Gaming Pornography and Video Games

[2010DigitalBoy]

[quote name='Dagger']Yume Miru Kusuri (A Drug that Makes You Dream)[/QUOTE]

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]That's been tled?! I think I have a hunt to go on....[/COLOR]

[Dagger]

[quote name='Deus ex Machina'][COLOR="DarkOrange"]That's been tled?! I think I have a hunt to go on....[/COLOR][/QUOTE]
Yep, it's been released by Peach Princess. I'm tentatively interested in it, but right now, half the reason I'm playing VNs is to improve my Japanese, so translated games are ironically on the back burner for me. :animeswea

~Dagger~

[2010DigitalBoy]

[quote name='Dagger']Yep, it's been released by Peach Princess. I'm tentatively interested in it, but right now, half the reason I'm playing VNs is to improve my Japanese, so translated games are ironically on the back burner for me. :animeswea

~Dagger~[/QUOTE]

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]This tempts me to bring up the educational standpoint of pornography. My best friend can read and understand Japanese and claims to have 'learned it all from anime/manga'. However, he admits that while he learned most of the speach by waching fansubs, he learned kanji through the furigana on manga.... ero-manga that is. So I think it's safe to say porn has educational vlue. [/COLOR]

[Dagger]

Haha. Well, as is the case with most potential vehicles of education, I daresay that what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

So to speak. :whoops:

~Dagger~

[Hero of Zero]

[COLOR="SlateGray"]I freakin' love porn games. Believe it or not I own actual cartridges of the original Mystique porn games - Custer's Revenge, Beat Em and Eat Um, and Bachelor Party. I don't even own an Atari 2600. I'm a collector of pop-culture references, and they're part of my horde. Sweet stuff.

A lot of porn games are just hilarious. Battle Raper has to be my favourite, mostly because it has the most awesome title ever. I don't ever... pull my goalie to porn games, because I only have so many hands and all. But I still play them, mostly for comedic value. The Japanese can come up with some seriously freaky ****.

Also, many lolles at this thread for reading way to far into porn. It's porn, not Atlas Shrugged; saying you play porn games or read erotic mangas for the story is like my dad saying he has a cavern full of Playboys because he loves reading the articles. Be honest; you just skip right to the good bits like everyone else.[/COLOR]

[Dagger]

[quote name='Hero of Zero'][COLOR="SlateGray"]
Also, many lolles at this thread for reading way to far into porn. It's porn, not Atlas Shrugged; saying you play porn games or read erotic mangas for the story is like my dad saying he has a cavern full of Playboys because he loves reading the articles. Be honest; you just skip right to the good bits like everyone else.[/COLOR][/QUOTE]
Lol back atcha. ;)

In the case of many eroge, that would be like buying a.... oh, I don't know, a three hundred page book for three five-page sex scenes. Totally inefficient. Of course there are eroge in which the sex scenes come quick and easy. So why don't people just stick with those? Why are the story-driven games--the ones where you have to click through hundreds or thousands of lines of text to get to the ero--the bestsellers?

Nothing wrong with enjoying the sex scenes. Nothing wrong with playing a sex-focused eroge (like Discipline or Bible Black) for the sake of the ero. But playing a story-focused eroge for *purely* the sake of the ero would just be silly, not to mention a waste of time that might be better spent on Wife With Wife.

Re: literary merit, I'd say that Saya no Uta is a cut above Atlas Shrugged. :animesmil

~Dagger~

[Hero of Zero]

[QUOTE]In the case of many eroge, that would be like buying a.... oh, I don't know, a three hundred page book for three five-page sex scenes.[/QUOTE]
[COLOR="SlateGray"]
Well, Lolita's a best seller... Ann Rice... There are actually a lot of people who've made careers just like that.[/COLOR]

[QUOTE]So why don't people just stick with those? Why are the story-driven games--the ones where you have to click through hundreds or thousands of lines of text to get to the ero--the bestsellers?[/QUOTE]
[COLOR="SlateGray"]
Because if someone goes through all the effort to write thousands of lines of text, he's probably going to be really meticulous about those sex scenes. A game which is just filler between sex scenes if liable to be mass-produced and cheap. And ok, [I]maybe[/I] there's some immersion aspect involved, but not to the point where you buy it purely for the text.[/COLOR]

[QUOTE]Re: literary merit, I'd say that Saya no Uta is a cut above Atlas Shrugged. [/QUOTE]
[COLOR="SlateGray"]
Oh, hell ya. Atlas Shrugged is a POS, I was just dropping a name. What about, "It's porn, not Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time!" Better?[/COLOR]

[Dagger]

Have you read Lolita?? The narrator deliberately [i]skips[/i] the sordid details... :animeswea And again, Laurell K. Hamilton is one thing, but to say that everyone buys Anne Rice books (and I'm not talking about her pen-name erotica) for the sex is probably a bit off the mark.

I guess the only way I can put it is this: if the sex scenes are the point, then why do popular eroge get PS2 ports? The PS2 versions are all-ages (in terms of sex, if not violence), and they still sell extremely well, even though their release doesn't mean the 18+ PC version is going out of print. Why would people [i]re[/i]-buy and replay the same product, [i]minus[/i] the sex, plus little extras here and there, if not for the story and so forth? Why would the all-ages anime based on the games sell well?

