Just something I had been wondering is how in a lot of JRPGs and visual novels you usually play as a premade character with a back story and the like. Most porn games I see tend to focus heavily or exclusively on custom characters. I was wondering if there's something inherent about erotic games that make them less suitable for something like a character who has a set appearance and backstory.
Erotic Games with Premade Characters
- Thread starter LegendaryKay
- Start date
Well... I don't know where you're finding a ton of erotic games with customizable protagonists.
Character Generation is expensive, yo.
But players are automatically emotionally invested in characters that they themselves make.
The flip side is that it is easier to write dialogue and situations for the game if you actually know who or what the protagonist is ahead of time.
Character Generation is expensive, yo.
But players are automatically emotionally invested in characters that they themselves make.
The flip side is that it is easier to write dialogue and situations for the game if you actually know who or what the protagonist is ahead of time.
Isn't TiTS itself an erotic game with customizable characters? I mean you can choose a race, gender, eye color, etc.
Fenoxo games make up nearly half of the games with character customization. I really don't think you can find 10 of those.
Challenge accepted! But yeah there's a very limited amount of games with character customization.
- Debauchery in Caelia Kingdom
- Newlife
- Lust Doll
- Female Agent
- Concubine by Logan Scodini
- My Very Own Lith
- Nimin
- Flexible Survival (I'm pretty sure, it's been a long time though)
- No Haven
- Accidental Woman
Free Cities and Fetish Academy both have some customization but that was added after and the games are generally designed for the original protagonist. I Don't Wanna Be A Boytoy let's you choose your character's background but that doesn't alter too much. Not bad considering most of these are just off the top of my head.
I think it's less to do with players finding it easier to empathize with a character they made themselves, as it is far easier for the developer to write a main character without a strong personality.
If you're looking for a detailed game with pre-established main characters, I can recommend Seeds of Chaos. Mind you, I was the lead writer on that project and still stay in regular contact with the team providing advice and acting as lore master.
If you're looking for a detailed game with pre-established main characters, I can recommend Seeds of Chaos. Mind you, I was the lead writer on that project and still stay in regular contact with the team providing advice and acting as lore master.
While I agree with that, I find that most porn game protagonists are very...simplistic or generic, not too different from the generic Joe McEveryman designs most male ecchi protagonists get. The only difference, in my experience, comes when the setting and story are built in such a way that sex flows into it naturally (even in a more hypersexual context since porn game) without it remaining the sole incentive to play. But those are even rarer, especially when you look for something that has at least some of your fetishes and, in my case, a female protagonist that isn't just subjected to the unwilling fuck conga.
Oh, you mean "About as erotic as being buried head-down in a combination compost heap/septic tank"?
No, it's more like Soldier's Life with Vanora as the main character and the option to choose Vanora and Payton's gender. Although less fun than that makes it sound. I'm not even sure it ever got finished before the creator moved on to his other projects.
At the end of the day, premade characters in a visual novel just make things easier, whereas a customisable character requires a lot of forward thinking.
But its also different styles of games which require different approaches.
Consider a game like "Long Live the Princess", whereby the protagonist is a faceless individual but who has clear interactions and relationships with other characters. They have a sister and an uncle, already defining how they should look and so makes the creator's job easier.
Now consider a game like TiTS, where by the definition of the game, the character will be changed at some point in the game. The writers and content creators have to account for at least some of those changes. For example, what if a character has two or more dicks? Do you put in a section of a scene to account for that? What if they're Tauric or a mass of tentacles? Now imagine someone trying to account for that in a 3D environment and watch their head explode. It works in TiTS because instead of trying to render everything, you can write it and build from there.
A premade character has its own advantages and disadvantages and likewise, a customisable one will have their own. If you just have a story to tell, then the premade character allows you to focus on the story, even if you risk alienating some of the readers, whereas if you want the focus of the game to be people creating their "ideal" self, then you can focus on that aspect through text.
But its also different styles of games which require different approaches.
