The top genres in terms of revenue in the niche of erotic games are the same as on mobile: role—playing games with gacha, as well as three-in-a-row. Grigory Sokolov, senior designer at Nutaku Publishing, told about this at the online Talents in Games Conference.
Nutaku Publishing knows first-hand about the adult video game market. The company has its own web platform, just specializing in such entertainment. In the summer, its audience reached 50 million people, and the product library — 450 games, 80 of which are free-play.
According to Grigory, the niche today is not limited to primitive entertainment. In terms of complexity, top erotic games that need to monetize and retain their users are not inferior to leading mobile projects and even work according to the same “manuals”.
As an example, Sokolov cites a story with a traditional main cycle. In many role—playing games, it boils down to three points: an obstacle — a reward for overcoming an obstacle – an improvement that is bought for a reward and allows you to overcome the following obstacles.
Erotic RPGs work by the same rules. However, there are complicating nuances. The first of them is the need to competently include adult content in the game. It is either integrated directly into the cycle, or an additional cycle is created for it, which does not interfere with the work of the main one.
Just adding nudity or explicit scenes to an adult game does not make sense (this is primarily true for such free-play titles). Eroticism must be harmoniously integrated into the mechanics, otherwise the game will not be able to monetize.
This can be explained most clearly by the example of collectible RPGs. In erotic titles, the collectible component is much more important: here players are more interested in the cards themselves than in their characteristics. Therefore, it is impossible to make weak heroes here: the user can focus solely on pumping the character he likes. If the user develops it to the maximum and cannot go further, it will hit the game. She will lose the player.
At the same time, such games are perfectly monetized just on the love of players for various female archetypes (100% of users of the Nutaku platform are heterosexual men). Having seen a favorite, the player wants to undress him. The latter, as a rule, requires leveling the character (the higher the level, the less clothes on it). Pumping involves mechanics such as loot boxes and gacha.
In erotic idlers, you have to create a second game cycle that is not related to the main one. The reason is that games of this genre are built on zeroing progress: players will soon get bored of undressing the same girl. Therefore, virtual chat mechanics are added to the idlers, which works independently, but at the same time, for example, may be limited by progress in the bark.
Even three-in-a-row within a niche does not work in the most obvious way. As a rule, they are a mix with a dating simulator, which is monetized through the mechanics of energy (it is spent on dates), and through restrictions on the number of slots for erotic cards that the player receives when progressing in match-3.
According to Grigory, the erotic games market is now less competitive than the traditional games market. There are fewer products coming out here, and there are fewer of them in general. He assures that it makes sense to work in this niche if you are ready to make an erotic ruskin (taking into account the rules described above) of your own game, which has proven its worth in a large market. And clones of popular games will be welcome here.
At the same time, Sokolov did not publicly announce any figures. How much complex games for adults earn, we can only guess.
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