Also the market for games like Sex Sim seems so underpopulated and underattended to. It surprises me that the porn industry does not pick up on it.
Forgive me for correcting you, but that's just not true. I've been a member of ThriXXX for over 5 years! The registered population of Gamerotica, the ThriXXX owned user website is now well over 100,000! And that's just the users that have signed up for it. That's not counting the ones who don't use GE. That isn't a drop in the bucket compared to say World of Warcraft, but for an adult-oriented game, that's pretty good.
Consider that a lot of older users, like me, are still on the monthly subscription plan. And most of the newer users have purchased sexcoins for new content. At even, say $100/year per customer, that's $10 million per year. For Blizzard, that would be poker money, for Sexsim, it would be a windfall.
And $100/year is a very conservative estimate.
The market for this game is very good. The reason it hasn't caught on yet is that it is still in its infancy. And the 500lb gorilla in the room is THriXXX. It's unfortunate, but for this game to succeed, it's going to have to outdo ThriXXX at a format they invented. Judging from what I've seen so far, they can do it. But it's not going to happen with just the "pick a girl and guy and have sex till they cum" scenario. That's been done to death by too many SexVilla wannabees, (3d Girlz, 3D Sex, Virtual Eve, the list is endless) no matter how many mods and options it gets.
Sexsim is going to have to become better than SexVilla and to do that it needs to become far more sophisticated.
I can guarantee that, if they do develop a porn movie studio with this game, you'll see thousands migrate from SexVilla. There is a lot of dissatisfaction with the condition of the game right now, but it's still the only game in town so nobody, me included, wants to give it up. But, if there was an alternative game with better capabilities and more freedom to create, then they'd jump ship in a New York minute. I guarantee it.
The one thing they don't allow in 3DSV2 is users to create new clothes. They can modify and re-texturize the ones ThriXXX made, but can't make their own...or hairstyles, or sets. So, these things being available here would be enough to get many to migrate from 3dSV2. They also can only modify certain parts of the figure...breasts, penis, hips, stomach and thighs somewhat, and of course facial features. One feature people scream for is to adjust heights on the figures. You can do that here.
The big problem for Sexsim now is that ThriXXX is developing the 3D SexVilla 3 now. It has been in development for over 2 years. Supposedly, they are going to release a "teaser" video this week showing some of their progress. If it contains most or all of the suggestions made by we users, Sexsim will have a lot of catching up to do.
The problem, as I see it for Jax, is that with ThriXXX having a stranglehold on the market like it does, getting venture capital support is probably difficult. And that would be necessary to take this game to the next level, because, as one of you said, this would be far too involved a project for just one person, or even a couple of people. It would require a team of coders, developers and planners. And that requires a lot of upfront money.
However, one thing that could be done almost immediately, and almost without cost, is to reveal the format of the 3d sets and props or release the development tool used to make them AND the animation tools. With those two things, users can start to make their own sets and character animations, make a video of a scene and make a movie using a third party video editor without actually having to have a full blown studio available.
I'm not talking about sex animations. I mean everyday, sitting on the couch talking or sitting at the dinner table, or answering the door animations, or any number of poses needed to make a movie. ThriXXX has those now because of the pose editor. I, myself, have made over 30 animations using it. And their animator will import BVH files with a little modification. THAT, is what is needed here, quickly.
