Porn Game Tropes: The good, the bad, and the fugly

[redknight00]

I do not agree. I find most characters in russian literature boring as hell and annoying, but they certainly have depth.

It's an introduction approach to game design. If the player can associate the cast with characters and not with objects - you have a much higher chance of him getting involved in the game. If the cast in the player head goes like "MILF1, Flat-chested-teen, idiot brother, some whore, teen-with-jugs, MILF 2 and 3...", there is a good chance he would not really care about the cast to get to know them. Let's take incest games for example.
If we want to keep up with the standard cast, there is a huge chance the player will just ignore them. Big sis is a bitch, lil sis is shy, mom is overworked, aunt is a perverted gold digger or just a slut (hopefully there are not twin nieces). It does nothing to the player. Seen it a million times. You can vary it a bit and shake it up, but if you want to use the classic trope - you must think of some way to make those characters interesting from the start. Maybe we get introduced to the bitch sister in a moment where she is vulnerable (maybe they just released some revenge porn with her). Maybe the little sister comes home so excited about her new book, that she ignores you. Maybe mom is not overworked and is actually an alcoholic trying to keep it together and we meet her drunk as fuck. Maybe we meet the aunt when her husband directly tells her he is going to his lover. Or that he is bringing a prostitute tonight for a threesome. Or something - yeah, she is a gold digger, but showing her humiliated or excited by such a thing will make her something more than "Milf2". Maybe the twins are dead (god, please!).
It doesn't need to be anything above a quirk, a trait, a habit. It just needs to make them interesting, captivating for just that moment. To not make the player think about them as blanks, but as characters. "This is my big sister and she is a bitch" does nothing for the player.
A good introduction by proxy also helps - maybe you meet the big sister... when somebody shows you the revenge porn! Great place to establish the MCs attitude, btw - will you get protective? Will you be happy she is humiliated? And now we have the seeds of a story arc for the big sister and at least one other character (whoever showed you that porn).
This is what I mean by interesting characters. Because we have a very short time to introduce somebody. And if the player gives no shits about them - there is a good chance they will just rush trough any depth shown later on. "It's MILF2, let me fuck her already!"

That's no lack of depth, it's a good example of how to use tropes to improve a story, using the familiarity the player has with the character archetypes used to speed up the plot and introduce conflict and story arcs.

 

[RogueKnightUK]

I'm simply a fan of creativity.

I love books, films, TV shows, music, artworks, architecture and have found that in all of them, the ones that tell a tale, that say something, tend to be more enjoyable. Where tropes become an alternative to creativity, rather than a tool for it, I despair.

Parts of Big Brother I didn't mind, as it was like a slapstick comedy. The MC being continually referred to as a moronic pervert and only vaguely denying was quite amusing. There was some genuine creativity to the game - which sadly is probably why it was copied into tropes by so many others that didn't even know they had other choices. (I have this temptation at times to take the artwork from BB and reuse it to create a completely different experience - just for the fun of it.)

Emotional connection to the characters in VNs seems, to me, to be the rarest thing, and especially rare that I feel that connection with the MC. Sure, there are characters within the games that I can recognise and connect with, Liam being an obvious example of course, but also Jane in College Life. But by and large, the MCs are much harder to connect with and feel empathy with, given the weird choices most seem limited to. I think 'Our Fate' is the best, at least for me, so far, although props to 'Babysitter' for not being too far behind.

Of course, just creating good characters is only one side of the many sides needed to create a good game. Honestly, game creativity is more complex in many ways than writing a book or making a movie. Because you don't just have the creativity of creating an engaging story with engaging characters. You also have to creatively design a dynamic player experience. Gameplay design and mechanics require their own creativity because no matter how good the characters and story arc, it's dependant on the gameplay experience whether that will be transmitted well.

A life sim that makes you click the same three activities each morning for example, to have a shower, make breakfast, and get dressed, is a bad mechanic and bad gameplay experience. You've actually designed the game to feel repetitive and pointless in action. By all means make the character do those 2-3 days in a row to illustrate that some tasks in life are mundane, but from the 3rd or 4th morning, just have a 'morning rituals' choice that assumes you do all the usual things and just cuts to either what is different today, or to the next meaningful choice with whatever time has passed.

 

[hameleona]

A life sim that makes you click the same three activities each morning for example, to have a shower, make breakfast, and get dressed, is a bad mechanic and bad gameplay experience. You've actually designed the game to feel repetitive and pointless in action. By all means make the character do those 2-3 days in a row to illustrate that some tasks in life are mundane, but from the 3rd or 4th morning, just have a 'morning rituals' choice that assumes you do all the usual things and just cuts to either what is different today, or to the next meaningful choice with whatever time has passed.

