Yep, it's me again. Let's stay on topic this time, shall we?
Introduction
When showing sexual content, the most common method is to show an average-length sex scene after a milestone in order to ensure sexual content is completely seperate from gameplay. The idea is that you don't have to worry about both of those having competing for the player's attention as well as reducing the toll on the game's pacing that comes with showing sexual content. There's just one critical flaw with this whole plan, and it's that games.. are games.
80-95% of a video game is going to be gameplay, not story, and not cutscenes. If we restrict ourselves to only show sexual content outside of gameplay, we don't have much room to show porn (and ultimately arouse the player). What's really problematic is that long stretches of time without showing any sexual content can cause arousal to plumet, which is exactly what happens with the whole milestone thing. Simply just increasing the amount of sex scenes creates it's own issues; the game would have to be broken down so the pacing isn't a complete mess, and besides someone also needs to make all those scenes.
But what if we didn't seperate gameplay and sexual content..?
Intermediate Content
Let me introduce Intermediate Content, IC for short. To keep a player aroused, a game will give small pieces of sexual content between the normal sex scenes to keep a player's arousal up. Unlike traditional sex scenes though, Intermediate Content is shown during the active parts of gameplay instead of during an intermission. The smaller impact of the content is less arousing, but also means it doesn't stop gameplay dead in it's tracks when shown (more on that later). This results in a smooth fapping experience that doesn't require them to go against the natural flow of the game. At least, when it's all done right.
While I'm the first to call it by this term, this isn't a new concept by any means. Countless games already do this, but not always well or to the extent needed for optimal effect. This is post is about why to use it, how to use it, and common issues.
Now then, in terms of presenting the IC to the player, it needs to be more refined than just showing a pair of boobs at a 30 second interval. That's just crude. Instead, here's the two immersive ways to present IC:
Mechanical IC is about having certain player-controlled action(s) designated to show sexual content, though they also have other gameplay effects. We'll call those actions 'Sexual Actions' later on. You'd see this implemented as battle-fuck combat in a game or breeding in a breeding game. It's not just a button that shows sex, it's also something for the players to interact with mechanically. The downside is that these actions need to designed so they're frequently seen enough to have an effect on the player's arousal.
The second type is passive IC, which is simpler but not as viable. Similar to mechanical IC, certain actions will show the sexual content, though not all are player-controlled, if any. The main difference is that they have little to no impact on gameplay. To make up for their lack of gameplay purpose, they are made frequent and near-unavoidable. The most basic example I can think of is NSFW card art in a card game. If you want to see what's going on, you've got to look at the cards and subsequently, their card art. I wouldn't reccomend this type of IC honestly.
You don't have to use only one or both forms of IC. It just depends on the game you're making, though it's way more common to see mechanical IC over passive IC.
Constructing Intermediate Content
Before I go on about making IC, I want to mention that Intermediate Content is not a band-aid that can be applied at any time to any game. It must be at the very core of the game because it plays a role almost as important to arousing the player as the full sex scenes from before.
Impact and Weight
Impact is a rough measure of how arousing a piece of sexual content is. More impact, more arousal. We don't need to know exactly how much it arouses each player, just a good idea of whether it's high, medium, or low. You can tell this from three factors: art quality, user interest (fetishes), and weight. Weight is different than the other ones in the fact that higher isn't always better.
Basically, weight is how much the piece of content (negatively) impacts the pace of the game. An image that appears in the corner of the screen for a few frames will be almost unnoticed in gameplay, while a 30-second animation brings the game to a screeching halt. But while heavier pieces of content are more interruptive to gameplay, they also give more sexual impact than lighter ones, and may not need to be shown as often to keep the player aroused.
Frequency
One of the most common issues I see is when games get their frequency wrong. Since showing sexual content damages the flow of gameplay, you need to be careful with how often you show them. Go overboard and there won't be much gameplay left. But if you show too little, well, then the player isn't being aroused. Adding a skip button isn't a solution either since that outright skips the sexual content you're trying to arouse the player with.
The less frequent content is, the more weight in your content you can afford without turning gameplay into a slog. It's best to use either medium or low frequency since working with high frequency/low weight is difficult to build a game around. While not revolutionary, medium frequency/medium weight is easy to design and can fit most games well. For reference, a vast majority turn-based games w/ sex combat could be categorized as this, along with a couple of sidescrollers here and there.
