So... I have an idea for a game... but I believe it would be too complex to actually be made. Opinions?

[Cynicaladm]

I have played a fair number of games over the last several weeks, and have not encountered something similar to what I have in mind. If something akin does exist, please point me towards it, because I would love to play that concept out.

That said,

bear with me..because it's kinda complicated, I'm going stream of consciousness with it and I tend to be lognwinded at the best of times.


Basically, the game would follow multiple parallel paths.

At the beginning, you would have to decide to play one of several characters, let's say 4 of them.
Each character is briefly described, in a manner that may indicate what themes or type of character the ...well.. character, has and what sort of content the player might end up playing.

So, for instance, as random premise examples:
You have one character who is a shop owner, and married.. he likes to play the field, has a thing with his cashier, and is pushing his wife towards swinging/open relationship.
The second character is a student who does odd jobs at the neighbouring houses, lives at home with his family (siblings?) and has a thing for his teacher and a classmate.
The third one is a lawyer, who is divorced and is a member of a bdsm club...he or she may or may not have a child somewhere.
The last one is a local bully who abuses a barmaid, or maybe a bigamous traveling salesman, or a single local police detective who is exploring his or her sexuality... or is hooking up with his clients.. or anything really.
(again, these are all just examples.. it could even be just 2 main characters, not 4)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These stories are independent from one another, effectively being 4 separate games, with characters that each explore different kinks (or occasionally overlapping/similar ones, depending on the choices made by the player).
The twist, such as it is, would be that they live in the same area/city/setting, and that some, or several, of the NPCs they interact with, are tied to at least one of the other characters.. so maybe the wife of character nr 1 works for character nr 3, or is a teacher at the school of character nr 2... maybe the ex wife or the daughter of character nr 3 is friends or in a relationship with character nr 2... or maybe the fourth character knows several of the NPCs the other MCs interact with for professional reasons... or all of the above and more... and then each of them have access to several NPCs that are not in the lives of the other MCs, with authonomous plotlines.

Where it would become interesting, is that you pic the first character you play with and follow his or her storyline all the way through, up to a certain plot event.
When you get there, you are given the option: do you want to save the game and go back to the start, picking one of the other characters and run their playthrough?
if you say no, you just continue playing and interact with other NPCs each with a "default" set of circumstances.
If however you accept to go back, you will get to pick one of the other characters and you will find out that you are also going back in time to day 1, and that the choices you have made with the first character influence your options in the playthrough with this second character.
For instance, you started with character 1, the shopkeep..during your playthrough, you managed to turn your wife into a passionate swinger. In your second playthrough, with the new character, you encounter her and she is particularly flirtatious/open to hanky panky.
If, on the other hand, in your first playthrough you have turned your wife off of sex/cheating altogether, when you encounter her in the second run, she might not be open to sex at all, or only after multiple efforts of persuasion... or maybe you won't encounter her at all, but encounter another NPC from the first playthrough instead.
If in the first playthrough the wife caught you cheating on her, she might actually seek out character nr 3 to represent her in the divorce.. and things might or might not happen with the lawyer accordingly.
If character nr 3 had turned his secretary into a sub slave, a subsequent playthrough with another character that encounters her, might reflect this.. likewise if she was turned into a domme.
And so on,... each MC would have a number of NPCs exclusive to their stories, and a number of NPCs that would be encountered by any number the other characters too... each time with a more defined personality/aptitude/evolution.

This would mean that the replay value of the game would be extremely high, because it would be first come first served, so to speak, so depending on the order in which you do the playthrough with the MCs, the dispositions and situations the various characters would encounter and see reflected in the NPCs would vary and be "locked in" by the previous playthroughs.

Again, for instance:
Playthrough 1 starts with the lawyer who turns his secretary into a sub slave...second MC is the husband of the secretary who suddenly finds that she is very submissive.. or that the lawyer has staked his claim, and now he finds himself a cuck.. or abbandoned altogether, which fundamentally alters his prospects... he might find that he enjoys the NTR dynamic and follow that path, or look for sex elsewhere instead.
Playthrouhg 2 starts with the husband, who decides to pimp out his wife, or encourages her to be slutty with her boss.. or even invites her boss for dinner for a 3some..or maybe she becomes totally loyal to her husband and in the following run, the lawyer can't get in her panties no matter what...
And maybe then , on run number 3, MC 4 comes along, and is a woman, and the secretary finds out she's actually bi or lesbian... or she gets arrested for solliciting because her husband has turned her into an escort in the previous run.
So effectively, every time you play the game changing the order of the characters you decide to play with, this affects the rest of the game, changing it. This also gives the player the opportunity to explore 4 different characters with very different tastes and kinks.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Either way, whether you play as only one of the characters or actually go back and play the other ones too..once you arrive at a significant plot point, , lets call it nexus, the different variables of the npcs you have, or have not interacted with, would be tallied up and you would have to pick which one of the characters you have progressed to the nexus you want to continue the game with... after which you would be able to explore the rest of the game and maybe interact with the NPCs of the other characters, who would react depending on whether you played their stories or not, according to how you played them (or didn't).

