Why do male main characters often seem underage?

[Barioz]

I doubt it has anything with incest or any other fetish. Our market is really small and underdeveloped so I look at Japanese one as teen/school themes are even more dominant there. Incest isn't really as strong as here on eastern market and teens are still common. Moreover even in mainstream VN-games it's common as well as in manga and anime. I agree that adult MC can be great as well as more adult themes but to shine they have to have much higher quality and unique features than games with younger MCs. Incest might affect our games ofc, but I think it affects settings of our games more than our MCs (you can be a father but family harem - mother, younger innocent sister and older slutty one - has to exist).

Don't get me wrong, I am not against incest games. In fact I played a lot of them. But soon you realize how often everything is nearly the same. Like 'You play as a young man who recently finished high school and lives with his mother, older and younger sister in the same house. It is up to you to build a relationship, earn some money and explore various events.' How many games would fit into this description? So the only questions left are how young does the MC looks this time, how brain damaged is he and how good are the renders? It's getting boring and monotone.

Why not something like 'You play as a xy, a young man in his early 20's. Since you grew up in a small village and lost your parents during your teenage days you barely made it through a small college with the last savings left. With literally nothing in your wallet you decide to move to the big city and its rollercoaster of possibilities and dark sides. Can you make your way out of your misery and let the city lights shining bright for you?'

You know, it's sure nothing special from the scenario perspective, but just this start sounds fresh and inviting. Possibilities to create content from this point are pretty much endless.

 

[xןʞ]

Meh it works both ways though really.

90% of older male/younger female games are just CP fetish where characters are totally over 18 because the little disclaimer and one line of dialogue at the beginning says so, just disregard the entire plot that implies otherwise.

 

[Ignazzio]

Don't get me wrong, I am not against incest games. In fact I played a lot of them. But soon you realize how often everything is nearly the same. Like 'You play as a young man who recently finished high school and lives with his mother, older and younger sister in the same house. It is up to you to build a relationship, earn some money and explore various events.' How many games would fit into this description? So the only questions left are how young does the MC looks this time, how brain damaged is he and how good are the renders? It's getting boring and monotone.

Why not something like 'You play as a xy, a young man in his early 20's. Since you grew up in a small village and lost your parents during your teenage days you barely made it through a small college with the last savings left. With literally nothing in your wallet you decide to move to the big city and its rollercoaster of possibilities and dark sides. Can you make your way out of your misery and let the city lights shining bright for you?'

You know, it's sure nothing special from the scenario perspective, but just this start sounds fresh and inviting. Possibilities to create content from this point are pretty much endless.

No worries. I'm not a fan of incest. In fact I find it pretty harmfull for our market nowadays. It's just that I can't see anything in it that would require young MC. I agree there are plenty of different ideas you could use to develop your game with older MC. I wouldn't mind playing such a thing. In fact I would love to play a game when we're a grandpa cuz I've never seen such a thing (except for strong Japanese eroges and I mean something realistic). It's usually setting that's hard to approach and not our age per se

 

[Barioz]

No worries. I'm not a fan of incest. In fact I find it pretty harmfull for our market nowadays. It's just that I can't see anything in it that would require young MC. I agree there are plenty of different ideas you could use to develop your game with older MC. I wouldn't mind playing such a thing. In fact I would love to play a game when we're a grandpa cuz I've never seen such a thing (except for strong Japanese eroges and I mean something realistic). It's usually setting that's hard to approach and not our age per se

Yep, that's what I said, no need for a young MC in incest games. 20 y/o MC and 45 y/o mother would work totally fine.

When you mentioned that idea with the grandpa I just got a hilarious idea crossing my mind. Maybe you have played the Artifact series. If so you may remember the grandma who got young again at the end. Imagine such a scenerio with a grandpa. You have the life experience of a 60 y/o man and a mysterious drink made you look young again. And now you are released to a world full of young girls and women to conquer. I would name my MC Muten Roshi. :biggrin::biggrin:

 

[Ignazzio]

Yep, that's what I said, no need for a young MC in incest games. 20 y/o MC and 45 y/o mother would work totally fine.

