To Developers of Incest Games

[slitherhence]

+1 like for humorous wallaby mention, but in all seriousness the taboo is the point, not the inbreeding, on some level telling our little monkey brains we can't have something means we'll go to quite some lengths to get it. The same goes for a lot of taboo or fetish content, especially the mild stuff, cheating, girl next door, old and young, anal, exhibitionism, voyeur, teacher-student and bondage are all on some level taboo, taboo leads to secrecy and secrecy has a thrill of it's own, it adds to the naughtiness.

I'm not that worried by the need for blood relations, just because the child is adopted doesn't mean that functionally the adopters are not the child's parents, it's the relationship that matters not the blood. Two step siblings screwing around behind their parents backs is not that far behind blood incest in terms of interest, for me at least, it's still forbidden, naughty and taboo but in this case legal.

I understand it defeats the point of the game, for legal reasons i can see why some people would add the caveat of either "step" or "adopted" but i agree it shouldn't be used as an easy out. i wonder what your stance on half siblings and cousins would be rather than direct family, i also wonder if you have a thing for impregnation or not, if so and the whole taboo incest baby thing matters or not to you as part of the fetish?

TL : DR
I agree, the "step" and "adopted" clauses are used badly in a lot of cases and can be considered to be defeating the point of the game but a good game can always get away with this if they sufficiently sell the relationship between the characters, which at the end of the day comes down to the writing.

Yeah it's not the inbreeding. It's more the perversion of one kind of relationship into another. And yes the taboo part is a big part too. I completely agree id they sell the familial part of the relationship, then it's fine. So perhaps I was unclear on that detail. My core issue is that, as you say, there are times when the game never develops a believable familial relationship. It just tells you there was one and expects you to accept it. Then dives head first into them having sex with each other. Even worse, the informed familial relationship immediately disapears and suddenly the male character is talking about "you're my woman" and all this other male power fantasy bullshit that just guarantees there's no way you'll ever see these two people as mother and son, father and daughter, or bother and sister, (or sister and sister, or mother daughter, or brother and brother, or father and son... whatever). At that point the clasic male power fantasy takes over and just drowns out any of the tenderness and pride/admiration that are classic parts of the idealized parent-child relationship. Or the idealized bonds of loyalty and trust between siblings.

Again, that's one of my favorite things about the father-daughter relationship in The Last Sovereign. Even _while_ having sex its still so clear that the relationship is still, in every other way, that of a father and a daughter. They didn't stop being father and daughter and become lovers... they became a father and daughter who are also lovers. And they are not blood related. But the game sells the father and daughter relationship so well they don't need to be. Seriously, I can gush for hours about The Last Sovereign... and not even just the incest. So I'll stop here.

But when that familial relationship isn't there except as an informed trait, the only thing left to sell it is blood. Take away blood and you cant sell the incest at all. Not to me. And if I can't believe what they are doing is incest... then the taboo aspect starts to seem really silly instead of erotic.

I've been meaning to link this here one day. Seems like the right time:

You must be registered to see the links

In brief, Dr. Klein's argument is that people who are uncomfortable with their own sexuality are also generally uncomfortable with sexuality in public at all, because they don't like being uncomfortable in public. I imagine that now applies to the Internet as well as a kind of 'public.' So those uncomfortable people sometimes actively try to censor sexuality for everybody so they never have to feel uncomfortable.

That means that Patreon's banning of incest content is a symptom of peoples' desire to keep from being uncomfortable about sexuality, even in the context of the porn they consume, rather than a cause of a supposedly new 'turn' against incest. Because as people, for example on Fenoxo's forum, have mentioned, it's generally a matter of people turning others in rather than Patreon going out of their way to find 'objectionable' content. Patreon doesn't have much incentive to ban or review content unless it actually offends people because it makes them money. So we can assume that there's a group of people, organized or not, maybe even some of the vocal anti-incest crowd on F95, who are helping ruin things for everybody because they just don't want incest to make them feel all icky or confused inside.

So please: don't just blame the greedy, cowardly corporations (though definitely do that too). Also blame the whiny lil' prudes who can't handle certain kinds of fictional sex being available to anyone, even if they're personally never forced to see it and have to actively seek it out themselves.

Oh I'm with you 100%. I'm mad as fire at Patreon and PayPal. I'm even pretty cheesed off with GeeSeki and a others game authors. But I know the corporations are ultimately in it for the money and it's not wrong of them to want to make sure they produce the income they need to pay their employees, their bills, and repay their investors (and yes, even keep enough to put in the bank in case the market shifts and they have to shift with it). And, for the same reason, I haven't gone over on GeeSeki's Patreon to rant... in the end he's doing what he has to keep the money coming in and, in turn, keep the project alive. I want to punch every last one of them in the face for not having the balls to make a stand... but I understand why they didn't.

But as you say, "society" can go fuck itself. People need to let people do whatever the fuck they want. If they ain't hurting anyone it's no one else' damn business.

You don't seem to understand something. Patreon is not gonna personally go through each dev's page and check if they are following their rules. If enough people report it, it will get flagged and put under review. Their rules are very clear and if they take a closer look at your game, they will not even let anything slide. Even step incest is against their rules. The fact that some games can stay up with incest content means Patreon just didnt find out about it yet. All the links you posted never mention incest in their patreon page. Why do you think that is? They are just risking it and know full well Patreon can bring the hammer down at any time. Incest patch is a grey area, and Patreon is very much aware of it but it gives the devs plausible deniability I guess.

MOD EDIT.. deleted personal attack. Next time, you will be warned.
Furthermore, we can consider it agreed that Patreon's rules suck. Let's limit the topic conversation to how developers handle the incestual relationships in the games itself.

From here on out, any post that tries to derail this thread to bitch about Patreon's rules will be reported as off topic without warning or comment. I agree Patreon are a bunch of fucking cunts. I agree that it's bullshit. But there is a time and a place. And this isn't it. Final warning.

 

[DarthSeduction]

I highlighted the relevant parts. I dare you to find three games that goes the "adopted route" and makes even a passing attempt to establish any kind of relationship between the characters other than a sexual one and an informed-only familial one.

I see you're the type who can't have a meaningful discussion without being highly confrontational. I didn't say it has been done, I said it can be. If you don't get that, you don't get to tell people how to make games. I would argue that Babysitter's godfather situation works however, if you play it without the patch. As does the situation I build in my game The Things We Do For Love without the patch.

And, for me, it has nothing to do with the risk of getting caught. It has to do, purely, with the fact that I know for certain they are father and daughter.

I'll give you that, if you have a dev who can take the time to develop the relationship over time you can get away with doing it purely from the familial ties, in fact, I'd argue that's what most of the anime I listed did, however not every game has that time. Establishing the taboo is a far more realistic goal for the average incest game.

As you say, most games that have blood relationship (and Dating My Daughter is actually a prime example) fail utterly

DmD is not a prime example of this. It's problems aren't with the characters relationship, but with the characters themselves being inconsistent, leading to most of its other issues, in pacing particularly, and lack of focus. It's incest is the one thing that is believable to me in it's entirety.

In my game, because I found incest unbelievable in so many others, I actually go out of my way to make it clear that the twins are very close, and more importantly, that they have a reason to make them leap past the psychological incest barrier. By the end of the first release you should see that these two are close, that they are definitely twins, and that they are thinking of one another sexually. You don't necessarily need a ton of time to build up the relationships of actual incest, so long as you build the infrastructure around it, but you do need a little more time when establishing it with less blood related characters.

 

[muttdoggy]

@slitherhence Don't get personal with them and start attacking them. I will issue a warning next time. Keep it civil.
They do have a point about how companies are affecting the narrative in porn games.
And it is true that the incestual relationships in games are not always written well nor fleshed out. We all agree on both points that corporations often drop the ball with regulating incest content and that many developers have no idea what they're doing with incest content besides writing sex scenes and sticking pronouns on individuals. But that is also subjective since each person's desires are vastly different. Some like the step relations, some like the fast sex, and some don't like incest at all.

The best that can be done is to limit the scope of the thread strictly to how it's portrayed in those games. But remember that these are opinions and must be treated as such. And in that same vein, you must treat each other with respect. I will watch for offenders and won't hesitate to take action.

 

[おい！]

Yes, you have ignored the op. As your quote proves, you have no idea what this thread is about.

