porn and more focus on characters, erotica and plot.

Being a dev is hard. I think we're just seeing burn out. I'm doing this alone and I don't plan on trying to make money. You have to be a decent writer, 3d artist/animator and programmer - all different disciplines with different challenges. I used to write long form short stories and have some tech background (before going into medicine). Condensing a plot to fit Ren'Py's limited dialogue has been a challenge and trying to find tool's is frustrating. I learned on more mainstream software, but all of them are now too expensive to do it for free. Moving from Photoshop to Affinity or Final Cut Pro to DaVinci Resolve or Lightwaave 3D to Daz3D/Blender is tough.

If I don't see a lot of support I'm going to try again but will go more mainstream, none-porn, rought using the things I've learned here. If that doesn't pan out I can always just keep learning Python and focus on AI aplets.

 

[Wolf 77]

There were more good New games a few years ago. Of course everything is new to a New one. Ist harder to give something special when to magic of novelty has worn off.

 

[HornDragon]

true honestly most games have very similar premises recently rarely are there games with a unique twists to it

 

[BNWOAmbassador]

I think there was a boom between 2019-2021 that - not completely but - saturated the market.

Either way, I won't stop playing them because at the end of the day, it's the same premise but a different way to showing it.

And the graphics are getting better and better. Hope someday it'd be fully realistic AI design.

 

[Wolf 77]

Úgy érzem, hogy a legtöbb jó játék, amivel érdemes játszani, a Games Plus kategóriába tartozik. Úgy tűnik, hogy ezek rendszeresebb frissítéseket kapnak, mint a többi játék.

I don't think so. I looked át games+, there also old 1-2 chapters , and unfinished games .

 

[XTenkaya]

Exceptionally unique and good games are painstaking to make and usually not worth the time, so its rare. I have played a lot of great new games though, just have to find them. Some genres are a bit more flooded than others. Most 2d unity games are going to be good because it requires novel assets and design. JP Eroge and 3dcg VN are mass produced and therefore more likely to be of a more average quality.

 

[astralac]

I've been thinking the same thing lately, it feels like I'm revisiting the same old favorites because nothing new has really caught my attention in a while.

 

[Fxfa]

The NTR genre is fucked now. Too much AI slop.

 

[arar]

hundreds of good games this site and many others with new stuff daily

 

[blonk1]

There are still new good games with unique stories

 

[A_Man_In_Space]

I think our preferences get smaller and smaller. The industry is as big as ever but our preferences or at least mine, prevent me from playing all these games. I remember playing every game I see but now, I skip so many.

 

[awkwardwank]

My issue is that my bar keeps going up. The bad new games are easily forgotten, and the good new ones just keep raising the average in my selective memory.

 

[naughtyones]

I Disagree to an extent, I think its because more exceptional games are coming out that the good games that you would once praise are being diluted by the pure quality a few hold over it.
it is no longer at the point where good renders and proper(ish) English are enough to be successful.

Will say it does not help that the growing trend of good titles being abandoned half way through once the dev decides to cash out with <insert medical issue here> excuse leaves many people hesitant and unwilling to invest into projects from unknown developers causing talent to invest less into the product as a result.

 

[saalihum]

My issue is that my bar keeps going up. The bad new games are easily forgotten, and the good new ones just keep raising the average in my selective memory.

I Disagree to an extent, I think its because more exceptional games are coming out that the good games that you would once praise are being diluted by the pure quality a few hold over it.
it is no longer at the point where good renders and proper(ish) English are enough to be successful.

Will say it does not help that the growing trend of good titles being abandoned half way through once the dev decides to cash out with <insert medical issue here> excuse leaves many people hesitant and unwilling to invest into projects from unknown developers causing talent to invest less into the product as a result.

Man, I kind of agree with both points. The standard for newly released adult games keeps getting higher. Like, Frank's Adventure, SimGirls, and Meet N Fuck were classic series in the early 2000s, but hardly meet today's expectations in terms of art and animation. While I still love Frank's Adventure, it's easy to forget how crude some of the old games were.

