Why do adult games need to end at the chase or with a harem?

[Bilbael]

Hi everyone!

I’ve been reflecting on common design choices in adult games and wanted to get your thoughts on something that feels like a recurring pattern. Most adult games follow this formula:

1. Start with the chase—seduction, corruption, or relationship-building.
2. Conquer the girls (or love interests).
3. End the game or wrap it all up with a harem ending.

One of the worst offenders for this is NTL Media. In all their games, the last part is almost entirely about boring multi-partner sex scenes.

But why does the game have to end once the chase is over? And why is the harem route so often treated as the ultimate goal? The chase is seen as the entire game, and the reward is the girls—usually grouped into a harem scenario if there’s more than one love interest. But doesn’t it feel like we’re missing out on so much potential?

There’s a whole world of possibilities for what could happen after the girls are won over. Different situations, dynamics, and sex tropes could be explored. What if, instead, the story pushed further into what happens next? For example:

• Evolving relationships with individual characters, deepening emotional or physical connections.
• Introducing conflicts, rivalries, or shifting loyalties among the cast.
• Exploring new fantasies, scenarios, or power dynamics that emerge in the "post-conquest" phase.
• Developing the consequences of choices made along the way, leading to varied and unique outcomes instead of defaulting to a harem ending.

I’d love to hear your thoughts:

• Do you think a game should end once the girls are conquered?
• Is the harem ending a necessary or ideal conclusion in an adult game?
• What kinds of "post-conquest" scenarios or dynamics would you like to see explored?

 

[Winterfire]

not true https://f95zone.to/sam/latest_alpha/#/cat=games/page=1/notags=254/prefixes=18

 

[Bilbael]

not true https://f95zone.to/sam/latest_alpha/#/cat=games/page=1/notags=254/prefixes=18

My question isn’t just about harem endings . Like I said, when the chase is over, the game often ends—there’s nothing more, almost no teasing anymore, and no creativity in the sex scenes. So the games either stop here, or not long after, or the devs tend to continue with a harem scenario, or multi-partner sex scenes as the solution.

 

[Jaike]

Hi everyone!

I’ve been reflecting on common design choices in adult games and wanted to get your thoughts on something that feels like a recurring pattern. Most adult games follow this formula:

1. Start with the chase—seduction, corruption, or relationship-building.
2. Conquer the girls (or love interests).
3. End the game or wrap it all up with a harem ending.

One of the worst offenders for this is NTL Media. In all their games, the last part is almost entirely about boring multi-partner sex scenes.

But why does the game have to end once the chase is over? And why is the harem route so often treated as the ultimate goal? The chase is seen as the entire game, and the reward is the girls—usually grouped into a harem scenario if there’s more than one love interest. But doesn’t it feel like we’re missing out on so much potential?

There’s a whole world of possibilities for what could happen after the girls are won over. Different situations, dynamics, and sex tropes could be explored. What if, instead, the story pushed further into what happens next? For example:

• Evolving relationships with individual characters, deepening emotional or physical connections.
• Introducing conflicts, rivalries, or shifting loyalties among the cast.
• Exploring new fantasies, scenarios, or power dynamics that emerge in the "post-conquest" phase.
• Developing the consequences of choices made along the way, leading to varied and unique outcomes instead of defaulting to a harem ending.

I’d love to hear your thoughts:

• Do you think a game should end once the girls are conquered?
• Is the harem ending a necessary or ideal conclusion in an adult game?
• What kinds of "post-conquest" scenarios or dynamics would you like to see explored?

Because "got the LI" is a natural end point for a plot focused on getting into a romance (or harem in your point 3 and in the rest of your post, most of those aren't very romantic to understate it). Developing it further means a dev needs to find another end point, that means a dual plot that can support further development of the relationship or taking your suggestion, focus on the relationship's development, try finding a new end point for that and shifting the tone too. Both consume time and effort.

The harem route's often treated as the ultimate goal because they combine a maximal amount of content for a type of story that often doesn't reward alternative paths, for an audience that's mostly interested in the sex scenes anyway.

Not that your suggestions are bad, they aren't, and I've been thinking along the same lines, so that means they're excellent , but it's sure time consuming, probably means getting more limited support too and not what you can expect the average dev to go for. Especially if they need to monetise it to commission art or buy assets.

It makes artistic sense to push further into exploring how the relationships develop, but not always commercial sense.

not true https://f95zone.to/sam/latest_alpha/#/cat=games/page=1/notags=254/prefixes=18

Right, and let's look a little further into them, male protagonist games first because that's what most harem games are here: There are 13366 games tagged male protagonist and 1760 have the harem tag, so a bit over 10%. So most obviously don't have harems, and a chunk of them are abandoned games (over 400 of them).

For female protagonists it's way less like everybody'd expect, 6149 female protagonist games and only 116 have harems, that's around 2%. And then 559 futa/trans protagonist tagged games, 42 with harem: 7,5%. The safe bet is that in most the protagonist is futa instead of trans.

The perception that harem endings occur "so often" is mostly based on male MC games. But I do think that in games with a more ambitious dual plot, harem endings show up a bit often than you might expect.

