adrix89
Cipher
Releasing sequels or expansions is your best bet for your cash cows. You can still experiment with new games but only if you have the budget to waste from your cash cows.
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The Indiepocalypse happened - we are now in the Indie Post-Apocalypse
- Thread starter Infinitron
- Start date
passerby
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2016
- Messages
- 2,788
Re-release seems to be the Jeff Vogel way of doing things
I don't think it is a good idea either. You can reuse a lot of code and even assets without doing a straight re-release.
Jeff Vogel does both
HentaiWriter
Future Fragments
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2015
- Messages
- 314
I'm also here to answer questions about adult gaming and such, I'd post more on the forum as a whole but I'm honestly spending 16+ hours a day working on stuff.
As for a boom in porn games, yes, it's become pretty huge. Patreon is paying out millions monthly to porn game devs, and Steam has already hopped on the adult game boom, given that they now have a multitude of filters coming specifically for adult games to categorize stuff like if it has violence, sexual violence, non-consent without violence, non-consent with violence, bondage, etc.
Adult games in general are routinely outselling SFW games on the average as well, where the best selling SFW games in the top 2% will of course dwarf every other NSFW game ever made, but the average NSFW game's sales dwarf 90% of SFW games on Steam.
Meltysquest, for instance, made $300,000 in a few months on Steam, and that's not even an outlier, that's only slightly above average; most adult games on Steam, if done even remotely well, make at least $100,000 within a few months.
House Party has made around $1,500,000 now, and while it is somewhat of an outlier, that's again only sales on Steam. There are a multitude of places to sell your adult game now, including FAKKU, MangaGamer, JAST, Denpasoft, Nutaku, Mikandi, Itch.io, Gamejolt, and many others I'm sure I'm forgetting.
Currently, in the market the majority of adult games are definitely "adult content first, gameplay later", which is something that we're aiming to slightly shift with our games, as are a number of other developers, to at the very least balance the adult content equally with the gameplay content, if not to put the gameplay first entirely and then the adult content secondary.
We want people to be able to consider adult games as a legitimate thing, much in the way that violent video games were originally just for shock value with little focus on actual quality of gameplay or story, but then eventually over time they were taken and treated seriously, with violence being something interwoven into character's motives, beliefs, playstyle, and the story at large.
As far as what we make, I currently make $15,000+ a month off of Future Fragments, our core Patreon game (there's two other Patreons I'm doing, but I'm doing those at a loss as I'm paying for all assets up front on them, while the Patreons themselves make little money as we don't have demos out for them yet, but we will within the next month or two; each game has separate teams, of course).
That $15,000 is split evenly between myself, Frouge (the programmer) and Triangulate (the artist), and then we each pay for external assets as well, and split those evenly too. So for example, this month we paid out $1200 to voice acting, and $800 to our musician, for a total of $2,000 off of that $15,000. We then take the remaining $13,000 and split it 3 ways, so myself, Frouge and Triangulate each get $4,333.33. That's not an average month, though; some months we pay out far, far more to voice acting, and other months we pay far less to music, and then there's some months we pay out lots to sound effects, and so on.
Adult games can certainly compare to proper indie games, just as again violent video games came into their own, too. For our own game (Future Fragments), honestly, most of the discussion on the backer discord 95% of the time is about the gameplay or the story; the discussion very, very rarely turns to the porn within the game. Most people are constantly wanting me to reveal this or that plot point, or showing me videos on how to beat a boss a unique way or how to beat a level in a unique way.
There's even a level editor that you can pledge to get that allows you to make your own levels and cutscenes, and then you can pass those levels and cutscenes around to other people so they can play them; the flexibility on this editor I would say is about as intuitive as Mario Maker, but far, far more robust. People have used it to make multiple-map level packages full of their own story, cutscenes, fights, and so on; one guy even did so much workarounds with the engine that he turned our platformer into a mini-RPG using the editor, so there really is a lot of people who are heavily into adult games for aspects outside of the porn.
If you do want to try our game, by the way, it's at https://gamejolt.com/games/FutureFragments/332701 (the entire page is SFW, don't worry, the game itself is very NSFW though).
