Games with overcomplicated storylines

[megaplayboy10k]

So, I'm playing a game that came out recently and/or had a recent update, and initially it seems like a straight forward storyline--young man meets and seduces various women he encounters. Then they throw in a whole storyline around robots, viruses and alternate dimensions and shadowy organizations trying to infiltrate and invade our world. It just comes across as incongruous and disjointed and unnecessarily complicated. If you're going to introduce a fantastic or science fiction premise, do it from the jump or near the beginning of the game.

Overcomplicating the plot, imho, tends to risk losing player interest, because the story becomes hard to follow, the dev will have a harder time fleshing out the storylines for individual characters, etc. It is possible to tell a complex story, but you have to keep a common thread running throughout--Treasure of Nadia, for example, has a complex story and characters with differing goals, but the "treasure hunting" aspect of the game is the common thread that ties it all together.

"How does A, B, C relate to X, Y, Z" is the question devs have to answer when they're plotting out a game. Game design should be more like writing a novel or play than an improv troupe putting on sketches based on audience suggestions.

 

[rk-47]

i think games like that dont care about plot and are more focused on the sex scenes, usually one man developments have to be one way or another, although treasure of nadia is a team effort so they have multiple people doing different things

 

[chainedpanda]

Hmm… I think this is a slightly more complex reason than you may think. The truth is most devs are unorganized. Read about Star Citizen, or the developmental problems of Kingdom Hearts III, No Man's Sky and Final Fantasy 15.

It's not easy to be creative and control your own creative process. Many devs and writers alike have a habit of coming up with ideas or plot lines which cannot fit the current world or narrative. The new idea will always be more appealing to them than the one they're currently working on. After all, it's new and fresh, and offers up a hundred new possible ideas.

I write/create worlds as a hobby. I will just go into Word and create a ton of documents detailing how certain aspects of the world works, from politics to religion etc. I have a nasty habit of creating 9/10 documents, only for the newest document to give me an idea which counters all the other documents I created. I then start all over on all the other documents simply to incorporate this idea instead of just editing the other documents. The more I try to fight this habit, the more burned out of that current world I become.

Now imagine an issue like this, could be harder on the dev or easier, but they have to keep working on their hobby to satisfy their audience/investors/boss/partners. It wouldn't be easy, and could very easily cause someone to burn out.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Then they throw in a whole storyline around robots, viruses and alternate dimensions and shadowy organizations trying to infiltrate and invade our world.

More and more authors understand that giving a story to your game is an interesting plus, if you want to have a chance to succeed. And (too) many among them think that a story necessarily need an antagonist, what isn't always the case, and that an antagonist is necessarily someone bad, when not evil, what is even less the case. Add to this the fact that they discovered the power of cliffhangers, and think that only an antagonist permit to have them, and what you talk about happen, alas more and more often.

The fact is that antagonists aren't necessarily bad persons, especially in the adult gaming scene. It can be the most perfect guy who goes after the same girls than the MC. This can even be extended to the fact that the MC can be the bad guy of the story ; the one who want to turn all the girls into his personal sex slaves. But even this isn't mandatory. Two good guys pursuing the same girl(s) is enough to have an antagonism. It's enough to add suspense and tension into the story, without the need to make them effectively fight, or even directly interact together ; the MC just need to acknowledge that his guy exist.
There's also the fact that, adult games being about seduction or corruption (the goal is the same, only the way to achieve it differ), the girls themselves can be the antagonists, by being hard to get. But anyway, the antagonist don't even need to be an external person. The MC can perfectly be his own antagonist, split between his desires and the moral. And it can even not be a person at all but, by example, the moral of the society.
And finally, the need of an antagonist itself isn't an obligation. You can write interesting romance without one, and the fact that it's a romance don't necessarily mean that the girls will not all end being MC's sex slave, just that they'll do it by themselves.. A game like Midlife Crisis, don't need to have an antagonist to both have an interesting story, and a cliffhangers-like at the end of an update.

 

[TheHighSpire]

It's not easy to be creative and control your own creative process. Many devs and writers alike have a habit of coming up with ideas or plot lines which cannot fit the current world or narrative. The new idea will always be more appealing to them than the one they're currently working on. After all, it's new and fresh, and offers up a hundred new possible ideas.

Sure, but that is why you start out by outlining the world, some of the main plot points and generally create an overview of where you want things to go. Naturally, any good project manager would make sure that all the stakeholders - participants, agree to the vision. From there you can create a schedule: when is what created and by who.

I understand that you don't want to burn out and that new ideas can be more appealing. But if what I wrote above is done correctly then at least the risks of the project getting out of scope can be mitigated or ironed out.

In the end, I find that projects like OP describes often are poorly managed and perhaps even lacking some kind of internal agreement and communication in general.

 

[anne O'nymous]

In the end, I find that projects like OP describes often are poorly managed and perhaps even lacking some kind of internal agreement and communication in general.

