Let’s explore the history of adult video games, from the start to now. Adult video games have been around for a very long time, but they simply haven’t always existed. They certainly haven’t always existed in their current form. The concept of the adult game can be traced back hundreds, if not thousands of years. But if we’re talking about videos games, it all started in the 1980s. What started out as simple text games has now evolved into a massive industry that publishes brand adult gaming options almost every single day. Of course, there’s no talking about adult video games without first exploring the adult tabletop gaming that came before it.
Adult Dungeons & Dragons
As with most evolutions in gaming, it all starts at home and around a table of friends just playing together. Dungeons & Dragons is a hallmark of tabletop gaming and is one of the many things that led to modern day video gaming. If you’re unfamiliar with it, Dungeons & Dragons is a roleplaying game that relies on storytelling and is usually enjoyed the most with a group. Just like other RPGs, players use clothing, weapons, and skills to progress through the story and explore the world that’s been created by the Game Master or the group. It should come as no surprise that the game quickly found a fanbase in adding adult elements to it. These elements were shared in social groups and can now be considered just another way of playing the game. In fact, the D&D Wiki has an entire section dedicated to adult aspects you can add to the game. They list equipment like bikini armor, jeweled chokers, reappearing clothes, and the Ring of Gender Swapping. They also have classes like alcoholic, escort, hooker, pimp, and temptress. This type of gaming happened in small groups, mostly independent of a larger community, until the internet and video gaming grew up.
Birth of Adult Video Games
One of the first games that can be considered as a full adult video game was Softporn Adventure. This was a text-based game that was published by On-Line Systems in 1981. It was created for the Apple II and sold around 25,000 copies. That’s almost a quarter of the number of Apple II computers sold at the time. That essentially means that, out of every four people to buy the computer, one person bought the adult game to play on it. The concept of the game was very simple. You played a party animal who was down on his luck and looking for someone to have sex with. In order to do that, you have to find items that would help you seduce three different women. The box showed three naked women submerged in a hot tub, covering their bodies. It was also clearly labeled as being for adults only. It was initially created as a way for its programmer to learn the language of the Apple II and was never intended for release. Even when it came out at the time, it was criticized for not allowing the player to use a female protagonist and seduce men. It still went on to critical and financial success. Many of these early games were pirated and shared using BBS, or Bulletin Board Systems, making them grow in exposure and popularity.
Atari 2600
After the success of Softporn Adventure, it didn’t take long for companies to try and capitalize with games released for the Atari 2600. The first was X-Man, which was released in 1983. This game faced protests from women’s groups and many retailers refused to sell it. It saw the player trying to get through a maze while avoiding crabs and teeth. If the player succeeded, a sex scene was played as the victory. This was followed by several releases from American Multiple Industries. These were unlicensed games called Beat ‘Em & Eat ‘Em, Custer’s Revenge, and Bachelor Party. They were all panned as poorly conceived with Custer’s Revenged considered to be one of the worst games ever made. The company went out of business with Company Playground purchasing the rights and releasing the games in 2-in-1 cartridges. 1986 saw the release of a poker game that showed pictures of Samantha Fox, a singer and model. The same company would later release Vixen, which featured another model named Corinne Russell with early motion capture for her animation.
Late 1980s
The real explosion of adult video games came in the late 1980s. Game designer Al Lowe was approached by On-Line Systems to create one in the style of King’s Quest in 1986. He took inspiration from Softporn Adventure, made it much bigger, and released Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards in 1987. While the company didn’t advertise the game and most retailer refused to carry it, the game was a massive success. It spread through word of mouth and was turned into a series with two sequels by 1989.
Adult Text Games
Adult sites like Literotica started publishing in the 1990s and adult games grew along with them. This was a time when the internet was finding its way into every home, but its abilities were still severely limited. Sharing images and videos were still too difficult and time consuming for the average user, so many games were text based. These were games that allowed the player to type in their actions and dialogue. If they were correct, and typed exactly as the game wanted, they would progress through the story. One of the most popular ways of making these games was as a “choose your own adventure” style novel. Literotica published many of them and the players could make their way through the story while making their own decisions and finding multiple endings.
Flash and a Growing Internet
Once we get into the late 1990s, the internet has grown substantially and transfer speeds to the home were many times faster than just a few years previously. This allowed video game developers to enter into the world of Flash. It was a uniform way of writing code and creating games that could be easily posted and played on host websites. This made it very easy for independent creators to make adult games and share them on gaming sites that anyone could visit for free. It was also possible to take CD Rom and PC games and port them onto the Flash sites as a way of pirating software that would otherwise have to be purchased from retailers that didn’t like to carry them. This led to the creation of a vast online community that could create and share games that never had to rely on brick-and-mortar stores for exposure.
Adult Policies of the New Internet
The new internet can be summed up as a collection of lightweight mobile interaction and live streaming. When the App Store, and later Google Play, went live, they were largely populated by adult apps that offered people mature subject matter and games they could play on their phones. Literotica was an early adopter of apps and mobile gaming. Their choose your own adventure games, as well as more advanced offerings, got their app to 1 million downloads before many people even knew what an app was. Of course, that changed when both Apple and Google banned adult apps, the very things that made their mobile platforms popular. The same thing would happen a decade later.
Steam and Twitch
Twitch was launched in 2011 as a way for gamers to stream their play to anyone who wanted to watch and join in the comments. It shouldn’t be a surprise that many streamers added adult elements to their work, including nude streams and playing games from hot tubs while naked, but covered up. Steam, at this point, was already the go-to source for buying and downloading games, with adult games being some of their most popular offerings. Both of these platforms saw adult content as getting in the way of their mainstream sales and made moves to hide or ban it. Twitch banned all nudity, both implied and obvious, from its platform. Steam hides its adult games behind preferences and offers little to no information about accessing them.
The Future of Adult Games
Despite resistance from retailers in the 80s and 90s, as well as resistance from modern streaming and digital storefronts, adult games aren’t going to be disappearing anytime soon. In fact, they’re still growing in popularity with many free and paid gaming sites across the internet. Adult games of any genre can be played on your mobile device or in your browser. Modders make it possible to add adult elements to any PC game. Now AI is joining in on adult gaming. Creators are developing AI programs that you can chat with about any adult topics that you want, including engaging in roleplay with them. As AI evolves, adult gaming will likely be turned from something you play into something you engage with. The sex has gone from something that’s uncovered to something you have with the game, and it only get more real and interactive from here.