Low frequency is more difficult to design, but isn't impractical. You may want to use it if the gameplay is fast-paced and can't afford many interruptions. However, while there's a lower frequency of content, there's still whiplash from the pacing going from normal to zero because of the high-weight content. To solve this, the conditions for the Intermediate Content to be shown should be met when the game's pacing is slowed, such as after most enemies in a wave have been defeated, reducing the pacing shock from before. However, depending on the genre of the game, it may be harder to come up with a way to pull this off.
Variety
Obviously, you can't just show the same pair of boobs over and over again, players are going to get bored of that. So you'll need more pictures to have a nice variety of content. The more you have, the more varied the content is, which is good. But it takes time/money to make these pieces of content and it's not practical to create a gigantic amount of them. How much should you make? 5 per hour of playtime? 4? 6? They'll be re-used, sure, but what's the comfortable limit?
There isn't a hard mathematical formula for that, but from what I've experienced, it's mostly about the variety of content the player can see without disrupting the natural flow of gameplay (that would be like quitting mid-level to visit the gallery). It also helps if the player is satisfied with the quality of the content, so spamming low quality content isn't the solution. I'd say having about 4-7 pieces of content 'naturally available' at a given time is ideal.
Don't be mistaken though, you'll still need to introduce new pieces of content over time. You can't only have 4-7 pieces of content throughout the entire game because players will still get bored of that content, just not as quickly as if there was only one at a time. Players will also be quick to choose favorites if way too much content is available at a time, so don't try the opposite.
Relevance
Besides frequency, the other most common issue is the lack of relevancy when using mechanical IC. Because of the gameplay aspects tied to the sexual actions, you need to be precise about how often they show up. A player might avoid them completely or overuse them (causing them to burn out their interest in the content, lowering the impact). The solution is to constantly motivate the player to use the sexual actions while also limiting the opportunities they can be done in order to stay in control of the frequency of content.
Constant motivation requires the sexual action to be the optimal move whenever it can be taken successfully. When players avoid them, it's often because they don't find the rewards worth it, so make sure it remains powerful throughout the whole game. For the fine control over the frequency, the opportunities the sexual actions can be done are limited. There's plenty of ways to do this, from cooldowns and costs to having the player recognize the opportunity to do it.
Now, if you have multiple sources of mechanic IC (different causes), you only need one to be relevant and moderately frequent. This means that even if a majority of the sexual content is shown as a result of negative actions (things bad for the player), a perfect playthrough of the game would still see some sexual content. Maybe not at the frequency the game needs, but it works as a failsafe at the very least.
Before I move onto the next section, I want to be extra clear: Do not confuse mechanical IC with gameplay mechanics that occur DURING sex. There are often seen as 'struggle to escape' meters or the rythm bar in beatbanger. The difference is that the sexual action of mechanical IC leads to sexual content, while the other occurs DURING the sexual content. It can be difficult to enjoy the sexual content infront of you if you have the mash the keyboard to escape lest you get a game over.
About Main Sexual Content
As the player becomes more aroused, the lower impact of IC eventually isn't going to cut it anymore. This is where we can use sexual content with extra-high impact, our 'full sex scenes' from earlier, which I'll refer to them as Main Sexual Content (abbreviated to MSC) from now on. Anyways, because most players aren't going to be willing to cum to the lower-impact IC, the high impact that MSC has will finish the job.
Impact Improvement
So yes, it's important that your main sexual content is arousing. Now the question is how can we improve the arousal factor of our main content?
Conclusion
In a porn game, it's very difficult to arouse the player when you aren't using Intermediate Content, or at least some other kind of frequent showing of sexual content. However, the most important factor for applying Intermediate Content, is simply having that sexual content exist between the main ones. It might not be perfect, infact, it could be very flawed, but the benefit of having the player stay aroused outweighs any concerns that come with it's inclusion. Most games that use IC actually don't use it very well, but they remain some of the most popular games of their genre.
TLDR: Add smaller sexual content between your sex scenes. It'll keep the player aroused.
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Introduction
When showing sexual content, the most common method is to show an average-length sex scene after a milestone in order to ensure sexual content is completely seperate from gameplay. The idea is that you don't have to worry about both of those having competing for the player's attention as well as reducing the toll on the game's pacing that comes with showing sexual content. There's just one critical flaw with this whole plan, and it's that games.. are games.
