What's up with the obsession to add as many as possible characters to the games?

[ijako3]

Hello.

So i was just thinking about ''what's the biggest part of the AVN games'' nowadays that makes me annoyed with most of the titles that come out now or get updated..

And here it is - Too many freakin characters being added every update to the game, mostly in very HQ productions that take 2-3 months or more to produce per episode, developers just sprung the number of characters like shotting bullets from some machine gun and take away spotlight from the main characters that don't have enough content to begin with and give it away to every new character that will have even less content or none for like 2 years because of how many characters are already in the game that needs actual progression.

For me personally it feels like some developers just wake up everyday with that new idea of character and add it to the game, then forgot about this character the next day because they have another idea and so go on..


What's your opinion and why do you think it is, that makes many developers obsessed with quantity and not the quality of characters that they already created?

Why is it so hard from the development standpoint to create a good pool of characters that will get good amount of spotlight and mutual progression storywise and keep it that way?

 

[joecoe]

I think you partially answered your own question: "quantity and not the quality."
Games with fewer characters require more creativity, a better story , and better writing to be successful. The easiest way to keep a player's attention when he has tried different sexual activities with all the girls in the game is to add more girls.
I'm not saying that every game that adds new fuckable girls with new updates must be bad. But in some cases it's the cheapest trick to add some "new content".

 

[anne O'nymous]

Why is it so hard from the development standpoint to create a good pool of characters that will get good amount of spotlight and mutual progression storywise and keep it that way?

Because it's easier to create short stories with characters that don't need a background, don't have a life and will never have a future, than writing an effective story. You just write a scene and drop it in your game, without having to care of the coherence with the girl's personality, with her past and with her ambitions.


And also, obviously: harem...

 

[whiskeyrose]

• The characters in the game are already flat/one dimensional and are defined by the number of scenes they have.
  • Adding a new character gives the impression that the scenes are varied, while all you need to do is swap out a hairstyle and skincolor
• You've already made your way up the Stairway to Heaven (Handjob -> Blowjob -> titfuck -> sex -> anal) and need to restart the new stairway with another character.
• You want to hit as many fetishes for your audience as possible. Maybe someones into gangster black chicks, maybe they want a latina bookworm, maybe they want an overworked alchoholic mother-in-law.
• The fantasy of having tons of sex with many different people is common (and I would argue, intrinsic) with most men (and I would possibly guess women too). This is a fantasy porn game, players don't want to be limited to a singular path with a small cast of characters.
  • Think about your porn watching/hentai searching habits. If they're anything like mine, you have a few of your favorites you go back to, but it's an endless search for something new. Yesterday it was latina maids being bribed into sex on BangBros, today it was fucking some kind of slug MILF in TiTS, god knows what tomorrow will be.
• Adding in new characters, even with it being mostly placeholder gives the impression to your patreons that you're doing actual work. Even if you just took a template you put together and slapped a few images on it, it seems much more substantial than spending 20 hours on the backend to make it run smoother and open up for future events.

Take your pick.

 

[polywog]

I like variety. Some people want to spend the rest of their life with one person, some people don't.
If a game isn't your cup of tea, don't play it. If you like monogamy, and only want to play games with one character in them, there are plenty of games like that to choose from.
Most people today are opposed to slavery, marriage is a thing of the past.

 

[whiskeyrose]

Most people today are opposed to slavery, marriage is a thing of the past.

I realize you're joking, but Marriage is still the norm. I just think divorce isn't near the taboo or stigma it used to be.

 

[polywog]

I realize you're joking, but Marriage is still the norm. I just think divorce isn't near the taboo or stigma it used to be.

I never joke about serious issues. People are boycotting marriage today. The average 21 year old is SINGLE today, that was unheard of 50 years ago. Apart from India where marriages are arranged, fewer people want to get married.

