What if Porn Games, were actually good Games?

[SoEinArsch]

I dont say every porn game is bad, but I think everyone sees they are not like Skyrim or Grand Theft Auto. And they dont need to be that, not now. But it would be a good thing or not?

So people, Question: Can we find some halfway skilled people and start working on this problem?

[TheWrongHands]

clearly you've never played skyrim with adult mods or bone town. also there are a number of really good porn games out there, like fate/stay night. i think you're probably generalizing things a bit too much to get across what exactly you mean.

[musical74]

The problem is everyone views what makes a porn game a little differently, and also what everyone looks for is different in that porn game. The Last Sovereign is an excellent game, but if you want lots of sexy pictures you won't get it (almost all the sex stuff is writing only). Monster Girl Quest is a good game with lots of sexy pictures, but if bestiality or game-over-rape turns you off you'll avoid it. There's lots of good porn games out there, you just might have to dig a little bit!

[maximilianos]

Wait... Fate/stay is a porn??

[TheWrongHands]

Wait... Fate/stay is a porn??

the first 2 games were, the company that makes the franchise got it's start making h-games (really good ones)

[maximilianos]

(I totally won't check that out when I get the time)

[TheWrongHands]

i highly recommend you do, fate/stay night is easily in my top 5 and there is a reason saber is one of the most popular waifus ever
that and the Unlimited Blade Works is one of the most bad ass super powers ever

[Darkwood]

I dont say every porn game is bad, but I think everyone sees they are not like Skyrim or Grand Theft Auto. And they dont need to be that, not now. But it would be a good thing or not?

So people, Question: Can we find some halfway skilled people and start working on this problem?

The big difference is budget. Skyrim has 10 000 000$+ budgets and huge team of developers, while porn game at most (except of exclusions) has hardly few people in teams and couple of thousands budgets.
Money rules

[InvaderG]

There are some games like Malice and the machine that do a good job at making the game part fun and interesting but its definitely one of the exceptions and takes awhile to produce updates due to the size of their team.

[TheDoubleDeuce]

I'm afraid such a thing will never exist. Self respecting artists and coders would never sully their reputations with something of smutty nature. So all us rejects are stuck pulling games out of our asses and piecing them together. But if there were to be a good h-game, it would be Japanese.

[sneezy]

It will take a while until mainstream developers and artists slowly trickle into the adult world. There is a lot of taboo going around but some (like me) love such games and start to create them.

Maybe in a few years the quality will be improved drastically.. but we gotta have a start somewhere.

[DeadlyAlias]

There are a lot of good games that are porn games, or at least started as porn games. The way I understand it, there are three major obstacles in the way of porn games "being good games".

1) Pornography is a demographic limiter, and hampers the success of its producers
I know it sounds really weird, "everyone loves porn", but sexual content is very private and personal. Sexual identity exploration is something that is inappropriate for children, and culturally considered to be dangerous (at least in the US), and I understand why. A lot of the pedophiles and sexual predators I know of or have seen get caught used erotic and sexual games to manipulate their victims into accepting certain VERY BAD behavior in fantasy, then in reality. So you can't put a porn game on shelves, you can't advertise it as publicly, and you can't sell it as freely. Most games series (thinking of fate/stay in particular here) that stand up on their gameplay lose a lot of the pornographic content so that they can be sold to/enjoyed by more people.

2) The core appeal of Pornography is emotionally opposed to the core appeal of gaming
Another weird sounding one, and technically not always true, but it is generally true. Porn is enjoyed in relatively short burst, experienced in a mounting intense high, and followed by a refractory period where it's not as interesting. Whereas modern gaming is obsessed with "addiction" and continuous exposure. There are some games that are played for 15 minutes between classes or meetings, but most of gaming and "high quality games" involve hours of constant engagement. Overwatch, Hearthstone, Fortnite mostly played in hours long intense binges. Looking at single player experiences you see Civilization, Skyrim, Red Dead, and Final Fantasy following the same model. If you think of the best Porn games you have ever played, how many of them kept you aroused the whole time? As someone who has put hundreds of hours into SimBrothel and WhoreMaster I am telling you the sexual content stopped being relevant to the play experience for most of each encounter. Porn a niche aesthetic/theme for games, not really a good core to hang a game on.

3) Sturgeon's Law & Sex Sells
At least 90% of anything is crap. You are more likely to give a questionable looking game a try if it has sexual advertising or sexual content, so you play more awful games that are Porn games than you play non-Porn games. They fool you more. The indie Porn game scene is pretty strong, at the moment I'm thinking of Future Fragments, Crisis Point: Extinction, and of course the flourishing community we have here.

On a slightly zingy-note, people bemoaning the lack of good Porn games remind me of the people who say "They don't make good movies anymore". I'll ask "What have you gone to see recently?" and they'll say "Oh nothing interesting is on." or "I haven't bothered." and sometimes "I don't really watch movies.". High quality Porn games, or even video games in general, aren't getting sold in the Walmart checkout line; but they are out there if you are willing to look for them.

[Reading_Steiner]

It's true that the appeal of a game and of porn isn't really the same, if I want porn, I'll often be too "busy" to play and if I want to play, it's sometimes difficult to stop to catch some "rest" if the porn in the game's too good.
But even with these limitations, I wouldn't be against a good porn game. I just don't know how it should be like: visual novels are already great but aren't actually games (you're just reading and sometimes doing a couple choices), you're passive 95% of the time, but actual games that you're involved in for a while AND which are good are uncommon in the R18+ world.
Plus, it's true that financing is a big issue. AAA games are financed by bank loans, and which bank is gonna lend millions for porn? No, you have to finance your project yourself, and thus it's hard to raise more than a couple thousand $; just look at how Nekopara, maybe the most popular eroge franchise outside of Japan, raised less than a million!

But then, the issue isn't unlike the one in anime. Non-H anime can enjoy awesome animation, while hentai will often feel and look like it's been done on a budget of 5000 yen, two 12-packs of Asahi beer and a pair of sweatpants, because that's their actual budget.