This is build v027F, and the current build is v0.33, so this build is fairly old and missing a lot of of the new gameplay features (like cutscenes that don't automatically start once you get near them, in the current build you activate cutscenes by just pressing up on NPCS), and it also has a lengthy tutorial at the beginning that's for this demo only, and won't be in the full game, but it was the easiest way to get all the gameplay mechanics across without leaving people confused, so we do hate it, but it's a necessary evil for a public demo dropping people in the third level of a game.
Make sure to leave the audio on, too; it's one of the main things we get told was implemented well, same goes for the music, which you can listen to some of on the Gamejolt page.
If you're not on Windows, you can play it at https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/683361.
I'd like if you'd try it out just to see an example of the beginning of what adult games could be when it comes to treating gameplay as seriously as the adult content; I'm not saying we're the end-all be-all, far from it, we've got a long way to go with not only making Future Fragments the best it can be (although we're releasing in less than a year), but also with just making adult games something to be taken seriously as a whole, but we're definitely getting there.
Feel free to ping me for any other questions and such though, I'm always happy to answer anything about the adult gaming industry.
Last edited:
some funny shit
Scholar
Just make Golden Krone Hotel 2 with bigger characters and lots of sex. First true porn roguelike.
lightbane
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2008
- Messages
- 10,193
If Rance ever comes out to Steam, expect hentai games' sales to explode. AS well as game "journalists" to become uber-butthurt.
Again, more reasons to upload the entire Rance saga in Steam. Or even better, GOG too!
Oh wait, they had trouble with Hatred, so no idea if Rance games would fly. On the other hand, subpar visual novel games are lately flooding GOG, so no idea.
HentaiWriter
Future Fragments
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2015
- Messages
- 314
Right now, the western indie porn game market is dominated by Patreon simply because in western society, very few people are already wealthy enough to be able to work on a game full time without having to do another job on the side for month to month affording rent, etc.
So being able to have that monthly pay, as opposed to something like Kickstarter where at best you'll get about $50,000 for your game on average, which would pay for food/rent for you and maybe one or two other people for a year (not nearly long enough to make a killer game in most cases especially with a small team, let alone having to afford things like sound and music and all that), is a godsend.
It's why prior to Patreon, the adult games market in the west was pretty much as scarce as it got, with only three types of games/people coming out;
1) People who were making very, very rudimentary/basic games with little to no polish/gameplay that lasted only a few minutes long (Meet n' Fuck games, for example); these could be churned out relatively fast for high earnings when there was zero competition on the market for the most part.
2) People who were making good quality games, but had to do day jobs at the same time, so progress was extremely slow and took 5+ years for games with even only a few hours of content.
3) People who were already independently wealthy like described above, and thus could make good games, but in almost all cases, these games were incredibly niche because the creator wasn't making them to appeal to a mainstream demographic, they just wanted to make something fun for themselves for the most part.
Once Patreon came out though, the month to month funding was about 1/2 of why the western adult games market exploded in popularity and possibility.
The other half of that though was the exceptionally low fees Patreon takes; in literally all examples of adult funding prior to Patreon, and adult sales, 70% was the absolute maximum of profits you'd see, and the only way you'd get that would be to have a killer app game that you could use as weight on sites that sold adult games to say "hey, my game is fucking amazing, give us this rate or we go elsewhere with our exclusives"; most of the time, it was 60% or even 50% profit you would have gotten.
When you pair up the above information with how little income people would get, as well as practically most sites at the time having very stringent rules on what was allowed (far stricter than what Patreon allows now, with the exception of DLSite which has always allowed every fetish practically, but charges you a minimum of 40% of your profits up to a maximum of 75%+ (!)), you can see why adult games only really sprang up as of recent, given that Patreon only takes 10% of your profits, and Patreon themselves only takes 5% of that; the payment providers are the other 5%.
There's other smaller reasons Patreon was a boon to adult game creators, but those are the biggest two, along with of course the significant userbase Patreon has nowadays.
