Question about MC consistency in real porn games

[khumak]

I have a question about what people like in a real porn game with regard to keeping characters consistent. With the exception of a single scene that I just really wanted to happen, I have insisted on zero body swaps for my female cast. For the main character though, he body swaps frequently. Sometimes he's a muscular bald guy. Sometimes he's a blond. Sometimes he's a brunette. Sometimes he's scrawny. I find that annoying but the alternative would be cutting out 80% of the content to keep the characters entirely consistent.

I do have a lot of scenes where I will intentionally hide the MC's face unless it's the actor who has the most scenes. But for some scenes it just doesn't look right if you cut his face out. You can't do any pussy licking scenes for instance. Any scene where they're talking don't really work if you cut his head off, etc.

So here is my question. Would you rather see dramatically less scenes with the main character and keep him consistent or is body swapping for only the main character tolerable. If body swapping for the main character is not tolerable, would you rather have a much shorter game with most of the content removed entirely or would you rather have most if not all of the girls have more sex with random dudes who are not the main character so that the main character can stay consistent.

My current plan is to settle into something kind of in between option 3 and 4 in the poll. MC can body swap but I try to hide it when it's feasible. When it's not feasible I don't worry about it.

To give an example of why it's sometimes just impossible to keep the character consistent even if you hide the face, there is absolutely no way to make the main character seem like it might be the same guy given a choice like the first 2 images below for the scenes you're using. So hiding the face adds no value. So basically the choice is either body swap, or the girl in the second image is removed from the game entirely along with all of her scenes.

Based on the poll choices. Option 1 would mean about 90% of the game is just removed entirely. Option 2 would mean none of the content is removed but most of it would involve all of the girls fucking someone other than MC. Option 3 means none of the content is removed but the main character will frequently look completely different from scene to scene. Option 4 means about 50% of the content is removed entirely, including all scenes where the main character's build was not similar. Many of the girls would have to be removed entirely since they never do a scene with a guy who has a similar build to some of the others. Even with similar builds you also frequently run into issues with tatoos. This guy has tatoos, and this other guy doesn't, so even if their build is identical they're obviously not the same guy.

Edit: added one more option for people who just don't like real porn games.



Edit: Below is an example of a body swap where I'm trying to hide the fact that I'm doing a body swap. You don't get to see his face. The Main character is usually represented as the guy in the first pic up top. The guy below has a similar build. So it's less obvious than for a scene like the one in the middle that the swap is happening. The caveat is that the girl in the middle is the daughter of a MILF who is an important character and both the daughter and the MILF have to be removed from the game unless I do a more obvious body swap.

 

[Sphere42]

I have no idea what your gameplay and narrative are like but personally I need characters to be consistent in order to follow them. I'd sooner think you're pulling a cold open scene transition or walking in on someone, or a fantasy/dream/hallucination.
If the story supports it (sandbox templates, shapeshifters) I'm fine with other cues even completely non-visual ones but without an explicit warning each look is a new character to me. Whether that matters for a specific game remains to be seen.

 

[khumak]

I have no idea what your gameplay and narrative are like but personally I need characters to be consistent in order to follow them. I'd sooner think you're pulling a cold open scene transition or walking in on someone, or a fantasy/dream/hallucination.
If the story supports it (sandbox templates, shapeshifters) I'm fine with other cues even completely non-visual ones but without an explicit warning each look is a new character to me. Whether that matters for a specific game remains to be seen.

It's a harem game so the way it's set up, MC is the only male who gets any action (aside from a preventable scene with MC's dad fucking mom and another preventable scene with Dad cheating on mom). Presumably girls with boyfriends or husbands are having sex with them as well but I don't show it. Any other males in the game are only there for their wife or girlfriend (or mother) to cheat on them with MC (or in the case of college age girls, sometimes the dad will be around usually completely oblivious to it). There is a ton of pure lesbo and threesome stuff as well.

The reason I focused on keeping the females consistent instead of the main character is that most girls do scenes with a bunch of different guys. So if you restrict it to only a single guy then most girls have to either be removed entirely or they only have 1 or 2 scenes. That severely limits the variety of content you can have. If you focus on the main character instead then you are basically stuck with all of the females be only minor characters that you only have 1 or 2 scenes with. So you have the same issue with variety.

Why does this girl never leave the bedroom? Why does this girl never leave school? Why does this girl seem to live at the beach? Why is this girl taking showers 24x7? So IMO You really can't keep both the main character and the supporting cast consistent unless you just want to jumble together some random sex scenes with no story or you want to make an NTR game where the main character doesn't get much action with anyone and most of the girls are fucking everyone except the MC.

 

[danarchist_lewd]

I just played Elixer of Life which does body swaps for the female characters and only uses POV shots. I thought it worked well, but the number of characters is quite low. They use coding to make it clear which character you're talking to: ie. the mom is always an older women, sister always younger, nurse always in nurse outfits etc. So that's an option.

Personally, I'd rather not see the male actors at all.

What I would suggest is doing a verticle slice of a single character and testing out each option. If you have anyone who you would trust to test both and give you an honest opinion that'd also be a smart choice.

 

[khumak]

I just played Elixer of Life which does body swaps for the female characters and only uses POV shots. I thought it worked well, but the number of characters is quite low. They use coding to make it clear which character you're talking to: ie. the mom is always an older women, sister always younger, nurse always in nurse outfits etc. So that's an option.

