leonizer wrote :
I wounder if you all can describe some elements which, in your opinion, erotic flash game should have. This opinion could be a guide line for our future productions.
I think it's hard to describe these elements since there are many themes of erotic based games. A dating sim has a very different structure than say the 'puzzle animation games' of Shark and Pusooy, and therefore the things that make a game in either genre 'good' are different.
Of course there are some common things (replayability, good graphics, story, etc. etc.) that good games will have at least some of.
But the things that make a game challenging really depend on the genre. For example, a good dating sim will have lots of things to explore, different ways of doing stuff, events, etc. You could say the challenge is in exploring the things that are relevant to your goal.
But the challenge in a puzzle-type game is simply having a good puzzle to solve. As I mentioned before I think the puzzles in Sharks and Pusooys games are mostly simplistic, easy to solve. To take the other end of the spectrum there's Orgasm Girl, which turns a similar game concept into a quite hard puzzle (on a sidenote: in case you didn't know, Orgasm Girl 2 is coming out soon. I know I'm looking forward to it).
I guess for most of us the 'ideal' erotic game will incorporate elements from all of the different themes. But I don't think it's realistic to focus on such a blend, doing that properly will simply take too much time (even if you managed to put together a team of several developers and artists).
So rather I guess I will repeat something like erana already said. Any erotic game developer should remember that they are creating a game first and foremost. Think about what challenge you are giving the player and how hard it is (this will require at least some betatesting). If you can combine this challenge with an erotic theme that would be excellent (Orgasm Girl being a good example), but you shouldn't trade the challenge for the erotic. And be creative, dare to try new things, there must be some game mechanic that works well in an erotic setting that nobody has yet thought of.
Now having developed some game concepts myself (non-erotic though) I know that coming up with something good is incredibly hard, even if you're not confined to the erotic genre. So it's also good to build on existing concepts (for example, Virtual Date Girls has been heavily influenced by Date Ariane, but it is still fun to play). Even small changes or combinations of concepts might lead to interesting new concepts.
As a final note to leonizer personally: In my opinion your games have gone quite a bit downhill since Lesson of Passion. Maybe it's an idea to rehash that genre and mix in some of your newer graphical stuff?