Rewarding readers for obtaining bad ends?

[Gambit74]

Not sure if this topic belongs here or in Writing, but I figured I would post it here instead since I wanted it to be a discussion topic in general rather than one that's focused solely on my project.

Anyway, I was wondering what you guys think about the idea of being rewarded for obtaining bad ends? It could be anything like a side story featuring the lives of your cast of characters, foreshadowing to help you find the true path, things that happened as a result of your bad end etc. I got this idea from playing Corpse Party for the PSP last year, where achieving all the dead ends (Or was it some? I can't remember) in a chapter will reward you with a short side story. I haven't played too many VNs so I'm not sure if there are a lot of others that do this as well.

I was thinking of doing this for my project seeing as there will be a couple of bad ends that occur later in the story rather than as soon as you've made a mistake, due to how it's structured. I feel that this might leave the readers with a bitter taste or just plain annoyed, so I figured it would only be fair to give them something for their effort. Plus it might possibly even encourage them to continue after realizing that they're on a path to a bad end.

So my question again is, what do you guys think of this idea?

[ludeshka]

I'd love it. Reasons for playing the game again are always good for me. XD

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Your bad endings should be satisfying and entertaining in their own right. They should be sort of an alternate story on their own, that while not the ideal solution to the storyline, are still enjoyable. Many comic books and other properties often have alternate "futures" for their stories where everything goes wrong and all the characters die. Readers love that stuff if it's written well.

Recettear had an amusing scene if you failed that had the main character whining pitifully in front of her new homeless box house. It was hilarious and so took a lot of the sting out of getting a bad ending.

[HikkiPanda]

It's good off course, you can also give them an achievement trophy and more CG as a bonus for the short story

[9:19]

I agree with LateWhiteRabbit.

No amount of bonus material can convince me to reload after a poorly written ending, good or bad. An impressive bad end, on the other hand, will make me flop on purpose just to see what will happen. All the better if I get bonus material for enjoying myself. XD

[Blane Doyle]

This is why I enjoyed Corpse Party so much. In order to unlock some of the extra content you HAD to get bad endings, and the endings were so entertaining themselves that I actually WANTED to get them.

Something as little as en entertaining, enjoyable, or interesting bad ending may work, but CGs or unlocked content may be nice as well. But even if you give rewards, if they are poor endings quite a few people may not even care about the bonuses.

[Gambit74]

I also agree with how well written the bad end must be, but my biggest concern with them right now is how late they occur in the chapter/scenario (And in some cases even the game as a whole) you're on that might turn people off. I can try to write interesting bad ends since I like fleshing them out to bring in more meanings behind them, but I can't guarantee that I'm good enough to pull that off with every single one though.

EDIT:
@Bane Reiko
Exactly! I also went out of my way to obtain all the ex chapters after finishing the main story just to see what every characters were like before they were pulled in .

[LVUER]

Yeah, it's a good idea. Don't be afraid to experiments, but yes, rewarding a bad ending is already used in many games already, so it's a good idea.

I never play Corpse Party, but there are plenty of other good examples of such games...

The most infamous "rewarding a bad ending" is School Days. In fact, the bad endings over-shadow all other good and normal endings!!! Lots of people play to get the bad endings... No, the game itself is famous BECAUSE OF the bad endings. If you want to watch the bad endings, there are plenty in YouTube.

In Lighting Warrior Raidy 1 and 2, a hybrid RPG-VN (with main female protagonist), most of the sex scenes could only be unlocked if Raidy lost (meaning bad endings, better save beforehand). Actually, in lots of H-game with female protagonist (and some kind of mechanism where you could lose), there will be a special H-scene if the protagonist lost (bad ending). In some of those games, lose is something difficult to do that you have to deliberately kill yourself to achieve bad endings.

In 999, ...

you have to get all the bad endings before getting the true/good one (actually all minus one since I accidentally skipped one of the bad ending and now it's impossible to get it without resetting the game data).

Not bad endings, but in Private Nurse, ...

You could unlock a new epilogues (or called as "diary" in this game) only if you get non-canon ending (end up with other two other girls, not the main one whose have the longest story, almost triple the amount of other girls).

