• The State of the Western Porn Games Industry (Self Posted)
    62 replies, posted
[Media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0bk7zjqi8c[/media] I had to download so much porn to make this video.
No mention of the FMV era? That was like the biggest source of porn in videogames before Newgrounds.
[QUOTE=Aredbomb;52395224]No mention of the FMV era? That was like the biggest source of porn in videogames before Newgrounds.[/QUOTE] Its a personal preference thing but many of those games were just normal low definition porn videos but with a UI slapped over them. Many of them didn't require much custom character Art.
Re: your point about the uncertainty of steam selling adult games. [url]http://store.steampowered.com/app/644570/Material_Girl/[/url] [t]http://i.imgur.com/Kq7rUCm.png[/t] It has already begun.
btw you forgot to add [del]the pinnacle of western-made erotica[/del] monster girl island to your description
Never knew the western porn game market was so fragile.
[QUOTE=Tetsmega;52395611]Never knew the western porn game market was so fragile.[/QUOTE] Probably has to do with a mix of Christian values and not wanting to talk about sex. Sex still has a bit of a stigma despite being one of the base biological functions that literally ever creatures on Earth has.
[QUOTE=megafat;52395686]Probably has to do with a mix of Christian values and not wanting to talk about sex. Sex still has a bit of a stigma despite being one of the base biological functions that literally ever creatures on Earth has.[/QUOTE] It feel like Western videogames have been getting less sexy since the 90s in general.
[QUOTE=Metist;52395761]It feel like Western videogames have been getting less sexy since the 90s in general.[/QUOTE]There has been a two-pronged attack on sexuality in general in the west from both conservatives for family values crap and more recently regressive left under the guise of feminism.
[QUOTE]Javascropt[/QUOTE] Oh you. Also, was the 3:01 game literally a reference to Dune DOS game? Damn. Also, that fucking Patreon description.
holy fuck, someone is actually getting 30k per [i]month[/i] for making porn games??? i'm in the wrong field
[QUOTE=elitehakor;52395849]holy fuck, someone is actually getting 30k per [i]month[/i] for making porn games??? i'm in the wrong field[/QUOTE] SFM porn artists make shitloads of money on Patreon.
[QUOTE=Antimuffin;52396078]SFM porn artists make shitloads of money on Patreon.[/QUOTE] And quite a few of them look better that some animation put out by actual studios.
[QUOTE=Antimuffin;52396078]SFM porn artists make shitloads of money on Patreon.[/QUOTE] It's kinda sad, but making porn is probably the easiest way for a talented artist and/or animator to make money. People that need their fetishes realized pay well, apparently. Wait, what am I saying, that's not sad it's fucking beautiful
I find the western ero game scene to be very interesting mostly because of how differently it is developing compared to the "normal" indie game scene. They both start from the same place, shitty flash game websites during the first decade of the 21st century, but then for obvious reasons they diverged greatly. The greatest difference between the two is that indie games prefer using Kickstarter to fund, and Greenlight to publish, while porn games prefer using Patreon both for collecting funds and as a publishing platform. As noted by the OP video, there is this strange phenomenon where paying for porn is unheard of, but paying for its development is a pretty common thing. This mirrors the normal drawn porn scene, where pretty much nobody buys the comics when they're easily available online as long as you look for them a bit, but there is a large circle of money on commissions. So it basically seems that people are not interested in paying for porn unless they are able to control what kind of porn it ends up being. I have no idea why this is the case, and I can just assume that fetishists are absurdly specific in what they want to masturbate to. But what is even more interesting is that the combination of Patreon + Undignified Industry creates scummy practices that normal people would not even imagine. People often complain that Greenlight is used as a way for developer to push shitty ass early access games that they can abandon the instant the initial cash flow stops. With Patreon it is the complete opposite, the cash flows stops when you stop, and not viceversa. This means that porn game developers are encouraged in working slowly. Remember that one webcomic you like but it updates one page every month? Apply that to a videogame. Now imagine that people pay for that one page a month, and if they don't, puff, no more pages at all. I could (but I won't) list you a large number of porn games that are currently being developed and that use Patreon as their main source of income and you would notice that every single one of them is something like "Game Title, version 0.0.1.2" or something like that. People just develop a quick demo (and considering most of these are just visual novels, demo = a few translating images and some badly translated cyka text), release it online, and then veeeeery slowly update it. Let's also not forget that many of these games are not made using hand-drawn art (which, you know, does take a considerable amount to time to make) but rather premade 3d models that are just posed and rendered (badly).
