Harems?

[215303j]

Quite a lot of games allow the MC to build a relationship with a number of girls at the same time, often even within one same family.

Am I the only one who thinks this is stupid?

In my experience, most girls want exclusivity. They may be interested in sharing / threesome, but usually not as a love interest.

I get that it can be a plot device to unlock the most content in one play-through, but to me it's stupid. There should be drawbacks to a MC who wants to create a harem, such as the main love interest eventually dumping the MC. Or at least change the content a bit so there is some repercussion, like in DMD. In my opinion, there should be an advantage to pursuing a single girl in a game, or the game must give a good reason why the girl doesn't object.

 

[chiva]

sometimes love make you blind
even if it's not
corruption is
why they don't object it because they have been corrupted
and that's why a lot of game have corruption tag
that's what i think
why harem? maybe because it's men nature want to be surrounded by beautiful girls all for himself

sorry for my bad english

 

[CeLezte]

In my opinion most devs would not want to go the extra mile to complicate things for the player. Those changes would probably require them to add new content and implement mechanics that didn't exist in the game before (and likely overhaul parts that need to work hand in hand with these mechanics).

I my self would definitely go ahead and test it to see what it looks like before putting it into the game. Fine tuning games with many interactive game play elements are not easy and they are quite costly in terms of development time.

 

[Humlebien]

You do realise porn, and by extention porn games, are fantasies? So it's not that odd, that people would like to have that fantasy of a harem of gorgeous women at their fingertips. If we wanted realism, there are tons of women out there, that will coldly shoot us down. Personally I play to have fun. If I wanted to be depressed, I'd play Darkest Dungeon, FTL or singleplayer Minecraft.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Personally I'm into polyamory. Monogamy is a social construct. Not everyone needs it. I do however dislike how often it seems the male MC in these seems to expect the women to be exclusive to him. At first the Artifact was happy sharing the love, but eventually the dev wrote the male cousin out because he couldn't compete with you. The same dev decided to get touchy about sis fucking the cousin, who she was fucking before you, in Incest Adventure. I mean, seriously, if you're going to fuck around how can you expect the women you're fucking to be exclusive?

 

[Egglock]

This is just my thought from a dev's perspective. The reason why a lot of the VN have the harem type mechanic, and there isn't any consequences is because the code to implement that is easy. It only has to worry about one thing and that is, for simplicity "love interest". Each time the player picks a choice or triggers an event, all the code needs to do is "does this choice increment the "love interest" if yes add if no move on. Once it reaches a threshold, fire off the next event, so on and so forth. Simple and easy.

If complexity gets added, it goes from keeping track of one thing to multiple things. For example, how will the code handle the relationship of multiple characters? what happens if the threshold hits this point but then decreases to this point? If the player gets caught what happens? (this can get messy really quick, as the dev will have to think about the place and time) There's a long list of things that can happen. I personally think, dev's don't want to spend all that time coding in the consequences that could possibly happen. Not only the code, but the artist will have to render those events.

 

[DarthSeduction]

This is just my thought from a dev's perspective. The reason why a lot of the VN have the harem type mechanic, and there isn't any consequences is because the code to implement that is easy. It only has to worry about one thing and that is, for simplicity "love interest". Each time the player picks a choice or triggers an event, all the code needs to do is "does this choice increment the "love interest" if yes add if no move on. Once it reaches a threshold, fire off the next event, so on and so forth. Simple and easy.

If complexity gets added, it goes from keeping track of one thing to multiple things. For example, how will the code handle the relationship of multiple characters? what happens if the threshold hits this point but then decreases to this point? If the player gets caught what happens? (this can get messy really quick, as the dev will have to think about the place and time) There's a long list of things that can happen. I personally think, dev's don't want to spend all that time coding in the consequences that could possibly happen. Not only the code, but the artist will have to render those events.

$ love -= 1 isn't that hard to type out every once in a while.

The real reason is that the developer wants to give the player the maximum amount of choice.

