What sort of Visual Novel interests patreons more? Story based or Porn based.

[GhostRider_X]

Perhaps this might seem a rather peculiar question, and maybe perhaps has been discussed or talked about already before on this forum or any other as such.

It's more or less a preference based question, and similar to what kind of patreon rewards people like, or what kind of models do the patreons prefer seeing in a Visual Novel.

Similar in context, my question is more or less based on the base story of any Visual Novel.

What would you prefer seeing in a Visual Novel? Should a VN focus more on porn or the story instead?

By focusing on story I don't mean to neglect the sexual part, but instead to have a perfect blend of both having an interactive story which makes some sense to it with added titillating sexual elements. Having a story and sex/porn in it both. If not actually make sense, then divert the attention induced through the flaws of including unnecessary or meaningless sex in them towards the story.

Basically it's to address all of the Visual Novels in circulation nowadays, considering these are nothing more then the American Version of the Japanese eroge hentai VNs. Most of the VNs that are in circulation around F95 through the patreon, are basically nothing more than just porn. MC always horny, or thinking about sex or just started to think about it, most probably with the female cast which in turn always mostly tends to have the family members included too. Or the MC being stuck in an unnaturally worse situation or finding herself landed in situations that basically almost doesn't work in her favor, where she has no other choice but to find ways to get out of them but by sex. Corruption based VNs, VNs with fetishes, VNs with normal college based stories, something including dating and stuff. But not much to the story for an avid reader who looks for more than just the art (and that's to say, the animated sex/porn) but instead looks for the words it speaks, the story it tells.

But more or less, they fail to deliver an interactive story, which an avid reader would love to read to and find the sexual elements titillating enough. Even the most successful ones have nothing much of a story, I'll address some of the more famous titles and some other less popular titles perhaps. Dating My Daughter, Big Brother, Dreaming of Desire, Dreaming of Dana, Zoe's Temptations and as such. Some may start off good but in the end tends to turn down the road of sex, is that all an 18+ VN supposed to be?

There's a VN or two I liked a bit more than any other, namely Depraved Awakenings and I must address it's developer PhillyGames, it's one game which has quite a story and then Dreaming of Desires from LewdLab which has a good story, but once again just because it's supposed to be 18+ everything tends down to come to sex by the end of it. I know it's supposed to have sex in it, but lots of sex that in the end it's basically nothing more than just porn as the end product, personally I don't think that's justice to these VNs. Most of the times stuff just doesn't even make sense and loses all sense of realistic appearance to it. Of course there are many japanese hentai which are based on porn and sex only, but then again it's just a preferential a question and nothing more.

Should these developers (or some kind developer in general) focus on the one base element in a Visual Novel - basically it's story, and if so how much would it appeal to you all? A visual Novel having a perfect balance to sexual elements and the story together, mixed with a kind of a blend in a perfect ratio to each of these two elements. One which is interactive, interesting and something more than just porn. One which no one would want to just skip skip skip and look towards the fapping part only.

Me for one, I would like something like that. If there's anyone else like me I'd love to read their opinions too. And anyone else reading this, please do comment on what they think either ways.

Note to readers: Any comment which is off topic to the poll, anything which promotes or demotes any of the developers projects mentioned (not mentioned) here, anything which harasses any other users view on the topic will be removed.

 

[Gomly1980]

Said it many times before, I can get porn anywhere on the internet, I go through visual novels for the novel with porn being a bonus.

There are a hell of a lot of great VN's with no porn in them at all like Steins Gate, Doki Doki Literature Club and Phantom Trigger.

It's all a matter of content.

If the story is shit I have no interest in it.

 

[NandabaCanti]

I'd say story is most important. I've played quite a few VNs with subpar visuals all the way through, but I find it a lot harder to stick with a game with a crap story. In the latter case, I'll often just end up extracting the art if it was good enough to be worth the effort and forget about finishing the game. If I just want to fap over art though, I can just head on over to a booru and find exactly what I'm in the mood for. Much like @Gomly1980 said, if I am turning to games, it's because I want something more. To get pulled into a fantasy world for some escapism and to experience an interesting (and hopefully unique/original) point of view.

I will say however, that the visuals are important to hook people. I turn away just as many games, if not more, for having shitty screenshots as I do for having a boring/poorly written plot summary. So it's important to give your best on this front as well, unless you want to bank on a few people trying it and start recommending it with phrases like; "That game has a great story, even if the graphics are shit, if you can get over them then give it a try." Which will obviously leave you struggling to gain a following.

You want to find a way to stand out from the crowd and put forth the most professional looking work you can manage in terms of writing, editing, and art. Most of us just don't have enough time to play more than a small handful of games in any given period of time, so you've got to prove your game is worth putting off everything else your potential audience could be doing with that time, so first impressions mean a lot.

 

[GhostRider_X]

Said it many times before, I can get porn anywhere on the internet, I go through visual novels for the novel with porn being a bonus.