This is not a thread to post your gripes about Patreon's rules. I get that their rules suck. I fucking hate their rules too. But that is not what this thread is about. This thread is very specifically about the use of one specific contrivance as a means of establishing incest as part of a game's story as opposed to the many other options available. Patreon's rules have nothing to do with that. Any further attempt to derail this thread to bitch about Patreon's policies will be reported as off topic.

Let's get something out of the way right off the bat. I'm adopted. This is not a dig at being adopted.

That said... if the characters in your game do not share a blood relation... then it's not incest. (ok ok ok, it can be, read the edit below) I don't care what the law says. I don't care if your adopted friend thinks it would still be weird to screw his mom. It's not incest. It's two people who have known each other since one of them was a child having sex with each other... nothing more.

Real talk now: there is one and only one meaningful way in which two people who are blood related is any more taboo than any other two people having sex: alleles. Incestuous sex, over enough generations, leads to birth defects and deformity because of the alleles being paired with identical alleles over and over causing what would otherwise insignificant and unnoticeable abnormalities to become a very noticeable deformities that cripple those burdened by them for life.

Frankly, I'm not actually opposed to incest. (Oh shit!? He actually said it! Oh shit!) Sure, go ahead and freak out. Whatever. I tend to think if two people are consenting and mature enough to understand the risks... have fun. But I'll admit the taboo nature of it is hot as fuck. And that's what games like this are for... living out those taboo fantasies you can't risk in real life.

It instantly stops being hot when I read the words "my step-sis" or "my adopted mom". It just loses all that extra appeal. And then what I'm left with, often enough, is poorly drawn/terribly rendered yet short scenes between mountains of RPG-esque grinding. No thanks. I can get vanilla porn on Pornhub in HD without the extra effort, butter faces, and ridiculous blimp tits (seriously, if you can hide three monkeys and a wallaby under her boobs and her never figure out where the screeching is coming from... they're too fucking big).

So please. Please please please. Next time you get the itch, right after introducing the characters as "my mom" and "my sis" and "my brother", you get the urge to have a scene where the MC finds out he/she is adopted... don't. Just fucking don't. For the love of hotness... don't.

EDIT: I'd like to clarify that It's not really about the adoption. I did a very poor job of being clear on that above. I was fresh off being cock blocked by yet another game pulling this crap on me.

It's about games that don't establish the familial relationship well or at all before diving into the sexual, incestuous one and, at the same time, throw out the blood relationship too. You can make the relationship taboo by establishing the familial ties, the blood ties, or both. When you establish neither, the taboo part seems silly instead of erotic. And that's what I usually see when incest-focused games go the step-sibling/adoption route. The thing is, it's really freaking hard to establish that familial relationship before the incest starts unless the game has something other than incest to carry it in the mean time. Hence why I focus on the step-sibling/adoption contrivance above.

The Quote was not made by me it is yours. As for what you do not like when it comes to what names are given to characters by devs, they do it so they can try to keep their game on patreon. If you have a problem with that the solution is simple, either do not download them or create your own game. It is easy to sit and rant about something, but you need to see things from a devs point of view. Some devs rely on the income that comes from patreon and so they have to change words around to keep the money rolling in. I have no problems with devs having to change words so the can keep getting revenue.

 

[slitherhence]

I see you're the type who can't have a meaningful discussion without being highly confrontational. I didn't say it has been done, I said it can be. If you don't get that, you don't get to tell people how to make games. I would argue that Babysitter's godfather situation works however, if you play it without the patch. As does the situation I build in my game The Things We Do For Love without the patch.

I apologize. I didn't mean it as confrontational. Simply a challenge, half in jest. Honestly. But I am frustrated with people derailing the thread to insist there is only one possible way to get a game with incest "content" onto Patreon despite me giving multiple examples of games that do it a different way and some of them even arguing against their own claims without realizing it. But that's not your fault. Apologies if I took it out on you.

At the same time. I'm not saying developers have made it impossible to develop familial relationships as part of an incest relationship... I only said that developers haven't done it very often.

I'll give you that, if you have a dev who can take the time to develop the relationship over time you can get away with doing it purely from the familial ties, in fact, I'd argue that's what most of the anime I listed did, however not every game has that time. Establishing the taboo is a far more realistic goal for the average incest game.

And continuing from what I said above, I also acknowledged that this is the reason why developers don't do it. I know it's uncommon because in many cases it would be counterproductive to the enjoyment of many players.

Where you and I seem to disagree is on what, exactly, it takes to establish the sense of taboo. For me, you need either that familial relationship as more than an informed trait... or you need (at minimum, infered) blood ties. Since, completely reasonably, most games are not going to take the player's time to develop and characterize familial relationships... blood relations becomes necessary. Just being secretive doesn't come across as taboo to me on it's own. Without context to explain why the characters are so worried about keeping their secrets it just seems silly. Or forced. With exhibitionism, the source of worry is obvious... but with sex behind closed doors... it's not. And just telling me these two people are legal guardian and ward doesn't do it for me.

DmD is not a prime example of this. It's problems aren't with the characters relationship, but with the characters themselves being inconsistent, leading to most of its other issues, in pacing particularly, and lack of focus. It's incest is the one thing that is believable to me in it's entirety.

I strongly disagree. While DmD certainly has other issues... there seems to me to be no familial relationship of any kind between D and F in DmD. And why would there be? When the game starts they haven't seen each other since D was a very young girl. F hasn't had the chance to be her father. And almost right away they start building a romantic relationship instead of a familial one. If it then turned out that D was adopted there would be nothing at all to sell the incest. And their need to be secretive would come across as silly. IMO at least.

Me "What? You're father and daughter!? That's Incest!"
F "Uhm well... we only met each other like a month ago."
Me "Wut?"
D "My mom divorced my dad and moved with me to another contry when I was really young. She wouldn't let me see him"
Me "But... I mean... you're still father and daughter though..."
F "I suppose on paper, yes... we are."
Me "More than on paper though right? I mean biologically!"
D "Oh, uhm, no... actually. I'm adopted"
Me "So you both just met... and your not blood related."
D&F "Yep"
Me "Oh... huh... ok then. I guess that's not incest."

In my game, because I found incest unbelievable in so many others, I actually go out of my way to make it clear that the twins are very close, and more importantly, that they have a reason to make them leap past the psychological incest barrier. By the end of the first release you should see that these two are close, that they are definitely twins, and that they are thinking of one another sexually. You don't necessarily need a ton of time to build up the relationships of actual incest, so long as you build the infrastructure around it, but you do need a little more time when establishing it with less blood related characters.

Seraphim Academy right? I've eyeballed it a few times but never downloaded it. Despite that it may seem that I was being confrontational... I was actually impressed by your depth of knowledge on the subject and the thought you put into it. I am aware of the psychological barrier you mentioned. However, I'm not sure that it isn't cultural, at least in part. Shame is one of the most powerful motivators and drives a great deal of the need for conformity in society. It's really hard to tell where cultural pressures end and biological pressures begin. The whole nature vs nurture debate.

But the ancient Egyptians (particularly the Ptolemaic Dynasty) practiced sibling incest, at the minimum, among the ruling class. And they weren't the only ones. Is it possible a biological instinct to avoid incest found dominance in the human race since then? Or maybe the Egyptians overrode their instincts. Or maybe, as I believe, it's cultural... and it just happens that the major cultures of our time are all in agreement on the subject. I'm sure British colonialism and the rise and fall of countless empires before that would have provided an ample medium for the spread of such cultural bias. The Roman empires, in particular, seem to have been quite opposed to incest in general... despite powerful leaders getting away with it plenty. Makes one wonder what might have happened if Carthage won.

But it changes little in this context I think. I agree that there is a psychological basis for the taboo against incest as well as the genetic consequences of it. But I feel like these games fails to establish either. They outright reject the biological end and fail to make believable the psychological end. Whether the familial relationships that form the basis for the psychological barrier you mention can be established in a believable manner in a short period of time or not, I am unsure. To date, I haven't seen it. I'm hoping Seraphim Academy will convince me.

But I remain convinced that throwing out blood relationships is counter productive. It's a guaranteed way to establish the taboo nature of the relationship nearly instantly. In fact, all it takes is not correcting the assumption people make when you tell players "this is my brother" or "this is my mom". And there's no benefit to be had by throwing that out. There are other ways to get a game on Patreon and still allow for incestuous content. High cost, no gain. Net loss. So what defense is there really in going the step-/god-/adopted route? Am I wrong?