 

[Adabelitoo]

I personally like when a game focus on 3-4 girls and not doing a harem when everyone has 2 scenes at most, but dude, harem is just so good, it works in so many levels

A game that I really like and does the right balance in between Harem and... not harem, is Solvalley School by TK8000. The game is about the main girls (his classmates) but when you develop each individual girl's story you get to fuck the girls around that girl, so it makes a harem while not falling in the classisc "2 scenes per girl" and fully developing every girl's story, and even the rest of the girls gets her good amount of scenes, plus, the guy work a lot on his games so every update has a fair amount of content

 

[polywog]

 

[CarbonBlue]

I think part of it is probably just feature creep. It is really easy to get carried away with a project and try to do too much. I am working on a VN right now and I have to constantly fight with myself to keep it as tight and focused as I can. I want to constantly add new things or explore new side stories. Also, it's easier to add a new character and side story than it is to wrap things up in a satisfying, cohesive way. I think that's one of the reasons we get so many abandoned projects.

 

[HopesGaming]

Depends on the game and what it is trying to do mainly.

For harem games, it's only natural for them to keep adding girls and expand.
Other games it can side chicks to freshen up the story.
And then there is, of course, the ones that just keep adding because they have a writer's block and it's easier to just add a new face with a new story.
For my game personally, I try to stick with my main girls. Whenever a new face is added it's mostly for lore building and side activities and never something that will be a big focus like the main ones will have. A game with only a handful of characters can feel a bit 'boxed in' and isolated.
I think it's about finding a balance. A new character is not necessarily a bad thing but as long as it does not end up becoming a main love interest when the current love interests have not been developed that far yet.

 

[whiskeyrose]

I never joke about serious issues. People are boycotting marriage today. The average 21 year old is SINGLE today, that was unheard of 50 years ago. Apart from India where marriages are arranged, fewer people want to get married.

I realize this is about to get really off topic, but it's a pretty safe bet that marriage is still the norm, people are just getting married later. This is driven mostly I feel by economic factors. Using a statistic of 21 year olds in the current western culture doesn't give an accurate picture. Compare it to the average birthing age of a mother in '72, which was 21 and 27 for a father; now it's 26 for the mother and 31 for the father. It's just shifted later.

 

[Domiek]

And here I am fighting off fan requests to make shallow side characters into main chars. I've already got enough characters and it's hard to bring meaningful content for all of them per update.

As you will notice with this community, for every complaint/criticism there's someone who actually prefers/enjoys it. Good thing that there's plenty of games available so hopefully there's something for everyone.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I realize this is about to get really off topic,

Not necessarily. Since games mostly takes place nowadays, they should respond to nowadays reality. Is the marriage a prevalence and people focus on monogamous life ? Is it the opposite ? Or are the two in fact absolutely not related ? If you want to write a strong background for your game, you need to have some insight about this.

but it's a pretty safe bet that marriage is still the norm, people are just getting married later.
This is driven mostly I feel by economic factors.

It's the opposite, people end getting married because of economic factors, but before this a constantly raising rate of people don't get married before their forties, or later. It's true in the

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, in the

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But if you dig deeper, you'll find that not being married doesn't mean not living as a couple. Between the rising number of legal alternatives, the fact that it's now less a problem to not being married, and the (was) rising rate of divorce, starting with my generation (I'm near my fifties), people stopped to see marriage as a mandatory step in their life. They continue to, mostly, find the love of their life in their twenties, start living with her/him, but don't feel the need to claim to the face of the world that they love this person ; and so to be married.
Then, when the economic factors pressure start to become too strong (what will you let to the kids, what will the other do if the one that own the house die, how the other will do if one become sick for a long period of time, and so on), they marry, to solve part of those problems that will inevitably happen soon or later.

Compare it to the average birthing age of a mother in '72, which was 21 and 27 for a father; now it's 26 for the mother and 31 for the father. It's just shifted later.

Just to point one thing you missed. It hasn't just shifted later, the age gap also have decreased, which indicate that less women marry a man way older than them. Which is an important data since it indicate that marriage for convenience tend to decline, and partly explain what's above.

 

[polywog]

Not necessarily. Since games mostly takes place nowadays, they should respond to nowadays reality. Is the marriage a prevalence and people focus on monogamous life ? Is it the opposite ? Or are the two in fact absolutely not related ? If you want to write a strong background for your game, you need to have some insight about this.




