What is the appeal of "Mind control"-games?

[Deleted member 3257669]

Question: What is the appeal of "Mind control"-games?

I've seen several Mind Control-games pop-up lately, where the MC gains some superpower either through some Devil/God-entity or finds some item that helps them in doing so. But I've always wondered what the appeal is of Mind Controlling somebody to do your bidding.

Personally I feel it kinda beats the purpose of having dialogue options in the first place, as does it really matter if you're on the good or bad side of somebody when you can just, you know.. mind control them? Obviously story-wise the developers set boundaries for mind control to happen but it kinda feels needlessly restrictive as in theory being able to mind control somebody would let you do about anything to anybody.

I'm not saying the Mind Control-genre is bad, as there's some good games out there but I do feel some games would've been better in my opinion if it didn't have it in the first place.

So what do you feel about this genre? What games would you have enjoyed more if it either lacked or had the Mind Control option?

 

[Deleted member 3145675]

Hi,

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Now, why using such a device/tool?

- it creates an impression of Powaaaaaaa (unlimited)
- it allows the writer to have his game progressing without having to create 258.457 subplots or reasoning or motivations
- why not?
- it only works on the weak-minded anyway.

- if you have to deal with weak-minded why losing hours to try and convince them when you can Dun-Möch them?
(these are not the droids you're looking for - move along)

(The Force shall free me)
(last line of the code of the Sith)

 

[animalrapist]

When you mind control a woman now they are put into their proper place at last. Everybody hates it when they are being very uppity so this is the optimal solution to the problem. Then you can get back to the very important men things you are in needing to do without the problem of worrying about the females

 

[fitgirlbestgirl]

To me, mind control stories only work if the mind control is very limited and used as a tool in an overall corruption process. So, more like hypnotic suggestion as opposed to straight up snapping your finger and having a willing slave. Complete mind control takes the stakes and progression out of a game. It's the same as every woman throwing herself at you in a vanilla game without having to work for it, it's just lazy and boring.

In any kind of game, be it vanilla, harem or heavily corruption-focused, the journey is more important than the destination. Whether you're trying to win over a girl, add another waifu to your harem or corrupt an innocent girl into becoming a depraved whore, the process of getting there is what's enjoyable. Hard mind control robs characters of agency and eliminates the possibility for conflict or interesting character interactions along that journey.

 

[Asia Argento]

Its a penultimate power and control thing. You are completely dominating your partner and doing what you wish with them, sometimes breaking their mind too to change them into something more palatable. Mindbreak often goes hand in hand with mind control. Regardless, thats the idea.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

For me, it can be a few different things, or any combination thereof:

1. Power-trip: Invading someone's mind to manipulate them is a power I'm sure many would love to have. Maybe they're just interested in the outcome (sex, submission). Or, for the more discerning enjoyers of corruption themes, it's the thought of being able to defile someone's core being, subverting it to suit your debased desires. Something seen in games like Spiral Clicker.

2. Revenge fantasy: Maybe you just hate the character. Maybe they're written as an insufferable scumbag and then you realize they could be much nicer to you and those around them with some "adjustments". Or you just want to punish them. Something like Gloria in iNSight of you, or John in The Company.

3. Corruption of heroic figures: This ties into the above aspects, but is what netorare is to netori. The appeal is reversed as the MC is undeniably evil and the people he/she is corrupting are very justified in resisting him/her. When I played Overwhored and I got a certain feeling of dread from it despite the mostly humorous tone of the game, I figured it was just my NTR-addled mind reading too deeply into it. Then I came across a writeup from the dev's (now probably better known for making Snow Daze) old blog explaining that exact feeling. There's just something about watching heroic characters being corrupted until they're willingly serving evil and injustice. Now, I prefer if they're talked into it, but Overwhored goes in the opposite direction, where the MC feels almost more like an unstoppable corruptive force than a person for most of the game.

4. Mind-control as non-con: I personally hate seeing rape. Mind control is more of a fantastical form of non-con, which is a lot more palatable and can even be enjoyable for the victim. Basically every game that has rape, I wish it had some form of mind-control instead. I've been turned away from many Japanese games that otherwise sounded interesting, due to their preoccupation with physical violation. It's ugly, messy and ultimately unsatisfying, especially if they're going to go with the "she eventually loves being abused" angle. That's really not how that works. I'd rather have a magical or sci-fi element than a tragic misconception about rape.