EDIT: Oh and to head this off at the pass, I'm not saying that blood relation negates the need for the characters to worry about secrecy. Rather... the other way around... I don't think the characters worrying about secrecy negates the need for having at least one of blood relations or well established familial relationships. And of those two blood relations is automatic. It takes effort to remove the blood relations aspect.... none to keep it.

@slitherhence Don't get personal with them and start attacking them. I will issue a warning next time. Keep it civil.
They do have a point about how companies are affecting the narrative in porn games.
And it is true that the incestual relationships in games are not always written well nor fleshed out. We all agree on both points that corporations often drop the ball with regulating incest content and that many developers have no idea what they're doing with incest content besides writing sex scenes and sticking pronouns on individuals. But that is also subjective since each person's desires are vastly different. Some like the step relations, some like the fast sex, and some don't like incest at all.

The best that can be done is to limit the scope of the thread strictly to how it's portrayed in those games. But remember that these are opinions and must be treated as such. And in that same vein, you must treat each other with respect. I will watch for offenders and won't hesitate to take action.

Apologies. I did overstep. Won't happen again. Though, I wish you had left everything but the insult. I think I made a really good point there. ::shrug::

But I disagree that they have a point. Yes, companies are affecting the narrative... but not in the way these people are insisting on. And I've proven that. They can insist as many times as they like that the only way to keep an incest game on Patreon is to go with the "Step-/God-/Adopted" contrivance... but it will never be true. I've given examples that prove it isn't true. And their insistence on denying that any alternatives to the "Step-\God-\Adopted" exist necessarily impedes any attempt I make to promote those alternatives. So I will continue to report them as off topic. Because otherwise the conversation I've been trying to have... that I established in the OP... isn't possible.

 

[desmosome]

Look man, I agree with the majority of your points as far as incest goes. I also vastly prefer blood relations. Its hard to have this discussion without bringing in patreon though. At first all incest was fine. At some point they decided incest was bad, so devs started going with step relations. Sometime after that step incest was also established to be against the rules. The way games approach the incest issue could be tied to when the development began, and if they managed to avoid detection by patreon for whatever reason and their willingness to risk the ban hammer. I would wager a guess that a big chunk of step relations found on this site came about from that time period between the first patreon crackdown and the later inclusion of step incest among the list of banned content.

I do agree on the point of go big or go home when it comes to real/step incest for new games that are being developed, but people, including the dev's who wants to tell the story can have different preferences. Maybe the dev wanted to tell a story about step relations. The mental block towards incest is as much a biological thing, as it is psychological, developmental, and cultural. Its quite a bit harder to establish a strong taboo with step relations, but it can be overcome with good writing. If the writing is poor... well, what are we really expecting from those games, other than a general rehashed plot and some nice renders.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Me "What? You're father and daughter!? That's Incest!"
F "Uhm well... we only met each other like a month ago."
Me "Wut?"
D "My mom divorced my dad and moved with me to another contry when I was really young. She wouldn't let me see him"
Me "But... I mean... you're still father and daughter though..."
F "I suppose on paper, yes... we are."
Me "More than on paper though right? I mean biologically!"
D "Oh, uhm, no... actually. I'm adopted"
Me "So you both just met... and your not blood related."
D&F "Yep"
Me "Oh... huh... ok then. I guess that's not incest."

She's not adopted, and moreover there are scenes that talk about the relationship he had with her when she was little. Again, I'm not at all calling DmD a masterpiece, in fact I've been known to piss people off when I talk about how bad it is, but I am saying that it does a good job of playing up the taboo.

Yes, there's been 10 years of separation, so they don't have the intense familial bond, but they do have the blood bond, she does refer to him as her father and want that from him. One of the inconsistent character issues I mentioned before is in the dad, Dots couldn't decide if he was writing corruption or romance, so dad swaps between being a no life dad/be a gentleman trope, and being a dad who is worried about what he's doing to his daughter. But I never felt like this flaw changed the fact that he felt like her father to me. What's more important is how they manage to make keeping this relationship from Elena, specifically, but also her mom, dad's coworkers, and other parties who might break them up is very important to establishing the relationship and its taboo.

Where you and I seem to disagree is on what, exactly, it takes to establish the sense of taboo. For me, you need either that familial relationship as more than an informed trait... or you need (at minimum, infered) blood ties. Since, completely reasonably, most games are not going to take the player's time to develop and characterize familial relationships... blood relations becomes necessary. Just being secretive doesn't come across as taboo to me on it's own. Without context to explain why the characters are so worried about keeping their secrets it just seems silly. Or forced. With exhibitionism, the source of worry is obvious... but with sex behind closed doors... it's not. And just telling me these two people are legal guardian and ward doesn't do it for me.

I don't think we do disagree on this, I simply think you aren't exactly a writer and not well versed enough on what you're talking about to definitively say what you're saying.

In my own game, I spend the first part of the first release on a prologe, a violent rape that immediately is meant to make you sympathise with the characters, more than that though it lays the groundwork for the ensuing taboo relationship. Because of the psychological barrier I'm talking about a relationship between family members, in particular siblings, is difficult to create without some sort of conditioning or trauma. This experience leads one of the twins to kill their own father to save the other twin. That saved twin starts to sort of worship the twin who did the saving, bringing them much closer than they would have otherwise been.

Then I spend the rest of the mid section of the first release introducing the characters and their relationship. Just normal family banter, jokes about mom's taste in music, playing games to pass the time while driving long distances, telling a funny story over dinner. That story I use to seed a lot of the twins' relationship, having them stop and pick up the story for one another swapping back and forth and giving that vibe of twins who can finish eachother's sentences they're so in sync.

Finally I end the release with a scene for each of them where they're given an opportunity to face their feelings for their twin on their own, leading to a shower fantasy scene for the brother, and a bed fantasy for the sister. By the end of the first release you should have the impression that they are family. And more importantly, you should have that impression whether you're playing the patched version or the patreon safe version, as the only changes I make to the story are in the prologue, the fact that they call their mom by her name and refer to her as their godmother, and the siblings themselves not having the lines that refer to them as siblings.

All the family elements, living under the same roof, sharing the same experiences, the finishing eachother's sentences, the jokes about mom's taste in music, still there, the relationship is still there, just not the mentions of blood.

Seraphim Academy right? I've eyeballed it a few times but never downloaded it. Despite that it may seem that I was being confrontational... I was actually impressed by your depth of knowledge on the subject and the thought you put into it. I am aware of the psychological barrier you mentioned. However, I'm not sure that it isn't cultural, at least in part. Shame is one of the most powerful motivators and drives a great deal of the need for conformity in society. It's really hard to tell where cultural pressures end and biological pressures begin. The whole nature vs nurture debate.

The Things We Do For Love is my incest title, Seraphim is a different project.

What I'm talking about, as a psychological barrier, is a little stronger than shame. If you and your blood sibling, father, or mother don't live together and/or see one another as much as people who live together would during the critical development years where that barrier develops, you won't develop it. It has nothing to do with shame. I say psychological, but it's likely to say that it has something to do with brain development too, as it happens sometime in between ending your toddler years and beginning puberty, a huge development period for the brain.

Even if you don't develop this, social stigma and taboo will still exist, you just won't have a mental block stopping you from forming those feelings and attachments. Also, of course, those mental blocks and attachments can be overridden by other psychological phenomena. I don't remember their exact terms, but young 16-21 year old girls seeking out their own father is not unheard of, but something they normally grow out of by 24ish, and this same thing can happen for an older brother or other predominant male figure in their life. Same with boys and their mothers in some cases. These aren't the freudian bullshit theories either, it's just something that sometimes under special circumstances that we don't fully understand, happens.

Still, even if that actual psychological barrier doesn't exist, society and it's taboos always will. Usually I'm against taboos, I see them as limiting the freedoms of good people, incest, even though I think consenting adults should be allowed to do what they want, is the one taboo I don't really care to fight. As you mentioned there are huge problems for incest if kids come from it, and that is, in my opinion, unforgivable. Understand, I'm not saying that they shouldn't be allowed to fuck, I'm just saying that I don't mind a social taboo preventing them from choosing to do so.

