|
|
View previous topic :: View next topic
|
| Author |
Message |
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
 Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2008 5:01 pm |
  |
|
I've been interested in Sengoku Rance too, and in Rance 6 - I'm quite fascinated by how those PC Eroge are mostly unaffected by all that next-gen tech stuff, thus making a RPG like Rance 6 look like my colorful good old beloved Xeen, even though it's technically 3D-accelerated. It's like a different evolutionary path. Seems the Rance games are a tad too much on the gory side of things for me, though.
And yeah, Sengoku Rance's reinterpretation of the sengoku era seems quite amusing - down to the ultimate demon bad guy being a weird variation on a catholic missionary or something. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
 |
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2008 10:00 pm |
|
|
| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| If you acknowledge them as a notable reward, you're going to have to do the same for cutscenes in other genres. |
Different genres have different relations to their components. For examples you may complain about the lack of cutscenes or dialogue in a RPG but it would make no sense to do so in a tetris-like or other abstract puzzle game.
In this precise case, the whole eroge genre is built around its visual rewards, it's what's defined this genre from the beginning. To not acknowledge that would be the silly thing to do. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 3:56 pm |
|
|
| Sengoku Rance is pretty good, though you'll need to understand japanese or have a good FAQ. It's a japanese strategy RPG parodying the japanese civil war. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 9:24 pm |
|
|
| Rya.Reisender wrote: |
| Oh by the way I said it's not hentai but real porn that Qix game. |
Gals panic has both, it depends on the episode. They switched to anime for the later ones. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2008 9:59 pm |
|
|
| Rya.Reisender wrote: |
| Honestly, erotic and game doesn't fit really well together for me. It's better if I can use both hands for masturbation. You guys probably don't masturbate when playin those games, but then... why play erotic games to begin with? |
That's because by playing them you masturbate your brain.
Thesycophant: you could have a look at the Harvest Moon games. That0's where all the fun stuff happens!
Also while I was watching that video my foremost thought was that in an old game called Season of the Sakura being nice to everybody's the best way, as long as you are there's only four branching points that matter for who you get. Probably also true for True Love though I think two girls were mutually exclusive.
Second thought was that if it's anything like the NHK manga you could've found much worse bits to link to XD |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 10:30 am |
|
|
| Talbain wrote: |
| And what I'm saying is that removing the porn from this game would not stop it from being a good game. |
Yes, but it's notable having it in there doesn't make it a bad game either, unless we're talking about the EW FAKE SEX crowd.
| antitype wrote: |
| I just find the whole idea of talking about HENTAI GAMES without a certain level of general disdain or snickering to be sort of odd. |
It's because it's the topic! "Here be sex games", it could've said, so we're certainly not gonna add disclaimers on each of our posts on how it's a really disgusting matter but we'll talk about it so we can fill the disdain and snickering quota or whatever.
The disdain would actually be counterproductive in the discussion. It's kind of a smaller scale version of the disdain people who don't know videogames have about games in general. Imagine if all of our topics here were filled with messages about how videogames are a horrible hobby, have nothing to reflect on and should be avoided. That'd be problematic and silly, it would prevent us from discussing what interesting things games have brought to narrative or interaction or anything else.
And it's the same here. Discussing gameplay mechanics is what we do here on Selectbutton, we're not suddenly gonna stop because this is an erotic games thread. For all the creepiness they may generate, there is the possibility that by discussing these games we can find something interesting. Interesting things often develop in niches, and this one's easily one of the biggest indie videogame niches in japan. We certainly won't find it by dismissing the genre.
In this precise case the most striking gameplay feature, and one that's only vaguely beginning to seep back in more mainstream games like Persona 3, is that in most of these games instead of (or in addition of) grinding for might and wealth you grind for relationships. In games like Sengoku Rance the strength of your generals and main character isn't just determined by the carnage they've left in their wake but by how much you interact with them.
Regardless of how much discomfort the game, depending on its setting, may put in the interaction itself, here we have an almost unexplored axis of player character progression that's actually basically nonviolent and may bring many interesting things if more games were to consider it. Why is it that the human element is mostly ignored as a gameplay brick and we have to turn to a niche market for perverts to find sizeable traces of it? Especially since one of the (if not THE) best-selling mainstream games, the Sims, has built its success on it but somehow seems to be near-immune to the rampant cloning the industry is known for? |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 11:05 am |
|
|
| Ah, my bad, never mind. I wasn't certain, and it's always a point worth pointing out |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 6:36 am |
|
|
| antitype wrote: |
| He uses the words "made love" in reference to a videogame girl he had pretend sex with. Isn't that precious? |
Once again, you seem to want to apply double standards just because this is a porn videogame. Reviewers or forumers don't go and say you pretend kill monsters and people in the latest Quakedoom, that you do pretend leaps off buildings in Mirror's Edge, that you pretend explore a pretend world in a RPG. They kill monsters, leap off buildings, explore the world because the context, a game on a game review site, makes the pretend bit an obvious assumption you base everything else on.
