Why are so many games on here so rapey? [Poll]

[GuyFreely]

@Ataios Right, I could see maybe a dev mistakenly trying to satisfy different tastes while trying to avoid a ton of extra work. This may be too generous, but it might happen. I think if that's the case, it just leads to a mess. Funnily enough, you've provided some great ways for doing it and still keeping consistency. It's really not that hard to come up with story reasons for what you're doing, if you just try. The whole Jekyll and Hyde scenario is a great way to explain seemingly inconsistent actions. It's really not about the acts themselves, it's about fitting the narrative you've provided.

 

[gunderson]

You say you don't care about a consistent tone and then immediately say you want it well written. Hmmm, okay. I mean well written implies they handled theme and tone well.

It doesn't sound to me like you have a problem with good or bad writing. You have a problem with porn game tropes. The 'supposedly good guy porn game protagonist who occasionally rapes people and doesn't think it's a big deal' is one such common trope. I would argue that you can write those scenes well, but the character does indeed, if you really think about it, get kinda schizoid. Well, so what?

Homer Simpson, for example, is a completely inconsistent, crazy, child-abusing asshole if you want to get technical about things. Does that mean the first dozen or so seasons of the Simpsons aren't amazingly well-written? That his lines, in particular, aren't well-written? I think you'd be in pretty poor company if you said that a B-movie from the '50s with incorruptibly good 'good guys' and implausibly evil 'bad guys' is better written simply due to its consistency.

 

[NandabaCanti]

@Ataios - Hmm, could be a scenario where the MC is a bit of a creeper/yandere who is obsessed with fantasies of getting a proper romantic relationship with one particular target, but is still a bit of a psycho perv who uses rape among other tactics to remove girls he feels are standing between him and his delusional fated relationship with his one and only. Perhaps if/when he inevitably gets rejected it can lead to an abduction/rape outcome as well. The whole thing can be gender swapped as well if so desired. This thread just keeps bringing out dark story ideas for me, lol.

 

[FranceToast]

I think this discussion is pretty thought provoking, thanks!

My problem is when the game presents itself as one way (let's say loving) and then forces the player (if they want to progress the story) to do something inconsistent (let's say rape).

Right, and frames it in the end as loving because alls well that ends well as long as the player 'wins'.


I have a somewhat 'philosophical' game building question-what do you think about games that give you (and encourage you) to do questionable things just to 'complete the gallery' of scenes, while giving you the obvious rollback/reload save to actually play/continue as 'the good guy'. Is that just partly "a pleasing as many people as possible" because of the nature of Patreon driven games?

 

[GuyFreely]

It doesn't sound to me like you have a problem with good or bad writing. You have a problem with porn game tropes. The 'supposedly good guy porn game protagonist who occasionally rapes people and doesn't think it's a big deal' is one such common trope. I would argue that you can write those scenes well, but the character does indeed, if you really think about it, get kinda schizoid. Well, so what?

Homer Simpson, for example, is a completely inconsistent, crazy, child-abusing asshole if you want to get technical about things. Does that mean the first dozen or so seasons of the Simpsons aren't amazingly well-written? That his lines, in particular, aren't well-written? I think you'd be in pretty poor company if you said that a B-movie from the '50s with incorruptibly good 'good guys' and implausibly evil 'bad guys' is better written simply due to its consistency.

I would say I have a problem with bad story telling. Bad writing can include grammar and typos, some of which can be overlooked, especially if you know it's a translation. Not great, but it happens. I just want a plot or story to make sense. It doesn't have to be realistic, but it does need to follow it's own internal logic. I don't think "good guy who rapes and doesn't realize it's bad" is an actual trope. The fact that you think it's a trope, makes me think you too have seen it happen more than once as well. I seriously doubt the devs sit down and decide they are going to use the accidental rapist trope. If that's a thing, it's worse than I thought.

I think Homer Simpson is a bit of a bad example as he is an every man in a comedy and will be whatever he needs to be to get a laugh. His inconsistency can even be the joke at times. I think he is consistently dumb, fat, and self-centered. The times when he isn't it is probably the focus of the episode. What if Homer was smart? That becomes the whole premise. If he goes against type, it's because the writers had a reason for him to do so (generally). I'm not even 100% agreeing that the Simpsons is well written as I stopped watching it forever ago. If a porn game is comedic or tongue-in-cheek it can get away with a lot of the same stuff too. It still has to be self aware though. You would make a point of the fact that the MC raped someone and how he's dumb not to realize it.

