Thank you for the reply! I'm happy about almost everything you said
.
You seem like a developer who not only cares about their game and wants to interact with the community and that’s awesome! I wish more developers were like that. I've highlighted one thing though I'd like to address.
There is a
Too Long; Didn't Read at the bottom...
I’ve been a novel, erotic literature, scrip, and other media writer for over 25 years, and I am currently writing several scripts for VN right now. I just need to learn the art side because I want to be able to do everything on my own. If I could provide a little advice, storyteller to storyteller: This game seems set up to be a near perfect harem game, it pays to know your audience.
Player expectation will make or break a game.
Most fans of harem games are very averse to seeing love interests with other men. Even in flashbacks or dreams. And they will not touch a game that shows those types of scenes (even if they are
avoidable [
event never happens] or
skippable [
event happens but you don't see it]) because, they often feel, it
sets the expectation that you (the developer) are cool with showing love interests with other men. So, questions will form in the player's mind, such as, “When will it happen, not in a dream or flashback, but in the now? When is one of the female mentor’s boyfriends going to show up and I walk in on them in the shower? Or when is a cop or delivery guy going to show up and I see him groping a girl?” These questions create negative anticipation. Negative anticipation will kill a feel-good happy harem game like this game seems to want to be. *If* you want to appeal to the harem audience (which is one of the largest audiences of adult visual novels) you should keep that in mind.
I could provide a large list of games that have fallen into the trap of showing a scene that even hinted that a LI would be involved sexual with another man, let alone actually showed it. Then the game fell apart after that and was abandoned or the developer realized the mistake and had to fix it later (wasting hours or even days of work) to keep the game from losing all support and funding.
Put yourself in the mind of a player and think of it in this way: If I know that every time a girl comes into the office for therapy there is a chance that I will see a sex scene of her with someone else, I will start to dread those scenes. I would know that I’ll miss the content and have a shorter game and feel like I’m being punished because I don’t want to see my precious girls getting sex from other guys. Or I will force myself to watch the scene in case there is important story information in it and then I’ll feel put off by it at least, often either feeling angry or jealous. And it wouldn’t be fixed if the very next scene is a lewd with her and the MC because I just watched her get banged by someone else. If the scene I watched her in was not pleasant for her (like she was remembering a rape or assault) then I’d feel like the MC was a jerk for being aroused and taking advantage of her. And if she did enjoy the scene (like it was with a boyfriend or something, even if she regrets it now) it feels like sloppy seconds at that point. She is just with the MC now because she is turned on by talking about it and the other guy isn’t there which makes her seem whorish and the MC seem like an afterthought. He is just the only available cock, and she is horny now. It's a lose-lose, it does nothing positive, adds nothing to the game except a lewd scene which, again, could be time spent making a lewd scene with the MC in it instead.
Think of it like this: If you have a girlfriend or wife, do you want her talking about her sexual past in great detail? Probably not, but maybe it needs to happen to help her get over a trauma, regret, or something. Okay, I can be strong for her, hear her out, help her, and move past it because I love her. But would you want her to then take out a tape of it and show you the sex scene? That’s kind of what you're asking players here. You’d be asking, “Hey player, that event she came in your office to talk about, do you want to watch it like it’s a sex tape or porno she made?” For harem players especially, that's a huge turnoff.
For many harem fans seeing a love interest getting fucked by someone else is enough to not just drop her as a love interest but to drop the game entirely. They won’t really care about context or later story. You, as the author, know the full plot and story, but the player doesn’t. This can be a problem because you may have a redemption arc, revenge story, or some other pay off later. It may be planned out in its entirety, and it can make sense knowing the full story. It could even be heartfelt and amazing from a story perspective. But that's not what the player sees at all.
First impressions are often lasting impressions and if they are negative, they can be last impressions as well since many may drop the game because of them. And due to the nature of game updates in the VN format where weeks or more go by between them we cannot just continue the story to get over it and get to the reasoning behind it. You have a very small window to fix a damaged first impression. Think about the issues players have with the MC's dick size, you have basically till the next update to fix that or some players will drop the game and that is a small issue next to showing love interests having sex.
If the player sees a sex scene of a girl and the issue or story point it relates to isn’t delt with quickly (and delt with very well) then it will often lead to speculation which often goes to dark places, like the fear of situations like I listed above about other men showing up later. Therefore, it can be better to be a bit more ambiguous rather than explicit with sexual history. The harem player often thinks like this, "Does a LI have a sexual past? Sure, they probably do, do I want to see a flashback or photo of it? Absolutely not! In real life no one would want that so why would a harem fan player who is self-inserting in the MC’s identity want it?"
Some players might want that, seeing girls with other guys, but they will not be fans of buildup, story driven, harem games and will likely not be happy unless non-MC sex scenes are the bulk of the content. They will be irritated by the time wasted on building relationships with the girls for the MC. And if you are planning on the majority of the content being scenes of the girls with other men then you will lose all harem fans very quickly. They don’t want the MC blue-balled while seeing the girls getting fucked by someone else. It's even worse if the girls enjoy those scenes when you show them. Every scene you render of a girl with someone other than the MC is a scene many players who would be huge fans of a classic happy-harem game will not want to see and will be made angrier about because they don’t want to see that, they want to see the MC with the girls. At best the majority of your players won't see it because they skip it, and at worst they will just stop playing the game.
