Discussion on the trends and future of scripts

General
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Credit to @GoonerScriptz for doing something like this with the Halloween scripts post.

There’s no real incentive right now for creating and releasing free scripts regularly. I don’t know what the solution is but I agree with you completely. I would also imagine that the level of encouragement that free scripters can get from the community may be limited to the capabilities of the forum host.

A weekly or monthly script competition of some kind, more community events, ratings for scripters and/or scripts are the first things I think of but I don’t know what would be possible to do.

As far as paid scripts go, I’m not opposed to them existing. If you want to be paid for your work that’s cool, I buy scripts from time to time too. But I don’t know if they should be as prevalent on here as they are. Someone that exclusively posts paid scripts on here without any community contribution isn’t using the site as a forum they’re using it as a storefront, and I don’t think that’s right.

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21

Yes. For me a forum is for discussion and not for sharing content. A forum is way too limited for proper content sharing. Imagine Youtubers would share their videos in a forum.

Then FapTap came and I high hopes for a change. I had some ideas to improve the visibility of new scripters and also for community events. My ideas where to highlight new scripters and their scripts on the front page to give them more visibility.

Also, monthly community events with a certain theme. Like Halloween, Christmas etc. FapTap and EroScripts would be the perfect co-existence. FapTap for the content sharing, EroScripts for the discussion. We could have discussed and announced these events, even let the community suggest themes and let them vote for the next theme.

But now that FapTap is not in the hand of the community anymore and in a, it seems like, maintenance mode, I don’t have much hope it will ever become something like this. Very unfortunate, especially when you think about the potential that project had and the impact on scripting.

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22

I feel like a lot of people react way too emotional towards the rise of AI scripts. Men using sex toys is still pretty stigmatized unfortunately. Using automated sex toys is even more niche so it’s no surprise that there aren’t as many scripted videos available. Let’s say AI scripts stop being a thing, what would that mean? It will simply lead to less scripts being available. Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised to see one of my favourite videos on SLR got an AI script. So between not having a script at all and having a script I will always pick the latter.

As for quality of the AI scripts, they are obviously not perfect. However, it feels like people under the impression that every handcrafted script is automatically better than an AI script which is not true from my experience. I have tried plenty of handcrafted scripts that I did not like. I’d even go so far and say the average AI script is better than the average handcrafted script. And it will only get better as the technology advances.

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23

Not wanting to put words in peoples mouths but i think the main issue with A.I. for scripting, is not the A.I. themselves but the effect it will have.

The fear is that it will only advance to the point of just about good enough and then will destroy the better bespoke scripts that would have been made. This isn’t a guarantee but more of the predicted path based on peoples experience of capitalism. Most companies (at least US ones) are run on short term profits over long term growth and this means that churning out lots of low quality scripts will generate quicker revenue even if it damages the ecosystem long term.

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I guess the reason why AI scripts can feel better, and usually more intense than handcrafted ones, is due to it doesn’t know how to control stroke length.

A human scripter sees the penis and decide how much of it is being stimulated. Thereby reducing the stroke length to accommodate that. For a basic AI that detects movements only (which lacks the ability to recognize and track body features), it will likely overshoot and generate a script that strokes full length.

Of course there are hand-crafted scripts which just sucks. I’ve not tried SLR AI scripts so correct me if this is not the case.

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In the topic of AI, just wanna link some community efforts here

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I agree with that, and it’s getting worse as more and more topics are created on the site.

It’s anecdotic but, last year, I would usually stop getting notifications (likes/comments) on a new topic for a script 1 or 2 weeks after release.
Now, it’s more like 3 days and this is with followers that get notified when I publish something.

Topics are getting burried fast.

Even if it’s a good thing, another reason could be that there is a lot more scripts availables now:

  • Paid scripts
  • Free scripts
  • AI scripts
  • More and more ‘old scripts’ (that can still be really good even if they were made years ago)

I can imagine a new scripter starting now. Like most new scripter, he choose to make a script for an old scene that he always liked but never had a script (which also mean that it’s probably not the most popular scene).
Publish his script, get a few likes/comments for a day or two and then… nothing.

