Just a note that I won't be going into as much detail because I just spent a day making the SLDR's cheat injector for RLE for the Prime mod and that took more time than I'd liked. So I want to spend more time working on my side project
We're engaging in the spirit of free cooperation here, after all. I do appreciate you (and others) take time to read and respond in a thoughtful manner. As you probably noticed, I took my time to respond this time in the same spirit.
Correct. Because a story is a story. A game is a game. One is passive while the other is active. I can see they want to tell a story. Which, cool, good on them. But a story isn't a game. And, as such, a story, being passive, can't have a game play loop
Right. But notice how that still is built around the primary gameplay loop.
Hmm, I believe to be it a bit more complex relation. The simplest, most basic story is something like: you are in a place (literal or metaphorical), that is not optimal, has a problem, a danger, you aim at something better, more desirable, and there is friction between. Such micro-stories are obviously found in every gameplay loop. And story writing (narration, dialogue) in games are used to establish starting place, give you vision of your end-point. And the most difference between pure story like in a book, and game is journey: in a book it is told to you, in a game, as you said you are active, agentic.
It's my view that just because it's porn, doesn't mean its less artistic. There are cultures that, prior to colonization and/or globalization, that saw, what we considered porn, to be just as foundational to literature as romances or comedies or tragedies.
Hmmm, to be honest, I'm not all that sure what exactly are you pointing too. I'm actually interested in someone actually developed real art of writing erotica and/or art. For man, mind you, as steamy romance is not exactly what I'm looking for. Modern porn mostly doesn't have story, almost at all. Or very, very bad ones. And where for example Japanese (or Italian, or French) at least try to set, mostly formulaic situations, can't say I found anything resembling well written (as much as language barrier and availability of translations allow). You can argue that it doesn't need one, especially for people that look for fap material. But I've been exploring, looking for better models for stories. Tried watching sexploitation movies, recently been listening to some harem-lit books. Best of them were half passable stories of normal kind with erotic subplots. Actually I found some of the most developed erotic stories here, at this forum in games, and since that discovery I've been lurking here and trying them, not only playing but analysing and thinking. But if you have some great fantasy/SF/Superhero saga to recommend (best in audiobook format), I'm open to suggestions.
So the other part is integration of sexual elements in a somewhat mainstream medium. And yes, there are some decent examples: Yakuza seems to have a lot of mildly sexual plots. As I'm from Poland I can mention that the first Witcher game was quite adventurous in this regard (but sadly the bigger CDPR grew, the more PC they got, Cyberpunk was a let-down for me in this regard). French comic books (that are very different from American) have decent amount of titillation.
It's just that sex, much like fart jokes, can be easily exploited for an instant reaction. But also like fart jokes, it can easily be overused.
I'm not sure if I understand your point. Clearly, sex and farts are worlds apart when it comes to motivational forces they exert over us. Yes, they both biological in nature, but sex is one of the main drives in humans (and not only), where farts are at best an accidental by-product. There is no fart-ual selection of species. And their surrounding taboos and norms that culture create around them reflex that.
Like, in the US, nudity is considered taboo and scandalous.
To a degree. It is pushed out of mainstream. But there is your HBO or Showtime not to mention whole porn industry. And I don't think there is any advanced civilization that doesn't put limitations around displaying nudity and sexual acts.
But when you've taken a ton of figure drawing classes, a nude body invoke less a reaction than seeing that same person dressed in lingerie. (Speaking from experience. My favorite thing to draw was the human figure. There are days for me, when seeing someone nude is not that much different than seeing them dressed.)
One of the reasons I discovered the need for erotica, rather than porn. Porn is very simple-minded. The whole building up anticipation, teasing, moving to a goal without instant ratification is much more interesting for me.
Also, I would re-examine those "philosophy nonsense" if I were you. The problem with art and literary theory is that, for some reason, they all have a grain of truth but are almost, always, especially by academics, expressed really, REALLY badly. Again, going back to my personal experience, a lot of the scripts that I was reading when I was young pulled from A LOT of literary theory.
As I said, I like philosophy. Had plenty of it in my studies too. I can even name some of post-modern concepts that I wholeheartedly agree with, or at last see them as interesting (I can at least consider death-of-an-author stance, even if I won't agree it should be normative). But I find in general the whole disposition too cynical, too full of itself. They (at least some of them) aimed at unintelligibility, which I find appalling. And in Theory of Literature especially, I didn't find it to be constructive or eye-opening to new possibilities. And deconstruction if for me major disaster. Sure, there are extremely rare examples of some amazing ones. Dune can be considered an amazing deconstruction of chosen one narrative. But mostly is just an excuse for edgy grimdark shit, it is cynical, and as the name itself suggest it is not constructive. I was (and to a degree still am) a major Star Wars fan for decades, and just can't forgive Rian Johnson deconstruction of this universe. It was a success of deconstruction: left complete ruin.
And, again, this is for a cartoon (granted, a cartoon for adults that's renounced for it's writing...).
To be honest, I don't watch too many cartoons (adult ones, so we are not talking about Batman animated series or X-men evolution that are less directly adult oriented). Nothing against per se, but I like clean, detailed ones, with more realistic than symbolic/simplified style. Loved Archer. Old Spawn short series was cool too. Invincible from the current ones started well. And I can appreciate significance and commentary of cultural mainstays like Simpsons or South Park, I just personally like something else.
But every one of those theories were proven correct. They (the writers of the show) got the emotional reactions they were looking for.
OK, that's interesting, and it is actually the type of confirmation I find credible. Pragmatic.
Often, the deeper you get into writing stories or making art, you'll begin to uncover for yourself these exact same theories as many before you, as I have and many after us will. And, sometimes, despite academia's best efforts, there's no substitute for practical, personal experience. Sometimes, you can only truly learn these theories once you have gone through the gauntlet yourself.
