Gaming Adult promises, “Adult games are the next big thing!” and fulfills that vow via freemium, browser-based hentai games with a sexy twist. Backed by more than a dozen years of experience in affiliate marketing and gaming, the company has become expert in creating, publishing and monetizing adult-oriented gaming experiences.
By delivering high-quality content and building a sense of community among its players, Gaming Adult boasts some of the best conversion and retention rates on the market and seeks to offer a great solution for affiliates seeking to promote this type of content, using an array of tools that include animated banners, targeted landing pages, iframes and more, with creatives optimized to attract users into the games.
It takes just one click at GamingAdult.com. This is your gateway to the program, with which we have distributed over $7 million in payouts to our amazing partners for the past few years.
Gaming Adult also provides affiliates with instant access to their stats through S2S, pixel tracking and more, with a reporting dashboard that offers real-time conversion details along with tools for analyzing referred players.
To glean a behind-the-scenes perspective into the company’s history, success and plans for the future, XBIZ caught up with Onizuka, Gaming Adult’s head of business development, for his insights.
XBIZ: What led to the launch of Gaming Adult?
Onizuka: Gaming Adult’s first game “Hentai Heroes” was an overnight success, but it took a lot of time and effort to get to that night. Back in 2005, the founders of the company, P.Rosso and two of his best friends, were working for one of the biggest affiliate programs in France, but they weren’t passionate about it. So, they decided to take matters in their own hands and launched their own marketing email business focused on the adult industry.
The email business was so successful that it allowed the team to grow and branch out to other businesses like creating a platform for artists and their comics, publishing mangas, producing “serious” games and even having a social platform for poker players. But neither of these experiments led to the success P.Rosso and the team were working for.
The founders were also brought together by their passion for manga and video games which eventually gave them the idea to create a parody game that would combine all-time favorite anime and video games in a very explicit way: a hentai porn game. It all started with a simple PowerPoint presentation and a lot of passion. In the summer of 2016, the first version of the game was launched and players immediately fell in love with it. The hentai adventure was sexy and funny and exactly what the players wanted. The first sales were 10 times higher than what we could have imagined for the launch so without really expecting that outcome, it became an “overnight success.”
This gave us the validation we were looking for: we decided to put all our efforts, expertise and passion into gaming. Since we had over 10 years of experience in affiliate marketing, we knew right from the start that if we wanted to scale our business, we had to launch our own program eventually. That’s how at the beginning of 2017, we created our affiliate program to connect our partners directly with our offers. We ran the beta testing for six months until we officially launched it in September. Now, three years later we are proud to count hundreds of different partners and to have distributed them millions of dollars in payouts.
XBIZ: How do games such as “Hentai Heroes,” “Hentai Clicker” and “Gay Harem” differ from one another?
Onizuka: The three games exist in an alternative reality — the Haremverse — where gorgeous girls and guys are always horny. All our games are “gacha” games with addictive harem collection mechanics and a lot of different features.
“Hentai Heroes” and “Gay Harem” are visual novels that tell a never-ending story in which the player needs to collect as many characters as possible and upgrade and develop them. “Hentai Clicker” is an incremental clicker game with different gameplay: the player needs to click on sexy girls to undress and satisfy them with his magic touch. Only if he is successful in giving them orgasms, will they join his harem. Yes, we find inspiration in real life.
“Hentai Heroes” and “Gay Harem” offer an entertaining story and require more engagement and dedication, while “Hentai Clicker” is a fun way to relax in your busy day by enjoying gorgeous art and getting to know the Haremverse hotties more intimately.
XBIZ: Is it only a matter of different characters/content for each or do these titles also feature unique gameplay/storylines from one another?
Onizuka: The storyline of “Hentai Heroes” and “Gay Harem” is different from “Hentai Clicker,” although they all take place in the same world. In “Hentai Heroes” and “Gay Harem,” the player goes on an adventure: he conquers world after world, quest after quest to find even more beautiful ladies or studs. In “Hentai Clicker,” the player is fighting a mysterious curse — the Mist that prevents the girls from feeling sexual pleasure. He is the only one who can break the curse and help the ladies of Haremverse be happy again.
What differentiates us from the other games on the market is that we provide sexy and positive entertainment. Our unique content appeals to the players and allows them to dive into a world of pleasure and joy. The game mechanics are easy enough for people with no experience and engaging for those who like RPGs. Moreover, we constantly work on our games by providing more quests, gaming mechanics and features.
We know our games are good not only because we have more than 10 million registered players, but also because our work is recognized and the company keeps winning awards. One of our most treasured trophies from last year is the Nutaku Gamer’s Choice Award for Best Writing. Our team is honored to be the gamers’ choice among such quality competition.
XBIZ: How does the platform differ from other adult gaming communities?
Onizuka: Our community has been a priority for us since the launch of the game. We have a dedicated team who communicates with our players, collects feedback, discusses ideas and supports the community. Our players are very important to us and we show our appreciation every day by giving them what they want: gorgeous girls/guys, exciting events and new fun adventures. We also entertain our players on social media, our forums and blog. We are among a few adult gaming companies that do that.
This also translates into having an amazing retention rate with over 700K monthly active users on all of our platforms. Our games are the most played hentai games in the western part of the world (Japan is a market of its own).
XBIZ: How important is the freemium game business model to the success of Gaming Adult?