This isn’t a recipe to get more peoples interested in making scripts.

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27

i am still a fairly new(ish) scripter, however i do notice that alot of people lurk around. Download the file and video and then poof (and to be fair i did that too when i just found this website). There are probably alot more users in this forum than people realise.

Edit : However i do love it though when people leave a nice comment.

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** cough ** SLR ** cough **

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The thing is, when using a forum for content sharing, comments are even more important. Aside from motivating the creator, it also bumps the topic and increases the chance that more people see it. No comments => no bump.

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Regarding AI scripts- what I’d consider the true ‘advantage’ isn’t there yet. What I would like to see is the ability to set preferences on creation. I would like to be able to tell an AI that maybe I don’t want it to follow action 1:1 on a super intense video. I’ve also experienced how different scripters approach different actions on screen (making The Handy vibrate by quickly jiggle a sleeve or a suction pop by quickly moving the sleeve up)- maybe some people like these effects and some don’t. This is one advantage of manual scripts- you can find creators who approach action in the ways that you enjoy.

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Glad youve joined the discussion @withy. Some of your comments had got me thinking and was a part of why I opened the thread. Playing devils advocate SLR haven’t done this quite yet. The way they have set up the A.I. scripts has mostly been done to keep the real scripters happy from what I can gather.

For example buying a AI script outright is not cheaper than buying a real one. AI scripts dont use your real allowance if your a subscriber… but it’s very hard nowadays to give any company the benefit of the doubt. I personally have found other companies much worse.

POVR strung along there client base for 6 months with promises of downloadable scripts and when they arrived they were tokens and they then removed all posts about them being funscripts.

Badoink do amazing videos and bundle in scripts but dont admit upfront they are A.I.

Dont get me started on Naughty America.

Once you lose a persons goodwill it’s very hard to earn back and blind faith in any company is rarely rewarded, but hey thats late stage capitalism for you.

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32

Personally, I’ve only posted scripts for free, so all of my gratification comes from likes and comments. That’s enough for me to feel like I want to do it as a hobby but I understand people’s desire to make a little money on the side for themselves.

Strictly from an employment standpoint, I just released 17 scripts in a pack a week ago for 3 - 5 min PMVs. Let’s say I’m scripting quickly and each takes 30 minutes to script, that’s still 8.5 hours I’m putting in to make them (I exclude testing the scripts because that can hardly be called work) and some more time revising and making a properly formatted post for them.

At some point, do I say “why am I doing this for free when I could spend that ~9 hours doing contract work that’ll make me actual money?” I don’t think my scripts are good enough to charge people money for and I like making them, but it might just be the reality that any craft people do will eventually want to be monetized, if only via this logic.

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Tokens are just a waste of resources and time because these can be “recorded” by a person who has knowledge of basic robotics and programming. There are even more rudimentary ways to do it with the tools available, but I won’t go into it because it will ruffle a few feathers.

As someone who buys scripts, adding in these tokens as a piracy deterrent is pointless. The entertainment industry can’t stop music and movies being pirated, so I’m really baffled companies are even bothering with tokens.

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This is a good point. I made a few free scripts a few months ago and even though i’m sure they got a decent number of downloads and around 100 likes, they really didn’t get much in the way of comments or feedback.

It would be nice if there was

  1. A # tracker for people that click the script download the same way you can tell how many people click a link.

  2. A way to limit downloads on scripts to only the people that are actively interacting with the community.

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You can track this by removing the “|attachment” from the script when you’re adding it to a post. Can probably edit a post now and remove it but it might not record previous download numbers.

Giving people incentive to leave feedback is a good idea. I’ve seen @qweer do it by releasing scripts based on activity on a post. Expanding on that in some way site wide or something could be really great.

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Oh that’s cool! If i ever decide to try scripting again i’ll try that. thanks!

