Why is it so hard to write a non-extreme character? Devs?

[tanstaafl]

Seriously. I make no secret of the fact that I'm into these games more for the story than for the game aspect, so if you're the opposite of that, I guess this thread isn't for you...or maybe it is, I don't tell you what to do. But why is it so hard to find a character that isn't an extreme of whatever trope a dev/author is going for in these games? A male character in these games is either a full on sap and/or cuck or a chad rapist (fucking mommy's feet while she's asleep counts, kids) with nothing in between. A female character is either a pile of playdough waiting to be molded by whatever male comes along or a full on dominatrix that will tie a guy down and fuck their ass at the blink of an eye. Is it so too much to want a little nuance in a character? Is it too much to want a male MC that doesn't roll over anytime a female looks at them or a female LI that is a bit assertive without breaking out the whips and chains? I know complex characters require more effort, but not as much as modeling and rendering do...come on.

Disclaimer: Yes, I'm aware that there are many games with characters like I'm talking about, but they are few and far between with devs usually defaulting to extremes of tropes for expediency.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

I don't know why, but somehow I think the French are to blame. It's the only explanation.

 

[Rafster]

I don't know why, but somehow I think the French are to blame. It's the only explanation.

mandatory ping to anne O'nymous for being french, old, and guilty of all this.

 

[baneini]

Games require skills in many areas, games are often made by people who can't spend the time to get good in all of them because they're one man operations. Any project with more people involved will be less Xtreme. An english major writer who spent 10k hours writing is better at writing than a 20y old russian making his first porn vn.

Then games need to be marketed. If your game has tags like "sex, romance, big tits" and the preview pics are generic 3d models standing around the player can't differentiate from all the other games. Extreme content is easier to use to communicate what the target audience is and reach it.

Maybe the dev understands people are looking for specific content where rest of the games content is essentially filler and focuses on content the player values the most. Player may seek more extreme version of content they've enjoyed before due to desensitization.

Projects where the story is in focus with slow burn and believable characters may not accrue monetary support thats necessary fast enough.

 

[DumpTruckLover]

I know complex characters require more effort, but not as much as modeling and rendering do...come on.

I disagree. With enough effort, you can create the most beautiful models and achieve stunning renders, but if you lack literary proficiency, your chances of writing a good character are low. That’s why writing a good story or character can be much harder than rendering or modeling. This also depends on the person.

As for the main idea of the post, this situation arises partly out of necessity. Let’s be realistic—most people who share their games on this site are not writers. Probably none of them have ever written a book. Creating quality characters is much harder than you might think. So, if you want to convey what kind of person a character is to the players, you sometimes have to exaggerate a bit. One of the reasons for this is also our impatience as players.

Character development is very important in stories, but most players want to see everything in version 0.1. They want a guarantee for future updates. That’s why a character that should reach a certain stage by version 0.5 might already be there in version 0.1, which makes it seem excessive to you.

There’s nothing to do about it. At the end of the day, we’re playing porn games. I also appreciate well-written characters, but I don’t expect the ones in a game I play for jerking off to have Dostoyevsky-level depth.

 

[Davos2]

Part of it might just simply be the dev's kinks, and some may just developers going by a trope list for whatever genre they are going for to appease fans and because it is simpler, easier, and more likely to draw in the money, such as uber cuck boy 3000 in ntr games, or a store owner in a corruption rpg offering lewd deals to the fmc, or that incest harem games have a dead dad leaving the mother and sisters as free pickings.

 

[tanstaafl]

I disagree. With enough effort, you can create the most beautiful models and achieve stunning renders, but if you lack literary proficiency, your chances of writing a good character are low. That’s why writing a good story or character can be much harder than rendering or modeling. This also depends on the person.

I think what this boils down to is that if you have a person that is good at both (rare, I know, but I've seen it) what you are left with is which one is more work? I may be wrong, but I think even when you are a pro at both writing and art/rendering, the art/rendering side will always be more work, manual process wise.

As for the main idea of the post, this situation arises partly out of necessity. Let’s be realistic—most people who share their games on this site are not writers. Probably none of them have ever written a book. Creating quality characters is much harder than you might think. So, if you want to convey what kind of person a character is to the players, you sometimes have to exaggerate a bit. One of the reasons for this is also our impatience as players.