That said, I do think there are a greater proportion of disappointing new releases today when compared to the adult games of the late 2010s up through about 2023. And you're definitely right about more devs cashing out and abandoning titles mid-development. So, what changed?

Well, as others have already pointed out, the prevalence of the same store-bought 3D assets and the rise of greasy-looking AI image generators have been, at best, a mixed blessing for creators. Great ero games can be made with those resources (for example, Treasure of Nadia with stock 3Dcg, Wasteland Lewdness with generative AI), but there's a lot more low-effort slop out there to sift through. IMO, the combination of asset markets and AI is why good renders alone aren't enough for a game to get an audience any more.

Additionally, internet content has become more commercialized and Google search has become demonstrably worse since around 2016. At least in the USA, legal challenges to net-neutrality mean that Google's algorithms no longer give content from smaller producers the same weight as content from large corporations, a situation worsened further by the rise of generative AI around 2021. The end result is that high quality amateur ero games increasingly struggle to get exposure in competitive markets. Blogs and social media are struggling (Twitter is moribund), and the commercial marketplaces like Steam, Itch, and Patreon are riddled with censorship, leaving specialized forums the best option for finding quality ero games.

There may also be other factors at play:

1. Pandemic Boom and Bust. The pandemic gave amateur game devs a lot more spare time, and loads of people were stuck at home alone and horny. Hence 2020-2023 saw a boom in the production of adult games, followed by a dip and lots of abandoned projects as creators went back to work. I think this is the best explanation for the sleugh of abandoned games recently.

2. Death of Flash Culture. 1996-2020 was the golden age of flash games, interactive fiction, and web development. Lots of amateur devs learned how to make games because web design was taught in school. The barrier to entry nowadays is much higher, as compared to Flash, Quest, RAGS, TADS, and other venerable engines, many of the modern professional-grade engines are a bit "heavier" than needed for an amateur project. Godot, Unreal, and Unity are powerful but hefty, with lots of auto-generated junk files--frustratingly inelegant and overkill for most amateur producers. (Godot is great, but requires more programming know-how than Flash if you really want to get the most out of the engine.)

The "death" of Flash also slowed down or killed off a lot of interesting projects and creators (RIP Peach's Untold Tale). HTML games have been slow to fill the void left by Flash, with some important exceptions (Free Cities, Degrees of Lewdity, and Incubus City, for instance). Some big projects like Fenoxo's Trials in Tainted Space did succeed in the transition from Flash to Java & HTML, but there was a long period of development hell before the new ports could be made.

Other classic creators simply seem to have aged out or decided to focus on non-adult projects. For example, Mittsies, well known for degenerate flash games in the 2010s, seems to have decided to focus purely on music, and found success with Helltaker.

3. Patron-Based Models Create Perverse Incentives. The rise of the Patreon model and the opening of Steam and other markets to "early access" adult games has lead to cash grabs, censorship, and all sorts of other drama. (Anyone remember the Breeding Season debacle? Nuff said.) Patron-based models tempt creators to cater to superfans and produce a constant stream of "content" with gated tiers of access. Then enshittification ensues.

Many of the "simpler" game engines are unfairly blamed for the woes of the patronage model. Ren'PY and RPGMaker games have been around since the early 2000s. Some are great, but many are terrible. The difference is that more of them are commercial now. While there have always been shitty amateur RPGMaker games (and I hope there always will be!), more of them used to be free fan projects. The golden age of web design promoted an amateur-focused, DIY spirit that extended to adult games. In contrast, the pseuo-professionalism of the Patreon era has lead to a lot of bad behavior and a homogenization of content.

In my opinion, there ARE still plenty of interesting and unusual games being made (especially amateur text-based games and games focused on particular fetishes), but there's also a lot more stale, low-effort competition from semi-professional creators.

TLDR: Why are there so many "stale" adult games on the market now?
1. The global pandemic is over so amateur devs have less spare time, and fewer people are developing games.
2. Flash culture is dead, and with it some of the old spirit of creative DIY. Modern pro engines can be a bit overkill for amateur devs learning how to make games.
3. The Patreon model encourages semi-professional devs to go for "safe bets" and thus less original content.

Those are my two cents, anyway! Your mileage may vary.