[QUOTE=Vodkavia;52396324]There's an economic reason why people don't like paying for porn; it's too expensive for most people and people don't want a direct paper trail between them and fem shep getting gang banged by futa asari. Rule34 is targetted at young males prinarily, so money is tight. Demand is high, but artists are just single human beings. Things like Patreon allow artists to sell things like preview images, raffles and input as affordable services for low end patrons while still supporting finished works. It allows people other than big spenders vying for scant commission slots to keep the train chuggin while not spending too much and having "Dora the explorer X Wolf Blitzer" on their paypal history.[/QUOTE] But people do pay for porn, they just don't really pay for premade porn.
[QUOTE=Vodkavia;52396324]There's an economic reason why people don't like paying for porn; it's too expensive for most people and people don't want a direct paper trail between them and fem shep getting gang banged by futa asari. It allows people other than big spenders vying for scant commission slots to keep the train chuggin while not spending too much and having "Dora the explorer X Wolf Blitzer" on their paypal history.[/QUOTE] A lot of artists just put "commissioned digital artwork" or something like that on the paypal invoice to avoid these kinda scenarios and also not get in trouble with paypal itself, as there have been problems with paypal locking accounts for using them to sell adult material in the past
[QUOTE=Vodkavia;52396324]There's an economic reason why people don't like paying for porn; it's too expensive for most people and people don't want a direct paper trail between them and fem shep getting gang banged by futa asari. Rule34 is targetted at young males prinarily, so money is tight. Demand is high, but artists are just single human beings. Things like Patreon allow artists to sell things like preview images, raffles and input as affordable services for low end patrons while still supporting finished works. It allows people other than big spenders vying for scant commission slots to keep the train chuggin while not spending too much and having "Dora the explorer X Wolf Blitzer" on their paypal history.[/QUOTE] people love paying for porn if its porn that is specifically made just for them/to cater to their tastes
[QUOTE=megafat;52396183]And quite a few of them look better that some animation put out by actual studios.[/QUOTE] And are slow as [I]hell[/I] Come on, I've been waiting [I]all month[/I] for Extra Busty Elizabeth from BioShock Gets Pounded by a Dog's Dick Part 2.
[QUOTE=LegndNikko;52396494]And are slow as [I]hell[/I] Come on, I've been waiting [I]all month[/I] for Extra Busty Elizabeth from BioShock Gets Pounded by a Dog's Dick Part 2.[/QUOTE] These things. They take time. Especially since many of these artists are single people who do [b]everything[/b], in some cases even including building basically every single model used, from characters to environments.
[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;52396632]in some cases even including building basically every single model used, from characters to environments.[/QUOTE] I have a pretty good understanding of the whole situation with SFM and what you are saying but I can't help but find this moderately disingenuous. Sure, there are people making nude versions/alterations of pre-established characters, but that's the thing. In the SFM community there is very VERY little creation of assets other than just re-using the properties of other games.
[QUOTE=Thlis;52396667]I have a pretty good understanding of the whole situation with SFM and what you are saying but I can't help but find this moderately disingenuous. Sure, there are people making nude versions/alterations of pre-established characters, but that's the thing. In the SFM community there is very VERY little creation of assets other than just re-using the properties of other games.[/QUOTE] It depends. There are people who just lazily port the canon nude Dead or Alive models, with very little work done. And then there are people who build an entirely different body, either from scratch or with generic bodies like from Daz3D, hand-building the proportions (to fit the original model or not, depending on the individual construction), often times retopologizing the base model and hand-adjusting the rigging / skin weights, seamlessly stitching the character's head to the body, and then manually fitting the character's clothes to this new body (which generally requires [B]every single polygon[/B] to be moved). Often the clothes will be similarly retopologized, and then naturally their rigging has to be changed to fit the new body. Then often the clothes will be modified, usually rather extensively, to allow for states of partial clothing. Then there's the matter of matching the body textures to the head, doing detail adjustments if the base model is more or less realistic than the base body, and texture-blending the diffuses, normals, and specular maps. Often cases the models will also have all of their flexes manually built, with support for full lip-sync and a wide expressive range. In the latter cases, the only things re-used are the heads themselves - over 90% of the model is custom-designed to fit the character. To say "just reusing the assets" is disingenuous in these cases. These models can often take 10+ hours to put together.