For instance, say that your playthrough with the shopkeep pushed the wife to seek a divorce and you decide to continue to play with the shopkeep in the second half of the game... if you did not play the lawyer run, maybe you spend the second half of the game as a newly divorcee, free and D2F anyone.. if you did play the lawyer run and the wife has interacted with him, you might find that she's returned home, convinced by the lawyer to give you another go, and you have to take that into account either in an open marriage or becoming a serial cheater.. or maybe something you did in the shopkeep run came to the attention of the lawyer, who is now doing your wife, and together they hold that thing over your head, and now you're a shopkeep locked in a loveless marriage and have to pay blackmail money, so your finances are affected and your chances with other NPCs are affected likewise, for the remainder of the game.. and so on..

So.. four stories that interconnect and affect one another in a significant way, leading up to a main event after which you decide which one of the 4 stories you progress to the very end.
Once you reach the end of the game, you can do a do over, and, once you're at the significant turning point once more, you can pick one of the other characters to "sandbox" the rest of the game with, providing for yet another added replay value.
Between VN flashbacks, different character development paths and the different permutations that the various interactions with exclusive or commonly shared NPCs bring, the game is potentially massive in size and further "meat" can be added to the bone as it develops, possibly in the second half of the game.
Come to think of it, at the nexus you could even introduce a new character that picks up the story where the other/s have brought it... the room for expansion on this setting/game is virtually infinite and would, as the game goes on, be built on a solid foundation of NPCs that would be progressively well defined in their proclivities/descent into debauchery.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does something like this exist?
Is it at all technically feasible?
I am pretty good with writing plots and dialogues and fiction in general, my background being that of amateur writer, occasional professional translator/editor, and long time tabletop roleplayer... I have a bunch of ideas for development, for exploration of kinks, for potential plot points, and a few VN-style flashback notions to flesh out the MCs and several main NPCs.

...But I can't program, design or do anything remotely technical worth a damn... and I have 0 interest in starting to learn how to do any of that... so if anybody thinks this would be a challenging/interesting project to work on, have at it.
Left to my own devices, the best I could do is turn this into a lewd choose your own adventure book.

In fact, I have a fair amount of time on my hands, currently, and I would not mind bringing the creative side of this to the table, if you fancy a collab and you think you have the technical and artistic skills to pull it off...
I would not be putting any money in the game, but I would also work basically for free,putting a pin in future conversations about revenue percentages. This would be, if I were a part of it, primarily a labour of love, not a get rich scheme. If nobody would want to work with me under those conditions, I'll take credit for the idea but leave it to (generic) you to do with whatever you want with it.

 

[rk-47]

Something like this is possible ,but perhaps not in renpy or rpgm, youll likely fair well in unity or even UE4 or something
if you cant program i would say get a team to do it for you, hire them and use patron money to pay them, while you plan the storylines and character arcs and storyboarding

 

[Cynicaladm]

Something like this is possible ,but perhaps not in renpy or rpgm, youll likely fair well in unity or even UE4 or something
if you cant program i would say get a team to do it for you, hire them and use patron money to pay them, while you plan the storylines and character arcs and storyboarding

Thank you for the feedback, but this would be a hobby project of mine, if I ever decided to take it on, and not something on which I am prepared to invest actual money, beyond time and doing the creative work. Hiring a team is out of the question for financial reasons. I am not going to sink actual money that I currently can't afford to divert this way in what is essentially a vanity project, If anything, I would be more interested in being hired by someone as a creative writer/editor/translator.
I guess I will open it up on the board for anyone who wants to take a crack at it.

That said, aside from it being a technical possibility, would you, or anyone else, be interested in playing a game with this kind of structure?? or is the above just too much of a raw outline to be able to tell if it would be an interesting concept?

 

[rk-47]

Thank you for the feedback, but this would be a hobby project of mine, if I ever decided to take it on, and not something on which I am prepared to invest actual money, beyond time and doing the creative work. Hiring a team is out of the question for financial reasons. I am not going to sink actual money that I currently can't afford to divert this way in what is essentially a vanity project, If anything, I would be more interested in being hired by someone as a creative writer/editor/translator.
I guess I will open it up on the board for anyone who wants to take a crack at it.