(And seriously, it wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say that half of new anime TV series are based on eroge or other visual novels nowadays.)

Some games are of, course, just filler racing from sex scene to sex scene. The problematic thing is assuming that this applies to everything. As an example, one of the most famous subgenres of eroge are nakige, "crying games"--so called because of their tearjerking cathartic effect. I don't think these would do well if fans didn't especially care about the characters; who wants his precious ero-scene to get followed by extreme depression?

If anything, amusingly, the ero-scenes are the part that feels obligatory, not the story. Some companies are better than others at integrating them. KEY (Kanon, AIR) started off making eroge but, once they became extremely popular, started making the exact same kind of game, just without ero-scenes (Clannad, Little Busters). Fans still bought their work in droves; they're one of the most rabidly beloved VN companies out there.

Personally I like it best when the ero-scenes are done in a way that enhances the story. Just like they'd be done in a good novel. I think it's a bit condescending to suggest that if a story has any sex in it, then people must be reading it because of the sex. Certainly that may often be a factor, but to call it the whole reason is a huge oversimplification.

I wouldn't argue this so stubbornly if not for my own experience playing VNs and seeing how the ero-scenes can be integrated (or not, as the case may be). And again, as for literary merit, I like to think that not only is there a continuum between Proust and porn, but that stories with explicit sex (i.e. virtually all modern literary fiction) are permitted to coexist with the more prudish great works of the past, and that liking an ero-scene doesn't mean you're enjoying it at the expense of the rest of the text.

~Dagger~

[AzureWolf]

While I agree with Dagger on the [B]creator's[/B] intent, that may not necessarily be player's intent.

[insert "I see what you did there" photo]

Sex sells, so maybe the creator put it there to sell more or it is integral to his story or whatever. But, again, sex sells, so the horny lad (or lass I guess) may only be in it for the sex. It is pornography to the gamer, but I would not categorize it based on gamer bias. Sure it has to be labeled to notify of the adult content, but just like a sex or masturbation scene in a movie, getting an adult rating is not the same as pornography. People may only download to watch the sex scene, but there's a whole story there they are missing out on, the director's true purpose in creating the thing.

Case in point (only because the darn thing is seared into my "!@#$in' disturbing" permanent part of my brain): [i]Old Boy[/i] had a sex scene, but can't say I remember one inkling of it (maybe I skipped it?). If you can watch the ending and can still say it's a porno, then you are one disturbed ####er. You at least watch the ending, right? That's what everyone does with games and movies: gets to the ending even if they skip some stuff.

[DeathKnight]

[quote name='Avenged666fold']I can't type or move a mouse while I do...what your suppose to do when your looking at porn[/QUOTE]

[color=crimson]Try your left hand.[/color]

[color=crimson]I have played games that were utterly strange and devoted to nothing but sex. The X-Change series, where a boy gets turned into a girl and has intercourse in a ton of consensual and none-consensual ways, is probably one of the weirdest series I have played through. I bring this series up because it is an example of a Japanese eroge maid simply to be pornography. The story is not even worth describing beyond the set up I mentioned above, and that little snippet is just the tip of the iceberg of the horrid narration of the game.

I can compare this to Crescendo, which was a very well written and emotionally moving game. The sexual scenes were complimentary to the overall story. Ever17, mentioned by Dagger, does not have any sexual scenes portrayed on screen. Ever17 was probably the best visual novel I have ever played. It is also the only visual novel that I have wanted to play again through the multiple endings just to see the story again.

The intention of the game creators is easy to see over the course of playing through the game.[/color]

[eleanor]

[quote name='Deus ex Machina'][COLOR="DarkOrange"]Anime chickzors are usually submissive, and like Lunox said, otherwise evil lol.[/COLOR][/QUOTE]

[font="trebuchet ms"] It's like feminism never happened! :p[/font]

[quote name='Hero of Zero'][COLOR="SlateGray"]
Well, Lolita's a best seller... Ann Rice... There are actually a lot of people who've made careers just like that.
[/COLOR][/QUOTE]

[font="trebuchet ms"] :twitch: I hope to god you did not think [i]Lolita[/i] was a erotic book.[/font]

[Dagger]

Thinking about it further, I actually don't think it's accurate to say that the submissive/evil dichotomy is a general rule. Even limiting the discussion just to games (rather than "Anime chickzors" in general :p), submissive heroines are no more the norm than wimpy high school protagonists who somehow attract harems despite not possessing an ounce of personal charisma. Which is to say that they're prevalent, but not as prevalent as they [i]seem[/i] to be--it's just that every time they come up, it tends to stick out in one's mind, since they're so damn annoying.

What I find interesting is the recent [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yandere][u]yandere[/u][/url] trend, which seems to have been pushed along by eroge. The idea of "moe" in relation to females may be automatically associated with the assumption of submissiveness, but that seemingly clear-cut image of the female waiting to be dominated has gotten twisted in all kinds of intriguing ways. What is it that makes male gamers fascinated by cute, trembling, blushing young girls who later have psychotic breakdowns and whip out the butcher knives? Why is the shattering of that submissive veneer and the ensuing violence exciting? Why is insanity moe?

I wouldn't call these characters "evil," because they're not villains. Players love them. (Of course, there are also a lot of strong, non-evil and mentally sound women in games.)

~Dagger~