Pacing in Adult Games

[Burt Reynolds Mustache]

Great post that I agree with except 2 minor quibbles.

1. Dreaming of Dana imo is incredibly tedious and one of the worst offenders of the things you rail against in this post

2 "I don't need to see my character jacking off" this sentence. Personally, I need to see MC jacking off but that's due to the fact that as a gay man, it's my only way to see toon cock in these games

1. Eh, it's as tedious as anything else early on. Even then you are getting sex and stuff on the regular, and as I said it was the weakest point in the game. Once the dates start up, which doesn't actually take that long the game moves at a damn fine clip. There is not a whole lot of down time, though there can be repetition as you wait out the week.

2. I feel for ya, I think there was a gay game that I remember seeing in the new updates. Hopefully it'll work out for ya, or there is also some gay content in My New Life, which has several scenes with both a pre-op trans hooker and the gay kid in your class.

 

[V.A. Laurie]

Great post that I agree with except 2 minor quibbles.

1. Dreaming of Dana imo is incredibly tedious and one of the worst offenders of the things you rail against in this post

2 "I don't need to see my character jacking off" this sentence. Personally, I need to see MC jacking off but that's due to the fact that as a gay man, it's my only way to see toon cock in these games

Interesting... I'm a little bit surprised that a gay man even has an opinion on some of these games, solely because most of them have no gay content --- so I'm just surprised that you'd have checked them out at all.

Fenric, for you, I'll throw in a few optional gay scenes into a future game.

 

[Benn Swagger]

Vote - Other - Respond in the comments.

Reason : Every men & women have different sexual innuendo. In this case, female. If the female had strong asexual or high morality, story must be prolong for her to get into sexual action (aka long corruption story). If the female is slutty sex hunger bitch, story should be simple. So I find developer who can balance their story base on actual characteristic is the best one.

If all female were default slutty bitches and use reveal sexy clothing. Why the need of "story" in this kind of games ?
I'm love THE TWIST that nearly got no story plot at all, because it's a sex simulation games.
I love Big Brother even though feel so slow and blue balling, but building the story are important for the game have differentiation to each casts characterization.
I love a middle games (med sex, med story) that balance sex scene (reward) and story continuation.

So every assessment based on the game vision, direction and genre. One that bad is, a developer who can't stick to his "SELECTIVE - PACE".

 

[Bawdy Ink Slinger]

For me there is a dissonance about this. Slow is better in the sense that it is more rewarding and also realistic. In my opinion it breaks immersion when somebody is ready to go as soon as you meet them. That just doesn't usually happen in real life. There's a buildup.

That said, the slower the build-up the larger the time investment. I may decide the risk is not worth my time and give up on the game before it has a chance to give me a payoff. I am pretty picky about what turns me on. Fact of the matter is that most things don't turn me on in these games. So regardless of the pacing I'm probably not going to enjoy the sex scene. In this context, I want the payoff as soon as possible so I know if I want to keep playing.

I think I found a good middle ground for my game. You effectively start in the middle of the story and the intro has a sexual scene. This is justified because things didn't start this way, you just kind of start the game after the build up has happened.

This way, you know from the very beginning if you're going to like the future payoffs. But there is a lot more to go from there. It's in the middle not the end. People are still reluctant to partake in the sexual acts. There is still a lot more corruption to be had.

 

[Burt Reynolds Mustache]

Vote - Other - Respond in the comments.

Reason : Every men & women have different sexual innuendo. In this case, female. If the female had strong asexual or high morality, story must be prolong for her to get into sexual action (aka long corruption story). If the female is slutty sex hunger bitch, story should be simple. So I find developer who can balance their story base on actual characteristic is the best one.

If all female were default slutty bitches and use reveal sexy clothing. Why the need of "story" in this kind of games ?
I'm love THE TWIST that nearly got no story plot at all, because it's a sex simulation games.
I love Big Brother even though feel so slow and blue balling, but building the story are important for the game have differentiation to each casts characterization.
I love a middle games (med sex, med story) that balance sex scene (reward) and story continuation.

So every assessment based on the game vision, direction and genre. One that bad is, a developer who can't stick to his "SELECTIVE - PACE".