There are a hell of a lot of great VN's with no porn in them at all like Steins Gate, Doki Doki Literature Club and Phantom Trigger.

It's all a matter of content.

If the story is shit I have no interest in it.

Agreed, there are a lot of VNs without porn, but the question in context was more about these 18+ VNs in circulation around f95 and patreon more. VNs with porn is a bonus but then again should it be all about porn only, or should the story matter too, something that makes sense and doesn't just comprehend towards sex, with some magic crystal, magic ring, it's like one of those initial Visual Novels that came out to be back in 2008 or earlier maybe, I don't remember the exact date but I remember playing this Dating Sim Ariane B, back then there were a lot of HTML Dating Sims, virtualdating and v-dating (if i remember correctly) are two such sites offering them. For me they were nothing more then Visual Novels too, but amidst all that the developer of Ariane B came out with something named as Something in The Air, at that time it was a work of art for me. Had quite a good story, a good title and offered quite many versatility in the choices. It was short, but for being a porn or adult or 18+ VN it was quite precise to be exact.

I can't quite say for the VNs nowadays, they are good mostly because of the art wise, but as @uradamus said that not everyone has the time to play everything out there and end up playing just one or two VNs or games at a certain time. I totally agree with that and to be honest for that one reason I look for something that's not just interesting because of the art only but the story too.

And I'm not going to ever say that a story is the base of a VN, art is something that has to follow that base, if a story is good but art as shitty as ever it's more or less likely to be put into pen and paper rather than an actual Visual Novel. For me, a Visual Novel is based on a good art, a base good story and being 18+ should have enough sexual content to keep the users stuck to the Novel to the end. A perfect blend of all 3 is required to achieve something like that.

I'd say story is most important.
To get pulled into a fantasy world for some escapism and to experience an interesting (and hopefully unique/original) point of view.

I will say however, that the visuals are important to hook people.

To make my point, I'm going to quote the above lines from @uradamus that story is the most important, and a VN is supposed to pull you into a world to get you an escape and to experience an interesting and a unique and original Point of View. But also, that the art and visuals are what hook people to the VN too.

But that doesn't mean the escape from realism comes off with baseless or senseless MC going after his family just because one day his friend talked about doing her mommy so hard that he couldn't hold his shit together and start fantasizing about her. Or a father starting to think about his daughter just because he has been ever so lonely to not get a date, in like what, 10 years perhaps. That's just basically screaming sex sex and sex, kind of like those porn shoots where you don't even know how things got down to a brother and a sister having sex just because the brother teased his sister for being a lesbian because she wears rainbow colored t-shirts, and wristbands. I wouldn't say I'm not a fan of incest, but as long as it's just a fantasy only and not reality. But to provide such a fantasy that kind of acting or a story line is as baseless as the expressions that those pornstars in those porn give off. Fantasy should be as close and near to the reality as ever. I think for me, that's the escape from reality where I don't know if it's a fantasy or a reality and I'm stuck between both wondering which is which. Where I actually fall in love with a character for who she or he is and not just because how she looks like.

In short that both are important and as such as most VNs are considered, I guess that's one of the reasons that people end up also giving away a CGI only from all of those VNs I mentioned above, or a version reducing file sizes of the photos, removing the redundant size of the graphics. Because if people were in them for the art only then they would have appreciated the developers effort in producing such high quality art. I don't think that's the case.

And as @uradamus said that if one wants to stand out from the crowd as such as that, and I should say in terms of finance the above mentioned crowd of VNs is a crowd with some tall heads. Producing something worthwhile is time consuming and sometimes require an amount of finance to be put forth. That's one of the reasons to know the audience what they want and like, since creating something and in the end the developer not getting the worth of his time and money is something saddening, or that's what I feel.

But alas, in the end I'd totally agree with @uradamus that first impressions are the last impressions. I hope someone listens or watches this poll.

 

[thecardinal]

A good story can save bad porn, but a bad story won't make up for good porn. Just my opinion. I don't mind when the story is the main focus, but if I have to wait at least 3-4 updates before I see any porn, I'm out.

 

[GhostRider_X]

@carnalcardinal But then again, what exactly is porn? Anything that includes a little bit of nudity, a little bit of fondling or the actual sex scenes, either oral or penetrative. Because teasing and blueballing the MCs with contant nudes, unnatural circumstances and scenes and stuff that doesn't really makes sense at all and is just put there for the sake of the story so that somehow the porn it shows makes a little bit of sense? Is that the nature of porn you give preference to?

Or which has a little bit of backstory, something which makes sense (which of course takes a little bit of time to get stuff at that point) and progresses slowly from that point on focusing on both aspects, story and porn together?