Erotic games are not magically exempt from that context. You apparently just chose to ignore it somehow because you feel the need to dismiss them.
The only people who don't get the implicit pretend bit usually are the anti-vdeogame activists, because they're utterly unfamiliar with the context. Being a poster on a videogame-discussing forum, you don't have that excuse. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 9:44 am |
|
|
But what in it so so creepier than pretending to hunt or kill living beings for your enjoyment? Sure, you're not ignoring the context of pretend, that's not the double standard I'm talking about.
You're saying pretending in this domain is different and inherently inferior to the pretend violence and pretend consumerism and power fantasies rampant in videogames. I say it's just one more aspect of it, possibly not even the most disturbing (it bothers me less than the kind of "fuck yeah" reactions you get when Kratos tears a gryphon's head off or something in the latest GoW3 trailer) and we shouldn't let it get in the way of finding out what makes these games and these gamers tick, because as I pointed out earlier it's actually a whole market that has its own notable pecularities, which can be interesting for mainstream games.
Or is it the added element of potential masturbation that's grossing you out? For all you know there are people who masturbate to mainstream games too (and probably more, because of the market's size).
It rather indicates you're having a problem with the players, and if so let us discuss the games. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 5:57 pm |
|
|
| bloody heartland wrote: |
| Hentai games just seem to be diametrically opposed to healthy interaction on the scale of things. I've never seen one that suggested it was the vision of a healthy mind. |
Quite. I can think of a few that are tamer than the stereotypical lot, but I can't really think of one that has absolutely none of the creepier fantasies in it. Though my experience is limited to a subsection of a few translated titles plus one or two that actually had gameplay compelling enough that it was worth a peek in the original japanese, so who knows, some may exist but were among the thousands that didn't get translated.
But since as I pointed out I don't consider shooting at people healthy interaction either, in the grand scheme of my outlook on games it changes nothing. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 9:31 pm |
|
|
| Rya.Reisender wrote: |
| So you are saying that raping someone is worse than killing someone? |
"more disgusting" are the words he used. It's not on the same value axis as "worse" or "better".
I agree this is irrelevant, though. Because...
| Quote: |
| So, putting the "pretend rape" of hentai games up against the "pretend head-exploding" of your average FPS, and being contemptuous of the first and not the second, isn't contradictory |
The bit I've been using in the videogame violence comparison isn't rape (because that's still violence) but sex. To think sex always equals rape in eroge would be a rather prejudiced, stereotypical view (kinda akin to people who think all videogames are "mass murder simulators"), and not the problem we've been discussing. Note it's pretend girlfriends that were derided earlier, not pretend rape victims.
So yes, I'm saying being contemptuous of sex but not violence is a worrying trend. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 9:22 am |
|
|
The fuckbots are an amusing comparison but ultimately not relevant - because you've just slid the scale of value through a change of context but it actually doesn't change the relative values. It just seems weird because of the sudden human similarity (yes, I said sudden, because you've just got from pictures on a screen with predefined adventure game dialog to androids you expect to be able to have conversations). I'd find them creepy as hell - yet, it's still worthy of note, immensely less creepy than human-looking robots you'd hunt and destroy for fun.
In other words it seems creepy because of the strong, physical human verisimilitude, not because of the sex thing. Thus yes, if I were a sexbot manufacturer I'd want them to have interesting conversation. Women don't have them with sex toys but apparently with gigolos, and gigolos are the relevant comparison for sexbots, not games.
Also, Tlon
| Quote: |
| the idea of convincing yourself that you have a real relationship with a videogame character is creepy |
It is worth noting this is a stereotype too, you seem to be assuming most eroge players are like this, but that's like saying all FPS players are intently convincing themselves they kill real people or all Super Mario players are virtual mushroom addicts. But you do know videogames are videogames, most players do and won't try to convince themselves they're not playing games. There's absolutely nothing that indicates it would be any different in the eroge niche and convincing yourself one of them gives you a real relationship would be creepy indeed, but just as creepy as a guy who'd convince himself he's a star soccer player because he's good at the latest FIFA game. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 11:42 am |
|
|
| CubaLibre wrote: |
| I think there's a lot that indicates it. |
Like what? When I go to eroge forums I see discussions that are very much about the games and not about convincing themselves they're actually living their relationships, and they rarely even talk about relationships anyway. They're strikingly gamers, they search for ways to abuse the systems and get everything and stuff like that.