That said, aside from it being a technical possibility, would you, or anyone else, be interested in playing a game with this kind of structure?? or is the above just too much of a raw outline to be able to tell if it would be an interesting concept?

i would certainly play a game of that calibre, complexity is good especially for an adult game since so many follow cookie cutter structures

 

[sensepirational]

Am I understanding this correctly? I think I am. You'd basically be writing and interconnecting multiple independent stories, all with separate interactions, though some may be with common supporting characters?

If I'm understanding you correctly, this seems like a nightmare to properly do as a technical matter.

And it'd be even more nightmarish if you intended to make it visual, as opposed to just text, because now you're talking about exponentially more renders for all the different paths and characters.

Is it possible? I'm sure it is. But is it practical? That's another matter entirely.

 

[ihl86]

First of all I want to let you know I think this idea is great and I would certainly play this type of game.
Now, the possibility of this being created is another matter.
From a technical standpoint, I think it could also be created in RenPy. RenPy uses Python as a programming language and Python is very powerful. You could do this object oriented and in the end, with enough thought put into this, it could be done. What would be needed for this to happen though is kind of know from the start what you want to do with the game. When you design backbone of the game, you need to plan for the possibilities you want in the game. If you try to add one later, that you didn't plan for, it could get very buggy.
With render, it's even more of a nightmare, just like sensepirational said. In the end, all the renders are content, so it's not more content than needed for other type of games (kind off) but it's a lot of parallel content that a lot of players won't see, or won't see too soon. So updates would be very hard to do to satisfy someone.
I think just because of the complexity I am attracted to this idea, I always find puzzles very interesting. Alas, I am already working on my own game, and while it is not so complex, I am very attached to the story.
For anyone trying to do this do, I would recommend this:
Plan from the start the paths, decide how much you want to interconnect them and also decide the ending of the chapter or game or whatever.
Once that is decided, the programming can start to support all that.
When implementing comes to it though, I would start with a single path, the one that attracts you the most. Just do it in a simple way at first, get some support behind. If enough support, a team could be hired to help out with the rest.
If you wanted to do this Cynical, you could just start with a single path, simple game. Just think what would be the most interesting of the paths and do that. You would still need to learn how to do renders but the RenPy side of things for simple paths is very easy. Once you get a few updates in, if your game is interesting enough you will get supporters and you could use that money to hire a team to help you out with the rest of the project.
I think, if you are really passionate about this idea, it's your best chance of seeing it done. It might be too complex for someone else to consider it worth working on.
Best of luck!

 

[Cynicaladm]

thanks for the encouragement, but I really don't plan on learning to programme or to do graphic work for the sake of this idea that came to me one late night. I might have fun plotting and sort of storyboarding the multiple interconnections and restulting scenes that would follow... and I do have a bunch of side characters and main character plots in mind, because that's how my brain is wired, I am actually able to crank out content fairly easily when I think of a character (years and years of playing dungeons and dragons characters with life the life expectancy of a butterfly will do that to you).. but no, I would not be able to turn this into an actual visual experience... nor do I want to learn how to.
the purpose of this thread is merely one of intellectual exploration, with a small door opened towards anyone who thought they could, and would want to tackle it to take it further... but as I read your responses, it appers to me that this would be a massive undertaking, with layers of complexity that go beyond the "mere" complexity of the game.

I am perfectly at peace with the notion that this will never become a thing, but as a matter of intellectual exercise, I do ask, if you were to try and do this, how would you go about it?

my initial thought, but I am in no way "technical" would be to assign a series of attributes to every NPC.. say for instance, corruption, kink, sub/dom scale, loyalty (I am literally making these up as I am writing).. and each attribute would have a value from 1 to 5. depending on what experiences the NPC has with every single main character, they get one such value assigned, which would carry over to the next main character's playthrough..

So, to go back to an example already made, if the wife of the shopkeep in the first playthrough has been sexually liberated by her husband, she will receive a corruption value of, say, 4, and in the following playthrough, with the lawyer, this will mean she will be open to being seduced by him... if in the first playthrough the shopkeep has also turned her into a sub, this will affect how she will interact sexually with the lawyer, and if she has a high value of loyalty, she might want her husband to be present, or informed, or involved.. and so on..

the interactions with her in the second playthrough could receive further "scores" and carry over to yet another main character and further inform what said MC could or could not do with her (or, for simplicity, her interactions could be limited to 2 main characters and no more)

finally, the choices the various MC make during their playthrough might give them special bonusses to play against the "scores" of the npcs, ... so an npc who has become a domme to the firstMC that ran the game, when confronted with the second MC might try to domme him, but if he has always made dominant choices until then, he might be able to flip the script and make her switch..


I am aware that this is getting more and more complex... manageable on paper, but I reckon too many variables giving birth to too many different scenes to be realistically possible to make. would such a structure make the making of such a game more or less complicated?

 

[Catapo]

There isn't much I can add that wasn't already said.
In short yes it would be possible to make but difficult to implement right: keep track of all the possibilities and implement previous choices naturally into another story-line.