Well, those are decent places to drop infodumps and random lewd scenes. If the game has no quest log those are also good places to re-evaluate the state of the game (especially for episodic releases). Otherwise - yes. Bad idea as a whole.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Well, those are decent places to drop infodumps and random lewd scenes. If the game has no quest log those are also good places to re-evaluate the state of the game (especially for episodic releases). Otherwise - yes. Bad idea as a whole.

Yeah, I used a shower scene in Seraphim for an infodump, but you got to watch to hot high school girls lather up... so it was worth it. But definitely a bad idea on the whole if it's a repetitive task. We have a trope for banality sims already if I'm not mistaken. If you're gonna use a shower scene it should be either for lewd content or to further the story, and in most cases, both.

 

[RogueKnightUK]

Well, those are decent places to drop infodumps and random lewd scenes. If the game has no quest log those are also good places to re-evaluate the state of the game (especially for episodic releases). Otherwise - yes. Bad idea as a whole.

I think, for me, that is exactly where game design should be doing more.

If you were a developer making a game that is going to need to have info dumps, why not design that into the game properly? Perhaps each night the MC writes a diary, and when there's info to go over, have the scene of it. On other days, it simply gets mentioned that he updated his diary before going to sleep. Now we have a character who keeps a diary, and a part of the game experience and immersion for the necessary data dumps and reflections. I think 'Waifu Academy' has a pretty good mechanic for the data dumps which fits into the MCs character as a plotter of dark plots.

Random Lewds I'm not so sure have a place at all. Nothing should be truly random in a good story. Random events in games tend to be added just to pad out content a bit or create an element of replayability, and I can't really see bumping into mum/girlfriend's sister on the way to the shower randomly actually making the game worth a second play.

 

[Burt Reynolds Mustache]

Casual Sexual Assault

In the real world, sexual assault is awful... it is a traumatic event that can haunt its victims for years, can cause severe physical and psychological trauma, and is considered by most to not be sexy. Not so in porn games. Porn games seem to exist in a rape culture, quite literally. Rape is common, attempted rape more so. Gangs of potential rapists roam the streets and sooner or later, the heroines of your game will be attacked, with only the MC there to protect them. Thankfully sexual assault is SO MUCH a part of the culture, the attempted (or occasionally completed) rape will have next to no lasting emotional trauma, or any lasting effect at all other than making whatever girl was almost raped want sex with the MC more than she did before. Casual Sexual Assault is just that, casual. It happens so often that it isn't even worth notice. It is dangerous enough to be a sufficient threat to save her from, but still minimal enough that it creates no lasting damage, or god forbid, slows down the ascent of the Stairway to Heaven. There will never be a mention of the incident again, one simple conversation will be more than enough to heal any trauma, and it will in no way turn the girl off from sex.

Full penetrative rape is uncommon with this trope, but not unheard of, generally speaking, the assault will end well before genitals are on display, and at most well before the girls can be tainted by some other dude. It's all about the power fantasy after all. A small subset of this trope might have a unimportant side girl actually get raped, just to show how hardcore the bad guy actually is.

Now even when you know who the rapist is, calling the police is right out, even when there are witnesses and an airtight case. In some cases this is justified,

If the main character is the one initiating the assault, it is more often than not a Casual Sexual Assault, it's most likely a case of "Rape Em Till they Love You".

None of this is to say that rape cannot be used in a story. Hell, it can even be the basis for a fetish game. This trope specifically calls out the use of sexual assault as disposable peril. Physical abuse is often, though not as often as sexual assault, used in a similar way. This trope is also not about agressive attempts at hitting on a girl, or the list would be at least twice as long. This sexual assault requires violence, or the threat of violence, or the threat of rape.

