I’ve never really played any porn games more hardcore than Baldur’s Gate 3 before, but you remember a couple weeks ago when GOG gave away those NSFW games, as a direct response to the whole thing?
Well I claimed the bundle just to boost their numbers (because censorship is bullshit), but recently I needed a low-difficulty gaming distraction, so I checked a few of them out, and… some of them are kind of good?
Like first off you have to be okay with visual novels (usually), but if you’re cool with that, some of them actually have some compelling characters, and occasionally even good gameplay in between all the fucking and whatnot.
Leap of Love is amusing, kind of adorable when it comes to the not-sex stuff, and charming. It is also a game where you (a former frog) can marry and simultaneously bed 3 princesses and their stepmother after deposing of the evil king. My brain is still trying to reconcile this.
Huniepop is one of the best match 3 puzzle games I’ve ever played, with a chill as hell soundtrack. Also a scantily-clad foul-mouthed love fairy wants you to fuck every woman in a 5 mile radius who can fog a mirror.
And Crom help me, when I finished… sigh… Fetish Locator Week 1, I actually cared enough about some of the characters to buy the next one.
The point is, some of these games have more depth and value than I’d been led to believe, and I wouldn’t have known that if the censorship thing hadn’t started that chain of events. So congrats censorship people, and honestly thanks, I guess? Completely the opposite of your intended effect. Task failed successfully.
The biggest issue with adult content in games is that it limits your market to adults that want that content. Which is already small to begin with. And you often can’t advertise the same way, which limits your audience further. You only find out about them through word of mouth or through places like Lemmy.
From the standpoint of the developer, your ROI is likely to be very small. I think that’s why VN are the most popular form of adult games, since they are easier to make than full games.
Its inherently a gamble. Yes, it limits you to that audience (which is increasingly villified by christofacists and the influencers who “don’t want people to think they are gooners”). But it also makes you the king OF that audience.
Subspace is a great example. It had an incredibly vague and over ambitious crowdfunding campaign and it did gangbusters. Because people are hungry for a horny game that is actually a game. That said, it feels like other devs realized that was a thing and the patreon-style sites are now the main focus and discoverability went to zero.
Which is why I think the next big step is a blogsite that actually covers these without feeling like you are just reading a guy’s wank diary (… which we kind of are but it is nice to not think about that). Its the same problem onlyfans et al have. The biggies keep getting bigger but there is almost zero way to find out about the newbies.
There is a site that I frequent but due to this community’s instance rules, I won’t post it here.
The site is more of a forum/community than a blog but it’s pretty good.
Do you mean Subverse? Searching for Subspace is just redirecting me to Subverse, but maybe I’m missing it
they do mean subverse!