For me this type of game would also have to be the full experience, it wouldn't be enjoyable to play monthly updates.

When you asked what else uses similar ideas 3 things came to mind immediately (2 anime and a visual novel):

- Baccano - an anime where the cast of characters are all aboard the same train and their individual story-lines affect each other.

- Durarara - a similar anime about the shady side of a town: gangs, mafia, loan-sharks, criminal doctors, etc. Again the story-lines intertwine at points and affect each other.

- The Letter - a horror visual novel where you follow the stories of 7 characters across the same ~10 days.
The visual novel itself is decent but the coolest thing is that the game is split into 7 chapters, one for each character, and every choice that you make affects the events of the story and the relationship between characters and they get carried across the chapters.
The game also allows you to see in a menu every possible branch and there you can actually see how insane this type of idea is: the first chapter looks like a normal tree with branches at every choice but when you check chapter 6 or 7 you see that the tree is A LOT bigger even though every chapter is almost the same in length (~10 days) just because they have to take into account every major choice from the previous chapters.

You'd have to make a lot of content that a lot of players will not even see just to cover every permutation of choices but I would definitely love to play something like this.

 

[ihl86]

I am not sure if you have any kind of programming experience but this would have to done with classes.
You would need to have a class for each Character that is present in more than one storyline.
Each character(class) would need to have a set of attributes , like the ones you described.
Afterwards that same character(class) would have a method for each of the decision that could be taken and depend on those attributes.
In your example with the wife, let's say she has a method accept_advances
In this method you could check who made an advance, maybe even where and different attributes and based on that it returns an answer.
This way, every time you play you modify her attributes but the method is created only once and it makes decisions as you see fit. When you are writing the game itself, you just say wife->accept_advances() and the method will take care of the answer and return yes/no/maybe or who knows what else.
The programming side of things is not that complicated, but the logic behind it, considering which attributes have to be at which level to make a certain decision. Afterwards on each storyline you would have to take into account to modify those attributes accordingly so that in the end she makes the decision you want her to make.
Doing it in any other way than object oriented sounds like a crazy amount of work and you would get to that tree of choices that Catapo was talking about.

- The Letter - a horror visual novel where you follow the stories of 7 characters across the same ~10 days.
The visual novel itself is decent but the coolest thing is that the game is split into 7 chapters, one for each character, and every choice that you make affects the events of the story and the relationship between characters and they get carried across the chapters.
The game also allows you to see in a menu every possible branch and there you can actually see how insane this type of idea is: the first chapter looks like a normal tree with branches at every choice but when you check chapter 6 or 7 you see that the tree is A LOT bigger even though every chapter is almost the same in length (~10 days) just because they have to take into account every major choice from the previous chapters.

You'd have to make a lot of content that a lot of players will not even see just to cover every permutation of choices but I would definitely love to play something like this.

This sounds like an interesting game. I am curious, can you decide the order in which you play the characters or is that already predefined? Because if you can choose the order as well, the complexity for that tree is even greater.

 

[Lstprod]

The only real difficulty from my point of view is the script. You have to be able to plan the whole with all the possibilities that this implies.

In terms of programming, I don't see any particular difficulty compared to other games.

In terms of graphics it's quite heavy, since each time you add an influence scene (which modifies the dynamics of the characters) you have to create all the resulting scenes for each possible version. And the more you advance in the development the more you have to multiply each scene.
But this is not particularly problematic if you are not keen on the graphics. If you start with honey select basic, someone who is a little comfortable can produce a lot of content very quickly. in fact, even with daz3d and the denoiser it is possible. (it will be much less beautiful, but faster)

No, for me the real problem is in the ability to plan, write and consider all the ramifications of choices and influences on each basic story. But maybe it's because I'm bad at it, maybe it's easy for people who knows what they're doing.

 

[Cynicaladm]

interesting replies that denote how little (fuck all actually) I know about programming.
If I can find the perserverance within me, I might just storyboard this, or at lest a trial section of this, and see if I can actually formulate the various permutations without it resulting in a complete chaos. It seems fairly logic to me as well that the best approach would be to start with defining one primary character, then start from there.. create their "trees of possibilities" and then add a second MC and intersect. I should probably also seriously limit the number of "shared NPCs" in order to reduce the number of permutations.. or maybe create 2 levels of NPCs.. ones that don't really change all that much in their antics, so that their behaviour would be fairly similar irrespective of the order of play, and a second class that instead is altered severely and plot dependent. The latter should probably only be a small number.. and I could also limit the permutations by limiting each "major NPC" to 2 MC storylines, 3 at most..so that the variations don't go crazy...
What I mean is that if I give an NPC 3 different "outcomes" with one character" and then port it to the next character, he will start with 3 different stories.. and might bring those to 3 different endings each...so already we have 9 possible outcomes (that's prior to factoring in individual "deviances" if those come into play)..
this would mean that a third MC would have 9 stories to pick from... and he should either stick to those 9 (which is a lot already).. or end up expanding the outcomes a further degree... which just becomes unmanageable, since that's just one NPC in a game that potentially has many.

