Why are so many porn games bad at the porn?

[Urpo]

You got ton of lewd games with option to buy various thing like potions and cars, equip armor, fight rats or bats, gamble on black jack, run a farm, organize armies, read thousands of words about the backstory of the world etc. - but most games don't have any interactions in the porn scenes. Most porn games seem like games that are bad versions of their normal game genre but with some sex stuff sprinkled in there as an afterthought. Most of these games seem to have counterintuitive design if your goal is to make sexy experience. Why is that? Why aren't people designing porn games with the porn experience as the priority?


(And this is just about the sex scene interactivity, but everything sex related in the games...)

Edit: I am more asking this related to the design. For example, why make players grind battles against bats, when they could transfer that grind to flirting or something sex related. As a positive example, game like College Daze has almost every event have to do with the sex by having almost always at least one sort of option relating to it (might not be directly connect to sex but something like "this will make her like me more -> closer to having sex").

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

Because it's better said than done Urpo.

 

[andrix_NoelzZz]

 

[Doorknob22]

Why are so many <creations> bad at the <relevant creation>?

Because they are created by inexperienced amateurs. It doesn't matter if we're talking about music, paintings, indie games or any other creations, amateurs produce (mostly) amateurish products. F95 (which is where, I assume, you consume your porn games at) offers a platform for both experienced and inexperienced developers. I assume (didn't check) that porn games offered in Steam are more polished, as amateur developers are less likely to market their products there.

 

[recreation]

Why are so many <creations> bad at the <relevant creation>?

Because they are created by inexperienced amateurs. It doesn't matter if we're talking about music, paintings, indie games or any other creations, amateurs produce (mostly) amateurish products. F95 (which is where, I assume, you consume your porn games at) offers a platform for both experienced and inexperienced developers. I assume (didn't check) that porn games offered in Steam are more polished, as amateur developers are less likely to market their products there.

nope, they're not^^
there are a few exceptions, but it's basically the same everywhere.

 

[gzrtjhgtyhjljk]

Because people who have the skills to make a decent porn game can easily find a better job.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

I suppose because the more control you give the player over the scene, the more you need to account for different outcomes and the more art you need to make. Most games I know of where you really have a lot of direct control over the sex are text-based and almost all are very impersonal. As in, either the MC or the sex partners are procedurally-generated or faceless drones (Karryn's Prison, Fort of Chains, Free Cities etc.)

As for the "sex to not-sex ratio", well some fetishes require a world, a story and character development to be done properly.

 

[Agent HK47]

1) Less control from the player means less renders and easier programming.
2) Sexy scenes can't very well have minigames or intricate choices/mechanics, when most players are limited to 1-hand play and most of their brain functionality has been diverted to a specific region of the body, at that point in time.

 

[Jofur]

Context is everything. If a game is just "press a button and get a sex scene" you might as well just watch porn. A lot of fantasies require a lot of grind or non-porn related things to work or be exciting. Not to say there aren't a fair amount of badly designed porn games out there(like what's up with those platformers where you have to take lose to see the erotic content?), but oftentimes a regular game with some porn sprinkled in there like a modded Skyrim is just what the doctor ordered.

 

[Urpo]

Context is everything. If a game is just "press a button and get a sex scene" you might as well just watch porn. A lot of fantasies require a lot of grind or non-porn related things to work or be exciting.

But in games sex scene you are just pressing a button (often to advance the text). What sexual fantasy involves collecting 10 mountain flowers or making enough money for armor upgrade?

Sexy scenes can't very well have minigames or intricate choices/mechanics, when most players are limited to 1-hand play and most of their brain functionality has been diverted to a specific region of the body, at that point in time.

They don't need to be minigames. Just choices would do a lot for interactivity (player input should matter in a game). Most still require you to click in order to advance the text, so having some meaningful interactions would not be a hinderense.

