Well, BB isn't the best game for me, but somehow it is one of the most iconic games. I think this is because all characters had names instead of ..... (type ur name here) and faces. A lot of games are missing this two things. Usually, the main male prot hasn't face.
Porn Game Tropes: The good, the bad, and the fugly
- Thread starter Burt Reynolds Mustache
- Start date
- Jul 10, 2018
- 924
- 2,441
Small Town Girl
Small Town Girls are different from small town boys because while every small town boy can immediately get to grips with living in a place that is simply bigger and different, every small town girl will need constant help and advice, and ideally should be sent to live with someone massively unsuited to the task (preferably someone male, unmarried, who's never had kids).
She is constantly surprised and amazed, because she's never done that before, or that, or anything in fact. Despite the fact that she is billed as a teenager, looks like a teenager, and you'll be told at every opportunity that she's a teenager, she's apparently time-travelled from some distant past where teenagers don't think they know it all and that all older people are simply outdated and out of touch. No, the Small Town Girl will ask and want the help of the nearest available pervert and treat every word as gospel.
She'll need your help getting a job since they don't have jobs websites, or employment agencies, in whatever distant village with no electricity she's supposed to be from. And she'll usually need your help again once she has a job and starts being abused by her boss (who has also time-travelled from the past before sexual harassment cases, and #metoo tweets). In fact, you'll probably have to employ her yourself somehow. Luckily, you'll always have some way to do so without the requirement of opening up the position to internal recruitment, or having to actually recruit someone qualified after advertising the vacancy.
I think it's inevitable that the basic theme for most games will be reused with some modifications in future games. I have no problem with that. We see the same thing for pretty much everything in the entertainment industry. Lots of sequels/remakes/copycats, very few truely original works. The execution is more important than the theme IMO.
- Are the renders good enough quality for the game to be worth playing?
- Do your choices in the game actually matter or do you end up in the same place no matter what choices you make? If the choices don't matter, then why bother having any choices?
- If choices do matter, do they lead to alternate scenes that are engaging enough to want to see? If not then it's still not much of a choice when you know you're just working to get a bad ending...
- Is there a clear "best" ending or are there multiple worthwhile paths to follow?
- Is there enough feedback between the game and the player that the player can gauge how well they're doing or are they playing blind? When I make a poor choice does the game give me some signal that it was a poor choice or do I have to wait til I've wasted 5 hours making other random choices before I get the bad ending and then have no idea why?
- Related to the above, is there enough context for the choices I'm making for me to actually make an informed decision or am I just saving, picking random choice A, discovering that's wrong, reloading, and picking random choice B instead...
- Are the characters developed enough that you actually feel anything for them or are they just disposable fuck toys that you're trying to abuse?
- Do the mechanics for the game actually make sense? Am I clicking on spinning disks or some other arbitrary pointless annoyance to advance the scene or am I doing something that's actually relevant to the story like maybe actually interacting with a character or gathering/making use of info relevant to the scene somehow?
- Are the mechanics for advancing the story actually fun or is it just an annoying obstacle to overcome (see above spinning disks and other related minigames)
- Is there something that creates tension in the game like an antagonist, deadline, etc
- Is the difficulty set at something reasonable for someone without perfect knowledge of the mechanics? Can a new player figure out all of the endings in a reasonable number of playthroughs without any walkthrough?
- Are the renders good enough quality for the game to be worth playing?
- Do your choices in the game actually matter or do you end up in the same place no matter what choices you make? If the choices don't matter, then why bother having any choices?
- If choices do matter, do they lead to alternate scenes that are engaging enough to want to see? If not then it's still not much of a choice when you know you're just working to get a bad ending...
- Is there a clear "best" ending or are there multiple worthwhile paths to follow?
- Is there enough feedback between the game and the player that the player can gauge how well they're doing or are they playing blind? When I make a poor choice does the game give me some signal that it was a poor choice or do I have to wait til I've wasted 5 hours making other random choices before I get the bad ending and then have no idea why?
