tickling video games

[damdu]

why are there so few tickling fetish games

 

[WickedTouch]

Generally speaking, game design and development requires skills and resources that the vast majority of people don't have. For those individuals or companies that do, they are almost always looking at the projected ROI and justifying the project based on that. The very few that are left over are developing games primarily as passion projects. , Because the tickling fixation is very rare, in the case of the profit-seeking ventures, justification is very difficult with a very small audience, only a fraction of which will end up paying for it; and in the case of passion projects, the number of people actually interested in tickling who also have the skills and resources to complete such a project is probably especially low.

 

[TicklerKoops]

why are there so few tickling fetish games

There was an era where there were multiple tickle games. Unfortunately, a lot of them didn't finish, but a handful of them did. If you go on the Tickling Game subforum, you'll be able to find a lot of them

 

[Studious_Hustler]

why are there so few tickling fetish games

Capitalism in its present state requires the majority of people to work long hours in menial jobs, in order to benefit a small number of billionaires, just to feed themselves and their families. That leaves most people without the time and energy needed for projects such as game development. As a result, many great projects that might exist under a less dystopian economic model can simply never come into existence.

 

[SoleMates]

My day job is as a professional game developer. It's true; there are more than you'd expect, but also less than you'd expect. The bulk of them use existing assets (usually done in RPGMaker, because RPGMaker doesn't require you to know how to code in order to use it) because the kind of people (hi!) who have the skills to do anything more are either doing it for a living, or are working a job that prevents them from putting in the kind of effort beyond what it'd take to make a shitty RPGMaker game.

Here's a bit of a benchmark for you. I've been working basically full-time on a short, (non-tickling) casual game. I purchased the 3D assets, but everything else (pixel art, programming, scripting/writing, music, etc.) is all me. You will probably be able to finish the entire game in an evening if you're clever and really crack at it.

I'm a fast developer. I know my shit. Even so, the game has taken roughly four months of full-time development and is still, as of the time of me posting this, only about 90, 95% done.

Now, imagine if I'd had to do all of the 3D art myself, or if I did the entire game in pixel art as I'd originally planned. I'd still have another four to six months, minimum, and even then I'd probably only be 75% of the way there. Hiring someone (or multiple someones) is a hassle in the other direction, coming with added expenses or risks that aren't worth it for a project like this.

Now (now now, not then now, you Spaceball), imagine I put in all of this effort on a game that I'd get absolutely zero compensation for. You'd have to be mad. Tickle people don't spend money. They pirate the fuck out of $5 videos, you think they're going to drop $20-$30 on a short asset-flip of a game?

This is why, as stated above, the bulk of tickling games are free, use cheap *maker kits like RPGMaker and stock assets, and are usually not very good (or, unfinished); because the effort, skill, and/or expense required to do anything more is simply not feasible. If I'm going to spend that much time and effort on a game, it's going to be something I can put on Itch.io or Steam and make some kind of money off of.

That said I did take some footage of Katya for a Sole Mates visual novel that I do plan to work on in the near future, but I have more immediate financial obligations for the time being. That's just reality for anyone even halfway decent at game development.

 

[sadisticprincess]

My day job is as a professional game developer. It's true; there are more than you'd expect, but also less than you'd expect. The bulk of them use existing assets (usually done in RPGMaker, because RPGMaker doesn't require you to know how to code in order to use it) because the kind of people (hi!) who have the skills to do anything more are either doing it for a living, or are working a job that prevents them from putting in the kind of effort beyond what it'd take to make a shitty RPGMaker game.

Here's a bit of a benchmark for you. I've been working basically full-time on a short, (non-tickling) casual game. I purchased the 3D assets, but everything else (pixel art, programming, scripting/writing, music, etc.) is all me. You will probably be able to finish the entire game in an evening if you're clever and really crack at it.

I'm a fast developer. I know my shit. Even so, the game has taken roughly four months of full-time development and is still, as of the time of me posting this, only about 90, 95% done.

Now, imagine if I'd had to do all of the 3D art myself, or if I did the entire game in pixel art as I'd originally planned. I'd still have another four to six months, minimum, and even then I'd probably only be 75% of the way there. Hiring someone (or multiple someones) is a hassle in the other direction, coming with added expenses or risks that aren't worth it for a project like this.

Now (now now, not then now, you Spaceball), imagine I put in all of this effort on a game that I'd get absolutely zero compensation for. You'd have to be mad. Tickle people don't spend money. They pirate the fuck out of $5 videos, you think they're going to drop $20-$30 on a short asset-flip of a game?

