I think some designers are missing the point of making an erotic game

[215303j]

The problem with porn games is partly the same as with porn movies, but fortunately to a lesser extent.

That's about the conflict between story and pay-off (sex).

If you look at porn movies, in the 1970's and '80's, there were a lot of soft porn movies with "great" (well, for porn) stories, but the sex was pretty limited, both in time and in quality (no dicks, let alone penetration). For some reasons, over time, the story became less and less important in porn movies. Since the '90's - 2000's, most porn movies are reduced to seeing people fucking. In more recent years, there are again some movies with some form of story, but they are usually still low budget, shot indoors etc., and still focussing more on the sex than those '70's -'80's movies.

With CG computer games there are obviously less constraints. If you want to set a game in the middle ages, you don't need to rent a castle and some decent props, like you would need to for a movie.

But the commonality between old school porn and most games here is the delayed pay-off.

For some reason, porn movies have gotten / are getting away with the lack of story, or having a very poor story. Probably because for most people, the pay-off is good enough.

Personally, I much prefer good stories.

Like Darth Seduction usually says, most stories could be much, much better. Still even the worst game here has a better story than main stream porn.

But by having any kind of story or build up, you are inevitably delaying the pay-off, in some form. DmD, which possibly has the longest build-up of all these games, tries to deal with this by having mini-pay-offs in the form of sex with side characters. This is obviously not perfect, but apparently still working from a commercial view point. I guess it depends a lot on personal preference.

**********************

Another conflict is the one between story and gameplay.

Some forms of gameplay (e.g. puzzle minigames) do nothing for the story.

The problem here is to find a way to have an interesting game mechanic without distracting too much from the story.

One great example where this works is General Practitioner. The game play (medical examinations) is very natural and integrated in the story. But it's very complicated.

For instance, Fallout 4 is a great game. It has good combat, an excellent story with meaningful and deep choices. But adding a nude patch doesn't help in any way. It doesn't make the game erotic, only awkward. Adding sex scenes, regardless of the quality of them, would most likely not help either.

 

[WhitePhantom]

For instance, Fallout 3/New Vegas are great games. They have good combat, excellent stories with meaningful and deep choices.

Fixed it for you

I think, although they are games, it comes down to do you want a more realistic approach or a more fantasy approach. If it's realism you want, you need a story, and because it's realistic, not everything ends up with sex, and not everything is totally driven by sex, for example a Wife and Mother does a good job of this. Another game, already mentioned, has been going for years, is totally and completely based on sex and yet you haven't managed to get it yet, that's how not to do it.

I'm basing my game more along the James Bond type movies, might not be for everybody but that's what I want to make, a story with sex in it along the way, but first and foremost it will be a story. If it's too slow for anybody, come back in five/six updates and just tab til the porn. Yes there is sex in it, the sex is like Porn Movies, you can see everything and with the next update there will be 4 scenes in total (this will be my fourth update). However I'm also putting a story in it which is why you are encountering these sex scenes, and some updates will have little to no sex in them at all whereas others might have a lot.

I think some games just have different goals & objectives. I just played Perverted Hotel and it's a great game in my view, and I enjoyed it, but the story isn't really existent and that's fine because the porn side is good and I wasn't really playing it for the story. Whereas I've also played Depraved Awakenings and I want to know what's coming next in the story waaaay more than the next sex scene (although it also has amazing sex scenes).

So yeah, that's just my thoughts

 

[gunderson]

A bit late to the party. Ah well.

Why shouldn't Opala (or Roundscape for that matter) count as a porn game? It's got porn for daaaaays once you actually unlock it.

My suspicion as to why people want to make this distinction is because Ren'Py is such a powerful force in the Patreon market right now, and because it's such a pain in the ass to develop remotely interesting gameplay mechanics in Ren'Py. So the debate ends up being, rather than whether you should emphasize making your minigames more fun or more porny, whether they should exist at all. And that kinda sucks.

Sure, the occasional game with really strong graphics and an engaging story can get away with having really barebones gameplay, but most of them need to be at least a little fun to actually play to keep a player's attention. And that's not so surprising, given that these things are called 'games,' right?

