Why porn? Or more specifically, why pornographic games?

[x3Darkie]

As I've put this thread under creative discussion, this question is more or less directed to content creators (non content creators feel free to chime in though). Whether you already have a game on the forums or are in the middle of developing one, why are you making a game with pornographic content (or a pornographic game, depending on how you phrase and define them)?

A friend asked me this question recently and I quote, "why are you making a porn game? With the amount of work you're putting into your current project and your skills you could easily just scrap the porn part and the game will just be as good and you could market it to a more general audience instead of a mature one." Once again, his words, not mine. Though I'm pretty sure he's saying that because we're friends and/or the fact that I've shown him my design docs and WIP assets so he's got a good grasp of my vision for the game, but regardless, his question prompted me to ask the forums and see what people think about it.

For me personally, it's more of a stupid (or perhaps naive) goal. The only reason I'm making a porn game is because one day, I told myself, if I'm going to make a career out of game dev, I want to make a game with porn in it at least once in my lifetime. Yeah, it's a pretty stupid reason. But I'd like to hear what everyone thinks about this question.

[kvier]

Kyrieru has some choice words on why they make porn games... unfortunately I can't remember whether they said these things on ULMF or their blog, or even what to search for.

[Daemoge]

Personally, I'm doing it because sex is one of the basic appetites we have. It's just an appetite. No more or less important than other fundamental desires. It's a thing most of us want. How does that manifest? Well, we create within our means. Some of us draw, some make edgy music, some of us make video games that include fucking. That's the short of it, for me at least.

[Changer]

For me, I like playing, and making games, but it seems strange that games are forced to be squeaky clean when it comes to sex. Like, it's okay to have a character chainsaw another character in half, but showing a nipple, now THAT'S evil. *eyeroll*

I believe that sex is a natural part of life, and so I don't feel like it's good to just pretend it doesn't exist. So, if so much as a nipple will get the dreaded AO rating, why not just go ahead and make it a full on H game.

[AcetheSuperVillain]

Honestly, cuz I'm a pervert. I have made a lot of risque games and art because that's what I like. I probably would have made porn games in my Mochi days if Mochi had allowed it.

There was always a hesitation for me, because I feel like if I make porn, I can't stop making porn, you know? Like if I switched to something else people would say, "that guy used to make porn, watch out" or "why does this game not have porn in it? bummer, dude!" But seeing the amount of money people rake in on Patreon really made me stop and say, "whoa, that's a real job!" And I realize I can still make a game that is just as good as if it didn't have porn. Like my current project Astro Vulpus, I think has a really cool shmup gameplay mechanic that will stand toe-to-toe with any Flash shmup, and in fact I probably wouldn't have come up with it if I weren't looking for a way to tie together smut and shmup. And also, times are changing. Porn is a daily thing for many people. Game of Thrones has porn in it and it's still a house-hold name. And when I uploaded Knarf's Quest it blazed past my other NewGrounds entries in views.

So yeah, I had a lot of hang-ups about getting into porn, but I found a lot of reasons to do it anyways.

[evildumdum]

I like making stuff and it's a genre almost entirely dominated by small one or two man teams so you can start with just a basic knowledge of coding. All other creative areas have long since established hierarchies and the bigger companies have an almost monopoly on production, but ero-games are too risque for that to ever happen so it'll always be open for the little guys like us.

[Daemoge]

I like making stuff and it's a genre almost entirely dominated by small one or two man teams so you can start with just a basic knowledge of coding. All other creative areas have long since established hierarchies and the bigger companies have an almost monopoly on production, but ero-games are too risque for that to ever happen so it'll always be open for the little guys like us.

And to speak to that point, as well, that's part of why this is worth approaching. The standard is generally quite low so contributing something substantial is well within reach. There's a picture that gets circulated a lot on my FB with Mr. Rogers drawing a house, and it's really just a triangle on top of a box, but it's captioned, "I'm going to go ahead and draw a little house here. It's not very good but that doesn't matter." Having that sense that you can jump in there and be genuinely appreciated even for something less than having one-upped The Witcher 3 is an appealing idea. I see a huge amount of people using RPG Maker. I find the engine hideous, personally, to the point that it motivated me to go learn a whole coding language just so that I didn't have to use that, yet I appreciate the depth and development some of these people have put into their stories and characters.