True to a point. For people who are into game dev for the kinks and not for profit it's absolutely true. But for those into it for a profit you'd think they'd take a hint from the majority of the super earners here and on steam/itch/etc. and realize that one common denominator for most (not all of course) of them is that they are well written (relatively...for porn games...heh) and put in the effort to learn a few writing habits.

 

[tanstaafl]

Part of it might just simply be the dev's kinks, and some may just developers going by a trope list for whatever genre they are going for to appease fans and because it is simpler, easier, and more likely to draw in the money, such as uber cuck boy 3000 in ntr games, or a store owner in a corruption rpg offering lewd deals to the fmc, or that incest harem games have a dead dad leaving the mother and sisters as free pickings.

Yeah, when it comes to games that are focused on a specific kink it's definitely expected that the tropes and kinks are the focus. I was thinking more of the overall games that fill the space between all the super specific kink games.

 

[tanstaafl]

Projects where the story is in focus with slow burn and believable characters may not accrue monetary support thats necessary fast enough.

This is too overly simplistic. As I just said in my previous post, specific kink games are not really what I was talking about, but the more overall games. Also, I'd like to point out that the specific kink games may get you quicker money, but the real money comes from the ability to bring in more people, which requires more nuance in the writing.

 

[ciaqoo]

But why is it so hard to find a character that isn't an extreme of whatever trope a dev/author is going for in these games?

I think the answer is quite simple.
To develop good VN even at early stage needs a lot of work. Extreme characters helping to short this work substantialy to show us some sexual actions in game sooner. In other way devs would risk to get more low scores at early stages of developing imho.
I think if the games would be scored also by professional reviewers just for good storyline it would help a bit to promote games with more complex characters and rich storyline.

 

[Insomnimaniac Games]

This is too overly simplistic. As I just said in my previous post, specific kink games are not really what I was talking about, but the more overall games. Also, I'd like to point out that the specific kink games may get you quicker money, but the real money comes from the ability to bring in more people, which requires more nuance in the writing.

The real answer? Most of us are a bunch of amateurs with no writing background beyond creative writing classes in high school. We decided that we wanted to make a game because we liked playing them, and started from practical zero when it comes to knowing how to actually do it.

 

[tanstaafl]

The real answer? Most of us are a bunch of amateurs with no writing background beyond creative writing classes in high school. We decided that we wanted to make a game because we liked playing them, and started from practical zero when it comes to knowing how to actually do it.

Fair enough.

 

[XforU]

Imo this:

"Characters are often written in an exaggerated manner because it makes their motivations clearer to the audience, simplifying complex narratives. A highly realistic character with nuanced decision-making can be challenging for readers or viewers to grasp, especially in mainstream films and TV shows, where immediate clarity is crucial. For example, you know Rambo will always choose to do the right thing, even at great personal cost, while the villain commits extreme acts of evil to ensure the audience despises them. Gray areas are difficult to execute effectively and can dilute the emotional impact if not handled with care.
Take Game of Thrones as an example—the first episode immediately signals who to root for and who to hate through visual cues, dialogue, and music. Similarly, superhero movies often present villains with overtly evil traits or catastrophic plans to guarantee audience animosity. Mainstream storytelling relies on these exaggerated characterizations to quickly drive emotional responses, keeping audiences engaged without requiring them to navigate moral ambiguity."


However, in our case, when writing adult fiction, instead of making someone overly good or evil, we focus on a person's kink.

 

[tanstaafl]

Take Game of Thrones as an example—the first episode immediately signals who to root for and who to hate through visual cues, dialogue, and music. Similarly, superhero movies often present villains with overtly evil traits or catastrophic plans to guarantee audience animosity. Mainstream storytelling relies on these exaggerated characterizations to quickly drive emotional responses, keeping audiences engaged without requiring them to navigate moral ambiguity."


However, in our case, when writing adult fiction, instead of making someone overly good or evil, we focus on a person's kink.

To use the AsoIaF example (yes books), almost every character was cut and dry for the first few chapters/books, then as the story progressed they became some of the most intricate and nuanced characters in all of fantasy. So yeah, a 0.1 with black and white characters is fine in any game, but for a game that's wanting a wider audience, by 0.9 you'll want a bit of nuance.

 

[anne O'nymous]

With enough effort, you can create the most beautiful models and achieve stunning renders, but if you lack literary proficiency, your chances of writing a good character are low.

