is the secret to success making 18+ content?

[MetalKing11417]

Steam removed all "R18+" games in the regional store of China on Feb.11
You can't make it successful if your players can't buy your game.
Just something for your consideration.

Personally, I will not actively make R18+ content in my game.
But, I will provide mod support to a degree... (All the graphics assets can be "overwrite", and customized contents made by players can be added into my game, including scripts/maps/items...basically everything. It just lacks a user-friendly interface right now.)
After all, Skyrim was not an R18+ game...

Given the capricious nature of the CCP as well as cultural differences, I would suggest that unless you are actually in china, you should not pin all your hopes on the Chinese market to make a profit. It certainly won't hurt to market to them, but for all you know, one year, your game might be perfectly Okay on steam there, and the next it is booted off steam for reasons you do not truly comprehend.

 

[orochi2k]

Given the capricious nature of the CCP as well as cultural differences, I would suggest that unless you are actually in china, you should not pin all your hopes on the Chinese market to make a profit. It certainly won't hurt to market to them, but for all you know, one year, your game might be perfectly Okay on steam there, and the next it is booted off steam for reasons you do not truly comprehend.

Not really. CCP considers Steam as a foreign platform working under WTO framework outside their jurisdiction. (Please do not get confused with Steam's regional store of China and the infamous "Steamchina", "Steamchina" is Perfect World's copycat project of Steam which is under full jurisdiction of CCP while "Steam's regional store of China" is still under the international/USA jurisdiction outside of China.)
Thus, there is currently no direct interference to Steam from CCP officially.
You can even buy Mortal Kombat at Steam's regional store in China.

As it's outside CCP's jurisdictions with little censorship. Players in China prefer Steam over local game stores. Thus, the Chinese player population is the 2nd biggest player group by region on Steam(only slightly behind the US.) Some game becomes the top Steam games by just conquering this group of players. (Yes...a certain immortal tale game.)


However, r18 content/ideologically anti-communism content/anti-ccp content are removed.
That is mostly because Valve does not want to be "Great Firewall"ed by CCP. It's self-censorship just like Hollywood.
(But, You can still throw in as much tomato juice in your game as you like. Your game is not going to be taken off just because it's full of violence/blood/gore, common sense still applies, don't do it too exaggerated. Even you can't put anti-CCP content, you can still put in anti-North Korea or anti-Soviet content as long as no CCP leadership makes an appearance in your game. None of their flags appear.)

Thus, it's quite profitable. It's profitable enough for Steam as an entire platform to even start self-censorship... They are afraid of losing it...

Fun fact: Culturally speaking. Players in China really really really really really really like r18 content on Steam as they can hardly get any from elsewhere. (Websites like pornhub are blocked by the Great Firewall.) They will even fake a Russian or Argentine ID (Previously, they also go to Hong Kong. But, some terrible things happened recently.) to jump into another region just to buy those games...(But, only a few of them can do it successfully.)

It really pisses me off that "GunSoul Girl" can be a top-seller in China.
(It's not taken off as it has some self-censorship. But, even with that, players in China still buy it...a lot..)

 

[Stimulantfound]

I can compete with Kagura Games, and you can too. Kagura Games is a publisher. You could probably work with them if your project is of a certain quality.

I'm not going to name names, but for the record, I have played some of the games currently available on their site, and I'm not concerned . . . I'm putting it nicely . . .

Consistency, good game design, and polish can do a lot for your project. You can always create erotic content separately, it doesn't have to be crudely inserted on top of the included resources designed with a lower age rating in mind, and expected to mesh well . . .

 

[AeroPergold]

The secret to success in my mind at least, is innovation. Want to make an 18+ game? Look at the competition and see what they're doing. If they do a crap job at it, simply making a product with greater quality will get the job done. But if you think you can not only bump up quality but also try something the competition has has not, then do it.

Its not what a 18+ game is, its what you do with it that will bring you success.\

EDIT: Say to your self "What would Jack Tramiel do?"

 

[joepmeloen]

I have an opt in option to allow adult content to be seen. This inclused some side quests like sniffing some chopped up shells in a bar, some casino games, gambling, swearing, bath scene and shower scenes, stealing bikini's from girls etc. So I think it is a good way to let both audience play a game.
Also all naked bodies are blurred when the adult content is turned off.

 

[Zalzany]

Key thing as some one who freqrents places where people put up their ******* 18+ games is find a niche, or do decent quality work. Like all games people want to feel like you got a direction of where this is going nothing worse then some one with a great idea, who then after version 3 of their tech demo goes "I am out of ideas, do you guys have any suggestions I can did through for stuff I like?" And yes seen that nothing more aggravating then that.