80-95% of a video game is going to be gameplay, not story, and not cutscenes. If we restrict ourselves to only show sexual content outside of gameplay, we don't have much room to show porn (and ultimately arouse the player). What's really problematic is that long stretches of time without showing any sexual content can cause arousal to plumet, which is exactly what happens with the whole milestone thing. Simply just increasing the amount of sex scenes creates it's own issues; the game would have to be broken down so the pacing isn't a complete mess, and besides someone also needs to make all those scenes.
But what if we didn't seperate gameplay and sexual content..?
Intermediate Content
Let me introduce Intermediate Content, IC for short. To keep a player aroused, a game will give small pieces of sexual content between the normal sex scenes to keep a player's arousal up. Unlike traditional sex scenes though, Intermediate Content is shown during the active parts of gameplay instead of during an intermission. The smaller impact of the content is less arousing, but also means it doesn't stop gameplay dead in it's tracks when shown (more on that later). This results in a smooth fapping experience that doesn't require them to go against the natural flow of the game. At least, when it's all done right.
While I'm the first to call it by this term, this isn't a new concept by any means. Countless games already do this, but not always well or to the extent needed for optimal effect. This is post is about why to use it, how to use it, and common issues.
Now then, in terms of presenting the IC to the player, it needs to be more refined than just showing a pair of boobs at a 30 second interval. That's just crude. Instead, here's the two immersive ways to present IC:
Mechanical IC is about having certain player-controlled action(s) designated to show sexual content, though they also have other gameplay effects. We'll call those actions 'Sexual Actions' later on. You'd see this implemented as battle-fuck combat in a game or breeding in a breeding game. It's not just a button that shows sex, it's also something for the players to interact with mechanically. The downside is that these actions need to designed so they're frequently seen enough to have an effect on the player's arousal.
The second type is passive IC, which is simpler but not as viable. Similar to mechanical IC, certain actions will show the sexual content, though not all are player-controlled, if any. The main difference is that they have little to no impact on gameplay. To make up for their lack of gameplay purpose, they are made frequent and near-unavoidable. The most basic example I can think of is NSFW card art in a card game. If you want to see what's going on, you've got to look at the cards and subsequently, their card art. I wouldn't reccomend this type of IC honestly.
You don't have to use only one or both forms of IC. It just depends on the game you're making, though it's way more common to see mechanical IC over passive IC.
Constructing Intermediate Content
Before I go on about making IC, I want to mention that Intermediate Content is not a band-aid that can be applied at any time to any game. It must be at the very core of the game because it plays a role almost as important to arousing the player as the full sex scenes from before.
Impact and Weight
Impact is a rough measure of how arousing a piece of sexual content is. More impact, more arousal. We don't need to know exactly how much it arouses each player, just a good idea of whether it's high, medium, or low. You can tell this from three factors: art quality, user interest (fetishes), and weight. Weight is different than the other ones in the fact that higher isn't always better.
Basically, weight is how much the piece of content (negatively) impacts the pace of the game. An image that appears in the corner of the screen for a few frames will be almost unnoticed in gameplay, while a 30-second animation brings the game to a screeching halt. But while heavier pieces of content are more interruptive to gameplay, they also give more sexual impact than lighter ones, and may not need to be shown as often to keep the player aroused.
Frequency
One of the most common issues I see is when games get their frequency wrong. Since showing sexual content damages the flow of gameplay, you need to be careful with how often you show them. Go overboard and there won't be much gameplay left. But if you show too little, well, then the player isn't being aroused. Adding a skip button isn't a solution either since that outright skips the sexual content you're trying to arouse the player with.
The less frequent content is, the more weight in your content you can afford without turning gameplay into a slog. It's best to use either medium or low frequency since working with high frequency/low weight is difficult to build a game around. While not revolutionary, medium frequency/medium weight is easy to design and can fit most games well. For reference, a vast majority turn-based games w/ sex combat could be categorized as this, along with a couple of sidescrollers here and there.
Low frequency is more difficult to design, but isn't impractical. You may want to use it if the gameplay is fast-paced and can't afford many interruptions. However, while there's a lower frequency of content, there's still whiplash from the pacing going from normal to zero because of the high-weight content. To solve this, the conditions for the Intermediate Content to be shown should be met when the game's pacing is slowed, such as after most enemies in a wave have been defeated, reducing the pacing shock from before. However, depending on the genre of the game, it may be harder to come up with a way to pull this off.
