But if you take out story and gameplay then what is the difference between a H game and a video or a CG set?
If you want to cut only story and still have the interaction then a solution already exist, it is one of those build your own girl walk her around and fuck her game. Which is perfectly valid.
There needs to be more focus on something that H game can do specifically that a video clip, movie or CG set can not do, or done as well.
I think the H content and the gameplay has cross path. That's the tricky thing about a H Game. If you want just the H content there are other medium, if you want pure gameplay there are big budget titles. H game exist in the area that it isn't just a game, but it also isn't just porn, it needs to be both at the same time.
But if you take out story and gameplay then what is the difference between a H game and a video or a CG set?
If you want to cut only story and still have the interaction then a solution already exist, it is one of those build your own girl walk her around and fuck her game. Which is perfectly valid.
There needs to be more focus on something that H game can do specifically that a video clip, movie or CG set can not do, or done as well.
I think the H content and the gameplay has cross path. That's the tricky thing about a H Game. If you want just the H content there are other medium, if you want pure gameplay there are big budget titles. H game exist in the area that it isn't just a game, but it also isn't just porn, it needs to be both at the same time.
I like to be a bit vague with my plots, and secretly theres always less rape in them than it seems... damsel quest definitely has rape, but everything in the castle is just something plucked from her repressed desires,
dash on the other hand, the whole thing is just a race they do once a year to determine who gets to be on top of their threesome
id rather not mention it and let people imagine what they want
I'd say there are 5 things the porn in an H-game needs to have, in order for the Hgame to be ideal.
In order of importance:
1. Quality
2. Focus
3. Speed of availability
4. Frequency of availability
5. Inevitability.
Once they guide the production of an H-game completely, I'm unlikely to dislike the result, unless the genre of the porn just isn't for me.
While there are always differences of opinion, the existence of opinions differing from mine is as relevant to what I consider ideal as the existence of Panda weight-loss diets is.
How relevant is that?
Not at all.
(Do pandas even get fat in the wild, or regulate their eating habits?
Doesn't matter. I don't care.)
Quality
If the h isn't good, then the h-game is worthless.
It may have fine mechanics and what have you, but a perfectly good non-h videogame can be a complete failure as an Hgame, and without arousing porn, a complete failure is precisely what an Hgame is.
(Take Rockman Zero for instance.
Shit is pretty cash, but a person trying to sell it as an H-game game would be guilty of complete mislabelling.
Hopefully he'd be financially punished for it by poor sales as well, but who can say.
Just as it should await a person who sells a game WITHOUT h content as an hgame, the same fate of financial punishment should await those who sell games with shitty/tiny/overly pixelated /otherwise useless h-content as "h-games".)
I'd call this an objective criterion.
Focus
The porn is paramount.
Everything done must be done for the purpose and only for the purpose of enhancing the porn.
If a designer thinks to himself, at any point whatsoever "Ah, but let me put X in, which is of equal importance to the porn, or of more importance", then I say he has misled himself, and the result will merely be wasted effort and time.
(A waste of my time as well specifically, if I happen to play the game.)
I'd call focus itself an objective criterion as well, though granted, with the number of fetishes out there, from vanilla to NTR, the things done "to improve enjoyment of the porn" can vary extraordinarily wildly, and shit done, for example, to make "Romantic Vanilla" more enjoyable to its target audience probably wouldn't interest me in the slightest.
Speed of availability
If you can play an H-game from the start for 10 clear minutes without porn becoming available, this criterion has been failed.
I'd imagine if people have a fetish for some character or other being "hard to get" then this criterion wouldn't apply to them, but that's not my fucking business.
I suppose that fact would qualify it, however, as a subjective criterion.
Frequency of availability
Not only should the porn be thrown at you quickly, it should also be thrown at you frequently.
The 10 clear minutes rule works here too; there should on no account be a time-span as long as or longer than that between scenes.
As above, I suppose that this too would be a subjective criterion.
Inevitability
It ticks me off when "virgin playthroughs" are even possible.
Even if they're only possible because of some form of "cheat code" or what have you, included with the game.
I especially like it when a virgin playthrough APPEARS to be possible, or is the desire of the main character, but within the 10 minutes I've talked about, it becomes apparent that completing such a playthrough is actually a complete impossibility - and the more forcefully that becomes apparent, the better.
I'd love to see my way clear to call this objective, and then somehow enforce my will on all developers, but regrettably I can do neither.
Logic dictates that this preference must be another subjective criterion.
Now apart from those 5 things, what else exists?