Personally, I'd rather not see the male actors at all.

What I would suggest is doing a verticle slice of a single character and testing out each option. If you have anyone who you would trust to test both and give you an honest opinion that'd also be a smart choice.

Yeah I've played those POV style games before but I didn't really see a way to create nonsexual scenes like conversations or phone calls without showing faces. It just doesn't work. Phone calls are less of a problem since as long as the character has done even 1 scene with a phone I can just always use that for them. But surprisingly there are some characters that have never done a scene that includes a phone (that I could find).

For instance a scene like this where MC and mom are having a conversation and mom is pissed at him for something. I need to show both of their faces or it just doesn't work. So this is another example of an obvious body swap. The alternative is they have the same conversation but you only see mom talking and only see the guy's arm or something. It just feels weird. If they're talking, I need to see both faces. Or you only see Mom but she's not looking at the camera. So it's not POV. It looks like she's talking to someone else, not the MC.

 

[Rafster]

The first real porn game I ever played was Young Marcus (gay version of young maria) and it had constant body swapping of everyone. It was weird at first, but I got used to it soon enough. Later, when I designed my game, I adopted the same policy as you: Fixed male NPC cast, body swap male MC (well, within a limit. My MC is supposed to be a white guy, so body swapping with asians or black people isn't possible). I totally sacrificed the MC consistency in order to have NPCs consistency.

If I tried a consistant MC I would have limited options for a real porn game. My players have reacted well to that, no complaints on that regard.

I'm making a gay game, so just swap the male NPCs for Female NPCs and you'll have the answer to your question. I voted for the third option.

 

[khumak]

The first real porn game I ever played was Young Marcus (gay version of young maria) and it had constant body swapping of everyone. It was weird at first, but I got used to it soon enough. Later, when I designed my game, I adopted the same policy as you: Fixed male NPC cast, body swap male MC (well, within a limit. My MC is supposed to be a white guy, so body swapping with asians or black people isn't possible). I totally sacrificed the MC consistency in order to have NPCs consistency.

If I tried a consistant MC I would have limited options for a real porn game. My players have reacted well to that, no complaints on that regard.

I'm making a gay game, so just swap the male NPCs for Female NPCs and you'll have the answer to your question. I voted for the third option.

Yeah that's kind of the same idea I'm going for. In my case, Johnny Sins is in more scenes than any of the other guys so he's the one I use as the profile pic for dialog and stuff for MC. But if I only used scenes that had him in it I would have to cut more than 80% of my total scenes. What seemed more important to me was the variety of scenes with each individual girl as well as their interactions with other girls. I picked girls who had lots of interactions with other girls in the game. So most of the girls are either friends with or related to some of the other girls and have either pure lesbo or FFM scenes with those girls where I don't have to do a body swap for them.

There are still some minor characters who only appear in one or two scenes, but most of the girls have a ton of scenes in a wide variety of situations. Many of them have 1 or 2 scenes with Johnny, but some of them, especially stars based in a different continent have zero. Foxy Di for instance is Russian I think and does zero scenes with most of the stars who aren't from Russia or eastern Europe. College age girls I had the most problems with. There are a lot of girls where I found like 1 College Rules video or something and that's the only thing they've ever done. So they can be in a drunken party scene or something but that's it.

 

[Rafster]

Yeah that's kind of the same idea I'm going for. In my case, Johnny Sins is in more scenes than any of the other guys so he's the one I use as the profile pic for dialog and stuff for MC. But if I only used scenes that had him in it I would have to cut more than 80% of my total scenes. What seemed more important to me was the variety of scenes with each individual girl as well as their interactions with other girls. I picked girls who had lots of interactions with other girls in the game. So most of the girls are either friends with or related to some of the other girls and have either pure lesbo or FFM scenes with those girls where I don't have to do a body swap for them.

There are still some minor characters who only appear in one or two scenes, but most of the girls have a ton of scenes in a wide variety of situations. Many of them have 1 or 2 scenes with Johnny, but some of them, especially stars based in a different continent have zero. Foxy Di for instance is Russian I think and does zero scenes with most of the stars who aren't from Russia or eastern Europe. College age girls I had the most problems with. There are a lot of girls where I found like 1 College Rules video or something and that's the only thing they've ever done. So they can be in a drunken party scene or something but that's it.

Keep going on like this. For me, it's more important NPCs consistency (Male for me, female for you) than MC's consistency. Just be careful to not go overboard and change the race of the guy, that may throw off the immersion of some players (others don't care).

I've seen other games with body swapping even with the NPCs, but in that case, they to respect the race, body build of the NPC in question, trying to hide the face as much as possible. I did this a couple of times for scenes that the actor (actress in your case) never did.

 

[khumak]

One issue I do run into pretty frequently with a lot of the girls that I forgot to mention is that a lot of them do some scenes early in their career where they're natural and then decide to get a boob job. Then they do a bunch more scenes. So it's the same girl but I usually decide not to use any of her pre boobjob scenes because it's a bit jarring to see her with A cups in 1 scene and then C or D cups in the next scene. So even when it's unquestionably the same girl, I still feel like I can't use the pre boob job scenes.

 

[desmosome]

Use common sense and the appeal to the probable majority. I would guess the overwhelming majority of people has their focus on the girls and want them to to stay consistent throughout the game. You could try to use mostly POV videos or crop out the MC's head if possible.