We just recently discussed some ways you can have an inconsistent character in a consistent narrative. If you structure the story around it, you can do almost anything you want. I think some people want to give the writer the benefit of the doubt. This character was this way on purpose. If that's the case, it should be clear to the player as to why.

I think this discussion is pretty thought provoking, thanks!

Right, and frames it in the end as loving because alls well that ends well as long as the player 'wins'.


I have a somewhat 'philosophical' game building question-what do you think about games that give you (and encourage you) to do questionable things just to 'complete the gallery' of scenes, while giving you the obvious rollback/reload save to actually play/continue as 'the good guy'. Is that just partly "a pleasing as many people as possible" because of the nature of Patreon driven games?

I think that there's a couple of things going on here. First, you don't have to unlock everything. If you want to, then you have to do whatever it takes to unlock it I guess. I would say generally, if there's a good/bad guy way to play the game, it's probably meant to stick to one side or the other. Speaking in broad terms, you could do a good run then replay a bad run. See both sides of the story as it were. I don't think you're meant to do both sides at once in one go. As you say, if it does allow rollback, then you definitely could try. Also, some devs want people to spend a lot of time playing their game. In the specific case you are mentioning, they will put in scenes you can only unlock in very specific ways. Often these scenes will be mutually exclusive so you can only get one scene then have to replay for the other. The entire point is to have you spend more time in that case.

 

[Captain Wet Beard]

Over exposure to pornography isn't a thing, there are plenty of studies showing that masturbation and pornography have no significant negative effects on the psyche.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

I dunno if this sub-sub-genre of gaming will have its own "Gamergate"/MeToo moment or not. I do think there's a little bit more leeway inasmuch as it's obviously an adult-only genre, dealing largely in fantasy/kink/fetish/philia, and that such things are definitionally not exactly "politically correct". We have some lines, such as no CP(although even there the lines are blurred because there's def shota and some loli content here, so long as the sub-adult characters are not portrayed in a "realistic" fashion--even then, the portrayal of clearly prepubescent kids is a clear red line). Further, Patreon has become a de facto censor in this small sub-industry, prohibiting CP including pubescent teenage minors, and most forms of nonconsensual activity. It is what it is.
I think the comments about internal consistency are spot on--generally "nice" MCs should not be groping, blackmailing and physically coercing female subjects until they "start to enjoy it". You can have games with branching moral choices, but realistically that should result in real consequences for the "bad/corrupt/evil" path, imo. Consensual incest games with a "harem happy ending" option properly belong in the "sheer fantasy" category.
It might be helpful for games with edgier content to carry something like a "dark fantasy" tag.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Personally, I don't really care if the game's tone is consistent because I'm looking for well-written/visualized/drawn, varied sex scenes in a porn game, not a role model main character.

You can't have inconsistent tone and well written/visualized in the same game, that's literally the issue being taken with it.

That's why, for example, games like Summertime Saga and Man of the House are fun for me. You're not just trying to date the popular girl and be a nice guy in Summertime Saga. You're also able to corrupt the girl next door and bang the older sister/webcam model. In those cases, what's consistent is the visual style and gameplay while the game sacrifices the idea that the main character is always a 'good guy' or 'bad guy.'

Now, I'm going to show you how I'd fix MotH, without harming any of the plot on the sisters, though because certain aspects of the mother are stupid af, there will be parts that are taken out or changed in favor of a slightly different narrative. For the most part I'll just hit some beats, though the first day gets a full rewrite, so it's a bit long.

The TL;DR is, you can hit the exact same story beats that MotH does, including blackmail and domination with Veronica, never once having to go rapey.

Spoiler: First day

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Spoiler: Ashley

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Spoiler: Veronica

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Spoiler: Mom

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[gunderson]

The TL;DR is, you can hit the exact same story beats that MotH does, including blackmail and domination with Veronica, never once having to go rapey.

