Adult Content in VN's - Is it needed? | Opinion gathering

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Azmor
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Adult Content in VN's - Is it needed? | Opinion gathering

#1 Post by Azmor »

Hello-hello everyone!

Since I'm hitting a point in my story, where people could ask some questions about the intimacy of the two characters, I am also asking myself: Do I really have to write / create material for adult content to make a VN more appealing to the viewer?
I am aiming for the young adult groups, but because of that, I am not quiet sure how far I should write about this topic in my game.

I've gathered some Pro's and Con's to this issue, but I would really like to hear some opinions from the community.

Is it necessary to build adult content in a serious VN game to deepen the atmosphere?

If yes, why?
If no, why?

- Azmor

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Re: Adult Content in VN's - Is it needed? | Opinion gatherin

#2 Post by papillon »

... Considering that by far the vast majority of VNs released on this site contain no adult content, I'm not sure what the point of even asking is. Pretty much nobody on this particular forum is going to argue that you "need" adult content, and many would say that if this is your target market, it might make your game less appealing.

Now, obviously, there are markets that do expect it. It depends on who you're targeting and what you want to achieve.

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Considering it

#3 Post by Azmor »

As you say, I also do believe that it would make a game less appealing to the community on this platform. I will consider your opinion as a positive attribute to non-adult content. Another aspect of adult content is gore / blood / violence.

Do you have any particular opinion or example of scenes to violence / blood display in VNs?

I do have played some fantasy themed VNs which contained those elements, but I'm writing my story as blood free as possible right now. I really am looking to make it realistic as possible, but I also want to hold it on a light level. The viewer shouldn't feel disgusted or awkward about the scenes.

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Re: Adult Content in VN's - Is it needed? | Opinion gatherin

#4 Post by Baru »

Honestly, just write what you want, it's your story afterall. If you feel the adult content is something you'd like to portray in your story, then go ahead! And if you don't want to, then don't. It's your story, and in the end, you decide what happens, right? :)

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Re: Considering it

#5 Post by Loona »

Azmor wrote:As you say, I also do believe that it would make a game less appealing to the community on this platform. I will consider your opinion as a positive attribute to non-adult content. Another aspect of adult content is gore / blood / violence.

Do you have any particular opinion or example of scenes to violence / blood display in VNs?

I do have played some fantasy themed VNs which contained those elements, but I'm writing my story as blood free as possible right now. I really am looking to make it realistic as possible, but I also want to hold it on a light level. The viewer shouldn't feel disgusted or awkward about the scenes.
People looking for realistic, or at least impressive-looking bloody content seem more likely to pick up a modern action game, from Mortal Kombat's fatalities and X-Ray attacks, to some shooter where victims explode in a bloody shower, or make a point to zoom-in and x-ray on the entry point of a shot.

If the story packs enough of a punch, or justifies and times its action moments well, sure, include such scene if you think they fit the story you want to tell - just know that lots of effort's been put in last couple of decades into doing it better in other kinds of gameplay.

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Re: Adult Content in VN's - Is it needed? | Opinion gatherin

#6 Post by Rossfellow »

Oh my. This seems to be something I ask a lot- not partaining to VNs in general, but my own.

I'm an edgy writer. When I write dark and gritty, I tend to go all-the-way. However, I am still trying to decide just how far I'm willing to do that with my current project.

Do I want a broader audience at the cost of toning it down, or go full-throttle at the expense of becoming a very narrow niche?

I still haven't found my answer to this day.
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Re: Adult Content in VN's - Is it needed? | Opinion gatherin

#7 Post by firecat »

the answer is not to try it too hard, if you wrote a story that involves death then you must give a good reason for that character's death or else the whole story fall about. that goes with violence as well, if people read about a guy that guys beats the living **** then what's the point of it the character itself needs a backstory. the whole idea of making something adult needs to fit right into the story and not just randomly add scenes of nothing that have no meaning.
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Thanks

#8 Post by Azmor »

Thank you all for telling me this. Now I see that I have to fix some parts, like the random encounters. I should try to give the NPCs a reason for their existence, not just for beating up the main character / main character's friends.
Eventually my story will have a good balance of both sides, which will make it appealing to the most viewers of the community.

As far as I see it, balance is the key to life. :D

Are there any other experiences that could be shared with me and the community about this topic?


- Azmor

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#9 Post by Kia »

IMO a twist in story is much more interesting than adult content even though I wont continue the game if I don't see something erotic at the starting minutes.

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Re: Adult Content in VN's - Is it needed? | Opinion gatherin

#10 Post by SundownKid »

Disclaimer - I have no idea about the preferences of the market at large. In my opinion, it's definitely not needed for me to enjoy a story. There's usually nothing of value lost by removing the adult content. Like, how many times did a sex scene actually play a pivotal role versus just being fanservice?

Violence... I am okay with blood, but I sure as heck don't want to see any gore. I'm not a horror fan and it just grosses me out without any benefit to the story at all.
Last edited by SundownKid on Mon Dec 15, 2014 6:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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#11 Post by Rossfellow »

SundownKid wrote:Disclaimer - I have no idea about the preferences of the market at large. In my opinion, it's definitely not needed for me to enjoy a story. There's usually nothing of value lost by removing the adult content. Like, how many times did a sex scene actually play a pivotal role versus just being fanservice?
One, being Saya no Uta, I feel. For some reason it really adds that cringe factor that story really thrives on.
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#12 Post by Laniessa »

I absolutely don't think it needs them, and it would actually make a game unappealing for me to play. Katawa Shoujo's H-scenes made me cringe and furiously tap the next button. That being said, if your game needs them for the story to be better, go ahead! I just wouldn't play it, probably. You can create a serious atmosphere without adult content. Bad adult content would even make it laughable.

