Wednesday 1 July 2015

Other adult games forums

Recently I've been posting my games on some other adult games forums to help get them out there. I have found that forums are currently the best way to find an audience for adult games, and while the AIF community still definitely has many good reasons to exist, and it's where my personal heart is, it's also good to draw in players who don't know about us. So anyway, here's a little review of my experiences with other active forums:


ULMF

This is currently probably the most useful forum for drumming up interest, even in older topics. I don't see heaps of chatter over there, so it's mostly a lurker forum, but they do seem to take an interest in free, Western games. I think this forum has a requirement that you post a number of posts before you can do some things, however.


Legend of Krystal Forum

This a relatively useful and active forum for AIF style stuff, surprisingly, or at least I've found it is for my games. The only inconvenience here is that while you're new to the forum you have to wait for posts to be individually approved by a moderator (including edits), so that makes it annoying if you want to go back and edit your first post, answer a bug issue or post about an update.


Fenoxo's Forum

This forum shows a decent amount of interest (though not as much as might be expected). They do have a good 'showcase' forum for authors to post their work.


Hongfire

I think this forum is mostly interested in professional games translated from Japan, there is much less interest in Western games.

The Undertow Club

This forum, formerly known as Hentai Ryona, doesn't have particularly restrictive rules but only generates moderate interest.

The Shark's Lagoon

At one point this was a very important site for AIF but Shark is difficult to deal with and the forum's rules have grown hostile to developers. While there is a decent community here I'm not sure I would necessarily recommend the forum to anyone any more.



I don't know if this list is comprehensive, but it's all I've really found in terms of large, active adult games communities out there. Are there any more I've missed? Is there anything I should mention in this brief review of the other forums?

14 comments:

  1. I agree that shark lagoon is historically the forum most interested in AIf, there are also french aif.
    I think that every author that want some visibility for his game is better that post even there, after having posted here, on reddit and yahoo.

    XXX

    ReplyDelete
  2. Shark's Lagoon has an impressive level of activity, especially considering the number of members (ie. less than a third of aifarchive).

    Although they're obviously uninterested in games outside of their specific subject areas, you might also want to mention tfgamesite and the Hypnopics Collective given that there is the occasional AIF game with tf or mc content (and both forums are very well populated_

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, if your game have some of tf or mc content those sites are a good place to post, you don't need that the game is only on those argument, but the element needs to be present.

      Delete
    2. Not true of tfgamesite, but the "Collective" will throw you out.

      Delete
  3. Any word on why Sharks Lagoon banned Patreon? Seems a pointless move. Shame too, it's a great place to drum up interest in such a thing if you were to start one now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Basically the policy seems to be that the webmasters consider it commercial advertising, and they want to be the only ones able to make money from the site. Personally I consider Patreon a very different thing to selling games, it's hardly a ruthless capitalist venture, but it's their prerogative.

      Delete
  4. I'm embarrassed that I don't know what mc and tf stand for.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Mind control and transformation

      Delete
  5. This blogsite (adultinteractivefiction.blogspot) isn't easy to find.
    - aifgames.com is down
    - http://www.delron.org.uk/d_links.htm is outdated

    Our community could use a simple link site that is maintained and findable e.g. via search engine term 'adult IF'.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The AIF community needs a site in general. Unfortunately there's no one with both the motivation and the capability to do so.

      The first 'community' site that comes up when you Google "adult interactive fiction" is the AIFCentral subreddit, which is on the second page of results (just behind Delron's site).

      There are (now) links to this blog and the subreddit and the game list at the top hit (/v/'s Recommended Games Wiki).

      Delete
    2. A 'community' site would be great to have. But also small steps can help. E.g. a link to this central point from the intfiction-forums. Or some common 'corporate design' of AIF - like a nice-looking, in no-way-offensive looking logo or banner, etc.

      AIF has been put too much in a twilight corner. Basically, it's focusing on human issues between man and woman, with relationship, emotions like romance and desire. Just more than mainstream (IF) games do.

      Delete
  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. forkinthefiction.blogspot.com

      Delete
  7. Browsing links here and at the reddit group, examined search engine output - IMO, these smaller sites with this blog as main centre are connected pretty good. Ex Libris and editor.aifblog@gmail.com, you've done very well!

    ReplyDelete