Super. Then let's tackle the elephant in the room: what's wrong with fictional rape in fictional porn games? Patreon, our current overlords/censors, certainly seem to have a problem with it. But it's fucking fiction, not real humans experiencing real pain or suffering, unless the player of their own volition decides to play something that they have reason to believe might upset them.

If a person can't tell the difference between fact and fiction and takes their ethical cues from pornography, I would suggest that that person is the one with the problem, not the porn itself. Or would you rather that we just never depict any morally questionable activity in fiction (or more to the point, that any depiction of immoral activity come with a stern warning) at all in case some viewer doesn't know how to make their own decisions and just does whatever anyone in any medium they are exposed to tells them?

 

[GuyFreely]

Super. Then let's tackle the elephant in the room: what's wrong with fictional rape in fictional porn games? Patreon, our current overlords/censors, certainly seem to have a problem with it. But it's fucking fiction, not real humans experiencing real pain or suffering, unless the player of their own volition decides to play something that they have reason to believe might upset them.

If a person can't tell the difference between fact and fiction and takes their ethical cues from pornography, I would suggest that that person is the one with the problem, not the porn itself. Or would you rather that we just never depict any morally questionable activity in fiction (or more to the point, that any depiction of immoral activity come with a stern warning) at all in case some viewer doesn't know how to make their own decisions and just does whatever anyone in any medium they are exposed to tells them?

Nobody is arguing against rape appearing in porn games. I'm not even saying it has to be "tastefully done" like the way Hollywood normally handles it. You can have as much rape as you want in your game, just fit it into the narrative. Don't act like it's a perfectly normal thing to have regardless of the story.

 

[gunderson]

Nobody is arguing against rape appearing in porn games. I'm not even saying it has to be "tastefully done" like the way Hollywood normally handles it. You can have as much rape as you want in your game, just fit it into the narrative. Don't act like it's a perfectly normal thing to have regardless of the story.

Really? Because it seemed exactly like DarthSeduction was arguing that the protagonist of Man of the House (who definitely seems pretty rapey most of the time to me at least) shouldn't be rapey.

And let's get serious here: these are porn games. There is every Goddamn reason to expect characters to be rapey in porn games. That's practically the most reliable thing about porn games: the protagonist will at some point either have sex with a woman without her consent or try to have sex with a woman without her consent.

Now perhaps you don't like that. Perhaps casually having a purportedly 'nice' protagonist be a rapist bugs you. That's completely fine! I'm sure you can find examples of games where every sexual act is 100% consensual or every protagonist is a confessed rapist or whatever. But stop pretending that this is a different genre than it is.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Super. Then let's tackle the elephant in the room: what's wrong with fictional rape in fictional porn games? Patreon, our current overlords/censors, certainly seem to have a problem with it. But it's fucking fiction, not real humans experiencing real pain or suffering, unless the player of their own volition decides to play something that they have reason to believe might upset them.

If a person can't tell the difference between fact and fiction and takes their ethical cues from pornography, I would suggest that that person is the one with the problem, not the porn itself. Or would you rather that we just never depict any morally questionable activity in fiction (or more to the point, that any depiction of immoral activity come with a stern warning) at all in case some viewer doesn't know how to make their own decisions and just does whatever anyone in any medium they are exposed to tells them?

It's not the ethical concern, it's the consistent storytelling. Rape away, but don't give me a romance story where all of the sudden there's rape. Rape away, but don't have my victim decide in the middle of our ongoing rape relationship that I'm not all that bad after all, even though she hated me before I started raping her, unless you're gonna give me a good fucking explanation for why that happens. Don't have the character who loves and adores me, and keeps making proactive measures to get in my pants need to be tricked into my bed. Write consistent well rounded characters who behave in the world they've been designed to behave in correctly.

It's telling that you quoted my TL;DR. Because if you'd actually read any of the spoilers, you see how nothing I changed for either Ashley or Veronica changed their story points at all. The differences were simply that because I made the characters have more than 1 dimension, the scenarios that Faerin definitely didn't intend to come off as rape, all of the sudden don't come off as rape.

 

[DarthSeduction]

And let's get serious here: these are porn games. There is every Goddamn reason to expect characters to be rapey in porn games. That's practically the most reliable thing about porn games: the protagonist will at some point either have sex with a woman without her consent or try to have sex with a woman without her consent.