- Related to the above, is there enough context for the choices I'm making for me to actually make an informed decision or am I just saving, picking random choice A, discovering that's wrong, reloading, and picking random choice B instead...
- Are the characters developed enough that you actually feel anything for them or are they just disposable fuck toys that you're trying to abuse?
- Do the mechanics for the game actually make sense? Am I clicking on spinning disks or some other arbitrary pointless annoyance to advance the scene or am I doing something that's actually relevant to the story like maybe actually interacting with a character or gathering/making use of info relevant to the scene somehow?
- Are the mechanics for advancing the story actually fun or is it just an annoying obstacle to overcome (see above spinning disks and other related minigames)
- Is there something that creates tension in the game like an antagonist, deadline, etc
- Is the difficulty set at something reasonable for someone without perfect knowledge of the mechanics? Can a new player figure out all of the endings in a reasonable number of playthroughs without any walkthrough?
That's not really what this thread is about. As the title suggests, there's good, there's bad, and there's fugly. Some people who are really into screenwriting and film design will talk about "The language of film". In the language of film, tropes are like idioms. I'm not sure what your native tongue is, but an example in English would be, "Futanari are like having the best of both worlds, form and sexiness of a woman, with a nice big sensitive dick you can use to tease her". A good trope works to set us in familiar territory in spite of being in a completely foreign story.
That said, not all tropes are good. One I contributed to creating, but that was submitted by IHaveNoPornAndMustFap is the "Player Antagonist" which is a high concept trope wherein the character the player is controlling, the "protagonist" is actively working against the player's goals, namely, sex. It makes it difficult to get into the game because the character you're supposed to be empathizing with and who's actions you guide is a virtuous character who would never fall to the depravity of the characters that surround them, actively working against having sex. This trope needs to die. There's a way to tell these stories still without making the player and the protagonist work against one another, it's just a more complicated game to design.
The Stairway to Heaven is actually an example of a good trope that is constantly misused. The Stairway to Heaven, as you'll see multiple people on here admit, is a real thing. Physical relationships start slow:
- chatting
- innocent touches, like on the hand or a hug
- more intimate touching, a hand placed on the thigh, dancing with hands on hips or ass.
- kissing
- more passionate kissing
- "heavy petting"
- minor sexual acts
- insertion
- more depraved sexual acts
All that explained, what this thread is about is identifying those tropes and bringing them under the microscope to show how they've been used or abused in games to date.
- Sep 25, 2017
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- 1
Oh, this thread is a godsend! Now we can avoid these tropes. Anybody wants to give us a list? We really want to avoid most of these tropes. Thanks.
- Sep 25, 2017
- 6
- 1
- Aug 9, 2017
- 2,859
- 13,502
"You are high school/college student who's still virgin. You are living with your mum, older sister with psycho nature and a younger sister who's naive more than kindergarten kid."
I still try to play - hoping for, at least, passable story - but in most cases... Yeah.
I still try to play - hoping for, at least, passable story - but in most cases... Yeah.
As I said above, you don't always want to avoid them, you just want to use them well. Tropes are like Idioms, a skilled writer can use a common trope to create something wonderful.
As an example, a scene I have planned for a later project (neither of the two games I'm working on now) is a common anime trope:
This scene is common, but in a familiar way that humanizes the characters involved, makes the story, which will be a dark fantasy involving monsters and magic in a modern setting, relatable.
What's important is identifying the tropes, and knowing how NOT to use them. For instance, with the stairway to heaven. It's often abused by people who see the sexual content in the game as the "goal" or "reward". If you structure your narrative so that something else is the goal such as creating and maintaining a relationship, you can use the stairway and not have it feel like you're just teasing your players. A good example of this is Dreaming of Dana. In it, your goal isn't simply bedding your sister Dana, but finding a way to have your cake and eat it too(oh look another idiom). As a result the plot of the game revolves around finding a "beard", a person to act as your partner to the outside world, and who's in on the fact that your real relationship is with your sister. This allows the dev to use the stairway reasonably, with a relatively quick progression (albeit too much grinding to get the stats up) from dating to having sex, and then going beyond that with other crazy sexual antics.
