Over at the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com) they have an article about the increasing sexual explicitness in games (BMX XXX by Acclaim for example). The article also says that the M-Rated segment is the fastest growing segment in the game market.

Has anyone ever thought of producing a p0rno game? I'm sorely tempted...

Brian Azzopardi

No, but I’m biased. It's my opinion that pornography destroys a guy’s capacity to have a meaningful intimate relationship with a woman, as well as contributes heavily to the objectification of women.

Some things just aren’t worth doing no matter how good the money might be. You always pay for taking shortcuts; my suggestion is to go out and make a game that stands on its own merits as opposed to capitalizing on a vice like pornography.

I definately agree with Dan. It is a destructive media. It should also be mentioned that many innocent children and underage teens' lives are destroyed in the process. This is not an allegation or a statistical guess on its effects. It is fact. When you support porn, you inadvertently support child pornography and other kinds of decay that we are all aware of. It can't be overstated how negative it is.

I must disagree here. I'm not a porn fanatic (heck, i don't even remember watching a porn movie in the last few years) but porn, as just any other thing, should be exploited.

Honestly, seeing two girls doing it in a video game, or a game that puts you in the role of an hitman, honestly, I think the first one is more morally correct.

Its true that excessive porn, specially in young age, will distort the views of kids, who think that all girls should have boobs bigger then their heads, and should do everything in the films, also leaves a sense of insecurity in relationg to their own relations since they tend to compare to the movies. But again, how is this better than people killing other for a bit of crack you see everyday on TV ?

The key thing is education. If you get a decent sex education from your parents/teachers, porn isn't any kind of problem, the problem is, parents don't want to talk about that with kids (just "use a condom" kind of talks).

And this is a business, if porn sells, we should try to get our share of the deal.

"When you support porn, you inadvertently support child pornography and other kinds of decay that we are all aware of. It can't be overstated how negative it is." Porn is legal in almost every country. Supporting child pornography is very different than supporting pornography. The companies that make the legal porn movies aren't usually the ones that do child pornography. From experience (well, I'm from Portugal, a few years ago, one of our islands was involved in many cases of pedophilia (sp) and child pornography) and almost all cases of both were from independent people and/or organized crime).

Again, I think its worst to have shotguns being displayed for sale at Walmart than having "erotic dreams n. 38493" there, but that is just me.

About doing a game, probably not as I don't enjoy porn.

Bruno

Lol, I'm actually working in a porn shop right now (indie games unfortunately don't finance themselves) and I can assure you that adult video games do exist and have for quite some time. We actually don't carry them because there's no demand. There are some on the net but I seriously doubt that they do very well.

Porno is a multi-billion dollar industry but it is also very low on profit margins per product. The average budget for a film, for example the Barely Legal series, is $50,000 because that is the most they can invest and still be sure to make their money back. Per title they make very little money which is why they are constantly churning out movies.

The lengths they go to trim costs throughout the industry is astounding - and educational. All of our product is shipped to us in old grocery crates and they use their old outdated catalogues and posters as packing material. They take old unsold video tapes and record new movies overtop of them. They buy bulk tapes from other video distributors (with movies already on them) and record over them. We seriously had one set of tapes that when the porno movie ended it cut into a Jackie Chan movie that had been taped over.

As for the sociological effects of pornography I have to say that the more time I spend at the shop the more conservative I become. I see the worst of it and how low some people get. We have homeless guys who come in and spend their last dollars on the peep shows - it's that bad.

I think porno should be a "phase" kind of product that a person should eventually outgrow. When someone starts collecting porn like it's "art" then they tend to slip away from real relationships with the world around them. I see it happen A LOT!

Believe me the porn market has been saturated for quite some time. The FAMILY market is still barely tapped (almost untouched by the mainstream) and you would be much more likely to find success there.

akura, if you don't know what you are talking about, (which is very clear to anyone with the least bit of intelligence and knowledge on the subject) do some actual research beforehand instead of posting your stupid and incredibly weak arguments. Pedophiles most often watch "regular" porn before they go out and seek a child to violate. It fuels their sickening fire.