 

[VNON]

vote for no, at least avoidable
it's just like incest,

markets love incest, devs create incest
or maybe because it just fantasy, it's hard to do that in real life? not impossible but it's hard
even if you join some specify religion, harem is still hard, no woman who wants two-timed
and in game, you can make harem with your families in there, no. its family's harems

of course, they will said because its corruption and hypnotist game
i love corruptions,
i don't like hypnotist , its just like want to make devs job easier

how my engrish?

 

[Ataios]

Personally I expect less realism in porn than I expect in high fantasy.
My favorite porn game is After Invasion. I only play the female protagonist and only the relations with the female characters (I prefer lesbian-only porn): her mother, sister and all of her female neighbors. Is that realistic? No way. Is it hot? Hell, yes it is!
I do even think, that in some games, the harems are plausible in the context of the setting due to blackmail or supernatural means. After all, the protagonist of harem games are not good, honorable heroes. On others, developers care less about plausiblity: Just persuading your mom and sister into a threesome will likely not work. But even in that case, I think, porn is not meant to be realistic. If it's plausible within the setting, it's a nice bonus, but I don't think, it's a necessity.
I real life I would never even consider either polygamy or polyamory, though to each their own. If it's between consenting adults and everybody involved is happy, it's their private life and no one else's business.

 

[Egglock]

$ love -= 1 isn't that hard to type out every once in a while.

True that decreasing the variable isn't hard. As that can come any where at anytime in the code. What I was talking about is the function that handles each characters relationship status with the player. In most VN there isn't a need for this, it's just a Boolean, that isn't hard. The hard part comes when it needs to start storing variables, call those variables, do a Boolean check, after the check determine which image needs to get displayed. Trying to write all that is a lot more work then just doing a Boolean and display the image.

 

[Prodigy1189]

i think you've completely, 1000% not understood what the point of the games on this site are. fantasies. a.k.a. things you cannot do in real life. like wow do we really have to spell it out for you?

 

[DarthSeduction]

True that decreasing the variable isn't hard. As that can come any where at anytime in the code. What I was talking about is the function that handles each characters relationship status with the player. In most VN there isn't a need for this, it's just a Boolean, that isn't hard. The hard part comes when it needs to start storing variables, call those variables, do a Boolean check, after the check determine which image needs to get displayed. Trying to write all that is a lot more work then just doing a Boolean and display the image.

Maybe it's just that I committed to telling a good story, but what you just explained is how almost all of my events already work.

 

[Ataios]

Personally I'm into polyamory. Monogamy is a social construct. Not everyone needs it. I do however dislike how often it seems the male MC in these seems to expect the women to be exclusive to him. At first the Artifact was happy sharing the love, but eventually the dev wrote the male cousin out because he couldn't compete with you. The same dev decided to get touchy about sis fucking the cousin, who she was fucking before you, in Incest Adventure. I mean, seriously, if you're going to fuck around how can you expect the women you're fucking to be exclusive?

Because player want to fuck a lot of woman without seeing other any male character except for the protagonist touch them. Protagonists of porn games usually don't care about morality, wether in the sense of romantic monogamous love, nor in the sense of an open polyamorous relationship. They can be greedy and jealous at the same time.

For many players I think, it's not even the idea of the harem that is so appealing. They are just into different kind of women. One player likes busty milfs, another likes skinny young girls. Some like dominant women, some like submissive women. Some like intelligent women, some like stupid women. If developer wants to appael to all of them, he must add many different women. Male characters other than the MC gross out a lot of players and can ruin a game for a lot of players. Nobody likes Eric, after all.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Because player want to fuck a lot of woman without seeing other any male character except for the protagonist touch them. Protagonists of porn games usually don't care about morality, wether in the sense of romantic monogamous love, nor in the sense of an open polyamorous relationship. They can be greedy and jealous at the same time.

For many players I think, it's not even the idea of the harem that is so appealing. They are just into different kind of women. One player likes busty milfs, another likes skinny young girls. Some like dominant women, some like submissive women. Some like intelligent women, some like stupid women. If developer wants to appael to all of them, he must add many different women. Male characters other than the MC gross out a lot of players and can ruin a game for a lot of players. Nobody likes Eric, after all.

