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

[whiskeyrose]

I get that. My suggestion was to change the "payoff" part of it. Perhaps the payoff is different sex positions, costumes, etc. Really, they could sacrifice a few dozen handjob renders and move things along briskly, instead of padding out the space between "reward" type h-content.

My other point was that you could have a system that indicates progress without assigning "stats" or "numbers" to it. "She feels really close to you now", "She seems less hesitant to try new things now", etc.

Yeah, the difficulty is that there really does need to be numerical stats in a game by the nature of it. And often times when you hide those variables from the player it feels more frustrating than intuitive. Usually it devolves into "How many times do I have to buy her lunch before something happens." as opposed to seeing some sort of stat threshold to work to.

And the stairway to heaven has two uses. The afore mentioned 'feeling of progress' for a player is one. But also its for trickling content from your patreon. If there was some more realistic relationships then creators might have to be creative in new scenes rather than just updating a change log to say "mom's handjob scene added, Sisters anal scene added."

 

[megaplayboy10k]

Yeah, the difficulty is that there really does need to be numerical stats in a game by the nature of it. And often times when you hide those variables from the player it feels more frustrating than intuitive. Usually it devolves into "How many times do I have to buy her lunch before something happens." as opposed to seeing some sort of stat threshold to work to.

And the stairway to heaven has two uses. The afore mentioned 'feeling of progress' for a player is one. But also its for trickling content from your patreon. If there was some more realistic relationships then creators might have to be creative in new scenes rather than just updating a change log to say "mom's handjob scene added, Sisters anal scene added."

Well, you can either 1) hide the stats and instead give other indications of progress, or 2) use a true/false conditional and check off whether the conditions are met("if you do 3 out of 5 of these things, X will happen"). It's a bit closer to how women make decisions, imo. The game can have a hint function so that players don't get frustrated. Did I really need to go through 15 days of Sophia getting more comfortable around me in the sauna? Well, according to the "stat thresholds", I needed to do that to advance.

The problem with the STH approach is that you get to a point where all games look the same and the player resentment starts to build. You could still trickle out content but just be more judicious about what you actually create with whatever bandwidth available. "Added location where nothing happens yet" can probably wait until you have something to do there, e.g.

 

[Segnbora]

Perhaps the payoff is different sex positions, costumes, etc.

A few releases of The Babysitter ago there was a scene where what your sex partner would do was based more on what you did (and in what order) than existing stat builds (though those were present in the background). That was a happy surprise, in that I used to see those mechanics all the time in the old Lesson of Passion games (before they settled on their current formula), but they seem to have mostly disappeared in modern games in favor of stats and/or conditions that need to be met before the sex

As for the Stairway, just reordering the steps from time to time would be nice. The dev could still parcel out content, but it wouldn't always look the same for every character. I've met a number of people willing to have intercourse pretty early in a relationship but who think oral's to be saved for real intimacy. Anal as an alternative to losing one's "virginity" is also a thing that happens, though probably not as often as it does in stories. (And we do have a game — Project Sage — that's pursuing that very idea.) Being willing to have penetrative sex but only with condoms until some future threshold is reached is something that's not used nearly as often as it could be...especially considering it allows you to double the number of threshold events. It doesn't always have to look the same.

 

[Proto Persona]

I get that. My suggestion was to change the "payoff" part of it. Perhaps the payoff is different sex positions, costumes, etc. Really, they could sacrifice a few dozen handjob renders and move things along briskly, instead of padding out the space between "reward" type h-content.

My other point was that you could have a system that indicates progress without assigning "stats" or "numbers" to it. "She feels really close to you now", "She seems less hesitant to try new things now", etc.

Everyone on Patreon is milking people for their money. Many are judicious and fair about it, but almost all of them are trickling out content at a slow enough pace to 1) make updates come out at a humanly possible pace while 2) keeping customers engaged long term. It's a balancing act, and many of them don't get it right. You call it padding, but unless a creator has a ton of ideas they can do quickly the money is going to dry up fast.

