Why do so many games still insist on adding boring minigames/grinding mechanics?

[Fran265]

I've been playing games from this site for quite a while now and I've lost count of how many games (mostly Ren'py games) still insist on implementing the same unoriginal and boring minigames, unnecessary sandbox elements (when the game is linear and there's nothing else to do other than roaming around the rooms looking for the next event trigger) and, of course, grinding.
Personally, these things don't bother me too much. I can tolerate them if the story or the scenes are interesting enough. However, as I've started reading the reviews you guys give to these kinds of games, I noticed that most people hate the grinding stuff and the minigames. If the majority don't enjoy these elements, why do devs still insist on adding them? Do you guys think that minigames and grinding can be done right and actually make the gameplay more fun?

 

[Narfbat]

The short answer: They're an easy way to increase playtime.

The same reason many AAA games use these mechanics, basically.

 

[NRFB]

Some developers have greater ambitions for their games than to just say "congratulations on managing to download the game, now have some porn." People take inspiration from a lot of different sources, and it isn't surprising that a major influence for porn game devs is video games, which usually have various ways of interacting. The thing is, many amateur devs lack in one or more fields between talent, inspiration, time, engine flexibility, or any number of other things that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head, and the result of them attempting to force in gameplay systems ends up misguided or even outright detrimental to their player's enjoyment.

I wouldn't argue that porn games need LESS gameplay by default. Sure, there are plenty of people who would be fine with that, but at some point I do feel like if you're annoyed by gameplay, there are plenty of other passive ways to consume smut. I would instead argue that the people making these games should take time to evaluate why they add the gameplay that they do, and be willing to rework things if feedback suggests that their audience doesn't actually appreciate those additions.

 

[Meaning Less]

If the majority don't enjoy these elements, why do devs still insist on adding them? Do you guys think that minigames and grinding can be done right and actually make the gameplay more fun?

Because the majority of people complaining are in fact a minority, otherwise this website would be full of kinetic novels.

Yes gameplay mechanics are what usually make a game more fun, you need something to overcome which in turn enhances the reward, the harder something is the more satisfaction you get once finally unlocking it.

Now sure there is a balance to be considered because players have different skill/patience levels, which is why some games try to solve that discrepancy with easy,normal,hard modes. But cheating works just as well for the impatient people.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

To begin with, what is boring to you may not be so boring to someone else.

 

[Mr. TurTur]

I like the mini-games for the most part.
They make the porn slideshow into a game, or at least a less passive experience.
It gets annoying when they block progress and are only built in as a wall.
Working for a bit of money is ok at first,
but I find it rather annoying to grind atributes at the gym every day.

 

[SilverFangBlackWing]

It's usually to fill time.

 

[Alt-0069]

Simple,
Take a game with... 3 girl.
Now try to imagine a way to seduce each.
Now try to add something like 2 quests for each. Not the same, not boring.
It's already hard.
Now i your character need to buy something expensive for a quest but aven't any money how do you do ? You make a button "work" in your world, but it is not very funny, "clic and the sun is setting after a day of work", a way to make funny way to gain money is to create a simple mini game with possible reward which are not money (like the card game in the trainer game in Avatar univers, you bet 50$ you won you gain 50$, you bet 75$ you won only 50$ but the girl is showing you her breats)
It's call game design. But many dev on this site don't know anything about this and make grinding or minigame because they have no idea about what to do between 2 quests.

 

[khumak]

Adding grind is easier than adding story.

 

[OmegaLord]

I do kinda get what OP means. By all means I'm not against mini games in porn games but I often find it's badly implemented.
-This is ether that it does not fit the game or story itself
-It's a one and done.
-It's just a bad game (too easy/hard or even broken) if easy why even have it if hard it can soft lock a game for some players.
-It becomes abandoned when it was adding something to a game (Card collecting/ benefit)

By no means do I think no game should have it but if you are playing a linear game with no choice it does not make sense, or if it's a one and done type thing.
Now if your playing a rpg type game I have no problem with it so long as it's properly balanced (I don't want to spend 1h+ of just grinding a spot to progress a bit in a lewd game.)

I have not kept up on Sunshine love but the doughnuts were a fun little bit added to the game which I would consider a minigame of sorts, didn't change the main game but did add a nice extra little bit. Same with games where you end up getting into fights and you have the fight minigame and possibly outside stats you can train.

It really depends upon how well integrated to the game proper it is, often it comes across as a after thought which does not work well with what else we have been given.

 

[Alea iacta est]

Devs are mainly teenagers that have no clue yet of how adult world operate.

So it is a mix of child world and adult world mix together.

Men (adult) just want to take easy and have a wank.....
But teen/pre-teen think, why not adding a combat simulation to frustrate the fuck out of the player.

