Tag: adult games

This is ninth of ten essays contained within the second issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, an experimental collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. I will be re-publishing the web versions of all essays from the first two issues of the anthology to this blog over the course of the next few months, but if you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: Laney Norman

Growing up with unfettered access to the internet in the early 2000’s gave me an early introduction to the wide world of adult media, especially games. They’re engaging, creative, and sometimes taboo with how they depict sex and intimacy. The best part is that they’re interactive, giving the stories an extra level of immersion. Porn games aren’t often seen as therapeutic, but in my adult life they ended up being a strategy to repair my personal relationship with sexuality.

Following an experience of sexual trauma, I wasn’t really focused on my own physical and mental safety when I pursued intimate relationships. This is a common coping response in those who have experienced sexual assault or other types of sexual trauma. According to the 2019 study “Navigating Sex and Sexuality after Sexual Assault”, victims of sexual assault often experience changes in sexuality in response to their assault. “Changes in sexuality included loss of interest in sex, increase or change in sexual partners, engaging in sex work, and increased sexual behavior.” (O’Callaghan) There’s no one way of coping with sexual trauma, so there are many ways this can present in survivors.

I would go on “Tinder binges” where I’d be on my phone for hours, swiping and chatting with almost anyone who spoke to me, looking for any sense of connection. Every time I’d get a notification, I’d feel a little thrill of potential and throw caution to the wind to pursue these kernels of intimacy. Dating apps are becoming more and more game-ified. In “The Brain and Swiping for Love”, Samantha Beck describes gamification of dating apps as “the idea of applying game elements to non-gaming situations—like dating. This unhealthy environment of unlimited swipes convinces users that there are always new people to meet and potential matches to be made, even if that is not necessarily the truth.” (Beck, p 111)

Disregarding my safety completely, I would go out, putting myself in risky and dangerous situations in an attempt to feel some sort of connection. Most of these encounters left me with more baggage to unpack rather than anything that felt like a fulfilling way to be intimate. I was hurting in many ways and how I was engaging with any form of intimacy or sexuality was harming me rather than helping me.

Continue reading ““I’m Game If You Are” – Reclaiming Consent Through Porn Games” →

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This is eighth of ten essays contained within the second issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, an experimental collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. I will be re-publishing the web versions of all essays from the first two issues of the anthology to this blog over the course of the next few months, but if you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: Leo G.

It’s 2004 and you’re horny. So you type into Internet Explorer the naughty words “porn game boobs” and click the first result. It’s a Macromedia Flash game! And it’s using the crustiest jpegs of anime girls you’ve ever seen.

It’s 2007 and you’re horny. So you type into your Wii Opera browser the naughty words “porn game boobs” and click the first result. It’s an Adobe Flash game! And it’s using the most obviously traced vector art of anime girls you’ve ever seen.

It’s 2024 and you’re horny. So you type into your VPN enabled Firefox browser the naughty words “porn game boobs” and click the first result. It’s an HTML5 Unity game! And it’s using the most beautiful art of anime girls you’ve ever seen.

The game says it’s got 50 girls to romance, each with 9 unique sex scenes. That’s 450 drawings of women getting railed, not counting any possible portrait or talk sprites. And all this for only $9.99? Before, those adult flash games were free, but if there’s this much content maybe it’s worth shelling out a couple of bucks. However, maybe I’m an experienced shopper, but where one might see a great deal, I see nothing but red flags.

Then it hits: something’s wrong. Maybe it’s how the same girl never has the same exact design details. Or maybe it’s the way her musculature will be off that’s questionable. And whoever the artist is seems to only know a handful of poses despite their masterful grasp on painterly renders. No, your intuition is actually working, that feeling is your gut instinct taking a trip through the uncanny valley. A human didn’t make this, a machine did.

Continue reading “The Quality And Quantity Quandary Of Adult Games” →

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This is fourth of ten essays contained within the second issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, an experimental collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. I will be re-publishing the web versions of all essays from the first two issues of the anthology to this blog over the course of the next few months, but if you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: Eithi

CONTENT WARNING: THIS ESSAY CONTAINS DISCUSSION OF NON-CONSENSUAL SEX ACTS.

What Is The Rance Series?

The Rance series is a long-running series of erotic Japanese role-playing games developed by Alicesoft from 1989 to 2018 spanning 13-ish games. They star its titular character, the brutish hero Rance and his faithful slave Sill Plain as they venture out in the Continent. While the earlier games feature more small-scale misadventures in a single town or village, they quickly escalate into large-scale conflicts involving the larger powers that control entire kingdoms and wars between the human powers and the monsters who rule the other side of the Continent. Throughout the games, Rance and Sill meet the people who inhabit the world from all sorts of social classes and kingdoms, learn about their situations, and usually get involved in the conflicts that arise-be it by Rance’s own actions or the actions of others.

