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


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Praak

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Hello everybody! I'd like to know your opinion on this question, do you think it is possible to make money with sex games? And do you yourself spend money for them?
I know there are people who run sites with sex games but I wonder how much they can actually get out from this? Obviously there is not much money in making small flash games an putting them on funny-games or similar sites. But what about the people who run their own site with some free games and make you pay a membership to access the other games?
And what about the japanese sims, do they get sold and if so in what markets?

Also does any of you have porn-apps on their phones/tablets? If so where did you buy them?

I'm sure you have guessed already that I'm programming a game, it's kind of a dating sim and I would like to make a good game, but the amount of time and resources I need to invest makes me think about if I could get something out of it. Please don't give me answers like "give us the game for free", I might, but I need to see if this is something I can keep investing in or if I should wrap it up as fast and cheap as possible and move on to something more profitable.

I hope you don't mind this little market research, didn't know a better way to find so many pervs in one spot :D
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

Just be like every other person and make a patreon or some such thing.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

freeko said:
Just be like every other person and make a patreon or some such thing.
Click to expand...

he's right, people are kind to new game makers
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

Sure there is. It greatly depends on the quality of your product though. If you just throw something together to get into making games because you think it will be lucrative because there's a market for it, you may not do too well, but if you enjoy making adult games, then put together a Patreon and see if other people share your vision. It seems like the best way to keep your dream alive, and also get something out of it so you can devote more time to it.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

Give us the game for free.

Nah, I'm kidding. There are plenty of Patreon sites that actually earn hentai game creators a liveable wage, whether or not the artist does any actual work (Hartista Pipebomb, you magnificent bastard, I'm looking at you). The key to getting one of these sites to work is drumming up enough interest in the material, of course, and that means posting screenshots and demos more openly (here or in other adult forums, preferably as wide-spread as possible).

I will not be contributing to that practice. I believe in paying once for a game, then enjoying the hell out of it. There are adult games I have paid for (Parasite in City, Witch Girl, Shinobi Girl, and Trials in Tainted Space come to mind), because they offered the option to pay once for the game, and enjoy it forever (mostly I purchased them off DLSite).

I think that this Patreon deal is all too often exploited to string people along for years, with little to show for it along the way (I hear that if you say "Breeding Season" slowly enough, it sounds like "gullible"). You pay forever for the game, and enjoy it... whenever the artist gets to it. Yeah, no thanks.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

I had some thoughts on this subject:

I think there is money, but not if you go the traditional route.

Judging from all the links posted here, I suspect that the prevalence of piracy is greater among hentai game than among normal games. There are several reasons I could think for this, though the major reason is really that for a given price, hentai games offer very little gameplay.

What is the problem

A typical hentai game selling for $10-15 usually has under 3 hours of gameplay, while for the same price, mainstream games in this price range usually offer at least 30 hours. You could even pick up occasionally really good ones like Space Engineers that's can keep the player engaged for a thousand hours.

This leads to a situations where anyone who's bought the typical hentai game will finish it in one sitting (fap to it once) then get bored of it on the same day. This leads to a psychological negative reinforcement, and makes people less likely to dish out money the next time around.

There are obviously other factors, such as a the lack of a distributor that's well trusted by a North American audience. DMM and DLsite may be the Steam of Japan, but I get the feeling that most Americans feel an unease when giving their credit card information to a Japanese site.

Analysis

The common argument for the lack of content is that hentai games are developed by small teams. This isn't a right argument, since plenty of non-hentai games developed by small teams have great content, it rather seems that most hentai developers are less capable or have put less effort into their products.

For example, Starsector developed by a team of two, a programmer and an artist, and has good art, good gameplay, and a good progression system, sells for $15 and is good for ~15 hours.

Or Factorio, developed by a team of 5?, has last-gen art but gameplay is very good, sells for $18 and is good for 100 hours.

What most hentai games out there, really seems to be in their alpha stage. They make their final release with about the same quality and quantity of content as non-hentai games in their early access. I feel that if they advertised it as alpha early access, then put in some extra work on game after the initial release to improve game balancing and better graphics, they would probably be more appealing, and pick up come-back customers on their subsequent games as well.

What could be done?