It's the opposite, people end getting married because of economic factors, but before this a constantly raising rate of people don't get married before their forties, or later. It's true in the

You must be registered to see the links

, in the

You must be registered to see the links

, and in fact in the

You must be registered to see the links

.
But if you dig deeper, you'll find that not being married doesn't mean not living as a couple. Between the rising number of legal alternatives, the fact that it's now less a problem to not being married, and the (was) rising rate of divorce, starting with my generation (I'm near my fifties), people stopped to see marriage as a mandatory step in their life. They continue to, mostly, find the love of their life in their twenties, start living with her/him, but don't feel the need to claim to the face of the world that they love this person ; and so to be married.
Then, when the economic factors pressure start to become too strong (what will you let to the kids, what will the other do if the one that own the house die, how the other will do if one become sick for a long period of time, and so on), they marry, to solve part of those problems that will inevitably happen soon or later.




Just to point one thing you missed. It hasn't just shifted later, the age gap also have decreased, which indicate that less women marry a man way older than them. Which is an important data since it indicate that marriage for convenience tend to decline, and partly explain what's above.

Vikki Stark summed it up nicely saying in regards to marriage "men and women aren't even playing the same game"
Men and women don't have the same expectations from marriage, and most of those expectations are unrealistic.

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Historically girls were attracted to men who were older, more experienced, established in their careers, and able to provide a stable home, which led to a healthy family. Two US Presidents married 13 year old girls while in office. Girls were (are) attracted to powerful men.
This changed with the rise of feminism, and the notion of equality. Marrying someone your own age most often ends in divorce, and is devastating for children. Two young idiots struggling to have a home and family is a recipe for disaster. They marry, things don't work out, they get divorced and each looks for someone else. She seeks a man more capable of supporting her, he seeks the younger bride he should have had in the first place. There's no place for equality in a family - one or the other has to wear the pants. I'm not saying that men are entitled, or pushing a patriarchy, women can choose to pursue a career and find themselves a boy-toy if they want to.

Society has also pushed for social programs which undermine the family. Men, and women need to feel needed and appreciated. Some women recognize that they can get government benefits for having children, the government supports this because it needs dependents to serve in the military, and pick up garbage in the cities, and do jobs that children from healthy families typically don't want to do. These women get a paycheck from the government for having unwanted children, they wouldn't be entitled to if they got married. In some cases they really take advantage of the taxpayers... they have children to get them money and housing allowance, and they put the house in the unwed baby-daddy's name. The unwed mother pays rent to pay the mortgage using her housing allowance from the government. If the two got married, she would not qualify for the housing allowance, and the baby-daddy would have to quit using drugs and get a job to pay for the house.

For centuries a marriage certificate was a document that showed title to a slave. Women were property, they had no rights. Times have changed, now a marriage certificate is title to a man, showing ownership of half what he has, and entitlement to alimony payments for eternity, if a woman can find a man stupid enough to tie that knot. Most men aren't stupid, they can have relationships without marriage. Marriage might become popular again if the laws change.

Until that happens, marriage is declining. 70% of the world population is unmarried, single, or divorced. Marriage is not the norm.

Teens today aren't waiting for marriage, or looking forward to having a family, they just want to live day to day.

 

[WhitePhantom]

For me originally (although it turned out to be a huge mistake) I added loads of characters because I thought of who I personally interacted with on a daily basis.

5 girls at the office I was working in at the time, lived with my girlfriend and she regularly had friends round, at the petrol station I saw literally every day the same lady, women I knew I'd see/talk to on nights out at the pub etc. I counted up during the week and I'd talk to and interact with about 20 girls a week at least.

So I took that idea and when I was making my game kept slamming in new characters because I wanted it to be like that, planning to give them backstories each and so on. Long story short it spawned far too many people and drowned the game, but personally that was the intention behind making so many to create realism.

I struggle with games like Melody and Dating my Daughter (don't get me wrong, they're great dating sim games) because the MC is so 2D. He has no friends, he has no hobbies, he basically doesn't work, his whole life revolves around banging D/Melody and then occasionally a side character pops up. Summertime Saga I find a lot more realistic because the MC is encountering a lot of different people every day.