Because, the first one seems nothing more than senseless porn which of course, those huge porn industries do tend to give us and with actual real people and not just animated. Just go over and look at some of newsensations, familystrokes, pornhub and whatnot. That's more quick porn than a month or two of 1st demo release and then the next one or two months for the next update. That's even better in my views. ^^

 

[Guygee]

Like most posters so far, I agree that without a decent story the "porn" content makes no point since there's an avalanche of "real" porn available anyway. Erotica requires a context and motivation, then it can become more than mere intercourse. So all-round quality should be the aim of any developer. "Build a better mousetrap" and all that...

Dating my Daughter, Dreams of Desire, possibly The Manifest in time - although less brutal violence and more erotic content would help the balance in this case imho - are good examples of good practice. Stories you miss once they're done.

Whatever, I for one appreciate the time and effort that goes into these releases. Thanks folks!

 

[Prokopije]

Story, of course. With "meaningful" porn as bonus.
There's nothing worse than (well ,at least for me) : MC wakes up one morning, bangs his mother/sisters/roomies/whatever instead of g'mornings, than walks to grocery store to buy breakfast, there's hot cashier and (of course) she's so full of lust that she'll let MC bang her right there. Than MC goes home, but in the bushes aside he founds another hot girl full of lust which will also let him to fuck her right there after 3 seconds they've met. He reaches his front door but someone grabs him on shoulder... of course it is hot neighbour full of lust which will drag MC to her lair and fuck MC's brain out out of nowhere... Long story short, MC dies of hunger and exhaustion because of lust ladies :test2:

 

[GuyFreely]

I can't help but feel like in the broader audience out there on the web, you need solid erotic content to do well on Patreon. I think the group on this website is more of the story first crowd (myself included), but I don't know that it's representative of "the masses" as it were. Now you'll have fewer, more dedicated fans if you deliver solid story. You'll have more, but less dedicated fans if you have hot erotic content.

As I often do, I like to draw comparisons to Hollywood. The most successful blockbuster movies tend to be paint by numbers action flicks. The other major performers are often visually captivating.

Spoiler: Top grossing movies

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I would argue that the most story driven movies of the top 10 are Titanic and Harry Potter. I personally think the story of Titanic is so-so and a lot of people wanted to see the ship sink. Harry Potter is a series of decent novels, but the movies lose a bit of that as they always do and we are left with more wizardry spectacle. (I'm not going to get into a star wars debate on the internet.) I mean I am a big fan of marvel movies, but I wouldn't accuse them of being deep stories.

We compare this to the "best" movies.

Spoiler: Top Rated Movies

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I would argue that this list is more representative of good stories. I like all the movies on this list, but the only ones that performed very well financially are Return of the King and The Dark Knight. I think these two cross over because they had both good stories and amazing visuals. The best of both worlds essentially.

So yeah, it's the classic dilemma of mass appeal versus artistic vision. If you can deliver great erotic content and an amazing story, more power to you. If you want to know what makes better money, probably the erotic content. If you want to know what makes for the best experiences, probably a good story.

[I feel the need to say this is purely my impressions and I'm not stating this as fact.]

 

[GhostRider_X]

Thanks guys for your replies.

Like most posters so far, I agree that without a decent story the "porn" content makes no point since there's an avalanche of "real" porn available anyway. Erotica requires a context and motivation, then it can become more than mere intercourse. So all-round quality should be the aim of any developer. "Build a better mousetrap" and all that...

Dating my Daughter, Dreams of Desire, possibly The Manifest in time - although less brutal violence and more erotic content would help the balance in this case imho - are good examples of good practice. Stories you miss once they're done.

Whatever, I for one appreciate the time and effort that goes into these releases. Thanks folks!

Thanks @Guygee for putting it up as that, but you're so correct with that. I also appreciate the time and effort these developers put into them as much as any other. Although the story is as good as for one time or a second playthrough not much. There isn't that much of branching of the story but some minor choice differences that's all. The one game for once you can say focus on a little bit of more towards the story is Deprave Awakenings. Although being 18+ it revolved to sex more often and to build that the developer rushed stuff each day. Instead of giving things more versatility towards it. Still in my opinion it was more better than any I've played yet so far.

Story, of course. With "meaningful" porn as bonus.
There's nothing worse than (well ,at least for me) : MC wakes up one morning, bangs his mother/sisters/roomies/whatever instead of g'mornings, than walks to grocery store to buy breakfast, there's hot cashier and (of course) she's so full of lust that she'll let MC bang her right there. Than MC goes home, but in the bushes aside he founds another hot girl full of lust which will also let him to fuck her right there after 3 seconds they've met. He reaches his front door but someone grabs him on shoulder... of course it is hot neighbour full of lust which will drag MC to her lair and fuck MC's brain out out of nowhere... Long story short, MC dies of hunger and exhaustion because of lust ladies :test2:

Woah, you took my heart with that one, @Prokopije lmao. But you're so true. Story with meaningful porn is a bonus. Something which the japanese has been delivering a lot better since they are the Gods of erotic VNs than these new chicks on patreon even if they are earning more (although I don't think one can compare an industry's or company's earning to a bunch of people grouped as a team) which @GuyFreely explained so very well in his post. That comparison is very well put and he's correct in what he said.

