The Ultimate Hentai Game

Not going to happen.

Weep and despair, my friends, for the game of your dreams is never coming. All hope is spent, thrust into the gaping chasm of a society unwilling to let go of its innocence. Reality is a harsh mistress. It teases you with glimpses of possibility but leaves before satisfaction has been delivered. And so we beg at the table for pathetic scraps of pleasure.

While some may be satisfied with their petty dialogue trees and pre-Atari gameplay design rejects, we know better don’t we? We have a grander sense of beauty and dream for a day when the ultimate hentai game will finally arrive.

It won’t and here’s why (in no particular order):

1) No Profit Potential:
Good games take time to make. Time is money. This is money that has to be made back at some point. But what is the market for a hentai game, exactly?

a) A bunch of freeloaders. I mean let’s face it: I don’t pay for much and you probably don’t either. Porn is the most widely pirated entertainment media there is. There is a ton of it and it is very easy to get. Add to this that the people who are most willing to appreciate a good game are also the most likely to know how to get it for free and you’ve got a severe lack of people willing to pay for a quality title.
b) No one you can market to. I don’t think IGN wants to throw hentai on the front page, do you? Retailers won’t stock it. Even most sources of adult content wouldn’t give you the time of day as the majority of people consuming porn still think cartoon sex is for freaks. What’s left? Ads on 4chan? That’s just another cost to recoup and also leads back to 1a): pandering to the people most likely to pirate your content.


2) No Consensus
What is a good hentai game? After all, we can’t make one if we don’t know what it is.

a) Should it have incredible gameplay? Why does it need hentai then if you’re just playing it for fun? If someone only wants to get off then gameplay just gets in the way. So it should concentrate on just being as erotic as possible! But wait, aren’t pictures, movies, and manga more efficient at that? Why make it a game at all, really?
b) What should it be about? One person wants to see big tits and another isn’t interested in anything but loli girls with dicks giving birth to alien tentacle monsters while having their limbs chopped off. If the game doesn’t cater to one’s interests, it’s not very good now is it? Hentai tastes are very diverse, and something as simple as a tentacle monster can be a very big deal.
c) Does it need a good story? Engaging characters? Riveting dialogue? All that just takes more time away from both the gameplay and the hentai.

You can’t make a good game without these things, but they all detract from the hentai content, which detracts from the point of making this sort of game in the first place!


3) Bad Stigma
Sex is sinful and dirty and you should be ashamed of even thinking about it.

a) So you are a big name game developer. You have a studio of talented people and sound financial backing at your disposal. How is this for a business plan: Create a hentai game, alienating much of your staff, increasing your turnover rate and inevitably giving your company a reputation for being sexist and twisted. Your funding quickly dries up and the gaming media refuses to cover your product. When your game hits the shelves – wait, it doesn’t because it was boycotted by lobby groups and banned by politicians. All non-pornographic avenues of business are blocked to your company (the name of which is forever tarnished) and your own name is personally blacklisted from other gaming jobs. The game itself is forever known as “that terrible sex game” and no one ever recognizes that it was good at all, completely neglecting to pay attention to the fact that there is anything to it other than sex.
b) So you are a small, independent game developer. You’re working alone or closely with a couple other people. You pour loads of time and effort into making a great hentai game. When the time comes to promote and then sell it, no one pays attention. Press won’t even consider talking to you and you have no money and influence to pursue the retail channel. You can’t even get publicity for the game by turning it into a scandalous news story because your company has too little of a reputation to care about. Everywhere you go the game is labeled as “that terrible sex game” and never recognized as being anything more than simple porn.


4) Bad Precedent
Hey, there already is some hentai games out there! They have exciting storylines and incredibly addicting gameplay!

Or not.

a) Shitty hentai games already exist and make money. Why do they make money? Because they are cheaply made and have little competition. After all, if every game sucks, none are really going to steal the show. They can’t even rely on licensed properties because they can’t get any decent licenses willing to enter the sex industry. So what results is that no one has any incentive to make decent products because by maintaining the status quo (of shit) everyone profits with minimum risk. Hey look, boobies!
Hell, DOAX2 isn’t even decent and that is using one of the most popular hentai properties there is. How is a full out hardcore game going to turn out any better if even the big studios are putting out crap?
b) Here’s one for the “but it could happen in Japan!” crew. Japan has lost its status as a bastion of gaming innovation. Sorry, but Japan is the country that turns Dragon Quest releases into national holidays and races out to line up for the latest Gundam title. The public there has voted with their wallets and decided that rehashing the same games over and over again is what they truly want no matter how poorly rated they are. Enter the bad precedent: if hentai games are currently crap then crap is all people are going to want because people seem to love buying the same stuff they already have.

Quality is unimportant, which leads us back to issue #1: there is no market for excellent adult games substantial enough to justify making one.


But we’re a resilient bunch, we’ll just keep hoping anyways. I mean, it’s not all bad. We’ve got good games, and we’ve got hentai. We’ll just have to be happy keeping the two seperate.