However, what Rance wants isn’t really to help others or to fight for justice; he’s simply in it for the women. Throughout the games, Rance has many sexual encounters with the various women he meets, often in extremely non-consensual contexts, and forms friendly relationships with some of them as they become recurring characters. Yet Rance’s main interaction with sex (usually) involves rape, and it’s an aspect of his character that’s remarked upon throughout the games as he meets new people.

This element is understandably something that will turn people off from the series. It’s the main barrier for people who’re uncomfortable with rape being depicted in media even if the setting, gameplay, and designs are appealing on the outside. I am not trying to convert people who don’t like those elements wholesale into the series. Rather, I think the Rance series has a lot of interesting elements that it explores through this framework and I personally find those elements interesting, especially as it relates to how the characters form relationships where consent is dubious or non-existent.

To do this, I want to first establish some basic ideas relating to how the series operates, as I believe it’s very important to get some elements clear for people who haven’t heard of the series or only know about it through its reputation on the internet.

Continue reading “The Dynamics Of Sex In The Rance Series” →

This is third of ten essays contained within the second issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, an experimental collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. I will be re-publishing the web versions of all essays from the first two issues of the anthology to this blog over the course of the next few months, but if you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: Lynn “wintermute” Robinson

I enjoy playing Tales of Androgyny. It is a well illustrated porn game with Visual-Novel-style dialogue and a surprisingly deep combat system that leads into evocative sex scenes. The majority of fuckable NPCs within the game are large, voluptuous women sporting equally large penises. The outcomes of the dialogue and combat systems determine whether they end up fucking your player character (“PC”) or being fucked by them, as well as who is “leading the action”. As a trans woman who is sexually interested in other women, these characters are unsurprisingly appealing to me. I enjoy the sex scenes, although what keeps me coming back to the game as it continues development are the engaging systems and the fantasy of inhabiting the world. The game allows some level of character customization, and so I tend to play Tales of Androgyny the same way I do Corruption of Champions (“CoC”), or games like Fallout or Skyrim: I make my character into a facsimile of myself, and role-play as if I were inhabiting that world.Though not particularly fine-grained, the character customization does facilitate this style of play through renaming the PC, picking their facial characteristics, skin tone, hair color, and the sizes of body parts. You cannot pick your gender, notably, nor can you pick your genitals like you can in CoC. Though I am unbothered by the mandatory penis and solitary hole, the lack of gender selection is where I begin to experience friction in my desired role-play.

Continue reading “Femboys, Futanari, And Finding Myself In The Space Between Their Bodies” →

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This is second of ten essays contained within the second issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, an experimental collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. I will be re-publishing the web versions of all essays from the first two issues of the anthology to this blog over the course of the next few months, but if you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

Written By: raginghadron

Time and time again while browsing adult games, I see store page after store page with bad marketing copy; bad enough that it actually obstructs the process of deciding whether or not to buy or try a game. This sucks from the perspective of a consumer, and it’s also gotta suck from the perspective of a developer.

It doesn’t have to be this way. I’ve seen indie developers talk about struggling with marketing, and I can totally understand how it can seem difficult from the outside, but it isn’t something that’s out of reach, even for an indie developer with no budget.

I used to work as an editor for marketing copy; I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a marketing expert, but pointing out flaws in marketing copy (and suggesting ways to fix them) was part of my job.

In this article, I want to use that experience to help you market your adult game. This isn’t about advertising or social media campaigns, but about the fundamental way you describe your game to potential buyers. Specifically, I’m going to focus on what goes on a game’s store page, but this information should generalize well to any other forms of marketing you choose to do.

Continue reading “Don’t Play Coy: Marketing Advice For Adult Game Devs” →

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PICTURED: Opportunity’s main menu screen.

INTRODUCTION

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to write, at length, about the experience of making some form of creative project. This stems from a life misspent poring time and time again over such indispensable self-commentary works as The Art of Discworld, Steven Universe: Art and Origins, and, most treasured among them all, The Calvin & Hobbes 10th Anniversary Book. There’s something so seductive to me about holding forth on all the little decisions you made, the things that influenced you, the experiences that shaped your creation… while I wouldn’t necessarily say that this desire is my sole or even primary creative driving force, I also can’t deny that it’s a significant contributor.

The only inconvenient thing is that in order to indulge this long-held desire to write a bunch of preening autobiographical fluff where I talk about how clever and creative I am, I first had to actually MAKE something that I’m proud of and that could bear this kind of extended scrutiny. So I did! It’s called Opportunity: A Sugar Baby Story!