But everything said, I never thought people would be longing for such content more, I guess that's why the Japanese industries are a prime in such and stuff.

 

[Deleted member 563623]

This is largely echoing others, but here in my own words anyway.

Both -> Story -> Porn.

If i just want porn on demand, i go to pornhub. And if i'm in the mood for a fun story, i'll watch a movie or read a book etc, in which any mature scenes are generally relevant and subservient to the storytelling, fairly tame, and are not a focus themselves, or are even absent all together.

When i play a 'mature game or VN', what i want is sexy scenes and settings and themes that are held together by a story and characters that are at least passable when standing alone. But the whole point should be to create titillating situations and scenes that benefit from the storytelling and character development. Those aspects shouldn't be the focus, or at least not the only focus, but they also shouldn't be lazily and incompetently done and glossed over. More 'porn with a story', but the other way can work too.

 

[BawdyBaron]

I think they're both important, but in the same way that cheap fiction and high literature are both important. If I just want some quick entertainment, I'm not reaching for Dostoyevsky, but that doesn't mean there isn't a time and place for it.

As people have said, if I just want to rub one out, I'm just finding some porn. If I want an experience I'm opening a VN.

 

[HopesGaming]

I would think that the highest success would be lots of erotic content on the get-go and with some okay to decent storytelling. It's just the middle ground. Too much erotic with no stories and people would just watch xxx instead. Too much story and people rather play a triple aaa game or a good vn without the eroge in.

BUT you should ALWAYS go for what you want to. In my case, I went to the heavy story route. I accept that it may not get the success as if it was mostly eroge but it's a passion project and I love it. If I didn't love it, then it wouldn't be worth it. Remember this is for the long run.

 

[gunderson]

Distinction: 'story' is way too broad here.

If you mean that there should be relationships between characters, that they should have motivations behind their actions, that there should be barriers to overcome, that characters should be well developed, and that the main character might have some goal other than or in addition to getting laid; I'm down. That sounds good.

But if you mean something like, "The demons are coming! You need to stop your high school from turning into hell and all your teachers and fellow students from becoming monsters with the help of your grandfather's sacred fursuit and his magical dildo-on-a-stick all while being trained in the art of mastur-jitsu by your talking pet dog/girlfriend," then fucking no. That shit is awful. That's what I think of whenever somebody brings up their beloved Japanese VNs.

I'm going to assume people are actually talking about the latter, because why would anybody want a game where there's no explanation of anything that's going on whatsoever and none of the characters have any relationship beyond whether or not they are currently screwing? That would be ridiculous. So assuming that we're talking about the convoluted standard Japanese VN narrative versus a more barebones plot but better porn, fuck story. Story sucks unless you're a great writer. And fun fact: if you can't write a clear, coherent paragraph in English, you're probably not going to write a great porn game in English. So maybe it would be worth accepting that you might have to lean a little harder on the 'porn' side than you want, at least if you're just starting out, before you show the world your true pornographic masterpiece of storytelling.

 

[GhostRider_X]

Both -> Story -> Porn.

I guess that says everything in 3 simple words and 2 arrows.

If I want an experience I'm opening a VN.

I don't know what experience is there to a sister being in love with her brother and a whole family getting or falling in love with the MC.

Too much story and people rather play a triple aaa game or a good vn without the eroge in.

If you would check out the actual script files or notice the story content then the erotic content in these novels are
1) Amount of renders
2) Situations involving/indulging/simply orchestrated towards containing sexual scenes. That would consist of these:
a) Clothed scenes of the MC ogling the characters, fantasizing about them, the characters getting to things being intimated towards each other but getting interrupted or any other such content or scenarios.
b) Shirtless or pant-less scenes of the female characters mostly. Female characters exercising, doing yoga, running swimming and as such.
c) Semi-naked scenes having frontal naked renders of female characters upper half of the body or their breasts, and in some cases the lower half. Scenes might have MCs getting a boobjob blowjob or a handjob or just jerking off, or watching/peeking/spying or anything else as such.
d) Fully naked bodies where the MC is just getting to see the characters naked, as a strip show. Having sex peeking/spying or as such once again. The MC might or might not end up having full intercourse getting interrupted by some means or anything else.
3) And the other side characters if any, NTR content or as such. Or perhaps just the MC or any other character jerking off.

Besides this, the textual content or the number of words used, amount to not that much. Considering that, according to the textual content things are already leaning towards the Visual Novel in having more story related content than porn related. It's only the amount of renders that is porn related. And even then, the ratio to renders would be around 1:1 or 2:3 perhaps, considering the renders are based according to the situations as mentioned above. As such there's not always naked content or even sexual content or characters having sex. Actual sex scenes might be just 6 to 8 perhaps. Until the sex scenes the only scenes there are are only about perhaps either blueballing the MC as seen in Dating my Daughter or the MC being sex fanatic who thinks of banging her mom as seen in Dreams of Desire. Woah, in My girlfriend's amnesia, there was this NTR content where I saw one of the characters raping/having sex with the MCs GF in a changing room at a pool, who thinks that if his bf would see her having being molested by some stranger she doesn't know, that he'd think of her as a slut or bad and might even leave her. She can't scream because she is afraid of her bf whom she keeps forgetting about each day that he might break up with her just because of that.

