Why does it seem like so many devs are averse to impregnation? (Thread is NOT about implementing pregnancy in games)

[c3p0]

It's really that much extra work compared to any other systems, animations or outfits. It just takes preplanning so you're not having to retrofit and add extra bones or morph targets after the fact.

Depends on a lot.

• Is there is only one character that can get pregnant?
• If not, can other characters get pregnant at the same time?
• If yes, do they have scenen together?
• If yes, is the total number of characters that can get pregnant at the same time higher than 2?

Conclusion: Yes, this is a a lot of work, cause you need at least 8 different scenes now.

Other question would be:

• Does this mean you have more than one path (pregnant/non pregant)?
• Does this has a major impact on the game?
• ...

So, if you only have a side char that is rather isolated, then the work for it is not much. If you have one or more character that are a core character to the game, then you may have a lot of work.

 

[suprisedcrankyface]

It's really that much extra work compared to any other systems, animations or outfits. It just takes preplanning so you're not having to retrofit and add extra bones or morph targets after the fact.

But that defeats the OP of 'leaving it to your imagination'. There are literally 100's of games where there are cream pies and no one mentions it.

Its just there is a line you have to draw between fantasy and attempting realism, and just like there is never 'time of month' dramas, or STD/STI issues (outside of niche games), this is another that gets ignored/overlooked for the sake of game play - most people want boom boom in the game and not the rest. Even in pregnancy games how many deal with 'swollen feet' or other real world shit associated with it. I mean how many games have anal where you dont get shit on the mc's dick...

I can comfortable say 70% of players do not 'want' it as per the poll earlier in the thread. If you run a poll about pregnancy then people who like pregnancy will gravitate towards it, most wont care (less than 200 repsonses from a forum with what, a million users?).

The real proof is in this question, how many devs take suggestions from their patreons and how many are asked to implement pregnancy, if 70% of the market wanted it you would see it.

 

[SisconM]

PLEASE READ FIRST: THIS IS NOT ABOUT WHY THERE ISN'T PREGNANCY IN MORE GAMES, NOR IS IT ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT DEVS OUGTH TO HAVE THAT CONTENT OR NOT.

First off, I get why some devs don't want full pregnancy in a game. Finding and/or creating pregnant models isn't easy, if it's optional then it doubles the workload, and if it isn't then it might put off some players, and I know some folks just don't like sex scenes with pregnant chicks or even seeing pregnant girls at all. It puts off some folks as much as seeing a fat girl forced into a game might. Personally sex with a pregnant chick (as in with the full belly) is kind of whatever for me, I don't mind it but it doesn't often add enough to the scene to be a big deal. So, all that is good, I get it, no problem there. I’m not really talking about pregnancy sex or even necessarily something like an epilogue image of girls being pregnant though that I don’t think should cause as much of an issue. So, I'm setting all that aside for now.

With that being said, why is there seemingly such an aversion to impregnation in general or even letting players keep the illusion of it for even just the sex scene? Even in games with pregnancy for some girls, there seems to be a need from devs to uncut the possibility of impregnation with girls all the time. Where devs have decided that because it isn't time for it yet, they need to explain away the moment instead of just leaving it for the player to fill in the blanks.

This can range in extremes. Some devs, for example, force condoms on the Mc when he bangs girls. Other games might force the Mc to pull out. Which just FYI to all the devs out there, is NOT an effective form of birth control, even precum can have jizz in it and from the moment you feel your release coming on you are already leaking the baby batter, basic biology. Other devs allow the option to creampie, but then have the girl (or worse the Mc) talk about being on the pill or getting a pill to undercut the moment.

I mean, we’re all adults here, we all know that if you nut in a chick she could get knocked up, but we all also know that even having unprotected sex and nutting in her, even when she’s ovulating, isn’t guaranteed to lead to pregnancy even IRL. So why the seemingly pathological need to uncut the player’s choice to roll the dice? Especially when the chick in the game asks the Mc to nut in her when you pick that choice but then she immediately says right after that, “I’m on the pill,” or something similar. And worst is when the Mc after that type of scene says something like, “You’re on the pill right?” Or similar. And again, I’ve even seen these types of dialogues pop up in games with confirmed pregnancy in the future. I’ve even seen it happen in games that are literally built around the breeding fetish.

