It is time for me to stroke my chin at you, please do not put your food under my beard hairs
I have twelve design documents in my “games to make” folder - one of them was finished (Wrangler), one of them was abandoned (no telling cuz I might do it another time), and ten in various states of progress and/or concept. And, out of all twelve, eight are porn games.
A couple of them have been prototyped, usually just some code written out. I kind of hate doing assets and animations, so few or none of them have any visual element past 3D cylinders and maybe some sprites I sketched. The reason is the same - porn game design is really fucking hard.
In short, sex is extremely difficult to gamify. Video games have some sort of loop, and sex is inherently repetitive; you’d think these go together like bread and mold. Unfortunately, porn needs to be constantly novel. You wouldn’t watch an animation where two dudes fucked in missionary for 3 hours would you?
This creates a weird mishmash where the game has to have some sort of (preferably easy) interactivity, while keeping the actual content fresh. But, again, this clashes. A good example would be Beat Banger - the gameplay is repetitive, but the animations in the background have to be different all the time. However, because it’s a game, and not an animation, you have to put at least some of your attention on not fucking it up. Worst-case, you’re focused so much on the incoming notes that you can’t look at the sloppy wieners flopping around on-screen. As a DDR fan, I know that’s not 100% true, but in DDR, you’re not in it specifically for the music videos.
How do you gamify porn in a way where the player can still moisten their fingers or mash their gherkins? Well, you have to have one-handed controls, or make the sexual stuff one-handed at least. But if you make the game one-handed, you’re restricted to mouse-only or keyboard-only (or half the Xbox controller if you’re a psycho like me). This leads to genuinely interesting game design challenges - how do we keep the player engaged, while allowing them to engorge? Do we blend the actual physical sex motions into gameplay? Do we have a regular game with porn in it? “Regular game with porn in it” is the norm, and that’s fine, but only in theory.
Many porn games I’ve played in this style are a fucking nightmare to play - because the sex interrupts the gameplay. If I’m playing a 2D platformer, and I get hit by an enemy, I do not want to sit through a fucking 30 second animation of my character getting fucked. “But you can skip it!” I can’t skip the knockdown animation, the enemy walking over, and the recovery animation. The gameplay and the context are completely at odds with each other.
In a regular video game, like a 2D platformer, the reward for the player is getting to play more of the game. However, with a porn game, the reward for the player is to see more animations. This creates a fascinating situation where the porn game doesn’t have to be any good or remotely fun because that’s not what you’re here for. In fact, sometimes games are created where you only see new animations when you lose, which puts the player in a situation where they want to fail. Terrible design. Speaking of, some Patreon games barely fucking work, but still get a ton of attention and cash, because there’s sex in it. Truly good and well-designed games, like Hole Dweller, get less attention. I don’t have a good reason why this is; Hole Dweller is free, which means people feel less obligated to pay for it, certainly a factor.
My point is, you don’t actually have to put much thought or effort into porn game design, which is completely ass-backwards.
Regardless, I want to innovate, and I want to see what weird or novel shit can be done blending porn and interactive media. I still think Rack is the pinnacle in that regard, but there’s always room for more. Maybe someday someone will make something that surpasses Rack in combining the two worlds - hell, maybe it’s already been done. At the moment, it seems more furry porn games are being created, but aren’t breaking new ground yet. Developers seem to be sticking with formulas, genres, and designs that are guaranteed to sell. How have we not seen a game that melds porn and gameplay better than Rack, which is ten years old?
Video games take a lot of time to make. I wouldn’t personally say it’s hard, but it takes a large amount of sustained effort. Because of this, the furry sex porn space is a little lacking in the innovation department, since most of them are being made by 1-2 people. For a truly innovative and/or big game to make it here, you either need a great concept (Rack), or a team of skilled people able to make something genuinely polished (HeatVR). However, with the Patreon revolution, polish is completely out of the window in favor of “will fix later”-type games.
As a solo developer or small team, it’s a very good idea to fund your project whilst it’s in development via Patreon. I absolutely am not bashing the practice, as it lets visionaries create cool-ass games without needing to worry about it succeeding.
My problem is, these games are rarely adjusted to fit the Patreon model of monthly or bi-monthly updates. One porn game I played in particular held up a big stop sign that said “GAME ENDS HERE” and kicked me out. It’s okay to have a game that’s not totally finished on Patreon - but for God’s sake try to hide it a little better. Rather than making your game a huge open world with nothing in it, make a set of islands that get gradually unlocked. Rather than having an area in your game that tells you to get lost, just don’t let the player go there in the first place.
This feeds back into my statement before, about how you don’t actually need much game design in porn games. This is where the effort needs to go, if you choose this model. It will require you to change your vision a little bit, if that’s where it’s coming from, but it will improve your game. Unfortunately, with a game that’s publicly funded and developed, you have to consider how the game is now and in the future. It doesn’t matter that you’re going to improve the performance or add the entire fucking game’s mechanics later - I’m playing it right now. You need to pick a genre and design that allows you to plop things in without it feeling like it should’ve been there from the start.
Most critically, I believe it’s important to have a “done state” - the point where the game has everything it needs, and can be put to bed. Devs understandably do not ever want their game to be in this state - some of em make a lot of money off these projects. But, as an artist, your work has to be complete someday. Otherwise, your game is dangerously close to a “live service” title. A game that’s never done could work - some insane people I talk to love Caves of Qud in particular - but you really gotta have a plan, and I don’t often see that.
Yes, I really did publish one whole game and then start preaching about game design. I love video games. Please make good video games.
Porn games are this fascinating field completely devoid of innovation (minus a few exceptions - love ya Hole Dweller), but somehow not explicitly needing it. Regardless, I do think this strange little bubble would be a lot happier if we can focus more on game design instead of how many cocks and balls we can cram into the Patreon trailer.
Oh also can you guys optimize your models? You don’t really need a model with 100,000 polygons unless you’re getting REALLY close (like VR). Thanks