And I hate to break it to you (that's a lie, this actually feels great to say), but 'good' porn game stories aren't that good. Don't get me wrong, they can be REALLY bad. Like, unreadable and incomprehensible even when perfectly translated to English levels of bad. But at best? Basically any of these Ren'Py games' stories only get to the level of mediocre bodice-ripper novels and no better. Not by any means to say that it isn't worth the work of trying to improve them (though I think for example that DarthSeduction's rewrite of Man of the House just orients the fetishes more closely around dom-sub relationships rather than actually making the story 'better'), but rather that this is all no excuse to avoid trying to improve your coding skills and giving players a break from reading your not-very-good-even-at-its-best novel.

For instance, Fallout 4 is a great game. It has good combat, an excellent story with meaningful and deep choices. But adding a nude patch doesn't help in any way. It doesn't make the game erotic, only awkward. Adding sex scenes, regardless of the quality of them, would most likely not help either.

For instance, Fallout 3/New Vegas are great games. They have good combat, excellent stories with meaningful and deep choices.
Fixed it for you

Let me fix this one for both of you: the FPS Fallouts are all great fun to play. Even at their best the stories are still worse than a reasonably well-written novel, but the overall integrated experience with gameplay, story, choices, RPG systems, and character investment is what makes it worth your time. And ain't nothing wrong with giving the ladies in Fallout bigger tiddays. Flat chested ladies are one of the many hazards of the Commonwealth/Capital Wasteland/Mojave.

 

[GuyFreely]

@gunderson I don't mind if a erotic game includes fun game elements. As I mentioned before, this can be highly subjective. Most minigames consist of things you'd find available at your favorite trashy flash game site. As you say, putting in complex game mechanics can be a lot of work. Even when the games are slightly more involved, they can become tedious. I'm thinking of a game called Milf Control which had a card game as the basis. Similar to real games I've seen whose names escape me. While it's vaguely tactical, it quickly becomes a chore (imo).

I would agree that the writing in many erotic games is fairly bad, unfortunately. However, I think there is no limitation to how good a story can be in an erotic game. Now I doubt we have any Pulitzer prize winning authors writing for erotic games, but there's nothing to say they can't be really good. Part of this might come down to commercial viability. A professional author needs to get paid and erotic games are still fairly niche and have a stigma to them. It makes more sense for them to write for non erotic games or write small novels to make a living. So you are left with mostly fan projects by people who have various levels of writing ability.

 

[Ixiah]

I think most Devs just cobble together Porn Scenes with non Porn Gameplay, like Big Brother, Summertime Saga or Queen Opala.
What most of them missing to some extent or the other is Gameplay that is directly tied to the Sex.
On the Asian side you have game like Shuusakuor or its follow up Kisaku.
You had to Balance your Dutys as a Caretaker with spying on Woman to gather enough Evidence to blackmail them.
And while they werent realy deep, its an good Start.
On the Western Side the closest you can come are Brother Sims, because well, the Gameplay _is_ directly tied to the Sex.
And dont get me started on all the Ren´py VN "Games"
But a lot of them are missing one or the other Element, be it to be more than just a Basic Sim with Hentai pics they dl from some booru, or in case like Porn Empire there is simply not enough "Meat" , the same Animations everytime and not enough "Potatoes" like meaningfull Upgrades later on that unlock more Content or Variations.

 

[Quonix]

I find the main problem to be that adult game devs tend to forget what kind of game they are making, they have a dream of making a game of a specific kind and they do that and then add the adult parts, when it should be the other way around instead. They put the focus on the wrong part of the game most of the time.

 

[GuyFreely]

I find the main problem to be that adult game devs tend to forget what kind of game they are making, they have a dream of making a game of a specific kind and they do that and then add the adult parts, when it should be the other way around instead. They put the focus on the wrong part of the game most of the time.

I'm not entirely sure I agree on this point. Maybe if you had an example of where you thought this happened. I think adult game devs generally set out to make an adult game, but they fall into traps of bad design. I think it would be perhaps be more correct to say they want to make their adult games have more traditional game elements, but lack the skill or effort to implement them. They put in boring, repetitive mini games or grind with very little thought to the overall product. They do this either because they think they should, or more dangerously, to pad out the run time of their game.