And all of this leaves aside the fact that these are fiction stories, often in fantastical worlds or settings, so if the dev doesn’t want to have pregnancy or impregnation, then it just won’t happen. Now, you might say, “But if the Mc can nut in a girl then people will expect that to mean that impregnation is possible unless the dev explains that it isn’t.” To that I have a few responses: one is that the dev can just make this clear in the game's overview. Just say, “There are no plans for impregnation or pregnancy in the game.” Two is that you can also have the Mc and a girl have this conversation outside of the actual sex scene. Either the next day or even before the sex, if you really feel the need to have it explicitly stated. And the dev can do this without undercutting the player’s agency or illusion of choice. And that is one of the reasons it bothers me. The way many devs choose to address not having impregnation (again, not even avoiding pregnancy but just the illusion of allowing impregnation) undercuts both player agency and even the illusion of choices mattering and it usually does it right at the moment of making the choice.

Another thing to keep in mind is that dialogue is the easiest thing to do in Ren’Py and impregnation can be done with one variable and an extra line of dialogue or two once or twice in the whole game, even using the same renders as if it wasn’t in the game.

Anyway, I could go on, but I think most people will get the point of this post. Basically I’m wondering why it seems like so many devs have a pathological aversion to impregnation and feel like they have to undercut so many sex scenes with forced condoms, pullout, or contraceptive talks. And If I’m the only one who has noticed this and finds it not just odd, but off putting and like it ruins a lot of what would otherwise be romantic or emotional poignant moments in games.

tldr


I think this is more about player freedom vs the dev's freedom. Pregnancy more or less locks the story onto a few paths so I can see why the dev would want to avoid it, especially when they don't want to come up with some excuse to speed up pregnancies/timeskip and figure out a way to deal with the kid without affecting the freedom to progress their story(this is why it's more common as an ending). Another thing I can think of is that authors are too afraid to change the status quo too fast (think of how romcom characters rarely progress their relationship) because they're afraid to lose the current "winning formula" for their setting when they want to drag things out.

only more sandboxy or specific fetish games have free pregnancy because their emphasis is on freedom, and even then there's usually some excuse for not spending 9 months in game locked to it or having to deal with the children(which is as unrealistic as the typical hentai girl's capability to choose when she gets pregnant no matter the creampie unless they get heart eyes).

I assume the stories that don't explicitly mention contraception assume it to be something mundane like "if the character is full he has eaten lunch off screen", so if there's no pregnancy something was done about it offscreen. OR the authors could just be inspired at the tons of hentai stories that have creampie's without consequences and decide they can do it too.

I feel like the "illusion of choice" thing is like a leftover thing from the popular Japanese visual novels where you get two different CG variations if you choose to nut in or out. Sometimes devs see a feature in a successful game, and decide to copy the feature without understanding the core reasons for it, and it gets worse when the next gen of authors look to those with pointless inside/outside choices as reference. (it's why some normal commercial games have weird unfun/pointless mechanics for the sake of it, "sucessful game has x mechanic we must have it too for no reason")


I get you though, instead of skirting around pregnancy and the possibility of it, acknowledging it opens up more possibilities/milestones for the story to progress into (eg. progressing from condom to pill because they wanted to feel the connection, before finally deciding they want to take the next step for getting pregnant). Many authors tend to think too much of the destination for their stories they forget to pace out the progress into smaller steps/milestones and instead do something akin to staying still and taking a big step every now and then.

 

[AshenLohigan]

It seems like there is still some confusion on what I'm talking about.

I am not talking about pregnancy content or even having, or forcing, impregnation content to be added in, nor am I saying devs should add anything to their games they don't want ever, let alone add in a whole new route, or even have a girl every confirm she is pregnant at any point.

I see you've been trying to explain this multiple times, but most of the responses are still focused on the work surrounding pregnancy xd. I can add something because I've read the whole thread and, surprisingly, I didn't find what I thought was one of the main reasons.