I can refer to many numerous examples from these new VNs I have been playing that i call senseless scenes, scenes that doesn't make sense, senseless porn or call it anything you want to. These scenes are there just to make sense for the porn content, that what the developers are showing and why they are showing that content at such a point. Because there's not a definitive plot they come up with something that might, might make sense to the story if put together there.

Based on that, you guys are already reading too much story. I just added a word to it, senseless story. I'm glad that you are working upon what your heart desires more. Kudos to that.

But if you mean something like, "The demons are coming! You need to stop your high school from turning into hell and all your teachers and fellow students from becoming monsters with the help of your grandfather's sacred fursuit and his magical dildo-on-a-stick all while being trained in the art of mastur-jitsu by your talking pet dog/girlfriend," then fucking no. That shit is awful. That's what I think of whenever somebody brings up their beloved Japanese VNs.

Prime example of senseless story.

Distinction: 'story' is way too broad here.

If you mean that there should be relationships between characters, that they should have motivations behind their actions, that there should be barriers to overcome, that characters should be well developed, and that the main character might have some goal other than or in addition to getting laid; I'm down. That sounds good.

That's exactly what I mean, I don't mean to give the VNs a medieval or fantasy or fictional background a simple dating or simulation VN would be a good one either way as long as the content makes sense at least.

I'm going to assume people are actually talking about the latter.......

I don't know about others mate, but I'm down to talking about the former one only. And considering people's replies I think they might also be talking about the former one, but I might be wrong perhaps. I don't know.

So assuming that we're talking about the convoluted standard Japanese VN narrative versus a more barebones plot but better porn, fuck story. Story sucks unless you're a great writer.

Fuck story? Haha, well I like these VNs too myself. I love them. They'd even get me off and true, fuck the stories there ain't much to them. There's a little excitement but one time or two time excitement to read it but that's all. After that it's old news. Considering the above part where I explained about how much porn these VNs actually have, I don't know what experience people get from them apart from the extra stimuli experience of their genitalia. Story do sucks in these VNs. The Japanese have better plot and story lines, the only thing they lack in are the visuals since they stick to anime style animation. But, I think they weren't making them entirely on the "jerking off" schedule of the buyers but more or less they were just Hentai or Echii or light adult visual novels. (here and everywhere I have referred to a Japanese VN I only meant those adult VNs which have porn and a basic storyline, not the ones whcih contain just porn, tentacles, beasts or monsters and as such. Yeah, even Japanese have those all porn based VNs. Heck, black bible had a rather interesting storyline). But anyways I hope everyone gets what I am talking about here.
And to say that the story sucks unless you are a great writer, well that might be true but then again for someone to earn 10k a month through patreon I think hiring someone good is not that hard.

And fun fact: if you can't write a clear, coherent paragraph in English, you're probably not going to write a great porn game in English.

Grammarly costs around 10 to 20 bucks perhaps I guess, most of the errors can be fixed through that. If the developer starts earning around $500 I don't think getting a proofreader would be that hard. It just happens to being resourceful and utilizing your resources better. Heck my English isn't that great and perhaps that might be targeted to me, but even then I think I would give a lot of checks, reads and trying to proofread it myself as close to as I can before getting it done by someone for a cheaper price as long as I don't have the resources to spend on it. When there are, I think I can and would acquire someone to do the job.

Working on the pornographic side until you have the resources, that's a nice tip but then again after that has been done things can always be revised, revamped, enhanced. After all these VN's are still a WIP even if the episode is done. It's not like it's entirely down to the bottom. But people just keep working. At least it works for some, perhaps that is what people look at in the end.

To be honest, I was a bit sad that the dev of Ren'Py is earning just less than 1k a month (I don't know about any other external sources he might be earning through with that software at least) and other people earning so much so with his software that much, but they can't even appreciate one out to him and donate a little bit more than 10 bucks. I have a little bit of sympathy to any developers like that being a developer myself and I very much appreciate his work and determination to it. It's kind of admiring a little. I wonder what would happen if he would instead make his software paid instead. Ha, well who knows.

And, any developers seeing my post, I apologize to anyone and everyone, I am not criticizing or trying to demote or promote your works by any means. I love all of your works, all of the works I gave an example of in my posts above.
This is just a post to know about if people are sensible enough and care about stuff which makes sense at least or are just bunch of people who don't care about anything and in the end just would buy anything that'd show some flesh some holes getting penetrated and as such. There's this one VN I liked a bit, I am forgetting it's name right now but it was developed by DedeKusto. Well at least it had a good story background and stuff. That's one game I wish gets to see the light of the day by end and gets finished. Oh yeah, it's knowm as Gates: the opening.