But the ancient Egyptians (particularly the Ptolemaic Dynasty) practiced sibling incest, at the minimum, among the ruling class. And they weren't the only ones. Is it possible a biological instinct to avoid incest found dominance in the human race since then? Or maybe the Egyptians overrode their instincts. Or maybe, as I believe, it's cultural... and it just happens that the major cultures of our time are all in agreement on the subject. I'm sure British colonialism and the rise and fall of countless empires before that would have provided an ample medium for the spread of such cultural bias. The Roman empires, in particular, seem to have been quite opposed to incest in general... despite powerful leaders getting away with it plenty. Makes one wonder what might have happened if Carthage won.

So, the barrier I'm talking about is developing in the child toward their immediate family. If you're already past that stage of development, you aren't going to redevelop it as an adult or older teen. If you're 15 when your sibling is born, you aren't going to have a block toward them, if you're out of the house by the time they're forming their block, they aren't going to develop one for you. If you're a parent, you aren't developing that block, the thing preventing you from it is a combo of social taboo and protective instinct. People go against taboo behind closed doors for what they want all the time, and if you don't have good protective instincts...

In the case of royalty, it is documented fact that it had nothing to do with culture or love, it was enforced by those in power to keep purity of the blood. Blood purity among nobility was important, almost all cultures with a king claim to have either descended from the gods or had their bloodline blessed by them, thereby securing their right to rule through holy decree. When you look into what was going on outside of the nobility though, it wasn't nearly so much happening, and where it did, it was more likely to be in a case of an authority figure taking advantage of and conditioning a child.

Cousins, it's important to remember, as well as Aunts, and Uncles are not necessarily counted in the psychological barrier. If they aren't in your life as much as the people living under your roof, you'll likely not gain that block. As a result cousin and uncles were far more likely to happen in much of the world back then, as it was convenient, and when there really weren't as many options, lots of people were your cousins. There are plenty of cultures today where doing things with your cousins is considered normal.

But I remain convinced that throwing out blood relationships is counter productive. It's a guaranteed way to establish the taboo nature of the relationship nearly instantly. In fact, all it takes is not correcting the assumption people make when you tell players "this is my brother" or "this is my mom". And there's no benefit to be had by throwing that out. There are other ways to get a game on Patreon and still allow for incestuous content. High cost, no gain. Net loss. So what defense is there really in going the step-/god-/adopted route? Am I wrong?

Remember what I said about needing a way to explain how you get the taboo and still get over the psychological barrier? Essentially needing a reason for your character to be ok with incest? You remember how I pointed out that it was important that The MC and his Daughter were apart for 10 years in DmD? Plausibility is the reason a lot of people will go with social taboo over blood taboo.

I mentioned in my first post several anime with incest themes where the characters were step siblings, and I felt they did a great job of creating that family feeling you spoke of with your response to me with that father daughter relationship you liked. They do this, not because they're trying to censor incest, though I suspect there is a monetary incentive as well, but because it actually creates plausibility.

By removing the blood taboo the only thing stopping you is a social one, and as I said, people go against social taboos behind closed doors all the time. Where this should come in with secrecy, is in a situation where people know you personally. I mentioned how I felt Citrus didn't handle the taboo element well. The three people who should have definitely been there to play that up if they wanted the incest audience are the main character's mother, and the love interest's father and grandfather. The father, however, was traveling abroad. The grandfather had a stroke or heart attack early on, taking him out of the anime for the duration, and the mother, despite having the most interaction with the girls outside of their friends, never even notices it. If they'd played up hiding things from her, or her noticing things were off, there would have been a taboo element to it. I would have felt like what they were doing, at least from one perspective, was wrong.

You're absolutely correct in saying that many games do a bad job of creating this taboo, giving you a great way to skirt it by just not telling anyone you're family, but that's a failure on them to create the atmosphere, not a failure of the atmosphere itself. In order to create this atmosphere there have to be characters who know of your actual ties, I have to believe that they would stand in the way of your love/lust/experimentation, and if you create people who you can lie to, this has to be in a form of consensual corruption/coming of age wherein it's a rare chance you and your taboo partner are away from the environment where people do know you, and you're able to lie and act however you'd like in public, helping to pull the reluctant partner out of their shell.

Again, creating that taboo, establishing the relationship is all possible with good writing. You just have to commit to it. With my game, one of the things that happens after the rape and murder is that the twins start sharing a room, the victim being unwilling to sleep alone sleeps on the other's floor until they invite them to just share the bed. I have a line in the game where I have the mom somewhat questioning if this is normal, but explain that the therapists said it's a perfectly normal coping mechanism. Right there I establish that mom is a bit uncomfortable with how close they are, and is only held at bay by her desire to see the kids recover from their experience. I'm also introducing the Aunt soon, who will of course know, and she'll be another worry for the taboo.

 

[LMalice]

I have played through tons of games of all tags on this forum since (and before) joining. I have also played quite a few 'normal' (non-adult) games.

A large portion of games I play are sandbox - this is because I would much rather be presented with a playground and a character and allowed to choose my own adventure, building my own narrative insofar as my character's background and motivations are concerned (a prime example would be Mount and Blade), rather than being funneled down a path set for me.

I mention this because insofar as the background/familiarity of the characters within the game is concerned, most of this background/familiarity is supplied by my own imagination (or context drawn from personal experiences) if the game does not do a good job of writing/selling it, and in fact in some cases I prefer it this way. A game that takes the effort to build it and portray it before moving on to how the relationship is corrupted/fulfilled (depending on your point of view) is certainly a pleasure to play through, but I don't find games that do not do this inherently bad/un-enjoyable merely because of this fact - provided they excel in other parameters such as art/writing/plot/scenes etc. My brain mostly deletes the words I don't want marring the narrative in my head and fills in any gaps that exist with what I want them to contain.

Before moving on I may also say that building this familiarity beyond a point would be excruciatingly difficult/bordering on impossible and is essentially a question of what degree is subjectively enough from person to person. If we are speaking of immediate family, the bonds you build are built over whatever part of your life you have already lived. How can you reliably, cohesively and comprehensively convey that? It would need so many moments which contribute to the bond to be portrayed (when you got hurt as a kid, when your folks counselled/supported/cheered you when you were down and vulnerable, the inherent instinct to protect those we care for, the million little acts of kindness you do unthinkingly for family etc). I am not sure a game with a limited scope could afford to devote the time or resources to building that up. Typically, a player expects to see nekked people soon-ish into a game, rather than wading through literature which builds background.

Also, while in no manner attempting to discuss/dissect patreon rules, I would suggest that perhaps you are being a bit harsh on the devs (not trying to offend you or anyone here - merely trying to debate). Patreon's rules and specifically their enforcement is erratic and seems to be case-by-case based. I certainly sympathise with devs who want no part of it and don't want to risk the game going under because enough people reported them. It's not really a question of what the rules are and how they are to be correctly interpreted or are currently enforced (or not enforced), it's about a person who has something at stake being risk averse. I can assure you that an individual fighting a corporation on a perceived point of principle is a very expensive endeavour (in terms of money, stress and opportunity costs) and I can't blame people for wanting to avoid such a scenario, especially since most of these games get an unofficial incest patch anyhow. On a related note, a lot of the games I have played on F95 that don't have incest coded in have a patch to enable it. I am curious as to your take on that.

I would say one of the issues is why (for a particular person) incest is hot/arousing/exciting. I would say not every one enjoys incest based content for the same reasons. To me it is essentially a question of whether you enjoy it by self inserting or without self inserting. Personally I find incest really hot in games/media/porn. At the same time I do not recall having entertained a single conscious sexual thought about family. To me the 'hot/arousing' part of the game is not me (self inserting) having sex with my blood (or adopted) relations. Rather, its the taboo of the situation, the fact that these two/three/four people have allowed lust/physical attraction to overpower established and enforced social norms. (This is why I think other 'taboos' such as cheating/cuckolding/betrayal are hot as well). At least for me, what jingles my jollies is that the player character or other characters around him are willing to indulge in acts they wouldn't ordinarily have dreamed of simply to explore how it would pleasure them physically, driven by overpowering lust - or they allow physical pleasure or the promise of it to progressively indulge in acts they otherwise wouldn't - or they overcome any natural 'morality' driven reluctance to use sex to achieve an objective/gain something tangible. This break from socially enforced repression of sexuality (not going into whether it's good or bad) and erosion of inbuilt/enforced or adopted inhibitions is exciting. I guess it is the corruption of the mind/values that a relation implies that excites me rather than the actual relation.