Steam though, is poised to basically be the "other half of the puzzle" here in that Patreon is where you get your funding to make your game, but Steam is probably going to be the go-to as far as selling your game, given that even though it takes 30%, the userbase it has and (what seems to be) the absolute lack of restriction on content would allow people to put some very extreme games on there that have fanbases full of "whales" who would pay through the nose for this extreme content. Ideally, it wouldn't get that way, because I would like if the mainstream would take adult games more seriously instead of it going to an extreme where they perceive adult games as being specifically the most extreme fetishes possible with gameplay being traded off/forgotten about in the big hits, but that'll be mainly up to culture and game creators and how those communities as a whole end up doing things.
So being able to have that monthly pay, as opposed to something like Kickstarter where at best you'll get about $50,000 for your game on average, which would pay for food/rent for you and maybe one or two other people for a year (not nearly long enough to make a killer game in most cases especially with a small team, let alone having to afford things like sound and music and all that), is a godsend.
It's why prior to Patreon, the adult games market in the west was pretty much as scarce as it got, with only three types of games/people coming out;
1) People who were making very, very rudimentary/basic games with little to no polish/gameplay that lasted only a few minutes long (Meet n' Fuck games, for example); these could be churned out relatively fast for high earnings when there was zero competition on the market for the most part.
2) People who were making good quality games, but had to do day jobs at the same time, so progress was extremely slow and took 5+ years for games with even only a few hours of content.
3) People who were already independently wealthy like described above, and thus could make good games, but in almost all cases, these games were incredibly niche because the creator wasn't making them to appeal to a mainstream demographic, they just wanted to make something fun for themselves for the most part.
Once Patreon came out though, the month to month funding was about 1/2 of why the western adult games market exploded in popularity and possibility.
The other half of that though was the exceptionally low fees Patreon takes; in literally all examples of adult funding prior to Patreon, and adult sales, 70% was the absolute maximum of profits you'd see, and the only way you'd get that would be to have a killer app game that you could use as weight on sites that sold adult games to say "hey, my game is fucking amazing, give us this rate or we go elsewhere with our exclusives"; most of the time, it was 60% or even 50% profit you would have gotten.
When you pair up the above information with how little income people would get, as well as practically most sites at the time having very stringent rules on what was allowed (far stricter than what Patreon allows now, with the exception of DLSite which has always allowed every fetish practically, but charges you a minimum of 40% of your profits up to a maximum of 75%+ (!)), you can see why adult games only really sprang up as of recent, given that Patreon only takes 10% of your profits, and Patreon themselves only takes 5% of that; the payment providers are the other 5%.
There's other smaller reasons Patreon was a boon to adult game creators, but those are the biggest two, along with of course the significant userbase Patreon has nowadays.
Steam though, is poised to basically be the "other half of the puzzle" here in that Patreon is where you get your funding to make your game, but Steam is probably going to be the go-to as far as selling your game, given that even though it takes 30%, the userbase it has and (what seems to be) the absolute lack of restriction on content would allow people to put some very extreme games on there that have fanbases full of "whales" who would pay through the nose for this extreme content. Ideally, it wouldn't get that way, because I would like if the mainstream would take adult games more seriously instead of it going to an extreme where they perceive adult games as being specifically the most extreme fetishes possible with gameplay being traded off/forgotten about in the big hits, but that'll be mainly up to culture and game creators and how those communities as a whole end up doing things.
Dayyālu
Arcane
Thank you for your kind and comprehensive reply! You pretty much covered everything a man could ask about the financial&development matter. However, of course yer a dev and I am nothing, but....
While I do understand the reasoning behind this, thinking that the first "hyper-violent" games had little else but violence as a selling point is misguided. Let's take some good examples of Old School Ultra-Violence games: Doom, Blood and DN3D (and this one had tits, even!): the violence is just a piece of the puzzle, built to make the player feel powerful in direct connection with the weaponry (an essential thing in shooters) and to build a suitable athmosphere. Likewise, I presume that a theoretical "good" porn game should have a fundation of good gameplay and make the .... ehr....uhm..... "reward" seem proper in context (Sengoku Rance comes to mind, being the outlier). A piece of the puzzle to build something worthwile for yer buyers, not a freaking artsy walking sim that wants to be a Hollywood movie. Or a French movie, if we're talking erotica.