If I'm understanding you right you're viewing everything as a binary. 'Good girls" take a long time to have sex, and only "slutty girls" will sleep with someone on the first date. But that's just not how real life works. In the Farmer's Dreams thread I mentioned that nowadays a pretty large number of first dates happen AFTER sex. The percentage is even higher for Millenials, with nearly 50% falling into that category. I'm not saying that there aren't women (and men) who need to take things slowly for a number of reasons, but 'good girls' want sex too.

And you can easily have a story in a game where you sleep with the main girl on the first date, or even before. Sex is not the end of a story.

For me there is a dissonance about this. Slow is better in the sense that it is more rewarding and also realistic. In my opinion it breaks immersion when somebody is ready to go as soon as you meet them. That just doesn't usually happen in real life. There's a buildup.

That said, the slower the build-up the larger the time investment. I may decide the risk is not worth my time and give up on the game before it has a chance to give me a payoff. I am pretty picky about what turns me on. Fact of the matter is that most things don't turn me on in these games. So regardless of the pacing I'm probably not going to enjoy the sex scene. In this context, I want the payoff as soon as possible so I know if I want to keep playing.

I think I found a good middle ground for my game. You effectively start in the middle of the story and the intro has a sexual scene. This is justified because things didn't start this way, you just kind of start the game after the build up has happened.

This way, you know from the very beginning if you're going to like the future payoffs. But there is a lot more to go from there. It's in the middle not the end. People are still reluctant to partake in the sexual acts. There is still a lot more corruption to be had.

Again, I just don't buy that slow is more realistic. I can be realistic, no doubt, but people hook up at bars, parties, at work, or whatever all the time. Hell Tinder made the one night stand even easier.

Now in a game like yours, when the concept s literally corrupting people to accept a whole mess of shit they wouldn't normally go for, then yes, slow is probably the way to go. But how often do we have a pair of horny teenagers, who are clearly into each other, in close proximity, hormones raging, and STILL taking months to fuck. You need to have some damn good characterization in order for that to seem plausible, especially if they are already doing everything BUT penetration.

 

[Fenric Andrias]

Interesting... I'm a little bit surprised that a gay man even has an opinion on some of these games, solely because most of them have no gay content --- so I'm just surprised that you'd have checked them out at all.

Fenric, for you, I'll throw in a few optional gay scenes into a future game.

Like I said, I don't really want to. Just have to since I have little to no other option for gay stories out there other than furry (and that stuff makes my dick limper than a wet spaghetti noodle)

 

[Darkaura]

A mix of a slow burn character, and say a monthly one-off or overlapping events seems ideal to me. Teacher's pets is a fine example as wife is immediately available, D is a work in progress, and students could be rolled out one after another, from cheerleading ho, to ambitoius student council slut, to slow burn college girl. A savvy dev, would provide an escalating monthly pay-off of some kind. Dark Cookie does that pretty well from a planning angle, but his shitty dev kind of breaks the schedule...

 

[MegaV]

I'll put my response in here as I'm currently developing some game titles myself, I may not be the best or the fastest when it comes to the coding part of the games, but my artworks have come on leaps and bounds. However, my main strength when developing these games is that I can tell a story and very often with so many adult games the first three things complained about very often by most players are

1) The pacing of the story is always criticised as terms used often are where devs "milk their patrons" or go hell for leather where the pace is fast to steady then it seems that the dev either gets bored or runs out of ideas, hence popular games ending up on the abandoned list.
2) The Lack of plot and any logical sense when it comes to writing a story as it's either all over the place or unreadable (maybe this could be that many devs these days are from different countries where English is their second language and Google Translate is usually not very helpful in the real world).
3) Character development (and probably to me the most important one), now I totally agree that there is no magic penis in this world that makes women just fall in love and jump you in real life and the fact that in some incest driven games the focus is "wow brother (or son) your cock is so huge, do you mind if I sit on it". Other plot lines include the female characters being extremely shallow (money is the key point I'm trying to make here), buy the girls enough gifts and they fall in bed with you no matter what relation they are to the MC. Here is where realistic psychology is utilised better, I'd advise anyone to put themselves in the situation and ask "how would I react??".

My best responses here to the main problems for adult games (my own personal opinions, not meant to offend), and how to overcome boundaries and plot holes. Some may like this others won't.