Consider a game like "Long Live the Princess", whereby the protagonist is a faceless individual but who has clear interactions and relationships with other characters. They have a sister and an uncle, already defining how they should look and so makes the creator's job easier.
Now consider a game like TiTS, where by the definition of the game, the character will be changed at some point in the game. The writers and content creators have to account for at least some of those changes. For example, what if a character has two or more dicks? Do you put in a section of a scene to account for that? What if they're Tauric or a mass of tentacles? Now imagine someone trying to account for that in a 3D environment and watch their head explode. It works in TiTS because instead of trying to render everything, you can write it and build from there.
A premade character has its own advantages and disadvantages and likewise, a customisable one will have their own. If you just have a story to tell, then the premade character allows you to focus on the story, even if you risk alienating some of the readers, whereas if you want the focus of the game to be people creating their "ideal" self, then you can focus on that aspect through text.
I think some more story-focused MMOs and RPGs have been managing to straddle that line fairly well, especially KOTOR, SWTOR as well as Dragon Age and Mass Effect, to name a few prominent ones (or 7th Dragon, if we're going for less well-known examples). The difference in those is that they only account for a specific spectrum of responses or have mute protagonists that help you make them into the most ideal version within certain limits while also allowing you to give them a unique spin. I'm sure we'll see more examples like these down the line, or new forms of play to accommodate being able to go nuts with character creation and little detriment to the story.
Someday.
You'll find many more without. It's far more likely to see a generic sort of character than one that can be significantly customized or one with an established backstory and personality. The reasons for this are fairly plain to see:
a) taking the customizations into account is quite a bit of work
b) writing is hard, using generics is less so
a) taking the customizations into account is quite a bit of work
b) writing is hard, using generics is less so
Isn't that just the worst? I find myself dismissing out of hand most female protagonist porn games just because I know exactly what the content will be and I've seen it all before. ...Though I suppose I also immediately dismiss a lot of male protagonist games for the same reason.
If there's a definitive reason why the customizable games tend to be more popular it's simply that there's more variety in content and flexibility in engaging with what's there. I don't want playing as a girl to be shorthand for unwilling fuck congas and corruption (porn games have this odd idea that women can't just like sex, that having any knowledge of it has to corrupt them) any more than I want playing as a boy to automatically subject me to the same eyerolling power fantasies.
Or worse yet: "You're a [derogative term] because you like sex and you're enjoying this, so I'm pounding you like the [another derogative term] you are!". Isn't that what the male NPC is enjoying too, thusly making him a [derogative term] too?
It's partly that I'm not very comfortable playing male characters unless there's no other choice and I can end up liking them a lot (like Yuri Lowell in Tales of Vesperia) but those instances are far and few between unless I really dig the supporting cast/deuteragonists.
A suprisingly fun solution to the problem you pointed out, for me at leas, were succubus- themed games where you play the succubus. Sure, there's a corruption aspect to it (sometimes) but at the same time it hands you a female protagonist who is very comfortable with sex and in control. And at this stage, I'll take what I can get!
I think it's worth pointing out that a fair number of the games on that list involve forced MtF transformations, so they're at least half voiding the concept. I will also point out that a ridiculous number of the protagonists in porn games (this seems exceptionally true for str8 porn games) are Asshole McTerribleguy, enslaver of women, destroyer of pussies and free will. Given that, I'm willing to chock some of the lack of character customization up to pure laziness, especially from a writing standpoint.
Douchey McDouchebag, porn game protagonist, is the counterpoint to every violated heroine female protagonist game, yeah. When I see it's either of those I immediately check out.
It's not even that every single one of them is terrible - there's just no variation to them at all. When you've played two or three you've played them all.
That's why oddball standouts like Lust Doll or My Very Own Lith are so refreshing. Every once in a great while someone has a unique idea for a game and you can usually tell that it's going to be different from the word go.
It's not even that every single one of them is terrible - there's just no variation to them at all. When you've played two or three you've played them all.
That's why oddball standouts like Lust Doll or My Very Own Lith are so refreshing. Every once in a great while someone has a unique idea for a game and you can usually tell that it's going to be different from the word go.