 

[tanstaafl]

Because the vast majority of these games are made by people with little to no training in any part of the process that could benefit from training. Like writing, coding, graphics, etc. People who have a basic idea that they start with and no knowledge how to put it all together other than to imitate other games of the same type. Which is fine, experience is experience and IF they stick with it long enough to learn and they get better over time. Or, more often, they make one game ever (usually not finished) and that's it.

 

[Jofur]

But in games sex scene you are just pressing a button (often to advance the text).

That's because it's a fuckload of work to make even one linear sex-scene, and most games are made by amateur developers who work alone. I suppose it's a preference thing, do you prefer 5 heavily interactive scenes in a game, or 20 linear ones? I imagine most would say the latter.

What sexual fantasy involves collecting 10 mountain flowers or making enough money for armor upgrade?

You could pretty much ask the same about any video game. You have to put in some work to make the goal feel rewarding. It is a game after all. If you are too easily rewarded with porn it often stops getting interesting, and it just becomes a fancy picture gallery/video player.

That and fantasies are complex. You've never played an RPG and wished you could fuck that hot quest giver instead of just getting some gold? Most of the time it's not the visuals you are fapping to, it's the context and fantasy. Immersing yourself as an adventurer is part of that.

 

[woody554]

the way renpy atl works makes it practically impossible to chain animations in any normal way you'd usually gamify fucking. you can't force the loop to run until end, you can't change any variables that matter from inside the loop, you can't guarantee renpy has loaded your animation before going into the loop. renpy is just really bad at animation. the result of which is that even if you go through the work of building up and rendering all necessary loops for a robust fucking scene, it's gonna jump all over the place at mid-loop, not show frames in the early loop, and lag when animations should switch. it's just awful.

so your only choice is to make a realtime 3d game from and program all of the interpolations yourself, but that's massively beyond the capabilities of most people here. and then you get to the point where you realize you'd like to have the dicks interact with pussies instead of going through polygons like ghosts, which is a whole another kettle of fish. then if you manage all that underlying infrastructure, you'll still have to make the actual game. it's a lot.

then of course there's the problem that people lack the artistic skill to mke the god stuff you might envision in your head. doing things is much harder than watching them, and while that might sound like a banal truism, when you actually try doing the things you find out even the worst games actually had quite a lot of understanding behind it. it just wasn't enough to make it look good.

it's hard to do. it's so hard. much harder than making a first person shooter which can skip over most of these things. it's more along the lines of games where you can jump and climb on any random things in the world.

might not be directly connect to sex but something like "this will make her like me more -> closer to having sex

well that's just better writing. the other way means you're basically giving the player a big red button that says "push to win game". you need struggle and frustration to make the win feel like anything. that means adding obstacles between you and your goal. and if you do feel frustration for jumping through those hoops then GOOD, it's being done right. if you don't feel any frustration then you're not being challenged/hindered and the sex scene will feel disappointing.

dopamine is not secreted when you get to the scene, it's secreted when you're trying to get there but are being hindered. the easier you get there the less dopamine you'll secrete.

 

[Urpo]

That's because it's a fuckload of work to make even one linear sex-scene, and most games are made by amateur developers who work alone. I suppose it's a preference thing, do you prefer 5 heavily interactive scenes in a game, or 20 linear ones? I imagine most would say the latter.

You could pretty much ask the same about any video game. You have to put in some work to make the goal feel rewarding. It is a game after all. If you are too easily rewarded with porn it often stops getting interesting, and it just becomes a fancy picture gallery/video player.

That and fantasies are complex. You've never played an RPG and wished you could fuck that hot quest giver instead of just getting some gold? Most of the time it's not the visuals you are fapping to, it's the context and fantasy. Immersing yourself as an adventurer is part of that.

5 good ones are better than 20 mediocre. Games could be shorter to makes this fit - however, I understand that this does not fit well with the income model that everyone seems to aim for.

About other games, they have different goals than porn games. Like in a JRPG, armor gives better stats and makes your character feel more invincible and gives illusion of progression in the context of a long JRPG. Picking random stuff in JRPG is to make players do something else than just fight and maybe give reason to explore the map. These are understandable choices for JRPG - more when they had technical limits twenty or so years ago.