For instance, however, if you go to the thread on Sisterly Lust, there are a lot of people whining that mom is a professional dominatrix. It isn't like you're forced to ever watch her fuck another man. What does it matter if her profession is prostitute as you fuck all her daughters, and their friends, and the girl you met 3 days a go when you got a random job just to keep an asshole from your sister (the one case where I will allow that the MC should get rid of a male rival.)

In Incest Adventure I don't think you see the cousin that was fucking your sister even once. I certainly didn't. However, because of the backlash he got with the Artifact, I assume, the developer made the MC in Incest Adventure jealous. He however is fucking the mom, sister, aunt, and the twin cousins. And this isn't a life sim where you get to choose one girl or the other. This is a Harem game. All of these women are fucking you, and most are aware of that you're fucking the others as well, with a few small exceptions.

I'm not saying that developers of these types of games should go full NTR and show us the women we are pursuing being fucked by other men, I just don't think its consistent for the character to be a jealous little bitch about it if they are.

I'll also differentiate, from a development standpoint, I don't care what anyone's individual tastes in sexual content are. I might make it possible for you to avoid certain content, like for instance, futa, but I wouldn't make a game and cater it to whether or not you appreciated it's content. So for instance, I'm talking to another dev right now about writing a story about a girl in an all girls school who is sleeping around with several characters. I am not going to stop to care if someone isn't going to like that character A is also having sex with their male teacher when she's not with you. It doesn't matter to the MC I'm writing.

Too often players complain about artistic direction as if that is something they should have control over. Its not. If you want control over artistic direction you need to make your own content. Now if you want to tell the developer behind My Girlfriends Amnesia that they made a great story but you can't play it because RPGM breaks your immersion every 5 minutes and there's no autosave so you lose hours of progress all the fucking time. Then yeah, you'd be right to complain about a technical failure of their game. But if you don't like the artistic direction. Shut up and play something else.

 

[Ataios]

For instance, however, if you go to the thread on Sisterly Lust, there are a lot of people whining that mom is a professional dominatrix. It isn't like you're forced to ever watch her fuck another man. What does it matter if her profession is prostitute as you fuck all her daughters, and their friends, and the girl you met 3 days a go when you got a random job just to keep an asshole from your sister (the one case where I will allow that the MC should get rid of a male rival.)

In Incest Adventure I don't think you see the cousin that was fucking your sister even once. I certainly didn't. However, because of the backlash he got with the Artifact, I assume, the developer made the MC in Incest Adventure jealous. He however is fucking the mom, sister, aunt, and the twin cousins. And this isn't a life sim where you get to choose one girl or the other. This is a Harem game. All of these women are fucking you, and most are aware of that you're fucking the others as well, with a few small exceptions.

I'm not saying that developers of these types of games should go full NTR and show us the women we are pursuing being fucked by other men, I just don't think its consistent for the character to be a jealous little bitch about it if they are.

I'll also differentiate, from a development standpoint, I don't care what anyone's individual tastes in sexual content are. I might make it possible for you to avoid certain content, like for instance, futa, but I wouldn't make a game and cater it to whether or not you appreciated it's content. So for instance, I'm talking to another dev right now about writing a story about a girl in an all girls school who is sleeping around with several characters. I am not going to stop to care if someone isn't going to like that character A is also having sex with their male teacher when she's not with you. It doesn't matter to the MC I'm writing.

Too often players complain about artistic direction as if that is something they should have control over. Its not. If you want control over artistic direction you need to make your own content. Now if you want to tell the developer behind My Girlfriends Amnesia that they made a great story but you can't play it because RPGM breaks your immersion every 5 minutes and there's no autosave so you lose hours of progress all the fucking time. Then yeah, you'd be right to complain about a technical failure of their game. But if you don't like the artistic direction. Shut up and play something else.

Even in real life, people can cheat and be jealous at the same time - and a lot of people do. Double standards are not so uncommon. I'm not defending this kind of behavior in real life, but I think characters acting this way in work of fiction are indeed quite plausible.

And as far as characters in games go, I also think, merely knowing a female character is with other men too, can be a huge turn-off. I don't say developers shouldn't make games with other male characters in them, that's their artistic freedom, but honestly, I wouldn't play them.