This trope is in almost every single game that tries to show the heroine or one of the harem in danger. A nowhere near exhaustive list follows:
Depraved Awakening (Mi-do. Assaulted, and possibly raped... gets over it in a matter of hours. )
Babysitter (Christine is assaulted by a homeless man on the train, because of reasons)
Parental Love (Elly is almost raped TWICE within as many days, with her big buff Dad having to step in both times. She shows zero negative effects from the assaults)
Dating My Daughter (Nearly raped by Lucas... shows no negative effects afterward)
Love and Submission (Becky is almost raped by a gang member after being assaulted in her place of work earlier)
Retrieving the Past (A bunch of different times, random college frat boys assault one girl, for example. One character is raped off-screen (with text showing what happened)
My New Life (The sex trainer is almost raped, and is fine afterwards. One minigame has the loser get raped. One of your teachers is drugged and assaulted)
Lexi (Lexi and her sister can be attacked with a few different results. The worst on having the main girl stripped and handcuffed to a pipe while her sister is attacked on the street. They seem no worse for wear the next day.)
Acting Lessons (Megan is almost raped by Peter, and is fine literally hours later.)
Our Fate (Handled better than most in that there is a discussion with your daughter after the assault, however, she is still perfectly fine the next day)
Every Japanese game... EVER (Ok not so much... but a LOT of them.)
Coceter Chronicles (kinda standard business after a while.)
Dreams of Desire (Mother is hooked up to a rape machine, with apparently no ill effects afterward)
Incest Story 2 (Mother is sexually assaulted, and gets over it very quickly so long as you save her)
And a ton of others I am sure I have forgotten.

Lampshaded in Incest Story 1, with the streets being filled with random rapists with their cocks out.

 

[RogueKnightUK]

Oh so true ... and so completely unnecessary. It's that thing of the difference between 'horror' and 'dread'. Dread is by far the more meaningful and powerful, and doesn't even need the actual horror event to happen, only to be dreaded. Meanwhile, a horror scene that has no dread aspect falls completely flat (something I wish Acting Lessons had known with the fire that is a non-event at the time with permanent after-effects).

A near-rape incident is actually a better event, with all the same weight of realisation of danger, than a rape itself.

 

[hameleona]

I think, for me, that is exactly where game design should be doing more.

If you were a developer making a game that is going to need to have info dumps, why not design that into the game properly? Perhaps each night the MC writes a diary, and when there's info to go over, have the scene of it. On other days, it simply gets mentioned that he updated his diary before going to sleep. Now we have a character who keeps a diary, and a part of the game experience and immersion for the necessary data dumps and reflections. I think 'Waifu Academy' has a pretty good mechanic for the data dumps which fits into the MCs character as a plotter of dark plots.

Random Lewds I'm not so sure have a place at all. Nothing should be truly random in a good story. Random events in games tend to be added just to pad out content a bit or create an element of replayability, and I can't really see bumping into mum/girlfriend's sister on the way to the shower randomly actually making the game worth a second play.

Game design is way more complex, than people imagine, but also way simpler than a lot of people make it out to be. I feel adult games are slowly grasping the idea, that very few people can be good coders, CGI artists, game designers AND writers at the same time. A lot of devs are also actively looking at what people like and not and even taking feedback in to account. That's good usually, tho there are games that seem to have been "ruined by patrons". Hopefully we will see more games who have actual writers and designers involved.

Well, several games use "take a shower" for a place to let the MC fantasize about sex with someone. I personally don't like it, but if you feel for some reason the need to appease the "why no sex already" crowd - that's a better place (along with dreams) than a random slut. I think we can do better with the random sluts, than bowing to the "need-fap-now" crowd. Even if we decide to be formulaic.
Also the example of @DarthSeduction - showering with someone for lewds and infodump. Win-win.

Now, let me check the new trope.

 

[Burt Reynolds Mustache]

A near-rape incident is actually a better event, with all the same weight of realisation of danger, than a rape itself.

Well, aren't most of the ones I listed a near-rape event? Actual completed rapes are surprisingly rare. But that is kind of my point. The Sexual Assault happens, but it is often stopped by the MC to show off and provide a hero fantasy... when that doesn't happen it is simply to add a level of danger. I need to reiterate that tropes are not bad in and of themselves. But I would say to authors and designers that realize that even a "stopped" assault can be, and often is, traumatic in and of itself. Hell, a friend of mine was unsuccessfully mugged, something that is considered far less traumatic than a sexual assault, attempted or not, and it fucked with them for a long time.

This trope I think is in many ways an extension of "Every man but the MC is an asshole." A sexual assault, whether successful or not is shorthand for saving a girl from the "worst thing that could happen" and thus making the MC more sexually attractive. But it is rarely if ever more than that. And even in the cases where it isn't, it becomes a danger to the girl to show that things can get real... but not TOO real... because something that traumatic is just shrugged off afterwards.

 

[Burt Reynolds Mustache]

Game design is way more complex, than people imagine, but also way simpler than a lot of people make it out to be. I feel adult games are slowly grasping the idea, that very few people can be good coders, CGI artists, game designers AND writers at the same time. A lot of devs are also actively looking at what people like and not and even taking feedback in to account. That's good usually, tho there are games that seem to have been "ruined by patrons". Hopefully we will see more games who have actual writers and designers involved.