So for me, more characters add realism, but they can drown games if too many are important characters or you do it badly like I did.

 

[Hadley]

Quality > Quantity. I like Games that focus on a single Love-Interest.

 

[Akamari]

More the merrier. I'm picky and quick to lose interest, so variety is important. Lack of fresh new characters when the old cast gets stale is one of the most frequent reasons why I abandon games.

 

[grtrader]

Hello.

So i was just thinking about ''what's the biggest part of the AVN games'' nowadays that makes me annoyed with most of the titles that come out now or get updated..

And here it is - Too many freakin characters being added every update to the game, mostly in very HQ productions that take 2-3 months or more to produce per episode, developers just sprung the number of characters like shotting bullets from some machine gun and take away spotlight from the main characters that don't have enough content to begin with and give it away to every new character that will have even less content or none for like 2 years because of how many characters are already in the game that needs actual progression.

For me personally it feels like some developers just wake up everyday with that new idea of character and add it to the game, then forgot about this character the next day because they have another idea and so go on..


What's your opinion and why do you think it is, that makes many developers obsessed with quantity and not the quality of characters that they already created?

Why is it so hard from the development standpoint to create a good pool of characters that will get good amount of spotlight and mutual progression storywise and keep it that way?

I think there are a couple reasons.
The first reason is people try to one up everyone and try to get the attention after all the pool of buyers and investors is limited.
Then you have the issue of trying to please to many people rather than focus on telling a single story they try to make everyone feel included. After all there is no way really for one character to meet everyone's expectations. If they are doing what one person likes it probably isn't what another likes.
Long stories where a character tends to have interactions with other people are a big reason. They could focus on the single event and include a lot more detail but they don't. It doesn't even need to require a dialog to be done right.
Example:
A single scene torture girl is tied face down on a bench as another person who you never have to see turns her ass into a pin cushion one pin at a time. The screen is split diagonally one side shows her face the other shows her ass and the pins being placed. She has a ball gag in. What you see is the expression in her eyes and the wrinkles on her forehead and tears and so on each time a pin is put in slowly or rapidly. You see the change in how she changes with each of them put in maybe she goes mad or maybe it turns to enjoyment...

The point is good writers and story tellers can take a single scene and turn that into a story. I have yet to see a single developer on here with that kind of ability and that being the case what you see is pretty expected.

 

[RogueKnightUK]

I see several mentions for quality over quantity. That's all well and good, and certainly easy to say ... but it doesn't reflect reality. It is one of those awful, sweeping generalizations, of the kind that claim anyone beautiful must be an air-head.

Here's the real truth: Quality is limited by what the developers can create. In terms of characters, quality is about the level of realism, the depth of interest, and the believability of the personality. Someone who can understand and write characters to that degree can do it for 30 characters, while someone who cannot do it won't be any better at it for one character than for 10. If anything, a bad writer will have more chance of accidentally writing one believable character if they create more of them.

However, I can't really tell from the OP whether this is actually about the quality of characters, or about not enough scenes with each character (however shallow, unbelievable or ridiculous that character actually is) that a game presents. There's a big difference between those things.

If the games you are playing and enjoying are mostly things like 'Man of the House' and 'Milfy City' then I'd say it is pretty safe to guess it is about the number of scenes, because the characters themselves have about the depth of a puddle. There is nothing but hilarity in using the word 'quality' about the characters in any VN where girls suddenly lust for a guy they've never had any interest in, or liking for, because they've seen his penis. You know what really happens when that mean older sister walks in on you naked? She laughs her fucking socks off, then goes on her phone to tell all her friends. She doesn't dash off to her bedroom for a jilling, because if she were the kind to be jilling looking at penises she'd have an entire internet full of them to look at.

So, if a writer/dev can't do deep characters in a pool, they naturally tend to go wide instead, and that's actually the smarter decision. That way, some people will think the lack of depth is solely to do with how many characters there are, rather than the truth.