Paper in Proceedings of DiGRA 2023,

by Petri Lankoski & Tanja Välisalo

Abstract

Pornographic games have historically been distributed outside of mainstream channels. Steam, in 2018, change its policy allowing uncensored pornographic games to be sold. We found 452 games or DLCs that were tagged as mature content and sexual content. We analyzed 40 of those games in detail. 17.5% of these games only contain nudity while the rest graphically depicted sex. Visual novels and adventure games were the most numerous genres. Drama and fantasy were the most used milieus. Two of the games contained only male-male sex whereas the rest depicted heterosexual sex or heterosexualized same-sex sex. The pornographic scenes or nude images were tied to the game’s progression structure.

Petri Lankoski & Mikolaj Dymek

Abstract

This paper looks at the history of game industry platforms in Finland and Sweden between 1979 and 2020 via 745 games. Both are relatively small countries where developers perform exceptionally well in a global market context. Developers and games developed in both countries are rather similar with some notable differences: Finnish developers focused on mobile games on Symbian in the 2000s, whereas Swedish developers focused on PC and console games, continuing a PC focus during the 2010s. The number of
game companies have increased rapidly in Finland and Sweden since 2010 but peaked in Finland in 2014. From a platform studies perspective, our data highlight rewarding historical insights about
the dynamics of game industry platforms in Finland and Sweden with dimensions such as influence by demo scene, price of hardware/software (computers), mathematics education, third-party
game engines, and finally higher education programmes in game development, consequently framing the data in socio-material perspectives on game industry platforms as application ecologies

Keywords: Finland, Sweden, Game industry history, platform

https://doi.org/10.1145/3582437.3587214

In Foundations of Digital Games 2023 (FDG 2023), April 12–14, 2023, Lisbon, Portugal. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 4 pages.

Mikolaj Dykek & Petri Lankoski

Abstract

Building on case study data, this paper identifies processes and actors that form an enabling ecosystem for indie porn game development consisting of game platform technologies, asset stores, commission-based artists, F95zone, Steam, Discord, and crowdfunding platforms (e.g., Patreon). Co-creational and organisational perspectives provide a rewarding exploration of this phenomenon.

Keywords: videogames, pornography, ecosystems, crowdfunding, indie games

https://doi.org/10.1145/3582437.3587176

In Foundations of Digital Games 2023 (FDG 2023), April 12–14, 2023, Lisbon, Portugal. ACM, New York,
NY, USA, 4 pages.

By Backe and Lankoski

Published in Narrative 30(2)

Article available on https://muse.jhu.edu/article/855327.

Abstract

The paper revisits a central question in the study of characters in digital games: Do players of, for example, a racing game steer the virtual car directly themselves, or are they controlling the body of a virtual driver? This seemingly technical question is shown to be primarily cognitive and conceptual: players draw on their real-life and fictional frames of reference in an ongoing epistemological process of situating themselves vis-à-vis gameworld and playable figure. The traditional metaphor for this relationship, that of a cyborg, neither captures the variety of relationships suggested by games, nor the range of interpretations open to players. To overcome this limitation, I propose six conceptual types, based on the significance that tools and vehicles have for the playable figure. I ask: is there a co-dependence between equipment and user, is it permanent, and do they have a metonymic relationship to each other? These abstract categories are shown to be connected to archetypical proto-narratives epitomized by characters from mythology and popular culture, which players implicitly refer to in conceptualizing their relationship to the gameworld. The essay, then, offers a framework for the conceptual variety of player-playable figure-relations, which, in drawing on cultural history, should be equally transparent to scholars of game studies and narratology.

https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120221084453

Petri Lankoski, Thomas Apperley, J. Tuomas Harviainen

Abstract

This article examines the prominent role of Patreon in the rapidly growing sector of crowdfunded pornographic games. Recent research has indicated that, on average, more people (patrons) are funding pornographic digital games on Patreon than other (non-adult) digital games (Lankoski & Dymek, 2020). Graphtreon’s ‘Top Patreon Creators’ list from 9 June 2021 includes six NSFW game projects among the top 50 projects (ranked by number of Patrons).1 For example, Summertime Saga (Dark Cookie), the highest-ranked pornographic game, is third in terms of the number of funders, with 27,791 patrons funding $74,657 per month. While Wild Life – An Adult RPG (Adeptus Steve), which reportedly only had 9417 patrons as of 9 June 2021, receives a monthly income of $94,129 from those pledges.2 The current funding levels for both Patreon projects are considerably higher than when we began our sampling: since January 2020, the funding level for Summertime Saga has risen by 27.86%, while for Wild Life – An Adult RPG it has risen by 21.45%.
Keywords
adult games, content analysis, heteronormativity, non-consensual sex, patreon funding, pornography

Petri Lankoski is participating in Planning with Youth research project where his research is focusing on how games could be used in involving youth in environmental planning.

Petri Lankoski & Mikolaj Dymek

In DiGRA 2020 conference proceedings: http://www.digra.org/digital-library/publications/patreon-and-porn-games-crowdfunding-games-reward-categories-and-backstage-passes/

Abstract

Patreon is a crowdfunding platform where pornographic games are funded; even the most successful game developer in terms of the number of members is developing a pornographic game. We looked at 42 developers and their Patreon pages in order to examine the effects of the Patreon crowdfunding model on videogame development. Especially we studied membership rewards. As a result, developers were not only selling the game, but rewards we much about Community, Influence, and Recognition. Regulating Content Access is used regularly but often the latest version of the game is made available to everybody, just later to the members funding the development. We propose that certain rewards are similar to backstage passes in the music business and suggest that Patron pornographic games funding deviates from the crowdfunding model is not following mainly product-oriented commodity logic but a more community-oriented concept.

Keywords: Patreon, pornography, porgraphic games, crowdfunding, rewards

Presented by Koenitz, H., and Eladhari, M.P., at DiGRA 2019,  August 8 2019, Kyoto, Japan. Slides at SlideShare.

Paper presented at Teaching Games: Pedagogical Approaches – DiGRA 2019 Pre-Conference Workshop (TGPA:DiGRA2019) August 6 2019, Kyoto, Japan.