Do people like adult games that are really story driven?

[laststarfighter]

I live by a philosophy: if I like it/think about it then there is at least one person out there who does too.

That being said, the answer is most likely "yes." People do like story driven adult games. However, if lurking on this site has taught me anything, not everyone does or cares.

Personally, I like adult games that has a good story. Whether it's interesting and deep lore or clever tongue-in-cheek humor and good character chemistry. The story doesn't need to be Shakespeare, but any recognizable thought put into it is appreciated.

If the story is a ham-fisted collection of words resembling sentences, then the artwork better be damn worth skipping all the dialogue.

 

[GingerSweetGirl]

There's a lot to catch up on this thread, but I'll add my thoughts. Yes, I enjoy a story-based game, and here are some thoughts:

• If your game is going to be more story than sex, then you need to be honest about your creative writing skills. Too many devs overestimate their story telling abilities, and it results in a major disconnect between them and their audience.
• How much/little sexual content are you thinking? You better be really honest up front about this.
• What's your rough idea for a release schedule? Are you thinking monthly? Bi-monthly? Quarterly? Less frequently? This matters because I think it's easier to sell less sexual content if the tradeoff is more frequent releases.
• How does the MC's or the LIs sexuality fit into the narrative? If we take corruption games as an example, often we have female characters with very little sexual experience. This sounds great in theory, but in story based games it requires an excessive amount of work/time to make their corruption believable. Regardless of the genre, I would recommend that your characters start off with some experience so that you can have some sex without sacrificing suspension of disbelief.
• If you're going to make an interactive story, then commit and do it well. Nothing is more disappointing than choices that are meaningless. There's nothing wrong with a Visual Novel if you can't commit to an interactive story.

 

[anne O'nymous]

This is very evident in many games with the typical good vs evil choices. The MC is generally written to be a "good" person who has the typical inner thoughts and interactions with characters because it is a tough order to write different dialogue trees for each common text between routes/alignment.

What just demonstrate that the writing isn't as good as it initially seemed, or the game not planed well enough ; and nothing more. You used Radiant as example, it's totally normal that it present incoherent reactions, and this have nothing to do with an impossibility. While the game use variables to count the number of time the MC reacted like this or like that with each girl, those variables are never ever tested ; what lead to them being totally useless.
And it's something, alas, common to too many games. The devs keep track of the decision, but never use this memory of the past to effectively weight the story and characters' reactions. But like What's mine is yours, Vitalsigns' game, that can't offer both significant choices and consistent characters because he don't use a single variables, and so have no memory of the past, this don't mean that it's impossible to make your game differently. It just mean that those persons don't know how to do it ; using their variables as a summary, while they should use them as an effective evolution factor for the story and personalities.

The problem arises because they have a certain core persona in mind for the MC that is generally leaning quite a bit towards the good, simpy, nice guy archetype while still providing choices in certain parts where the MC can act like a total sociopath with little justification.

No, the problem arises because they never searched to learn how a game should be made. They have some writing knowledge, can make some renders, found a game engine easy enough to use, and they stopped there. At no time they have considered that making a game can imply something more than that.
Their knowledge about games are limited to them playing some, dot. I'll not name him, because it would be shaming, but there's a dev here that regularly claim to make a game heavily based on player decisions, but just show texts like "she'll remember that", with no effective variables behind them ; it's the pinnacle of this "I learned by playing" syndrome ; he mimicked what he saw games do, assuming that everything else will magically happen.

While writing the story and making the CGs are difficult, the most complex part of game making is the code. It's where the author should put most of his attention at first, because it's where the story and renders become a reality. You can have an interesting game with a writing bellow the average or bad CGs, but you can't have an effectively interesting game with a bad code ; or it's a pure Kinetic Novel, what isn't necessarily a bad thing.

 

[Stretta]

IDC about story; I care about likeable characters with personalities. Too many games use the same played-out cookie cutter character archetypes ad nausem.