But then again everyone has their own opinions and preferences. This is mine. And this is nothing more than giving a voice to that preference and ask other's opinions about it.

 

[rogosh]

Story and porn without mini games or fights. Nothing kills erotic games like minigames and combat.

 

[HopesGaming]

I guess that says everything in 3 simple words and 2 arrows.


I don't know what experience is there to a sister being in love with her brother and a whole family getting or falling in love with the MC.


If you would check out the actual script files or notice the story content then the erotic content in these novels are
1) Amount of renders
2) Situations involving/indulging/simply orchestrated towards containing sexual scenes. That would consist of these:
a) Clothed scenes of the MC ogling the characters, fantasizing about them, the characters getting to things being intimated towards each other but getting interrupted or any other such content or scenarios.
b) Shirtless or pant-less scenes of the female characters mostly. Female characters exercising, doing yoga, running swimming and as such.
c) Semi-naked scenes having frontal naked renders of female characters upper half of the body or their breasts, and in some cases the lower half. Scenes might have MCs getting a boobjob blowjob or a handjob or just jerking off, or watching/peeking/spying or anything else as such.
d) Fully naked bodies where the MC is just getting to see the characters naked, as a strip show. Having sex peeking/spying or as such once again. The MC might or might not end up having full intercourse getting interrupted by some means or anything else.
3) And the other side characters if any, NTR content or as such. Or perhaps just the MC or any other character jerking off.

Besides this, the textual content or the number of words used, amount to not that much. Considering that, according to the textual content things are already leaning towards the Visual Novel in having more story related content than porn related. It's only the amount of renders that is porn related. And even then, the ratio to renders would be around 1:1 or 2:3 perhaps, considering the renders are based according to the situations as mentioned above. As such there's not always naked content or even sexual content or characters having sex. Actual sex scenes might be just 6 to 8 perhaps. Until the sex scenes the only scenes there are are only about perhaps either blueballing the MC as seen in Dating my Daughter or the MC being sex fanatic who thinks of banging her mom as seen in Dreams of Desire. Woah, in My girlfriend's amnesia, there was this NTR content where I saw one of the characters raping/having sex with the MCs GF in a changing room at a pool, who thinks that if his bf would see her having being molested by some stranger she doesn't know, that he'd think of her as a slut or bad and might even leave her. She can't scream because she is afraid of her bf whom she keeps forgetting about each day that he might break up with her just because of that.

I can refer to many numerous examples from these new VNs I have been playing that i call senseless scenes, scenes that doesn't make sense, senseless porn or call it anything you want to. These scenes are there just to make sense for the porn content, that what the developers are showing and why they are showing that content at such a point. Because there's not a definitive plot they come up with something that might, might make sense to the story if put together there.

Based on that, you guys are already reading too much story. I just added a word to it, senseless story. I'm glad that you are working upon what your heart desires more. Kudos to that.


Prime example of senseless story.



That's exactly what I mean, I don't mean to give the VNs a medieval or fantasy or fictional background a simple dating or simulation VN would be a good one either way as long as the content makes sense at least.


I don't know about others mate, but I'm down to talking about the former one only. And considering people's replies I think they might also be talking about the former one, but I might be wrong perhaps. I don't know.


Fuck story? Haha, well I like these VNs too myself. I love them. They'd even get me off and true, fuck the stories there ain't much to them. There's a little excitement but one time or two time excitement to read it but that's all. After that it's old news. Considering the above part where I explained about how much porn these VNs actually have, I don't know what experience people get from them apart from the extra stimuli experience of their genitalia. Story do sucks in these VNs. The Japanese have better plot and story lines, the only thing they lack in are the visuals since they stick to anime style animation. But, I think they weren't making them entirely on the "jerking off" schedule of the buyers but more or less they were just Hentai or Echii or light adult visual novels. (here and everywhere I have referred to a Japanese VN I only meant those adult VNs which have porn and a basic storyline, not the ones whcih contain just porn, tentacles, beasts or monsters and as such. Yeah, even Japanese have those all porn based VNs. Heck, black bible had a rather interesting storyline). But anyways I hope everyone gets what I am talking about here.
And to say that the story sucks unless you are a great writer, well that might be true but then again for someone to earn 10k a month through patreon I think hiring someone good is not that hard.


Grammarly costs around 10 to 20 bucks perhaps I guess, most of the errors can be fixed through that. If the developer starts earning around $500 I don't think getting a proofreader would be that hard. It just happens to being resourceful and utilizing your resources better. Heck my English isn't that great and perhaps that might be targeted to me, but even then I think I would give a lot of checks, reads and trying to proofread it myself as close to as I can before getting it done by someone for a cheaper price as long as I don't have the resources to spend on it. When there are, I think I can and would acquire someone to do the job.