If you notice these mini games shitty games have very poorly represented sex scenes, for the same reason, Devs are unable to represent adult world.

Best games here are those with robust story and great art in representing sex scenes
Lisa, fashion business, etc.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

Lisa, fashion business, etc.

I wouldn't put Fashion Business represents anything accurately or maturely tbh. The writing in sex scenes is weak. And it's one of the worst possible examples to choose for a game that doesn't have shitty minigames. It does, and it's the worst kind of trivial busywork.

 

[Alea iacta est]

I wouldn't put Fashion Business represents anything accurately or maturely tbh. The writing in sex scenes is weak. And it's one of the worst possible examples to choose for a game that doesn't have shitty minigames. It does, and it's the worst kind of trivial busywork.

It is a well recognised masterpiece.

What you wrote is just your personal opinion...

Reality/data is expressed in the amount of positive reviews.

 

[Ambir]

Adding grind is easier than adding story.

This. It is incredibly time consuming to add story.

The core of the issue is that story follows a 1:1 ratio of work and result. Basically, for one unit of story, you need to put one unit of time.
When it comes to grinding, once you've designed the gameplay, the more grinding you add, the more time you 'save', because for one unit of work, you get multiple units of time the player has to spend.

It's just an efficient way to make the player spend more time on the game.

If you want a good exemple of saving time by adding repetitive gameplay, I would cite tetris. Tetris is pure gameplay with zero story. The dude that coded it put some amount of hours into it and since then, it's been played to death to a ratio of hours played on hours it took to make the game that is climbing into the stratosphere. That is an efficient use of time that generate revenue over time, something which most patreon model games do not do as effectively.
I don't know how you can incorporate porn into games with better mechanics effectively, since there seems to be some fundamental differences between the two genre of games at play, but I think there are some answers that lie there.

I would say the biggest issue with porn games that relates to this question is the lack of skills within porn devs on the game design/programming side, which makes them struggle with making gameplay that is enjoyable.
I believe this is much more of an issue than devs adding gameplay to games. Given the amount of porn mods that can be found within something like skyrim or the sims, I don't believe gameplay in an adult game is the problem. Rather, I think the issue is definitely that the grinding mechanics and the minigame suck.

Do you guys think that minigames and grinding can be done right and actually make the gameplay more fun?

Definitely. I've played really cool adult games such as Monster Girl Quest, which had gameplay that really made the game more fun. I think it's possible to make proper adult games that have fun mechanics, it's just a matter of getting the skill required to make fun gameplay. (which is not trivial)

 

[khumak]

I think most games get grinding wrong but I do think it can be done right. IMO, the wrong way to do it is to make it purely a time waster with no real reward until you've done a lot of it. The right way to do it is to make it so that each scene that is part of the grind gives you a more advanced version of some repeatable "grinding" scene.

So let's take grinding for fitness skill as an example. IMO the wrong way to do it is to make you just go to the gym and lift weights 5x a week for a month until you finally get a point of fitness which then finally triggers your ability to progress in something.

The right way to do it would be to make a workout scene with a girl (or maybe a couple of different girls that randomly alternate). The first time you work out maybe she just ignores you and focuses on her workout. The next time you catch her watching you as you work out. The next time she asks if you can spot her while she does her bench press or something. Each individual grind session goes a bit farther and with the final one maybe she follows you into the shower afterwards and fucks you. That would be a satisfying fitness grind. She doesn't have to be an important character. She doesn't need any background. You don't even need to know her name. She's just the gym hottie that you managed to fuck when you got in good enough shape to get her hot.

Assuming you're not doing any actual animations all this takes is an extra several renders, minimal coding time, and zero time spent trying to think of a story justification.

IMO, in an adult game that includes grind pretty much every grinding scene should involve some sort of escalating naughty scene.

 

[Interesting_name82]

So they can be called "games", it's really stupid tbh, I only saw one or two games where it was implemented nicely, or for a good reason (like actually being able to chase the girl you want).

 

[Xanado]

Because they actually want to make a "game" and not just a vn?

 

[Seewolf]

Grind always sucks! Grind is just a mindless waste of time by tedious redundant tasks and no fun at all (at least for me). For me it's not enjoyable and I'm also not willing to invest that much time as some devs think it might be suitable for a rewarding scene. Grind has nothing to do with putting some effort in it for "feeling" a reward. This can be done without grind by teasing f.e., without blueballing endlessly. Many renpy non-sandbox VNs get that one right, while the rpgms and sandboxes often don't.

I also don't enjoy most mini-games. Having to beat those again and again for some small story progression or rewarding scenes is the fastest way for a game to go into the trash bin on my system. It might be fun the first few times to beat a mini-game, but not 100+ times over the course of the game. Wiser devs include a skip/auto-win button, if they really think it's neccessary to include mini-games.