 

[desmosome]

What just demonstrate that the writing isn't as good as it initially seemed, or the game not planed well enough ; and nothing more. You used Radiant as example, it's totally normal that it present incoherent reactions, and this have nothing to do with an impossibility. While the game use variables to count the number of time the MC reacted like this or like that with each girl, those variables are never ever tested ; what lead to them being totally useless.
And it's something, alas, common to too many games. The devs keep track of the decision, but never use this memory of the past to effectively weight the story and characters' reactions. But like What's mine is yours, Vitalsigns' game, that can't offer both significant choices and consistent characters because he don't use a single variables, and so have no memory of the past, this don't mean that it's impossible to make your game differently. It just mean that those persons don't know how to do it ; using their variables as a summary, while they should use them as an effective evolution factor for the story and personalities.




No, the problem arises because they never searched to learn how a game should be made. They have some writing knowledge, can make some renders, found a game engine easy enough to use, and they stopped there. At no time they have considered that making a game can imply something more than that.
Their knowledge about games are limited to them playing some, dot. I'll not name him, because it would be shaming, but there's a dev here that regularly claim to make a game heavily based on player decisions, but just show texts like "she'll remember that", with no effective variables behind them ; it's the pinnacle of this "I learned by playing" syndrome ; he mimicked what he saw games do, assuming that everything else will magically happen.

While writing the story and making the CGs are difficult, the most complex part of game making is the code. It's where the author should put most of his attention at first, because it's where the story and renders become a reality. You can have an interesting game with a writing bellow the average or bad CGs, but you can't have an effectively interesting game with a bad code ; or it's a pure Kinetic Novel, what isn't necessarily a bad thing.

You know what, I know jack shit about coding and everything I know comes from trying to fix traceback errors in games here, but even I know how to track variables and call them up for alignment checks and if else statements. More complicated stuff will damage my brain, but simply using the variables to create different dialogues is not hard at all for even noobs.

Anyways, I believe it's a multifactorial issue. Weak coding, bad/no planning for the routes, MC written to be leaning too hard to one side in common text lines, and time constraints that make it implausible to write separate text for each alignment in every part of the game.

The shining example of a dev who did it right is CedSense (rip). Our Fate makes you choose a route early on and checks the alignment (I assume) very often to alter the dialogue whenever necessary. I only played the bad daddy route, but I could almost guess the spots where he added a bit of flavor text on what the MC is really thinking when he talks to D or planning things out. The MC NEVER seemed out of character in my playthrough. So yea, it's absolutely possible.

 

[TankyThomas]

Wow, another thread about how to balance sex and story in western adult games! A healthy dose of narration will give life to the game.

 

[Endrju]

I only play story based games.

There are plenty of porn sites if I want to see just fucking, i'm here looking for interactive stories and characters I want to know more about.

 

[Rando Civ]

Some of them do, some of them don't.
At the end of the day, the only taste that matters is yours.

 

[CarbonBlue]

Sometimes you don't need story. Or exposition. Or sex. Just character interaction.

I still maintain, however, that most of the time that people say they want choices that matter they're not being completely honest. I wager most of those people take a look at the immediate response to their choices and scroll back to look at the responses for the other options. Or people will just play through the game and select the other path(s). If you do that and you're going to make sure you see the full content of the game, then did your choices really matter? Same if you use a walkthrough.

 

[Kinderfeld]

If your game is going to be more story than sex, then you need to be honest about your creative writing skills. Too many devs overestimate their story telling abilities, and it results in a major disconnect between them and their audience.

This is super important. If you intend on making your story a hugely important component, and not some excuse to jump from one lewd scene to another, you need to really have it planned out and a good grasp on your characters' motivations and development arcs. People are only going to read so much until they decide to skip to the lewds.

 

[GingerSweetGirl]

This is super important. If you intend on making your story a hugely important component, and not some excuse to jump from one lewd scene to another, you need to really have it planned out and a good grasp on your characters' motivations and development arcs. People are only going to read so much until they decide to skip to the lewds.

One thing that I think games need to do a better job of is balancing the routes. Often in games, there is a clear distinction between routes where one will clearly have more content than the others. As a player (and especially as a paying customer) it is really difficult to justify following the path with the least amount of content, even if you take the role playing aspect of the MC seriously. For example, in A Wife and Mother, I really wanted to follow the Good Wife path, but 80% of the content is on the Filthy path, so I wound up following the filthy path, even though I don't think it makes a lot of sense in the narrative of the game.

A great story-based game will allow access to tons of content on any route. This is a lot of work, but it's the only way to make a game balanced. And don't bury content for later in the game on one path, while the content for the other path is front loaded, that again leaves things unbalanced.