1) To get a perfectly paced game, with an equal amount of build to payoff I'd recommend using as many characters as possible (this is what I am doing right now). Each character in the game has to have their own personality traits ranging from "Slutty" to "Shy Virgin" and display these traits in the story. Something that helps with this gameplay speaking is by having stats for the main character, as different females have different traits that they are attracted to like for example sense of humour, a fit athletic body, intelligence, kindness, the list goes on. However, this type of game has a fine line between being "too easy" and being "grindy" and it's up to the developer to find a happy medium between these two fine lines which can be really tough, it's pretty much trial and error.
2) The plot is very important to any game so my best advice would be to create a small but decent back story for the main character, then write the beginning of the game, then next write in the end of the game and where the main character is going to end up. The fun part is then writing in the middle part, taking into account backstory, the beginning and the end and how the main character gets to where he/she needs to be. Simplified down to the simple 4 rules for writing any kind of story is a) Short Backstory b) Beginning of the story c) end of the story d) the journey from beginning to end. This is the best way I can explain. Repeat this process for the majority of characters in the game and you're half way there to being a winner, winner, chicken dinner lol.
3) Character development - This can easily be overcome by following the points I placed in the above two points. Develop the main characters stats as in the real world there is no magical potion that makes anyone of the opposite sex instantly want to bounce on you just after having one conversation. The idea with the stats is that once maxed out you then have a MC that is potentially the hottest guy in the game, which then makes it more believable if the girls all swoon at your feet. Next, by using the abcd method I mentioned in 2) by duplicating this process for all the other characters of the game then it will automatically help with character development as well as plot and these go hand in hand, you can essentially kill off two birds with one stone, hence less development work later on if everything is planned out beforehand.

Just to summarise
1) Use as many characters as possible and give each character a difficulty level in your development plan to get to the final goal with.
2) Character development and plot can go hand in hand by using the abcd method I explained above.
3) Base the game logic in reality, not the clichéd low budget Skinemax movie logic.
4) Stats are a good thing
5) Having an antagonist or a rival in the game can be a good thing just don't make him/her an Eric. What I mean by this is to give the player an opportunity to overcome the villain at every turn, not to be cucked at every turn.
6) Use some extreme fetishes in the game but warn players beforehand what fetishes will be shown when undertaking each quest (so you can put in M/M, NTR and others without offending gamers if they are warned first). Also make these side quests optional.

 

[Bawdy Ink Slinger]

Again, I just don't buy that slow is more realistic. I can be realistic, no doubt, but people hook up at bars, parties, at work, or whatever all the time. Hell Tinder made the one night stand even easier.

They do, but in my experience that can still be considered a relatively slow progression. How much luck would a guy have if the first thing he asked a woman at the bar is "DTF?" I don't think that guy would be very successful.

There is a little game you play. You small talk, try to make a little connection, and realize there is something there. I mean at least in my experience. Also alcohol is a social lubricant and it's not usually involved in the fast progressions that I dislike.

When it comes to Tinder you may have a point. I just don't have experience with that. But I suspect there's something psychological behind it. I mean if the game had a Tinder app and that's how you met somebody and then you had a one night stand, obviously that would be realistic. But what most of these games do is have you meet somebody on the street and they act like they swiped right on your profile on Tinder.

 

[Burt Reynolds Mustache]

They do, but in my experience that can still be considered a relatively slow progression. How much luck would a guy have if the first thing he asked a woman at the bar is "DTF?" I don't think that guy would be very successful.

There is a little game you play. You small talk, try to make a little connection, and realize there is something there. I mean at least in my experience. Also alcohol is a social lubricant and it's not usually involved in the fast progressions that I dislike.

When it comes to Tinder you may have a point. I just don't have experience with that. But I suspect there's something psychological behind it. I mean if the game had a Tinder app and that's how you met somebody and then you had a one night stand, obviously that would be realistic. But what most of these games do is have you meet somebody on the street and they act like they swiped right on your profile on Tinder.

Maybe we're talking about different things.

There is a difference between 'Hi baby, wanna fuck?' working and drawing the eventual penetrative sex across 10 updates, at least as many hours, and twice as many separate scenes. You want build up, GREAT! You can use it, and use it well. An example I have used before is

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the MC and his love interest are both virgins, and both take a bit to get to actually fucking, but it's like 3 or so scenes of actual messing around, not 30. It keeps a good pace, and doesn't seem out of the ordinary for the characters at all. They are in a situation where they see each other every day, are young and horny, are surrounded by people getting laid, and are experimenting. Oh and losing their virginity, that was just a step in their relationship, not the end of it, not by a long shot.

