Oh wow, exactly one week since the last post. I was really worried thinking about this before that I'd have been gone too long, but hey, here I am, back on time. This is a topic I've been sitting on since around Christmas, but now I can finally actually talk about it.
So, porn games are really weird in the way they exist as a thing to market around. With a normal video game I can just show you some screenshots, maybe a video of gameplay, and you either know if you're interested or not. With porn games however the gameplay isn't the focus. I mean, it kind of is, it needs to be fun, but no one looks at a porn game and says "Oh damn, that looks *fun*." No, everyone who looks at a porn game is trying to decide if they think it looks hot or not. Will they get off on playing this game?
And that, is where a really big issue crops up. Cause people are inherently visual, so if I show you some images that are really sexy and up your alley, you know that you're going to enjoy the sex content. Except, you don't need to play the game to see still images. In marketing to you the game, I'm giving away some of the content, and diluting the overall experience that you're gonna get playing it. And art, by it's nature, is still, once you've seen it, you've seen it. To be fair, this same restriction applies to writing, but writing is, overall, quicker to produce, as such you're not stuck in one position within the writing for an extended period of time, like you are in art. The result of this is that games with heavy art feel like they're really easy to get someone to play, but then struggle to hold up over time. Especially on replay value.
Writing on the other hand is the exact opposite. How the fuck do you market something that has no pretty art to show off? That's a somewhat serious question, if anyone has any ideas, please for the love of god tell me it might make working on Shield High easier. But it's just as much a rhetoric one for the sake of the discussion. Just screenshots are harder sells when the screenshot is comprised largely of text. However, once you've gotten someone in, keeping someone in with text is easier. There can simply be more of it, and you can keep a scene flowing and more interesting than with art, since there's nothing that your dialogue and descriptions can be conflicting with in front of the viewer. The big downside of this, is that since art takes more time to make a single piece of, it's generally viewed as being a more valuable skill set than writing. Hell, I make this mistake sometimes, and I am writing a porn game and know exactly how hard and painful it can be. But since I can do it, it feels like anyone can, until I read some other writing and realize just how wrong I am.
A QUICK SIDE NOTE: I am in no way claiming to be a great writer. Just good enough that some of you, my adoring fans, have told me that I'm the best in my particular genre. I would never claim such a thing, however if someone else were to do so, which they have, I would be being dishonest not to repeat them.
Like most musings, I feel as though this has been a directionless ramble, so I'll give a brief summary of what I think, and then wrap it up because I really want to finish this burger in front of me. Games that use predominantly art as their source of porn are really easy to get random people interested in, but are difficult, if not impossible, to make truly great products. Games that rely on their writing meanwhile, is where some of the best products can lie, but also some of the very worst products end up, and are generally pretty difficult to market. That having been said, going forward I think I'm just gonna put out screenshots, since in writing this I do recall looking at CK2 mods, which often were just screenshots of events being started that turned out a good way to hook people, so maybe I'm just being over dramatic.
And as a quick aside, Animation-driven stuff is a whole other ballpark of quality that I'm not even going to consider touching here, but probably is just the best of both worlds.
Pudding Earl
Tuesday 30 January 2018
Tuesday 23 January 2018
Earl's Musings: Player Motivation and Initiative (Or, The Earl rants a while longer about why sandboxes are bad)
I know, I know, what am I doing back so soon? Well, it's part of a new initiative that I've just come up with. Right now, I'm achieving fucking nothing. Shield High is stalled, my other game is stalled, my book re-writing thing is stalled. The only work I do is on the roleplaying games I'm running and that doesn't really count. So I'm going to try and make an effort to post more musings about literally any thoughts I have about porn games. With luck this torrent of thought will motivate me to begin working again on actual projects.
So anyway, on to the point. Porn games have, in my opinion, a porn problem. This problem is that porn feels like a band-aid for deficiency in the game. And, to an extent, that's okay. If your gameplay is just mediocre, if it functions just fine, but has some weird imbalances, then, whatever, your porn probably can carry that through. What if your gameplay is solid, but your story is a bit lacking? Well, again, porn can make up for it. But there is something porn can't make up for, which is motivation. Why am I playing this game? What am I supposed to do? What goal can I work towards? None of these questions a player asks can really be answered with just "Porn". Because porn, obviously, is super freely available, no one is going to work on things for *just* porn.
This isn't just a porn game problem obviously, and I'm not saying all games have this problem. The thing that got me thinking about this is how utterly directionless I feel playing Skyrim or Oblivion with porn mods on. Obviously I want to engage in the porn content but it's hard to do so while also advancing a grander story. I had to think about it for a moment after getting this far however to be sure that I've played porn games with this problem, but I know I have. I forget the name of the game, but I remember playing a demo for a paid game and finding myself thoroughly underwhelmed by the whole thing.
