How Important Is Animation to You?

[Burningscarlet]

Since I don't know Japanese I prefer games with anims but if I knew how to speak it then I wouldn't mind the CG's honestly

 

[refferee]

I'd say not very important for most games aside from a few RPG maker games like Rain's Rave that does it quite well for those that do otherwise not really.

Sprites on the other hand are practically needed otherwise it feels... flat. If you understand where I'm getting at.

 

[Bromo]

A few years ago I would have said that I really prefer animations.
But times and tastes change. I have the same point of view as the most here, I guess.

Writing is definitly more appreciated for me by now - that's the reason I'm happy to see games like MGQ and Paradox, Treasure Hunter Claire, Succubus Tower and Succubus Prison (and more) translated and Games like Monster Girl Dreams (and more) being made. (That are only the first ones that come to mind, don't want to write every single one down )
Animations are (sometimes) nice to look and fap at but to be able to understand the story behind it and read the stuff that's happening makes every game thrice as hot ... and a lot more fun to play. Because of that MGQ Paradox is probably my favorite RPG Game of all times to come. It has great gameplay (never saw something like that job system anywhere else), a story that is no 0815 porn and I'm able to play it in English and thus understand what's going on.

So I'm glad to find a good animated game now and then but it's not as important as the gameplay and the writing / language barrier
"Not very important" for me

 

[ADM]

Animation is the quintessential pillar of any hentai game, imo. You could have the best gosh darned story, the best mechanics in the world, high budget CGs, a reliable content creator you can trust + all the other goodies that everyone else views as important, but if you factor out the animation, all is for naught.

This comes down to my personal philosophy about hentai (and where I think I'll probably get a lot of hate from) - hentai games are for fapping, not for playing. That might sound a bit contradictory (see reference: hentai games), but the "games" portion of the hentai is meant to augment, not replace, the hentai. If I wanted to play actual games with actual plots, I have access to steam with literal hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of games to choose from whom on average are better developed, have more experienced creators and feature more ambitious projects than the vast majority of "lewd" content out there. Keep in mind, I've failed to mention multiplayer, which is an -almost- essential aspect to most game genres, whereas hentai/porn + multiplayer is like mixing bottle of coke with hydroflouric acid: still looks good on the outside, but might end up sending you to a hospital if consumed.

I get that a lot of people on here see plot as the most important aspect, and I get it. I don't like to think of my characters as chunks of meat you put penises into once in a while. But if you prioritize the plot over the porn you're sacrificing content for story, which is not what I get into a hentai game for. I would rather play a game with mediocre (or even nonexistant) plot with "meh" mechanics but good quality hentai, than vice-versa. I can create an entire plot in my mind as a play a game, as long as the content is good. I'm not able to do it the other way around. And for that the hentai has to be animated.

I feel like I shouldn't be the only one who feels this way though. Sites like pornhub and xvideos, publishers like brazzers, bangbros, or even hentai sites like hentaihaven and hentaiplay, didn't become some of the most trafficked sites on the web featuring various stills and images. They got there with movies, clips and animated content. That's what people want to see. It just so happens that animating content is also the most time-consuming of the bunch, and I get the impression that many "lewd" developers just don't have the resources to devote to making fully (or even partially) animated content.

Finally, I just want to point out that of games I've played and enjoyed out there, probably half are just VN's with CG's making up the majority of the content. I understand that there's more to porn than animation. But of those half that aren't animated, I can say with 100% certainty that if they were all fully animated, they would be drastically better (most would probably be in my top 10) than where they currently stand.

On a related note, have any of you ever played School Days? The game by Overflow, not the anime that aired a few years back. That shit right there is what every VN should strive to be (minus the 10gig file download, that shit be ridiculous).

 

[alias34]

I feel like I shouldn't be the only one who feels this way though.

Of course animation is objectively better, doesn't mean people have to insist on it, as you yourself already said;

It just so happens that animating content is also the most time-consuming of the bunch, and I get the impression that many "lewd" developers just don't have the resources to devote to making fully (or even partially) animated content.

Which is probably why most people don't mind. I still prefer 20 different stills over 8 animations (I think thats a fair estimate)

And... I mean you yourself prefaced your post by saying "in my opinion", but something about the tone of your post makes you sound a bit entitled and judgemental of people who are able to settle for something more abstract. No offense, you probably didn't mean it that way, it just really comes off like that

 

[Kyrieru]

I think that when comparing animations and CGs, you also have to take into account the context and the accompanying content. I'd prefer to have more scenes in an RPG if it meant no animations, but in a 2d H-platerformer with no animations, a game could have 10,000 gameover CGs and I still wouldn't want to play it. Dialogue/text is also more or less required with CGs, whereas animations merely benefit from it.