so... either only 2 MC interact with the same NPC, or the 3rd and 4th MC only get to "see the results" of the NPC growth, and don't get extra development of the relationships.. but even so, that's still a potential 20 something plotlines for a single NPC...

unless I severely cut down on the interactions, those NPC plotlines are going to completely swamp the scene, which would then bury the main plotlines of each main character... creating balancing issues on the story... this can be managed of course, but requires tons of text/legwork and the resulting added work in graphics would also be crippling (not that I concern myself with that, since I wouldn't be doing any of that...but even just the storytelling side is pretty substantial)

I also agree that this would be the kind of experience you don't want to wait for endless updates for... this should be experienced all in one go.. like those choose your own adventure games I mentioned... and then replayed at infinity.

I am also a believer in walkthroughs and guides, but this would be an almost impossible guide to make, or rather, could only be a guide limited to the main character of the moment..because the outcomes would still depend on the order of play, which makes every "hint" given during play non functional when the order of play is different... so we would end with "guide lines" that are longer than the text lines they're supposed to guide us through.

on one hand, this is promising to become a headache real soon.. on the other hand, it is an interesting creative challenge.

 

[ihl86]

Based on your idea I just thought of a somewhat similar but at the same time different game idea.
Same interconnecting lives and cross influencing but instead of a fixed narrative with different potential endings, it would be a lot more open world, sandbox type.
And you could also switch between MC's (daily/weekly). This way, if you would get to the point where you realize you made a mistake in your first timeline and are now on your third one and have to replay everything almost the same but with 1 or 2 different choices to get what you want in this timeline. (I always have this fear of missing out when playing games where actions don't really have a transparent result. Like you make a certain decision that doesn't really say much in day two but then in day 12 if you didn't make that decision you don't get to do something else. I always hate that.)
It would be kind of like a sims game where you play with multiple characters in the city. They are the puppets and you the puppet master. Like you want a certain MC to get with a woman but she has a husband, jump into the husband timeline, make him cheat on her or something and she will than want to get her revenge and would be willing to do the same.

 

[trusk rock]

It does sound interesting and i believe it can be done but the biggest problem with this type of game would be time. Creating a single linear game is already so time consuming and when i imagine what you want to do , i can only think of multiple people with really powerful computers rendering out scenes day and night and some good programmer writing all the code and fixing so many indefinite loops lol and these people would expect some financial rewards too ofcourse for all that which as you mentioned earlier is off the table. Even writing it all may not be as easy as you think because of all the possible scenarios that you will have to cover without making a mess . So is it possible? Ofc it is . Hell even i like the idea and would love to try it but only problem is that i have always been very passionate about not starving to death so i can't put so much time and effort in here without anything in return and this will be the exact problem when you will approach anyone who can collab with you on this.
Although I think there is still a chance, there are big Devs out there with a lot of patreons and doing game development as their main job, some of them might be ready to take this as their next project and with all the experience and supporters which they have already, they might actually do it. Try to contact them directly through doscord or DMs here maybe. Goodluck

 

[Lstprod]

I find it hard to understand people ...

At the code level there is no need for loops, class and other such things. A classic stats system like any other VN works perfectly.

Let's imagine we start with MC1, in the middle of the story MC's wife .... Gertrude goes up to 4 in Lust ... comes the choice to start again on another MC we jump to the character selection screen and Gertrude always has 4 Lust and we play with MC2, with Gertrude at 4 Lust and everything continues normally ... At the moment of the possible variation we check the stat and we jump to the scene in question ... As for any VN with stat ... His idea is absolutely nothing complicated to program. If there are indeed a lot of stats for each character etc ... We can use classes but we would do it for any game with this kind of stats ...

Then with regard to the graphics ... You are all here to say that you like the concept, that it would be a game surely interesting etc ... But you can only imagine it with graphics equivalent to AAA? Why a powefull computer, why tones of renders ... Why not keep it simple and do fast and efficient graphics in the first place? Who cares if its not top notch photographics realistic renders ... Do you really prefer to continue seeing games with the same stories and the same concepts and ... even sometimes the same character models?