If we set aside the whole aspect of developing the topic of pregnancy in games and focus only on what you described as not even giving players the possibility of imagining that a scene could lead to it and actively avoiding the subject, there are two strong reasons behind this for many creators.

Most games of this type are heavily focused on harem settings, where the player is caught in an endless loop of erotic scenes with different characters. Introducing pregnancy in any way, even with a single sentence and without further story development—because that could be done as just one of the possible routes—often leads to breaking that harem dynamic. Not always, but quite often. For many creators, this is their livelihood, and as many have pointed out, they want to keep the game going as long as possible. Sure, there are a million ways to handle this issue, but another major factor comes into play beyond just laziness or the difficulty of implementing such a system: the religious and moral aspect.

Many platforms that creators rely on for income, or even their own personal beliefs, prevent them from making a game where the player starts a family with one of the girls while still sleeping with the remaining 20. So, in most cases, pregnancy would be an endpoint in the story in some way.

Of course, you could argue that the story could continue, focusing solely on that one character post-pregnancy while removing the harem aspect. But this leads to the most important issue—many people in the discussion have already mentioned how creators are often flooded with dozens of fetish requests, character suggestions, and narrative demands. Despite all this, the biggest request still remains: more characters and more scenes.

For solo developers, time is limited, and that’s a big problem. If they were to start a romantic arc like this, some players would demand more content for it, while others wouldn’t care at all. And that's exactly why even something as simple as "confirm she is pregnant at any point." can end a character's storyline, disrupt the harem dynamic, and affect many other aspects I mentioned. But hey, these are just a few of probably dozens of reasons—I'm just adding another perspective to the discussion. ^^

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about my personal beliefs—I’m just sharing what I’ve observed over the years.

 

[user115637]

If there's one thing I've learned in my time on the dev forums, preplanning is not a very common thing. We've even got a thread talking about how much we're all winging it and learning as we go.

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[DoodlesTheBob]

If there's one thing I've learned in my time on the dev forums, preplanning is not a very common thing. We've even got a thread talking about how much we're all winging it and learning as we go.

I've got a degree and 2 titles under my belt so.... yes. I'm aware. My ex-boss helps with internships, and he awards them based on contests. One of the things he does for developers (not animators or artists, just programmers, scripters, etc) is a "game design document" contest. There's a small cash prize, but he would then invite those game devs back to actually make the game next time. He was getting way better vertical slices via this method, whereas the "Show up and make a game, right now" were far inferior and never really gave him a sense of the quality of the interns he'd be selecting.

Learning to look before you leap is so critical and so undervalued. It's why so many titles get into development hell or invalidate your save files sixty times before they get out of fucking early access.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

Learning to look before you leap is so critical and so undervalued. It's why so many titles get into development hell or invalidate your save files sixty times before they get out of fucking early access.

This is true. It's also true we're all a bunch of amateurs who, most of the time, have zero experience with even the most basic of coding, and have no idea what we're getting into. (I say this, but I only broke save files all of once so )

 

[harem.king]

Most games of this type are heavily focused on harem settings, where the player is caught in an endless loop of erotic scenes with different characters. Introducing pregnancy in any way, even with a single sentence and without further story development—because that could be done as just one of the possible routes—often leads to breaking that harem dynamic. Not always, but quite often

No, it does not in any way shape or form break the harem.
In no way shape or form is pregnancy incompatible with harem.

Of course, you could argue that the story could continue, focusing solely on that one character post-pregnancy while removing the harem aspect

You don't need to remove the harem to accommodate the pregnancy. This is stupid.
None of the games featuring pregnancy do that.

Remember in summertime saga where the harem is removed when you impregnate one girl?
No, because it never happened

 

[DoodlesTheBob]

Depends on a lot.

• Is there is only one character that can get pregnant?
• If not, can other characters get pregnant at the same time?
• If yes, do they have scenen together?
• If yes, is the total number of characters that can get pregnant at the same time higher than 2?

Conclusion: Yes, this is a a lot of work, cause you need at least 8 different scenes now.

Other question would be:

• Does this mean you have more than one path (pregnant/non pregant)?
• Does this has a major impact on the game?
• ...

