Behind The Brand:  Active Duty

Active Duty content goes all the way back to 2000, with almost 1700 videos released over the last 25 years. Originated by Dink Flamingo, the classic site featured military men who are straight, gay, and bisexual, engaging in solo or gay action. Through the years, Active Duty has taken many forms, from the ‘fresh off the base’ origins, to ‘former military,’ then dabbling in ‘military type’ guys. The gradual evolution has been influenced by a variety of factors, which we’ll dive into a bit below.  

I’m Jeremy Babcock. Chief Creative Officer of ASGmax. I’ve seen several stages of the Active Duty evolution over my six years in the industry, and have been more recently tasked with finding ways to evolve with the times and the everchanging tastes of the broader ASGmax network. To celebrate the upcoming release of Active Duty’s “Operation: Weekend Off Base,” we’re going to take a little trip of Active Duty past, present and future.  Let’s go!

Where To Begin?

The Active Duty brand has been one of the most challenging ASG properties to produce over the years.  Dink Flamingo had such a one-of-a-kind approach to casting and creating the original content. Legend has it he’d just approach the guys out in public, using his silver tongue to talk these random strangers into making hot solo content – eventually getting them more and more comfortable to the point they were engaging in hot guy on guy action!  

This approach was one only Dink could pull off, but Active Duty continued for years after he’d passed it off. Generally with real military guys, but sometimes with guys who just had that ‘look.’ Active Duty became a great launching pad for some of your favorite Next Door Studios models. Ryan Jordan, Scott Finn, Spencer Lavall, Princeton Price, Quentin Gainz, Johnny B, LeeRoy Jones… the list goes on and on!

Around the late 2010s, crackdowns around “active” military members doing adult content closed the door, almost entirely, for casting current military members, which also coincided with a couple of other major disruptors within the industry… 

Covid & Fan Sites

2020 changed a LOT about the porn industry. Almost overnight, studios were forced to shut down – with no return in sight. This forced studios to burn through their backlogs of content, but even worse, this put models on ice. Unable to continue studio work for six months or more, this moment forced a lot of models to either retire, or put their energy into Fan Sites.  

While many models had already started posting content to one or more of these sites, this shift during Covid really solidified that change in content production within the industry. This also went a long way into cutting off the “gay for pay” pipeline that sites like Active Duty had thrived on for years. Fan Sites gave an outlet for certain models to avoid collaboration and focus on solo content, pushing them even further away from studio work.  

Post-Covid Recalibration

Coming out of covid, a LOT had changed for production within the industry. Travel was mostly still high risk, as well as expensive.  At the same time, many models had taken jobs locally and moved on from the industry. This forced us to rethink everything about the Active Duty brand, forging a new path with all-new locations, casting, and strategies. This slow ramp up out of covid was mostly survival.  Shoot models we could cast from our very small pool of California talent to try to give the brand some of the proper ‘types’ of guys.  

While it was fun to see some of the popular industry models mix into the content, it just didn’t scratch that same itch. As restrictions eased, casting options opened back up, and we were able to get back to mostly former military guys, and retain some of the original model types that members knew and loved.  Creatively we tried a mix of interviews, eye candy montages, and military themed sets. This continued to work for quite a while, though the amateur, gay-for-pay, guys having first time experiences really suffered during this period. Fan Sites had really cut off casting options for guys like that, and it’s really never come back. Over time, the tastes of the fans also started to reject those guys – yearning more for engaged, enthusiastic hardcore sex.

The ASGmax Network

Our next big shift is what brings us to where we are today. We launched the ASGmax network in Summer of 2023. This network combined our 5 major brands on to one platform, which also combined 5 unique audiences into one membership base. Almost 2 years later, we’re still continually learning and refining content to find the sweet spot for this new member base.  

While we’ve put out some killer content the last couple of years, with some fan-favorite models, the Active Duty brand has continually lagged every other brand in our combined network of sites. Whether it’s the military theme or the style of the brand, it wasn’t competing as well with our other content on a regular basis.

Looking Forward

Always trying new things, testing new models, looking for new ideas – we finally saw a spark in January with “Can’t Stop Staring,” which was a rare attempt at a story scene on Active Duty. 

One common thread we’ve found on ASGmax is that our audiences are really drawn to stories. With Fan Sites now commonplace, it’s this story content that separates studio work, and the reaction to our first story-based Active Duty scene was immediate and clear.  

This spark led to the development of our very first Active Duty feature! Military sets and locations are as hard to find as real military men, so we thought it would be fun to explore what would happen when these studs get away from the base. “Operation: Weekend Off Base” was born! This is a light, fun story of 4 buddies getting away for a weekend of fun, that quickly turns into a weekend of having fun with each other!  We brought back some Active Duty favorites (Blain O’Connor, Brock Kniles), mixed with some fresh faces and standouts from our other brands. Eddie Patrick and Colt Spence have been recent fan favorites, and Justin Cross makes the jump from Auditions to Active Duty. A mix of military veterans and fan favorites.  A recipe we’re hoping helps us bridge the gap for both audiences.  We’ll begin to find out on June 30th!

Looking forward, we’re hoping to continue to test and experiment.  You’ll still see some of the previous all-sex content style, but we’ll also be mixing in some story scenes and possibly features, as well. As always, it really comes down to the feedback we get from our members, which plays a huge role in shaping the future of Active Duty and every other ASGmax brand. We’re excited to see how this story content is received this Summer!