 

[JoGio]

I think they can work if they're restricted in an interesting way.

The most common implementation is for the main character to gradually train his power, which I think is an uninteresting premise and often leads to grind mechanics built in (repeating events and conversations over and over again).

A more interesting way to implement this, at least in theory, is to make it so that a certain set of conditions have to be created for the person to be susceptible to mind control. The challenge for the player is to "arrange the pieces" so that this condition ends up being met.

In other words, any character could be mind controlled if the player is clever enough to set a trap for them, and each trap might be different because what makes the target vulnerable could depend on things that are particular to them (ex. mental/emotional state, birth signs if you want to get metaphysical, etc.)

Edit: I just remembered a game that did this well. It's called Supervillainy.

Spoiler: I talk about the premise, but don't want to spoil it for people that like to go into it blind.

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So far it's only implemented for one character but I hope the developer continues in a similar trajectory for others.

 

[rk-47]

Mind control makes the scenes seem fake and dead, not a fan really

 

[Doorknob22]

I'll approach this from the perspective of an author as I've been writing erotica for 20+ years and I've been trying to wrap my head around this problem about half this time.

Good Mind Control stories are tough as fuck to write because they Mind Control in itself opposes the very foundation of erotic story telling: build sexual tension and release it. When attempting to write an erotic story (or a game) which deals with Mind Control, the author is caught between two nasty options:

1. Cheat. You claim the protagonist (or MC) has Mind Control but in reality he doesn't. The whole story or game revolves around why you can't use your powers: you are not strong enough, you have moral dilemmas, not wishing to alert others, etc. etc. Bottom line is the player (or the reader) doesn't feel the MC actually has Mind Control powers (or he has very limited ones).

2. Don't cheat. I can't see how a true Mind Control game can be pulled off as it would essentially be a slideshow of sex images. Mind Control stories are extremely hard to pull off as they consists mostly of sex, blocks upon blocks of sex with almost no dialog or sexual tension because the protagonist doesn't need to seduce anyone to get laid, which is the foundation of writing good erotica.

P.S. Anyone into Mind Control stories, I suggest looking into my friend

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. He writes good, hard, Mind Control stories but his stories demonstrate the problematic nature of Mind Control stories: shitload of hardcore action with very little plot or sexual tension.

 

[Rilevav]

I'll approach this from the perspective of an author as I've been writing erotica for 20+ years and I've been trying to wrap my head around this problem about half this time.

Have you played Penlight? It's basically a morality play on mind control. The player can control NPCs and have almost no limitations though the ones that exist require a little caution. But doing so sucks the fun out of romance for the player and MC equally. If the player tramples over consent then one way or another they will be headed for a bad end.

 

[Carrera]

And why does anyone like anything really.

hint, has less to do with being evil than you think or would like it to be.

 

[khumak]

The problem with Mind Control in a game is that it's basically an "I win" button. It's too powerful so it's boring. It's like playing an RPG where you can create a character who starts out at the maximum level with the best equipment in the game from day 1. What's the point in even playing?

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

The problem with Mind Control in a game is that it's basically an "I win" button. It's too powerful so it's boring. It's like playing an RPG where you can create a character who starts out at the maximum level with the best equipment in the game from day 1. What's the point in even playing?

Doesn't have to be. Not all mind control turns the target into a mindless puppet. It can be used to "get a foot in the door", or to implant suggestions which can then be exploited.

 

[SharkVampire]

I feel the same way as OP. Usually I avoid such games, since It's require really good writing talent to make such theme interesting for experienced adult genre player. But I guess there can be good games in this genre. Once I came across on such a game and was pretty surprised how the dev pulled out this theme. There is no magic, all behavior changes are caused by the chip in the victim's brain, which alters the production of chemicals in the body and triggers the reaction that player wanted. Also in this game, the mind control pretty limited to certain persons (one willingly accept to test this chip, and the other is victim) and it's not ultimate instrument with resolving MC's problems, so he need to use his wits a lot, to escape danger he pulled himself. The game is not without flaws, like grind, for example, but it still has more advantages, such as a good language with which it is written, a well-disclosed mind control theme, so in general, the game is quite good.
If you interested - this game is called "iNSight of you".