Here’s some quick at-a-glance facts about Opportunity:

  • Opportunity is a pornographic kinetic novel about sex work, romance, parenting, and Millennial ennui. It released on Steam and Itch in February of 2023.
  • I did all of the writing, programming, and assorted managerial tasks, while all character sprites and sex scene artwork was created by the pseudonymous artist Pacha.
  • The first chapter of Opportunity released on Itch in late February of 2021. It was about 20,000 words, had only two sex scenes, and took about an hour to play if you read slow.
  • After catching the eye of boutique pornographic games publisher TinyHat, we released chapters 1-3 on Steam Early Access in March of 2022, with chapter 4 coming in August of that year.
  • The full, final, 5-chapter version of Opportunity is over 140,000 words long, takes 6-10 hours to read end-to-end, and features nearly 400 sex scene CGs.
  • Opportunity is the second project Pacha and I worked on together, the first being the as-yet-incomplete mecha-themed visual novel As Above/So Below. It will soon be followed by our third large-scale project, the mind-control-breaking isekai sandbox visual novel Monstrous Liberation.

This will be a series of essays exploring the themes, influences, characters, and philosophies contained within Opportunity: A Sugar Baby Story. I hope that it proves interesting not only to fans of the game, but also to people who might want to know about my creative process and personal motivations for making Opportunity! (As this series will inevitably discuss plot spoilers, each one will consist of a short spoiler-free introduction followed by a read-more divider.)

To begin with, let’s take a look at some of the other creative works that shaped my approach to developing Opportunity.

Continue reading “Opportunity Retrospective: Part 1 (Intro & Inspirations)” →

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This is fourth of nine essays contained within the first issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, an experimental collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. I will be re-publishing the web versions of all essays from the first two issues of the anthology to this blog over the course of the next few months, but if you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

By: Juniper Angel Theory

The modern era of media is defined by many things, but perhaps more than anything it’s defined by horrifying scale. Games are no exception to this; last year a whopping 12,529 games were released on steam. If you played one hour of each it’d take you almost a year and a half of 24/7 play to try every single one, and that’s JUST games released in 2022. With this much media coming out every day, we usually focus on the few we find value in to sift them out of the rough.

But what if we didn’t? What if instead of looking at only a few interesting games, we evaluated the whole medium to look for patterns? By observing games with similar engines, art styles, genres, or even publishers we can discover specific trends and answer some puzzling questions. It also allows us to find games we might have otherwise overlooked due to the sheer volume of media produced every day.

Continue reading “A Broad Overview Of Steam’s “Adult Only” Category (With New Editor Commentary)” →

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There’s a certain threshold that exists when critically considering any artistic work: namely, a certain standard of that must be achieved before the work can be expected to withstand any level of critical scrutiny. This is not merely a standard of quality, but also a standard of cohesive creative intent – is the creator of an artistic work offering some kind of identifiable vision, such that the steps they took to attempt to realize that vision can be evaluated for their effectiveness? Further, to what extent could the creator be expected to absorb, digest, and respond to critical feedback in their work? And, lastly, to what extent could critical examination be said to be of use or interest to a wider audience?

Continue reading “Good Enough To Criticize” →

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This is second of nine essays contained within the first issue of the Adult Analysis Anthology, an experimental collection of longform writing that seeks to expand the breadth of critical discourse around adult games and adult game culture. I will be re-publishing the web versions of all essays from the first two issues of the anthology to this blog over the course of the next few months, but if you’d like to support the creation of more high-quality writing about adult games the full anthology is available for purchase on Itch! Anthology logo by Pillow!

By: Yarrun

In 1982, a company named American Multiple Industries, in a bid to garner free publicity through controversy, got to work on a game designed to upset people. Custer’s Revenge, a simple, poorly-made game for the Atari 2600, focuses on the eponymous Custer’s attempts to sexually assault a bound Indigenous woman, named ‘Revenge’ in the game’s instruction manual. It was decried by feminist and Native American activist groups alike… and it quickly became AMI’s best-selling game, moving at least 75,000 copies at an inflated cost of 49 dollars a cartridge, netting a revenue of over three million dollars. The stunt worked like a charm, but the game would linger in infamy for its blatant bigotry, and for years after, it would be the most prominent example in the West of what an ‘erotic videogame’ is.

Sex sells. So goes the common adage. But when it comes to videogames, while selling normal games via scantily clad female character has consistently been a viable tactic, selling games about sex has generally been more fraught, with most companies unwilling to garner the same reputation that Custer’s Revenge earned. Admittedly, in the East, developers that started on erotic videogames could transfer over to making non-erotic videogames with relative ease. The Fate franchise, after all, went from a visual novel with sex scenes added to increase its value to one of the most profitable gacha games on the planet. But in the West, erotic games and the companies that developed them were kept in their own ghetto away from the rest of the industry, with most success being found in the computer game market with various strip poker titles.

Continue reading “On Patreon, and the Taming of Erotic Game Development (With New Editor Commentary)” →

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