The point is that the these porn games don't do stuff that enhance the fantasies or the main core action, but instead fill them full of random bs that hinders the experience. They often dont have proper kind of interaction (due questionable design choices) for the genre.

 

[OsamiWorks]

Be the change you want to see in this world

 

[woody554]

The point is that the these porn games don't do stuff that enhance the fantasies or the main core action, but instead fill them full of random bs that hinders the experience. They often dont have proper kind of interaction (due questionable design choices) for the genre.

yeah. I do agree with that, and it's what bothers me with most 'original stories' which force me to read through some inane mob/spy'who was your dad really' -story which almost never has any connection to the issue which is how do I get my dick in big sister's pussy. it's a distraction from the main story instead of building it up, which undermines the main story.

at the very least the non-sex parts should somehow deepen the characters regarding the relationship aspects. nobody cares about the mobster turf war or who wins it, but you might care about mobster dad giving his daughter daddy issues, which then explains how you elsewhere get close to her. like maybe you'll have dialog choices to say cool young guy playa lines or stuck up old guy rambling, and that specific girl will only respond to old guy stuff that reminds her of her daddy.

 

[Alea iacta est]

You got ton of lewd games with option to buy various thing like potions and cars, equip armor, fight rats or bats, gamble on black jack, run a farm, organize armies, read thousands of words about the backstory of the world etc. - but most games don't have any interactions in the porn scenes. Most porn games seem like games that are bad versions of their normal game genre but with some sex stuff sprinkled in there as an afterthought. Most of these games seem to have counterintuitive design if your goal is to make sexy experience. Why is that? Why aren't people designing porn games with the porn experience as the priority?


(And this is just about the sex scene interactivity, but everything sex related in the games...)

Edit: I am more asking this related to the design. For example, why make players grind battles against bats, when they could transfer that grind to flirting or something sex related. As a positive example, game like College Daze has almost every event have to do with the sex by having almost always at least one sort of option relating to it (might not be directly connect to sex but something like "this will make her like me more -> closer to having sex").

You are asking the right question...

I am thinking this for months.

My opinion:
1) Culturally: Porn has been brilliant when has been produced in Europe (Italy, France, Germany) very good plot and extremely high quality porn scenes (Bandinelli, Salieri, Darcel, etc...), then, as usual, US arrived and flooded the market with meaningless "all-sex" cheap production, where there is no soul in sex.
2) Age: most of DEVs are barely 20 years old, therefore lacking of "education" and "experience"
3) Audience: Audience on this forum is barely adult, they are more keen on combat, character customization rather than rape, gang bang, deepthroat, MMF
4) current cultural climate: Well we live in the century of dictatorship of positivism/relativism, new-puritan wave (always from shitty US) that is literally kills all the creativity (check Movies, Music and art in nowadays).
If you notice you won't find a lot of MMF and gang bang, prison fuck etc.. because kids cannot hold this hardcore.

Porn has always been about transgression and not romance shit or dating simulation.. but transgression in nowadays means been technologically censored (ban payments, ban forum, etc...)..

Dev they are so dedicating so little time to produce high quality sex scenes with a lot of assets and images.. spending more focus on blunt teenager stories where the protagonist MC looks like a 15 years old

 

[Crimson Delight Games]

Shit's hard to produce, yo.

 

[Urpo]

Shit's hard to produce, yo.

I don't think that is the core problem. Something like Absolute Power Corruption has lots of questionable things, likely stemming from being single developer game. However it stays very close to delivering a focused porn game experience. It hits various kinks constantly while having very little unnecessary fluff. It offers interaction chanches that are right for the genre almost at every turn. Most things in this game might seem amateurish but it's game design in the context of porn games is top notch.

So, it doesn't seem like production problem but rather a game design problem.

 

[bigboi2923]

Fundamentally, all issues with quality are because games designed primarily for porn have a limited audience. This is a very niche market still