So, when a game identifies the protagonist as adopted, or the sibling/parent as step-sibling/parent, it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the game provided the taboo exists and is portrayed/developed well. The taboo is in breaking social norms, and would definitely exist regardless of whether the person I was screwing was a 'step'-relation or not since any discovery would still lead to a sizeable social backlash. I can definitely understand however that for those who enjoy self inserting or are specifically looking for 'incest' (defined as sex between blood relations) this would break something within the game.

Since peeps in the thread have given some examples on which games do incest well, I am curious what you make of TheTwist (unity) and FamilyLife (qsp) in terms of how they handle incest and building a background to the taboo (since one of them features an adopted protagonist and the other doesn't go down the adopted route iirc). Personally, I rate TheTwist highly even though it is insistent on stressing that the MC is adopted and not blood related either to the 'mom' or the 'sister' because of how it develops and portrays the progressing depravity of the characters, and since it layers it's taboos so well. On a related note, this is why I think the exhibitionist scenes in DmD are pretty hot, since the taboo of the secret context of the f-d relationship is layered by the taboo of the F exposing D/encouraging D to expose herself in public, at times layered with the risk/consequence of being discovered and held accountable.

 

[slitherhence]

Look man, I agree with the majority of your points as far as incest goes. I also vastly prefer blood relations. Its hard to have this discussion without bringing in patreon though. At first all incest was fine. At some point they decided incest was bad, so devs started going with step relations. Sometime after that step incest was also established to be against the rules. The way games approach the incest issue could be tied to when the development began, and if they managed to avoid detection by patreon for whatever reason and their willingness to risk the ban hammer. I would wager a guess that a big chunk of step relations found on this site came about from that time period between the first patreon crackdown and the later inclusion of step incest among the list of banned content.

I do agree on the point of go big or go home when it comes to real/step incest for new games that are being developed, but people, including the dev's who wants to tell the story can have different preferences. Maybe the dev wanted to tell a story about step relations. The mental block towards incest is as much a biological thing, as it is psychological, developmental, and cultural. Its quite a bit harder to establish a strong taboo with step relations, but it can be overcome with good writing. If the writing is poor... well, what are we really expecting from those games, other than a general rehashed plot and some nice renders.

Fair. However... the whole "step-sibling" thing vastly predates the Patreon decision and even Patreon itself. This has been a frustrating trope in video pornography, erotic fiction, and even porn games going back at least a decade. I get why some might have switched to it recently. It's not that I don't get why people are doing what they are doing. But I intend this thread as an open request, in perpetua, to stop doing it moving forward. I don't expect half finished games to devote entire updates to retooling for the other approaches. But I would like it to be clear to future developers that this is something they need to consider carefully if they can avoid. If they are going to do it right, then sure, go ahead. If it's just being thrown in as a token sacrifice on the altar of sexual stigma... then don't do it.

She's not adopted, and moreover there are scenes that talk about the relationship he had with her when she was little. Again, I'm not at all calling DmD a masterpiece, in fact I've been known to piss people off when I talk about how bad it is, but I am saying that it does a good job of playing up the taboo.

Yes, there's been 10 years of separation, so they don't have the intense familial bond, but they do have the blood bond, she does refer to him as her father and want that from him. One of the inconsistent character issues I mentioned before is in the dad, Dots couldn't decide if he was writing corruption or romance, so dad swaps between being a no life dad/be a gentleman trope, and being a dad who is worried about what he's doing to his daughter. But I never felt like this flaw changed the fact that he felt like her father to me. What's more important is how they manage to make keeping this relationship from Elena, specifically, but also her mom, dad's coworkers, and other parties who might break them up is very important to establishing the relationship and its taboo.

::facepalm:: When did I say she was adopted in the game? I gave you an example of what it would have been like if she was not blood related. It's a hypothetical scenario to demonstrate why the lack of both a blood relationship and a familial relationship completely undermines the incest theme. I never said that's what happened in the game. In fact, I'm really god damn certain I was never in the game with them... and it would be really freaking weird if that's what I was claiming.

And I've never said DmD did a bad job establishing the taboo aspect of their relationship. But the taboo nature of that relationships hinges ENTIRELY on them being blood related. There is no familial relationship between them. None. I saw nothing that I would ascribe to a father-daughter relationship. From the very moment F meets D he's looking at her as a woman... thinking about her curves... her breasts... her lips (can't blame him, frankly). I never see him chide D for bad choices. The first time he shows any kind of pride in her is on their date to the couples party... which is also when things start to turn overtly sexual between them. From word go he's a love sick fool spazzing out like a virgin who just met the girl of his dreams. I realize the reason he's spazzing out is because she's his daughter. But spazzing out because you want to stick your dick in your daughter does not a familial relationship make. For D's part she treats F like someone she met on the internet and is now meeting in person. A lot of her cutesy actions are borderline flirting. I realize D, as a character, is way too naive for that. But they come across as flirtatious anyway. This is why it's more of a romantic relationship than a father-daughter relationship.

I don't think we do disagree on this, I simply think you aren't exactly a writer and not well versed enough on what you're talking about to definitively say what you're saying.

In my own game, I spend the first part of the first release on a prologe, a violent rape that immediately is meant to make you sympathise with the characters, more than that though it lays the groundwork for the ensuing taboo relationship. Because of the psychological barrier I'm talking about a relationship between family members, in particular siblings, is difficult to create without some sort of conditioning or trauma. This experience leads one of the twins to kill their own father to save the other twin. That saved twin starts to sort of worship the twin who did the saving, bringing them much closer than they would have otherwise been.

Then I spend the rest of the mid section of the first release introducing the characters and their relationship. Just normal family banter, jokes about mom's taste in music, playing games to pass the time while driving long distances, telling a funny story over dinner. That story I use to seed a lot of the twins' relationship, having them stop and pick up the story for one another swapping back and forth and giving that vibe of twins who can finish eachother's sentences they're so in sync.

Finally I end the release with a scene for each of them where they're given an opportunity to face their feelings for their twin on their own, leading to a shower fantasy scene for the brother, and a bed fantasy for the sister. By the end of the first release you should have the impression that they are family. And more importantly, you should have that impression whether you're playing the patched version or the patreon safe version, as the only changes I make to the story are in the prologue, the fact that they call their mom by her name and refer to her as their godmother, and the siblings themselves not having the lines that refer to them as siblings.

All the family elements, living under the same roof, sharing the same experiences, the finishing eachother's sentences, the jokes about mom's taste in music, still there, the relationship is still there, just not the mentions of blood.



The Things We Do For Love is my incest title, Seraphim is a different project.

What I'm talking about, as a psychological barrier, is a little stronger than shame. If you and your blood sibling, father, or mother don't live together and/or see one another as much as people who live together would during the critical development years where that barrier develops, you won't develop it. It has nothing to do with shame. I say psychological, but it's likely to say that it has something to do with brain development too, as it happens sometime in between ending your toddler years and beginning puberty, a huge development period for the brain.

Even if you don't develop this, social stigma and taboo will still exist, you just won't have a mental block stopping you from forming those feelings and attachments. Also, of course, those mental blocks and attachments can be overridden by other psychological phenomena. I don't remember their exact terms, but young 16-21 year old girls seeking out their own father is not unheard of, but something they normally grow out of by 24ish, and this same thing can happen for an older brother or other predominant male figure in their life. Same with boys and their mothers in some cases. These aren't the freudian bullshit theories either, it's just something that sometimes under special circumstances that we don't fully understand, happens.

Still, even if that actual psychological barrier doesn't exist, society and it's taboos always will. Usually I'm against taboos, I see them as limiting the freedoms of good people, incest, even though I think consenting adults should be allowed to do what they want, is the one taboo I don't really care to fight. As you mentioned there are huge problems for incest if kids come from it, and that is, in my opinion, unforgivable. Understand, I'm not saying that they shouldn't be allowed to fuck, I'm just saying that I don't mind a social taboo preventing them from choosing to do so.



So, the barrier I'm talking about is developing in the child toward their immediate family. If you're already past that stage of development, you aren't going to redevelop it as an adult or older teen. If you're 15 when your sibling is born, you aren't going to have a block toward them, if you're out of the house by the time they're forming their block, they aren't going to develop one for you. If you're a parent, you aren't developing that block, the thing preventing you from it is a combo of social taboo and protective instinct. People go against taboo behind closed doors for what they want all the time, and if you don't have good protective instincts...