This is why, as stated above, the bulk of tickling games are free, use cheap *maker kits like RPGMaker and stock assets, and are usually not very good (or, unfinished); because the effort, skill, and/or expense required to do anything more is simply not feasible. If I'm going to spend that much time and effort on a game, it's going to be something I can put on Itch.io or Steam and make some kind of money off of.

That said I did take some footage of Katya for a Sole Mates visual novel that I do plan to work on in the near future, but I have more immediate financial obligations for the time being. That's just reality for anyone even halfway decent at game development.

this was a fun and informative read thanks for ur insight ✨ i played a bunch of the rpgmaker games and even considered making one of my own at one point but i wasnt committed to it

 

[Oblesklk]

Generally speaking, game design and development requires skills and resources that the vast majority of people don't have. For those individuals or companies that do, they are almost always looking at the projected ROI and justifying the project based on that. The very few that are left over are developing games primarily as passion projects. , Because the tickling fixation is very rare, in the case of the profit-seeking ventures, justification is very difficult with a very small audience, only a fraction of which will end up paying for it; and in the case of passion projects, the number of people actually interested in tickling who also have the skills and resources to complete such a project is probably especially low.

+1

I don't have anything novel to add to the thread. But having published two games so far on Steam and itch.io and having been a lifelong member of the tickling community, some may find my perspective helpful.

I spent about 8 months in development for The Cyriaan Chronicles (https://store.steampowered.com/app/3300240/The_Cyriaan_Chronicles/), my first game, and it cost roughly $2,000 to produce. I did the scriptwriting, direction for the game, all the database management, and limited scripting myself. I hired out artists for important character profiles, and paid voice actresses for the voice acting in the game.

Tickle Magnet (https://store.steampowered.com/app/2692860/Tickle_Magnet/) took closer to a year in development as the game is absolutely massive (300k words in the script which is almost equivalent to a 3-novel trilogy in one game). I spent closer to $3,500 in production costs for that game. Artists, authors, voice actors and actresses, music, etc.

Both games use RPGMaker as its engine, as I found it more accessible to newcomers than other engines. Both games have made a profit. From a financial perspective, I would be insane to be doing this for monetary gain. I did it because it's a bucket list item for me. Before I leave the Earth, I wanted to produce tickling media that people love: videos, comic books, video games, and animation. That's one thing off the list, and only thing left now is animation.

It's a long way of saying these are passion projects. But my primary issue is scale. I do it because I love it, as one does with hobbies. As you can imagine, it's challenging to find others to help in a meaningful way: hard to tell someone to learn several niche technical skills only to be paid pennies per hour to help out. Because there's no value proposition for another to help me, I'm on my own, which means production just takes a very long time to make the kind of experiences I want to create.

I don't know other creators' stories, but I presume similarities.

 

[SoleMates]

I don't have anything novel to add to the thread. But having published two games so far on Steam and itch.io and having been a lifelong member of the tickling community, some may find my perspective helpful.

Publishing a game is always a huge milestone, even for the pros. Congrats!

 

[TicklerKoops]

My day job is as a professional game developer. It's true; there are more than you'd expect, but also less than you'd expect. The bulk of them use existing assets (usually done in RPGMaker, because RPGMaker doesn't require you to know how to code in order to use it) because the kind of people (hi!) who have the skills to do anything more are either doing it for a living, or are working a job that prevents them from putting in the kind of effort beyond what it'd take to make a shitty RPGMaker game.

Here's a bit of a benchmark for you. I've been working basically full-time on a short, (non-tickling) casual game. I purchased the 3D assets, but everything else (pixel art, programming, scripting/writing, music, etc.) is all me. You will probably be able to finish the entire game in an evening if you're clever and really crack at it.

I'm a fast developer. I know my shit. Even so, the game has taken roughly four months of full-time development and is still, as of the time of me posting this, only about 90, 95% done.

Now, imagine if I'd had to do all of the 3D art myself, or if I did the entire game in pixel art as I'd originally planned. I'd still have another four to six months, minimum, and even then I'd probably only be 75% of the way there. Hiring someone (or multiple someones) is a hassle in the other direction, coming with added expenses or risks that aren't worth it for a project like this.

Now (now now, not then now, you Spaceball), imagine I put in all of this effort on a game that I'd get absolutely zero compensation for. You'd have to be mad. Tickle people don't spend money. They pirate the fuck out of $5 videos, you think they're going to drop $20-$30 on a short asset-flip of a game?

This is why, as stated above, the bulk of tickling games are free, use cheap *maker kits like RPGMaker and stock assets, and are usually not very good (or, unfinished); because the effort, skill, and/or expense required to do anything more is simply not feasible. If I'm going to spend that much time and effort on a game, it's going to be something I can put on Itch.io or Steam and make some kind of money off of.