Well, you can either 1) hide the stats and instead give other indications of progress, or 2) use a true/false conditional and check off whether the conditions are met("if you do 3 out of 5 of these things, X will happen"). It's a bit closer to how women make decisions, imo. The game can have a hint function so that players don't get frustrated. Did I really need to go through 15 days of Sophia getting more comfortable around me in the sauna? Well, according to the "stat thresholds", I needed to do that to advance.

The problem with the STH approach is that you get to a point where all games look the same and the player resentment starts to build. You could still trickle out content but just be more judicious about what you actually create with whatever bandwidth available. "Added location where nothing happens yet" can probably wait until you have something to do there, e.g.

I'm not saying the current systems are better, just easier. You're expecting creators to work harder, when the current methods make money. That's just not the route most people are going to take when they are one creator or a tiny team.

You say hide the stats and give better hints. That means more writing and structure, and not an insignificant amount of work. After all that, people are still gonna complain that the hints aren't specific enough. Most patrons are only paying to see the porn. I'd wager the vast majority of them are men. Most men couldn't give less of a shit about the great plot and realistic characters, those are just nice bonuses. Anything that makes the porn take longer to reach is going to be seen as a hassle. You say it's boring to just fill up a number. I say it's easy to see how much longer till I see her tits.

You say you're wanting more realistic portrayals of relationships and characters. For most creators the work is just not worth it when the majority of the people funding you are just looking for tits (oral, anal, vaginas, ect).

 

[megaplayboy10k]

Everyone on Patreon is milking people for their money. Many are judicious and fair about it, but almost all of them are trickling out content at a slow enough pace to 1) make updates come out at a humanly possible pace while 2) keeping customers engaged long term. It's a balancing act, and many of them don't get it right. You call it padding, but unless a creator has a ton of ideas they can do quickly the money is going to dry up fast.


I'm not saying the current systems are better, just easier. You're expecting creators to work harder, when the current methods make money. That's just not the route most people are going to take when they are one creator or a tiny team.

You say hide the stats and give better hints. That means more writing and structure, and not an insignificant amount of work. After all that, people are still gonna complain that the hints aren't specific enough. Most patrons are only paying to see the porn. I'd wager the vast majority of them are men. Most men couldn't give less of a shit about the great plot and realistic characters, those are just nice bonuses. Anything that makes the porn take longer to reach is going to be seen as a hassle. You say it's boring to just fill up a number. I say it's easy to see how much longer till I see her tits.

You say you're wanting more realistic portrayals of relationships and characters. For most creators the work is just not worth it when the majority of the people funding you are just looking for tits (oral, anal, vaginas, ect).

That makes game devs on Patreon sound like the game industry equivalent of cam girls. Which is seriously depressing. "Don't tell me a funny anecdote about your day, I'm just here for my hit of oxy."

 

[Proto Persona]

That makes game devs on Patreon sound like the game industry equivalent of cam girls. Which is seriously depressing. "Don't tell me a funny anecdote about your day, I'm just here for my hit of oxy."

When it comes down to it, there's probably a lot of crossover between the lives of a cam girl and a porn game maker. Small team of creators, usually a solo act, having to constantly come up with a stream of content slow enough to not run out of ideas, but fast and unique enough to keep people engaged and coming back for another good time. Long crazy hours as you try to keep up with the demands for content from a very fickle audience. Ultimately you're only a step or two away from being a prostitute, with all the cultural baggage that entails. And at any time the whole thing can fall apart and leave you unemployed with barely any marketable skills or experience, if you can even mention how you got them. Though I guess game creators have it a bit easier in that last category since computer skills can be transferable.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

When it comes down to it, there's probably a lot of crossover between the lives of a cam girl and a porn game maker. Small team of creators, usually a solo act, having to constantly come up with a stream of content slow enough to not run out of ideas, but fast and unique enough to keep people engaged and coming back for another good time. Long crazy hours as you try to keep up with the demands for content from a very fickle audience. Ultimately you're only a step or two away from being a prostitute, with all the cultural baggage that entails. And at any time the whole thing can fall apart and leave you unemployed with barely any marketable skills or experience, if you can even mention how you got them. Though I guess game creators have it a bit easier in that last category since computer skills can be transferable.

