2D Games are Less Popular

[Deleted member 1952336]

I sorted the games on F95 from most liked, to least liked, then graphed the percentage of 2D games on each page. As you can see the more popular a game is the less likely it is to be 2D.

Spoiler: Possible Contributing Factors

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Thoughts? Do you like 2D? Do you hate it?

 

[Winterfire]

I only play 2D games

 

[Meaning Less]

Number of likes in f95 have zero relation to the game quality.

They are given to uploaders and not to games.
And in fact even negative reactions like "laughing, facepalm, sad and thinking" seem to be counted as "like".

 

[Deleted member 1952336]

Number of likes in f95 have zero relation to the game quality.

They are given to uploaders and not to games.
And in fact even negative reactions like "laughing, facepalm, sad and thinking" seem to be counted as "like".

It would be more appropriate for me to say 2D games get less attention on F95 then.

I just graphed them by rating as well, and 2D games tend to make up more of the lower rated games, and more higher rated games tend to be 3D. But there's still plenty of the opposite.

 

[Meaning Less]

It would be more appropriate for me to say 2D games get less attention on F95 then.

Well that is partially true, but if I had to give a better reason is because most japanese stuff is 2D, and japanese stuff in general tends to get less attention here.
1.because they are released as completed almost always, so it is harder for people to accidentally stumble upon them unlike games that are being updated almost every week.
2.because this is a western website and there is almost zero japanese developer activity here, so people don't waste their times trying to get the dev attention in those threads, they play the game and usually don't review, like or complain. But many people still play and enjoy them.

 

[Heranwen]

I mostly play 2D games.

The usual 3D games we have here, the NPCs face look too weird/cringe to my tastes. Kinda like the uncanny valley thing. And it's like, 90% of the 3d games uses the same graphics/rendering stuff, so it's like they are all the same game/engine with different stories. In 2D the variety and quality depends on the artist.

 

[Airell]

I think the type of graphics that fit depends on the game's context, story and game world as well. Overall though, I prefer 2D.

 

[4 Anon]

If I had to guess it's because its mostly RPGM games that use 2d. And those tend to be either a timesink with a few images or very poorly made resulting in lower scores/views. When done well 2D/3D probably matters very little to most people.

 

[Laikhent]

Well that is partially true, but if I had to give a better reason is because most japanese stuff is 2D, and japanese stuff in general tends to get less attention here.
1.because they are released as completed almost always, so it is harder for people to accidentally stumble upon them unlike games that are being updated almost every week.
2.because this is a western website and there is almost zero japanese developer activity here, so people don't waste their times trying to get the dev attention in those threads, they play the game and usually don't review, like or complain. But many people still play and enjoy them.

This is a strong possibility

maybe if japanese games were filtered out we would get a different result

 

[Glib_Gentleman]

This is a strong possibility

maybe if japanese games were filtered out we would get a different result

I would like to see the chart with Japanese games filtered out as well.

I think that would yield some interesting results. After all, there are quite a few extremely popular western games that are 2D, like Summertime Saga and Rogue-Like.

I prefer WELL-DONE graphics, period. Whether that is 2D or 3D, all that matters to me is that the graphics look good, fit the style of the game, and don't look like everything else. 2D tends to do this better simply because it is handcrafted to be different by it's very nature. (Subtracting out the anime Japanese games, of course.)

"Art by intention" is my point.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

Thoughts? Do you like 2D? Do you hate it?

Can't play most 3DCG games. DAZ models are just disgusting, creepy. Ew.

I think you should be more careful about some other factors influencing results, like engine and genre. Try comparing 2DCG vs 3DCG Ren'py games.

 

[MarbleCrown]

Frankly, 2D art also requires way more skill to do well and way more time to produce than 3D renders (posing, lighting and environments, not actual rendering time). This means 2D games usually have less art and smaller updates, so it's easier to make a fleshed out game using 3D art. This website's community specifically also heavily skews toward visual novels which tend to favor the use of 3D renders. The upside to 2D art over 3D is that it's usually more distinct and stylized (more memorable) and it's much easier to make 2D animations look good compared to 3D animations.

 

[Crestrial]

I can understand why the braindead click-along Renpy VNs top the charts on this site, because the people who flock to them are coomers who just want easy visually aided erotica, not so much a 'game'.

But I will never understand the appeal of the 3D models. They are horrid looking meat puppets that either A) give uncanny valley skinwalker vibes

or B)

 

[Chains123]

i can tolerate 3d games but i prefer2d games
they generally have actual asthetics attached to them that get you into a certain mood depending on the artstyle of the artist.