Again, thanks for your replies! Always interesting to know what's going on.
Jeremiah
Literate
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2018
- Messages
- 11
Nope. There's at least two really popular ones that I know of: Noxico and Trapquest
https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/comments/8ei8ab/bizarre_fetishbased_roguelike/
Notice the first comment...
Gerrard
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2007
- Messages
- 12,010
Pretty sure Japan has you beat on that.
karoliner
Arcane
This always bothered about hentai games of all that i played the only ones with decent gameplay were Parasite in city and Vita's Great Escape.
HentaiWriter
Future Fragments
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2015
- Messages
- 314
To be clear, I didn't mean that early games with violence were universally for shock value or that shock value was the only content in it, but take for example two of your examples that I played back when they came out; Doom and Duke Nukem 3D.
The gameplay is fun on them, but let's be honest, both of them had nearly no storyline whatsoever (Doom was basically demons coming through a demon spawner on Mars AFAIK, and DN3D was somewhat the same but with pig-humans and such, and on Earth instead of a military base).
If those games were instead without their gore and guns and violence, let's also be honest, they would not have sold anywhere nearly as well as they did, because the violence *was* a major selling point. You couldn't remove the violence from those games and still have them do remotely well, IMO.
That said, those are two games I wouldn't consider to be using violence purely for shock value, nor would I be considering them games that I was referencing when it came to "no content outside of the violence"; I'm talking more games like the Mortal Kombat rip-offs that were prevalent in arcades all during that era (and on home consoles, like Time Killers, which as far as I remember was just awful and only got any notoriety because of the over the top bloodbaths in it, and Eternal Champions, which, while definitely a strong console contender, definitely went way over the top with violence as a way to shock/get attention to it, especially with the Sega CD port), and games like that.
Again, of course, it wasn't ALL games with violence that did this, just a majority back during the early days, and especially when the whole ESRB formation/Night Trap/Mortal Kombat drama was going on, I remember practically half the games coming out then were advertising with things based around violence and gore and brutality on their ads, again for shock value.
Well, if you get a chance, try our game out; maybe you can add it to your list if you consider it to fit being a game with adult content and decent gameplay both
https://gamejolt.com/games/FutureFragments/332701
Viata
Arcane
HentaiWriter
Future Fragments
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2015
- Messages
- 314
the kinkier the fetish is, the more you will make.
Crazy virgins in their 20s and 30s having no family to fund usually have lotsa disposable income and willing to pay crazt amount to fill their (probably legally) impossible kink
HentaiWriter
Future Fragments
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2015
- Messages
- 314
It depends, really.
There's a sweet spot and specific fetishes that really interest people, if you're going purely off of cash grab purposes, and the top five are (in no particular order);
- bestiality
- incest
- furry
- loli
- cuck
Those five are definitely the biggest ones in the west; now that said, Patreon bans all of them except for cuck and furry, although a lot of incest games get by on the trope of having the player name the very obvious mother or sister characters whatever they want, so as to make it "player's choice" for the blame, so to speak.
Additionally, most places in the west will ban bestiality, and practically everywhere bans loli.
That also said, I would advise you to make a good game first, worry about fetishes second, because if you do this, you'll get people who will want to play your game because it's good, drawing in people who may not even like the fetishes in the game, versus just ONLY getting people into said present fetishes.
As far as the demographics on games, those change per game and fetish too; furries are generally fairly well off just because being a furry is a fairly expensive hobby/interest with the cost of fursuits and travel to a lot of conventions.
From polls we've ran too, the educational level of people pledging to these games might surprise you too; out of about 1000 responses, we had our biggest demographic (something like 35-40%) claim to be 4-year degree holders, with the next highest being 2-year holders, and then even a few phd's and people who had taken some college but dropped out. People who had never attended college were actually our smallest demographic.
Yeah, I don't think going for too extreme is the best way to make money. As an example, it will be interesting to see how Maggot Baits does commercially once it releases.
If you want to do a really complex, hard core niche game but still fund it somehow, slap some pretty girls into it. People will even solve math equations if it is the means for gaining the affection of lolis.