Now perhaps you don't like that. Perhaps casually having a purportedly 'nice' protagonist be a rapist bugs you. That's completely fine! I'm sure you can find examples of games where every sexual act is 100% consensual or every protagonist is a confessed rapist or whatever. But stop pretending that this is a different genre than it is.

No, there is not every reason to expect that characters written in a specific way should all of the sudden through no reason other than because the writing sucks, become rapey. And that is the case with both of the games you mentioned.

 

[gunderson]

No, there is not every reason to expect that characters written in a specific way should all of the sudden through no reason other than because the writing sucks, become rapey. And that is the case with both of the games you mentioned.

Ah. So you haven't played that many porn games then. Okay.

This feels like the same conversation I had with a group of people who believed that this was primarily a site for authors to advertise their games rather than a porn game piracy site. I don't share your view on the broader genre of porn games, but it seems like you're sufficiently invested in it that nothing anyone says about the history of porn games in the West matters to you. So...

Best of luck on your quest to rid the world of porn games of casually rapey characters?

 

[DarthSeduction]

Ah. So you haven't played that many porn games then. Okay.

This feels like the same conversation I had with a group of people who believed that this was primarily a site for authors to advertise their games rather than a porn game piracy site. I don't share your view on the broader genre of porn games, but it seems like you're sufficiently invested in it that nothing anyone says about the history of porn games in the West matters to you. So...

Best of luck on your quest to rid the world of porn games of casually rapey characters?

Best of luck with your continued acceptance of shit writing.

 

[GuyFreely]

So a lot of games don't develop the MC much past he wants to fuck women. Fine, okay, less time spent on non-fucking content. Without establishing the character, we only have his actions to go on. So let me give two examples that assume we know nothing about the MC. Assume that no explanation is given outside of the events.

A:
You meet a girl. You talk to the girl. You buy the girl a gift. You write her a love poem. You take her to a nice restaurant. You share your first kiss. At night, you sneak into her bedroom and rape her.

B:
You meet a girl. You talk to the girl. You buy the girl a drink and another and another until she can barely stand. You wrangle her back to your place where she falls unconscious. You rape her.

Both of these scenarios involve rape. Which one seems to fit together better? I'm hoping the answer is B. Sure, there could be a perfectly good explanation for A, but there often isn't one given.

 

[megaplayboy10k]

So a lot of games don't develop the MC much past he wants to fuck women. Fine, okay, less time spent on non-fucking content. Without establishing the character, we only have his actions to go on. So let me give two examples that assume we know nothing about the MC. Assume that no explanation is given outside of the events.

A:
You meet a girl. You talk to the girl. You buy the girl a gift. You write her a love poem. You take her to a nice restaurant. You share your first kiss. At night, you sneak into her bedroom and rape her.

B:
You meet a girl. You talk to the girl. You buy the girl a drink and another and another until she can barely stand. You wrangle her back to your place where she falls unconscious. You rape her.

Both of these scenarios involve rape. Which one seems to fit together better? I'm hoping the answer is B. Sure, there could be a perfectly good explanation for A, but there often isn't one given.

Well, the consistent thing is that the MC is a Rapey McRaperson in both scenarios. The first one is more disturbing, like a well-mannered serial murderer who comes across as polite, charming and romantic...right before they miss the turn to drive the girl home.