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People who get very enthused in their hobbies always seem to lose perception of scale. According to Thehandy.com, they have sold over 100k units. A quick google search says Eroscripts receives 1,800 unique visitors each day. That’s less than 2% of users on what is likely the most active funscript community right now. It’s actually much lower than that when you start adding in all the other interactive sex toys. It’s most likely under 0.5% of interactive sex toy owners that use this site. From what I’ve read, slr seems to be the only porn site with any real selection of hand crafted scripts. And lets just be generous and say that 5% of interactive toy users use SLR. That means that 95% of owners are using AI created content, and only 5% are using quality brewed content. That means AI scripts aren’t hurting the ecosystem, they are the ecosystem. And the majority of the consumers in that ecosystem most likely have no idea where scripts come from at all.

Porn isn’t going anywhere. Its been around since before any of us, is bigger than ever, and is not slowing down. More and more sex toys are showing up every month. But we are a LONG way from people going to work and saying “man what an amazing night last night. I had the most amazing robotic e-wank brewed by ScriptMasterB, you should check it out”. Hell, most porn sites have had a social media share button since long before interactives were a thing, and most people have never and will never intentionally click it.

But if you think I’m wrong. You think this community is, or should be a larger part of the interactive community. Do your part. Talk to your family and friends. Send out links on X, Facebook, reddit, etc. Buy your friend a hand brewed script and let them take your handy for a ride so they can see what they’re missing out on. Put Eroscript bumper stickers on your car. Hand out fliers in front of strip clubs.

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I’m skeptical about your numbers, especially since you don’t count devices that were used twice, maybe on subpar AI scripts, and are collecting dust somewhere, but let’s use them anyway… 100,000 units, 5,000 on SLR (5%). I will not even add the 2K+ from eroscript because they might overlap with SLR users.

First of all, you need to understand that you are on a forum that only include those 5,000 peoples. These are the people who “fund” the creation of handcrafted scripts, with their time or money. They were already exposed to the “real ecosystem” which, according to you, consists of mostly AI scripts and they chose to move to a corner of the ecosystem that had handcrafted scripts.

This is only part of the ecosystem that I’m thinking about. If 95% of the users were already fine with AI scripts before, good for them but I don’t care.

This year, AI scripts have been injected into our corner of the ecosystem. I would say “forcibly injected”. I’m looking at you, SLR, with your missing “hide AI scripts” button.

For some of us, untested/unadjusted AI scripts are useless. I won’t try to give a % of people because no one knows exactly. I’ll only give my own biased opinion. I’m all about being immersed. For me, AI script, right now and for the foreseeable future, is akin to ‘water dripping torture’ where I never know when the immersion will be broken. I’ll always prefer playing, or replaying, a known good script than throwing the dice on an AI script.

That being said, depending on the % of people that ‘leave’ this part of the ecosystem, it will have an impact on the amount of “funding” handcrafted scripts get (in time or money).

I don’t think it’s likely but there might be less handcrafted scripts in the future. We already see it on SLR (if you ignore the flurry of Findus scripts). It might be a small anomaly that will correct itself soon but we don’t know.

Also, for me, there is some part of the equation that never scales up. Even if there are 10,000 scripts of any kind made per year, I still have one dick and 365 wanks per year and I’ll always optimize to get the best experience for those 365 times.

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Few things to take into account when running the numbers. I dont want to call anyone out as i think good points are being made but incorrect statistical analysis is one of my triggers (my managers at work hate me for it.)

1800 unique daily users does not mean that only 1800 visit this site as not everyone visits daily. Were also making a large assumption that everyone who bought a handy knows about and uses scripts. The other assumption that I think is wrong is that people found A.I scripts first and then moved here for better ones. Up until the last 12 months A.I scripts were less prevalent and googleing funscript send you here before anywhere that makes A.I scripts.

There is a technical hurdle involved in moving from buying a toy to getting everything running that some people will never try and some will give up.

I dont disagree with your assertion that we are the niche users @macgyver just how you got there.

Also @Zalunda I agree that currently there are more quality scripts than we know what to do with. If scripting stopped today i would still have enough for the next 7 years without repeating a script.

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