Well, several games use "take a shower" for a place to let the MC fantasize about sex with someone. I personally don't like it, but if you feel for some reason the need to appease the "why no sex already" crowd - that's a better place (along with dreams) than a random slut. I think we can do better with the random sluts, than bowing to the "need-fap-now" crowd. Even if we decide to be formulaic.
Also the example of @DarthSeduction - showering with someone for lewds and infodump. Win-win.

Now, let me check the new trope.

One I want to get to eventually is the "watch the MC jerk off trope" which is personally baffling to me. Yeah I know, we're dudes... we fap a lot. I just do not see the desire to watch my avatar fap alone in my room, for no reason. It can often be a way to throw in a dream sequence... I suppose.

 

[DarthSeduction]

This trope I think is in many ways an extension of "Every man but the MC is an asshole."

All bad guys are rapists! (Insert cenemasins ding)

 

[DarthSeduction]

One I want to get to eventually is the "watch the MC jerk off trope" which is personally baffling to me. Yeah I know, we're dudes... we fap a lot. I just do not see the desire to watch my avatar fap alone in my room, for no reason. It can often be a way to throw in a dream sequence... I suppose.

For when you do, here's the perfect pic to go with it.

 

[hameleona]

Casual Sexual Assault

In the real world, sexual assault is awful... it is a traumatic event that can haunt its victims for years, can cause severe physical and psychological trauma, and is considered by most to not be sexy. Not so in porn games. Porn games seem to exist in a rape culture, quite literally. Rape is common, attempted rape more so. Gangs of potential rapists roam the streets and sooner or later, the heroines of your game will be attacked, with only the MC there to protect them. Thankfully sexual assault is SO MUCH a part of the culture, the attempted (or occasionally completed) rape will have next to no lasting emotional trauma, or any lasting effect at all other than making whatever girl was almost raped want sex with the MC more than she did before. Casual Sexual Assault is just that, casual. It happens so often that it isn't even worth notice. It is dangerous enough to be a sufficient threat to save her from, but still minimal enough that it creates no lasting damage, or god forbid, slows down the ascent of the Stairway to Heaven. There will never be a mention of the incident again, one simple conversation will be more than enough to heal any trauma, and it will in no way turn the girl off from sex.

Full penetrative rape is uncommon with this trope, but not unheard of, generally speaking, the assault will end well before genitals are on display, and at most well before the girls can be tainted by some other dude. It's all about the power fantasy after all. A small subset of this trope might have a unimportant side girl actually get raped, just to show how hardcore the bad guy actually is.

Now even when you know who the rapist is, calling the police is right out, even when there are witnesses and an airtight case. In some cases this is justified,

If the main character is the one initiating the assault, it is more often than not a Casual Sexual Assault, it's most likely a case of "Rape Em Till they Love You".

None of this is to say that rape cannot be used in a story. Hell, it can even be the basis for a fetish game. This trope specifically calls out the use of sexual assault as disposable peril. Physical abuse is often, though not as often as sexual assault, used in a similar way. This trope is also not about agressive attempts at hitting on a girl, or the list would be at least twice as long. This sexual assault requires violence, or the threat of violence, or the threat of rape.

This trope is in almost every single game that tries to show the heroine or one of the harem in danger. A nowhere near exhaustive list follows:
Depraved Awakening (Mi-do. Assaulted, and possibly raped... gets over it in a matter of hours. )
Babysitter (Christine is assaulted by a homeless man on the train, because of reasons)
Parental Love (Elly is almost raped TWICE within as many days, with her big buff Dad having to step in both times. She shows zero negative effects from the assaults)
Dating My Daughter (Nearly raped by Lucas... shows no negative effects afterward)
Love and Submission (Becky is almost raped by a gang member after being assaulted in her place of work earlier)
Retrieving the Past (A bunch of different times, random college frat boys assault one girl, for example. One character is raped off-screen (with text showing what happened)
My New Life (The sex trainer is almost raped, and is fine afterwards. One minigame has the loser get raped. One of your teachers is drugged and assaulted)
Lexi (Lexi and her sister can be attacked with a few different results. The worst on having the main girl stripped and handcuffed to a pipe while her sister is attacked on the street. They seem no worse for wear the next day.)
Acting Lessons (Megan is almost raped by Peter, and is fine literally hours later.)
Our Fate (Handled better than most in that there is a discussion with your daughter after the assault, however, she is still perfectly fine the next day)
Every Japanese game... EVER (Ok not so much... but a LOT of them.)
Coceter Chronicles (kinda standard business after a while.)
Dreams of Desire (Mother is hooked up to a rape machine, with apparently no ill effects afterward)
Incest Story 2 (Mother is sexually assaulted, and gets over it very quickly so long as you save her)
And a ton of others I am sure I have forgotten.