In the case of royalty, it is documented fact that it had nothing to do with culture or love, it was enforced by those in power to keep purity of the blood. Blood purity among nobility was important, almost all cultures with a king claim to have either descended from the gods or had their bloodline blessed by them, thereby securing their right to rule through holy decree. When you look into what was going on outside of the nobility though, it wasn't nearly so much happening, and where it did, it was more likely to be in a case of an authority figure taking advantage of and conditioning a child.

Cousins, it's important to remember, as well as Aunts, and Uncles are not necessarily counted in the psychological barrier. If they aren't in your life as much as the people living under your roof, you'll likely not gain that block. As a result cousin and uncles were far more likely to happen in much of the world back then, as it was convenient, and when there really weren't as many options, lots of people were your cousins. There are plenty of cultures today where doing things with your cousins is considered normal.



Remember what I said about needing a way to explain how you get the taboo and still get over the psychological barrier? Essentially needing a reason for your character to be ok with incest? You remember how I pointed out that it was important that The MC and his Daughter were apart for 10 years in DmD? Plausibility is the reason a lot of people will go with social taboo over blood taboo.

I mentioned in my first post several anime with incest themes where the characters were step siblings, and I felt they did a great job of creating that family feeling you spoke of with your response to me with that father daughter relationship you liked. They do this, not because they're trying to censor incest, though I suspect there is a monetary incentive as well, but because it actually creates plausibility.

By removing the blood taboo the only thing stopping you is a social one, and as I said, people go against social taboos behind closed doors all the time. Where this should come in with secrecy, is in a situation where people know you personally. I mentioned how I felt Citrus didn't handle the taboo element well. The three people who should have definitely been there to play that up if they wanted the incest audience are the main character's mother, and the love interest's father and grandfather. The father, however, was traveling abroad. The grandfather had a stroke or heart attack early on, taking him out of the anime for the duration, and the mother, despite having the most interaction with the girls outside of their friends, never even notices it. If they'd played up hiding things from her, or her noticing things were off, there would have been a taboo element to it. I would have felt like what they were doing, at least from one perspective, was wrong.

You're absolutely correct in saying that many games do a bad job of creating this taboo, giving you a great way to skirt it by just not telling anyone you're family, but that's a failure on them to create the atmosphere, not a failure of the atmosphere itself. In order to create this atmosphere there have to be characters who know of your actual ties, I have to believe that they would stand in the way of your love/lust/experimentation, and if you create people who you can lie to, this has to be in a form of consensual corruption/coming of age wherein it's a rare chance you and your taboo partner are away from the environment where people do know you, and you're able to lie and act however you'd like in public, helping to pull the reluctant partner out of their shell.

Again, creating that taboo, establishing the relationship is all possible with good writing. You just have to commit to it. With my game, one of the things that happens after the rape and murder is that the twins start sharing a room, the victim being unwilling to sleep alone sleeps on the other's floor until they invite them to just share the bed. I have a line in the game where I have the mom somewhat questioning if this is normal, but explain that the therapists said it's a perfectly normal coping mechanism. Right there I establish that mom is a bit uncomfortable with how close they are, and is only held at bay by her desire to see the kids recover from their experience. I'm also introducing the Aunt soon, who will of course know, and she'll be another worry for the taboo.

Ok listen, you are getting seriously bogged down in minutia and are getting further and further away from what I made this thread for.

This thread is about games that throw the "step-/god-/adopted" bit in the player's face. I don't see anything here that explains why that's how things should be or must be done. There's alot here I agree with. I agreed with them in my previous reply to you, in fact. So I'm going to restate my position, again, as clearly as I possibly can:

I think throwing the "step-/god-/adopted" contrivance in the player's face is never necessary. I think that doing it in a game where you either cannot or will not be establishing a familial relationship between the characters first is always a bad idea. I think you cannot have the incest taboo without either a blood relationship or a demonstrated familial relationship.... one or the other MUST be there.

In response to what you've said so far... I disagree that characters being secretive is, in and of itself, enough to establish the taboo nature of their actions.​

Start from there... tell me why I'm wrong.

Before moving on I may also say that building this familiarity beyond a point would be excruciatingly difficult/bordering on impossible and is essentially a question of what degree is subjectively enough from person to person. If we are speaking of immediate family, the bonds you build are built over whatever part of your life you have already lived. How can you reliably, cohesively and comprehensively convey that? It would need so many moments which contribute to the bond to be portrayed (when you got hurt as a kid, when your folks counselled/supported/cheered you when you were down and vulnerable, the inherent instinct to protect those we care for, the million little acts of kindness you do unthinkingly for family etc). I am not sure a game with a limited scope could afford to devote the time or resources to building that up. Typically, a player expects to see nekked people soon-ish into a game, rather than wading through literature which builds background.

This is my take on that too.

Also, while in no manner attempting to discuss/dissect patreon rules, I would suggest that perhaps you are being a bit harsh on the devs (not trying to offend you or anyone here - merely trying to debate). Patreon's rules and specifically their enforcement is erratic and seems to be case-by-case based. I certainly sympathise with devs who want no part of it and don't want to risk the game going under because enough people reported them. It's not really a question of what the rules are and how they are to be correctly interpreted or are currently enforced (or not enforced), it's about a person who has something at stake being risk averse. I can assure you that an individual fighting a corporation on a perceived point of principle is a very expensive endeavour (in terms of money, stress and opportunity costs) and I can't blame people for wanting to avoid such a scenario, especially since most of these games get an unofficial incest patch anyhow. On a related note, a lot of the games I have played on F95 that don't have incest coded in have a patch to enable it. I am curious as to your take on that

You're doing exactly what the others did. You don't at all understand what this thread is about.

I'm not saying these developers should put straight, unfiltered incest back into their games. I've not advocated for that anywhere. I've only come down on just ONE of the MANY different ways that they could go about "censoring" the incest to comply with Patreon. At no point has Patreon announced a rule that said "you must use step-relations or adoption when you do an end-run around our anti-incest policies". There's no such rule. Futhermore, in the spirit of the "what do you think of..." game... what do you think of games that used a step-relation or adoption contrivance before this new Patreon rule? And how about the games that did it before Patreon even existed? Are those Patreon's fault too? Did Patreon, before it even existed, somehow cause these game developers to use step-relations in their games?

No one... especially not Patreon... is forcing game developers to go that route. No matter how many times you or others blame Patreon it will never be Patreon's fault that developers went with step-siblings and adoption over incest patches and custom defining the character's relationships.

As to your question about what I think about the patches? I have absolutely no problem with them. I won't say they are great... but I much prefer them to the step-sibiling/adopted bit. In fact, that's what this thread was supposed to be about. Getting developers to go with patches or something else other than the step-sibling/adoption bit. But it's been so fucking thoroughly derailed by people who refuse to fucking read before they open their fucking traps... that I can just forget about having that conversation.

I even put a notice in bright red and bold at the top of the OP spelling this out... and yet, here you are. Fucking WHY?

::sigh::

So, when a game identifies the protagonist as adopted, or the sibling/parent as step-sibling/parent, it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the game provided the taboo exists and is portrayed/developed well. The taboo is in breaking social norms, and would definitely exist regardless of whether the person I was screwing was a 'step'-relation or not since any discovery would still lead to a sizeable social backlash. I can definitely understand however that for those who enjoy self inserting or are specifically looking for 'incest' (defined as sex between blood relations) this would break something within the game.

This also, generally speaking, matches my thoughts on the subject.

Since peeps in the thread have given some examples on which games do incest well, I am curious what you make of TheTwist (unity)

The Twist is the game that finally pushed me over the edge and prompted this thread. I stopped as soon as the MC overhears the father saying he can't have children. I think that should make very clear what I think of it.

and FamilyLife (qsp) in terms of how they handle incest and building a background to the taboo (since one of them features an adopted protagonist and the other doesn't go down the adopted route iirc).

Family Life doesn't go the adoption route? ::goes to download it::

Personally, I rate TheTwist highly even though it is insistent on stressing that the MC is adopted and not blood related either to the 'mom' or the 'sister' because of how it develops and portrays the progressing depravity of the characters, and since it layers it's taboos so well.

::grinds his teeth:: I'll give it another chance.

On a related note, this is why I think the exhibitionist scenes in DmD are pretty hot, since the taboo of the secret context of the f-d relationship is layered by the taboo of the F exposing D/encouraging D to expose herself in public, at times layered with the risk/consequence of being discovered and held accountable.

Agreed.