The key thing is you chars need to hook the players its a bit lower bar with 18+ in some regaurds stuff that was only meh for PG games like some sasy, and a little generic attitude can be pulled off as well people playing these have no problem with tropes or cliches as long as they get their 18+ material with it. Great example is just adult entertainment in general cliche stories, bad acting but it gives them what they want.

There is how ever multiple types I play some games most people just hold space bar or mouse to skip the text just for the visuals and naughty bits. Some do a crazy good job of writing not just story, I donated to a few who originally had no visual content at all but some really steamy romance novel quality 18+ scenes, then they get money commission a couple still images behind those walls of adult text, and their audience grows a ton more.

Oh and read up on the rules not the fanboy versions of sites like *******. Seen a few who thought they could blantly break the rules and be too little to get caught on there explode in popularity one update, and they reached wrong person who narced on them for breaking the rules, or simply they took an intrest because you started making them more cash. Key thing is all 18+ must behind pay wall you can do text updates and thing for all, but any nudity must be behind payway for legal reasons so they can go "well you kid had a credit card or paypal account so we assumed they were an adult." There is a setting to mark you page 18+ this puts out a warning to people who stumble on it, make sure its tagged. Officially any adult acts should be left off if they are sticklers about what your chars are doing in the images for legal reasons as well, nudity is classified as "art" so they don't care about that as long as you do the paywall filter on it, but any one doing beast with two backs could get you for a rule violation.

After all that key thing is be passionite just being a good artist is one thing people will come for the images, but you want to make money at least have cheesy sterotype set up people can laugh at between the 18+ breaks and for the love of god put some breaks in there, you want people to want to play this game for hours not get what they wanted in 5 mins and then stop playing...

 

[CleanWater]

Learn RPG Maker MV, my project, achieved 2% of it's goal on it's first sale on Itch.io

A NSFW game (which I won't mention here due to forum rules) achieved 2500% of their sale goals on the same Itch.io event.

Things to consider:

My project goal was $100 (one hundred dollars) and sold one copy for $2,50. The game is basically "free" so far, with the source files available through a paywall. So people may play it without paying anything.

The NSFW goal was $10 (ten dollars) and it reached something around $250 (which gave that "success discrepancy" on the results).

Yes, NSFW sells, that's undeniable. However, I had sold some copies before this sale, and even had persons who supported it with more than what I asked. Before this project I also worked with parody games and lived around 5 years solely of indie game dev (although I'm far from being rich right now).

One of my games (non-RPG Maker engine) even reached 2nd place of the Steam popular releases back then. I have told my story here (use Google Translate tab, because my blog is in PT-BR).

Success is something very relative. For me success was to live out of indie games. I didn't needed to much money for that. This resumes my experience with this matter.

 

[Zeriab]

Be careful with overgeneralizing from a single data point.
If we apply the same argument from CleanWater between that unnamed NSFW and Omori the conclusion would be that SFW sells wayyyy better.

The data is still interesting :3

 

[WingedHares]

Be careful with overgeneralizing from a single data point.
If we apply the same argument from CleanWater between that unnamed NSFW and Omori the conclusion would be that SFW sells wayyyy better.

The data is still interesting :3

Yep. At the end of the day, good gameplay, story, or just the good 'ole marketing are what make games successful xD

Sure, nsfw might help catch interest if your games are lacking in those areas, but just relying on it won't make your game successful, not making it well-known like Omori and To The Moon anyway since people might not want to talk about nsfw games they like with their friends, so that's a problem if you're counting on word of mouth marketing.

If you decide to go the nsfw route anyway, I'd suggest making a sfw base game with nsfw DLCs on the side. It'll help catch interest and people might still talk about it since it's not the primary part of the game

Best of luck, OP ^^

 

[jkweath]

Seeing some new activity in this thread, I'd just like to remind anyone browsing that, next time you see (what appears to be) a below-average quality porn game on Steam selling really well, to check that game's publisher and supported languages. A lot of these games are localized and published by Kagura Games, which is an established publisher with a large user base. That plus the multi language support makes a *massive* difference.

If you're not interested in making 18+ content, then don't do it. It probably wouldn't sell as well as you might think it would anyway.

 

[WingedHares]

Seeing some new activity in this thread, I'd just like to remind anyone browsing that, next time you see (what appears to be) a below-average quality porn game on Steam selling really well, to check that game's publisher and supported languages. A lot of these games are localized and published by Kagura Games, which is an established publisher with a large user base. That plus the multi language support makes a *massive* difference.

If you're not interested in making 18+ content, then don't do it. It probably wouldn't sell as well as you might think it would anyway.

Yep. Those two would totally help with the numbers. Marketing, marketing, marketing.

People really shouldn't fall into the trap of nsfw = success since it's certainly not true. A lot of factors need to be considered that lead to a game's overall success : D