When you mentioned that idea with the grandpa I just got a hilarious idea crossing my mind. Maybe you have played the Artifact series. If so you may remember the grandma who got young again at the end. Imagine such a scenerio with a grandpa. You have the life experience of a 60 y/o man and a mysterious drink made you look young again. And now you are released to a world full of young girls and women to conquer. I would name my MC Muten Roshi. :biggrin::biggrin:

Didn't play Artifact as I rarely play pure incest games but I like your idea. But even you try to make your MC younger subconsciously Realistic VN when we play 90 y.o. guy would be totally unique oO

 

[Barioz]

Didn't play Artifact as I rarely play pure incest games but I like your idea. But even you try to make your MC younger subconsciously Realistic VN when we play 90 y.o. guy would be totally unique oO

Yes younger but not teen. I think above a specific age it becomes very special interest and it wouldn't be my cup of tea to see a really old guy jumping on a young woman.

 

[Ignazzio]

Yes younger but not teen. I think above a specific age it becomes very special interest and it wouldn't be my cup of tea to see a really old guy jumping on a young woman.

Hey, he can jump on grandmas But OK, that would require some very specific fetish

 

[Barioz]

Hey, he can jump on grandmas But OK, that would require some very specific fetish

Errr, you shouldn't jump on grandmas, you could never know if she breaks in half.

You could call it 'Trump Simulator' though. Would be very realistic... :biggrin:

 

[Volta]

Your answer seem to be that the underage mc is the result of developers catering to younger players likely in their teens. But this still leaves the question of why cater to them if they can't pay (I assume). Since you're planning to develop games yourself, are familar with the paying demographics of these games? Do young players in their teens constitute a large portion?

I'm beginning to think maybe I'm wrong to analyse this as a purely profit-driven choice. Perhaps the developers of these games themselves are younger, and therefore more familiar with a young man's mindset as well as being more in tune with the incest fetish as you suggest teens are? This way, the develpors are making the games partly to fulfill their own fetish while older players with the means to pay simply support them because they're the only ones making these games?

My point is that the players are people trying to recapture their teen life or an idealised version of there teen life and that the incest fetish begins and perhaps is strongest in the teen years. I expect the demographic for these games to be pretty broad just like the type of people on this forum, however i suggest that they will mostly have developed the incest fetish during the late teen years while still at home and getting to know sex.

These sound like feminist define men. Also you try to correlate between fantasy and reality, which you can't. A fantasy is a fantasy. People can like any random things without having related issue to their real life.

Do you think people who love bestiality want to do that in real life ? Or the one who love Dick Girl want to have face & body like a women, pair of boob and a dick ? No, fantasy is a fantasy. Your define is what the developer usually used on their games, it's so silly. x'D

i don't really know what you mean about the feminism, i'm male and i'm talking about male protagonists mainly so i'll wait for clarification on that. However i'm not suggesting people actually want their fantasies in reality, what i'm suggesting is that the persons reality will shape their fantasies and as such their taste in games.

 

[gamersglory]

Male MC's are usually depicted younger because Men don't really want to look at a very hairy man fucking a female character. That and most men want to feel young and full of vitality in the game so playing as a younger better-looking MC is a placebo effect.

 

[baka]

you nailed it gamersglory! i didn't realize it before, i always thought it was because of a fetish (

You must be registered to see the links

).

 

[DarthSeduction]

I find that they are portrayed no younger than their female counterparts. For instance, Max and Whatever you name is in Man of the House, skew young, but so does their younger sister. Their mother's look like healthy 30 somethings in spite of both Max and MotH being the second child. I think that while the law requires the characters be 18, they probably are intended to be younger. We rarely see a male MC if he's older, and if you do its torso down. Only exception to this I can think of is Dreaming of Dana.

 

[Ataios]

Personally I find underage looking protagonists in porn games quite repulsive and reason not to touch a game. Unfortunately for me they are fairly common, especially in mom-son games. I do play some mom-son games, but only if the son is clearly a grown man (in the best case also taller than the mom). However I find underage looking girls at least equally disturbing, that's why I don't touch dad-daughter games with a 3 meter pole.

I don't know why developers do that though, maybe really because of underage players who fantasize their moms. I think or at least hope, that this is more common than players who find underage boys sexually attractive. *Shudder*

 

[Lykanz]

Because MOST players are mentally underage, so it's easier to relate.

 

[Slappy Kinkaid]

I personally never really understood the appeal of underage characters, so I will defer to the already provided responses. Then again, I myself can't really speak from any personal bias since I am for the most part asexual these days & just like playing offbeat games. PArt of why I am that way is due to being in a RL Shotoa, (or however it's spelled), situation myself. I was introduced to porn around the age of 8, lost my virginity at about 13 to a woman in her 40's whom I met on a local phone chat line whom had a "mommy" fetish. Why I say that led to me being asexual now is a long story that I wont go into here, (suffice it to say over-stimulation of underdeveloped neurological sexual framework & other underdeveloped brain hemispheres led to hyper-sexualization up until my early 20's which slowly "burnt out" causing said framework to be remapped via neuroplasticity bypassing much of the neurological sexual areas).