Strangely, 42 harem games don't have a male, female, or futa/trans protagonist tagged.

 

[Winterfire]

My question isn’t just about harem endings . Like I said, when the chase is over, the game often ends—there’s nothing more, almost no teasing anymore, and no creativity in the sex scenes. So the games either stop here, or not long after, or the devs tend to continue with a harem scenario, or multi-partner sex scenes as the solution.

But it's not true tho, my link shows games that disprove what you've said on the very first page. It's not just 2D, many DAZ games (to my dismay) even start with a girlfriend character already.

I think you just need to play different games, and not games that are obviously not aimed at you.
Make a thread here: https://f95zone.to/forums/recommendations-identification.104/ and ask for recommendations.

 

[kytee]

They don't "need" to end there but the writers of the stories you read chose to end it there. The chase, as you say, is the most interesting part. There's not much fun or interest to be had from continuing the story, just for the sake of continuing the story. There has to be a natural addition to the story with its own set of conflicts and purpose to keep going. Otherwise, I'd honestly rather have the story end than have the story continue with "and they lived happily ever after... And happily ever after... And happily ever after...", continued ad infinitum just so that you the reader get to experience this.

 

[anne O'nymous]

One of the worst offenders for this is NTL Media. In all their games, the last part is almost entirely about boring multi-partner sex scenes.

Well, you answered your own question. It's because, once you fulfilled the game objective(s), there's nothing interesting to add to the game.


Most games are about conquering the girl, or building your harem. Not about your life once you conquered the girl, or built your harem. And once it's done, what is there to say?
"Honey, let's have sex."/"Not today, I've a headache"?
"Leave me alone, I'm cleaning the kitchen. You want more sex? Well, help in the house"?
"Hey! It's the third time today that you have sex with her, and you haven't touched me at all since so many days..."?

You need a story, or a semblance of story, to keep the game interesting.
Just putting sex scenes over sex scenes do not works. There's game who are solely doing this, and they have their public, but it's not the same that those who play for the chase and/or the story.
Switching your audience mid game is never a good idea, and most devs understand this instinctively.

There’s a whole world of possibilities for what could happen after the girls are won over. Different situations, dynamics, and sex tropes could be explored. What if, instead, the story pushed further into what happens next?

But, as I implied above, this is another story, that don't necessarily interest the same audience.

Of course, it's not impossible to have a game that continue further. But this mean that conquering the girl, or building your harem, is neither the motive of the game, nor its goal, but just a side story. Something that will happen, or not, independently of the story.

A game like The DeLuca Family can works that way, because sex is not its main component. After a full year in the family, MC can perfectly have conquered Gracia, Luna and Isabel, as well as a lot of secondary girls, while the story would still have years of development ahead. But it need to be a good writer, and to have a strong captivating story, for this to works, at least in this part of the community. Simply because players needs to forget that they are here to get the girls or to fap intensively.
Yet, in this game at least players have the chase part, what keep the game interesting for them. Unlike a game like WVM, that have a harem almost right from the starts, but is not about building the said harem, and more about not being annoyed by all those girls who throw themselves at you.


But of course, for such game to exist, it need way more works from the developer side. Unless there's only one possible LI, the further you'll advance in the story, the more change there's depending on what girl you pursued, or what girls you included in your harem.

Let's take a family of five (MC, mother, three sisters) that travel around the world to solve mysteries. It can perfectly be the base for a game as you want it. The relationship between the MC and his family will evolve slowly. Like they travel, the only man that is always with them is their son/brother. So, their sex live is either two/three days stories with complete strangers, or incest. And once they are an incestuous harem, there's still mysteries to solve, so the game can continue.
Okay, but what if the player don't like the middle sister, because she's a brat as expected from her? She'll not be part of the harem, and the game need to take count of that. The victory orgy once a mystery is solved need to be done twice. One time including the mid sister, one time excluding her. Same for most of the interactions with the mid sister, that either show her as an intimate partner, or as feeling excluded from her family because she's not part of the harem.
And this is just one of the four girls that can possibly be part of the harem. So, either you multiply the devel time by at least 10 once the harem is expected to be fully built, or you force the girls into the harem, without giving the choice to the player.

What doesn't mean that it's totally impossible. You can still have this kind of dynamics in a game, but as I said above, it imply that all the sexual content will be purely secondary, as independent as possible from the main story. Therefore, while you'll have a game that can fulfill the desires of players who want to goes further than the chase, it will also be a game that is less appealing for most of them, because not focused enough on the sex. This unless you're a good writer, like HopesGaming is.


In the end, most games are like you describe them simply because it's how they are built.
If it annoy you, what I can perfectly understand, then it just mean that you don't pick the right games to play.

 

[desmosome]

If winning the girls is part of the conclusion (where they wrap up plot points and resolve conflicts), then that's where it will end. If winning the girl is just part of the set up, or the journey, then it will continue. But the story will reflect this nature and would presumably be written intentionally this way, which means it won't feel like the story is just going on and on and overstaying its welcome.