Maybe your perception's limited to vocal weirdos you think are representative, kinda like how you could form a rather disturbing vision of Super Mario just looking at the blogs and sites of the various fans who think they're really princess Peach's boyfriend? |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 12:12 pm |
|
|
| antitype wrote: |
| Let's toss out a few more really far-fetched examples and hope it throws people off! |
Well, yes, that's my point. We both know those guys aren't representative of the normal super mario player or the same for those japanese guys who are petitioning to be able to marry anime characters. I argue that the same phenomenon works for eroge. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 1:52 pm |
|
|
| antitype wrote: |
| And I think there may be some credibility to what you're saying, but your example is so far-fetched you're risking destroying your own credibility. |
What, the Peach cases? I chose them precisely because they're rather widely net-known cases of crazies that take their obsession a little too far with a character from a game that's about as far from eroge as you can get. We're talking about stuff like a deviantart guy who gives discounts to people who commission pictures of his self-insert character having sex with princess Peach here.
| antitype wrote: |
| but I would say that even people who might claim to be fairly casual about them would be better off just finding some decent porn (or, you know, a real human sex partner) and skip the creepy/bizarre/precious game of virtual "seduction". |
Well, seduction is certainly the most characteristic and unique mechanic of the genre, but you'll find plenty of games that don't use it. Adventure games, shooters, RPGs or empire-building games, with all the sex being incidental to the plot (or tacked on, too) instead of being a goal in itself. To bring up Sengoku Rance again, your goal in there's to conquer japan. Fucking every girl you encounter in the process is a mere side activity, as well as one of the methods of leveling up (Your main character being a chaotic neutral who only seeks satisfaction, be it through conquest or sex). There are a lot of plain offensive or cynical things you can blame on it, but trying to get you attached to a virtual girlfriend isn't one of them. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 7:27 pm |
|
|
| evnvnv wrote: |
| if sex games weren't so focused on 'deviant' sex would people still be offended by them? |
I suspect they would, because they'd still be porn and that itself is a deviance, plus antitype's original jab was actually pointed not at the deviant sex, since the aspects he mentioned were from the tamer categories. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 10:21 pm |
|
|
Regarding the moralistic reaction I suspect those who'd be prone to it mostly overlap with those who are against violence in games, and to them game distributed using mainstream channels are a much easier target. It's more efficient going after violent games (or even GTA and Mass Effect that have sex in them even though they're more than tame by eroge standards) because they're omnipresent.
It's less of a niche in japan, but I think it's still a niche. Though I have trouble understanding the otaku subculture there so I may be underestimating matters on that account. In fact, a bit of googling indicates the japanese diet had at least two petitions for bans this year, though it never resulted in anything (even the ban that was more specifically aimed at depictions of minor characters). Apparently it falls within their views on the freedom of speech. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 11:56 pm |
|
|
| Antitype, the root of my issue with what you've said isn't even that your assertion those games are amusing/pathetic, it's your assertion we shouldn't be allowed to discuss them as a result. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 12:06 am |
|
|
The fact that from early on you've been deriding the very subject and some of the posters, and posting such encouraging bits as
| Quote: |
| fucking keep it to yourself. |
| Quote: |
| I would have thought these forums would be the last place the eroge genre would be met with any sort of glorification, or anything less than pure ridicule |
were encouraging us to infer this meaning, I'm afraid. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 12:56 am |
|
|
Regarding how we should approach the subject it's ultimately up to each poster to choose his own angle. We're not even really been glorifying it, merely discussing it normally. A security cushion of humor can be useful for some of us to have extra comfort about what they type but ultimately we're not comparable to real-life friends.
Acting behind the masks of netpeople, however thin they may be, allows us to take more straightforward approaches because ultimately we're here for what we discuss, not who we are. Many of the people I know in real life I won't even talk much about games with, let alone game mechanics, the occasional wiimote waggling at a friend's being their deepest experience with the subject (and let's not talk about explaining them how I find the oldschool design choices wonderful in a game where you can conquer japan while acting like a gleefully chaotic Don Juan, to put it mildly). That's why I can go online to more specialized forums, or for further niche subjets like this one topics, to be able to discuss it without dancing around the subject. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 9:53 am |
|
|
Actually I think the guitar hero mention is fair. It's important to keep in mind it's obvious the games are a hardly comparable to the real thing. That's a big part of what makes them games, and the guitar hero mention is relevant in that not being (or not even trying to be, because there is no real thing in this world a videogame could actually reproduce, barring other videogames) like the real thing doesn't prevent them from being enjoyable in their own right, in fact it can contribute a lot to said enjoyment.