The root of the issue, in my opinion, is that porn, while in the name of the genre(depending on what you call it), can't actually be the main draw of the game. There needs to be some other form of engagement to motivate a player to actually be a player, and not just wander off to go and do something else. And it can be something pretty simple. In TiTS for instance, I played through that game with the motivation of beating the shit out of my cousin and taking them as a prize. Will you actually be able to do that? I don't know. I fucking hope so, cause if not that's the biggest tease ever. But it's my motivation for playing on.
The other point besides motivation, as the title suggests, is player initiative. This one is a lot more circumstantial, as there's a lot of genres where you just...don't need it. If your game is linear, or spoon feeds content to the player, initiative isn't necessary. However, again, playing the games I do, it comes up a bit and I want to mention why I think it's a thing worth considering. Player initiative is a strange thing in video games. The rigid nature of video games means that pursuing a goal is a very limited thing. I can't set out in Skyrim to be king. Not unless I have a bunch of mods, at least. Nor can I set out to be a Jarl, or really any figure of authority. Except for all the guild leaders. But that doesn't entail pursuing any real goal, it's just a quest chain. There's no initiative behind it. One time in Oblivion I set out with a goal to build a harem. That actually worked out nicely, I had something to work towards, I had to build up the power to achieve it. In the end I did it. And then promptly stopped playing because it wasn't a very fun outcome. It was the most motivated I've felt playing one of these games, cause I had a clear goal to build towards. The problem wasn't that achieving it was boring. The problem, at the end of the day, was how easy it was. Once I had access to the right spells combat became a joke, and without any threats, and without the game being able to pose a challenge to my success, I didn't feel any need to continue.
I was going to include a bit about Shield High here, but on reflection it's wiser to just stop talking and hopefully I can just...show you how I think things could work better.
Pudding Earl
Friday 19 January 2018
Earl's Musings: Why I think sandboxes kinda suck
Well gee, I just went ahead and ruined the plot of this musing. You can basically tell what my thoughts are from the title. Great job me. And it doesn't even imply there's anything sexy going on. There might be though, I haven't gotten into it yet and I'm sure I can weave it in somewhere.
So, I've started playing two games recently. I've picked up Oblivion again, and I've been playing Gravity Rush (also Gravity Rush 2 but they're almost the same game). Playing a purely open world game like Oblivion alongside a somewhat open world but mostly linear game like Gravity Rush has kinda made me realize that for all my claims of wanting an open world game, in a lot of ways I really don't. I mean, even looking at the porn games I play, Princess of the Ring remains my favorite, and that's basically an arcade game. It's a shame, because the promise of an open world game is huge. And it's that exact promise that kinda makes them suck.
The big problem I have with an open world is how...inorganic a lot of it can be. I've made at least a hundred characters for Oblivion over the years. Only one ever made it to level 10. My current character is level 4. That having been said, the one who got over level 10(I think they ended up being level 15 or something) was on the Xbox, and so the lack of mods meant all the content was appropriate for my level and I could just walk everywhere I wanted without any fear. So there's still hope for my PC characters one day getting that high. The main reason I don't gain all that many levels is because, in order to gain levels, you basically need to be aimless. The best way to level up is to pick a direction and walk. Any time you see a cave, or a ruin, you walk inside, kill everything, loot some stuff that's good, and then leave to keep going.
The problem with that is that it's the opposite of how the game presents the way of leveling up. Which is completing quests and going on focused adventures. So if you're trying to do the things the game suggests you should, you end up being pretty weak and never growing, and if you level up you find yourself feeling no sense of achievement other than getting stronger. Furthermore, getting quests is...strange. You just sort of, ask around town until you stumble onto something most of the time. Or decide to look things up. And the limited number and scope of the quests means that you can't really have a home in these games. Eventually the content in an area will dry up and you'll have to move on. That isn't inherently bad, but it does limit your options for what to really do in such games.
Even more conventional sandbox games suffer from this sort of hub-based, activity-based approach that prevents you from really *making* a story, instead of simply playing one out. Personally, I think the solution lies in creating a framework by which a player can create and pursue an ambition. To use Oblivion as an example, making it possible to overthrow a count, and become count yourself could be a rather interesting ambition. It doesn't even need that many new mechanics added in, base it off fame and disposition to local NPCs, as well as some authority figure somewhere. Or add in an ability to make a faction. The DLCs allow you to build up a base, simply adding on a few more mechanics to that, territory control and an abstract measure of power would be sufficient to give a sense of achieving something.