Absolutelly. But there are fantastic courses on YT, even on YaleCourses channel itself. But in this instance I find that they seem to be asking the wrong questions. Maybe I need "Narrative Theory" or other discipline that doesn't seem to exist. Understanding structures and narrative arcs, setting up motivational frameworks. Exploring differences between plot driven and character driven stories and why one (character driven) is better than the other. Understanding values of consistency and keeping promises you made to reader/watchers/players when introducing them to your world/story. Understanding how actually are our stories fit into our psychology, culture, what function they have for us.
I actually wrote something tangentially addressing this in another thread.
https://f95zone.to/threads/is-anyone-else-tired-of-sexy-women-in-games.135705/#post-12779353
Particularly about an art theory I know everyone rolls their eyes at (even I did at some point), the "Everything's beautiful" or "There's beauty in everything."
I find myself disagreeing a lot with you here. Not sure how much in depth discussion we want to have. But on the subject of the beauty, you seem to fall strongly on the side of radical social constructivism, where I strongly reject blank slate theories. Mind you, I don't reject ability to learn, and the fact that there are social constructs (or socially reinforced standards), just the assumption that there is no nature that shape it, and we are free to reimagine it. When it comes to beauty, sure, there is some decent variability in our standards/ideals, we imitate and reinforce what we find attractive (or what we think the opposite sex find attractive). However, research concerning both short term and long term partner selection in both sexes has been done extensively, name of David Buss comes instantly to mind if you want to discuss the subject, and leave me with little doubt that there are universal guiding principles governing our perception of beauty, like looking for health markers for example symmetry.
But also, Jordan Peterson? The guy that thinks ethnic studies (remainder, I'm Asian. Taiwanese to be exact) should be abolished? That guy that would say to my face that I'm less of a person than he is because he has awesome genes despite him literally having an autoimmune disease (a genetic disease, mind you)? The guy that thought an all beef diet was a good idea, despite what doctors said to him, and natural even though most of the population of humanity in history didn't have persistent and reliable access to cow meat? The guy that thought China was setting up milking machines for men because he saw it on a Chinese porn and didn't realize it was porn? That Jordan Peterson?
You'll have to excuse me if I don't listen to the guy that thinks the recorded history of my culture is somehow less authoritative than second hand stories passed down by a bunch of people and then edited and compiled into a book by a committee and then mistranslated again and again that he thinks is holy.
This is another and even stronger example of a situation where I'm somewhat unsure how much I want to go in depth discussion. Part of me already screams from the inside, has already half written treatise on the subject, and want to plunge in probably mutually escalating discussion with you. The impulsive way. Been there, done that, didn't eve got the T-shirt for it. Another part, wants to disengage and avoid potential conflict at all cost. But finally I made the decision to first of all wait a bit - that is one of the reasons my answer comes delayed. That's why I'm writing this meta-answer first.
It might have been a mistake on my part to mention Peterson, as I was aware he is not, let's put it mildly, exactly universally appreciated. But I do believe, that he, especially his "Maps of Meaning" lectures and book are extremely beneficial in understanding not only "architecture of belief" but also of myths and stories in general. For example, he takes long time (3x over 2 hours long lectures) to analyse classic Pinocchio movie, not in glib, snobbish way often found among intellectuals that look down on the popular culture. He similarly treats other popular culture (Harry Potter, Marvel) with similar thoughtfulness and attitude of curiosity.
Most of what you're writing about Peterson just doesn't compute for me, and my knowledge of what he teaches, what are his opinions (or even what are his weakness). It seems to be a straight-up false picture of him. He certainly has nothing against Eastern cultures. Never heard him denigrate them. And I listened to him a lot, and there was never even a hint of racial superiority on his part that you are implying. I can hardly understand how could you even come to these conclusions, was that by yourself, by listening to him, or are these second hand opinions? Never - ever - heard him boast about his "awesome genes". Are we even talking about the same person? Certainly he did not talk about your culture in such condescending way you are talking about Bible here.
OK, he might have said something like every academic discipline that name and with "... studies" should be abolished - not 100% it is his quote, but He did express similar sentiment, which was aimed at poor quality research, not against ancient cultures and traditions, on the contrary. But OK, it was oversimplification from his side. Another acknowledgement I'll make is yes, he and his family seem to have a history of autoimmune disease. And one of the better methods of managing this condition that his daughter discovered was a meat diet. I don't remember him talking about milking machines. It's not impossible. Not sure how much I would hold it against if he made such a mistake.
Yes but several on this website, and no offense to RLE, are not the complex ones
Of course. It actually sometimes baffles me, why even look for porn in this medium, if you want just scenes without any friction.
While I know I said our game is incomplete up above, we made 100% sure that the girls themselves were complete. Everything we add to them now is just continuation or additional content. Which is, again not to bash Oni, more than what the girls in his game currently have.
Yeah, I oversimplified things. I know that girls are not necessarily complete as soon as they are introduced in RLE. And I haven't been following TNH development that closely. Mainly meant that you are developing them in parallel and that possibilities with them seems to be somewhat mediated by "act" (chapter/season) structure that is absent in RLE.
Wait till you read up on intermittent reinforcement (Vegas style positive reinforcement). That is far more insidious and difficult to break out of.. basically sets people up for addictive behaviors
Yeah, or as EA want us to call it: surprise mechanics. As the technology of making games becomes perfected, there are some serious dangers. Perfecting engagement to the point of addiction, and putting dopamine circuit on overdrive, is certainly one of the most relevant ones.
) to include more clothers (and that's fiiineee 