Another game that uses the stairway well IMO, is Daughter For Dessert, wherein you do start small, but quickly accelerate from some minor sexual act to full penetration in all 3 holes in like 2 dates. How does the dev manage this? Well, the goals of the game revolve around strengthening the relationship with your daughter and keeping your diner afloat. Sex isn't the reward, it's just a part of the game.
There are some things to avoid, the "Retard in Lechertown" for instance is a very difficult trope to do well. See, its one thing if we are supposed to believe that your character is an alien from another planet, or a different plane of existence in which they didn't have sex, or at the very least, lust, the way we do here. But if your character is supposed to be a fully grown adult in this world where everyone is a rapist, then they should be prepared for that. The "Dad is a Dick" trope is another bad one, as it creates a villain who's just too powerful to overcome, turning your porn game into Dark Souls. In fact, you should be very careful with antagonists in general. Make them believable, people don't get by being abusive dicks turned up to 11 all the time. In fact, abusive dicks need to use psychological conditioning to get away with what they do. They make you believe that they love you so that when they fly into a rage you have this feeling that they don't mean it, that they love you and don't want to hurt you.
My best suggestion to you is to read the thread, looking specifically for the responses with trope descriptions in them, the games that have them, etc. Then after that, see if there are any replies to those that point out bad examples of it, so that you can avoid doing what that game does. Also, play a lot of the "bad" games that are mentioned.
Every Dev should play Dating my Daughter to know how NOT to use the Stairway to Heaven, and for that matter, Be a Gentleman, and No Life Dad. In this game you have the worst examples of all 3 of these. 19 releases in and the most we've gotten from the daughter is a pussy job, not vaginal sex, just rubbing it back and forth on your dick till you both cum. The name of the Be a Gentleman trope itself comes from the game over screens in this game in which any negative action ends with a game over and D telling you to Be a Gentleman, but it still encourages you to try, because you'll get some tantalizing scenes for it. And lastly, you are the quintessential no life dad, you have no relationships to speak of outside of work, your best friend is just a guy who shares your perversions and doesn't hang out with you outside of work, you have a hot boneable secretary, but you aren't, and you're treated like shit by your boss in spite of being a good earner. All of the sudden your daughter comes into your life and your secretary throws herself at you, you start fucking or at least getting close to her little friends, and other opportunities come you way, like the incest family in the beach town.
Meanwhile, Babysitter, written by the guy who created this thread, also has all 3 tropes. The Stairway is climbed much faster, and isn't treated as the reward for play, as the plot focuses on relationships of the characters and the subplots involving the romantic rivals. The Be a Gentleman trope is subverted, getting rid of the game overs by having you simply use spyware to do your peeping via webcams. And the No Life Dad element is treated like a character flaw that he's getting over as a result of finally getting his business off the ground, the fact that it happens to coincide with Christine's entrance into his life is just a serendipitous occurrence. He also has managed to write antagonists, the romantic rivals Silver and Robert, who are charismatic, likable, and even interesting, in spite of them being both your enemies for romantic reasons, as well as actual criminals with some degree of threat to them.
So yeah, read through all the tropes, play some of the games and take away from them what not to do, then as you're writing you'll be able to use them in a way that translates to a language we can all understand, but doesn't make your game suffer from their poor execution.
Villains/antagonists in general tend to be a serious weak point in most of the adult games I've tried. Either there isn't one at all which I feel is a bad design choice, or there is one but he's either a total psychopath with no redeeming qualities at all or he's a doormat (both of which severely limit the story options IMO). Hardly anyone in the real world is evil incarnate. Just because he's the antagonist doesn't mean he has to be the antichrist. Most of the time the villain is also either way too hard or way too easy to defeat.