 

[DarthSeduction]

::facepalm:: When did I say she was adopted in the game? I gave you an example of what it would have been like if she was not blood related. It's a hypothetical scenario to demonstrate why the lack of both a blood relationship and a familial relationship completely undermines the incest theme. I never said that's what happened in the game. In fact, I'm really god damn certain I was never in the game with them... and it would be really freaking weird if that's what I was claiming.

Your intentions weren't clear, obviously you were a self insert, but how was I to know you were intentionally perverting the truth to demonstrate a point rather than continuing your argument that there was no real relationship there, that you didn't feel it was incest. Next time, you might want to make such a thing clear in the first place and if you don't maybe try responding with an apology for your lack of clarity rather than a combative response like this.

I think throwing the "step-/god-/adopted" contrivance in the player's face is never necessary. I think that doing it in a game where you either cannot or will not be establishing a familial relationship between the characters first is always a bad idea. I think you cannot have the incest taboo without either a blood relationship or a demonstrated familial relationship.... one or the other MUST be there.

I thought I had addressed this, allow me to rephrase.

The purpose of going with a step/adopted/etc relationship, aside from the obvious financial ones, is in getting over that very important social barrier. You don't have to look far to find people complaining about the "suddenly I'm into incest" feeling that most games have. When you use a step relation rather than a blood relation, those people are suddenly silent. As I laid out talking about my game, to do that same thing, I included a rape and patricide. That's the kind of necessary step you need to get over the "suddenly I'm into incest" hurdle when blood is involved.

As I also laid out using my game as an example, if you know what you're doing its very possible to set up the family familiarity in a single release, regardless of blood. As adopted godchildren the twins aren't ever referred to as twins or siblings in the patreon-safe version, but the unique familiarity of twins, their banter with their mother, and one another, they all still come together to build up the relationship.

In response to what you've said so far... I disagree that characters being secretive is, in and of itself, enough to establish the taboo nature of their actions.

This is the second time you've reduced taboo to secrecy, if that's all you think taboo is, you shouldn't be telling people how to write.

It isn't the secret itself but how that secret drives the plot, character interactions, and so forth. I read a lot of incest manga. Some of these are as short as 12 pages. They don't have time to establish a long relationship between the characters, but what they can do is make it clear that they're worried about family finding out, that they feel like it's wrong because they're related, etc. That drama, that feeling of unrest brought on by the fear of being caught is what makes these short incest stories work.

Even in a longer plot though, it can be incredibly beneficial to have to keep it a secret. See, a far more important mistake that a lot of games, and especially those that are incest romance focused, make, is treating the sex as if it's the reward at the end. They do this because there is not an actual goal in mind. When the secret is an important part of the narrative however, the goal can be coming up with a way to keep that secret, and a fail state could be losing the secret, or deciding that there's no way to keep the secret. A good ending might result in the people running away together, a bad ending might result in them choosing to run away from one another in order to fight their feelings. Another good ending might have them seek out what lesbians who hide their sexuality from their family call a beard, a guy who is there as a shield to hide their true relationship. A different bad ending could have them fucking when a family member catches them.

The drama created by this, as well as the plot deviations and character intereactions as a result of this are able to make the incest compelling, are able to create a situation, even in instances where there is no blood, or where the two people have been apart for a very long time, where you feel like what is going on is incest, like it's a corruption of what their relationship should be. It takes skill to write, sure, but even a blood relationship should have some fear of the taboo, or else it just ends up feeling like a generic romance.

 

[enkephalin07]

I used to find incest fantasy appealing for its taboo, but now it's been so overdone that the magic is gone. However when someone adds the caveat that their characters aren't blood related, then I know I'm looking at a hack writer struggling for any appeal, and using indiscriminate niche demand as a crutch. Incest fantasy suffers from Sturgeon's Law because there hasn't been enough hard critique like the OP.

 

[MikeMasters]

I love games with incest, but only if it's done right. Maybe not right in objective way, but definitely in the subjective way. I can agree that familial relationship is very important in establishing the fantasy. If that is done right I can even forgive missing blood ties. Because when I see and feel a strong familial relationship, the words with which they refer to each other lose meaning in my mind. They can call themselfs steps-/ cousins/ landlords or what ever and it doesn't ruin the fantasy for me. Yes, the blood relationship does help, but only in conjunction with the familial one.

So why does so many games fails to deliver? First, I think many new developers saw a success of games like DmD, Big Brother, Dream of Desires, among others. And thought to themselves, it's an easy cash grab. So they tried to create a game with incest without a real desire to do so, or an idea, how to really do it.
Second reason, why so many games fail in my eyes, is inability to create an incestuous relationship that comes from love. The familial relationships are friendly, loving relationships that should be nurtured. Yet many game developer don't know how, so they turn to night rape sessions, blackmailing and deceptions to develop an incest. That absolutely ruins any kind of believability of the romantic scenario. Especially if the player's "victim" says she loves him during the misconduct.
The third reason is pacing and it's tied to the familial relationship, or let's say familiar relationship in this instance. So many games barely establish any kind of familiarity between the characters, when they start feeling first sexual desire between one another. They are supposed to be very close without any sexual desire for a long time. The player should get a nice taste of that bond, before any first sexual thought appears in MC's head. Otherwise their previous relationship is just line of text that nobody cares about.

So what I did in my game? First of all I somehow avoided the Patreon witch hunt last year, so MC's sister is still his sister and not a step-friend whatever.
Second, player will spend a lot of time with her without a sexual thought. They tickle each other, MC buys her a new laptop, helps find a new job. And nothing else is happening between them. To spice it up a little, the is some accidental nudity, like nip slips or kiss on a cheek, with some extra stuff for voyeurs, but nothing too creepy. So you simply establish your own brother-sister relationships. So much so that you help her choose new swimming suit. Actually help her pick one out of four options. Show her around the college, where MC studies and so on.
Third think I did, it's actually you who decide, if there will be an incestuous relationship at all. Throughout your interactions with the sister you'll get in situations, where MC's see something, like the sister in an underwear and he can think to himself if he's attracted to her or not. If he reacts positively to these incentives several times, then he can finally react to his feelings. And that's just the beginning of the romantic relationship.
Fourth thing is very simple, even if they realise their feelings are of a romantic nature, they don't jump in the bed right away. They testing their limit, what they are comfortable with and what they think their sibling is comfortable with. So I went with this route: "Yes, we love each other, but what are we going to do about it?". It creates a funny, awkward situations, where they slowly progress they romantic relationship and add more and more sexual desire to one another.

Is my approach good? Well, in my mind it's better then in most of the games. Is the execution good? I don't know, but I hope so. Is it unique? Definitely. And that's probably last reason, why so many games fail with the incest. They are all the same. Either long lost brother coming home, or long separated father. One son with mother and two sisters, or one father with one daughter. To push the incest sub-genre we need more variations and uniqueness. And that's kind of all I wanted to say, I think.

 

[hameleona]

I love games with incest, but only if it's done right. Maybe not right in objective way, but definitely in the subjective way. I can agree that familial relationship is very important in establishing the fantasy. If that is done right I can even forgive missing blood ties. Because when I see and feel a strong familial relationship, the words with which they refer to each other lose meaning in my mind. They can call themselfs steps-/ cousins/ landlords or what ever and it doesn't ruin the fantasy for me. Yes, the blood relationship does help, but only in conjunction with the familial one.

So why does so many games fails to deliver? First, I think many new developers saw a success of games like DmD, Big Brother, Dream of Desires, among others. And thought to themselves, it's an easy cash grab. So they tried to create a game with incest without a real desire to do so, or an idea, how to really do it.
Second reason, why so many games fail in my eyes, is inability to create an incestuous relationship that comes from love. The familial relationships are friendly, loving relationships that should be nurtured. Yet many game developer don't know how, so they turn to night rape sessions, blackmailing and deceptions to develop an incest. That absolutely ruins any kind of believability of the romantic scenario. Especially if the player's "victim" says she loves him during the misconduct.
The third reason is pacing and it's tied to the familial relationship, or let's say familiar relationship in this instance. So many games barely establish any kind of familiarity between the characters, when they start feeling first sexual desire between one another. They are supposed to be very close without any sexual desire for a long time. The player should get a nice taste of that bond, before any first sexual thought appears in MC's head. Otherwise their previous relationship is just line of text that nobody cares about.