Detriments, Irrelevancies, and Window-Dressing
Anything else you can think of is appetising window-dressing as per the point on "focus", or it is irrelevant, or it is a detriment.
Story?
Where it is believable and sets the scene, it can be window-dressing make the main content more enjoyable.
You'll rarely need more than one paragraph, and then some dialogue.
If the story is completely self-contradictory, it becomes a detriment, and its detrimental status as an annoyance can outweigh its benefits as window dressing.
Character development?
It can certainly add to the enjoyment, or be a strong motivating factor, for example in cases of sexual corruption of a character, but that doesn't bring it above the status of window-dressing.
Where it is not part of the appetite-whetting or gratifying process, it is irrelevant.
Gameplay?
If it's well done or average, then it can function as window-dressing and help to set the scene.
A little bit of a challenge, (or a lot of a challenge, depending on my mood at the time) and then a pornographic reward for completing the challenge, and/or an obstacle with a pornographic endpoint for failing to surmount the obstacle.
Taking JSK's games for example, the one I like best from a design standpoint is the one with the possessed archer girl, for the transparently simple reason that you get sex whether you win or you lose, and the tone of the sex is thematically appropriate to what went before, whether a victory or a defeat.
If you're in a dom mood, work a little and get a dom scene.
If you're in a sub mood, drain your stats and get a sub scene basically no matter what you do.
That's nearly ideal, and the gameplay itself isn't poorly done so as to constitute a detriment.
(From a gameplay perspective, in terms of porn rewards for winning and for losing a conflict, things like CoC and TiTS are similarly pretty good, and they can similarly be used as an example.
Though they're text based.
And though, unfortunately, like in some/all of JSK's games, virgin playthroughs are quite possible.)
Where the gameplay is in fact sexual itself, that can also be a benefit, eg Touching Games and Battlefuck, though I'm not too big on battlefuck, since the point is for the MC NOT to cum first.
Now where the gameplay is both poorly done, and it stands between you and the porn, then it's a detriment.
Take a platformer with a porn reward at the end of the stages, for instance.
A platformer with bad collision detection on the platforms is a failure of a game, and where that gameplay inadequacy interposes itself between the player and the pornography, it's a failure of an H-game as well, and so the poor gameplay has become a detriment.
I don't agree. Porn isn't a genre like platformer. If a game has some platforming elements. Metal Gear Rising/Batman Arkham Aylum. That does not make it a platformer; however, if a game has even a tiny smidgen of porn, it's a porn game. This idea just stifles creativity in general.
You can say the same thing about the "game" aspect... or even internal portions like the "audio" aspect.
It's obvious that the amount and value of "dressing" differs for you than some other people, because if it has even 1 paragraph I think it's at least trying so it should try to do more.
All VNs. The original porn games do not qualify as porn games by your standards.
Who would have thought, we are not finished. I guess "it all boils down to personal preference" is not enough a comment to make people stop argue.. about personal preference.
Even Lucky777, who actually tried not to include any "genres" of H or special kinks into account, included personal preference all over the place. He dislikes being able to do a virgin run and he dislikes not being forced to see H in an H game. That is personal preference. A few comments prior to his, someone stated how cool it is that in some games, you can CHOOSE to do a virgin run and how some games reward you with a completely unlocked gallery mode.
I, for one, think that playing through the game without seeing any H and then getting a full gallery as a reward feels like playing any rpgmaker game bought off steam and then reading through an H manga. For me, that does not make sense, but i know that some people like it that way. I also dislike the concept of a gallery itself. The game and its setting should complement the H content and thus make a gallery feel out of context and odd. If a game has a gallery mode and your experience doesnt suffer if you use the gallery mode, the game was not preoperly designed. And if the gallery H is not as immersive as the original H but you dont care, you could just read H manga instead.
BUT that is all my personal preference. If i ever manage to start working on something like this, I will implement my idea of a good H game and hope many people like it. BUT it also will not be a perfect game, no matter how hard I try.
TL;DR:
Not only fetishes, but also gameplay and game-elements are personal preference. We might find a concept most people can agree with, but it wont be a "perfect" solution.
TL;DR:
Not only fetishes, but also gameplay and game-elements are personal preference. We might find a concept most people can agree with, but it wont be a "perfect" solution.
Inevitably, but it's worth taking the time to clearly formulate (at least for yourself) those elements which you most prefer, if for nothing else than to make it easier to look for 'em or ask for 'em, and it's worth posting them on a "general h-game design discussion" thread, for people to agree with/disagree with/comment on them as they see fit (and as for example TitanAnteus has already done.)