Who will be the brave codexer who makes Age of Desudence?
If you want to do a really complex, hard core niche game but still fund it somehow, slap some pretty girls into it. People will even solve math equations if it is the means for gaining the affection of lolis.
Who will be the brave codexer who makes Age of Desudence?
Dayyālu
Arcane
Less surprising than it may seem. Lower educated classes have less access to the peculiarities of Internet degeneracy (probably even Patreon is too complex for them), can't find the idea of a porn game appealing or simply employ whores.
Too much free time.
Ahh, you are a "storyfag" (no offense intended) in Codexian terms. Nothing wrong, it's fairly noticeable that you like writing games. Maybe it's even on your nickname.
Pardon me if I go a tad off topic: there is a difference though between Violent Games and Porn Games. Doom and Blood's violence nowadays is almost cartoonish and no longer shocking, but the quality of their gameplay has kept them to be entirely forgotten: Doom's mod community is huge (and even a contender for porn games, with the infamous H-Doom). On the other hand, "shock value" games are rightfully forgotten if they didn't manage to update with the times (the cargo cult new Mortal Kombat games, fun for what they are).
Porn games on the other hand exist essentially because they are porn games. If they weren't, they would be half-forgotten indies with no chance to obtain success. While you can remove violence from Doom (and many mods did so!) and keep up a good game, a porn game has to mantain, I guess, the "pact" that created it: giving to the masses erotica. You can't make it too difficult or fail to provide the content. Low-effort high-content porn games will always have an edge, particularly in this era of casualized gaming. I mean, who's up to do a hardcore TB-based strategy porn game (bar the Japs!)? You are shackled to your own choice.
This rant means methinks you are risking a lot in focusing on a gameplay and storyline erotica game. I wish you success, because honestly we need good games even in the weirdest forms, and 'cause you have been an excellent chap in giving us informative replies.
HentaiWriter
Future Fragments
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2015
- Messages
- 314
Huh, I was positive that had already came out. I think it'll do well if only because of the other example I noted about "if a game is quality, people will try it out regardless of fetish", and Clockup, to my knowledge, does pretty amazing polish/quality on their stuff; just look at this intro to Maggot Baits, for example.
(highly, highly NSFW btw)
Minus the lolis, I've actually considered doing a game that teaches English or something along those lines and if you do things right, the teacher strips off clothing, but then I'd probably expand it into some crazy storyline where your English is required to battle an oncoming threat and your teacher was the one being taught all along by you and now she's the general of the evil forces and using your own English against you, or something ridiculous like that.
It's also that people with college degrees are more sexually open-minded/adventurous, although for the life of me I can't find the multiple articles I've read about this in the past.
Yep, I definitely am in it for the story, but I'm also in it for the gameplay, the audio, the visuals, all of it has to be quality for it to be enjoyable, IMO, and people making games should aim to address all parts of a game if they want success.
That said, I definitely agree with you about shock value and everything else you said, which is what tied into my point above about "make a quality game, and then regardless of fetish, people will come and enjoy it".
This is where I would disagree and agree both; I do agree that porn games exist specifically and mainly to give porn to the player, but that said, I would categorize porn games , that term, under the same value above as "shock value" games. What we and a lot of other people are trying to make in this "third wave" (or fourth?) of what we'd probably call adult games or erotica/erotic games are like what I described in previous posts; a game that DOES have pornography and adult content in it, but it's not the chief focus to the point that everything else is thrown to the wayside; everything is cared for and the creators are trying to make it into a legitimate, full fledged game.
I can go on about my own game here with all the features in it that aren't tied to porn, but I've already talked about it a lot in previous posts, so I'd say if you get the chance, at least try the demo out that I linked in previous posts to get an idea of what I mean with where we're going with this. You can literally play the entire demo and never even run into porn depending on your path, honestly.
To go further with this, the responses in reviews and emails and such have almost universally been that even if we were to remove all of the adult content from the game, they would still purchase the game and enjoy playing it; most of the discussions on our discord are about the game's storyline, gameplay, discussions of how to mix/match powerups, rather than the porn. (It does come up though, don't get me wrong.) In our case, we're still giving the porn a lot of attention, don't get me wrong (there's already over 60 animations in the game and hundreds of moans/orgasm sounds that get cycled through randomized pools to make each encounter unique, multiple versions of game over scenes, lots of long-form sex cutscenes, etc.), but we're also giving the gameplay, writing, audio, and visuals just as much attention.