I suspect that there are some who started out doing it as a labor of love, then got on Patreon once they found out they could make money doing it. There are others who jumped on the bandwagon to try to make a buck, and others somewhere in between(they enjoy creating the work, but the appeal of being paid to do it is strong too).

 

[RogueKnightUK]

The answer perhaps is the obvious one - have the stats be an indicator to the player, but have them function as the chance for an all-or-nothing decision.

 

[Proto Persona]

The answer perhaps is the obvious one - have the stats be an indicator to the player, but have them function as the chance for an all-or-nothing decision.

So you want to layer RNG on top of the usual grind to unlock something? I think anything that makes reaching the porn less obvious is not going to be well received.

 

[RogueKnightUK]

RNG is not always bad, and it is at the heart of most games where there is any chance for failure or imperfection. If you have a scenario where you normally demand 50 pts in whatever stat, having that as a percentage chance of success equal to points x2, means at the very worst it is guaranteed to happen no later than it would have, with a 50:50 chance at half the grind.

Adding further variables and a streak-breaker (a streak breaker may be as simple as if reaching a number of fails equal to the percentile chance of failure, auto-success is given) eliminates the worst and most extreme instances of bad luck.

I disagree that having chance play a part stops people doing things. People still flirt despite the chance it won't be well received, and still ask people out despite the chance of rejection. It is simply the perceived level of risk they tend to quibble over.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

There are already plenty of instafuck flash games out there. Are there really patrons on Patreon who click past all the dialog boxes to get to the tits faster? Any of them paying more than a dollar a month per game? I can't imagine going big on a game while not caring much about the writing, story, etc.

 

[deviantfiend999]

For RNG, I don't mind when it's used in a turned based combat game, provided that it is not done in a way that the odds is not in the player's favor. Even in established commercial games like XCOM or Fire Emblem, the odds are always in the player's favor against the AI opponent, the RNG just exists to give the players cause to adapt to unforeseeable, but resolvable, challenges, provided the player is reasonably prepared.

For visual novels, however, I think the only thing RNG is good for is when it provides contents that are not crucial to progressing the main story lines. Random encounters, for example, can provide more varied scenarios without having the players complete a huge amount of bizarre and specific series of choices before hand. If it's anything like Man of the House pizza delivery mini-game you can count me the fuck out.

 

[RogueKnightUK]

Where a game is a sandbox, running through a week or a month cycle over and over, RNG is pretty much essential. Otherwise there is no variety, no flavour, and the final game will feel as fixed and repetitive as the code is. Where a game is a linear, story-based VN then obviously RNG would be massively out of place, and instead the story-telling should be deciding what happens and when. However, this thread is named 'Porn Game Tropes' not just adult VN tropes, so perhaps it is wise to be a little less limited in what we have in mind when making assumptions.

The DeLuca Family is an excellent game with RNG affecting the mission outcomes and money gained. Lab Rats 2 is an incredibly complex and ambitious game that makes very, very extensive use not just of plain RNG, but also of weighted probability calculations. SuperPowered has the thing where who you meet in the corridors or at lunch are down to RNG and while the use of RNG and the grind in some other parts of the game can be too much, the fact that you can select a girl who hasn't randomly appeared to interact with simply by choice of class to attend makes this a good use of RNG for flavour.

Are there times when RNG is a poor choice and used for the wrong reasons? Almost certainly. Just as there are times when a point grind is used because the dev knows it is unrealistic for a character to agree to something on just one conversation and one date, so wants you to have many conversations and dates to get there, but just can't be bothered to write multiple conversations, or to create multiple date events.

 

[whiskeyrose]

I love this discussion, but I love tropes a bit more. Put a couple more together that I'm unsure if have been covered.