It's worse than that, because most adult games are made by a single person. Therefore they have no excuse. If something appear suddenly in the story it's necessarily their fault ; either they totally failed to introduce it by small touch, or they just thought about it right now. In both case it's not a good sign for the future of the story.

That one don't know his full story from start to end isn't a problem. But, since most of them aren't professional writers, they should at least know all the key moments, in order to anticipate them and make the story progress from one to the other, instead of jumping from an idea to another. It's doesn't matter if the player can't understand what will happen, as long as, if he go back on the story once he know, he can then find at least some of the clues left by the author.

Something as big as what OP took as example can not appear suddenly. That the discovery is a big shock and lead to a sudden understanding of how big and dangerous the menace is, why not. But there's necessarily some signs, or else it mean that they started their big plan few days ago, and the menace will be eradicated relatively easily.
Obviously, one could answer that the signs where present, but that the MC don't knew about them. Yes, it's a possibility. But the player isn't the MC, the signs should still be shown on the background ; strange behavior on the back of the MC, some strange news on the TV, random NPC talking about it on a coffee shop, and things like that.
The TV news can be just a headline, "Still no hope for a cure regarding the recently discovered virus", the NPC can talk about this guy they know that had a sudden behavior change, we (player) can witness a glitch in reality while the MC is walking down a street. It's not enough to spoil the big surprise yet to come, but at least we would know that there's something approaching. And, like I said above, when going back to the start of the story, all those small events now obviously lead to the terrible revelation and, "yes, now that I know, it all make sense".

And those words are the more important. Unless it's a voluntarily move, the story should make sense. And, whatever how stupid, impossible, or unrealistic, it is, if it's introduced slowly, small touch by small touch, it will make sense. But when it's a voluntarily move, it should regard the whole story ; it's a senseless one, dot.
If it regard only one part of the story, or one event, then it totally kill the story. This especially if the story wasn't this great at start and people where mostly playing for the "adult part". In such case, anything that come between the players and the girls, everything that unnecessarily slowdown the progression, will feel like a pure annoyance.
It's by example what happened for A Wife and Mother, when the MC started to face blackmail after blackmail, and what I fear will happen to WVM, with the bad guys not going anymore some background annoyance, but a frontal threat. In both case, the writing isn't good enough, and it happened way to late in the story. This late in the story, the players now have their habits, liking either the story or the dose of "goods" it provide ; sometimes both. Suddenly changing both rarely works as expected.
To keep WVM, passing from "the story of a stud that will build a harem with the help of his girlfriend", to "the story of a guy that will join a secret society to help people, partly with his dick", was already hard to take. But it now being, "the story of a stud that will build a harem, while helping people with his dick and fighting bad guys that are really villain peoples"... What next (I only play it when a full day is finished) ? He'll soon run for presidency, then decide to unify the world, in order to start human expansion in the galaxy ? :/
At the opposite, there's a game like Fetish Locator. The fact that the application is also used for blackmail, then the fact that someone is investigating this, were near to deus ex machina moves, but they don't change the story. It's still the story of a student exploring sexuality with the help of an application ; just that now he don't do it just for his pleasure. It also haven't changed the pace of the story, because there's no need to extra scenes especially wrote to deal with those addition to it ; unlike for the two examples above.

 

[chainedpanda]

Sure, but that is why you start out by outlining the world, some of the main plot points and generally create an overview of where you want things to go. Naturally, any good project manager would make sure that all the stakeholders - participants, agree to the vision. From there you can create a schedule: when is what created and by who.

I understand that you don't want to burn out and that new ideas can be more appealing. But if what I wrote above is done correctly then at least the risks of the project getting out of scope can be mitigated or ironed out.

In the end, I find that projects like OP describes often are poorly managed and perhaps even lacking some kind of internal agreement and communication in general.

You described the problem already. There is only a single person working on the project. Meaning that they have no one else to keep them on track. It's typically one guy, likely has very little, or possibly no experience in programming or writing, and he is given free rein over what he's doing. He has nothing to limit his creativity, no boss to please, he's just doing whatever the hell he wants to.

The only thing you could claim that could keep the dev on track are his patreons, but once again I mentioned four games which were made with millions (Star Citizen is officially the most expensive game ever made btw, and it's not even done yet) and two of them were also crowdfunding games with MASSIVE audiences and large amounts of income, and they also went completely off rails. Not to mention, the people who work(ed) on those specific games are professional developers who have worked on various titles before. In the case of Star Citizen, the head dev has worked, and managed, many games of the same genre.

While yes, I do agree if managed successfully, there shouldn't be any problems. These devs have no "real" deadlines, hence why so many claim "ready when it's ready" now, and for most devs funding isn't a real problem either as they're not making a lot of money, and using mostly free assets anyways. Which, professional devs have a budget, they have deadlines, etc. There is nothing from stopping these devs from going off script or from burning out aside from pure willpower alone.