I have a some advice before I'll get to my list. If you're not interested in my thoughts at all, just what tropes I will never accept, they will be at the bottom, with a differently colored heading.
DISCLAIMER: I shall be using
cringe language, and being intentionally
edgy. The list on the bottom will be tame though.
I've been reading this thread, and I have to say - while I do understand everyone's gripe, some of the most disliked tropes listed here, are by far the most popular and profitable tropes. Like, by far. It's not even a contest.
IMHO don't decide by what the outspoken minority wants, decide by what you want. That being said, ofc, reading the market and asking people is important. But do your due diligence.
Imho
- If you want money, go with the popular tropes no matter how disliked they are.
- If you want to express your creativity, do your own thing
- If you want long term support, but probably not a lot of money, pick a niche
- ALSO DON'T EXPECT TO MAKE MONEY. You probably won't.
Counter argument to what most other people have said in this post
I for one, am 100% happy to be the contrarian and go against the flow. It's my favorite thing in the whole wide world. You know what I like?
- incest
- rape
- ryona (beating up)
- humiliation, punishment
- bestiality
- scat
- ugly bastards
- porn cliches (fuck the real estate agent for a discount)
- user defined ages for characters
Yep, I'm the disgusting 4channer. Like really, I'm a 4channer. It's probably obvious.
I first started playing porn games about 15 years ago, I think. Still a teen. back then I played some really fucked up, strange and obscure flash games. The kind you won't even find on this site.
And for me, that's what porn games are for. If I want a romantic story, I'll read a book. If I want to see some people fucking with no context, I'll watch porn. If I want to get off right this very second, I'll watch some hardcore porn, double anal, double fisting, vomit, whatever.
But why would I ever prefer a pron game over brazzers? One of two reasons.
- Long chain of perverse events, where things that happened in the past matters.
So this is your Book 1 of Four Elements Trainer, or Something Unlimited. I start with insulting katara, then forcing her to dress differently. I make her take slut walks in the village. Spit on her and humiliate her. In the end when I leave, she's now the town's bicycle (free use cum dump). It's different form porn becase a whole lot of shit happened, that isn't limited by a max length of 30-60 mins.
It gets more perverted as it goes along and it builds up on what happened previously. LIKE A GAME.
- When I make all of the decisions
I'll compare this to the previous. There, I decided to go on the 4chan path, as opposed to the beta pussboy soy cuck path. I do decide what she wears and how to wear her hair and whatever. But that's tropes of the trainer games. I didn't actually decide anything in that game. Except the path, and how hard I pushed her. If I had gone the same path and pushed her less, she would have just been my personal cumdump / piss rag, but not the town cum dump.
When I say "decide", I actually don't mean the torpe of 3 answers, only one is good. I mean I want to decide as much as possible. I would like to decide where to go, who to pursue, how to interact.
I don't want all my choices to be a stat change. Nor do I want all my choices to matter. Have you ever played witcher 3? There you have a lot of discussion options, a la baldur's gate. Some inquisitve, some not. Some necessary, a lot not. I can chose to be nice, or not, be aggresive, be sarcastic, and a lot of other things. Even ask questions and learn more about stuff that isn't plot relevant. A lot of the discussions there don't even have a hidden variable behind them.
Right at the start, I can decide if I want to chastise Ciri or not. It doesn't matter, she won't "remember that" (a la tell tale). She just answers naturally. I chastise her, so she proves me wrong. I criticse her footwork, she goes above and beyond and does amazingly.
I want to push the story in what direction i want. But that requires time and effort and very few games do that. If that is not on the table, at least let me have the ability to converse with people, so that I can decide how they talk.
Let me be nice with my family and the people I love (coincidentally, the exact same people), but don't force me to also be nice with the douchbag. Let me fucking deck him, break his nose, then I can return to my "landlady" and seduce her to pregnancy.
Closing note on my oppinions
I also happen to be a patron of the games I like most. But I'm not a simp who'll just give you money in exchange for bath water. I'll give promising games a good 15$ to get them started. Is not the full price of the game, but if they do finish it, I'll give them some more. Depending on how good it is.
THAT BEING SAID, I am a patron of niches. I've been giving blue axolotl money for - at least a year now? Deff over 100$ If I see a game pushing the boundries, going into the downright socially unacceptable, I help those fine gentlemen.
Tropes I'm tired of
- I'm personally not into vanilla porn. There are so many other sources for it, I just don't have the hours in a day to click a vanilla game. Sorry.
- I hate games that don't know what they are. Are they porn games or romantic stories with lewd acts. You can't be both. If you have a harem with every member of your family and your dog, don't try to be realistic about it. You can't.
- Realism is fine, but do it correctly! You doing an incest game? Then you kinda have two options IMHO. Either rape and blackmail. Or your other family members were already perverted deviants.
Your mom wanted to suck your cock dry when you were a shota. She didn't suddenly decide she wants your babies the night you turned 18. Have her groom you. Or if you don't have the balls to do that, at least imply it.
Have the tsundere sister. But show how incredibly horny she is while the MC can't see her. Make her a fucking deviant. Otherwise stick with rape or porn logic.
- No more manlets. I promised to use nice language here, I would use a very different word for this kind of MC.
- If you make a shota game, at least be a man about it and make a patch. Looking at you "The Twist".
- Sandboxes are only good if the developer knows what they are doing and put a lot of extra effort into them.
- If the world is empty, why is it a sandbox?
- If I have to do things in a certain order, why is it a sandbox?
- If I have nothing to discover on my own, why is it a sandbox?
- Also plz, don't make me have to click everything -_-
- Also plz, don't make random events
- Also plz, don't make something only one day during one hour, that is stupid and tedious
- Put character indicators on the map so I don't have to explore empty buildings
- You can still hide stuf in empty buildings, but hint in the story about it, not just a single line in a pdf file that I would rather not have to use in the first place
- Understand that I wont be playing your game, just your game, and nothing but your game. I will play other games. If I have a bunch of tasks, or things that I have to remember. I won't. Make a fucking task list.
- Ren'py or fuck off
- Sometimes grind is ok. But don't make it pointless, random, and unguided. Have a hint system, a cap, make it make sense without having me to unren the game and look in the source code THANKYOUVERYMUCH
- Stupid body proportions. Sure you want to make a bootlicious character.
- But when her ass looks like a botched operation ... maybe you went too far.
- When har asshole captures light and mass and nothing except radiation can escape, maybe her ass is too big.
- If her booobs are so big, she can't write on paper while sitting down, maybe stop.
- This only applies to RPG maker games, those people have their own stupid shit. But plz don't make the game mechanics be the opposite of the purpose of the game. If I play a porn game, I want to see porn. Duh.
If in your game, the only way to advance is to not get hit. But the only way to see porn is when you loose and the monsters rape you and leave your preggo ... maybe don't do that. Make the game in such a way that the rape and preggo shit is unavoidable, and the game is about surviving a certain ammount of time?
- Or you know what? Don't make complex game mechanics in a porn game FFS. I'm only using one hand and most of my blood is not in my brain.
- Ren'Py or fuck off
- No traps, or endgame screens. No "these are 3 options, but only one is correct". I forgot the dev that does this, but don't ever EVER have a 5th grade quizz with 30 questions that have multiple choice answers that I won't know if I did anything correctly and I absolutely have to download a mod just to tolerate your game for 5 straight minutes.
- Ren'Py or fuck off