Stockholm Syndrome

What benevolence looks like

So in lewd games slavery is still a thing. The intro will include a short explanation as to why the imposed slavery system is still a thing and that you should kinda-sorta feel bad about it. Your character may even comment on how awkward it feels to have a slave or how it might be morally upsetting, but it won't stop him from fucking the ever loving shit out of all of her orifices. Often times the slaves in your possession will start the game out as innocent naive virgins, despite the fact that the intro described slaves being used almost exclusively for light housework and fucking. During the slave's plot path, she will come to the conclusion that being MC's slave is a pretty good deal, and will suffer an emotional breakdown if offered freedom. When coming into contact with other slaves or free'd slaves, she will describe how MC is 'different' and attempt to convince them to offer themselves as his property. This path to unconditional love is paved with lavish gifts like Dildos, Bondage Gear, and constant pressure to perform increasingly uncomfortable sexual acts. The time-frame of a timid slave to devoted life-long lover only takes about a week to go from kind conversation to lending her out to strangers on the street.

Everybody Loves MC

I love him for his deep personality

Almost every female in the world will irrationally pursue a relationship with MC. Despite having no personality, job, or almost any redeeming qualities whatsoever. anything with a pussy is willing to put all her chips in the MC pot. She will describe MC as 'different' and a soul-mate despite his only trait being a crippling sex addiction. The path to a woman's heart is a few kind words upon meeting her, and then its pantry stealing and setting up hidden cameras. Occasionally a woman will not immediately soak herself at the sight of MC; These characters only need to be coerced into a threesome with a close friend and they will quickly fall in line.​

 

[Proto Persona]

There are already plenty of instafuck flash games out there. Are there really patrons on Patreon who click past all the dialog boxes to get to the tits faster? Any of them paying more than a dollar a month per game? I can't imagine going big on a game while not caring much about the writing, story, etc.

If that's the way my point came across then I didn't do a good job explaining it. I'm not trying to claim the patrons don't care about the story or characters. I'd imagine those people just come here and steal the game. What I am saying is the porn matters WAY more than the other elements of the game do. So much so that if you gave patrons the choice between more character development or more sex scenes, I think the sex would win. I don't think it would even be a contest. The time and resources most of these devs have are very limited. I think the best returns are spent in the areas that people want to see.

Where a game is a sandbox, running through a week or a month cycle over and over, RNG is pretty much essential. Otherwise there is no variety, no flavour, and the final game will feel as fixed and repetitive as the code is. Where a game is a linear, story-based VN then obviously RNG would be massively out of place, and instead the story-telling should be deciding what happens and when. However, this thread is named 'Porn Game Tropes' not just adult VN tropes, so perhaps it is wise to be a little less limited in what we have in mind when making assumptions.

The DeLuca Family is an excellent game with RNG affecting the mission outcomes and money gained. Lab Rats 2 is an incredibly complex and ambitious game that makes very, very extensive use not just of plain RNG, but also of weighted probability calculations. SuperPowered has the thing where who you meet in the corridors or at lunch are down to RNG and while the use of RNG and the grind in some other parts of the game can be too much, the fact that you can select a girl who hasn't randomly appeared to interact with simply by choice of class to attend makes this a good use of RNG for flavour.

Are there times when RNG is a poor choice and used for the wrong reasons? Almost certainly. Just as there are times when a point grind is used because the dev knows it is unrealistic for a character to agree to something on just one conversation and one date, so wants you to have many conversations and dates to get there, but just can't be bothered to write multiple conversations, or to create multiple date events.

I think the point systems are a byproduct of men writing for men. I think the majority of guys approach all women as a prize to win. The point systems in games are very similar to how men actually see their relationships. Maybe RNG can be used to vary things up more and surprise the player. In the end though I think most guys expect that if they put enough work in, it should be guaranteed to put out. Too many games already make the work needed ridiculously long to prolong playtime. I'm certain that RNG mechanics would only make those grinds even worse.

 

[HopesGaming]

If that's the way my point came across then I didn't do a good job explaining it. I'm not trying to claim the patrons don't care about the story or characters. I'd imagine those people just come here and steal the game. What I am saying is the porn matters WAY more than the other elements of the game do. So much so that if you gave patrons the choice between more character development or more sex scenes, I think the sex would win. I don't think it would even be a contest. The time and resources most of these devs have are very limited. I think the best returns are spent in the areas that people want to see.