[LateWhiteRabbit]

In Lighting Warrior Raidy 1 and 2, a hybrid RPG-VN (with main female protagonist), most of the sex scenes could only be unlocked if Raidy lost (meaning bad endings, better save beforehand). Actually, in lots of H-game with female protagonist, there will be a special H-scene if the protagonist lost (bad ending). In some of those games, lose is something difficult to do that you have to deliberately kill yourself to achieve bad endings.

I'll admit that having to LOSE to see some of the best ecchi scenes in games like Lighting Warrior Raidy and Monster Girls is ANNOYING. It seriously hurt the flow of the games I thought, where you had to SAVE -> LOSE -> RELOAD -> WIN on every fight in Monster Girls and every boss fight on Lightning Warrior Raidy. It gave the games a "stuttering" feel to them.

Bible Black has some pretty amazing and infamous bad endings.

[Blane Doyle]

999! I forgot about that for a moment! Technically, according to walkthroughs, you only have to get one ending before it. But the overall story makes so much more SENSE when you play through every ending because it helps you piece together certain things about the characters and understand what really happened. (technically speaking, the way they pulled it off nearly EVERY path and ending could be considered canon. Simply canon that happened before the true end.)

And yes, School Days is another excellent example.

I agree that games like LWR and MGQ can get rather tedious. It's not terribly bad if you like doing that, but it isn't what I would call the best way to do this sort of thing either.

[tinfoiltank]

In Lighting Warrior Raidy 1 and 2, a hybrid RPG-VN (with main female protagonist), most of the sex scenes could only be unlocked if Raidy lost (meaning bad endings, better save beforehand). Actually, in lots of H-game with female protagonist, there will be a special H-scene if the protagonist lost (bad ending). In some of those games, lose is something difficult to do that you have to deliberately kill yourself to achieve bad endings.

I'll admit that having to LOSE to see some of the best ecchi scenes in games like Lighting Warrior Raidy and Monster Girls is ANNOYING. It seriously hurt the flow of the games I thought, where you had to SAVE -> LOSE -> RELOAD -> WIN on every fight in Monster Girls and every boss fight on Lightning Warrior Raidy. It gave the games a "stuttering" feel to them.

Bible Black has some pretty amazing and infamous bad endings.

Agree -.-

This is a bit weird to say, but I'm not a huge fan of bad ends in general. It always felt weird to me that I could "lose" a story game. If it's combat-related it's totally ok though.

But if it's what the player wants to happen, is it really a "bad" end at all?

[sciencewarrior]

If you can't write a good bad ending, then cut it. Don't let the player make the decisions that would lead to it.

I agree with LateWhiteRabbit; every route should be an enjoyable story. If you removed all the other routes and turned it into a KN that led to your bad end, maybe the heart-warming story of your main path would turn into a classical tragedy, or a dark humor cautionary tale, but the question to ask is, would it be good?

EDIT: I realize this isn't how many otherwise good visual novels work. Sometimes, your character just takes a wrong turn and a giant boulder falls on top of her. But, specially in cases like yours, in which the bad ending is far from the decision point, it pays to work to harder on the ending.

[Gambit74]

EDIT: I realize this isn't how many otherwise good visual novels work. Sometimes, your character just takes a wrong turn and a giant boulder falls on top of her. But, specially in cases like yours, in which the bad ending is far from the decision point, it pays to work to harder on the ending.

Well, endings like that I like to call them dead ends rather than bad ends in order to distinguish between the two. The way I see it, dead ends are when the protagonist dies because of a mistake or the story comes to a complete halt without any sort of end, and bad ends are when the story either finishes prematurely or when the protagonist fails to do what the writer intended for them to do

Since you already gave an example of dead end, I'll provide examples of my definition of bad ends:

1) Protagonist fails to solve a case and everyone gives up hope while the culprit gets off scott free. The protagonist then ends up regretting that they probably could have done more if they had only done this or that when they had the opportunity (Does not apply to stories where this is intentional as the true end).

2) Protagonist thinks they solved the case and decides to move on with life, but in reality they either caught the wrong person or they have only begun to scratch at the surface of the real thing. By the time they realize it however, it'll be too late to do anything about it. Protagonist then goes on to either live life normally or gets fired from their job and wind up living on the streets or something.

[SusanTheCat]

Nobody has mentioned one of the best "must get all _bad_ endings before you get the true ending" VNs:

.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.
My Magical Cosplay Cafe
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It even makes sense in the plot!

Susan