[Avian07]

For me Erotic games is a stepping stone and a way to improve aspects of my art. For instance I have little experience on making/designing background art, frankly I suck at it. Though to my defense im still using a mouse on my digital arts but im still trying to learn techniques to efficiently create/render one so when I do manage to transition to a drawing tablet and the likes I'll be more productive. So my main point is Erotic games for the most part isnt so picky on art quality or users mostly gloss over less than perfect piece of artwork for well designed game mechanics but having great artwork does make that significantly more favorable and as for me im learning things I havent dabbled on before so its exciting and eye opening.

[RodneyPP]

short answer:
1) I like porn
2) I like vgames
do you see the logic here?

other thing is that adding porn is a nice way to revive old school games

[NovusPeregrine]

I like making stuff and it's a genre almost entirely dominated by small one or two man teams so you can start with just a basic knowledge of coding. All other creative areas have long since established hierarchies and the bigger companies have an almost monopoly on production, but ero-games are too risque for that to ever happen so it'll always be open for the little guys like us.

I'm gonna second (or is that third?) this. I did consider making a more 'mainstream' visual novel type game, as that is also reachable with a small team, but it's actually easier in some ways to generate assets for an adult game than it is for a regular one. That's not...completely accurate...but for the non-artistically inclined (I'm very much not, which is why my own game uses 3d graphics created using Daz3d) it's mostly true. I will also add that it is one of the few genre that people will accept games coming piecemeal, even supporting creators as they continue to grind away at producing a full-featured game.

[TyrelJerome]

Why not?

[flatliner10]

A game is a save Environment to experiment witch Ideas Concepts or mechanics which you can't shouldn't or simply don't want to perform in real life, and anything sex related is a vital part of life in general, whenever you want it or not.
Adding Sex to a Game-Environment for experimentation or entertainment is just logical.

Its hard enough for an small indie-developer to gather anyone's attention with just another Game under Millions, even if he has the ability to create a High-Quality Game in a reasonable amount of time, much harder get paid/credited for his affords.
You have to give the People something they actually want, even actively looking for but cant get from normally. A groundbreaking Feature stunning graphics awesome Story or even sex/fetishes whatever.
Sex spices up a lot, just look at nexusmods and the download counters for anything remotely naughty.

People like fanservice in Anime -> Hentai
People like naughty Mods in Games -> Porn Games.
The people WANT porn in their Games PERIOD.

I want porn in my Games...'nuff said

Now excuse me while i go play that unholy child of an Candy-Crush-ripoff and a Dating Sim

[BBReady]

Honestly, part of it's money, part of it's to vent. When I see people raking in thousands of dollars per month (or per update) on Patreon for these types of games, it definitely piques my interest. Add in the fact that I can make money with this on the side and on my own, and I'm even more interested.
Also, it allows me to vent. I don't know if it's because a lot of the stuff I've been reading, watching, and playing over the past few years has been more sexually mature in nature or what, but when I start on projects that aren't meant to have a lot of sex content in it, I always feel inclined to add a lot more than necessary. Like, I want to acknowledge in my projects that sex is a natural part of life and all, but I don't want to go overboard with it. So, I figured that instead of wrestling with myself on how much sexual content is appropriate for this action-adventure story, I could instead just start developing a game that focuses entirely upon sexual content, and then maybe I won't feel so pressured to add a corpulent amount of sexual content in projects where it isn't necessary.

[DuskyHallows]

It's mostly already been said but it never hurts to chime in. Because there's little or no reason not to. From a personal standpoint, both of us enjoy making smut. The majority of people raised on the Internet are one level of pervert or another and being able to channel that into a creative project is satisfying as hell. From a Dev perspective, it's a great place to dive in. Competition is much less fierce so setbacks that could cripple a mainstream game are simple hurdles to be overcome in the NSFW games industry. If you're even remotely successful you can make enough to supplement your income or live off of, and if you make it big then you're set no matter what your next project is.

But I suppose the main reason is that we had an idea for a porn game one day and we ran with it.