 

[Cynicaladm]

Based on your idea I just thought of a somewhat similar but at the same time different game idea.
Same interconnecting lives and cross influencing but instead of a fixed narrative with different potential endings, it would be a lot more open world, sandbox type.
And you could also switch between MC's (daily/weekly). This way, if you would get to the point where you realize you made a mistake in your first timeline and are now on your third one and have to replay everything almost the same but with 1 or 2 different choices to get what you want in this timeline. (I always have this fear of missing out when playing games where actions don't really have a transparent result. Like you make a certain decision that doesn't really say much in day two but then in day 12 if you didn't make that decision you don't get to do something else. I always hate that.)
It would be kind of like a sims game where you play with multiple characters in the city. They are the puppets and you the puppet master. Like you want a certain MC to get with a woman but she has a husband, jump into the husband timeline, make him cheat on her or something and she will than want to get her revenge and would be willing to do the same.

I thought of that route, but sandbox often translates into grinding mechanics, which I have come to dislike over time. also, this would be stories that don't have "bad endings or mistakes".. simply put, if you try to get all the content or "unlock all the achievements" in a linear, calendarised way, this is simply not going to be possible, because of the nature of the game... and the idea is that the endings, whichever they are, are still satisfying even if you don't get to see that one scene where NPC x hooks up with NPC or MC y".. that's what enhances the replayability. In short, the consequences of making a decision regarding an NPC encountered with your first character may become apparent only if and when you decide to play another specific MC in a specific order, long after you've exhausted the chapters of the first main character...
So turning it into a sandbox where you flip from one to the next to explore every permutation in a linear timeline rather than following the story (this would primarily be a story thing, because I am ultimately a writer and not a game dev and that's the perspective this would be created from) just doesn't work.
in that sense, the game might not be the right game for you, unless I write a compelling enough narrative to make you trust that you will reach a satisfying progression anyway.
Should this game ever be made, I am sure there are always ways to unlock the scenes or the paths that have not been explored in the playthrough, but since the stories change so much according to the order of play, why would you deprive yourself from playing a practically new game and do a full replay, and encounter those scenes naturally? after all, if you don't do that, you're going to look for a new game anyway. might as well give this one a second run, since the experience will be so different....
maybe a tool could be made that tallies up all the different games and tells you "you missed a couple of scenes here and there, if you really want them, here they are"..

It does sound interesting and i believe it can be done but the biggest problem with this type of game would be time. Creating a single linear game is already so time consuming and when i imagine what you want to do , i can only think of multiple people with really powerful computers rendering out scenes day and night and some good programmer writing all the code and fixing so many indefinite loops lol and these people would expect some financial rewards too ofcourse for all that which as you mentioned earlier is off the table. Even writing it all may not be as easy as you think because of all the possible scenarios that you will have to cover without making a mess . So is it possible? Ofc it is . Hell even i like the idea and would love to try it but only problem is that i have always been very passionate about not starving to death so i can't put so much time and effort in here without anything in return and this will be the exact problem when you will approach anyone who can collab with you on this.
Although I think there is still a chance, there are big Devs out there with a lot of patreons and doing game development as their main job, some of them might be ready to take this as their next project and with all the experience and supporters which they have already, they might actually do it. Try to contact them directly through doscord or DMs here maybe. Goodluck

Oh, I don't expect any of them to find this little thread, and this really is more a thought experiment than an actual plan of action. I am currently between jobs so I have time to "waste" on creative thoughts... I am merelly toying with the possibilities and engaging with those of you who are patient and intrigued enough to give me a feedback, for which I do thank you profusely.

I am certainly not going to chase down those big devs, because to make this work they would have to entrust an untested and semi/unpublished author with a large share of creative freedom/control/responsibility, and actually have to pay me for the effort (because putting this on paper alone would be almost a full time job worth of effort and it would affect my ability to find a dayjob).
And quite frankly, the jobs I am actually looking for probably pay better than anything those devs would be able to afford to pay, meaning I would pick that over this vanity project... which I could still do, but as a hobby in my free time, and no responsible dev with employees and freelance contracts to pay for would ever want to work with me in such a circumstance (rightly so, I wouldn't either)....
So I have no illusion that unless I win the lottery this will never see the light of day, at least in the form of a videogame...
and I never buy lottery tickets.

 

[Mimir's Lab]

I think it sounds cool on paper but I don't actually think the ends justify the means for this. There's just way too much work involved in making the game happen, especially when you consider that it's basically multiple games in one. That's also where I think all your efforts will go in vain. What's even the point? You'll please the few completionist types of people who will want to explore every nook and cranny of the game to see all the different permutations, but the mass majority of people would stick to the more interesting paths and never try out the others. Paradox of choice is a thing after all. That means the majority of your work gets seen by very few people and, to me, it's very inefficient, especially when a developer is looking for reasons not to quit when burnout comes along. If you had a team, it'd be possible, but you'd have to have big pockets or a team who really believes in your vision of the game.