And now we get to the sex element. Cause even sex is negatively impacted by this in some ways. Well, it isn't, but it could be better with them. Defeating enemies and taking them as slaves is fun. I've played at least one playthrough of Oblivion along that general premise. Being defeated and taken as a slave is also fun. However these interactions are, ultimately, random and meaningless. I might be enslaved and swear revenge on my captor but most of the time, he's just a random bandit. I might defeat my enemy and capture them but this is our first encounter, there's no history to make it more interesting than just what it is. With ambition systems and the like however, it could be possible to have rivalries that have meaning to them. You could be enslaved by someone you can't just kill when you get out, who you have to work for your revenge on. Enslaving rival leaders would be equally exciting, because you've known them for some time before finally winning out over them.
Thinking about it, what I'm describing is a lot like the Nemesis system. That was a cool thing, I've heard lots of nice stuff about it. Personally I couldn't really enjoy Shadow of Mordor however, so I can't say for sure if it was actually as good as people say. Either way, I realize what I'm talking about is a pretty massive stretch, so I don't actually expect to ever see it happen.
Hope you all enjoyed the ramblings, if there's something that does what I'm dreaming of please do let me know, it'd be lovely to find out about.
Pudding Earl
So, I've started playing two games recently. I've picked up Oblivion again, and I've been playing Gravity Rush (also Gravity Rush 2 but they're almost the same game). Playing a purely open world game like Oblivion alongside a somewhat open world but mostly linear game like Gravity Rush has kinda made me realize that for all my claims of wanting an open world game, in a lot of ways I really don't. I mean, even looking at the porn games I play, Princess of the Ring remains my favorite, and that's basically an arcade game. It's a shame, because the promise of an open world game is huge. And it's that exact promise that kinda makes them suck.
The big problem I have with an open world is how...inorganic a lot of it can be. I've made at least a hundred characters for Oblivion over the years. Only one ever made it to level 10. My current character is level 4. That having been said, the one who got over level 10(I think they ended up being level 15 or something) was on the Xbox, and so the lack of mods meant all the content was appropriate for my level and I could just walk everywhere I wanted without any fear. So there's still hope for my PC characters one day getting that high. The main reason I don't gain all that many levels is because, in order to gain levels, you basically need to be aimless. The best way to level up is to pick a direction and walk. Any time you see a cave, or a ruin, you walk inside, kill everything, loot some stuff that's good, and then leave to keep going.
The problem with that is that it's the opposite of how the game presents the way of leveling up. Which is completing quests and going on focused adventures. So if you're trying to do the things the game suggests you should, you end up being pretty weak and never growing, and if you level up you find yourself feeling no sense of achievement other than getting stronger. Furthermore, getting quests is...strange. You just sort of, ask around town until you stumble onto something most of the time. Or decide to look things up. And the limited number and scope of the quests means that you can't really have a home in these games. Eventually the content in an area will dry up and you'll have to move on. That isn't inherently bad, but it does limit your options for what to really do in such games.
Even more conventional sandbox games suffer from this sort of hub-based, activity-based approach that prevents you from really *making* a story, instead of simply playing one out. Personally, I think the solution lies in creating a framework by which a player can create and pursue an ambition. To use Oblivion as an example, making it possible to overthrow a count, and become count yourself could be a rather interesting ambition. It doesn't even need that many new mechanics added in, base it off fame and disposition to local NPCs, as well as some authority figure somewhere. Or add in an ability to make a faction. The DLCs allow you to build up a base, simply adding on a few more mechanics to that, territory control and an abstract measure of power would be sufficient to give a sense of achieving something.
And now we get to the sex element. Cause even sex is negatively impacted by this in some ways. Well, it isn't, but it could be better with them. Defeating enemies and taking them as slaves is fun. I've played at least one playthrough of Oblivion along that general premise. Being defeated and taken as a slave is also fun. However these interactions are, ultimately, random and meaningless. I might be enslaved and swear revenge on my captor but most of the time, he's just a random bandit. I might defeat my enemy and capture them but this is our first encounter, there's no history to make it more interesting than just what it is. With ambition systems and the like however, it could be possible to have rivalries that have meaning to them. You could be enslaved by someone you can't just kill when you get out, who you have to work for your revenge on. Enslaving rival leaders would be equally exciting, because you've known them for some time before finally winning out over them.
Thinking about it, what I'm describing is a lot like the Nemesis system. That was a cool thing, I've heard lots of nice stuff about it. Personally I couldn't really enjoy Shadow of Mordor however, so I can't say for sure if it was actually as good as people say. Either way, I realize what I'm talking about is a pretty massive stretch, so I don't actually expect to ever see it happen.
Hope you all enjoyed the ramblings, if there's something that does what I'm dreaming of please do let me know, it'd be lovely to find out about.
Pudding Earl
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)