Just as the protagonist or any of your other characters are made more interesting by having character flaws, an antagonist is made more interesting by having some positive attributes and a believeable story behind why they are the way they are. A properly done antagonist adds tension to the game and a sense of urgency. A poorly done antagonist can be either irrelevant or a constant source of frustration and annoyance rather than something that actually enhances the game. You want him to be a legitimate threat but not an overpowering one. Ideally the interests of both the antagonist and protagonist should sometimes have some overlap as well. Usually some type of ends justify the means scenario for 1 or both of you rather than both of you always opposing everything the other does. Makes for a less predictable story.
Antagonist? Turn it up to 11!
Does your male protagonist have a romantic rival? Make him a total dick with a shit ton of money and all the good looks! Is your protagonist a teenager living with dad still in the home? Make him a total dick who threatens to send you away or even kill you, especially if this is an incest game! Is your game a wonderful heartfelt romance with multiple well written characters and a feel good story? Burn it all down (literally) by having several over the top antagonist characters who absolutely wouldn't be able to function in a realistic society! Are you a girl who has to go work in the real world for the first time? Make all the men she can possibly interact with rapists!Lots of games, both those with seemingly talented writers and those without fall into this trap. A similar trope is that of the Mustache Twirling Villain. These characters aren't well explored and are just constantly dicks. They have no personality outside of the complete 1 dimensional monster the developer wants you to see. Sometimes this can be a good thing. A campy story in which you embrace the absurdity, for instance, or a good heroes journey, in which the ultimate evil should not be sympathetic, but a counterbalance to where you want to see your hero, but most of the games guilty of this are neither of these. Usually this antagonist is a sort of "Deus ex Machina" who can't be touched. Maybe you're given an option to do something in one scene or another, but find that doing anything will likely just make things worse, and that when the turn up again, which they will, you'll be caught completely off guard. Maybe they'll have control over the perceptions of you that other characters have. Regardless, this character will be a thorn in your side, and will destroy your enjoyment of the game.
Good:
- Waifu Academy
Bad:
- Both The Artifact and Incest Adventure's fathers
- Photographer and his brother in Dating My Daughter
Fugly: (This is gonna piss some people off)
- Acting Lessons
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- Name the Retard In Lechertown
- Eric Big Brother
@Burt Reynolds Mustache
Well, we tend to know or suspect the reasons behind abuse of Stairway to Heaven, and the lack of meaningful choices in games. In the former, it's because renders and animations take a lot of time and to enable sex with one or more major characters would involve frontloading a lot of the game development. In the latter, it's because meaningful choices multiply the development work by the number of choices or "tracks" available.
But if you change the game objective, like you said, from "have sex with X, Y and Z" to "achieve A, B and C", with sex happening along the way, then you open up the game more and you can create something new and interesting.
But if you change the game objective, like you said, from "have sex with X, Y and Z" to "achieve A, B and C", with sex happening along the way, then you open up the game more and you can create something new and interesting.
- Jul 19, 2017
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Brutal, and pretty accurate. I think the interesting thing when it comes to villains is that they absolutely NEED to fit into the story and atmosphere congruently. If you're making a crazy sci-fi or fantasy game, then a uber dark evil overlord who is smarter, more influential, and far more powerful than the MC makes perfect sense. In a Noir game you need some corrupt evil dude at the top to pull the strings. Which is why I think you calling Waifu Academy as one of the ones who did it right is perfect. The game embraces its camp, and so the over the top personalities work.
Anyone looking to use this trope, I would say make sure that your villain is neither a) all powerful (unless the setting calls for it); b) motivated solely by evil; and c) Seems like a person who could actually exist.
Also, if for the villain to succeed they need to either a) be super-humanly competent or b) rely on the hero and everyone attached to the hero being a total idiot, consider reworking the character.