So, if you only have a side char that is rather isolated, then the work for it is not much. If you have one or more character that are a core character to the game, then you may have a lot of work.

If you're using a universal shared body, it's not 8 different screens, because the characters are build-a-bear. Look at all of illusions games that have pregnancy inflation mods. Look at skyrim and CBBE/CBBA. It's really not that complex. It's very rare that every character gets a unique mesh and unique animation system. Even in titles with diverse character models such as final fantasy, every single model uses the same skeleton to drive animations and particularly facial expressions without any real heavy lifting in terms of offsets for the facial bones. Hrothgar males is just about the only one that needed extra work.

So for sandbox games? It's easy to implement.

Now if you're talking a visual novel that is using 2D assets? Again, it comes down to planning. There are so, so, so many RPG maker games with the paper-doll mindset. A dozen expressions that just get layered on top of a blank face. Pregnancy belly? It's just a paint over. It's nothing new. People were doing it before violated heroine. You can also just reduce workload by having maternity outfits and lock the player out of redressing the character outside of those special category outfits.

Go look at PICOPICOSOFT's next title. Bridle. Multiple breast sizes. "City University of New New York" mode in 2 flavors. Pregnancy options across the board. The real question is how lazy is the dev? Are they a 2 or 3 times a year updater like Alorth? Are they hardworkers? I mean fuck, even the bratty devs behind corruption of champions and tales in tainted space manage to create alternate scenes, special triggers based on very specific mutations, and an anti-redundancy descriptor system and pregnant character art.

The only difficult one would be a fully animated 2D title, and how many of those do we have **without** pregnancy content in the first place?

 

[DoodlesTheBob]

No, it does not in any way shape or form break the harem.
In no way shape or form is pregnancy incompatible with harem.

You don't need to remove the harem to accommodate the pregnancy. This is stupid.
None of the games featuring pregnancy do that.

Remember in summertime saga where the harem is removed when you impregnate one girl?
No, because it never happened

Rance, where you impregnate the entire harem. Lol

 

[suprisedcrankyface]

I've got a degree and 2 titles under my belt so.... yes. I'm aware. My ex-boss helps with internships, and he awards them based on contests. One of the things he does for developers (not animators or artists, just programmers, scripters, etc) is a "game design document" contest. There's a small cash prize, but he would then invite those game devs back to actually make the game next time. He was getting way better vertical slices via this method, whereas the "Show up and make a game, right now" were far inferior and never really gave him a sense of the quality of the interns he'd be selecting.

Learning to look before you leap is so critical and so undervalued. It's why so many titles get into development hell or invalidate your save files sixty times before they get out of fucking early access.

This is true. It's also true we're all a bunch of amateurs who, most of the time, have zero experience with even the most basic of coding, and have no idea what we're getting into. (I say this, but I only broke save files all of once so )

There is something to be said however, that those interns likely have 0 games & are waiting for someone to tell them to make one, whilst the amateur enthusiasts are forging ahead already.

Not disagreeing with you, but passion and drive in a creative area are pretty key. No matter how how well coded, a boring generic game is still a boring generic game.

I also think that alot of games end up abandoned because these are porn games, and if the dev scratched the itch they were after they kinda wander off.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

Not disagreeing with you, but passion and drive in a creative area are pretty key.

That's pretty much how most of these games get made. Nearly all of us never get enough compensation for the amount of time we actually put in, so money isn't really the motivator some seem to think it is.

 

[suprisedcrankyface]

That's pretty much how most of these games get made. Nearly all of us never get enough compensation for the amount of time we actually put in, so money isn't really the motivator some seem to think it is.

It also has the added security advantage that if you don't really know how your own code works then its harder for someone to steal it .

The best games here seem to be done from passion and someone wanting to play their own game, it really shines through against the soulless cash grabs that turn up.

The downside of the money as motivator on those passion projects is you can also see when that spark goes out, where a passion project gets way successful and the dev continues to pump out a shadow of their earlier works on something they would have otherwise already finished.

 

[DoodlesTheBob]

There is something to be said however, that those interns likely have 0 games & are waiting for someone to tell them to make one, whilst the amateur enthusiasts are forging ahead already.