It's a simple concept. There are a lot of games that end at the point you mention because that is the point of the game and a natural point of conclusion. A lot of harem games don't even have an actual plot apart from banging, so there is nothing to continue once goal of making all the girls "mine" is achieved. And the ones that do have some plot generally tends to overlap the plot progression with the harem completion rate.

 

[Geigi]

Because "got the LI" is a natural end point for a plot focused on getting into a romance (or harem in your point 3 and in the rest of your post, most of those aren't very romantic to understate it). Developing it further means a dev needs to find another end point, that means a dual plot that can support further development of the relationship or taking your suggestion, focus on the relationship's development, try finding a new end point for that and shifting the tone too. Both consume time and effort.

The harem route's often treated as the ultimate goal because they combine a maximal amount of content for a type of story that often doesn't reward alternative paths, for an audience that's mostly interested in the sex scenes anyway.

Not that your suggestions are bad, they aren't, and I've been thinking along the same lines, so that means they're excellent , but it's sure time consuming, probably means getting more limited support too and not what you can expect the average dev to go for. Especially if they need to monetise it to commission art or buy assets.

It makes artistic sense to push further into exploring how the relationships develop, but not always commercial sense.


Right, and let's look a little further into them, male protagonist games first because that's what most harem games are here: There are 13366 games tagged male protagonist and 1760 have the harem tag, so a bit over 10%. So most obviously don't have harems, and a chunk of them are abandoned games (over 400 of them).

For female protagonists it's way less like everybody'd expect, 6149 female protagonist games and only 116 have harems, that's around 2%. And then 559 futa/trans protagonist tagged games, 42 with harem: 7,5%. The safe bet is that in most the protagonist is futa instead of trans.

The perception that harem endings occur "so often" is mostly based on male MC games. But I do think that in games with a more ambitious dual plot, harem endings show up a bit often than you might expect.

Strangely, 42 harem games don't have a male, female, or futa/trans protagonist tagged.

Considering how many users are complaining about the tagging system, the numbers are even less.

 

[DawnCry]

Harem management is an interesting concept and I tend to prefer it a lot more compared to the harem one, however it's a very unexplored terrain.

The core of it is solving the conflicts that happen when you create a harem until you end up either failing or finally stabilizing it. Basically it just have both external and internal issues:

-External tends to refer to 3rd parties generating conflicts in your harem, it could go from a witch cursing members of your harem in different ways to having people trying to seduce members of your harem.

-Internal is basically what you said, conflicts and rivalries within the harem, or perhaps even having some girls start to get too much into each other.

Is such a concept interesting? it is, but it tends to have a conflict with the concept of harem games, with this I mean that most harem games are simple stories with easy to solve conflicts and no negative consequences, it's rare to find some that go over that, on the other hand a harem management game tends to appeal more to players that enjoy management/simulation games, this is basically the reason why for a harem game the end point is to get the girls.

Is it hard to get a concept related to this type of game? not truly, you only need to have the MC be a person of power, be it a hero, noble/prince/king... basically the easiest way would be to have a political harem, in the sense that the girls don't join the harem out of love but for political reasons and boom, now you have a bunch of girls with different objectives, you can add whatever you want:

-Girls that start liking the MC
-Girls that aren't interested in the MC but in the other girls
-Girls that try to control the MC and be in power
-Girls that actually want to take revenge on the MC

Hell, you could even add a futanari with illusion magic to appear as a girl if you want.

 

[roserosa]

One of the worst offenders for this is NTL Media.

Yup. I played Lust Epidemic and thought it was cool despite the Harem elements, but Treasure of Nadia became unbearable after some hours of gameplay, so I dropped and don't plan to go back even though I bought at Steam. Ok, it's a porn game and made specially to cishet men jerk off, but please, I think even them must get bored with the same threesome/foursome over and over.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

• Do you think a game should end once the girls are conquered?
• Is the harem ending a necessary or ideal conclusion in an adult game?
• What kinds of "post-conquest" scenarios or dynamics would you like to see explored?

The game should end when the story is finished. If it's a story about conquering a girl or several, then yeah, duh. If it's a story about something else, and romance is just a side quest, then no. But the idea of harem as the super-objective slots into gamification of relationships fairly well. Conquering one girl = good, conquering two at the same time = more gooder. It's a fairly simple logic.

The post-conquest scenarios... no. Look, suppose you make a game that goes like 1) seduce 1st girl 2) seduce 2nd girl 3) make them accept being part of your harem. If you end this game here, this game is ending after the conquest has been done. Okay, you now add steps 4,5,6... etc. If whatever step you end with, let's say 7, has the harem in a stronger state, however you define that (better sex scenes, pregnancy, additional girls), then that's STILL ending the game as soon as conquest is done. You've just slightly redefined the goal of conquest to be not just a harem, but the best version of harem the game can offer.

So the alternative is that steps 4-7 erode the harem instead? Well, let me tell you, players—especially harem lovers—won't like that. Heavens forbid a harem member leaves you for another character. That's the n-word. That gets you death threats. Setting this particular mess aside, nothing prevents players to... not complete this downwards portion of a story, and just stop at the apex, muck around for a while and then quit the game.

Fundamentally, I feel like you're asking why so many games end with the PC being most powerful. Because numbers go up.