- May 21, 2017
- 109
- 405
Well talking about villians most of the time is that the author does't know how to deal whit their own creations, you can make a villian as powerful as you like as long as you have planned how the MC is gonna deal whit them, but most of the times there is no thinking of that they just introduce them just because. Or if you go deeper sometimes the authors just don't even have the game story planned they just go along whit the flow or sometimes they have a story in their head but to please patreons they rekt their story or sometimes they lose motivation but have to keep producing the story to not lose patreons, etc. Some villans or just characters are introduced to please certain fetishes and not to be villains in the story. Then sometimes the Mc is just as bad as the villains, no redeem quality's at all. Big brother for example main character was the same as Eric but just lamer and weaker than him. That's why some people say make Eric the MC and you have a better game lol...
- Dec 10, 2017
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Meh, I've seen villains done badly in all sorts of media where the people writing have had a much longer time to refine their characters. My main villain are still tags that aren't correctly attributed, now those guys have to die ^^
From a writer's perspective that's a bit of a mess of misconceptions. First, lets talk about patron influence and Eric. Eric was not created by patrons or intended just to service a fetish. He was seeded from the beginning as a romantic rival to Max. Patron influence is what eventually led to DS making viable ways to get rid of Eric, and that is where he lost his motivation. Without a clear villain to pit you against he had to increase the "antagonism" of the relationship between max and the love interests. That made the game a drag to play and probably a drag to write. But Eric being an insurmountable challenge was always the plan, and that is why it is DS's fault for not having written it well.
But that brings up your point of a plan to get rid of them, and quite honestly, that's not true. When a villain is introduced early with insurmountable power and the actions you have to take merely to keep that villain from destroying you result in a monotonous grind that makes you feel like you're working rather than playing, you create a situation where the player's start to lose interest and even resent the game. That is where the patron pressure came in, people were no longer willing to support this masochistic experience. Even if DS had a plan to get rid of Eric later in the game, the fact that he made him so powerful so early was ruining the experience. If that power had been a slow build, Eric corrupting your mother while you had small inclinations that something was wrong, but nothing direct to point to until it was too late and he was all powerful, and then it became time to implement that plan to get rid of him, we'd have a perfectly fine villain. The problem wasn't that Eric hit 11, it's that Eric was always at 11.
The other examples I gave in my trope are all generally well received games. Two are by ICCreations, probably the second highest regarded dev here, after ICSTOR, in terms of consistency. The issue with them isn't planning, it's simply that there's no scale to the evil. The dad in The Artifact is trying to bring some evil warlock back, but there's no real inclination that this father ever cared about his son or the rest of his family, or how or why he became this evil, he just is, leaving him with no depth. Incest Adventure makes the dad absent for most of it, but once he's finally introduced he's over the top. He's cheating on your mom, hates you, and its not long before your natural reactions to expose him lead him to violence against you/your mother. There's no motivation, no inclination that he has any redeeming quality making the question, how did he remain a married father of two for this long?
Acting Lessons is one of the most well received games ever to grace the current market, and even a cursory glance will tell you it was meticulously plotted out. There are people who, even after the game jumps the shark with the completely out of left field dark tone are willing to call it the "Citizen Kane" of adult games. However, as I just said, completely out of left field. If Dr. Pink Cake had taken the time to better develop the antagonists, given us a view of them at a 5 or a 6, then gradually dialed them up to 11, we wouldn't have felt whiplash at their sudden destructive tendencies. And then for him to create a hidden psychopath who, quite frankly, doesn't have any justification in the game for being what she is, aside from "Well she's crazy", and you have to sit back and realize, if you don't develop your villains well it doesn't matter how good your character development with the "good guys" was.
- Oct 10, 2017
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@DarthSeduction i'd say you missed the ever-present bully in each and every game with a college setup from your list. You know, the type of guy who kicks the shit out of the mc right infront of the teacher's office or at the main lobby where the security guy sits, in the yard or frankly right infront of your hot woman prof or love interest or perhaps half the school. After that the mc usually ends up knocked out but when he wakes? Is either in a hospital or still there lying on the floor and his love-interests helps him up. But thats it. Everybody acts as if nothing happened, everything is alright, its perfectly normal if a guy gets hospitalized or left unconscious on the floor in college.
