It wasn’t long ago that the idea of adult games being nothing more than vaporware was ridiculous. Along the same lines, the notion that an adult game could be well-designed and fun to play seemed on the same merits as mainstream games seemed as impossible as Shrek popping up in Kingdom Hearts IV. The two genres seemed forever poised to stay in their lanes.
Maybe Shrek will fight alongside Donald and Goofy after all, because that’s all changing.
Adult games are actually increasing in popularity. While experts and critics may give a handful of different reasons why this is happening, after reviewing the best porn games on ThePornDude.com, I know why. It’s not that complicated. Below are several reasons why adult games are more popular than ever before and why gamers should give them a second look.
Video games have invaded pornography
Seriously. According to Pornhub Insights, this invasion seems to have begun with Overwatch in 2017, but took off at the end of 2018 and well into 2019!
As you can see, there was a 223% uptick in Resident Evil search results roughly nine days after the release of Resident Evil 2 in North America on January 25, 2019. A few months before that, Red Dead Redemption 2 was released on October 26, 2018, resulting in a whopping 731% increase in search queries by October 28!
Unsurprisingly, there was a substantial uptick in Overwatch and Fortnite queries when the games were released, though they haven’t slowed down that match. Interestingly, Fortnite’s recent uptick in search queries seems to happen when a new season is released since new characters are usually released. So it’s unsurprising that Season 6’s ‘Calamity’ is one of the most searched Fortnite characters on Pornhub.
Look, gamers have always wanted to tug one out to video game babes. I lost count how many pages of printed Lara Croft JPEGs I ruined before I graduated grade school. But with the rise of babes dressing and performing in cosplay, machinima, streaming platforms like YouTube, and the mobile revolution turning everyone into gamers, a perfect storm has created a path forward for adult only games.
The platforms are already here
It used to be that an Adults Only (AO) rating was a death sentence for video games. It wouldn’t be carried on store shelves, and mainstream digital marketplaces refused to sell them. It also didn’t help that adults-only games were mostly garbage, confined to the underbelly of Flash game sites using stolen anime assets. Adults-only game developers needed a place to go to share their vision.
Enter online gaming platforms like Nutaku. While similar adult Flash game sites had been around for years when Nutaku decided to open for business in 2015, the timing could not have been more perfect. The site opened a few years before Pornhub began noticing a spike in video game pornography. Further, Nutaku has developed and published good adults-only games. They don’t feel like they were developed by a perverted teenager that has nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon: it’s clear professionals have developed these games.
This has caused the community to grow by leaps and bounds So much so that Nutaku features a tournament called the Lewd Gaming Championship – a first-of-its-kind eSports adult gaming tournament. Other developers are creating entire online worlds devoted to allowing people to live out their fantasies. With virtual reality poised to become mainstream in the coming decade, all kinds of adults-only games are going to become more frequent.
Steam removed the taboo
Nothing solidified that adults-only games are mainstream quite like Steam reversing its ban on pornographic games in late 2018. Since then, Steam has seen a wave of adults-only content hit the marketplace. Steam has opened itself up to an entirely new industry.
The sky didn’t fall like so many people thought it would, nor did it spell the end for Steam. Adults-only developers merely have a place to sell the content they have worked so hard to create, and consumers now have an easy avenue for purchasing pornographic games. Buying adults-only games should be as simple as buying the latest DLC in Halo: The Master Chief Collection: thanks to Steam, it now is. Other mainstream digital marketplaces like the Epic Store and GOG should follow suit.
18+ games are actually fun now
Developing an adults-only game is no longer as simple as copying-and-pasting hentai assets and copying a game’s gameplay. That’s how you get Super Hentai Tetris. People want creativity, actual thought, and proven development ideologies to go into their adults-only games like any other game they want to purchase. If a game sucks, they won’t buy it – who knew, right?
Gaming went mainstream – but so did pornography
Gaming became community-focused in the 2010s. Thanks to platforms like YouTube and Twitch, millions have created and streamed gaming content. This has given way to the boom in eSports, individuals creating million-dollar brands behind their personalities, and so on. The gaming industry went even more mainstream in the decade than it had in the 00’s – but so did pornography.
Whether it’s thanks to the mobile revolution that made porn readily available to everyone, the rise of apps like Tinder that made casual sex accepted by all, or the new booming market of the adult streaming industry on platforms like Chaturbate, gaming and porn went fully mainstream in this decade. It’s one thing for your mother to have heard of Super Mario Bros. or Jenna Jameson in passing. Still, when she throws out a Pornhub reference and mimics a Fortnite dance after a few drinks of her favorite Scotch, it’s safe to say that both industries are as mainstream as Netflix.
Mediums are always evolving, just like our societies and cultures. Sometimes, certain evolutions create a magnetism that attracts two entirely different things and blends them to create something truly special. Take 2008’s, Iron Man, for example. Hollywood had traditionally created franchises based on popular films and characters. Still, after watching Tony Stark throw down the gauntlet and tell the world he’s Iron Man, studios shifted from creating franchises to ‘cinematic universes.’ The result? The top-grossing movies of the 2010s were superhero films. Sometimes, a different angle can make all the difference.
We see the same thing happen with gaming and porn today. No, adults-only games are not going to outsell the next GTA VI, nor will they have more players than Fortnite. Instead, adults-only games are merely going to be normalized. Whether it will happen thanks to virtual reality become mainstream developers churning out adults-only games that ordinary people want to play is anyone’s guess. The day is coming when you will speak as casually about having sex with a hot brunette in an online adults-only game as you would about surviving a horde mode. When that will be – or what adults-only games will look like – is anyone’s guess.
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