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

[ParkGDev]

Sadly, some women shame other women too. Fifty Shades of Grey was a Twilight fanfiction, but the writer got an idea to turn it into an original story. It became popular. On one side, you have women who liked it and are asking for more, the other half of them cringed. 365 Days for those women is said to be the worst wattpad story ever.

Oh absolutely. For the record, I'm not in the "make fun other people's harmless hobby" camp. As for my pet peeves in the lewd games space, my opinion still comes from a place of understanding. You can't shame someone for their smile. In a sense, you can't shame someone for what they like.

It's totally normal for people within a specific hobby to make fun of themselves, like the lady mentioned does, with her smut readers audience. As a guy, even in the so-called masculine hobbies we do it too. In muay thai, it's "If you didn't scream ohwee when you kicked him, it doesn't count". If you ask any wrestler, they would say "Is your girlfriend totally OK with you sniffing other guys' crotch?" or "Let me guess, 3 months in and you already have a 'jiujitsu saved my life tattoo', right?" are common jokes. But just like with the self aware smut readers, it's all good fun.

Sorry for the elaboration and going off-topic, but you get my point. It's all in good spirits.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I must be missing some context of the discussion, then. My interpretation hinges on the point that devs are marketing their games to players who play only for the lewds.

What are you trying to say?

If you design it correctly, you can perfectly have well crafted characters, and in the same time tons of sex presented in a way that will please the half that play to fap. What you'll focus on when advertising you game will depend on you, and his something totally unrelated.

I was talking about the devs that resort to extreme stereotypes, not the more modest devs. That's what I meant by writers writing specifically to fullfil their target audience (the lewd-focused audience), or that the Japanese tropes are marketed to Japanese players and Western weebs.

You're an adult game developer, you should know a bit better the adult gaming scene.

Outside of the Japanese scene, those who write with a particular audience in mind are, for a large majority, the Western Studios, like Winged Cloud or Winter Wolves, by example. And it's clear that their games are not designed to fap. They import, 20 years later, what Japanese were already doing in the 90's, games/VN with a lewd value.
The others, who represent around 85% of the adult gaming scene, are pure indie developers with no prior experience in game making, writing, coding, and designing. They just want to make a game, either because they have an idea, or because they expect to become the next DarkCookie. Only a minority among them think in terms of audience, and even less have actually planed their game.
The vast majority (inb4: what mean not all) have no idea what will come next before they actually are working on the next update of their game. And it's the reason why their characters are flat, because they only exist in the present, reacting to the situation they are facing as if there were no past, nor future.

And it's precisely for that reason, that this thread exist. Globally what Tanstaalf is asking, is for those devs to put a bit more effort into their creation. Starting by planing their characters' personality.

 

[MarshmallowCasserole]

There's a creator on Youtube who imitates and makes fun of women smut writers and she always cracks me up because it's true.

Why people just do that, huh. Why people say, this thing exists, and it's good and funny, but I'm not gonna tell you how to find it. Why are you like this?

NAME, GIVE ME A NAME!

I'm not a writer by trade, as do most devs. In my experience, I try my best to write grounded characters but almost end up making them same-y. MC in my first VN is a rather normal guy. MC in my 2nd VN is a hotheaded workaholic, a little boy-ish but mellows out towards the middle of the story. Women in my stories are mostly level headed, aside from some differences in their demeanours. But sometimes I scratch my head and wonder how else can I make them more interesting, because they seem too much like a regular joe and jane.

If you want an actual answer, it's emotional flaws. If you just write a workaholic, that very surface level. You can still nail the character, but that's... maybe not accidental if you're writing from experience or imitation, and you probably are. But it's unreliable, easy to make mistakes without the full character structure laid out.

The flaw instead can be broken into parts. Workaholism is a surface manifestation of the coping mechanism. They are a workaholic because they have tied their self-worth to success, for example. But they would never admit that to themselves, instead coming up with (often flimsy) justifications for their behaviour. They gotta provide for their family, never mind that their constant absense makes their child feel neglected, and eventually the family collapses. Ooops.

So, the parts: a past experience or upbringing, leads to core insecurity, leads to unhealthy outward beaviour that numbs the pain of the core, all this covered by a rationalization.

This is why japanese charater tropes often lead to garbage. She's a tsundere. Yeah, okay. But why? What is that type of inner brokennes that leads to this circus freak level of behaviour? What's her rationalization for being a freak?

 

[ParkGDev]

Why people just do that, huh. Why people say, this thing exists, and it's good and funny, but I'm not gonna tell you how to find it. Why are you like this?

NAME, GIVE ME A NAME!

If you want an actual answer, it's emotional flaws. If you just write a workaholic, that very surface level. You can still nail the character, but that's... maybe not accidental if you're writing from experience or imitation, and you probably are. But it's unreliable, easy to make mistakes without the full character structure laid out.

The flaw instead can be broken into parts. Workaholism is a surface manifestation of the coping mechanism. They are a workaholic because they have tied their self-worth to success, for example. But they would never admit that to themselves, instead coming up with (often flimsy) justifications for their behaviour. They gotta provide for their family, never mind that their constant absense makes their child feel neglected, and eventually the family collapses. Ooops.

So, the parts: a past experience or upbringing, leads to core insecurity, leads to unhealthy otward beaviour, covered by a rationalization.

This is why japanese charater tropes often lead to garbage. She's a tsundere. Yeah, okay. But why? What is that type of inner brokennes that leads to this circus freak level of behaviour? What's her rationalization for being a freak?

Sorry! I didn't include her name because I didnt wanna go offtopic. Here's one of her skits

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. Very hilarious and self aware skits. Her body language never fails to make me laugh!

As for the workaholic MC in my VN, yes he's a workaholic for a reason. Insecurity, tying his self worth to his productivity, denying his feelings which he deems unprofessional, absent parents, etc. I'm not the best writer out there nor do I intend to write over complicated stories (my series is inspired by straightforward and wholesome doujinshi works), but at the bare minimum, I don't resort to character tropes without any reasoning behind their personalities. In short I write based on my own normal-person experience, with some sprinkles of fiction of course. Just because a story is grounded, does not mean it has to be boring, hehe.

Again, every dev is different, and every player looks for different things.