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Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?


ToxicShock

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

It's been well studied. It's called the Overjustification Effect and most evidence and meta-analyses suggest that it does indeed exist, although the argument is that it's only the person's motivation, not actual quality of work.

The assumption is that motivation drops for nearly 25% for people who know that they will be rewarded for their work for every single standard deviation in increase of pay, even as low as 36% reduction for people who know the exact amount ahead of time.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

That's kind of weird to think about in practice though. I can't imagine in a simple straight forward manner, many people would react to "Here's a bunch of money, do more of the thing you like to do" by deciding they don't want to do that thing anymore.

It might have to do with the source of motivation. Such as, perhaps a person's driving motivation is to "become successful" and when they suddenly get paid a bunch of money they feel successful and thus no longer feel as potent a drive to reach that goal. Kind of like how telling someone all about a story you want to write can cause you to satisfy the urge to tell the story and end up causing you to be less interested in going through the hard part of actually writing the story.

In that case though, the people would would primarily be affected by the de-motivation would be people who do it with an end goal of just making money, as opposed to seeing making money as a step towards being able to do more of their craft.
 

XSI

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

That depends on how you define success
Financial success is one thing. Artistic success is another

A for me, I occasionally donate to porn games. But only if they managed to impress me in some form. Just being porn isn't enough for me.
Also never patreon, or other monthly payments. Always a single sum paid directly to the creator
 

Paladox

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

To be honest after I finish 'The Fairy, The Succubus, and The Abyss' I most likely will not make another game that has any focus on player decision. There is a lot of effort that goes into stuff like that and I would rather tell a one-dimensional story than focus on such a complicated gameplay element.

So in a way I guess you could say the quality of my games will drop after the first one, but only if you care a lot about choice and consequence styled gameplay.

If I do end up making another game with choice and consequence elements then it will be a more open-ended experience with very little impact on the overall story. Like it will just change your character's appearance or change how an NPC feels toward you, rather than changing how your character acts and how the whole world perceives them.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

Yeah, the amount of work that goes into having player choice actually matter to the game easily explains why most games don't bother; even games that include "morality systems". (Hence stupid stuff like murdering 4 guys then dancing in the town square until you are a saint again in the Fable series)

My game is also quite heavy in player choice as well. It has lead to at least 4 times as much writing for each character's dialogue to account for if you enslave someone and change their personality. Plus, there are at least 3 major paths in the game that each branch off into sub paths so the writing adds up fast. I think when I'm finished I will have at least 4 game's worth of story in one game.

Although it is a lot of work though, ending up with a game that stands out for doing something different is insanely important for getting noticed. Having that thing that stands out be a story structure that is very difficult to do also means you won't have to worry about your game being pallet swapped by a lazy dev with a huge budget for marketting. It's one thing to copy a game mechanic; but you can't copy a story and get away with it.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

Yeah, one of the critical errors that a lot of indie groups do with marketing is that they DO successfully spread their stuff everywhere... and then they lose all personalization/humanity to what they're doing/making.

You gotta reply to people frequently and fast, and you've got to genuinely care about every single individual person and message to the best of your ability.
I care about your response, sorry I couldn't respond earlier, been busy moving.

How was that? :p
Joking aside, little to respond to, cause I pretty much agree with you. It is nice to hear stated that I'm not the only one getting strange requests on a regular basis though. :p

The strangest thing for me is, I get regular complaints about grind in my main game... I know for a FACT that if I removed all grinding and thus challenge, the game would lose substance and suffer more than if I kept it in so.. *shrugs* I might adjust the grind, moreso if theres specific, valid criticism or suggestions, but thats about it.

As for choices making game creation complicated, boy, can I sing a song for that. My game has a multitude of choices and changes for the player, and I struggle hard making these choices seem significant. I feel like you shouldn't make a game that doesn't have at least different ending paths, else.. why make a game at all, why not a movie or visual novel or etc. A game should allow the player to interact with the world they are in. I think for my next project my goal would be to downsize the actual game, but massively improve the interactivity for that.. see Undertales design style, thats only 6 hours for the longest playthrough path at best, but its choices REALLY matter, and that, plus well written characters is what carries it.
 