You really don't like it that much? Aren't those touching games centralized around that idea though... Touch her here and here in these orders until she gets aroused. That's like saying an entire genre of H-Games shouldn't exist.
Inevitably, but it's worth taking the time to clearly formulate (at least for yourself) those elements which you most prefer, if for nothing else than to make it easier to look for 'em or ask for 'em, and it's worth posting them on a "general h-game design discussion" thread, for people to agree with/disagree with/comment on as they see fit (and as for example TitanAnteus has already done.)
Discuss away, amongst yourselves or whoever else you want, my statement on the point was clear and I've nothing to add.
If there's anything you find particularly unclear, I'm probably willing to try to clarify.
That is all.
Touching games most certainly cannot be centred around the idea of virgin playthroughs.
The aim of a touching game is to get to the sexual intercourse, and on top of that, as far as I'm concerned, groping is sexual.
...As is the whole nature of a touching game, I'm not actually sure what you could possibly be getting at.
im confused, is this thread for discussing design or arguing about preferences?
either way MOAR TRAPS, MORE YURI AND MORE GENDERBENDING
edit- both kinds of trap... the kind where they have a dong in their skirt, and the kind with trapholes, groping machines and tentacle monsters... aphrodisiac gas traps are also nice
Discuss away, amongst yourselves or whoever else you want, my statement on the point was clear and I've nothing to add.
If there's anything you find particularly unclear, I'm probably willing to try to clarify.
That is all.
I have participated.
You disagree that focus is a required design-element of an ideal Hgame, on grounds that it may stifle creativity.
It may or may not stifle creativity, and you are free to disagree, but I am not concerned.
You. I like you. May not agree with all of your personal preferences, but you know what 'design' means.
As much as everyone loves to throw the 'personal preference' tag around when it comes to arguing H-game design, there is one immutable fact revolving around game design as a whole, not just exclusively for H-games: personal preference doesn't matter.
The fact is simple. There is good game design, and there is bad game design. There is no 'opinion' in these facts, they are simply facts. Nobody can look at Super Metroid or Megaman X and say "this game has bad design," because it doesn't. They're fucking immaculate from a game design perspective. They do everything right to teach their player about their game, they have their core concepts that the entire game's design revolves around, and they're brilliantly crafted experiences from start to finish.
HOWEVER, someone can very easily say "I don't like this" and it's a perfectly legitimate claim. You don't have to like something because it's well designed, but claiming something is bad design because of personal preference is a logical fallacy and something that greatly irritates me as a designer. Essentially, this entire thread is about personal preference in H-games, not game design. Which is fine - nothing wrong with talking preferences - but the topic is sorely mislabeled because of it. Game design requires study and hours of dedication to mastering the art; forming an opinion, however, does not.
It's the same as a painting designed by a brilliant artist; say, American Gothic by Grant Wood. Everything from the shape of the windows to the pitchfork and their expressions was meticulously thought-out to evoke a certain feeling in the viewer. In that regard, it's a brilliantly designed painting made by a man who dedicated his life to that craft. Someone who's never painted a thing in their life can't possibly walk up to it and say "this is a badly designed painting" without being absolutely ridiculed. Someone who understands painting, however, would be able to study it and see the thought and effort put into that painting and appreciate it from an artist's perspective, regardless of their personal feelings toward it. As a thing to be viewed, they could easily find it to be completely against their own personal tastes - but disliking it personally and respecting the design are not conflicting ideals. They can live in harmony.. if you're open enough to consider the possibility.
I can conditionally agree with this point, if you specify that you're designing for a predominantly male audience. Women tend to require more foreplay.
You can see this effect in written erotica - stories aimed at women will often emphasize sexual tension as a crucial element of a scene. The author will establish an attraction, hint at the (eventual) resolution, make the characters aware of it, make the audience aware of the characters' awareness, and then deliberately postpone the resolution.
It isn't just a matter of writing "Jack and Jill sat around being horny for fifteen minutes and then they fucked." The author fills out the scene so that the reader must experience the delay. The reader's anticipation and arousal mirrors that of the characters. This must be done with caution and skill, of course: there's a difference between stringing the audience along with tantalizing details, versus simply padding a scene with repetition and superfluous adjectives. Or doing the godawful-JRPG trope of expecting sexual tension to carry the entire plot, so that your audience has to watch two increasingly-unlikeable angsty characters awkwardly maintain a platonic relationship for 80+ hours.
It's easy enough to develop a game for a male audience, playtest it, notice a 20-30 minute section which is all [combat | backstory | exploration] and then fix it by tossing in a bit of fanservice - maybe the heroine trips and we show an upskirt CG. Bam! Done.