That said I did take some footage of Katya for a Sole Mates visual novel that I do plan to work on in the near future, but I have more immediate financial obligations for the time being. That's just reality for anyone even halfway decent at game development.

Very awesome read. Thank you! Yeah, a majority of the tickling games you can really access that are like... mostly fleshed out are RPGMaker games and even then, a lot of them kinda stopped because the commitment to doing the story laying out the battles, power creep, etc, seems very extensive.

We'll never see a Final Fantasy X type of game that's centered around tickling. However, it's cool to see now(compared to a decade ago) people are doing more customized games that aren't just "enter generic character model here" and then make a tickling scenario for game over scenes lol

 

[Oblesklk]

Very awesome read. Thank you! Yeah, a majority of the tickling games you can really access that are like... mostly fleshed out are RPGMaker games and even then, a lot of them kinda stopped because the commitment to doing the story laying out the battles, power creep, etc, seems very extensive.

We'll never see a Final Fantasy X type of game that's centered around tickling. However, it's cool to see now(compared to a decade ago) people are doing more customized games that aren't just "enter generic character model here" and then make a tickling scenario for game over scenes lol

Although I used RPGMaker MZ for my first two releases, I am taking a very long look at Unreal Engine 5 for my third game.

With that context in mind, I am curious about the observation "We'll never see a Final Fantasy X type of game that's centered around tickling." What is it about that game in particular, as a benchmark, do you believe would be most difficult to achieve within the tickling community?

Publishing a game is always a huge milestone, even for the pros. Congrats!

I've never published one before, and have been gaming since I was 5. So it was seriously awesome to see it up on Steam, acting like a big boy game and everything 🙂

 

[SoleMates]

Although I used RPGMaker MZ for my first two releases, I am taking a very long look at Unreal Engine 5 for my third game.

...unless UE5 has some kind of absolutely must-have features (...or would those be feet-ures?), I would actually recommend Godot. It's open-source and totally free, as well as super-lightweight (the entire engine is about 65MB with no installer required). If you've never done 3D before and aren't a solid coder then it's infinitely easier to get up and running than a beast like Unreal. I've used Unreal, Unity, and Godot over the years and Godot wins it for me, hands down. 'course engine choice is a personal thing, so don't let me steer you away from Unreal if you really want to use it, but honestly I'd try 'em all and see which one works best for you if you haven't already done so.

With that context in mind, I am curious about the observation "We'll never see a Final Fantasy X type of game that's centered around tickling." What is it about that game in particular, as a benchmark, do you believe would be most difficult to achieve within the tickling community?

You said it yourself; scale. The Final Fantasy team is enormous (The FFVII Rebirth team clocked in at around 2300 people) and the folks who work on those games are some of the best in the industry. The only way you'd be able to reliably deliver a 3D game at all is to either purchase all of your assets/game systems or hire a large team, and producing those assets takes upwards of triple the time that 2D assets do. (That's the amount of time our art team budgeted when I was at Rocket Ninja; they figured out how long it'd take in 2D and then multiply it by 3. A single 3D character with FFX-level detail and polycounts could take months to sculpt and rig.) Never mind the texturing, animation, rigging, material generation, particle effects, scripting, game mechanics... the animation is going to be your biggest problem; most of the other stuff like walk cycles, etc. you can find on Mixamo or get AI to do it, but getting halfway decent tickling animations without paying an artist or two is not gonna happen.

Then you have to worry about the fact that simply designing the levels is an art in and of itself, and with 3D that difficulty is multiplied, again, over what it would take to do it in 2D. There's a reason 3D artists specialize in different systems nowadays, and why most amateur 3D games look bare and uninspired.

Never say never, of course, but I won't hold my breath for one guy to pull off anything even remotely close. The one or two 3D tickling games I saw floating around the web looked terrible. And that's not even getting into the cost; AAA games today cost billions. Even if everybody in this community bought two copies, it still wouldn't break even.

the commitment to doing the story laying out the battles, power creep, etc, seems very extensive.

Even the pros can't reliably estimate how long something will take, most of the time. Amateurs definitely can't. If I had a nickel for every n00b I've encountered who has a rude awakening over how long content takes to create, I could buy Sydney Sweeney as my personal tickle slave for life.

Rule of thumb a lot of us use is... take however long you think it'll take and double it. That worked well enough for me when I made my Roguelike; I thought it'd take a year. It took two.

 

[Antonio629]

While we are at it, I've been looking for one game for some time. Depths of tickle torture chamber. Does anybody know where can one acquire it?

 

[marvelsm]

There was an era where there were multiple tickle games. Unfortunately, a lot of them didn't finish, but a handful of them did. If you go on the Tickling Game subforum, you'll be able to find a lot of them

Where is the tickle game subforum?