I disagree, not on the substance, but on the reason.

One don't need literary proficiency to write a good character. It help, but if it's all you have, what you'll get will only be an arrogant chad, or a smart cuck, nothing more.

What is needed to write a good character is empathy and life experience; with the "life experience" possibly coming from real life encounter or reading. Without this, you get the flat personality that we encounter in too many games, because it's all the author know about. The experience to be able to give a coherent past to your character, and the empathy in order to be able to put yourself in his/her shoes and know how (s)he would react accordingly to this past.

 

[tanstaafl]

What is needed to write a good character is empathy and life experience; with the "life experience" possibly coming from real life encounter or reading.

Old people unite.

 

[desmosome]

Achieving decent proficiency in rendering is WAY easier than doing the same with writing. Just right out of the gate, rendering is using a program that already does the bulk of the work for you. Most use DAZ instead of rigging their own models in blender or something. Then there is the fact that anyone around the world can learn this skill regardless of their native language.

Writing, when it comes to games on this site, need to be in English. That already cuts out huge swaths of people. Then there is the fact that you don't have DAZ for writing. You need to do everything on your own (let's ignore the new development of AIs for the sake of argument). Learning to actually write is akin to learning to paint/draw, whereas learning to render using DAZ is like learning to use excel.

Oh, but I have to add that not everyone is even attempting to write nuanced characters, just like not everyone is trying to render realistic models. Caricatures of baloon tits and gigantic badonkadonk can be intentional, just like one dimentional characters that are just there to satisfy a kink.

 

[Rafster]

Old people unite.

I told you, he's guilty of all this.

A male character in these games is either a full on sap and/or cuck or a chad rapist (fucking mommy's feet while she's asleep counts, kids) with nothing in between.

This is a common trope. In my game, the MC is a blank character, with an attitude stat that make him one of 3 archtypes: An intelligent (and kinda psychopath when pushed enough) submissive dude, a suposedly dominant who tends to be an asshole to everyone, and a... "neutral" attitude, who is just a sarcastic joker. Kinda trying to emulate (very badly) what Dragon Age II does with Hawke, That alone made my game's writing VERY LONG, scenes that vary with only the attitude of the MC, and that is not counting external factors or decision, which multiplies the length of the scene even more.

Writing a dominant one is the hardest, I try to NOT fall into the crazy narcissistic and psychopath rapist trope but it's really hard to not making him like that. The submissive one is also problematic making him stand out. Even worse, in reality, I'm a very submissive dude and it shows on the first two or three romance routes I made. There's one I'm making that divided into the 3 archtypes, and man... it's a total mess. At least my game is a heavily text based game with some Real porn added to it.

Hah, I hate writing, and it's 90% of the game since it's text based. In my next game, I'm done with the attitude thing a la Bioware, it's too much for one person lol

 

[ciaqoo]

Writing, when it comes to games on this site, need to be in English. That already cuts out huge swaths of people. Then there is the fact that you don't have DAZ for writing. You need to do everything on your own (let's ignore the new development of AIs for the sake of argument). Learning to actually write is akin to learning to paint/draw, whereas learning to render using DAZ is like learning to use excel.

I have maybe controversial idea for the tool which could help writing.
Now i have tool for extracting translation nodes from renpy games.
Next i'm going to build up huge dataset of extracted translation nodes and than i'm going to search this database by keywords to get inspirations for dialogues with given keywords or with given lenght.
I'm still not sure if it will be really helpfull but i'm going to try my idea in practice when i will be ready.
If it will be really helpfull maybe it could function almost like DAZ for writing.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

I know complex characters require more effort, but not as much as modeling and rendering do...come on.

I think this is not accurate. Not claiming this to be complete data, but even within the subset of games with 2D art I think decent artists significantly outumber decent writers. Like 5 to 1 or maybe more, and 2D art is considered harder to learn. And decent writers outnumber decent game designers easily 10 to 1.

I think this is simply due to how amateurs (and porn scene is mostly amateurs) treat writing and gamedev differently from visual art. How many people would actually dare to put their first drawing ever into a game? Probably very, very few. Yet putting the first story they've written? That's just normal. Putting the first game design idea they came up with? Same!

If writers spent even a *year* training their craft by writing short stories and then analyzing their mistakes, and writing again, we'd see better writing overall.

Basically, the answer is: skill floor issue.