It would be interesting to see an H-game designer try to follow the 10-minute rule while focusing on a female audience, since that usually calls for lengthier sex scenes separated by long intervals of character development. Fanservice goes directly from the author to the viewer (often ignoring or undermining the established identities of the characters involved!), but sexual tension is something that needs to be experienced by characters. It relies on narrative context, and it may be difficult to shoehorn it into a scene at a late stage of development.
I suppose that you could try to weave sexual tension into normal gameplay (incidental comm-chatter? visual cues? flirting with the boss during the mission briefing?) but then the player's attention is going to divided. If the sexual content is compelling then you might need to temporarily reduce the difficulty of gameplay to compensate for player distraction.
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I've seen a few H-games include scenarios that I'd classify broadly as "coitus interruptus" - two characters go on a date (wardrobe change! moonlight! solitude! mysterious background music hints at sexytimes!) but then they suddenly get ambushed. We switch back to regular gameplay for a while (walk around the map, sneak past enemies, fight RPG battles, etc) until the objective is complete, then we get some dialog and an actual sex scene.
If you're aiming to integrate narrative and gameplay, or simply trying to introduce some variety into your game (e.g. your battle tactics normally involve 5 characters in armor -- how will you manage when you have only two people in evening dress?), then it's a reasonable approach. Unfortunately, it doesn't really work as a means of establishing or emphasizing sexual tension. "Life-or-death combat" tends to be emotionally dominant, and the scenario often includes a boss-fight confrontation with a minor antagonist which will occupy the narrative focus. If you maintain an erotic tone throughout the scene, then you're telling the player (and/or the main character) that it's perfectly normal to have an erection while killing people. And that's fucking disturbing, even by Japanese standards.
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In order to design gameplay focused on sexual tension, I think that you'd need to borrow elements from Puzzle and Stealth games. Those genres specialize in keeping the player engaged even when they're not mashing buttons - the player is planning, observing their surroundings, watching other characters for subtle movements, anticipating, and waiting for the right opportunity. But when I try to imagine an actual gameplay sequence, I end up with something akin to Heavy Rain. It's fairly immersive, but it fails to be either erotic or fun. And then I realize "even my best-case vision of this scene wouldn't be worth 10% of the effort needed to implement it" and I suddenly remember why so many H-games opt for RPG and VN schemas with minimal development costs.
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I guess it's a long shot, but... Can anyone recommend any games which effectively incorporated this sort of tension/anticipation/delay element? Or, more generally, examples of H-games for women which focused heavily on gameplay?
You're making a large assumption in the beginning... ("Women tend to like more foreplay")
If you want eroge that actually have gameplay and good ero targeted more towards women, I'd say you're in for a challenge. Eroge are primarily developed and consumed by guys.
Also eroge outside of VNs tend to try and get to the sex asap, which is why rape is so common. If you want sexual tension though... maybe you should look into the NTR genre?
It's the same as a painting designed by a brilliant artist; say, American Gothic by Grant Wood. Everything from the shape of the windows to the pitchfork and their expressions was meticulously thought-out to evoke a certain feeling in the viewer. In that regard, it's a brilliantly designed painting made by a man who dedicated his life to that craft. Someone who's never painted a thing in their life can't possibly walk up to it and say "this is a badly designed painting" without being absolutely ridiculed. Someone who understands painting, however, would be able to study it and see the thought and effort put into that painting and appreciate it from an artist's perspective, regardless of their personal feelings toward it. As a thing to be viewed, they could easily find it to be completely against their own personal tastes - but disliking it personally and respecting the design are not conflicting ideals. They can live in harmony.. if you're open enough to consider the possibility.
Your example is just an example of group consensus. Not good design or bad design. American Gothic made some stylistic choices that a lot of people find interesting and agree with. Design isn't something as superficial. It's more technical. A well designed building will not fall in a variety of circumstances, and separates itself into regions necessary for its users. The painting you talked about could have had inverted colors to show something... like how we value traditional values or something... but that's a stylistic choice. It wouldn't be good design just because a lot of people liked it.
You're making a large assumption in the beginning... ("Women tend to like more foreplay")
If you want eroge that actually have gameplay and good ero targeted more towards women, I'd say you're in for a challenge. Eroge are primarily developed and consumed by guys.