All this isn't even addressing the elephant in the room, which is how do you create a coherent and interesting story with interconnected storylines, multiple protagonists, and a ton of moving pieces? It may sound cool to have a ton of choices affecting the story, but if you don't have an interesting story to begin with, your players will never get far enough to experience all your hard work. Now you have to create multiple interesting stories that all weave their narratives in and out of each other, which is an absolute nightmare for a writer to pull off. Story is not just having random shit happen all over the place and the protagonists have to deal with it (that's whack-a-mole), all the problems should relate to the larger theme at hand.

Then you have to consider why people play these games in the first place. Everyone, to my understanding, is here to get off on games that have attractive, and maybe even interesting, characters and sexy situations that include all the stuff that they like and none of the stuff they don't like. If you have four protagonists and I am only interested in playing one of them (further restricted by sexual preferences), it doesn't matter how much effort you put into the other three, I'm sticking to the one I like. The game also sounds like it's a mile wide and an inch deep; How long is each individual path when someone bum rushes only one path to the end? But that's a sidetrack. Ultimately, my point is you can create four entirely separate games that really caters to the fetishes they're designed for much, much easier than creating one massive interconnected game that caters to everyone.

 

[Cynicaladm]

I find it hard to understand people ...

At the code level there is no need for loops, class and other such things. A classic stats system like any other VN works perfectly.

Let's imagine we start with MC1, in the middle of the story MC's wife .... Gertrude goes up to 4 in Lust ... comes the choice to start again on another MC we jump to the character selection screen and Gertrude always has 4 Lust and we play with MC2, with Gertrude at 4 Lust and everything continues normally ... At the moment of the possible variation we check the stat and we jump to the scene in question ... As for any VN with stat ... His idea is absolutely nothing complicated to program. If there are indeed a lot of stats for each character etc ... We can use classes but we would do it for any game with this kind of stats ...

Then with regard to the graphics ... You are all here to say that you like the concept, that it would be a game surely interesting etc ... But you can only imagine it with graphics equivalent to AAA? Why a powefull computer, why tones of renders ... Why not keep it simple and do fast and efficient graphics in the first place? Who cares if its not top notch photographics realistic renders ... Do you really prefer to continue seeing games with the same stories and the same concepts and ... even sometimes the same character models?

thank you for the input...
one thing though
Gertrude is a terrible name

 

[Lstprod]

Ahah i know !

 

[Cynicaladm]

I think it sounds cool on paper but I don't actually think the ends justify the means for this. There's just way too much work involved in making the game happen, especially when you consider that it's basically multiple games in one. That's also where I think all your efforts will go in vain. What's even the point? You'll please the few completionist types of people who will want to explore every nook and cranny of the game to see all the different permutations, but the mass majority of people would stick to the more interesting paths and never try out the others. Paradox of choice is a thing after all. That means the majority of your work gets seen by very few people and, to me, it's very inefficient, especially when a developer is looking for reasons not to quit when burnout comes along. If you had a team, it'd be possible, but you'd have to have big pockets or a team who really believes in your vision of the game.

All this isn't even addressing the elephant in the room, which is how do you create a coherent and interesting story with interconnected storylines, multiple protagonists, and a ton of moving pieces? It may sound cool to have a ton of choices affecting the story, but if you don't have an interesting story to begin with, your players will never get far enough to experience all your hard work. Now you have to create multiple interesting stories that all weave their narratives in and out of each other, which is an absolute nightmare for a writer to pull off. Story is not just having random shit happen all over the place and the protagonists have to deal with it (that's whack-a-mole), all the problems should relate to the larger theme at hand.

Then you have to consider why people play these games in the first place. Everyone, to my understanding, is here to get off on games that have attractive, and maybe even interesting, characters and sexy situations that include all the stuff that they like and none of the stuff they don't like. If you have four protagonists and I am only interested in playing one of them (further restricted by sexual preferences), it doesn't matter how much effort you put into the other three, I'm sticking to the one I like. The game also sounds like it's a mile wide and an inch deep; How long is each individual path when someone bum rushes only one path to the end? But that's a sidetrack. Ultimately, my point is you can create four entirely separate games that really caters to the fetishes they're designed for much, much easier than creating one massive interconnected game that caters to everyone.

I agree with most of the points you make... with some exceptions.
I would like to think that these stories would be character driven. I have some 30 years of experience creating/writing characters, and I am told by people I game with or who have read the odd thing that I have written, that I make compelling characters. You quite rightly talk about how people would focus on the parts of the game they like. I do the same. sometimes I skip over dialogue to get to the action, sometimes I skip over the action because the dialogue and story is so compelling...and there are definitely games that I don't even start playing.
This concept would introduce 4 different characters with very different styles and kinks and situations, so there would be something for everyone.
Say you like incest.. the intro tells you that one character lives with his family.. you'll pick that one and you might never look back and never go back to replay the other ones.. and you don't need to because the story of the character you choose doesn't require you to. Someone else might decide they find incest yucky but they are attracted by bdsm, and they will pick another character... so potentially, the game has something for everybody, even though most people will not play the entire game.
And yes, that would lead to the rational thought of making separate games for separate audiences..but maybe there's also the guy who likes to see a story evolve and interconnect with other stories... and I don't really see much of that happen in the games I have played.