Onizuka: Freemium is currently one of the major business models in the gaming industry. It started with mobile games and quickly became one of the most preferred models even for the big players such as Electronic Arts and many others. All the popular games such as “Fortnite,” “Angry Birds” and “Clash Royale” are using the freemium model successfully.
The situation is not different in the adult segment of the gaming industry. Playing our games and enjoying high-quality art is free. It is up to the players to decide whether they want to make in-game purchases or not. We just try to make shopping as easy and secure as possible. We offer a great variety of packages and bundles and we often have event-related promotions so that everyone can find the best deal for themselves.
We’ve been developing and improving our game mechanics based on the freemium model for the past five years and branching out with different games. We will keep exploring this model as long as the players are also happy with it and it allows us to create high-quality games.
XBIZ: Who is the ideal affiliate for the platform and what type of traffic and sales skills do they need?
Onizuka: Our games are made by hentai fans for hentai fans. So, it’s not surprising that the ideal traffic with the best conversion rates for our offers comes from other hentai websites. All of our partners that work directly or close (adult gaming, anime, comic books, etc.) with that segment can expect to monetize their traffic with our program.
We are currently experimenting with other verticals such as camming. Our business models are quite similar: both based on purchasing tokens or in-game currency so the opportunity to convert these users is real. Combining camming and gaming has a lot of untapped potentials and our recent collaboration with ImLive proved it.
We are very flexible when it comes to our offers so we can be sure to adapt ourselves according to our partners’ requests. Our motto has always been to “make win-win deals.” That’s the reason why we welcome any partners, regardless of their sales skills and aim to assist them in the best way possible.
XBIZ: Who is the ideal player and how can they benefit from the Gaming Adult experience?
Onizuka: The ideal player is someone looking to have fun. There is absolutely no violence in the games, no stress: only exciting adventures and beautiful girls. We are appealing to the player’s natural desire to collect just like people used to collect Playboy magazines in the past. The players can also compare their harems, which adds a competitive element in the game.
Our games are browser-based and can be played both on desktop and mobile. The gameplay provides opportunities for players with different levels of gaming experience to advance at their own pace while the exciting content makes the game interesting for everyone. We have a vast girls’ lore and a variety of events so that every player can be sure to find his favorite waifu, and then have a whole harem of girls like her.
Our players come from all over the world. “Hentai Heroes” is translated in French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese to make our universe even more welcoming for the players.
XBIZ: Do you consider adult games to be “porn” — why or why not?
Onizuka: When it comes to our games, no, it’s not porn. Porn is more passive; it’s just meant to be consumed. What we offer is adult entertainment. Our games give the players stories that make them laugh and hit them “right in the feels,” require strategic thinking and make them a part of an engaged community. The games stimulate sexually, but that is not their sole purpose. The goal is to make the player forget his mundane life and dive into an amazing adventure that brings visual and mental satisfaction.
XBIZ: Does Gaming Adult support games on VR headsets or boast any other noteworthy technology?
Onizuka: Our fans enjoy 2D art and we are good at it. So, for now, we are not planning on supporting games with VR since it would mean going to 3D. However, we’ve always been interested in this technology: the opportunities that VR offers to the gaming experience are pretty huge. It’s still too early for us to go there, but once the market is more developed, we will explore it.
We are constantly looking to improve the players’ experience. Innovations keep surprising us and the possibilities for connected technology are very exciting. Smart and responsive sex toys can make playing games even more arousing so we are keeping our eye on this market and the major players there, such as Kiiroo.
XBIZ: How can affiliates and other potential partners get in on the Gaming Adult action?
Onizuka: It takes just one click at GamingAdult.com. This is your gateway to the program, with which we have distributed over $7 million in payouts to our amazing partners for the past few years. We offer a variety of different models for each type of affiliate, from a lifetime 50 percent revenue share to CPA and CPL.
Since what we are giving the players is a free game to play, the real moneymaker is the revenue sharing model. Just like with cam websites and casinos, our users are not restricted to spending money only once. That’s why we benefit from players who can afford to spend a lot of money: the gaming industry calls them “whales.” In our games, our top players have been spending up to $500 every month (and sometimes even more) during the past four years.
Thanks to this model, our top partners can generate a vast and steady source of revenue from us for many years. And of course, the more traffic they keep sending, the more revenue they will generate.
On the other hand, our CPA and CPL models were developed especially for media buyers and affiliate networks. We kept in mind that such partners will need a faster payout to cover their expenses and we adapted ourselves to them. Therefore, we created multiple offers depending on the geos and the devices. For example, our base CPA is $50 for T1 countries and can go up to $65 for the very top ones.
On top of everything else, our affiliate program offers a user-friendly interface with everything needed to promote our games with a variety of tools, including banners, landing pages, pre-rolls, interstitials and more. We also provide custom creatives upon request.
XBIZ: Finally, what does the future hold for Gaming Adult?
Onizuka: More games! We have the knowledge, experience and the perfect team, so now we want to expand our portfolio.
We are also looking forward to collaborating more closely with the adult industry as we did recently with ImLive. The partnership resulted in increased traffic, good revenue and the Live Cam Award for Best Marketing Campaign. After all, both the adult and the gaming industries want to give people a believable fantasy experience and entertain them — and that’s exactly what we do best.