BUT.. if you dare lift a finger at the bully, for example smack him in the face thats barely enough to make him stagger a bit or (godforbids!) lose his balance and trip... the dean always -ALWAYS- immediately appears and you are threatend to be expelled (if not immediately expelled), get chewed out and probably facing a lawsuit as well. And naturally everyone is horrified by your brutish action, except maybe that single girl you tried to protect.
So i'd add The Bull
to your list.
I'm still looking for that single game where this isn't the case with any shool setup. Interestingly, in Waifu Academy we can rough them up but we are pretty much the antagonist there.
BUT.. if you dare lift a finger at the bully, for example smack him in the face thats barely enough to make him stagger a bit or (godforbids!) lose his balance and trip... the dean always -ALWAYS- immediately appears and you are threatend to be expelled (if not immediately expelled), get chewed out and probably facing a lawsuit as well. And naturally everyone is horrified by your brutish action, except maybe that single girl you tried to protect.
So i'd add The Bull
to your list.I'm still looking for that single game where this isn't the case with any shool setup. Interestingly, in Waifu Academy we can rough them up but we are pretty much the antagonist there.
- May 3, 2017
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We are talking games here - this is turning into a philosophical discussion about good writing. It stands to define first and foremost if a 'visual novel' qualifies as a game at all to begin with. Just because a novel becomes a bit interactive by giving the reader some choices doesnt make it a game. Games present the player with a clear set of rules, a goal to achieve or if meant as a more sandboxed environment at least the rules and a playing field to use at the players choice inside a given rule set.
Visual novels are mostly an interactive or pepped up book - that's it. Choices and visuals are just a extension of what the usual limits are in a finished book.
Having this established it also becomes very clear why so many VNs fail and are felt to be incomplete, badly done (with regards to villain to stay in your last topic) or simply are neither a VN or game to begin with.
I heavily agree with @nyalest that many authors of novel games have done bad jobs due to both outside pressure from patreon users or just because they filled gaps and holes with arbitrary introduced characters when things failed or they needed something to rectify some fetish.
Villains are basically an element of the game mechanics - or are at least supposed to be. They have to fulfil a certain purpose inside the given set of rules which have to apply to all NPCs and the player. The second a developer (or writer in those cases) introduces 'overpowered' characters the player (or reader here) feels cheated or betrayed. Many many game developers did similar mistakes with bosses or level endings by introducing special mechanics that just applied to those all the sudden. Most if not all of these games have had terrible reviews and ratings.
Visual novels are mostly an interactive or pepped up book - that's it. Choices and visuals are just a extension of what the usual limits are in a finished book.
Having this established it also becomes very clear why so many VNs fail and are felt to be incomplete, badly done (with regards to villain to stay in your last topic) or simply are neither a VN or game to begin with.
I heavily agree with @nyalest that many authors of novel games have done bad jobs due to both outside pressure from patreon users or just because they filled gaps and holes with arbitrary introduced characters when things failed or they needed something to rectify some fetish.
Villains are basically an element of the game mechanics - or are at least supposed to be. They have to fulfil a certain purpose inside the given set of rules which have to apply to all NPCs and the player. The second a developer (or writer in those cases) introduces 'overpowered' characters the player (or reader here) feels cheated or betrayed. Many many game developers did similar mistakes with bosses or level endings by introducing special mechanics that just applied to those all the sudden. Most if not all of these games have had terrible reviews and ratings.
It's been a while since I played incest adventure, but it would been a good example of that guy. TBH, I haven't played many games in which a bully was a big deal.
I mean, I did include Waifu Academy.
Offcuts, which, surprisingly handles its antagonists well. And Seraphim Academy(Shameless self plug). Milfy City gets out without one of those too, interestingly enough.
But yeah, I don't play a lot of games with a school setting, so I'm not all that well versed in school setting tropes in games.
No, we're talking Tropes here, which is literally a factor of writing.
And you lost me. Sorry, not here to debate what is and isn't a game.
- May 3, 2017
- 1,473
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The topic is about porn games - so its more than relevant to get some definitions in place before discussing writing style