As a side note, the most entertaining mind control I can remember was in Vampire Masquerade: Bloodlines, especially when you played for Malkavian and projected your madness onto others

 

[BrainWaves]

To be fair, mind control is a fetish in and of itself, so a pretty big part of the appeal of mind control is...well the presence of mind control.
But, just like any fetish, there is a lot of preferences and different ways to put it. There are many forms of it, and while the most common one is "I have a phone app that turns people into slaves", it's far from being the only one.
Many forms are more sublte, or more limited, like when the willpower of the person is taken into account, for example.

But yeah, if that's not really your thing, I get that it's hard to see the appeal.

 

[Deleted member 2466386]

Well I'm pretty sure many of us wanted powers like time stop or mind control when we were young.

In term of mind control for me the key is "power", the absolute control over someone's body/mind is the genre's charm point for me. The usage of this is endless too, mind control to take revenge, NTR, corruption, humiliation, etc.

Some main things that I usually see involving mind control that I think it's the appeal of mind control are

- Moral Degeneration / "Pride Destruction" : when a cocky character gets fucked up and treated as animal. The popular storyline such as
First, got mind controlled / hypnotised with blank expression and got trained sexually / punished.
then, one day after a long mind controlled sex / punishment, suddenly snap out while having sex(intentionally by the trainers). Got mentally destroyed.
finally, mind control is no longer needed and she's turned into a sex slave.

- NTR : a very popular method for NTR in general via phone application or magic.

- Corruption : since mind control is powerful, some games give the player a restriction like the will is too strong and can't be fully controlled and have to raise some stats before you can control her to do anything big, which really give the player with "corruption" fetish a full experience of watching that character slowly getting corrupted as the mind control grows stronger and stronger.

 

[Volta]

I think we need to separate mind control and corruption a little.

Mind control is often considered the mind blanked walking doll with arms outstretched repeating some "programming" or whatever, whereas i would personally consider any sort of hypnosis to be mind control, even if it's mild and only slightly behaviour changing, something that would often be considered corruption.

Personally i don't find the "bot" type of mind control hot, slight nudges and personality changes however are far more fun, they work with a game's format of gradual payoffs and i suppose you could even consider it forced/controlled character development/change.

No matter which way you look at it mind control is imposing your will on someone, corruption suggests that you encourage the change rather than directly cause it, at their more mild ends they aren't too different, rather a different means to the same end.

So what is the appeal of mind control games, if done in a certain(imo, the) right way they are just corruption games that can lean into the corruption mechanics in a different way.

 

[262177]

Powertrips unless it's a strategic mind battle where everyone else also has mind control and crazy willpower. Then it's a survival challenge.

Not exactly my thing, especially if it's mixed up with hypnosis and mindless slaves, but making it original and making everyone much harder to break - leading to the protagonist breaking or getting broken itself - could be a dealbreaker.

- NTR : a very popular method for NTR in general via phone application or magic.

Thought the whole app thing was just hypnosis, but those do go hand in hand after all.

 

[Panic Code]

Total domination!!

 

[woody554]

there's a dividing line between domination and mind control, and while they might first seem related, they're really almost opposites of each other.

domination is about forcing your will over the subject's will, mentally overpowering them. which implies that they MUST have a will of their own, or there's nothing you can overpower. typically the stronger their will, the more pleasurable it's overpowering them. it's about fighting a worthy opponent, and winning them.

mind control is the opposite of that. it's about magically or chemically negating the subject's will, even erasing it from existence. not fighting it, but turning it off like a light switch. usually completely removing even the theoretical possibility of them somehow fighting the control. typically we're looking for mindless slaves, even objects.

both are control fantasies, but from extremely different points of view. it seems to me most of us doms don't care for mind control, precisely because they're not free to fight back. where as the mind control people are unsatisfied with a submissive that retains their own will, precisely because they have the POTENTIAL to not being in their control.

there doesn't seem to be much overlap between these two groups. and why one group gets their dick up or panties wet for one fetish but not the other, as usual no one knows. we just do.

games of course merrily mix up these things because the dev either doesn't share the fetish and just thinks "it's the sort of thing that sounds cool in porn stuff", or because they're on the fence trying to score both groups while not really serving either.