Knau, the fact that you mention there is a series called "Barely Legal" speaks volumes about how wrong it is without going into any details. Like you say, you've seen some of the negative effects on people. It's the ones you don't see that are the worst. One could only hope something causes you to challenge your views even further so you may one day leave that business.

Hydroaxe, do you think its the porn that makes them pedophiles ? Or is their sick mind that lacks a correct education since they are kids ?

Blaming porn for pedophilia is stupid, pedophilia has been around since ever, a good example was old roman (around Cesar time) culture, where abusing kids was what was considered a good time on the higher culture groups (unf. this is true and proven). I don't remember they had porn, heck, even TVs there.

Sure porn may incite pedophilia, but movies incite killing, games incite killing and drugs, how is that different?

Again, I'm not saying porn is good, but if we blame stupid people's actions on porn, we also need to blame tv and video games on some actions, and I for once, believe that people do stupid things because they are stupid, not because of whats on tv.

Bruno

Okay, I guess you don't understand what the word "fuels" means in the context of the sentence I wrote. Or, you just don't know what it means at all. Of course, you've been too lazy to bother reading up on the subject since your last post. That's exactly what I expected. Then you try to drag other issues into it. How predictable.

I never said porn was the cause of pedophilia. It adds to their evil desire. That's only one single example of how it ends up hurting people. (Do you understand the word "adds?") They hurt children more often when they use it. I wouldn't want to see you put out a fire. You'd probably grab the nearest gas can and pour it all over the fire!

A) you should learn how to be polite in your answers
B) right now, my idea of you is one of those christans (sp) that go around saying porn is the product of satan and we will all rot in hell for it
C) porn 'fuels' their addiction, people getting shot and killed on tv do the same. Sorry if you are against porn but are in favour of other stuff, not really my fault, but to blame one thing and not agree that are others things to blame is not very good. Specially because you have seen more and more cases of people defending that violent videogames lead to violence. What you are saying gives them all the right to believe in that, and again, I believe people are responsible for their actions, not tv, porn, games. By your idea, DragonBallZ is to blame for the two kids killed in France 4 years ago because they believed the dragon balls were real and the other kid would bring them back to life, not the parents that leave the TV to educate their children. By you idea, Final Fantasy 7 is to blame for the family killed by the son in Spain 2 years ago or so with a sword because after playing 7 hours straight (along with multiple weeks of playing) the kid went to get his father sword and killed his family and said he was just trying to imitate the guy in the game. By your idea, these two are as much to blame as porn, again, I believe its a lack of education and/or serious mental deficiency that leads to this, you think its the tv/games, fine.
D) I'll stop visiting this thread, no need to keep on reading personal attacks from someone I dont know or give a damn.

There you go again off on a tangent. I never said I was in favour of "other stuff." Those cases are not comparable to the subject matter that we were arguing about. It's much more complex than that cut and paste argument approach. Given the other complexities involved, which would take too long to discuss, I'm will to stop posting to this thread as well. I do agree with you though that good parents don't constantly leave their kids unatended. However, we'll have to agree to disagree on porn. I just don't believe that leaving gasoline close to a fire hazard is a good idea. Let's get back to video games. It's a much more fun subject.

Guys, let's keep it civil here, okay? The last thing we need is a flame war about whether porn (games or whatever) is okay or not. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and it's not likely you're going to convince anyone else here. Let's keep these boards to their intended purpose: indie game development.

For myself, I wouldn't do one for the host of reasons that have been mentioned here, and just because it's against my own morals. Back in '98 my company was offered a lot of money to do porn games for a porn web site called something like Kitty's Sex Palace. My co-founders and I met to talk about it. Two of us were adamantly against it from the start. The third was against it as well, but thought that we ought to at least discuss it... the money they were offering was, well, significant. (Of course, this was back in the heyday of the Internet Bubble :) ).