 

[lassoluh]

One thing that I think games need to do a better job of is balancing the routes. Often in games, there is a clear distinction between routes where one will clearly have more content than the others. As a player (and especially as a paying customer) it is really difficult to justify following the path with the least amount of content, even if you take the role playing aspect of the MC seriously. For example, in A Wife and Mother, I really wanted to follow the Good Wife path, but 80% of the content is on the Filthy path, so I wound up following the filthy path, even though I don't think it makes a lot of sense in the narrative of the game.

A great story-based game will allow access to tons of content on any route. This is a lot of work, but it's the only way to make a game balanced. And don't bury content for later in the game on one path, while the content for the other path is front loaded, that again leaves things unbalanced.

I'm skeptical about this approach about routes in games, would be much easier if the decisions change some parts of the path until the end, but these parts never go too far from the course of the game, resulting in minor and medium changes in the plot, but the initial/major proposal never changes.

Doing routes is a headache, the amount of work will basically double, people only will get frustrated with the game being divided into two or even three parts, some routes will have more content than others, people don't pledging because they don't want their money invested in the routes that they don't like, and the list of problems goes on.

 

[GingerSweetGirl]

Doing routes is a headache, the amount of work will basically double, people only will get frustrated with the game being divided into two or even three parts, some routes will have more content than others, people don't pledging because they don't want their money invested in the routes that they don't like, and the list of problems goes on.

This is a very fair critique of the style. The only way it works (while keeping the size of releases small-ish and released regularly) is to by limiting the number of permutations created by the routes. This would probably require fewer variables (fewer characters, choices, sub-plots, etc) so that the game didn't branch out too far.

But I look at a game like Good Girl Gone Bad and I'm blown away by what the dev accomplished regarding branching routes. I didn't play the game when it was in development, but looking at it in its completed form and the number of branching paths are absolutely insane. If she (the dev) was able to balance those in real-time, then she's the master and all devs should follow her example.

 

[lassoluh]

But I look at a game like Good Girl Gone Bad and I'm blown away by what the dev accomplished regarding branching routes. I didn't play the game when it was in development, but looking at it in it's completed form and the number of branching paths are absolutely insane. If she (the dev) was able to balance those in real-time, then she's the master and all devs should follow her example.

I agree, still have some good games that are an exception, but the amount of work this may require is absolutely insane

 

[TankyThomas]

If each choice matters then any good writer will give you a blank protagonist because they need to account for whatever the user chooses, otherwise in many choices he would be acting out of character. Down each path they can get more detailed with his personality because there are less options, however, when he is first introduced he is a blank slate.

It doesn't have to be like that, you could write a very detailed protagonist with a sharply defined personality, but you'd have a terrible story, as he will often be acting out of character, the mark of a terrible writer.

If the writer is good and chooses this type of protagonist, he would only give you superficial choices that only decide which girl you end up with and whether it is a good or bad ending, but the lion's share of the game would be essentially linear, each path having the same core story but with different dialogue or small events unique to that route but with the key points of the story shared between all of the routes.

Well said. That’s why some of the best Japanese VNs have no choices, or only a specific set of choices can reach a certain ending.

The tension between the choices of player and the protagonist is a topic frequently explored by meta VNs.

 

[TankyThomas]

I think there's potential success to be had for both views. But once your fanbase is one of those it becomes a bit more difficult to sell them on the other. Not saying it isn't possible but it's an uphill battle.

One of the way out may be producing a good story first, then make short fan-discs.

 

[Mimir's Lab]

One thing that I think games need to do a better job of is balancing the routes. Often in games, there is a clear distinction between routes where one will clearly have more content than the others. As a player (and especially as a paying customer) it is really difficult to justify following the path with the least amount of content, even if you take the role playing aspect of the MC seriously. For example, in A Wife and Mother, I really wanted to follow the Good Wife path, but 80% of the content is on the Filthy path, so I wound up following the filthy path, even though I don't think it makes a lot of sense in the narrative of the game.

A great story-based game will allow access to tons of content on any route. This is a lot of work, but it's the only way to make a game balanced. And don't bury content for later in the game on one path, while the content for the other path is front loaded, that again leaves things unbalanced.