I think there's a bit of a push behind threads like this to, well, "make better games". That is, make games that are erotic, entertaining, "gratifying" and yet better written with better dialogue, better plotting and more consistent characterization. We have a whole porn game tropes thread which points out a lot of the clichés, good and bad, in the genre as it is. These games proliferate...if you check the "latest games" alpha build, you'll note there's something like 2800 games released over the past 2 years. Not all of them complete, but that's a dizzying release rate for a genre that's profoundly undercapitalized compared to mainstream electronic gaming(which is a multibillion dollar industry--this one is barely multimillions, not counting the plethora of flash games on porn sites).
I tend to think that constant peeping(as opposed to inadvertent or one-off), groping, blackmail, drugging, sleep-raping, and physical coercion(Dark Neighborhood has a scene where the brother forces the sister's head down underwater to suck his cock--that's textbook sexual assault, folks) all tend to fall into "dark fantasy" and "non-consensual" tag categories. It is true that many games give the player the option to not do these things, but in some cases you almost have to in order to advance the story. Installing video cameras and pimping out the women of your family to the internet would also be "non consensual". Corruption which involves manipulation is kinda also shady. Corruption/Mind Control involving supernatural/superscience means at least has the virtue of pushing the scenario into "complete fantasy", and the darker behavior of the MC could simply indicate the corrupting effects of having such power over others.
I suppose the developers could essentially put a disclaimer over this stuff("potentially disturbing content which skirts the edges of consensual behavior" or somesuch).
I guess I'm not calling for "rape shaming" devs or those who like this stuff, but maybe to be more mindful of what kind of fap game you really want to make--"nice guy finds a way to better his luck with women" or "skeevy perv does whatever it takes to gratify himself". It could be you offer both options to the player and they decide what kind of person the MC is going to be.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Well, the consistent thing is that the MC is a Rapey McRaperson in both scenarios. The first one is more disturbing, like a well-mannered serial murderer who comes across as polite, charming and romantic...right before they miss the turn to drive the girl home.

I think there's a bit of a push behind threads like this to, well, "make better games". That is, make games that are erotic, entertaining, "gratifying" and yet better written with better dialogue, better plotting and more consistent characterization. We have a whole porn game tropes thread which points out a lot of the clichés, good and bad, in the genre as it is. These games proliferate...if you check the "latest games" alpha build, you'll note there's something like 2800 games released over the past 2 years. Not all of them complete, but that's a dizzying release rate for a genre that's profoundly undercapitalized compared to mainstream electronic gaming(which is a multibillion dollar industry--this one is barely multimillions, not counting the plethora of flash games on porn sites).
I tend to think that constant peeping(as opposed to inadvertent or one-off), groping, blackmail, drugging, sleep-raping, and physical coercion(Dark Neighborhood has a scene where the brother forces the sister's head down underwater to suck his cock--that's textbook sexual assault, folks) all tend to fall into "dark fantasy" and "non-consensual" tag categories. It is true that many games give the player the option to not do these things, but in some cases you almost have to in order to advance the story. Installing video cameras and pimping out the women of your family to the internet would also be "non consensual". Corruption which involves manipulation is kinda also shady. Corruption/Mind Control involving supernatural/superscience means at least has the virtue of pushing the scenario into "complete fantasy", and the darker behavior of the MC could simply indicate the corrupting effects of having such power over others.
I suppose the developers could essentially put a disclaimer over this stuff("potentially disturbing content which skirts the edges of consensual behavior" or somesuch).
I guess I'm not calling for "rape shaming" devs or those who like this stuff, but maybe to be more mindful of what kind of fap game you really want to make--"nice guy finds a way to better his luck with women" or "skeevy perv does whatever it takes to gratify himself". It could be you offer both options to the player and they decide what kind of person the MC is going to be.

I think I'm willing to overlook the peeping, I mentioned it in my initial post, but I don't really have an issue with it, even if it isn't optional, because at least it's always treated as a bad thing that you'll face consequences for. The problem arises with the blase attitudes toward non-consensual actions that occur. Part of the thrill of rape and rape scenarios in games is the fear of getting caught. In many of the games which I think are unnecessarily rapey, there's no fear of consequences, the characters are the problem. They aren't well written and so what the developer probably intends to be consensual acts become rape, because the developer didn't take the time to give the characters motivations and personality beyond the cookie cutter description they spoonfeed you in the first 5 minutes.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

Doesn't know how to interact with human females: Pretty self explanatory. I feel like it's possible some devs honestly don't know how to write normal interactions with women. Could chalk this up to lack of experience or overexposure to pornography. They don't see why slipping drugs to the girl you like to have sex with her is a bad thing.

Yeah, I doubt that's a thing except for someone who had gender-segregated schooling and grew up with nothing but Japanese porn.

 

[DarthSeduction]

Yeah, I doubt that's a thing except for someone who had gender-segregated schooling and grew up with nothing but Japanese porn.

Then why do none of the girls in games have any motivation?