 

[KHTA]

Animation is the quintessential pillar of any hentai game, imo. You could have the best gosh darned story, the best mechanics in the world, high budget CGs, a reliable content creator you can trust + all the other goodies that everyone else views as important, but if you factor out the animation, all is for naught.

Of the top 5 selling games on JP dlsite, none have animation. Hell, number 2 is just sound. total sales = 204117
Top 10 - 2.
Top 20 - 7.
Top 50 - 15.

If you look elsewhere, the numbers will get even more outside your favor.

Now on the western side of things
Top 5 - 4. Total sales = 31501
Top 10 - 7.
Top 20 - 13.
Top 50 - 38.

btw, the number 1 spot in JP doubles that of the total sales of the top 5 combined in English DLSITE.

Looking at the western side, animation is pretty damn important it seems. However even then not a single one reached 10k in sales. If the western audience was my target for a game....I would personally go with animation as the top priority. However, if I was actually trying to make money I would try and cater to the JP side of things. And looking at their top 50....all of them seem to either have great story, fun game play, high budget CG and/or all the other goodies that everyone else views as important.

In the long run, it's just not profitable to put the majority of the focus in the animation. The time put in vs. the amount made...just doesn't seem viable.

Finally, I just want to point out that of games I've played and enjoyed out there, probably half are just VN's with CG's making up the majority of the content. I understand that there's more to porn than animation. But of those half that aren't animated, I can say with 100% certainty that if they were all fully animated, they would be drastically better (most would probably be in my top 10) than where they currently stand.

Now this is very much true. However, it goes both ways. Any purely sex animation game would have been much better with story, game play or just adding more to the girl(s) than just making them a virtual sex toy. Game with good game play would get much better with a good story. Game with good story would get much better with good game play. Game with both would be much better with high quality CG. And of course, game with high quality CG would be much better with animation of equal quality. But on the flip side; low quality animation, lackluster story, boring game play, forgettable characters, low quality CG...can all hurt a game.

It's less of you pointing out something profound and just you pointing at the obvious. The more you do for a game, the better it'll be. That's to be expected, no?

 

[Anon_Ymous]

Just my two cents:
If there's a gallery available on e-hentai (or similar places) I don't play the game itself. With three exceptions, if the game has:
- English voice acting
- really good writing accompanying the CGs
- animations
Because animations tend to not get ripped at all, It's way more work that still CGs images.

It's pretty much impossible to compete with non-adult games in terms of gameplay or story, since you also have to draw all the sexy and you have higher prices due to a smaller customer base. So I think you should focus on making the sexy stuff an exclusive reward for playing the game, one that's not gonna get ripped on release day.

 

[Noble 6]

ACT game? Required.
Non-ACT? Waste of development time and often ruins artstyles.

 

[DawnCry]

Personally I don't have animation even in my top 5. First of all I don't like nukiges I prefer games with storyline.

Basically don't give me a magical harem in which you did nothing to obtain it or the reasons are so stupid that I can't play it. Sorry if this sounds a bit... bad but many games with H content don't even bother to make sense.

While I'm not into NTR (I can tolerate it) one of the games that mostly fit my taste is oyako rankan, a game in which if you want to get the girl you want it's kind of easy and with little risk but if you want to get the harem ending... use a walkthrough or you are in for a bad time. Perhaps what I seek in adult games is just that it's not MC centered, you can do things but the world around you moves too.

An example that I usually give is imagine that a village is gonna be attacked by goblins, if you do nothing or try and fail then the goblins will conquer the village, capture many women and get them pregnant, so now the goblin problem will be bigger and affect other villages too. Rather than the MC being the determinant factor it's only one of them. In fact perhaps the village could survive the attack without your help. That's kind of what I seek, being part of an adult game, not the invincible MC.

 

[Aesthetic]

Now I see why ACT games are so darn popular. People will not take an ACT game w/o animation.

 

[zaku2142]

Now I see why ACT games are so darn popular. People will not take an ACT game w/o animation.

From what I have seen after so many years of playing these games, is that it seems to have become sort of a standard to have some form of animation in ACT games. Same can be more-so for RPG games that use RPGMaker, though some still use plain imagery, text and if lucky, sounds.

 

[Lynte]

The thread title is difficult to answer. I believe people have something like a tier list in their head that different features like animation go into. That tier list thing looks something like:

• Necessary: Features that immediately eliminate the game from their consideration if missing.
• Effective: Features that greatly increase their evaluation of the game, if present.
• Luxury: Features that are nice to have but only worth it for developers who are experienced in this kind of feature.
• Doesn't Really Matter
• Avoid: Things the player would rather not have.

But on top of that, animation comes in all different kinds and it will depend on context.

