The Pretty Decent Hentai Game

A long time ago I made an ironically titled post called The Ultimate Hentai Game in which I explained why it will absolutely never be made: There's no money in it, nobody knows what they want, nobody wants to go near it, and crap games already have a firm grip on the market. It's one of the better things I've written here and that's depressing, really.

But the nice thing about posts from long ago is that a long time has passed.

Today, as a more experienced and knowledgeable man, I'm going to provide a rebuttal to my own arguments. In doing this I hope to bring a new light of hope to all hentai fans around the globe! Right after I finish bursting out laughing from writing lines like that.

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1) There's New Profit Potential (countering: "No Profit Potential")
Once upon a time all games were bought and sold in retail brick-and-mortar shops. Then along came the internet, and people realized they could make money through advertisements shown online instead! Then they realized they were idiots and actually couldn't and lost bazillions of dollars. Fast forward a decade or so and advertising is back in the saddle and rapidly growing in terms of value. Right now adult advertising in games is difficult to pull off, if not impossible, but who knows how long that will last? Demon Girl is #72 for popularity on Newgrounds, someone is going to wake up and take advantage of this situation eventually.

Another new revenue stream that's picking up momentum is micro-transactions. Would you pay $1 for a second character, or a new enemy? $5 to boost the experience all-round? Again, the systems aren't here yet, but one day someone is going to make a killing once they set it up.

Sponsorships are now a big thing in the flash gaming market. Flash games, made in a few months, are going for 10-20k plus bonuses. While that amount is still very unusual, if the value of games continues to increase at this rate it's possible (read: likely) that adult portal sponsorships will show up and begin to help justify spending time on developing hentai games. More time developing means more advancements in the genre which helps to turn the tide of crap around.

The population of the earth is growing, the prevalence of religion is dropping, more and more people are becoming tech savvy. Hentai has an ever-growing market to target, even if we are mostly cheapskates.

2) Soft Focus (countering: "No Consensus")
Some people want to push forward with gameplay and others want to ratchet up the H content, how do you reconcile the two in a single game? The answer is actually pretty simple: provide both types of stimulus simultaneously.

The concept is what I'm calling soft focus and it's the opposite of the way hentai games are currently made. The standard model is: a) Make the player go through sections of gameplay, then b) provide a non-interactive hentai sequence as a reward. My approach is to tie both sequences together and then give the player the option (not an explicit dialog tree style option, but an implicit "look where you want to" option) of directing their focus to what they want. Try not to penalize either approach and maximize the amount a player can get out of it.

An additional way of "pleasing everyone" is to allow players to tailor experience to their fetishes. Don't like the extreme stuff? Turn it off. Want more of a specific fetish, crank up that slider bar. Or maybe this is integrated into the micro-transaction model so people buy the types of content they want.

3) Fuck Stigma (countering: "Bad Stigma")
For a big company to engage in adult game development is still, and probably always will be, completely infeasible and dangerous. But for all the reasons listed above small companies are becoming more and more viable. Small companies carry less baggage and they can maneuver into more niche areas. Stigma is going to hurt a light-weight unknown company far less than a major corporate player.

Hentai audiences are crazy devoted. You guys are proof of that! I did jack all for a year and was between this blog and my site was getting 2k hits a day and had people posting in forums about me. As mentioned before, Demon Girl is #72 for popularity on the oldest flash portal on the net, and even got into the top 100 for score! That's hard for any game to do. Maybe 99.9% of viewers don't care, but that remaining fraction of a percent make up for them.

On the flip side, you don't need to have a close relationship with that 99.9% to harness the millions of views they bring in. Someone who views a game just so they can write a nasty review would still be seeing an add; would still be boosting the popularity. Maybe people consider you to be a dirty, shameless sinner but maybe that's not so important.

4) Fuck Japan (countering: "Bad Precedent")
Don't get me wrong, I love the country. So much amazing stuff comes out of there. I wouldn't be here today without 'em! Still, when it comes to gaming the rest of the world is moving on. Russia is starting to build up a significant set of developers, Korea is dominating the online space, anime is big in the west now. How long will it be before India starts pumping out titles? Japan may be holding back the hentai game genre but that means the rest of the world has a golden opportunity to take control of it.

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So at this point you're thinking "oh my god he's back into making Mystic Girl and it's going to be the most amazing thing mankind has ever witnessed" in which case I'll need to SLAP YOU. Mystic Girl is still on hiatus, although I can say for sure that I want to take another shot at it. I've got ideas about what to do with it; ways to make it better than I originally intended. Whether I get around to pursuing that, who knows? But you'll all be the first people to hear if I do. And rest assured I won't give you a date for it lest I be hit by a truck.