Heck, if you want to see a quick video review on the game;
(lightly NSFW)
I've already got a GDD (game design document) for one.
Same goes for a Dynasty Warriors style game too, although that one's incomplete, but there's a fair bit of info when it comes to the characters and such (and it's only the generalized document, not a specialty one like I make for the artist, programmer, musician, SFX person, voice actors etc.).
If you'd like to read it, it's at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BGM2ees3bytPkuQMLtRpap9MH796r5GQyeWqmyCFzac/edit?usp=sharing and it's meant to play like a cross between Dynasty Warriors, Warioware, and Monster Rancher. I won't start on this one until Future Fragments and Reclaim Reality are both done, though.
To continue on from what I wrote just a bit ago, you would think that you'd be risking stuff, that's definitely common sense, but you'd probably also be surprised to find that nowadays a lot of those games that are in the top 30-50 on Patreon are the ones that are going for being "erotic/adult games" rather than being "porn games". Most of them have some form of fun or engaging gameplay and porn often takes a backseat or is at the least not the sole driving force behind the game.
Also, thanks a lot for the well wishes!
So I decided to check the game mentioned in the OP and...WOW. I'm amazed at how clueless some people can be. Someone else said something about the market rewarding service, and this person is correct. Shame he failed to elaborate on his point, but I will.
The only thing all "indie developers" have in common with each other is the fact that they aren't rich megacorps. Which means their games can't go toe to toe against AAA in the "production values" department because they're going to lose 100% of the time. So whenever regular joe the gamer browses steam's "indie catalog" he knows he is not supposed to expect AAA graphix/voice acting/etc. So it all comes down to a simple question: "if I'm not getting production values, what AM I getting instead?". And that's where this Omnochronom dude AND the OP fail to provide an answer.
I browsed the Steam page and tried to read the game's official website. First of all, whoever decided that having a floating background behind the text was a good idea is fucking retarded. I was getting a bit of motion sickness trying to read the game's description. That's "lol, nope" right there. But the main problem is that this game name drops DotA in its very first sentence, but completely fails to provide an answer as to "why would I play your game instead of DotA?". It's like the author doesn't even consider this question, but it's THE most important question a potential buyer is ever going to ask.
You see, most of us consumers aren't hobos living under a bridge. So the biggest investment into a game isn't its 10, 20 or 60 USD price tag, but rather whatever time I decide to sink into the game. And the "time cost" is the same, regardless of whether is a 60 USD AAA popamoler or a 1 USD indie shovelware. So if your indie pet project is derivative and essentially boils do to "a poor man's Dota, but single player because muh hurt feelings" most people will jump to the conclusion that the game isn't worth their time.
If you want sales then you need to provide something other people actually want but can't get anywhere else. The last part is key, IMO. I'm not saying an indie title needs to be a one-of-a-kind-100%-original-creative-breaktrhough BUT it needs to bring enough to the table to justify the inferior production values. Otherwise you're just stuck with a "poor man's X". And a "poor man's X" has very little reason to exist, most people will simply play X instead.
The cold hard truth is that indies with mass-market appeal are almost an impossibility. For every Darkest Dungeon/Undertale/Banished out there you're gonna have a gazillon failed projects. The "safe" route is to find a niche AAA isn't exploring and try to provide something for that untapped market. But in order to do that you'll need to come to terms with the fact that your game will never hit AAA sales figures. A niche game for a niche audience from a developer that shares the same niche interest. So basically "the AoD route".