In over half the games here, the amount of game time required to get to that stage would almost certainly be in the double digits. It would be a series of escalating scenes of one sex act at a time until you finally get there. That doesn't feel real to me.

Pandora also handles the quick sex with the slutty girl very well too. It leads to a game over, but there is build up to that sex not only in the scene itself, but tiny bits of flirting that happened before hand. Character matters, situations matter. Hooking up out of nowhere, with no conversation based on running into someone on the street? Yeah, that's unrealistic. Fucking someone you met at a party after you've both had a couple of beers and the night is getting sexually charged? Makes sense. Two consenting adults banging after the first date? Also, makes sense. A virgin being unsure about what comes next and trying to take it slow? No issues there. A virgin deciding fuck it, I like this person, and I'm horny! That shit happens too.

What generally doesn't. Again that long term series of slow as fuck escalation, over months. I'm not saying it CAN'T happen, but you need to have some damn fine writing if you expect me to buy it.

So few games even bother trying different ways of hooking up, or not. How things can go well, or fail. It's why I constantly call out shitty pacing, because it really doesn't serve a purpose other than frustrating the player.

 

[Benn Swagger]

If I'm understanding you right you're viewing everything as a binary. 'Good girls" take a long time to have sex, and only "slutty girls" will sleep with someone on the first date. But that's just not how real life works. In the Farmer's Dreams thread I mentioned that nowadays a pretty large number of first dates happen AFTER sex. The percentage is even higher for Millenials, with nearly 50% falling into that category. I'm not saying that there aren't women (and men) who need to take things slowly for a number of reasons, but 'good girls' want sex too.

True, in real life, everything is random. But right now, we're talking about game story plot. Which do you prefer ... long story plot to corrupt "good girl" and get reward by it ... Or, Long story plot to corrupt already "Slutty Girl" and get reward by it ? Which more exciting ? ... but again, it's back to the story deliverent itself. If the story writer and dialog making very convincing aka top quality, every scenario (good girl, slutty girl) can be approve and intriguing.

 

[Burt Reynolds Mustache]

True, in real life, everything is random. But right now, we're talking about game story plot. Which do you prefer ... long story plot to corrupt "good girl" and get reward by it ... Or, Long story plot to corrupt already "Slutty Girl" and get reward by it ? Which more exciting ? ... but again, it's back to the story deliverent itself. If the story writer and dialog making very convincing aka top quality, every scenario (good girl, slutty girl) can be approve and intriguing.

Honestly I don't think either of them requires a long story plot. I think being overlong is a problem in a lot of the games here, hence while I harp about it more or less incessantly. If I am playing your game for hours and hours to get to the sex, then a) your story had better be fucking amazing or b) you're doing it wrong. Good writing can make the build up to sleeping with the 'good girl' seem like it took enough time, while still being respectful of the player's actual time. All while not simply throwing pussy at the player.

A game that recently did this surprisingly well, at least in concept was School, Love, and Cousins. One of the girls, Emily is cute and the first girl you date in the game. She's a little shy, a cheerleader, but seems to like the MC pretty well. You eat with her at lunch for a couple of days, hang out at school, and go on another date. You can soon visit her at home, you have one make out session where she says she's not quite ready yet, then the next time over you have sex. You find out she wasn't a virgin, but her first time didn't go well, and that's why she was worried. Now SLC isn't a well written game, but this one part of it actually rang true. It didn't waste the player's time, it didn't spend ages treading the same ground over and over again, and it built up to a realistic hook up.

 

[Bawdy Ink Slinger]

Maybe we're talking about different things.

Definitely. And we definitely have played different sets of games.

In over half the games here, the amount of game time required to get to that stage would almost certainly be in the double digits. It would be a series of escalating scenes of one sex act at a time until you finally get there

I have the opposite experience with the majority of the games I've played. The way it works is there is a ton of set up before you're even introduced to a potential love interest but as soon as you are she is immediately DTF.

The primary example that comes to mind for me is TiTs. In that game everybody you run into immediately wants to fuck you. In most games I've played, the love interests act the same way.

We are clearly playing different types of games. I would agree that 30 scenes to get any action is excessive.