Pong's success came from the fact that, while immediately identifiable as a parallel to table tennis, it was very much its own thing, with its own possibility space. The same is true for all game genres, including eroge. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 7:31 pm |
|
|
| CubaLibre wrote: |
| I mean no one thinks Shadow Warrior is an eroge because you can find secret naked hentai chicks. There's too much actual game built around it. |
Well no, Shadow Warriors isn't one because the actual game isn't built around it at all, what little vaguely erotic material there is is tacked on in such a minor way you could swap it with flower pots and not have to change even one other byte of the game, and it wouldn't feel even slightly out of place.
| CubaLibre wrote: |
| I daresay that if an amazingly mechanically tight game also featured a lot of naked people fucking, we'd never call it eroge in the first place, because the whole genre of "eroge" is fundamentally based around easy/nonexistent gameplay leading to whack material. |
That bit's much more interesting, though, I really wonder about that. While the bulk of it is currently rather shallow dating sims or adventure games (though the dating sim mechanic did debut as the one gameplay innovation of the genre, it's been cloned to hell and back) there are a few (blahblah Rance 6 and 7 blahblah, well, you know the drill) games in the genre I consider to be mechanically tight. One of the drawbacks I could see is they are quite a few years backwards technologically, though it's an aspect they have in common with other indie games. And I think the "lot of people fucking" *is* a hell of an obstacle too, that would cause most people to overlook that hypothetical game. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 8:42 am |
|
|
| Talbain wrote: |
| In fact it's surprising that many interesting stories spawn from the h-game genre, for whatever reason - each story in Fate/Stay Night is roughly a novel in length for example. Actually perhaps it's not surprising, in the same way that corny romance scenes in romance novels are not surprising. |
Yeah, stories become prevalent in that market because it's the cheapest part of a game to make. They can't go for the technological arms race of the mainstream market, so they focus on text and drawings, and text is still cheaper than drawings.
You don't see that in the mainstream market because mainstream devs know that text is boring, will scare your buyers away and should be eradicated by the combined forces of voices and pretty icons. |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 3:52 pm |
|
|
| Rya.Reisender wrote: |
| So what about we leave out those hentai games with actually good gameplay / story where you might as well could remove the hentai, and think about hentai cames that can really make you horny and are really good to play for masturbation. |
That's kinda like deciding to discuss Mario's mustache instead of Mario games, it leaves out all the interesting bits (unless you're a mustache fetishist). Plus frankly what makes good wank material's all dependent on your personal tastes.
As for making up your own story, you don't even need a game for that. the external agent's interest is precisely the element of surprise introduced by the fact it's not a story or mechanism you'd make up, but that may actually end up being more compelling than what you'd come up with (and this applies to non-eroge too, landmark games are those that bring something new to the table.). |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
chevluh
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Switzerland
|
| Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 6:44 pm |
|
|
| Rya.Reisender wrote: |
| chevluh wrote: |
| Rya.Reisender wrote: |
| So what about we leave out those hentai games with actually good gameplay / story where you might as well could remove the hentai, and think about hentai cames that can really make you horny and are really good to play for masturbation. |
That's kinda like deciding to discuss Mario's mustache instead of Mario games, it leaves out all the interesting bits (unless you're a mustache fetishist). Plus frankly what makes good wank material's all dependent on your personal tastes. |
But in the end you are saying that the interesting parts of an eroge game for you are the gameplay and the story. Then you might as well just play an RPG, or am I wrong?
The Mario's mustache isn't really a good comparison because Mario's mustache is not the main element of Mario games. |
Mario wouldn't be the same without his mustache, that's important. Oh sure, I could've said Mario without some more omnipresent aesthetic element, like mushrooms, but mushroom fetishism didn't sound as amusing as mustache fetishism. There's actually one Mario game where the mustache made it as a gameplay element, bonus points if you can name it. But I digress.
What I am saying is that an eroge (or at least a good one) is a whole. Sure, if I just want gameplay I can get a mainstream game, but in the same way if I just want to fantasize on the pics I could just get the HCG collection from some shady part of the net and save myself the trouble, so it's actually the game/porn mix and what may result I find compelling (And actually part of the aesthetic, since they're a low-tech niche they tend to stick to blue skies-type graphics and push bitmap stills to their limits instead of 3D, it's refreshing. But having your porn game use the same kind of palette as Isles of Terra's just a bonus). |
|
| Unfilter / Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