3d games are usually just asset flips, the developer has to work with what he gets unless of course he uses some kind of 3d character creator like honey select but those characters all have their own weird asthetics attached to them aswell.

im generalising of course there are people that actually make their own models and stuff but theyre rare and you can see that in every 3d game the world just looks really off putting there are conflicting objects appearing in the surroundings and you never really get grounded in the world or believe that it could theoreticly exist.

realistic graphics dont make a game immersive, a consistent artstyle and theme does.

 

[Deleted member 1952336]

Japanese stuff in general tends to get less attention here.

I would like to see the chart with Japanese games filtered out as well.

If I had to guess it's because its mostly RPGM games that use 2d.

Those might be contributing factors, but I redid the chart for Renpy Only, which means it's not including RPG Maker games or Japanese Games. Japanese games don't use Renpy. And it's the same general trend.

I also changed it to be sorted by views to get an even more accurate picture of what getting the most attention on F95. So much counting, which is required because many games don't tag themselves correctly. I probably won't do any more, but I learned something today lol.

Frankly, 2D art also requires way more skill... 2D games usually have less art and smaller updates.

This has got to be the main big factor. There are many games where you can tell the Dev has been drawing for years, but still isn't good enough to make it work.

The upside to 2D art over 3D is that it's usually more distinct and stylized (more memorable) and it's much easier to make 2D animations look good compared to 3D animations.

This is probably why we think of 2D games as being more popular than they are, because it's easy to remember the successful 2D games and the successful 3D games all blur into each other.

Still there are very successful 2D games, that are just as successful as the most successful 3D games, it just requires incredible skill, requiring many many years of practice, to produce high enough quantity and quality of 2D art needed for that level of success. Summertime saga creator was a professional background artists, and surely practice drawing characters for many years on his own before starting out, for example.

Mastering Daz3D art will take many hours, but not as long as mastering 2D digital art. Mastering Blender (creating 3D art from scratch), might take as long as 2D and would get even less attention generally, and takes pretty much as long as 2D to create things from scratch, but not many people do that, I don't recommend this path as some one who's dumped hundreds of hours into blender to become fairly skilled.

 

[Meaning Less]

View attachment 1844087

Well now that you are only using renpy as a base, you have to consider that from 4060 total renpy games only ~31% (1255) are 2D.

So those percentages don't look so bad now considering they don't go over 50% and also are against a larger number of 3d games.

Even though I still think that all f95 sorting options are a bad measure of anything scientific because views, likes and ratings mostly indicate forum activity and not actual game data.

 

[snookums.d.panda]

I also changed it to be sorted by views to get an even more accurate picture of what getting the most attention on F95. So much counting, which is required because many games don't tag themselves correctly. I probably won't do any more, but I learned something today lol.

I think that sorting by views is not a metric that should be considered since these are forum threads and not just download pages. That is unless you consider circular discussions on how said game's developer is a scammer makes a game more "popular," especially as you can argue it's easier to make a cash-grab title with 3d assets than a 2d one would be (unless you steal art, but thankfully that seems a rarity.)

Also, I'm a bit confused as to what your point is. Are you taking less popular to develop, or less popular to play? While your numbers point to player counts & opinions, your continued talk of art mastery jumps to a developer mindset and almost gives the impression that whether a game being in 2D/3D is the deciding factor to it being good or not.

 

[NukaCola]

I liked western 2D games with good art but there are only a handful of them on F95. Most other 2D games is usually Japanese low effort 2D hentai games that I have absolutely no interest in.

 

[Symbolic Reasons]

I sorted the games on F95 from most liked, to least liked, then graphed the percentage of 2D games on each page. As you can see the more popular a game is the less likely it is to be 2D.

View attachment 1840111

Spoiler: Possible Contributing Factors

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Thoughts? Do you like 2D? Do you hate it?

3D games are easier to make with the generic daz3d models versus having artists draw 2D characters and every scene involved. I am an artist who worked on a 2D porn game. Irresistible Johnson

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

It would be more appropriate for me to say 2D games get less attention on F95 then.

Probably tied to upload frequency. You can do almost weekly updates with a 3D game if the dev is committed, or has even a small team. Not so for a 2D one (not even close).

Higher upload frequency = more frequent releases = more eyes & hype on the project = better attention-to-content ratio.