The problem with padding out the run time of an adult game, is that it doesn't generally add value for the player. In a more traditional game, let's say skyrim, where you've implemented various crafting and combat systems you can pad the gameplay with more "stuff." You add extra enemies to fight, items to gather for crafting, little hidden places to explore. These all cater to certain types of gamers and reinforce the core mechanics.

Spoiler: More Skyrim tangent

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Adding a minigame or a grind to most adult games doesn't reinforce core game mechanics. Hell, most adult games don't have core game mechanics in the traditional sense. Yes, adult games that are actual games exist, but I'm talking about the majority of games found on this site. Generally these games most closely resemble choose your own adventure games. So if you want to add to your game, add more choices, more paths, more characters, more story, or (obviously) more adult content.

 

[MrXV]

I think having good mechanics and a good base down for a game is the most important, even an "Erotic" game. Having a good game is preferred by me than a shitty game mechanic wise with click and fap scenes.

also, I like the different grind mechanics to an extent. Like working, working out, reading, jogging whatnot. Aslong as the dev can put in either random occurances in those grind moments or just have some sort of smaller event happen now and then. Not a huge fan of minigames to unlock content or to build stats/money though. But it seems like it's heavily used for some reason.

Buut..I want a great game first and the art/story should be a second prio imo. Good mechanics and good game design will help a lot and also make your game much more fleshed out than having all your focus on the story/art imo. Bad art and a wonky story can work if the game mechanics is great, but shitty game mechanics will most likely turn people away no matter the art direction/story you got.

 

[dexterdx]

For instance, Fallout 4 is a great game. It has good combat, an excellent story with meaningful and deep choices. But adding a nude patch doesn't help in any way. It doesn't make the game erotic, only awkward. Adding sex scenes, regardless of the quality of them, would most likely not help either.

Tend to disagree on F4 with you, on multiple accounts (long story short, I call it Fallout: Disappointment).
You are correct about adding nude patch only because mod scene for it is still in early phase.

Look at Skyrim (not SE), you can just add nude patch/ecchi armors, or you could mod game so hard it turns into another game, be careful on which mods you add, and you'll turn it into completely new game.
It can even be better sex simulator than 99% of games featured here. (I'm not exaggerating, I'd post links, but can't find rule on sharing/advertising other pages/forums, so I play safe)

 

[GuyFreely]

Look at Skyrim (not SE), you can just add nude patch/ecchi armors, or you could mod game so hard it turns into another game, be careful on which mods you add, and you'll turn it into completely new game.
It can even be better sex simulator than 99% of games featured here. (I'm not exaggerating, I'd post links, but can't find rule on sharing/advertising other pages/forums, so I play safe)

Most definitely. This is largely what I did before I started trying out the types of games on here. Though a lot of the more involved mods are made with a female player character in mind. Which I don't mind, but I've seen many people on here who refuse to play female protagonist games.

also, I like the different grind mechanics to an extent. Like working, working out, reading, jogging whatnot. Aslong as the dev can put in either random occurances in those grind moments or just have some sort of smaller event happen now and then. Not a huge fan of minigames to unlock content or to build stats/money though. But it seems like it's heavily used for some reason.

Buut..I want a great game first and the art/story should be a second prio imo. Good mechanics and good game design will help a lot and also make your game much more fleshed out than having all your focus on the story/art imo. Bad art and a wonky story can work if the game mechanics is great, but shitty game mechanics will most likely turn people away no matter the art direction/story you got.

Right, there are ways to put a "grind" into a game that aren't a complete waste of time. Like you say, varying up the situation. If I am seeing the exact same generic scene every time, it's not adding anything. I think part of the issue are the engines available to the devs. I'm sure some clever people have jammed some cool gameplay into Ren'Py, but by default the mechanics are fairly limited. RPGM obviously has the ability to make something along the lines of SNES era rpg games, but beyond that, I'm not sure what it has to offer. I haven't looked at it myself. To have more fleshed out gameplay, you'd probably want something like Unity and a lot of people aren't up to the challenge of doing that.

More to the point, I think someone with serious game development skills would be inclined to make something more mass market (non-ero) to make more money. You'd need that special combination of someone with strong game dev skills and a passion for ero-games.

 

[thecardinal]

More to the point, I think someone with serious game development skills would be inclined to make something more mass market (non-ero) to make more money. You'd need that special combination of someone with strong game dev skills and a passion for ero-games.