I know, it's not easy for developers anyway. Essentielly they can either develop a game to maximize their potential audience or to create the world and story, they themselves like and hope you find a like-minded audience. The first route is likely the saver one, but also the one less likely to create exceptional games. If I could develop my own game, most likely I would also choose to second route.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Even in real life, people can cheat and be jealous at the same time - and a lot of people do. Double standards are not so uncommon. I'm not defending this kind of behavior in real life, but I think characters acting this way in work of fiction are indeed quite plausible.

And as far as characters in games go, I also think, merely knowing a female character is with other men too, can be a huge turn-off. I don't say developers shouldn't make games with other male characters in them, that's their artistic freedom, but honestly, I wouldn't play them.

I know, it's not easy for developers anyway. Essentielly they can either develop a game to maximize their potential audience or to create the world and story, they themselves like and hope you find a like-minded audience. The first route is likely the saver one, but also the one less likely to create exceptional games. If I could develop my own game, most likely I would also choose to second route.

In real life, when someone is cheating, they didn't start fucking their mother and their sister and their aunt and their cousins in the span of a week and just all of the sudden decide they cared about loyalty. What really bugs me personally, is when you're the interloper and yet you're mad she's got a boyfriend in the first place. You're the one who is cuckolding them. In the case of Incest Adventure, when the game begins your sister has been dating your cousin for money for a while now. You having a sexual relationship with your sister should be a matter of dominance over both of them, however people seem to have such fragile egos that they have to control even the fictional women in their lives.

 

[Ataios]

In real life, when someone is cheating, they didn't start fucking their mother and their sister and their aunt and their cousins in the span of a week and just all of the sudden decide they cared about loyalty. What really bugs me personally, is when you're the interloper and yet you're mad she's got a boyfriend in the first place. You're the one who is cuckolding them. In the case of Incest Adventure, when the game begins your sister has been dating your cousin for money for a while now. You having a sexual relationship with your sister should be a matter of dominance over both of them, however people seem to have such fragile egos that they have to control even the fictional women in their lives.

To clarify: Does it bug you that the players suddenly care about loyalty or that the characters suddenly care about loyalty?

 

[FetishCollectorD]

I happen to know quite a few poly-amorous folks. It's not as uncommon as you would think nowadays. Especially within the BDSM lifestyle.

 

[DarthSeduction]

To clarify: Does it bug you that the players suddenly care about loyalty or that the characters suddenly care about loyalty?

A little of both, however it's the character who is at fault. Its one of those things where I'd address it in some way, like a set of variable based conditional statements that would determine if the MC had the capacity to care about loyalty.

 

[Ataios]

A little of both, however it's the character who is at fault. Its one of those things where I'd address it in some way, like a set of variable based conditional statements that would determine if the MC had the capacity to care about loyalty.

As far as the characters go, I think their behavior is consistent, as they are so thoroughly evil, that some hypocrisy about loyalty is just the tip of the iceberg. The typical harem game protagonist gets some super power early in the game and his first thought is: "Great, how can I use this to rape my mother?". In most harem games the protagonists see the women as possession rather than as partners and essentially he doesn't want his slaves to serve other masters. Personally I find it more inconsitent, when such a protagonist suddenly, between enslaving all female family members, co-workers and neighbors, discovers his romantic nature or acts in virtuous way.

Incest Story was certainly inconsistent in that way, as the protagonist, despite fucking anything that has a vagina is somehow described as having a romantic relationship with his mother. So in general for a harem game to be plausible in itself, the protagonist has to be a complete jerk and using some means of blackmail or coercion. Otherwise the chance to get a mother to lick her daughters pussy, while her son fucks her, is quite low.

I think a polyamorous game would be fairly different from a harem game, though I'm not sure if a lot of people would play it. I personally would only play a lesbian polyamorous game, but not a straight or bi one. In general I think a polyamorous game - regardless of orientation - would work best with a "multiple protagonist angle", so it doesn't have the smell of NTR on it. It could be something like the Sims with a large household and disabled jealousy settings.