What I personally wonder is where these underage games are that are being referenced. I have only seen a small handfull like incestual awakening, Nergal's Nest's games & I think Myxxxkin. Can't think of any others. & from what I have seen, there is very little tolerance for underage characters in games globally online. So it would seem that even making such games would be a fruitless effort as there are little to no means of distributing them, making any profitability difficult to say the least. So it leads me to wonder, if these games do exist, where are they because I personally haven't seen them & would be curious to know how exactly they fly under the radar, (not asking for links mind you, just generalities of course).

 

[Vanaduke]

It also takes you back to simpler times. Where hormones running rampant, and you discovered that titties are awesome. No taxes, moronic co-workers.

Ha. I think this is the most accurate description that truly answers the question; back in the day where life was simpler and being stupid was blissful.

These sound like feminist define men. Also you try to correlate between fantasy and reality, which you can't. A fantasy is a fantasy. People can like any random things without having related issue to their real life.

Do you think people who love bestiality want to do that in real life ? Or the one who love Dick Girl want to have face & body like a women, pair of boob and a dick ? No, fantasy is a fantasy. Your define is what the developer usually used on their games, it's so silly. x'D

You are naive to think fetishes has no origin and arrogant to act like you know how. The freudian sciences alone (despite its outdated principles, theres merit to its credibility), the most basic evaluation of psychosexuality can easily stem out the correlation of repressed attachments that leads to preference and eventually fetishes. Oedipus complex or unresovled mother issues for example, provides the foundation of attraction to older women and is an underlying factor why some men commits to younger/loli preference, even to the point of homosexuality and futanari preferences.

 

[zoneitorboneit]

What I personally wonder is where these underage games are that are being referenced. I have only seen a small handfull like incestual awakening, Nergal's Nest's games & I think Myxxxkin. Can't think of any others. & from what I have seen, there is very little tolerance for underage characters in games globally online. So it would seem that even making such games would be a fruitless effort as there are little to no means of distributing them, making any profitability difficult to say the least. So it leads me to wonder, if these games do exist, where are they because I personally haven't seen them & would be curious to know how exactly they fly under the radar, (not asking for links mind you, just generalities of course).

Surely you've seen or played the games made in Japan. It's quite common to have many female characters look underage. I'm surprised you say there is little tolerance when it's so rampant. All you have to do is literally look at any asian based renpy game. They might say they're 18+ but they look and act young.

 

[Slappy Kinkaid]

Surely you've seen or played the games made in Japan. It's quite common to have many female characters look underage. I'm surprised you say there is little tolerance when it's so rampant. All you have to do is literally look at any asian based renpy game. They might say they're 18+ but they look and act young.

Fair point. In all honesty i tend not to play the japanese games. For one, most of them are non English, which makes playing them near impossible, also I'm just not a fan of anime, so I never really thought about it. I guess I meant more western type games.

 

[uradamus]

I'd say both teen shota/loli appeal to me for roughly the same reason when done well; I often like stories about inexperienced characters innocently exploring their sexuality. This works with both teen X teen where the two are discovering things together and teen X mature where the teen is being led gently by the more experienced partner. I've got no interest in real kids, but well done character art that mixes young and mature features in an appealing way can hit the spot when the mood is right.

In real life though I couldn't ever consider being with a teen. Hell, even women well into their 20's and 30's most of the time. Because the majority of women actually take a long time to mature mentally/emotionally to the point where I can stand to be around them for more than short bursts. This obviously isn't universal; I'm just talking in broad strokes here. I've had 2 or 3 female friends who've been far ahead of their time even back in our teen years, but they're pretty rare. For most, it often takes having kids and settling down for a while before they lose a good chunk of their selfish, petty and vapid qualities.

 

[zoneitorboneit]

Fair point. In all honesty i tend not to play the japanese games. For one, most of them are non English, which makes playing them near impossible, also I'm just not a fan of anime, so I never really thought about it. I guess I meant more western type games.

Well the big games like those from Illusion are translated if that's up your alley.

Nevertheless, how many western games can you think of? There isn't much to choose from, so it would be difficult to find patterns in fetishes. There is certainly a growing market thanks to patreon however there still isn't much to choose from.

The only game that comes to mind with the use of a young character is XStory Player but that's about it.