I disagree. Do not underestimate your fellow members.
I mean, I kind of believed the same thing when I first made my game, but still went ahead with it.
And luckily, and to my own surprise, the number of people who cared for a proper story and character development was many. Also, the ones who end up being patrons.
And looking at my fellow devs who released at the same period as I did (sex-focused game)- I think I can consider it a major success story and personally am very happy.

 

[Segnbora]

I completely agree with this. There's a market for "man see girl, man fuck girl" games that will never go away. But games with a realistic and meaningful plot? There's a serious audience for those. It might not be as lucrative as the audience for the former, but it exists and is extremely devoted to the games it wants. It's not like Depraved Awakening...a game with exclusionary and difficult paths...suffered. It's a different audience, but it's a passionate audience.

 

[obibobi]

I completely agree with this. There's a market for "man see girl, man fuck girl" games that will never go away. But games with a realistic and meaningful plot? There's a serious audience for those. It might not be as lucrative as the audience for the former, but it exists and is extremely devoted to the games it wants. It's not like Depraved Awakening...a game with exclusionary and difficult paths...suffered. It's a different audience, but it's a passionate audience.

It's not a matter of it being more lucrative, you will just find that there are a lot less people capable and willing to make an adult game with a decent plot than there are man meets woman and fucks her games.

I wouldn't narrow it down to realistic and meaningful, that would rule out comedies which can have interesting plots beyond man meets and fucks woman.

 

[RogueKnightUK]

... the porn matters WAY more than the other elements of the game do. So much so that if you gave patrons the choice between more character development or more sex scenes, I think the sex would win. I don't think it would even be a contest...

I disagree with that too. You know, having had no sex scene or content in the first episode of Season 2 of RTP, we were expecting a few people to be impatient and say something, even while knowing that the majority of players (at least the vocal ones) were more interested in continuing the story. However, the reality was that we got not one single comment or criticism, and a lot of very positive feedback on the episode and it's character and plot development.

So, I'm with @HopesGaming in thinking you are rather misjudging people there.

To support that further, you might want to check out 'Scarlet Spire', which lets everyone know up front it is not a porn game and has zero sexual content, and while that almost certainly limits the attention it gets, it *is* still getting attention and play.

I think the point systems are a byproduct of men writing for men. I think the majority of guys approach all women as a prize to win.

Wow, that is quite the projection. So, how do you manage to explain this belief in line with men who like to be dominated, and certainly don't consider themselves that way? Honestly, that seems a very outdated and archaic viewpoint of some kind of "Man hunt, Man provide" world view. Women are not property, or prizes anymore, at least in the majority of the world.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

I disagree with that too. You know, having had no sex scene or content in the first episode of Season 2 of RTP, we were expecting a few people to be impatient and say something, even while knowing that the majority of players (at least the vocal ones) were more interested in continuing the story. However, the reality was that we got not one single comment or criticism, and a lot of very positive feedback on the episode and it's character and plot development.

So, I'm with @HopesGaming in thinking you are rather misjudging people there.

To support that further, you might want to check out 'Scarlet Spire', which lets everyone know up front it is not a porn game and has zero sexual content, and while that almost certainly limits the attention it gets, it *is* still getting attention and play.


Wow, that is quite the projection. So, how do you manage to explain this belief in line with men who like to be dominated, and certainly don't consider themselves that way? Honestly, that seems a very outdated and archaic viewpoint of some kind of "Man hunt, Man provide" world view. Women are not property, or prizes anymore, at least in the majority of the world.

My general impression is that, overall, the personal politics/ideological leanings of board members(and more than a few devs) is all over the map, probably you'd need to map it in 4 dimensions. That being said, there's a nontrivial number of people whose stated views I'd put somewhere in a Venn diagram with MRAs, PUAs, alt-righters, paleoconservatives whose views would be right of center 70 years ago, etc. Occasionally you might see a dialogue or comment in a game that reflects some of those views...