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#13 Post by LateWhiteRabbit »

Nope.

This was really a problem until a few years ago and threatened to hobble the genre. Observe how many erotic VNs were re-released with all the hentai content scrubbed from them - their stories stood on their own, and the hentai was limiting their potential market. Or observe how many hentai games got turned into PG rated anime shows.

It can turn me off a game quick if it isn't done right. Some older VNs (90s - early 2000s) seemed like they had a timer - "Oh, no! It's been 10 minutes since the player saw a panty-flash or boobs! Quick, make the nearest female NPC lose clothing! Go, go, this is not a drill! It doesn't matter if it's been built towards or makes story sense - just do it!"

My advice? Don't treat it like a necessary ingredient. If it makes sense to add it, do so, but do so with a purpose and a plan.

Papers, Please! (not a VN, but a good example of nudity with a reason) used nudity to make the player feel uncomfortable shaming people for perhaps baseless suspicions. Forcing a character to be photographed naked because they said they were a woman but you thought they looked like a man, for example. It is a rare example of nudity not being used for titillation, but to achieve a certain mental effect in the player.

Even if your purpose is arousal, I'd use it strategically and in small doses. I remember reading advice from an author years ago that counciled using swears sparingly in the dialogue of your characters. You needed to save them for when they would have the most impact, and if you used them constantly, you would have no way to escalate a character's emotional outbursts. It means little when a sailor-mouthed hero screams profanity at the bad guy. It means a lot more when a cool and composed hero does the same. The audience is going to sit up and say, "Wow. So-and-so is really mad! They never curse. This must serious."

Do the same with adult content. Too much erotic content and it actually can become boring. The experience becomes flat. Game of Thrones is a great show, but I've long since stopped being surprised/excited/titallated by the nudity in that show. "Oh, are there boobs on-screen? I didn't notice." My teenage self would be so upset with adult me.... :lol:

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Re: Adult Content in VN's - Is it needed? | Opinion gatherin

#14 Post by Tempus »

LateWhiteRabbit wrote:Papers, Please!
Excellent example.
LateWhiteRabbit wrote:The audience is going to sit up and say, "Wow. So-and-so is really mad! They never curse. This must serious."
The reverse can also work. Someone who's always swearing, boisterous and generally obscene can show their shock/awe/fear through understatement. I don't think it's so much that you should ration swears or sex (though I really wish people would ask themselves whether it's necessary before throwing them in) but rather that you should ration everything. It sort of reminds me of the loudness war in music. Despite it's name, the problem wasn't that music got too loud, it was that the dynamic range got flattened thus diluting the music of its nuance as far as variations in loudness went.
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Re: Adult Content in VN's - Is it needed? | Opinion gatherin

#15 Post by RotGtIE »

papillon wrote:Pretty much nobody on this particular forum is going to argue that you "need" adult content,
Challenge accepted.

Frankly, this is a pet peeve of mine about human culture in general. The most frequent joke made about this subject is the degree to which violent content is generally allowed for younger audiences yet any sort of explicit sexual content automatically bumps up the ratings to 18+. So much for making love and not war, eh? An even greater absurdity is seen in Japanese visual novels with erotic content which cover their asses by putting up a disclaimer that all fictional characters depicted in the work themselves are 18+, even when the characters are obviously high schoolers. It just takes prudishness to a bizarre level when developers have to do that for their own legal protection; as if nobody ever got laid in high school. The audacity of the censorship mentality never ceases to astound me.

But political nonsense aside, if a work contains adult content, there's not much reason for it to be implicit. Gore is a natural consequence of violence, and sex has enormous potential for developing characters. Deliberately scrubbing the details of these from a story for the purposes of widening the potential target audience is just as cheap and weak as deliberately crowbarring them in to satisfy a niche market's physical urges. Especially egregious examples include cutaways at the moment of bloodshed in order to hide the obvious results of violence while still leaving them implied for the audience, or fading to black during the warming-up stages of a sexual encounter between two characters, also while implying the obvious which is about to follow. These are garbage techniques designed to do nothing but cash in on everyone's collective ability to pretend that what's being implied won't be understood by younger audiences, and therefore allow a work to be opened up to a wider audience even though the content isn't any more age appropriate for younger audiences. The adults still get the titillation that they want, while everyone acts like underaged audiences haven't been invited to partake in a work of fiction which includes very adult themes. Hypocrisy at its most blatant.

So I argue that, if a work of fiction necessarily contains implications of or allusions to adult content, then there is no reason to keep that content implicit unless the product is being deliberately whored out to lower age groups. That doesn't mean that creators are obligated to show every bit of sexual behavior that goes on in their story every time it happens, but it does mean that cutting out explicit sexual scenes and replacing them with implicit scenes in order to keep the rating at "teen" or "mature" rather than "18+" is an act of dishonesty on the part of the creator which comes at the expense of scenes which can bring a greater degree of realism or better character development to the story.

Now if your story is called Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet, then obviously there's not a place for sex in your story at all, so there's no foul for not having any. But if you've got a Saya no Uta on your hands, there's just no way you can get away with removing the explicit sexual content without severely gutting the development of Saya and Fuminori. It would be a sin to do so.

I would say that it isn't so much a question of whether adult content is needed in VNs, but rather what is needed is for adults to be capable of coming to terms with how babies are made and that the consequences of violence include some very gut-wrenching results on human bodies. What's needed is the maturity to say that it doesn't matter; that a work of art is no more or less dignified based on its inclusion or exclusion of explicit adult content.

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