Not to mention that unless they have initial funding or a team, most devs are the sole writers, coders, and artists.

 

[thecardinal]

also, I like the different grind mechanics to an extent. Like working, working out, reading, jogging whatnot. Aslong as the dev can put in either random occurances in those grind moments or just have some sort of smaller event happen now and then.

I haven't tried it yet, but trying to code random occurrences in Ren'py is probably really tedious and easy to mess up. The 'mini games' that some games have are really neat bits of coding, but I hate picking up trash or killing bugs to unlock erotic content.

 

[Quonix]

I haven't tried it yet, but trying to code random occurrences in Ren'py is probably really tedious and easy to mess up. The 'mini games' that some games have are really neat bits of coding, but I hate picking up trash or killing bugs to unlock erotic content.

Actually not really that hard, it's pretty damn easy, I'm in the process of implementing random occurences/chances in my game right now, now that I have finished all the other important mechanics and menus. Also, in the process of making the waiting mechanic work as intended, I have discovered why many games have you do the waiting on the map, long story short, if the base of your game wasn't made to handle images updating dynamically, then for example let's say you're in room x, at morning there's nobody, at afternoon there's your sister, at night there's your mother, if in the morning you press the waiting button, time will advance but the image will stay the same, which would be the morning image in the afternoon. I assume many devs didn't know how to do it when first getting started and now that they have coders it would probably be too much hassle to rewrite the mechanics. That, or maybe they think it's ugly when the image updates in front of the player, but I really doubt it.

 

[Nottravis]

There's some well thought out and reasoned debate here so.....on the subject of mini games, quick question?

I'll be honest, I loathe mini games that you -have- to complete in order to progress, but what about optional ones? In the game I'm currently bashing into shape (and without wanting to spoil anything should I get off my arse and eventually release it!) there's an event where, depending on your choices etc, you can end up playing strip poker with one of the characters. Now it's a mini game for sure, but not a necessary one so does this fall into the loathsome grind category?

 

[Quonix]

There's some well thought out and reasoned debate here so.....on the subject of mini games, quick question?

I'll be honest, I loathe mini games that you -have- to complete in order to progress, but what about optional ones? In the game I'm currently bashing into shape (and without wanting to spoil anything should I get off my arse and eventually release it!) there's an event where, depending on your choices etc, you can end up playing strip poker with one of the characters. Now it's a mini game for sure, but not a necessary one so does this fall into the loathsome grind category?

I don't believe it falls into the loathsome grind category, but it might be annoying for the player, since most players will get any chance they can to see a character naked, and to see that character naked in that scene they HAVE to win the strip poker game, it won't be treated as optional by the players. Also, remember that as the dev you know that the player can progress even without winning the strip poker minigame, but a player that gets to that minigame will keep save scumming to win it thinking that they can't progress without winning it, they can't look at the code and most of them wouldn't understand it. Try to insert the MC's thoughts along the lines of "If I win this strip poker game, I'll get to see her naked, but even if I don't it won't delay my plans/our relationship/etc."

 

[Nottravis]

Gotcha, thanks.

So lots of signposting at the very least. Much obliged!

 

[Dan Hasshole]

A lot of them don't even finish their games

 

[Tease Me]

A lot of them don't even finish their games

Many lost the game because of incest content... many more just seemed to be in it for the money and when they did not see great profit like MrDots or DarkSilver they balked.

Some of the game makers have that are worthy of support are DarkHound for Holiday Island, KsT for Twist
Gaweb Studio For Glassix, MrDots for DMD and Melody, Faerin for Man of the House. Dark Silver for Big Brother and Gloria, Asteros for My Cute Cousin aka roomate

Of these my favorite game for exceptional content and outstanding renderings is Dark Hound's Holiday Island.
You up your stats mainly by working out and interacting with the girls. You get game currency for Fapping that you can spend on gifts and boosts.

If more developers would follow the lead of the ones I stated, this board would not be so full of demos that have no or little content or games that have monthly updates of nothing but fixes and debugs.

I am sure I am not alone when I say the game on this board have taken a serious nosedive in creativity, content, and workmanship.

 

[GuyFreely]

There's some well thought out and reasoned debate here so.....on the subject of mini games, quick question?