I am no expert on this, but I just had a thought. What if hentai games do early-access model? After generating initial content, release it as early access and continue to work on it to improve breadth as quality.

By selling early access, the developer could gain a initial capital could be reinvested on artists to improve graphics, add new sex positions, as well as additional programmers to develop new game mechanics.

I think the aforementioned Starsector and Factorio are great examples of how many problems with small developments could be approached, and both game's main pages have development blogs recording each game's development process.

These two games also offer good examples of a payment system that does a decent(though not overtly strong) job of deterring piracy. I am not totally sure on this, but I think the early-access versions of these games use BMT micro web-authentication system based on with passcodes. So, while the game files could be downloaded freely, they need to be activated and authenticated every time they run. The possibility of the authentication being cracked the further mitigated by the games' frequent updates, making it so that searching for a crack is needed for every update, which is not really worth the effort for most people than just dishing out a couple of bucks.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

There probably is money in sex games; I started getting a lot more pledges to my Patreon after starting to work on a free game, compared to when I was just posting drawings.

I have no idea how a for-sale model fares in the current market though. I would imagine that angle would be something for artists/designers who already have a massive fanbase, rather than something you'd want to try just starting out.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

Its worth a part time job for me, though there was some initial investment getting art ready, etc. I have a pay as much as you want model, I.e. My games are free, but I ask for donations and patrons get early previews and more input on plans.

Problem is really the holy trinity, to make money you need to be able to write, draw, and program, and all on a good enough level. Obviously you can hire a programmer or a few artists, but.. count that as expenses from your creation.

Ultimately, barring a few strange exeptions, its not a free money making machine, but a job like any other.. albeit a very fun job. You spent your free time creating something people like, they give you money to make moar.

If you wanna get into game creating just to make money.. Don't. I've seen a few trying that, they realize after a few weeks that game programming is actually a LOT of work, and it takes a decent amount of enjoyment/obession with your own project to reach a conclusion.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

I think like with most vidya there is money in sex games, but you have to catch lightning in a bottle to make it more than just something you do on the side.

So like Breeding Season and Fenoxo have somehow hit that sweet spot where they get a metric fuckload of money for products that many might say develop too slowly or don't have as much content as it deserves for the money it receives. And then you have your army of patreons out now that make $200-400 a month for whatever it is game they're making.

Do I think there's a market for sex games? Yes I do. I know there's a massive audience for it but the main question is will the audience pay for it?

Personally, whenever I see a patreon I'm instantly turned off from whatever the game they're making is unless there's a quick turnaround from patreon releases to free releases (IE: Patreons get the latest version a week earlier than everyone else). Maybe it's the ideology that nobody pays for porn. Maybe it's because my the experience with every sex game is that you play it once for a fap and then never touch it again. I'm not sure. Or maybe it's because there is a scourge of patreons that take money and don't update the game for months/abandon the project and just collect from the patreons whom aren't paying attention to who they're donating to.

Now with all that being said, I think when a game caters to a specific audience and finds that right niche, it becomes a success. Fenoxo/breeding season got in with that beasitality/furry crowd and made bank. But personally the only sex game I've put money towards has been the Warcraft sex parody game Chronicles of Alexstrazza, in which I donated to become a VIP. I've put countless hours into Auril's (The creator of CoA) episodes, and I became a VIP because I've got something bad for warcraft draeni and various fantasy creatures, something Auril's game caters to.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

If you are well-to-do, you support in money. If you are not yet, support in heart.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

noname_wu said:
If you are well-to-do, you support in money. If you are not yet, support in heart.
Click to expand...

It's more than that though, it's more to do with the idea that you just don't pay for porn at all.

People can be poor as shit and they still pay for movies, vidya, eating out. But the idea of actually paying for porn is hilarious to most.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

To answer the original question, yes some people pay for hentai games. :D Personally I have spend quite a lot on games in japan for games I wouldn't get here or on the browsergame millenium war aigis, since I love the hentai TD idea. But especially if you're not known well enough, selling a game will become rather difficult in my eyes. I made a game in RPG Maker with the idea to go commercial with it for a while, but changed to Patreon since it'll allow me to post everything I make and get feedback to improve on it. This should help refining the game and hopefully get's some funds during the creation of the game. Otherwise you'll have to finance the game on your own and wait for the income until you're done with it.

