I Am A Developer of Adult Video Games

What language is the game being coded in?

Pure C! SDL API

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If I had a dev kit of some sort I would be! It really comes down to resources. Once your game project reaches a certain size you have to start spending money whereas typically I made games on no budget. Which was fine until I decided I wanted to make a splash.

All I can do is build portable/adaptable game engines going forward and hope that some day I can afford to scale my ideas and expand to those platforms.

How old were you when you decided this was the genre of video games you wanted to develop?

20, I was like ah well I'm broke and I can code. I had already abandoned my original profession and vanilla or "normal" games were too much about how you market them versus how good they are. Which is not to say I hadn't made any. It's just that adult games still had that feeling of "I made this thing for people who appreciate things like this."

Do you ever look at a project and think"WTF am I doing?" ??

My latest project actually, the one previously mentioned, Triple X Tycoon. On one hand I just want to make a game that does the adult industry as a whole some honest justice. So many products and so much history to work with! On the other hand everyone I talk to about it goes "Why?" And I'm like..I just said why.

If you meant do I look at an octopus animation and go "WTF am I doing??" Then yes. There's been more than one occasion where I wanted to go apply at IBM to work on mainframes in a white collar and forget about it all.

tits, asses, or leg man?

Definitely an ass and leg man.

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It's interesting because I don't get turned on during the process of designing/coding. But if I was in the middle of doing research on a topic I could end up in the rabbit hole and who knows!

Some of my friends worth with me on projects. As far as my family is concerned though, "I build websites"

What separates a "good" adult game from a "shitty" one?

A good one is full of humor. A shitty one will just make you feel guilty. I think it's different from porn in a sense that a lot of people don't go getting off to "adult" games. But apparently, this is what most adult game devs shoot for now. Like 3dxchat. That's just a sex simulator.

Would you ever shake hands with someone immediately after they played one of your games?

haha good question.

At this point if you're paying for my stuff I'll throw in a hug.

Do you think we'll ever get to the point where CG sex is actually sexy? Even as good as character models are now, the best animation still looks wooden and almost always has clipping problems, which just makes things weird.

Eventually I think the whole sex simulator + VR thing will start to show some real progress. There's already a bunch of peripherals being made. It's only a matter of time.

Would you come to my birthday party?

I'll bring the lighter fluid and whipped cream.

I started making adult games last summer. It has been tremendously fun, and I've been trying to stay safe/legal, but I'm still worried that I'm missing some "gotchas".

Anything you wish you would have known about, when you were first starting?

People like BDSM and furry stuff. Otherwise you're making dress-ups featuring the latest hot celeb.

Favorite sandwich?

I feel like this is another trick question

If you were to commit an elaborate heist, what would you steal, how would you do it, and who would you put on your team to get the job done?

I'd steal a panda. I'd roll in on a bamboo earthboard and you'd be up in the black hawk waiting to do the airlift out.

Like porn for video editors, is the adult video game field the easy way in?

It used to be. Now it's hard to stand out, it's all about beating someone else to the next "thing" rather than making something unique. With Triple X Tycoon I just want to do something that I haven't seen done. I'm fucking sick of programming tentacles.

:-(

lolz

What is your favorite dinosaur?

Also, can you make a "WINDOW GIRL" part 2?

It's not mine but you're right, somebody's gotta do it. I actually want to make a new Ganguro Girl. That damn game stands the test of time.

As far as dinosaurs, the ones with the feathers.

Do you like gay porn at all?

Nah I'm straight but I got no problem producing that kind of material.

I don't know much about Adult game industry, but is there a big market? It seems like marketing and selling adult games would be difficult. Cheers!

Super difficult since like somebody mentioned, nobody wants to be directly associated with the subject matter. This makes it hard for us to grab attention the old fashioned way, word of mouth. Which nowadays means sharing on social media. In the case of Triple X Tycoon there's an extreme limit of what we can show and do since 90% of the game isn't finalized and we're relying on public support via crowdfunding.

The market is pretty big yeah. For flash, not so much as it used to be so you're relying on ad money one way or another. I think it's a growing area, one that I expect will continue to innovate in the next few years.

How do you advertise your game, presuming your game is good? What are the best and worst ways?

With Triple X Tycoon all we can do is keep the press in the loop. Nobody outside of the porn industry news outlets like Xbiz and AVN are actually willing to do any reports on the game. If you find one outside of those two sources let me know so I can thank them.

We can only hope for retweets and whatnot. Otherwise, most people don't want to be associated even if they do like the concept. This, in addition to the fact that OffBeatr has a lower volume than Kickstarter for example is why the whole crowdfunding thing is the headache I thought it'd be.

The problem is even interested people are unlikely to tell their friends or retweet given the subject matter.

Exactly.

Have you tried contacting RockPaperShotgun ? I know they write some articles about sexe in videogame (S.exe). They have a huge readerbase too.

Yup, tried them from a few angles. And we'll try one more time once the demo is ready.

Thanks for doing this IAMA. My life's dream is to develop video games. I have two questions my first is how did you get into the business and did you pursue a degree into your field. For example I am pursuing Computer Programming as just a fall back but I really want to develop video games for my career. My other question is how did you get into developing adult video games?