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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

The strangest thing for me is, I get regular complaints about grind in my main game... I know for a FACT that if I removed all grinding and thus challenge, the game would lose substance and suffer more than if I kept it in so.. *shrugs* I might adjust the grind, moreso if theres specific, valid criticism or suggestions, but thats about it.
I get that a ton. It's like some people don't understand how RPGs work. In fact, I have had more than a few players who will flee from every encounter, then are legitimately surprised when they are under-leveled or don't know a spell they need to trigger a scene they want.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

I get that a ton. It's like some people don't understand how RPGs work. In fact, I have had more than a few players who will flee from every encounter, then are legitimately surprised when they are under-leveled or don't know a spell they need to trigger a scene they want.
I say this differs from game to game last one that i played was fun but at about 30-50% at the game i said screw it at grinding random encounters until i get some levels to get any chance on he boss battle, that's with random encounters having almost the "classic" mechanics so nothing special.
I basically just cheated the exp.
Now with something more interesting or pre-placed(not completely but limited, i.e. you have to bet them to progress or it's more optional side-quest) i have bigger tolerance to it, i guess that's just my experience and may differ from person to person.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

Pre-placed monsters are one way to get rid of grinding. Though, I personally find it a bit annoying to have monsters on the field as it gives me this feeling like if I don't fight every single monster i see, I'll end up under-leveled as a result and end up unable to progress. How true that is depends on the game, but I've encountered enough unwinnable conditions in RPGs to be afraid of that chance.
 

Paladox

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

... A game should allow the player to interact with the world they are in. ...
There are games like Zelda where you don't really notice that there are no choices. You either do something or you don't, and it doesn't really matter in the end because the whole world is a lot of fun to interact with and there are lots of fun hidden things to find.

I think if an RPG were to have enough adventure elements then it could stand on those without the need for choice elements. The Final Fantasy games are somewhat good at accomplishing this, although they are more focused on challenging combat scenarios.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

I absolutely fucking hate random encounters with a passion. I don't mind grinding as long as I can make that choice myself instead of running around blindly not knowing which enemies I'll run into, or when, or where. Sometimes you just want to cross a field, though, and being able to run around/away from the monsters then is a godsend. Not due to difficulty, just avoiding repetition.
 

TentanariX

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

Games like Earthbound, Chronotrigger, and Lunar. Where there's wild encounters but you can avoid if you want and can maneuver yourself properly.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

I absolutely fucking hate random encounters with a passion. I don't mind grinding as long as I can make that choice myself instead of running around blindly not knowing which enemies I'll run into, or when, or where. Sometimes you just want to cross a field, though, and being able to run around/away from the monsters then is a godsend. Not due to difficulty, just avoiding repetition.
Yeah, I get that. I have two counter-measures to prevent a player from being too annoyed if they have to go to an earlier floor to look for something they missed. The first being that enemies that are weaker than you flee, so you don't have to go through the tedium of 1-2 turns of combat every time.

The second is that random encounter rates for each floor is tied to player level so if you are a higher level on a lower floor, random encounters become less frequent.

Unfortunately, when someone flees from every encounter though, it messes the math up and ends up causing random encounters to become more frequent than they would be otherwise, and they take longer to get out of too.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

I absolutely fucking hate random encounters with a passion. I don't mind grinding as long as I can make that choice myself instead of running around blindly not knowing which enemies I'll run into, or when, or where. Sometimes you just want to cross a field, though, and being able to run around/away from the monsters then is a godsend. Not due to difficulty, just avoiding repetition.
When I was working on an earlier RPG Maker game I found a good way to deal with that. You can effectively use the monsters' agility as a difficulty measure. This way when the player is strong enough that they don't benefit from fighting those monsters anymore they can just run away.

But anyway I still think limited encounters (with visual representations on the field) are a better way to go, with optional (and unlimited) arena type fights. While random encounters do annoy me, I find it more annoying when you have a limited number of monsters you can fight/find.