Lampshaded in Incest Story 1, with the streets being filled with random rapists with their cocks out.

I agree as a whole, but with Mi-do IIRC it's more "used to it", than "gets over it". Yes, people can get used to being raped. This doesn't mean in any way they are not broken or traumatized, but they can be used to it to a point they can (to quote a really good movie) "take a hot bath and forget about it". It's a complex and uncomfortable topic and I don't really want to go in to it (especially since it is bound to attract two very specific subsets of people that I can't stand), but it's not as clear cut as "Rape or attempted rape = huge trauma". Still, since it's usually used as a Break the cutie tool, the instant mental recovery is at best strange.

Also there are HUGE cultural differences in the assault (basically what is considered a sexual assault) and the reaction to it (self-blame being alien to some cultures for example). What is normal and accepted in some places can land you in jail in others.

We also need "Police is useless" trope. That's something prevalent in way too many games (if not all) and main reason a lot of cases get dismissed is not witnesses (a lot of offenders there).

 

[RogueKnightUK]

"If you can't write it as a scene, write it as a dream" pretty much is it's own trope.

 

[DarthSeduction]

I agree as a whole, but with Mi-do IIRC it's more "used to it", than "gets over it".

I think it's safe to say that the scene you eventually save her from is a huge escalation in powerlessness and violence. Even if she wasn't traumatized by the act itself, the subsequent escape from captivity and being chased through the woods by a crazy irishman with a crossbow would be enough to give anyone major trauma.

 

[hameleona]

I think it's safe to say that the scene you eventually save her from is a huge escalation in powerlessness and violence. Even if she wasn't traumatized by the act itself, the subsequent escape from captivity and being chased through the woods by a crazy irishman with a crossbow would be enough to give anyone major trauma.

Kind of. But keep in mind the style of the game - film noir with modern action spread around. Save the girl - bed the girl is a trope in those genres. I think it being overused is one of the reasons people started to push against the Damsel in Distress trope.

 

[RogueKnightUK]

Actually, near-death experiences are often known to result in lust, or rather, it seems that Evolution favoured genetics that had a last attempt to breed in the face (or aftermath) of high life-risk. Sometimes it gets categorized more as 'affirmation of life in the face of death', and written more as euphoria at survival, but it seems to be the same instinct in play either way - and it is instinct.

Some things our ancient and supposedly less-wise ancestors were absolutely right about. Categorisation of sex as one of the 'base instincts' is one of those. The oldest part of evolved brain is the amygdala, sometimes colloquially called 'the lizard brain'. It controls the most basic of survival instincts which neuroscientists sometimes jokingly call "The four Fs" - imagine it being the override, the first response that, being so basic and in it's position at the base of the brain, closest to the nervous system, always fires before and overriding all other cognitive function. It effectively has four considerations (the four Fs):

Do I Fear it? (Fight/Flight response instinct).
Is it Food?
Can I Fuck it?
Forget it, let another part of the brain worry about it.

Now, the procreative imperative of the amygdala rarely kicks in in the way that the fear response or food response does - except in conditions of extreme stress. But when it does, as with the aforementioned near-death experience, it can be as powerful an instinct as the fight or flight response, and comes from the exact same part of the brain. The rest of the time, the amygdala's influence on sex is merely to trigger feeling randy/horny, which the conscious mind and higher brain then rationalises before action.

 

[redknight00]

I think if there's none yet, a good trope would be related to physical space in porn games. A lot of them keeps the player large amounts of time in small spaces with an unnaturally high number of hot women per square meter.

 

[hameleona]

I think if there's none yet, a good trope would be related to physical space in porn games. A lot of them keeps the player large amounts of time in small spaces with an unnaturally high number of hot women per square meter.

Porn-time dilation?
Personal space has an inverted correlation with the number of girls there are in the game?

 

[megaplayboy10k]

The Implausible Reason to Fuck(IRF)
This is actually a trope common to almost all porn/erotica. Especially true in incest games. Sure, Mom has sociocultural conditioning, religious and moral values and millenia of evo psych telling her that fucking her son is wrong and feels wrong, but she's super horny or she saw his huge cock or he's been so nice to her lately or she's just doing it to help him get over it. Etc. Basically, lots of characters don't have really good reasons to hop in bed with the MC(who may be much younger, a complete stranger, a blood relative, a student in their class and so forth), but the dev has to throw out something remotely plausible in order to move things along.
Examples: too numerous to mention