Monday, February 20, 2012

Death threats

Today is February 20th, 2012, and it's an important date for Polymorphous Perversity. It's been exactly one year since I started working on this (which was supposed to be a 2 month) project.

There are basically two reasons why everything is taking too long. One, the game was supposed to be simpler, just a bland RPG with simple graphics and lots of sex. I got ambitious, and the concept evolved.

The second reason is that I noticed the process was having personal effects on me, and I decided that it was a good thing.  Instead of shutting my mind to the vast sea of sexual weirdness presented in front of me, I chose to embrace it. From the beginning, I opened the game's doors to player contribution, asking for their sexual fantasies and experiences and even adding their voluntary naked photos on the game. I made my own contribution too. And let's just say that my research experience has gone past googling for stuff.

But taking too long to finish a game is a bad thing in itself, and it's even worse if you're forcing yourself in the process to think about a delicate (in lack of better terms) subject such as this one to inspire game design. I'm a perfectionist, and I'm stuck on some parts of the game because I haven't found the perfect way to design them. I think, I look for ideas, but it's making me sick. I think the best way to describe what I'm feeling is to imagine having a pervy ghost whispering fetishist porn in your mind all day long for a year.
What I'm saying is: I need to convince myself that the game doesn't have to be great, or I'll never finish it. Yeah, it may end up being great, it may end up being crap, but I don't care anymore. I already know I utterly failed on my (rather impossible) goal of representing every possible element of the human sexuality spectrum in the game. To be honest, I was only aiming at male sexuality in the first place, since I'm pretty insightless on female sexuality. I run the risk of making the game too shallow, too fast, too cliche, too cold, but I don't (can't) care.

Expect the game to be finished soon. And if it isn't, feel free to make me death threats.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

A word about sex in media

I just read Rich Stanton's piece Why Can't Games Do Sex?

Although I appreciate the insightful review on sex and video games, I have to disagree with the basic premise, which is: sex is a natural thing, so we should deal with it naturally. That includes, of course, having sex on videogames.

This has been discussed before in my blog.

I'll use myself as reference for my argument, but in this regard, I think I'm a pretty standard person, so I hope it's generalizable.

I've played a few Hentai games before... like True Love and Hentai Sim Brothel (which inspired Marvel Brothel). Though they're pretty ok games, I felt a little impatient while playing them. That is because, knowing I was playing a game full of sex and naked chicks, I wasn't really in the mood for stats management and talk-talk-talk. I like how Electrondance described Hentai Sim Brothel: it's a game that rewards masochistic play with hentai images. But it's not supposed to be really masochistic, as it's an interesting business simulator. However, when you're in the mood for sex, you're probably not in the mood for numbers.

My point is basically: sex change things. When I'm watching a movie that I know to contain a strong sex scene, I can't help but wait for that scene and get a little impatient with the rest of the movie. I mean, who likes the terrible acting and dialog of porn actors/actresses when they're not having sex? Same for games. Same for pretty much everything (dates?). Like I said elsewhere, having sex in a game is enough to turn it into a sex game. And sometimes, you just don't WANT to make/play a sex game. So if you're going to do sex, you have to do it right.

If you put a sex minigame in GTA, I have no doubt people will rush through the rest of the game trying to get to that as quickly as possible. They'll hack the game, if they have to. If there was actual sex in The Sims, I don't think people would treat it as "part of the avatar's basic needs" in a natural way, they would force and rush sex in the most bizarre ways possible just for giggles. So, yeah, blame the players. If you want to have sex in a game, make it a sex game, like that grotesque Sepe Cumshot... thing (I'm still washing my hands), on the risk that it'll be a horrible game if you're just trying to simulate actual sex as realistically as possible - because, you know, it's probably not as good as actual sex.