Given what one of the above posters said about the lengths that the porn industry will go to to cut costs, I wonder if -- without promoting porn or porn games in any way -- there might not be a future Indie Game Dev Conference talk on "Lessons We Can Learn From Porn." :-)

Originally posted by alchemist
Guys, let's keep it civil here, okay? The last thing we need is a flame war about whether porn (games or whatever) is okay or not. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, and it's not likely you're going to convince anyone else here. Let's keep these boards to their intended purpose: indie game development.


i agree. i think we can agree to disagree in a civilized manner.

even though the porn game market is saturated, the overall concept of making a game for that market is no different than
making a game for people who like 1st-person shooters...either
one has the potential to be blamed for some ill in society.
the person that made such a game would have to be able to
look themselves in the mirror each morning i assume...

I'm not going to argue that there is a huge market out there for pornographic content. I was reading in business week how porn is one of the largest and most profitable industries on the internet. Judging by the amount of content out there I have no doubt that this is true.

I love the indie gaming community and I love the things that as a whole I think we stand for. We try to make the best quality games we can with new and creative twists. We stand apart from the capitalistic treadmill that is the retail gaming industry and create our own games that arise out of our own inspiration and creativity. Yes we want to make money and that influences the games we make, we know we can't compete head to head with the majors right off, so we go after markets they aren’t catering too. We do things smarter (I think) and we do it for the freedom of building the games the way we think they should be built.

The day that Indie gaming is associated a mass of derivative porn games that come on cheap RW CDRoms that are shipped in other games boxes with ink jet printed cover art pasted on them just to turn a miniscule profit, is the day I hang my head in shame. We have a certain dignity as the conscientious objectors to the capitol driven retail game industry. Lets not loose that dignity or credibility. Dexterities site shows that you can be successful creating games that primairly parents, grandparents, and women.

There's so much opportunity out there that one can be successful without catering to the baser urges of horny teenagers (no offense to any teens reading this) and dirty old men. What would bring you more pride? Doing a creative game that you put a lot of time and energy into making fun game mechanics and having people play it, love it, and send you emails thanking you for making it. Or would you rather make some penis insertion simulator that's only real feature is the fact that it has nudity and allows you to act out fantasies. You get emails from teens saying "Dood this is so F***ing awesome, I get wood just looking at it U R so 1337!" and mails from irate parents who caught their kid with your "Free demo". (There’s also a question of how successful such a game would be, there’s a lot of overlap between the porn industry and the hacking cracking community)


There's a certain pride that can only be taken when you do things decently. When people choose to buy your game over someone else’s because yours was better executed and the gameplay was well thought out. When your main selling point is pr0n then you never know why people are buying you're game but you can assume it's not because of your creativity or game design. This may depend on the group of people you associate with, but in my circle of friends (and family wife and 2 kids) I couldn't ever show them a game like that and take pride in it. They would look at me with disgust and contempt in their eyes.

We're not at a point in this little indie scene where we are compelled to sell our nobility for a few bucks, especially when there are so many opportunities to make as much money elsewhere. I’m not trying to change your personal views on pornography, trying to change someone’s mind in an online forum is a fools errand and frankly I’m happy to let you have your own opinions. I just want to make a case for preserving the dignity we still have by asserting that there are plenty of other opportunities equally as viable at this point that should be explored before we resort to churning out derivative, uncreative, XXX content to make a few $$$.

I never expected the discussion to get this heated.

To be honest I have to say that p0rn does not make you bad. If you are ready t to buy XXX-rated material then you're already leaning towards the "dark side".

As regards adult games I never knew the market was saturated. As for whether I would be proud or not to making a p0rn game: I suppose I would if I were so inclined. After all, I would still put in my best effort irrespective of the content.

So I take it that Steve would probably not appreciate me submitting a p0rn puzzle game? :)

Brian Azzopardi

Although I do see the opening post in this thread as a valid topic for intellectual discussion under the right conditions, I don't feel those conditions exist here. Discussing adult software on a public family-oriented web site just isn't going to fly, so this thread has been closed. If anyone wants to continue the discussion, feel free to do it via private messaging or via email.