Except most indie devs (OP included) don't want to be AoD, they want to be Call of Duty, minus all that silly corporate infrastructure behind CoD. If you look closely, this Omnochronom game has nothing to do with DotA. Because DotA is a multiplayer game at its core, so a SP game can't possibly be "kinda like dota". The reason why this guy name dropped DotA is simple: he knows DotA has a HUGE playerbase, so if even 0.00001% of that player base buys his game then he is all set. That's his reasoning right there, and it's a p. shitty reasoning, for the reasons I mentioned above. Also:
You still don't get it and you never will. If you make a porn game, you're going to fail there as well. Because you have yet to bother with coming up with something people want but can't get anywhere else. You have no passion and no new ideas to bring to the table, you just read some dude on a forum saying porn games are where teh bucks are at and decided to chase the next fad. Just like every single creatively bankrupt developer ever. Indie or otherwise.
Read HentaiWriter posts again. The guy isn't making money because he is "making porn games", he is making money because he knows exactly what his audience is looking for, but can't get anywhere else.
The only thing all "indie developers" have in common with each other is the fact that they aren't rich megacorps. Which means their games can't go toe to toe against AAA in the "production values" department because they're going to lose 100% of the time. So whenever regular joe the gamer browses steam's "indie catalog" he knows he is not supposed to expect AAA graphix/voice acting/etc. So it all comes down to a simple question: "if I'm not getting production values, what AM I getting instead?". And that's where this Omnochronom dude AND the OP fail to provide an answer.
I browsed the Steam page and tried to read the game's official website. First of all, whoever decided that having a floating background behind the text was a good idea is fucking retarded. I was getting a bit of motion sickness trying to read the game's description. That's "lol, nope" right there. But the main problem is that this game name drops DotA in its very first sentence, but completely fails to provide an answer as to "why would I play your game instead of DotA?". It's like the author doesn't even consider this question, but it's THE most important question a potential buyer is ever going to ask.
You see, most of us consumers aren't hobos living under a bridge. So the biggest investment into a game isn't its 10, 20 or 60 USD price tag, but rather whatever time I decide to sink into the game. And the "time cost" is the same, regardless of whether is a 60 USD AAA popamoler or a 1 USD indie shovelware. So if your indie pet project is derivative and essentially boils do to "a poor man's Dota, but single player because muh hurt feelings" most people will jump to the conclusion that the game isn't worth their time.
If you want sales then you need to provide something other people actually want but can't get anywhere else. The last part is key, IMO. I'm not saying an indie title needs to be a one-of-a-kind-100%-original-creative-breaktrhough BUT it needs to bring enough to the table to justify the inferior production values. Otherwise you're just stuck with a "poor man's X". And a "poor man's X" has very little reason to exist, most people will simply play X instead.
The cold hard truth is that indies with mass-market appeal are almost an impossibility. For every Darkest Dungeon/Undertale/Banished out there you're gonna have a gazillon failed projects. The "safe" route is to find a niche AAA isn't exploring and try to provide something for that untapped market. But in order to do that you'll need to come to terms with the fact that your game will never hit AAA sales figures. A niche game for a niche audience from a developer that shares the same niche interest. So basically "the AoD route".
Except most indie devs (OP included) don't want to be AoD, they want to be Call of Duty, minus all that silly corporate infrastructure behind CoD. If you look closely, this Omnochronom game has nothing to do with DotA. Because DotA is a multiplayer game at its core, so a SP game can't possibly be "kinda like dota". The reason why this guy name dropped DotA is simple: he knows DotA has a HUGE playerbase, so if even 0.00001% of that player base buys his game then he is all set. That's his reasoning right there, and it's a p. shitty reasoning, for the reasons I mentioned above. Also:
You still don't get it and you never will. If you make a porn game, you're going to fail there as well. Because you have yet to bother with coming up with something people want but can't get anywhere else. You have no passion and no new ideas to bring to the table, you just read some dude on a forum saying porn games are where teh bucks are at and decided to chase the next fad. Just like every single creatively bankrupt developer ever. Indie or otherwise.
Read HentaiWriter posts again. The guy isn't making money because he is "making porn games", he is making money because he knows exactly what his audience is looking for, but can't get anywhere else.
rusty_shackleford
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50,754
my friend draws furry porn and makes a lot of money doing it tbh, hes been doing it for probably well over a decade now.
karoliner
Arcane
Western civilization was a mistake. It's nothing but trash.
Viata
Arcane
Wait, where you saw this?
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