One thing I have found less and less on the shelves are games oriented for adults. Most 'Mature' games are only rated that because of excess blood or violence. I think times are changing with the increased themes found in Sims2 and Playboy. But that is about it, or at least main stream enough to get advertisement. Looking back on NES games like Golgo 13, and even games like Shadowrun, these are games oriented in adult worlds. Games like Kotor leave me bored because everything is spelled out for you, and while it has pretty colors, it is all very black and white. Maybe this is why Fallout 1/2 were such hits because they too were adult situated. I really need to check on Planetscape, because I have heard it is also. This leads into how it seams adult games do not turn big profits which is probably why producers don't make them. I was just wondering if anyone here thinks about adding adult situation and themes into their games, and how you think it might impact its sales, and standings in the community?

I follow most of what you're saying.. except those complaints you are making about KOTOR. Did you actually *play* KOTOR?

Given that the gamer population as a whole is aging, it may be nearing time for the industry to consider these more adult-themed games. I can see how the ROI on such games might not have been profitable ten years ago when the gamer population consisted primarily of teens and early twenties, but now gamers are creeping into the thirties and forties. I imagine someone out there is doing market research on the potential for these games.

Quote: Original post by Taulin
One thing I have found less and less on the shelves are games oriented for adults.

This leads into how it seams adult games do not turn big profits which is probably why producers don't make them.

I was just wondering if anyone here thinks about adding adult situation and themes into their games, and how you think it might impact its sales, and standings in the community?

I hope that market changes.

Or, the adult games (with a few exceptions that have taken advantage of some of the aspects of this sweet spot) simply haven't hit the sweet spot in the maturing gamer market, or, haven't hit the right chord, so to speak, most likely.

I think the right situations and themes to your content architecture will be beneficial for the developer and the community comprised of the public, as to the game development community, I believe they are the only ones with the talent and luck to figure out which ones are going to work to further another aspect of game design as art and/or science.

I think that the way into the adult market, in context of an older player, with broader life experience, concern and intent is inevitably going to have to emerge in game design, but the products will have a narrow focus on certain aspects of life, which is not always slash and burn, frag or puzzle. Certainly this is a huge opportunity for behavioral and oppositional AI.

Strictly speaking from a market opportunity standpoint, I love an evolving medium. :)

Addy

To be honest. I really enjoy playing Hentai games (like Seasons of Sakura, Three Sisters, Paradise Inn (think thats the name)), theres only like a few and its a shame because they are like the only semi text games that i enjoy. I wish some game companies would consider working on one or something because those things are addicting and another one of my friends enjoys them a lot as well.

Interestingly there seem to be two camps of gamers: the one wants games to be for adults (like this post) and take a serious (maybe morally ambiguous) path and the other complains about games taking themselves too seriously and wants to concentrate on the fun apsect. Since both type of posts come up with about the same regularity, the current games to fit the needs of the gamers quite well...

Quote: Original post by SumDude
To be honest. I really enjoy playing Hentai games (like Seasons of Sakura, Three Sisters, Paradise Inn (think thats the name)), theres only like a few and its a shame because they are like the only semi text games that i enjoy. I wish some game companies would consider working on one or something because those things are addicting and another one of my friends enjoys them a lot as well.

ONLY A FEW HENTAI GAMES???? Even if you only count the ones translated in English there are a lot of them. Something Awful has like 30 reviews alone. If you check out the hentai\import game sellers sites, like JAST USA, Himeya soft, etc. you can find a good amount. If you count the hentai games made in Japan then you'd have a new game to play like every day. That's how many of them there are.

Hmm... this is a complicated topic. There are many games on the shelves I would consider adult in nature, but what I'm guessing you mean by adult games has nothing to do with being mature at all -- games that rely on genuine emotional depth rather than an overblast of style.

Pandora Tomorrow or Battlefield Vietnam are without a doubt set in worlds as adult as Golgo 13 or Shadowrun were. What Pandora Tomorrow and Battlefield Vietnam don't offer is sympathetic characters in well thought-out and emotionally complex situations.

Here are my speculations as to why the market has bent this way:

#1: Although in their infancy, games have already been Hollywooded, and everyone knows the quickest way to make a buck in Hollywood is to have a bad ass hero and great special effects. The good movies that come out of Hollywood have a bad ass hero, great special effects, and emotionally tangible charaters (Spiderman.) However, style always supercedes emotional depth. Anne of Green Gables the Movie wouldn't be a blockbuster. Ninja Gaiden the Movie might have a chance, even though that game's plot was laughable. For better or for worse, that's what the public pays money for, adult or not.