I also don't get it, that a "game" is supposed to have tedious redundant mechanics, unlike VNs. No, in my book a game is supposed to be fun, while spending time on it. AAA game titles like the Witcher 3 didn't really have grind in it (with a few exceptions like in order to get some very special armor sets or blades), but an interesting world to explore with lots of quests and npcs. Of course erotic game devs are usually very small teams or even one man shows and therefore can't compete with big business gaming companies with hundreds of specialized employees.

Therefore I wish devs would focus more on interesting stories and making npcs with believable personalities or putting more love into scene design, than silly time-consuming game-mechanics, which are just stopgaps most of the time.

 

[Alea iacta est]

Grind always sucks! Grind is just a mindless waste of time by tedious redundant tasks and no fun at all (at least for me). For me it's not enjoyable and I'm also not willing to invest that much time as some devs think it might be suitable for a rewarding scene. Grind has nothing to do with putting some effort in it for "feeling" a reward. This can be done without grind by teasing f.e., without blueballing endlessly. Many renpy non-sandbox VNs get that one right, while the rpgms and sandboxes often don't.

I also don't enjoy most mini-games. Having to beat those again and again for some small story progression or rewarding scenes is the fastest way for a game to go into the trash bin on my system. It might be fun the first few times to beat a mini-game, but not 100+ times over the course of the game. Wiser devs include a skip/auto-win button, if they really think it's neccessary to include mini-games.

I also don't get it, that a "game" is supposed to have tedious redundant mechanics, unlike VNs. No, in my book a game is supposed to be fun, while spending time on it. AAA game titles like the Witcher 3 didn't really have grind in it (with a few exceptions like in order to get some very special armor sets or blades), but an interesting world to explore with lots of quests and npcs. Of course erotic game devs are usually very small teams or even one man shows and therefore can't compete with big business gaming companies with hundreds of specialized employees.

Therefore I wish devs would focus more on interesting stories and making npcs with believable personalities or putting more love into scene design, than silly time-consuming game-mechanics, which are just stopgaps most of the time.

I really quote everything.

I would just add.... Dev should spend more effort in designing good quality sex scenes, often the sex scene is represented by a couple of images almost like a checkbox exercise.

 

[Parmenion1405]

I think there are 2 Problems regarding Mini-games out there. The Devs on the one side and the Players on the other side.

Remember, I would say 2/3 maybe more of the content creators on Patreon and other sites do this as a hobby and have usually a normal job to do as well, and it wouldn't be a surprise to me if some of them have although a family that demands time. So the time they have to develop their games is limited. And even the few that make enough income with these sites to do it as a full time job, are normally a one-person company.
Even the even fewer Teams are relatively small in comparison to "normal" dev-companies.
So let's assume a decent update to a Patreon-Game takes about 2-3 Month at least. The playtime the can generate this way will be normally at max 1-1.5 hours (without any grinding, and that is an optimistic guess at playtime) and here we have the main problem on the dev site. The time invested for creating content is always factor X more than the playing-time they create. If they can double or tripple the playtime by investing a (in comparison) small-time amount by creating a mini-game, the ratio Playtime vs Creation time gets much "better" without having more content.

On the Other hand, we have the players/donators. They want and demand content on regular bases, cos they support the Creators with money. But if you read a few posts in random game threats here, most of us will notice that a lot of people are ungrateful bitches. Even here on a pirate site, where u don't pay for the content unless u want to, are so mane whiners and haters, that do not appreciate any afford of the creators. Some critics maybe justified, but a lot isn't. And if we be honest, most of us get impatient when we have a game we like does not get new content.

So by adding Mini-Games the devs have a cheap way to stretch content, and silence the audience for a longer time. It isn't ideal, and some other reasons for mini-games are mentioned before my post. But I think, the greediness of the audience for as much content as possible in the shortest amount of time with the best quality of renders and a typo free engaging story that ideally branches (more dev work for each branch) and has no grind but a lot of sex scenes in it... and the devs with the limited time. And think of this solo devs have to do renders (usually when u render you cannot do anything else) and even when u say ok a render on a good pc takes 5 min, if they have the preps done a new scene creation maybe 40-50 min. and you get 5-10 Renders of one scene, so an update with 500 renders will take (let me do the math) more than 83 Hours of rendering time (assume 50 min seen dev time and 10 Renders per scene and that's quite vague) than they have to write the dialogues and scripting it on the platform they use (unity/renpy etc.) so you can assume that an update of 500 renders will at least take 200 Horus of work. That's more than a month of full time work. And now assume the fast-clickers that only want the fap scenes. They will take half an hour to finish it, and start to complain how short the update was...

Just my 2 cent
Parmenion