In my opinion, these adult games need to narrow their scopes significantly. You simply do not, as a hobbyist in an extremely niche market, have the capital nor the skill to go crazy with your branching storylines. Creating a game where one half is a good guy and the other half is a bad guy seems interesting on paper, but has a bunch of problems that are already listed above (content unseen by some part of playerbase, long development time for small content on each route). Devs should narrow the scope of their games; Remove the good guy route or the bad guy route and focus on the other. This way you only attract the people who are interested in that route and you can develop the game way quicker. You can focus on what really makes that route fun instead of having to split your head in two trying to figure out how to do both. People won't mind that there isn't an good/evil route in your game if you don't present it to them, ie if you give someone a choice to go left or right, no one will ask or care for a choice to go up or down. Most people only really care for one route anyways; Only the few completionists want to see how every route plays out. If you don't present them a route, they don't notice anyways. But if you really wanted to, you could, once your game is finished, go back and create a separate route so that your ultimate end product has the multiple routes you originally planned for. This isn't to say that you have to turn your stories kinetic, just be sure to keep your complexity down to a manageable level. Simple stuff like dialogue and visual reactions to previous choices doesn't take much effort to produce but have a high impact on the experience of your playerbase.

 

[Blatant Wizardry]

Personally I think that video games should prioritize gameplay above all else. Graphics, story, audio, they're window dressing and nice to have but not essential. Or at the very least not the thing that you should prioritize. However, video games are unique in that the gameplay can in turn gate the story you wish to tell, as well as be a vector as to convey said story. In turn the story can be used as a vector to convey gameplay mechanics - like how Arx Fatalis does with leveling up being something that is explained in the narrative. In the end, everything in moderation.

 

[TankyThomas]

Personally I think that video games should prioritize gameplay above all else. Graphics, story, audio, they're window dressing and nice to have but not essential. Or at the very least not the thing that you should prioritize. However, video games are unique in that the gameplay can in turn gate the story you wish to tell, as well as be a vector as to convey said story. In turn the story can be used as a vector to convey gameplay mechanics - like how Arx Fatalis does with leveling up being something that is explained in the narrative. In the end, everything in moderation.

In such cases, would you consider VNs a kind of video games?

 

[anne O'nymous]

Anyways, I believe it's a multifactorial issue. Weak coding, bad/no planning for the routes, MC written to be leaning too hard to one side in common text lines, and time constraints that make it implausible to write separate text for each alignment in every part of the game.

I think it's more a question of personal choice made by the author.
It need more time, obviously, but if you planed your story, even if it's just a quick overview, you are supposed to already have an idea of the amount of works you'll need. And you'll also know how much you can take, and so keep in your game.
It's acceptable to have a game that need more than a month between two updates, and acceptable, when it's (more or less) monthly updates, to advance a single route in an update, then another one in the next update. Therefore, even with this effectively needing more works, and so more time, there's nothing except yourself that prevent you to do it.

The shining example of a dev who did it right is CedSense (rip). Our Fate makes you choose a route early on and checks the alignment (I assume) very often to alter the dialogue whenever necessary. I only played the bad daddy route, but I could almost guess the spots where he added a bit of flavor text on what the MC is really thinking when he talks to D or planning things out. The MC NEVER seemed out of character in my playthrough. So yea, it's absolutely possible.

And this way to do it, with the route being frozen relatively fast, is probably the best one.
Ideally, the first two/three release should be here to let the player decide of the MC personality. Then, starting there this personality will not change, just be cleared by the following changes. Else, even if the game take really care of the actual values, it would lead to a really confusing story with, by example, a MC being an angel at start, then becoming evil, before going back to his angel persona.
There should always be a moment where you can't go back, just choosing how you'll effectively place yourself in the side you decide to follow. What would permit you, by example, to be a narcissistic bastard, but eventually have a heart and not hurt those who have it really hard, or a full selfish jerk, while still preventing you to suddenly decide that the others should pass before you.

In another thread we were talking about the need to be put face to the consequences of your choice. And it should be part of those consequences. You past the few first releases of the game to be the bad guy, now deal with it, you'll be a bad guy for the rest of the game, just authorized to decide how much you'll be bad.
The same obviously also applying if you decided to be the good guy ; you'll not be offered the possibility to blackmail someone for sex, or to sleep rape your mother, it's not who you decided to be.