#2: Noone, with the possible exception of Will Wright, has figured out how to mesh emotional depth and gameplay. They're like oil and water. Emotional depth is relegated to cutscenes and gameplay is everything inbetween. Lots of emotional depth and less focus on gameplay equals an Adventure game, which bore most people to death nowadays. Lots of focus on gameplay and less focus on emotional depth equals Fight Night 2004, which both you and I are probably less than satisfied with. Needless to say, it's damn hard to strike a perfect balance. Games that did this well in my opinion (until revolutionary creative leaps in the field take place) are similar to the games you listed, Shadowrun (SNES), Final Fantasy Tactics, Planescape: Torment, and others.
The people in charge of the game market right now know a lot more about gameplay than they do about writing, and that's the short end of it.

Of course, I'm not really complaining. I'm still looking forward to Donkey Konga despite it having no depth. However, I just started Valkyrie Profile which is amazingly deep and quite mature (although the voice acting... um, could use some work, to say the least.)

The solution is that we need to pick up the slack. In every other artistic community it's the indy scene that supposed to generate the depth.

Quote: Original post by VanceXT
Hmm... this is a complicated topic.

#2: Noone, with the possible exception of Will Wright, has figured out how to mesh emotional depth and gameplay. They're like oil and water. Emotional depth is relegated to cutscenes and gameplay is everything inbetween. Lots of emotional depth and less focus on gameplay equals an Adventure game, which bore most people to death nowadays.

The solution is that we need to pick up the slack. In every other artistic community it's the indy scene that supposed to generate the depth.

I think these are good points. I have been working with ways to involve emotionality (both action and response) in gameplay for a few years now, ever since it became clearly where I wanted to go with my adventure game design.

The only rough example I could make work was with the challenge design, where the emotional issue ('what's at stake' in screenwriting) is effected by action and object manipulation by the avatar in level.

E.g.; you have to steal the horses from the Spanish Garrison in order to take the wounded indian back to the medicine man, but only enough time to be stealthy so the horse's won't spook and give away your position and presence taking them will allow you to do so. You can't steal the horses until you and the healthy indian and the wounded indian escape from the pit you have been imprisoned in.

Only by forming a human back bridge between you and the healthy indian can you exit the pit your Spanish Captors put you in. Only when the indian gets medicine from the medicine man, will he be well enough to guide you to where he was captured, which is where your next clue in the mystery lies.

It's kinda like screenwriting, where everything in scene, in action has absolute purpose for being there or it isn't in scene. With a three D realistic world, the scene has to be compositionally complete, so don't make all world objects in SceneCurrentView with inspecific interaction values such as, one the low end, a, trample this little tree and it snaps and stays trampled, b, trample this TreeOtherKindMagicalVarietyAClass, and you can whittle a good dowsing rod to get your ass out of the desert with failing health and radiation protection.

I firmly believe we are going to have to program more and more tightly constructed contexts of emotional response and action/reaction into our NPC's and objects and other entities if our players are going to do in games what is another part of good fun, playing a supporting role and watching a scenario succeed because you helped, but were not the most important character in scene.

We all know how to be a good supporter, and, that can make for some interesting gameplay possibilities, freeing up designers from having to make UberOmnipotentChallengeDesign every step of every level, exhausing the player through overuse of only one set of emotional response, fight or flight. MMORPG's make fight or flight a gangfight, and don't do much except temper the emotional fear and replace it with cameraderie communitizing.

Whereas otoh, somebody else, like an NPC or as I often call them, ensemble characters (similar to the types of mercs you could pick in Rainbow Six titles; yet each of these character NPC's have a variety of uses not necessarily militaristic, and more like reality, so it really is a team effort some of the time and hero time the rest of the time) that have a decent level of logic and intelligence so that when the nurse character says, "Roll up your sleeve" and takes out a transfusion needle and a antiseptic swab while the little girl lies their bleeding nastily, and you are a chance at saving her life, you (the player) will taste a particularly emotional interactivity of another kind, and, as in traditional storytelling, all fruits are not sweet, nor are all herbs bitter.

Food for thought,

Addy

I, too, miss games that seemed more mature (again, not nipple mature, nor profanity mature, but story and character mature). On a tangent, it seems that there is a trend in every form of media to make all important characters little kids. There was a time when making the main character a child was like making him a midget, or a dog. Funny, even absurd, and always treated that way. Now you've got Cody Banks beating the bad guys with chewing gum and laser-propelled lunch boxes, and it's done as straight as a Bogart movie might have.

I for one would like to see something that's not dumbed down for the lowest common denominator. SInce the current denominator appears to be about eight, I'd like to see something with a sword-weilding hero who's old enough to be believable with it. I blame the Japanese, and their ridiculous fascination with six-year-old ninjas. Even the ancient immortals in anime look and act like infants. Absurd.

So, in conclusion, by all means make a game that kids wouldn't like. Don't fill it with G-strings and gore and crude language, but rather with themes, ideas, motives and grammar that are above a fourth-grade level. Jesus.