So what I did in my game? First of all I somehow avoided the Patreon witch hunt last year, so MC's sister is still his sister and not a step-friend whatever.
Second, player will spend a lot of time with her without a sexual thought. They tickle each other, MC buys her a new laptop, helps find a new job. And nothing else is happening between them. To spice it up a little, the is some accidental nudity, like nip slips or kiss on a cheek, with some extra stuff for voyeurs, but nothing too creepy. So you simply establish your own brother-sister relationships. So much so that you help her choose new swimming suit. Actually help her pick one out of four options. Show her around the college, where MC studies and so on.
Third think I did, it's actually you who decide, if there will be an incestuous relationship at all. Throughout your interactions with the sister you'll get in situations, where MC's see something, like the sister in an underwear and he can think to himself if he's attracted to her or not. If he reacts positively to these incentives several times, then he can finally react to his feelings. And that's just the beginning of the romantic relationship.
Fourth thing is very simple, even if they realise their feelings are of a romantic nature, they don't jump in the bed right away. They testing their limit, what they are comfortable with and what they think their sibling is comfortable with. So I went with this route: "Yes, we love each other, but what are we going to do about it?". It creates a funny, awkward situations, where they slowly progress they romantic relationship and add more and more sexual desire to one another.

Is my approach good? Well, in my mind it's better then in most of the games. Is the execution good? I don't know, but I hope so. Is it unique? Definitely. And that's probably last reason, why so many games fail with the incest. They are all the same. Either long lost brother coming home, or long separated father. One son with mother and two sisters, or one father with one daughter. To push the incest sub-genre we need more variations and uniqueness. And that's kind of all I wanted to say, I think.

While I mostly agree, I think a lot of devs fall in to the trap of the "fuck X when!!!" crowd. Go to any DmD clone game and make a drinking game of the number of people screaming how they got blue balls, since "why won't they fuck already". There are ways around that, yes, but they present their own problems. I personally have no problem with slow burners, but they do have problems.

You are totally right abut the copy-cat problem, tho. Especially considering the early ones (Big brother, DmD and Dreams of Desire et. cet.) are not exactly great games. Especially Big Brother - that's a shit game if I eve saw one. DmD and DoD are decent, but have a completely different set of problems.
And, to be perfectly honest, I don't think many people care for incest being done right. Milf City is one of the most successful games around and it would take a lot of work to convince me that's a good game or a good story.

 

[MikeMasters]

And, to be perfectly honest, I don't think many people care for incest being done right.

That's why I said specified, that it's subjective right ;-)

I think a good solution for slow burners is what Mr.Dots did in Melody. Simply introduce side characters to fuck with, while the main relationship slowly develops. It's certainly better than any dream sequence. Again, IMO.

And it can be done right without side characters. There is a lot of stuff, that can happen between the beginning of the game and the first intercourse. Like dry humping, skinny dipping, cuddling, messages, accidental nudity, masturbation and more and more and more. If it's served in right doses, players can enjoy themselves, while the girl's pussy stays unscaved.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

I think I posted in another thread that there's an awesome number of ways you can have a familial relationship with someone:
1. Blood(e.g., birth mother)
2. Adoption(adoptive mother)
3. Marriage(stepmother, to a much lesser extent, mother in law; if your mom marries a woman, she's your stepmom too! And of course your dad's wife would be a step mom)
4. Foster care(foster mother)
5. Symbolic or voluntary(godmother, if raised by nuns you might have a reverend mother or mother superior take care of you)
6. Weird mystical thing(it's a clone of your mom, your mom(s!) are a succubus and an angel, there's an alternate universe mom out there, etc.)
In theory, one could have a half dozen mothers, in story. I would lol at that premise, but if well done, I'd play the shit out of it too!
I agree that you have to establish the familial relationship. It doesn't have to be lovey-dovey in order to be "realistic" or credible. There are games where mom and/or sister treat the son like crap, for example. Which is true to many people's life experiences, unfortunately, and adds a vindictive/revenge element to the sexual motive. Or the mom and son could be coming together after a long time apart(son lived with dad, or birth mom comes back/son comes to find her). But it's good to let that play out in game, in story.
As to the appeal of the incest fantasy, and I will specifically deal with the Oedipal one here:
1. The sexual taboo nature(no sex with family members)
2. The age difference(the MC is impliedly underage often, and mom is of course 18+ years older); Mom or not, she's usually portrayed as a "hot MILF"
3. The power inversion/subversion(mom is in a position of authority, if she submits sexually that's a reversal of power)--it's not a coincidence that mind control, corruption and D/S are frequent themes in these games
4. The illicit/secret nature of the relationship(you can't go around bragging about the hot mom you're banging when it's your own mom)
5. The perversion/violation of the family structure/relationship(mom is now effectively your wife/girlfriend/lover, and your other female relations are your harem)
6. Possibility of further decadent behavior going even further(pregnancy(at the extreme, breeding your own family to spawn future sex slaves, bdsm, group incest, lesbian incest, anal sex, various fetishes)

Sex with older female authority figures, to me, is close to a sublimated Oedipal fantasy--the hot teacher, the nun, the boss, etc.
I would like to see an incest game where the MC has two families--stepmom's family, mom's family--and has to navigate that a bit before the sexual component of the game begins in earnest. For one thing, you can change up the ethnicity of the step-family. E.g., MC lives with mom until mom and dad divorce, dad remarries and MC doesn't have much contact with original family until years later, when X happens...

 

[Conviction07]

And, to be perfectly honest, I don't think many people care for incest being done right. Milf City is one of the most successful games around and it would take a lot of work to convince me that's a good game or a good story.

Eh, I just think that the people who want instant gratification are the most vocal. If you take games like DMD and particularly A Wife and Mother right now, the majority of its game thread is filled with people bitching and moaning about how slow everything progresses. And while I don’t disagree, they’ve also become, and are becoming pretty damn successful.

As far as Milfy City goes, I’d challenge anyone to convince me that that game even has a story. Because the premise of a horny teenager who spends every waking minute consumed with how he’s gonna bang his family, just doesn’t cut it.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

Eh, I just think that the people who want instant gratification are the most vocal. If you take games like DMD and particularly A Wife and Mother right now, the majority of its game thread is filled with people bitching and moaning about how slow everything progresses. And while I don’t disagree, they’ve also become, and are becoming pretty damn successful.

As far as Milfy City goes, I’d challenge anyone to convince me that that game even has a story. Because the premise of a horny teenager who spends every waking minute consumed with how he’s gonna bang his family, just doesn’t cut it.

I think they were pointing in the direction of a coherent story at the outset, then just kinda dropped it in favor of fanservice.

 

[hameleona]

Eh, I just think that the people who want instant gratification are the most vocal. If you take games like DMD and particularly A Wife and Mother right now, the majority of its game thread is filled with people bitching and moaning about how slow everything progresses. And while I don’t disagree, they’ve also become, and are becoming pretty damn successful.

As far as Milfy City goes, I’d challenge anyone to convince me that that game even has a story. Because the premise of a horny teenager who spends every waking minute consumed with how he’s gonna bang his family, just doesn’t cut it.

Milf City gets 5000 patrons. They may be vocal, but they are also obviously a paying bunch. Sadly most other games (even the good ones) struggle to move above 1000. So... yeah.

By the way, Milf City tried to have a story. A not-so-deep and comedic one, but it tried to. The way they let patrons decide what will be developed next is what killed that story. Instead of the player exploring why did the mother want to fuck her son so much, what happened between her and her sister and figuring out what has the school psychologist to do with it all... we got a disjointed mess of plot-threads for the sake of letting patreons decide what gets updated.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

Milf City gets 5000 patrons. They may be vocal, but they are also obviously a paying bunch. Sadly most other games (even the good ones) struggle to move above 1000. So... yeah.

By the way, Milf City tried to have a story. A not-so-deep and comedic one, but it tried to. The way they let patrons decide what will be developed next is what killed that story. Instead of the player exploring why did the mother want to fuck her son so much, what happened between her and her sister and figuring out what has the school psychologist to do with it all... we got a disjointed mess of plot-threads for the sake of letting patreons decide what gets updated.

It can still be fixed by the time the "final" version comes out, they just have to tweak the conditional events and sequencing of stuff. You just have the MC go back to the therapist every time there's a development with the family or with Celia.

 

[gamersglory]

If you want to oversimplify the Incest definition. The fact that the characters are complete works of fiction that don't exist how is that Insect in the first place. There just CG or Animation. So why are Visa and Mastercards policy's even relevant here