Personally, my list would look something like this if I'm considering a pixel ACT game:

• Necessary: 4+ frame loops, or 3+ frames per second; 2 Frame animation exists in some games and I consider them garbage.
• Effective: 8+ frame loops, 12+ frames per second, or 32px+ resolution; Having redrawn movements instead of shifted pixels is a big+, An orgasm animation that's longer than the loop animation is also a big +
• Luxury: 16+ frame loops, 20+ frames per second, or 200px+ resolution

If it's a VN, animation itself is no necessary. But bone animation is Effective for me and I consider hand-drawn animation a Luxury.


As an aside here's how I feel about a couple other features:

• Necessary: Voice, Sound, Gallery, CUTE GIRLSSS
• Effective: English UI Translation, Good controls, high-quality voice and sound effects, volume options, tentacles, nice scenario/background
• Luxury: Good story, music, hentai illustrations, decent gameplay, full-text translation, insect

 

[Lynte]

Of the top 5 selling games on JP dlsite, none have animation. Hell, number 2 is just sound. total sales = 204117
Looking at the western side, animation is pretty damn important it seems. However even then not a single one reached 10k in sales. If the western audience was my target for a game....I would personally go with animation as the top priority. However, if I was actually trying to make money I would try and cater to the JP side of things. And looking at their top 50....all of them seem to either have great story, fun game play, high budget CG and/or all the other goodies that everyone else views as important.

I just want to expand on this a bit.

The way I see it, there are actually 3 different big markets on the JP DLSite. One for games and video, one for voice, and one for manga. I consider the first 2 markets having the least overlap because the games-and-video market mainly caters to sadists and voice market mainly caters to masochists and people into pure-love. The 3rd market overlaps heavily with both but doesn't seem to get as many sales. Probably because other competing doujin manga distributors exist.

On the hand, only the games-and-video market exists on the English DLSite due to the language barrier. The entire English DLSite isn't even as big as any of the 3 JP markets, IMO. Animation looks significantly more important in the west because games and video are basically all we can enjoy (and are willing to pay DLSite for.)



If you're looking sell on DLSite...

I think going for animation focus or illustration focus are just about equally viable. As long as you make it JP playable. Heck, there are

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that have done pretty well.

I hear going for good illustration and animation at the same time is overkill. I think adding animation to VNs hasn't led to a significant bump in sales compared to non-animated VNs, that's why they're still fairly uncommon. Feel free correct me if you have different data, though.

Gameplay focus? Not really. I think the effort should be 1:3 between gameplay and hentai. On the (tiny) survey I took with my game's demo, only 5% took gameplay over hentai. And 40% took hentai over gameplay. The rest valued both equally. And the survey is probably biased toward gameplay. People may talk about gameplay on forums like here, but this would be a small portion of the DLSite audience. I believe the average buyer is just looking for fap material that's behind a few hoops to jump through. Overall, I think you can be fairly lax in working on gameplay.

Story focus? I wouldn't really know lol

Voice? You can compete on the voice market if you're a good scriptwriter. It's surprisingly large and looks profitable. The big catch is, basically the entire audience is Japanese right now. I would really love for some more English works to come out, though. There's like one good one out there at the moment.

 

[Nightverge]

I'm so desensitized that animation is pretty much mandatory for me. Only exceptions so far are rain's rave and tialucy.

 

[DeathByBiscuit]

I basically only play RPGs or VNs, so that's where I'm coming from.

Animation is completely unnecessary and often times half-assed to the point of turning a decent game into an mess, its awful when you get excited about animations and then you get to a scene and its just a CG being stretched up and down or sideways like all they had to animate it was Adobe After Effects.

If there's actual work put into it like the Sprite Hills games or Shin-Sei-Den where the animations are fantastic then yes great, love it. But we live in a world where those kinds of games are rare, so I'd say animation is not important at all. A nice treat when its done well but completely forgettable 90% of the time.

I figure people that play mostly ACT games will have the complete opposite opinion.

 

[Araragi Kun]

I figure people that play mostly ACT games will have the complete opposite opinion.

Pretty much. I don't like RPGs and I think the animations are one of the more important aspects of a game.

 

[Demaar]

It really depends on the games genre and the animation quality.
Too many games seem to think they don't have to be good if they just throw in some crappy animation.

I really love good animation but good animation is very hard to come by.

Also, for an RPG/VN, if you asked me to decide between an animated scene and a Still CG scene with really good writing, I'd probably choose the second one.

Oh, and If I say good animation I mean something along the lines of the "Divine Arms" H-scenes.

 

[GEMPAL00]

Animation(Art)>Gameplay>Optimization>Others

This is how I see whether the product will interest me or not. Animation or Art is the main selling point of games (in case I think it's safe to say that games is part of "Art" too) even with bad gameplay and other things can still be tolerated with at least good animation. Normally all aspect should be balanced which make a good game. Then again I think Animation or Art in game if it's done good can be a great help even if the other things is not that good because we could still feast our eyes with something nice and "relaxing".