Also eroge outside of VNs tend to try and get to the sex asap, which is why rape is so common. If you want sexual tension though... maybe you should look into the NTR genre?
my heart skips a beat when a female name pops up in my sales AHHHHHHHHHHHH
ANOTHER IMPORTANT TOPIC... which is better? more content with one playable character or half the content because the production time was spent producing two playable characters?
in some ways i prefer one character and lots of content... currently considering expansion options and i dont think making another opponent with their own grapples and stuff would be very fun for me or the player... so I wanna go for a lot of opponents with a smaller amount of content for each (each with their own mini game)
If I'm wrong there, your example doesn't show it. The position of saves in a well-designed game is thought out to give the player an optimal level of challenge vs. frustration. If a game is well designed, but the designer leans too far to the "frustration" side of things for an individual's liking, ala Dark Souls, that doesn't make it bad design just because they wish there were more save points.
Wrong. You're thinking preferences, again. I said absolutely nothing about group consensus. American Gothic, and any painting - or even creation for that matter - that is designed well, was done with a purpose. If that purpose is executed properly and makes the viewer feel or experience what the designer had intended, then there's no 'opinion' whatsoever. I wasn't talking about the style American Gothic was painted in, but the feeling the viewer is supposed to have upon viewing it - which is, in fact, a very technical element which requires a keen knowledge of human perception.
As a matter of fact, I directly stated several times that it doesn't matter whether someone likes it or not. That has no bearing on any matter of design, and I honestly don't know what I said to make you think I was implying that.
As much as everyone loves to throw the 'personal preference' tag around when it comes to arguing H-game design, there is one immutable fact revolving around game design as a whole, not just exclusively for H-games: personal preference doesn't matter.
The fact is simple. There is good game design, and there is bad game design. There is no 'opinion' in these facts, they are simply facts.
At risk of destroying that which I smiled about, I'd suggest that "good" and "bad" game design are only objective if you interpret "good" to mean "generally or universally successful at doing what the designer set out to do, with some regard also usually being had to the personal preferences of the target audience the designer had in mind, if he has set out to please the target audience" and "bad" to mean the opposite of that.
I'm suggesting that the entirely subjective personal preferences of the intended target audiences and the entirely subjective intentions of the game designer are actually inescapably mixed in with the question of whether the game's design is "good" or not.
Bit of a problem with the deceptively objective-sounding nature of the adjective "good", really, since I'm saying that "good" in a vacuum is actually a non-concept; something is only good FOR something else.
That "something else" is completely objective, and sometimes that's relatively obvious, like in the case of a person's physical health: Drinking of arsenic is not "good" for the continued life and physical health of your body.
That something else can also be in the mind of a person, as in, a game might be good at satisfying certain desires or expectations which the person holds, but even though desires and expectations are subjective, whether the game is "good" at meeting those desires or expectations is also actually objective, because the state of a man's mind is as much an objective fact as the state of his digestion.
That person can be the consumer of the game or the designer of the game.
Even in non h-game contexts, the personal preferences of the target audience and the intentions of the creator are important, because something like "I want to be the guy" is "good" at tormenting you hilariously with its utterly unfair traps, and yet at the same time at being generally fair in its gameplay mechanics, but it's really bad at being an easy game that gives you a swift sense of accomplishment with minimal effort.
It... does what I believe the designer set out to do, and in that respect it's probably "well designed."
It also does what I believe the target audience wants it to do, and in that respect it's "well designed" to satisfy their desires.
But god diggity damn if you just don't happen to be the target audience expecting a generally fair challenge interspersed with utterly unfair but arguably amusing traps.
You gonna have a bad time, bwoy.
Because it's "poorly designed" to give you whatever OTHER experience you were desiring, you gonna have a bad time.
Actually it's also partially my mistake; on looking back I see that I didn't include the whole of your statement in my quotation and response so as to imply that what was "not my concern" was ALSO whether creativity was stifled or not, in response to your point - and as a result of that failure the natural reading of my statement would have been "I don't care that you disagree with me, and I am not participating in the discussion by at all responding to or acknowledging any point you raise as a result of disagreement."
If I'm wrong there, your example doesn't show it. The position of saves in a well-designed game is thought out to give the player an optimal level of challenge vs. frustration. If a game is well designed, but the designer leans too far to the "frustration" side of things for an individual's liking, ala Dark Souls, that doesn't make it bad design just because they wish there were more save points.
But that's an opinion though. The idea of the optimal level of challenge vs frustration differs from person to person so the idea for good design in that regard is also subjective.
but the feeling the viewer is supposed to have upon viewing it - which is, in fact, a very technical element which requires a keen knowledge of human perception.
As a matter of fact, I directly stated several times that it doesn't matter whether someone likes it or not. That has no bearing on any matter of design, and I honestly don't know what I said to make you think I was implying that.