It is absolutely irresponsible from a financial/workload sharing standpoint, because you're still banking on the game actually delivering and finding an audience.. you could even equate it to buying the latest iphone only to send text messages and call your nan.
that's why this is more a thought experiment about a gaming experience, than it is an actual plan of action.

 

[ihl86]

I find it hard to understand people ...

At the code level there is no need for loops, class and other such things. A classic stats system like any other VN works perfectly.

Let's imagine we start with MC1, in the middle of the story MC's wife .... Gertrude goes up to 4 in Lust ... comes the choice to start again on another MC we jump to the character selection screen and Gertrude always has 4 Lust and we play with MC2, with Gertrude at 4 Lust and everything continues normally ... At the moment of the possible variation we check the stat and we jump to the scene in question ... As for any VN with stat ... His idea is absolutely nothing complicated to program. If there are indeed a lot of stats for each character etc ... We can use classes but we would do it for any game with this kind of stats ...

Then with regard to the graphics ... You are all here to say that you like the concept, that it would be a game surely interesting etc ... But you can only imagine it with graphics equivalent to AAA? Why a powefull computer, why tones of renders ... Why not keep it simple and do fast and efficient graphics in the first place? Who cares if its not top notch photographics realistic renders ... Do you really prefer to continue seeing games with the same stories and the same concepts and ... even sometimes the same character models?

I would hope that the interconnectivity and dependencies between the stories would be a little more complex than modifying one or two stats.
In the example with the wife, maybe the husband has a NTR fetish and does that with her. That means in the other timeline, maybe she can get with the lawyer but the husband will be there to watch or something. And hopefully even more stuff I didn't think about yet.
That's why I stated in one of my posts that everything should be thought about from the start.
Imagine developing a good chunk of this game with a few stats and then realizing you need something more complex to be able to handle what you want to implement next.
That would mean you have to rewrite a lot of the code, retest everything and so on. I've seen a lot of games going into redesign of code because they couldn't handle the new ideas the developer had. And so one or two updates were mostly about the rewrite of the code than anything else. Or maybe some even died.
Of course, it is possible to also make it simple and use just a few stats and check them, I think it depends on the story and what those branches contain.

I think it sounds cool on paper but I don't actually think the ends justify the means for this. There's just way too much work involved in making the game happen, especially when you consider that it's basically multiple games in one. That's also where I think all your efforts will go in vain. What's even the point? You'll please the few completionist types of people who will want to explore every nook and cranny of the game to see all the different permutations, but the mass majority of people would stick to the more interesting paths and never try out the others. Paradox of choice is a thing after all. That means the majority of your work gets seen by very few people and, to me, it's very inefficient, especially when a developer is looking for reasons not to quit when burnout comes along. If you had a team, it'd be possible, but you'd have to have big pockets or a team who really believes in your vision of the game.

All this isn't even addressing the elephant in the room, which is how do you create a coherent and interesting story with interconnected storylines, multiple protagonists, and a ton of moving pieces? It may sound cool to have a ton of choices affecting the story, but if you don't have an interesting story to begin with, your players will never get far enough to experience all your hard work. Now you have to create multiple interesting stories that all weave their narratives in and out of each other, which is an absolute nightmare for a writer to pull off. Story is not just having random shit happen all over the place and the protagonists have to deal with it (that's whack-a-mole), all the problems should relate to the larger theme at hand.

Then you have to consider why people play these games in the first place. Everyone, to my understanding, is here to get off on games that have attractive, and maybe even interesting, characters and sexy situations that include all the stuff that they like and none of the stuff they don't like. If you have four protagonists and I am only interested in playing one of them (further restricted by sexual preferences), it doesn't matter how much effort you put into the other three, I'm sticking to the one I like. The game also sounds like it's a mile wide and an inch deep; How long is each individual path when someone bum rushes only one path to the end? But that's a sidetrack. Ultimately, my point is you can create four entirely separate games that really caters to the fetishes they're designed for much, much easier than creating one massive interconnected game that caters to everyone.

I think that could also be a way to implement your complex game in a simpler and more realistic way.
If you want 4 stories, actually make 4 separate games, each with only 1 story. Start with the most interesting one and gain a fan base for the world. Games could be made to depend on each other either with the player selecting what choices he made in the other game or by reading save games or some ending output files.