Working on the pornographic side until you have the resources, that's a nice tip but then again after that has been done things can always be revised, revamped, enhanced. After all these VN's are still a WIP even if the episode is done. It's not like it's entirely down to the bottom. But people just keep working. At least it works for some, perhaps that is what people look at in the end.

To be honest, I was a bit sad that the dev of Ren'Py is earning just less than 1k a month (I don't know about any other external sources he might be earning through with that software at least) and other people earning so much so with his software that much, but they can't even appreciate one out to him and donate a little bit more than 10 bucks. I have a little bit of sympathy to any developers like that being a developer myself and I very much appreciate his work and determination to it. It's kind of admiring a little. I wonder what would happen if he would instead make his software paid instead. Ha, well who knows.

And, any developers seeing my post, I apologize to anyone and everyone, I am not criticizing or trying to demote or promote your works by any means. I love all of your works, all of the works I gave an example of in my posts above.
This is just a post to know about if people are sensible enough and care about stuff which makes sense at least or are just bunch of people who don't care about anything and in the end just would buy anything that'd show some flesh some holes getting penetrated and as such. There's this one VN I liked a bit, I am forgetting it's name right now but it was developed by DedeKusto. Well at least it had a good story background and stuff. That's one game I wish gets to see the light of the day by end and gets finished. Oh yeah, it's knowm as Gates: the opening.

But then again everyone has their own opinions and preferences. This is mine. And this is nothing more than giving a voice to that preference and ask other's opinions about it.

I do actually agree with a lot of what you saying. Even some game which is serious with their storytelling it always ends up with focus on the porn which can neglect the story.
But the problem is, how can you make a good story and make it fit with the story without the porn becoming the focus.
The way I tried to do it was separating the two as 'sections'.
I have a story section which focuses only on the story and then another section which is more lighthearted and focuses on the more eroge part of the game. So I could write the story without thinking about trying to integrate lewd situations. Of course, these two still need to feel connected and that is also some work involved in that.

Another thing about the serious story. It's a big gamble. Because it's not easy to make a story. One thing is great ideas, another to actually have it down on paper. If it's bad. Everything goes down, wherein a mostly porn focused game people are more forgiving since the story is more of a plus to the game.
Then there is also the market, how many actually care about a story. (not a porn story but a real story)
The genre of the story. Slice of life, over the top kind of stuff, fantasy etc.

I agree 100% with using Grammarly. That is what I use and plan to get the paid version in the future.
And hopefully, no one going to derail the topic if they don't agree. People should always have the rights to their opinions.

 

[GuyFreely]

I think when most people say story is more important, the implication is that it is "good" and well written. If the story is bad, then it becomes a something you have to slog through to get to the porn bits. People have different tolerances for this and different opinions on what's good and bad. When it comes to discussions like these, I find it best to be as objective as possible. Not every story has to be pulitzer prize worthy, but good writing goes a long way regardless of the subject matter.

From a personal standpoint, I don't mind a premise that seems a bit insane if they at least stick with it and try to make it interesting. If someone says a game is about having to fuck women to save their lives, I don't immediately think well that's stupid as shit. It might very well be trash, but it could also be a fun romp that doesn't take itself seriously.

What I want to see is that someone sat down and seriously thought, so how does all this work or why are we doing this? I'll give a random example of lazy writing versus slightly less lazy writing. Let's say you want to have a classic "buying new clothes" scene. The lazy writer has the girl say "I need some new clothes." You might say, "Women buy clothes all the time for no particular reason." Sure, okay, it's not unbelievable, it just doesn't get us anywhere. How about there's a costume party, or a fancy dinner, or a beach trip coming up. Alternatively, there could be a reason ahead of time, the dryer ruined her clothes, her luggage got lost, her house burnt down. You are connecting scenes together in a coherent way. At the same time, not every single little thing has to be tied together. People eat, people sleep, people bathe you don't really need to explain these things. It's just nice to see some thought put into a game.

 

[GhostRider_X]

how can you make a good story and make it fit with the story without the porn becoming the focus.

Well the first factor is bringing something unique to the market. You can't always have the MC getting to bang other characters, or having NTR content that showcases the MCs girlfriend or her family members who he cares about so much that he'd tend to incest than let any douchebag go out on dates with them. I believe that if MC isn't always the focus, or instead having multiple main characters. Having more perspective other than the MC only in the game. To not always focus on the MC and also show what other people are tend to be doing. I found it really amusing that the MC of DoD is able to land inside so many panties while his friend became a dork.

Second, thing to not always focus on the other male characters or lack of them always dulls me out. Stranded with benefits worked on that really good but then again his "eroge" content wasn't that good. There are a lot of ideas that can be brought forth to indulge erotic content with the flow of the storyline. Why is it always the MC getting to bang most characters. Well, I don't judge how it is delivered but to think that things can't be delivered without them not making sense is underrated. I think an actual planner, can think of stuff which would make sense delivers erotic content easily without making it so incoherent that there's no logic to what is happening.