Variety
Obviously, you can't just show the same pair of boobs over and over again, players are going to get bored of that. So you'll need more pictures to have a nice variety of content. The more you have, the more varied the content is, which is good. But it takes time/money to make these pieces of content and it's not practical to create a gigantic amount of them. How much should you make? 5 per hour of playtime? 4? 6? They'll be re-used, sure, but what's the comfortable limit?
There isn't a hard mathematical formula for that, but from what I've experienced, it's mostly about the variety of content the player can see without disrupting the natural flow of gameplay (that would be like quitting mid-level to visit the gallery). It also helps if the player is satisfied with the quality of the content, so spamming low quality content isn't the solution. I'd say having about 4-7 pieces of content 'naturally available' at a given time is ideal.
Don't be mistaken though, you'll still need to introduce new pieces of content over time. You can't only have 4-7 pieces of content throughout the entire game because players will still get bored of that content, just not as quickly as if there was only one at a time. Players will also be quick to choose favorites if way too much content is available at a time, so don't try the opposite.
Relevance
Besides frequency, the other most common issue is the lack of relevancy when using mechanical IC. Because of the gameplay aspects tied to the sexual actions, you need to be precise about how often they show up. A player might avoid them completely or overuse them (causing them to burn out their interest in the content, lowering the impact). The solution is to constantly motivate the player to use the sexual actions while also limiting the opportunities they can be done in order to stay in control of the frequency of content.
Constant motivation requires the sexual action to be the optimal move whenever it can be taken successfully. When players avoid them, it's often because they don't find the rewards worth it, so make sure it remains powerful throughout the whole game. For the fine control over the frequency, the opportunities the sexual actions can be done are limited. There's plenty of ways to do this, from cooldowns and costs to having the player recognize the opportunity to do it.
Now, if you have multiple sources of mechanic IC (different causes), you only need one to be relevant and moderately frequent. This means that even if a majority of the sexual content is shown as a result of negative actions (things bad for the player), a perfect playthrough of the game would still see some sexual content. Maybe not at the frequency the game needs, but it works as a failsafe at the very least.
Before I move onto the next section, I want to be extra clear: Do not confuse mechanical IC with gameplay mechanics that occur DURING sex. There are often seen as 'struggle to escape' meters or the rythm bar in beatbanger. The difference is that the sexual action of mechanical IC leads to sexual content, while the other occurs DURING the sexual content. It can be difficult to enjoy the sexual content infront of you if you have the mash the keyboard to escape lest you get a game over.
About Main Sexual Content
As the player becomes more aroused, the lower impact of IC eventually isn't going to cut it anymore. This is where we can use sexual content with extra-high impact, our 'full sex scenes' from earlier, which I'll refer to them as Main Sexual Content (abbreviated to MSC) from now on. Anyways, because most players aren't going to be willing to cum to the lower-impact IC, the high impact that MSC has will finish the job.
Impact Improvement
So yes, it's important that your main sexual content is arousing. Now the question is how can we improve the arousal factor of our main content?
- Focus on quality: Obviously, you'll want to put extra effort into the art quality of your MSC. That's the least you can do.
- Stick to your guns: If your game has a focus on any fetish (it probably does), you should stick to those when making the main sexual content. Even if you're not the best artist, this will boost the sexual impact significantly.
- Allow anticipation: The anticipation of main sexual content can carry a lot of impact as well. The only cost for building anticipation up is not showing your MSC back-to-back, which is pretty easy.
- Allow expectation: Also, to allow anticipation to build up, players need to be able to expect it. Players aren't dumb, but they aren't able to expect random sex scenes that come out of nowhere.
Conclusion
In a porn game, it's very difficult to arouse the player when you aren't using Intermediate Content, or at least some other kind of frequent showing of sexual content. However, the most important factor for applying Intermediate Content, is simply having that sexual content exist between the main ones. It might not be perfect, infact, it could be very flawed, but the benefit of having the player stay aroused outweighs any concerns that come with it's inclusion. Most games that use IC actually don't use it very well, but they remain some of the most popular games of their genre.
TLDR: Add smaller sexual content between your sex scenes. It'll keep the player aroused.
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