Thanks Wisemen, so I started making computer games when I was in middle school. I used pre-made game engines like Elysium Source and Eclipse to make the worst thing you can make as your first game, an MMO. It ended up working out, this was back when the indie scene was a lot less crowded too so exposure wasn't an issue. I skipped college after high school to begin a career as a tech/video game journalist where I had already gotten things published. Eventually I got tired of being on the outside looking in and took the plunge of learning a programming language.

Like I said before I had used 3rd party resources prior which only required minimum knowledge of code. Now game engines like CryEngine and Unreal have their own languages that you'd want to know with the exception of Unity which runs on C#. Long story short I picked up Python as my gateway drug. Now I code all my desktop applications in C and all my flash in Actionscript.

Newgrounds was really popular when I picked up actionscript. I knew a few guys making all this 18+ stuff and selling them to porn sites who needed filler. I was broke by the time I left journalism and jumped on the wagon.

CryEngine and Unreal have their own languages

Both use C++ now and it's awesome! Unreal script was kind of a mess in my opinion (though I didn't use it for very long). It's nice being able to jump into an engine without picking up a new language that you'll never use for anything else.

On the topic of engines, do you think there will ever be a serious push for 3D games in your preferred genre? Unity is making 3D game development incredibly accessible, and is generally fantastic to work in for smaller projects.

I'm hoping I can take my company there if no one else is willing to put in the grunt work. There are a few companies in the 3D adult space but those games are mostly sex simulators. I think those guys will rule VR because of that. It'll be like "Hmm lust + VR + sex simulator = $"

what kind of desktop applications do you make with C? i have a lot of experience with the language but have never done anything with it outside the Unix command line.

You can wrap it up in and API. I like nCurses when I'm feeling really simple although I use OpenGL or SDL for game development. I love Unix

Do you know the guys who made Bone Town? I would like to high five them.

Haha I know of them. I considered hitting them up for publishing at one point. Hell, I want to high five them too.

Keep up the dirty work, I would love to play something like this. Used to have loads of fun in 'lula, the sex empire'. My question: how do people irl react when you show then your work? (GF, neighbours, ....)

Thanks! You're +1 more person we're making this for then. So my GF is super supportive, she even helps out which is cool. People that I know personally have seen it in action, they seem to think it's pretty cool which is a start.

Are you old enough to remember "Soft Porn Adventure"?

Haha wow you really brought it back! See I'm a huge sucker for IF style games, so I know of Softporn Adventure but it did come out a decade before I was born. I even played it once in DOS, I still think that cover design is boss.

Where can I find cheat codes?

I wish I could tell you!

What are some of the flash games you've made? What do you think of the Japanese adult game industry?

I made completely non-notable dress-up game clones primarily. I was the hired hand on coding some other shit too, you can start to see how Sexy Soldier Dress Up and Sexy Santa Dress Up gets a little monotonous. I had a sci-fi orgy adventure game called 50 Days Aboard but you ain't finding that one until I re-release it >=]

I used to see Japanese hentai games all the time around 2003-2006. Idk how it's doing nowadays but I can't imagine they're doing bad. In fact there's publishers dedicated to translating and releasing that stuff. I their like vibe.

Hey, thanks for the AMA! :D

Do you think that with the rising VR stuff (oculus rift et cetera), we will see interactive porn? (Or porn games)

If yes, how long until the first My little Pony mod comes out?

Thanks again!

Absolutely, there are companies that are already doing it but the early approach seems to be "interactive" porn films.

As for My Little Pony, It's only a matter of time before some savvy brony commits to it. I'd give it two years.

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100% absolutely!

What software you use for graphics and art? any tips about drawing? and 3d modeling? especially how to do it the easy way legally e.g. without using copyrighted materials.

For most projects I use GIMP for making graphics. In Triple X Tycoon I'm only responsible for the palette, UI design and a few icons here and there. I contracted our motel pixel art to a guy we work closely with. I haven't done 3D since my first "successful" non-adult project which I can't name since idk how they'd feel about the association.

If you absolutely have to use something that's copyrighted material, ask the owner. It sounds simple but I did work on a game called Zoo Base with ties to Star Zoo of Bay12 Games for example. I pretty much just asked Tarn and got permission. If it's someones likeness you're after it can be a bit more difficult and I'd stay away from it. Shoot for originality, and you won't even have to worry about all that legal nonsense.

When is your favorite time to go spelunking?

No time. I have no life, or money to purchase the proper gear if I wanted to.

Do you sometimes feel uncomfortable making these games? If you had a request for a game, what was the weirdest one? Have you told anyone about your profession? How did you come into this type of Industry?

Nah, never uncomfortable. Never had a request but that's because I used to be way less open about it. Now it doesn't matter to me. I got into the business because I needed to make some cash and a lot of the games were just sex simulators. I thought I could make adult games that weren't sex simulators. Except for the ones that were!

I really just sat down and started coding it. They were easier to pick up after being rusty at programming for awhile!