Not disagreeing with you, but passion and drive in a creative area are pretty key. No matter how how well coded, a boring generic game is still a boring generic game.

I also think that alot of games end up abandoned because these are porn games, and if the dev scratched the itch they were after they kinda wander off.

The point of my ex-boss doing that is to teach young devs a valuable skill. We get a lot of situations where games are spaghetti code and you can't fix things because they somehow break a dozen other things. When there's FOSS code out there to teach you how to write an expandable save system with version change checks and version change conversions of flags as they get renamed or get reorganized in terms of data table... it doesn't even take a week to adapt that to your title and then customize it further as needed.

Instead you have amateur devs delving into the save system, pulling out their hair, development cycle after development cycle. The "Déjà vu" factor is soul crushing. Realizing the work you didn't do last time fucked you over this time, and you're too exhausted at this point to pull your nose back from the grindstone to make it any easier next time so you choose to fuck over future you just like past you had done. Then you say fuck it, abandon the game, and start something new.

Momoirosoft is a good example with "Our Apartment", guy's broken his own previous work repeatedly. The save system chokes on each update. Groping during sex breaks every other update. All that and he's adding 200+ art pieces for outfits and none of them are set up for pregnancy rigging. The horrible part? He fully intends pregnancy to be part of the act 4 of the game and the heroine will play up a breeding kink at that stage. It is going to be a nightmare to go back and fix all the animation issues and pinching that will introduce because he wasn't trying to address this as he was implementing outfits.

So what's he do?

He starts a new project to "recharge", which you can see on his subscribestar. What's he doing differently? He's planning much more thoroughly. Proper concept art. Proper rigging. A defined and small story. His scope is settled before he's even started. That's what experience teaches you.

 

[c3p0]

If you're using a universal shared body, it's not 8 different screens, because the characters are build-a-bear. Look at all of illusions games that have pregnancy inflation mods. Look at skyrim and CBBE/CBBA. It's really not that complex. It's very rare that every character gets a unique mesh and unique animation system. Even in titles with diverse character models such as final fantasy, every single model uses the same skeleton to drive animations and particularly facial expressions without any real heavy lifting in terms of offsets for the facial bones. Hrothgar males is just about the only one that needed extra work.

You do know that Ren'Py games are a bundle of text, videos and images? So, if a char can get pregnant, you have 2 times the render count. If 2 chars can get pregnant and are on one scene then 2² times the render count and if you have 3 chars in one scene it will be 2³ times - at least.

Sure, if you have a game engine that can render it on spot, then it is another thing. Yet, 37% of the games here use Ren'Py.

Go look at PICOPICOSOFT's next title. Bridle. Multiple breast sizes. "City University of New New York" mode in 2 flavors. Pregnancy options across the board. The real question is how lazy is the dev? Are they a 2 or 3 times a year updater like Alorth? Are they hardworkers? I mean fuck, even the bratty devs behind corruption of champions and tales in tainted space manage to create alternate scenes, special triggers based on very specific mutations, and an anti-redundancy descriptor system and pregnant character art.

If you using layer and "overpaint" iit, what corruption of champions, tales in tainted space and a lot of them are, it is more manageable. If it is a pre-render game that doesn't use layers, then it is more difficulty up to nightmare for more than one (possible) pregnant char in one scene.
Also, images are one thing, coding is another. Eg. from Perverteers game:

 

[DoodlesTheBob]

You do know that Ren'Py games are a bundle of text, videos and images? So, if a char can get pregnant, you have 2 times the render count. If 2 chars can get pregnant and are on one scene then 2² times the render count and if you have 3 chars in one scene it will be 2³ times - at least.

Sure, if you have a game engine that can render it on spot, then it is another thing. Yet, 37% of the games here use Ren'Py.

The rendering time is the only big constraint. Once you have a decent layout for how you intend to handle branches and special conditions, something you should already have if you offer outfit customization, it should be a lot of copy-pasta. Considering most of the images I see rendered are not even taking the time to be rendered in Eevee, steam or blender cycles, and are mostly something straight out of Daz... I don't exactly respect the time demand or the render demand. A lot of that is the "YOLO, GOOD ENOUGH!" mindset. Not high-quality work.