 

[Nightcrawler]

Pacing of game depends on the game you are playing and the devs vision of the game.Me personally i like a slow burner with a few side interests to keep the left hand happy while moving to achieve main goal.However others may prefer a wham bam thank you mam and move on to next target.The truth is their is no hard and fast rule on pacing other than you have to make it within the context of your story.some will like it some will hate it that's life you cant please everyone

 

[Burt Reynolds Mustache]

Definitely. And we definitely have played different sets of games.

I have the opposite experience with the majority of the games I've played. The way it works is there is a ton of set up before you're even introduced to a potential love interest but as soon as you are she is immediately DTF.

The primary example that comes to mind for me is TiTs. In that game everybody you run into immediately wants to fuck you. In most games I've played, the love interests act the same way.

We are clearly playing different types of games. I would agree that 30 scenes to get any action is excessive.

I remember TiTS being pretty much a fuckfest from the moment you meet that slime girl, which if I recall was like five minutes into the game. I remember running around, unsure of what to do, maybe fucking a cow girl or some other weird shit, then getting ass impregnated by a tentacle monster and deciding that TiTS was not the game for me. I don't remember any love interests at all, but as I said I played that game long before I even found out about this place.

What types of games are the ones you usually play then? I generally have most of my time with some RPGM games, Ren'py or Unity pretending to be Ren'py, either VNs or life sims. I do love me some good text adventures though. BBBen needs more love on this board. And I think GoblinBoy still has some of the best characterization via context I have seen in any adult game.

Pacing of game depends on the game you are playing and the devs vision of the game.Me personally i like a slow burner with a few side interests to keep the left hand happy while moving to achieve main goal.However others may prefer a wham bam thank you mam and move on to next target.The truth is their is no hard and fast rule on pacing other than you have to make it within the context of your story.some will like it some will hate it that's life you cant please everyone

What defines a slow burn for you? I am curious because as we all come from different points of view our defiitions can vary a bit as well. My issue with what many would call a slow burn is that there are often many scenes that aren't additive, they are simply repetative. Wake up, have the same conversation until you hit the next flag, then repeat that conversation, etc. etc. In VNs though it can very much be worse than that though, as entire scenes often feel like replays of things we have seen before.

 

[nyalest]

To me the speed of the game relays on what kind of characters the author is creating and each should be different, unless you using magic or Mind control those are different story's. But the problem to me right now is that most games is not about the character personality but more of how can i make it longer for the player to reap up benefits to extend the game and get the most cash out of the game.

 

[Nightcrawler]

What defines a slow burn for you?

The best example i can give of what i consider a slow burner would be Dating my Daughter.Slow build up with D but you have other interests in Georgina and Elanor

 

[Bawdy Ink Slinger]

I remember TiTS being pretty much a fuckfest from the moment you meet that slime girl, which if I recall was like five minutes into the game. I remember running around, unsure of what to do, maybe fucking a cow girl or some other weird shit, then getting ass impregnated by a tentacle monster and deciding that TiTS was not the game for me. I don't remember any love interests at all, but as I said I played that game long before I even found out about this place.

yep that's pretty accurate for how it works. Sorry, when I said love interest I meant people who provide potential sex scenes. That's what I've been meaning the whole time too. And it's these fuckfests that I've been complaining about with regards to pacing problems. I really don't like them. I understand why some people might but for me it breaks immersion when everybody is that eager.

You are right, there are no love interests that I have found in that game, just a whole bunch of characters you can fuck.

By the way I'm a very slow reader so it took me about 30 minutes to get to that slime girl.

What types of games are the ones you usually play then? I generally have most of my time with some RPGM games, Ren'py or Unity pretending to be Ren'py, either VNs or life sims. I do love me some good text adventures though. BBBen needs more love on this board.

I am making a text-based game so usually the games I play are text-based and the reason I'm playing them is to learn from them. But, I spent far more time writing my game than playing others. I wouldn't be surprised if I've played the least amount of games of anybody in this thread.

 

[V.A. Laurie]

I'm really happy I made this thread.

Currently I am working on the games New Life With My Daughter and Freeloading Family, but based on these responses, I can now say for sure that I am confident in my plans for future games with regards to the pacing and the content.

 

[walgadon]

Slow paced games can be great as long as they fill that time in a meaningful way. Big Brother while the art is great artificially slows down the game by having a lot of timeslots within the days and a lot of basically grind which really is not that great. Where Dating My Daughter while maybe at least to me not the most attractive visually does great there.

I feel like a faster build can also work if the game is less focussed on one or a few people.