A Higher Standard For Writing About Adult Games

Over the past several years, mainstream game storefronts have relaxed their restrictions on adult content in games, leading to an explosion in porn games on those marketplaces. Seemingly overnight, adult games went from being an underground hobby to being a popular and profitable subgenre of indie games. And yet, coverage of porn games and commentary on porn game culture has yet to meaningfully materialize within the annals of what remains of mainstream video game media.

There are a number of understandable explanations for this, of course. Even when the industry was much healthier, mainstream video game coverage always struggled to provide equal space to independent games over hot AAA releases. Advertisers have extremely limited tolerance for their products appearing next to content that might be deemed controversial, so ad-supported outlets (which is to say, all outlets) avoid covering anything that could upset their tenuous cashflow. A depressingly-large ratio of English-speaking audiences are highly Puritanical and would respond negatively to any favorable coverage of sex-positive material. And even ignoring all of that, writing about porn games is even more difficult than writing about other niche games because it necessarily reveals one’s own sexual preferences – something many people would be happier remaining private.

However, the fact remains that more people than ever are making porn games, and more people than ever are playing them. How are new porn games meant to find their audience? Where are major releases from popular porn game developers supposed to go? What kinds of experiences have players had with porn games over the years? What are the emerging trends within the subgenre? Who can track the lineage of design decisions between different releases? Who are the innovators? Who are the bad actors? What is worth playing? What is worth celebrating?

There exist a handful of enthusiast blogging sites and a loose ecosystem of video creators who provide a smattering of adult game industry coverage, but as far as I could tell nobody was attempting to put out thoughtful long-form writing on the games and culture therein. This is what the Adult Analysis Anthology seeks to address. AAA, first organized in 2023 with three issues published as of 2025, features thirty-three paid essays from a wide spectrum of adult game players, developers, commentators, and others. The subjects cover range from 101-level primers on the ins and outs of adult game development for the uninitiated, reviews of adult games and major franchises, anecdotes from longtime subgenre commentators on their experiences, and tender accounts of players’ personal relationships with porn games, to name just a few.

A fourth issue of the anthology, containing fifteen new essays, is planned to release in May of 2026, and a fundraiser is currently running to finance its creation.