I find it best to be as objective as possible. Not every story has to be pulitzer prize worthy

That's true not every story has to be worth a prize ha. But come on it should at least make sense. Okay let me give you an example from DoD, Alice our beloved little sister of the MC was at this party talking to that guy. She and her brother has a really good relationship. She respects him as much as that a day before she saw him looking at her naked and she let it pass as much as to ask to see him naked too. She's at the party and she's talking to this guy. The MC doesn't even know what kind of a relationship they have, how much inclined she is towards him and as such but brings her to the bathroom only to hogwash her into either loving him or being his slave. Did that make any sense? She respects him and he could have asked her not to be that inclined towards him, or he could have warned her. But to make the plot the MC just brainwashed her. Well cool. Not everything has to be pulitzer prize worthy but at least worthy enough to give it an actual read and then not feeling like an idiot to what they read. Then actually should be worth the money. If people can pay that much to him surely he can do a lot better. Either the patreons have no sense of logic to them, have a lot of money to spare to everyone or just think that animated porn stills are far better than a 10$ subscription of teamskeet. Woah, hey teamskeet do have some cool porn with interesting plots. Well not exactly plots but there are porn stars that really do play out the script so good.

People eat, people sleep, people bathe you don't really need to explain these things.

You're so correct there. Half of the things people do don't make much sense haha. I don't know if this thread makes any sense or not, I think not much. But you aren't paying me for this not-so-sense-making thread but to the VNs making albeit no sense to the content they have. As i said once again, I don't know what experience people have with still renders having some cool dream shard story within it. Or about a dad who thinks of her daughter as a dating object. Well to each their own. I get an experience from them but to donate 40 bucks to them monthly meh. I'm not against or with piracy at all. I do like them but only as much as I do like porn. I wouldn't pay for it at least, maybe one day when I have way too much as all of these cool patreons haha. Sorry, that was just a joke.

 

[Bright Sun Studios]

I'd personally choose story over porn (as I do in the games I create myself). But I do feel that the story needs to have a point. I think there are 2 types of stories in story driven erotic games: A story that supports the sex scenes (sex is the focus and story is used to build up characters and situations only for the sex scenes), or sex scenes that suppor the story. I prefer the sex scenes that support the story (so the story is the actual focus) by a lot. I know some people might disagree and that's fine, but I just like reading a good story. But I guess that also depends on why you read erotic VN novels. I read them to either get inspiration for my own games or (and this usually why) I just want to relax with a good story because I have some free time. I don't go into them thinking 'oh, lets have some porn for a few minutes so I can get off'. I think erotic novels are more about fueling arousal than releasing it, but maybe that's just my opinion and you can agree with that or not.

But here are some examples I've come across in which I don't think the story worked that well:
- All of the Kiss For The Petal games. I love the series (mostly because there are so few yuri games out there. So please don't see my complaints about it as me saying they are bad games), but I have to admit the stories in the games usually aren't great. They don't capture me. Mostly because they are of the 'story supports the sex scene' variety. Not much happens in the story for the most part except setting up the next sex scene. It almost feels like they lack a proper beginning, middle and end because of that (although they do have that). The story isn't building up to anything accept sex. The characters don't seem to go through any changes/they don't seem to learn anything. And that's mostly because story isn't the focus of the game. The story is there for you as a reader to get to know the characters that are going to have tons of sex and that's it. It feels like a bunch of sex scenes with a bit of narrative context instead of a proper narrative.
- Nympho Sensei Ryoko. Nice art, nice looking female main character. Terrible game. This is an odd one. Because it just has almost no story. This is an example of game that tries to be only porn and nothing more. 95% of it is sex scenes. And as a result it's just about the most boring VN I've ever read. Nothing about the game captured me although I felt that it should have. I kept hoping it would getting so I kept playing it, but the game doesn't even have proper ending. Neither does it have a clear beginning for that matter.

When it comes to visual novels, in my opinion you have to go for what the medium does best and what it does better than other forms of porn. Visual novels are kind of the best way to tell erotic stories as you can still give player some nice sexual visuals that aren't too expensive to make while focusing on the story. And I think that's what most people look for in erotic VNs (although I have heard some people say otherwise, obviously not everyone looks for the same thing). If you want story + porn, there is almost no alternative. Comics are a somewhat good alternative, but the focus more on visuals than story for the most part. VN is sort of the other way around I think (although there are obviously some very good looking VNs out there). Also VNs can go for the Expression aesthetic (if people are familiar with the game design aesthetic theory on top of the Narrative aesthetic that comics can go for. And for people like me, Expression is so important and one of the reasons I love VNs with good dialogue choices.
But one of the visual novel format weaknessess is that it's rather static. Even with animations, it's still much more static than actual porn videos. And that means that despite the visual being nice, they aren't as visual stimulating as straight up porn is for the most part. That's why I think games like Nympho Sensei Ryoko are boring to me. I can get better porn than that that's more visually appealing if I just want to get off quickly.