I'll be honest, I loathe mini games that you -have- to complete in order to progress, but what about optional ones? In the game I'm currently bashing into shape (and without wanting to spoil anything should I get off my arse and eventually release it!) there's an event where, depending on your choices etc, you can end up playing strip poker with one of the characters. Now it's a mini game for sure, but not a necessary one so does this fall into the loathsome grind category?

So strip poker falls into the category of an acceptable mini-game in my opinion. (I'm a little biased because I play poker anyway and I played strip poker games when I could find a good one.) The main reason I think it's okay is that it immediately unlocks erotic content, in the form of the girl getting more naked as you win. One point is that it has to be fair. If the female opponent is cheating to win, you are just pissing off your player. (This is the case in Holiday Island for the higher difficulty players.)

Now not everyone is going to want to play poker, but pretty much everyone will want to see the girls naked. I would say if you want to cater to the people who want the content without the grind, let them cheat. Literally give them free wins. You can even do it inside your narrative. You can say that the player knows how to stack the deck, so that if he is dealer, he will win most of the time. So you set up this premise and when the game starts you can choose, [Let her deal] or [Be the dealer (stack the deck)]. From a coding standpoint, no idea how hard this is to do, but it would be a nice way to handle it. You can even have the girl comment about how she thinks he might be cheating.

Of these my favorite game for exceptional content and outstanding renderings is Dark Hound's Holiday Island.
You up your stats mainly by working out and interacting with the girls. You get game currency for Fapping that you can spend on gifts and boosts.

I know I talked about Holiday Island somewhere, maybe even this thread, but I'll recap here. I wanted to like Holiday Island. It has a paper thin plot and one dimensional characters. The premise is pretty silly even with the conspiratorial undertones. I don't know if this ever goes anywhere, I didn't find out the secrets of the island in my time with it. As I've stated before, I don't mind these style of games. I think they are just as valid as something with a deep involved story.

The Good:
It has a bunch of different girls. I would say he could have varied the body types a bit more, but whatever. I really like the way you can choose a subset of the girls to be on the island. This is kind of like the Illusion game Sexy Beach Premium Resort. It also has decent renders. A lot of assets are reused, but overall the quality is pretty good. The way the grind is handled it pretty easy. So you talk to a girl once, go through all the dialogue, and the next time you talk to her, the choices have pluses and minuses indicating her preferences. Now, I still cheated, because I didn't feel like doing it, but it was nice that it was straightforward.

The Bad:
Grindy. Yep, workout to get strength, read books to get charm, etc. Thankfully, you can cheat (not built in though).
Without a guide, this game is largely a sexy slot machine. There are a number of factors: the girl, her outfit, location, time of day, presence of absence of other girls, your progress on love/lust tracks, maybe more? So you are trying to find the perfect combination of these factors to get special scenes. You might stumble into them with brute force, but it will be a lot of wasted time going down dead ends. For example, a certain location might offer activity X. Most of the girls can do activity X, but only one girl will have a special scene attached to it. You have no way of knowing which girl(s) have a special scene, so you are left trying all of them. Even then, she might be wearing the wrong outfit. So you'll have to try it multiple times per girl.

I wouldn't mind this convoluted mess if the player was guided to the solutions a bit more. Maybe don't let me do activity X with girls that don't have a special scene. I would still have to get lucky to find the right combination of factors, but at least then I won't follow dead end paths. A little trial and error might be okay, but not to the degree Holiday Island presents. I'm sure some of these scenes are supposed to be content on their own, like watching the girls stretch in the gym. Then some girls have a "bonus" on this scene where they get their tits out, etc. The problem is that even these scenes get boring quick where you are trying to find the extra content.

This is kind of my larger point. I think Holiday Island could be fixed. I think it could be a much more enjoyable experience by wasting less of the player's time. Trying twenty combinations that don't work to find one that does, is not good gameplay imo. As I said, there are enough pieces that have to line up here without all the dead ends. Would it be a shorter game without all the guessing? Yes. Is that a bad thing? No. Longer play length does not always mean a better player experience.

 

[thecardinal]

Strip poker, Truth or Dare, and Never Have I Ever would all make great mini-games in a game. At least with the last two there is no skill involved, easier to code, and it would be a great way to explore the other characters