Unfortunately, when someone flees from every encounter though, it messes the math up and ends up causing random encounters to become more frequent than they would be otherwise, and they take longer to get out of too.
Well sometimes you have to put the player at fault. If you were to play Castlevania and run through the whole level, not grabbing any candles, powerups, etc.. and get to the boss with one bar of life.. who's fault is it when you die? Reminds me of when I could beat all 4 end-game bosses in Super Castlevania with a whip that hadn't been upgraded, without getting hit.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

I simply use a dodge system for almost all fights. You see the monster, you can run into, or around most of the monsters. You can even dodge all, if you are really good.
If you want to restrict random encounters annoying gridnyness its actually exeptionally easy to control too, just few people bother to do it. Just set up a variable for each monstertype, then reduce random encounters in that area from 50% to 50% -(number of variable for that area x5.. or x2, or whatever).

As for Zelda.. sure if you have a game thats so engaging that it doesn't matter any more thats fine, but even in Zelda or Undertale random enconters were among the least fun elements when they happened, that the game on its own is awesome doesn't mean it makes random encounters work, it just means the game works inspite of them.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

I simply use a dodge system for almost all fights. You see the monster, you can run into, or around most of the monsters. You can even dodge all, if you are really good.
If you want to restrict random encounters annoying gridnyness its actually exeptionally easy to control too, just few people bother to do it. Just set up a variable for each monstertype, then reduce random encounters in that area from 50% to 50% -(number of variable for that area x5.. or x2, or whatever).

As for Zelda.. sure if you have a game thats so engaging that it doesn't matter any more thats fine, but even in Zelda or Undertale random enconters were among the least fun elements when they happened, that the game on its own is awesome doesn't mean it makes random encounters work, it just means the game works inspite of them.
As lame as it may make me sound; pathfinding AI is just beyond me right now. xD I've tried to look into it multiple times, but every time I look at the example code for things like A* pathfinding or something, it looks to me like just an impenetrable and indecipherable pile of numbers.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

As lame as it may make me sound; pathfinding AI is just beyond me right now. xD I've tried to look into it multiple times, but every time I look at the example code for things like A* pathfinding or something, it looks to me like just an impenetrable and indecipherable pile of numbers.
In RPG Maker it's super simple. You give them individual commands and they do it, like "move up, move up, move down, move down" And if it is set to repeat, then they just keep going up and down. If they get blocked and you have a complicated set of movements then the character can end up inside walls or other weird stuff. xD

Good luck with whatever engine you're using. Sounds complicated.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

In RPG Maker it's super simple. You give them individual commands and they do it, like "move up, move up, move down, move down" And if it is set to repeat, then they just keep going up and down. If they get blocked and you have a complicated set of movements then the character can end up inside walls or other weird stuff. xD

Good luck with whatever engine you're using. Sounds complicated.
Simple movement isn't hard; what's hard is code to make the monster "give chase" when a player is nearby, and give up when they are far from the origin point, then also moving around obstacles efficiently.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

As lame as it may make me sound; pathfinding AI is just beyond me right now. xD I've tried to look into it multiple times, but every time I look at the example code for things like A* pathfinding or something, it looks to me like just an impenetrable and indecipherable pile of numbers.
Ah, the problem is a logical one actually. You don't -need- the AI to find the right path, just to move towards the player when possible, if not possible, move in a random direction then attempt to move towards the player again. Don't program an AI that can think for itself, just manipulate random numbers to make pretend like it thinks for itself.

The 'Give chase' would be a proximity check if X pixels away from player for Z miliseconds turn on/off movement Y, donzo.
 

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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

Simple movement isn't hard; what's hard is code to make the monster "give chase" when a player is nearby, and give up when they are far from the origin point, then also moving around obstacles efficiently.
What engine are you saying? That's easy to do in RPGMaker. There's a default movement type we can use with RPGMaker that's basically "approach the player character". Then with event touch you can make it a chase which triggers H-scenes if you lose.

Or if you're more proficient at coding/scripting you can use a parallel process to check the variables for locations X+Y and make it so that enemies patrolling set locations chase after the player but stop chasing if they leave an area if you use conditional branches + more variables + more technical jargon and I'm going to stop now because my brain hurts just typing this.
 
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