[QUOTE=Keychain;52396351]people love paying for porn if its porn that is specifically made just for them/to cater to their tastes[/QUOTE] This is why the Furry porn business is a goldmine.
Isn't the top paid Patreon for Furry porn?
[QUOTE=Metist;52395761]It feel like Western videogames have been getting less sexy since the 90s in general.[/QUOTE] As games became more mainstream they had to become less risque at the same time. It's something that's especially apparent if you compare something like say, The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall with the more modern entries.
[QUOTE=Mr.Moustachio;52396721]This is why the Furry porn business is a goldmine.[/QUOTE] True that. I mean, if you have a specific strong desire, and you have the money to pay an artist to make it real, then it makes sense for such an exchange to happen. Plus, having something be tailor-made for you makes it all the more special, like it's not just something that came off a factory line to be sold to any old Tom, Dick or Harry. This is your furry porn, it was made for you. You wanted to see a minotaur bumming a catboy on a Persian rug (not you specifically, I don't know what you're into), and this guy made that vision a reality. For a price, of course.
[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;52396719] To say "just reusing the assets" is disingenuous in these cases. These models can often take 10+ hours to put together.[/QUOTE] I didn't say reusing assets. I said reusing properties. There's a big difference with that. The point is that SFM porn is almost entirely dependent on pre-existing properties to an absurd extent. It outright hampers creativity, and even "industry" growth when the only things made are things that barely skirt parody and have a high chance of being shut down when profit is involved. I'd argue that this is a weakness when it comes to the western porn game market as well.
[QUOTE=Thlis;52396806]It outright hampers creativity, and even "industry" growth when the only things made are things that barely skirt parody and have a high chance of being shut down when profit is involved.[/QUOTE] It appears that people are more interested in existing characters and IPs than just generic models (actors) that were created for the sake of the porn. I mean, you can compare the rapid SFM porn growth VS the slow growth of 3D pornography (although some of it already had rule 34 versions) that had a head start over a decade long. I guess at the end of the day, people also find it fantasies with familiar characters to be more interesting.
[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;52396632]These things. They take time. Especially since many of these artists are single people who do [B]everything[/B], in some cases even including building basically every single model used, from characters to environments.[/QUOTE] Porting Daz and CBBEV and UUNP does not take all that much time, and moreover was done quite some time ago for most bodies. Yes, [I]some[/I] artists insist on everything fitting their fetish, most, as in almost all, just quite frankly use 100% not their own assets to money pretty much hand over fist, and at this point are even expected to use existing assets because that's all they did to begin with. And for a fact re-rigging not only does not take time, most of it is now automated, same with retopologizing on top of a built UV with a reworked mesh, whether someone has access to that shit due to the absurd kool kidz klub mentality of places like SFMLab are actually an entirely separate matter. [QUOTE] people love paying for porn if its porn that is specifically made just for them/to cater to their tastes[/QUOTE] Fetish Pandering makes a shit-ton of money short term, but long term it is just that, it also doesn't bring the art or industry any closer to mainstream legitimization. In fact, it does the opposite, which only ensures that mature content with mature themes stays marginalized and ostracized. It's actually part of the problem.
[QUOTE=Thlis;52396806]I didn't say reusing assets. I said reusing properties. There's a big difference with that. The point is that SFM porn is almost entirely dependent on pre-existing properties to an absurd extent. It outright hampers creativity, and even "industry" growth when the only things made are things that barely skirt parody and have a high chance of being shut down when profit is involved. I'd argue that this is a weakness when it comes to the western porn game market as well.[/QUOTE] It's an aspect of online marketing. You reach a larger audience when you produce content based on already popular IPs, because people are already looking for content related to that IP. It's why the doujin market in japan is so important. It's the only way for complete newcomers to reliably get attention. [editline]24th June 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=27X;52396852]Fetish Pandering makes a shit-ton of money short term, but long term it is just that, it also doesn't bring the art or industry any closer to mainstream legitimization. In fact, it does the opposite, which only ensures that mature content with mature themes stays marginalized and ostracized. It's actually part of the problem.[/QUOTE] who cares about legitimization? who cares if it's ostracized? Artists make what people will pay them to make. If people will pay for fetish porn, artists will make fetish porn. If that's such a big problem to people, then they're free to outbid the fetish porn market.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.