So yeah, maybe pregnancy implementation is out of reach for developers with a certain work ethos, mindset, underpowered hardware or personal time constraints. I'm just saying, it isn't the nightmare you make it out to be. Pregnancy can even be designed to be only one outcome of a specific path of choices. This further limits any concerns about having to render the pregnant version in every single scene and every single outfit. It doesn't have to be an all or nothing affair.

If anything, I'd suggestion the devs that are trying to make for-fun and not for-profit projects consider asking other people in the community to help them run renders. I've got a 4080 super. I know I'd pitch in.

 

[DoodlesTheBob]

You do know that Ren'Py games are a bundle of text, videos and images? So, if a char can get pregnant, you have 2 times the render count. If 2 chars can get pregnant and are on one scene then 2² times the render count and if you have 3 chars in one scene it will be 2³ times - at least.

Sure, if you have a game engine that can render it on spot, then it is another thing. Yet, 37% of the games here use Ren'Py.


If you using layer and "overpaint" iit, what corruption of champions, tales in tainted space and a lot of them are, it is more manageable. If it is a pre-render game that doesn't use layers, then it is more difficulty up to nightmare for more than one (possible) pregnant char in one scene.
Also, images are one thing, coding is another. Eg. from Perverteers game:
View attachment 4704689

This is where another gem of experienced gamedev comes in. Make your own tools. I'm not trying to be condescending but it can be a godsend to spend a week designing a comfortable and cozy tool that will take your manual else-if ladders or arrays and turn them into a visual programming array. It can be a lot easier to manage rather than the esoteric mental management of a big block of || == and &&. Systems like blueprints in Unreal being an example.

 

[c3p0]

This is where another gem of experienced gamedev comes in. Make your own tools. I'm not trying to be condescending but it can be a godsend to spend a week designing a comfortable and cozy tool that will take your manual else-if ladders or arrays and turn them into a visual programming array. It can be a lot easier to manage rather than the esoteric mental management of a big block of || == and &&. Systems like blueprints in Unreal being an example.

And just form the devs here, how many would do that? Most of them have 0 knowledge before they began their journey and most of them don't even get enough money out of it so we can't talk about them doing it professional.

 

[DoodlesTheBob]

And just form the devs here, how many would do that? Most of them have 0 knowledge before they began their journey and most of them don't even get enough money out of it so we can talk about doing it professional.

That's the thing. Maybe some of them are reading this discussion and they never thought to try it and now they will? I hate that so much good wisdom and insider advice is locked behind college dick jerking and industry nepotism. It's easier to get into gamedev if you're Gordon Walton's grandson vs trying to struggle bus self-teach. I like to help change that even if all I can offer is some advice and render time on my computer for those who ask.

 

[suprisedcrankyface]

He starts a new project to "recharge", which you can see on his subscribestar. What's he doing differently? He's planning much more thoroughly. Proper concept art. Proper rigging. A defined and small story. His scope is settled before he's even started. That's what experience teaches you.

Its pretty normal behavior, the only difference being that devs try too hard on their prototype game rather than running it as a smaller scale prototype & moving on once they are more competent (trying to run before walking).

To use woodworking as an example.
Make a chopping board. Make a coffee table. Make a dining table.

I see what you are saying but there is a very truthful saying - People teach you things you don't want to know, you teach yourself things you do. Curiosity & passion cant be taught, but a curios and passionate person will seek out knowledge.

In your example with your boss an intern who had made a project at home and already worked out what you are saying first hand would be the very best you could get, even if it was a failure that taught them. As you said, thats what experience teaches you, and being given the answer to a math problem is very much not the same as working it out yourself.

So yeah, maybe pregnancy implementation is out of reach for developers with a certain work ethos, mindset, underpowered hardware or personal time constraints.

Its also what I would call a 'hard' kink (kinda like feet), many people are not interested and those that are go all in. So either its a game where pregnancy is front an centre or its just not really there. And those few games that do put it in the game but not as the focus is usually an avoidable mechanic.