Visual Novel Games are often self-insert media, which is very different from other media. It's tough because what could work really well in a novel or movie will wreck any game (let alone VNs). I wrote an erotic novel that is a harem story and the whole things kicks off with the main character seeing a girl that goes to college with his sister in a porno. So, he has his sister set up a meeting with the other girl just for a laugh. Well, he falls in love with her, finds out she and some other girls are being blackmailed into doing porn, his sister included, and rescues them before his sister goes all the way on camera (though he had seen her on camera giving a guy a blowjob). It works in a novel because no one is self-inserting in the story, the main guy has a name and it is set, the reader doesn't make any choices.
In a VN Game that same story would destroy it because the player would put themselves in the MC shoes, they would feel what he feels. Not just feel empathy for a character in a story but take on the feelings *of* the character in the story. The player named the main character. Often players will name the MC after themselves to add to the emotional ties to the game. They make choices for the character and take ownership of his actions. They wouldn't just feel bad that the MC had to hear or see something, they feel bad that they heard or saw it. And making it skippable won’t really help, all it will mean is that you spent hours making a scene that most players either won’t see or, worse, will want to drop the game because it exists at all.
And then there is the matter of
reputation. If you plan to make more games moving forward, then you will set the expectation of the type of developer you are now in many people’s eyes. If players come to this game expecting a happy harem game, which this feels like it should be and what you want it to be, and they are bombarded with scenes (even optional, again skippable scenes still happened and took time away from making other scenes) of girls with other men they will lose trust in you and think you tried to fake them out. You presented one game and made another.
A little example: Which do you think would endear the player more to a love interest? Her telling a story about a sexual event in her past, growing teary eyed as she does, and the MC holding her and caressing her back as she fights to get the words out and leans on him for support? A scene that could then lead to an intimate and beautiful moment of the girl and the MC together, even just kissing would be amazing pay off in that moment as he holds her while she leans on him. Or this could happen: She comes into his office to tell her story and the flow of the game is interrupted by a menu to ask if we want to see her have sex and then we could watch it and see her get fucked by a guy? She may have enjoyed it, or it could be traumatic, either way it will not evoke the same emotion of care and protection from the player. It will evoke either
anger (if we see her raped or abused) or
jealousy (if she enjoyed it then, even if she regrets it now). But if we skip it, we jump to the end of the counseling session, and see what? The MC getting sloppy seconds? Do we see a scene that feels like taking advantage of the girl as opposed to helping her heal? Or maybe the scene then plays out like I described above, but now it feels like we are watching everyone but the MC gets laid while he is left there as a strong friend that maybe gets a kiss and a hug?
Finally note: Much of what I’ve said is, again, just advice and can be ignored if you like. I’ve played VN for years and been a storyteller for decades. I’ve seen promising games get derailed and fall apart because the author added a scene where a love interest was seen having sex, and even scenes where a love interest was just *heard* having sex, or even hinted at having sex with someone else. Even dream scenes can destroy a great game if done poorly. Developers then have to try and fix it which often means changing the scene, so it happens differently, or scrapping the scene entirely. Many developers often fall into the easy answers of “the MC doesn’t care,” “The girl isn’t really a love interest,” which just makes even players who weren't bothered that much by the scene angry because they are now losing a girl they liked, or the MC is different than they want them to be. Or worse a developer goes quiet and start to ignore fans and end up abandoning the game.
TL,DR -
Expectations matter, know the audience . Everything above is from the usual perspective of harem fans, and they are the largest single group of VN fans by the numbers. You cannot appeal to all fans and will end up losing both groups (harem fans and non-harem fans) if you try and make a game mostly for harem fans while including scenes that don't appeal to them but attract NTR and sharing/swinging/MMF fans. Is the game for harem fans? If it is for fans of harem games, they will not want to *watch* a girl getting fucked by other guys in any context or circumstances. They will not want it at all because it will attract fans of NTR and other types of content that will then attack and berate the harem fans for wondering why the scene was made when a different scene could have been made that didn’t compromise the love interest.
It may not be fair or right, I may or may not agree with it, but that’s how it is in this industry. Your time is better served just telling those parts of the story in words and rendering a scene having the MC holding the girl through it if it is traumatic and helping her heal or something like that. If you want to show off the girls in lewd scenes without the MC, in group scenes, or in context that don't fit the game theme (such as scenes with futa's, monsters, or something) then exclusive galleries and such is more than enough for people who enjoy that and just want lewd's, they often skip the story anyway.
Sorry for the massive post… I'm just working through my thoughts on this because I really like the set up and characters introduced so far. I know it's rambling a little, and maybe even repetitive in some parts, but it's just how I process things once they are in my mind, and this is very much occupying my thoughts at the moment... I just need to get them out of my head. It's my autism coming out...