In the end, both ways are possible but require hard work to pay off ;)
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

I've seen people pay for h games before, me being one of them. Some like to donate to a new h game to help it get developed. I started donating a dollar a month for Breeding season cause its a good h game. That just my opinion.
 
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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

If you're willing to make a sustained effort and don't fall to the process of dying internally while working on your project, even very simple and mundane game design will have monetization opportunities if it has content of some kind that is in demand. This concept stretches so far, that people are willing to play trashy annoying games if they have good porn content, even games that are in a different language on RPGmaker with nothing but poorly drawn hentai CG with four annoying variations of the same 10-30 pictures.

Essentially, what you need is programming skills and a secondary creative talent of almost any kind; art, writing, game design, photoshop, maybe even some kind of audible talent (though I imagine music and voice acting are less necessary than other skills when making a game). Even if you want your game to be ultimately free you can still monetize it into a business model using patreon or some other donation system, with the whole, "Public version/Private version" gimmick. This always means working for the long-term rather than the short-term unless you're part of a team, and even then the scale of the project can change things up considerably. How long it takes Fenoxo and team to update TiTs as opposed to CoC for example, ironically due to design decisions that have been met with intense scrutiny and opposition. (For porn games specifically, RNG-sploring by clicking on buttons is better than winding around different maps and being encouraged to spend more time in specific locations limiting the range of available content to run into. In any other popular game genre *but* porn a map would probably be preferable, imo)

Ultimately, I think that if you're a game designer and aren't too picky about how you break into the scene, porn games have a unique combination of intense demand and low standards that make it easier to find success as an indie game dev. But the difficulty and mental fatigue it apparently costs is nothing to snort at, so if you are a prospective developer don't underestimate the undertaking, even if making marketable porn games is theoritically easier than making marketable games of pretty much any other type.
 
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Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

Speaking of "marketable", how do you even market adult games? If that isn't too off topic a tangent. Most of the things I've read you can do to market a clean game don't tend to apply to adult games due to adult content being forbidden in most places on the internet.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

People are going to pay you for your game, or get it for free, regardless of the way you offer the game. This is why I like Patreon, as I can provide the game for free (which eliminates any piracy worries I may have otherwise had) and it allows me to basically have a tip jar. If people like your game then they will support you and pay whatever they think is a fair price.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

Paladox said:
People are going to pay you for your game, or get it for free, regardless of the way you offer the game. This is why I like Patreon, as I can provide the game for free (which eliminates any piracy worries I may have otherwise had) and it allows me to basically have a tip jar. If people like your game then they will support you and pay whatever they think is a fair price.
Click to expand...

I've only bought a few games myself. patreon is nice but a lot of people dislike it, and it's better for people to be able to buy and play games immediately, still your point about free games is nice. I just can't imagine people paying me enough with patreon to give me a living wage, so i dont really have the option of releasing them for free.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

I think a lot of dislike for Patreon comes about through this misconception that Patreon has to be a 'pay for full version' model.
I personally dislike using it like that, don't think it was intended as such. I use mine as a 'hey, folks, all my games are free, but if you throw money at me I can develope them more easily!' kinda thing.
I mean, its up to each gamedeveloper to do with it what they want, but I think patrons should reward game authors they like for work they are doing, help them pump out more nawties, not pay them for nawties already done, for that theres better commercial sites, pixiv, etc.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

Without a decent "adult steam" sort of game market patreon is the only viable option. I make okay money from it. Not as much as medical work did but hey, I wouldn't expect it to.

Pervy said:
I use mine as a 'hey, folks, all my games are free, but if you throw money at me I can develope them more easily!' kinda thing.
Click to expand...

I do the same thing.
 
Re: Is there money in sex games? Is YOUR money in sex games?

Cypress_z said:
Without a decent "adult steam" sort of game market patreon is the only viable option. I make okay money from it. Not as much as medical work did but hey, I wouldn't expect it to.
Click to expand...

Wait hold on, you're from the medical profession as well? I swear, every other person in our profession must secretly be working on an rpg maker pron game at this rate. :p
 
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