A Topic About Sex In CoG/HG Games

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So, quick disclaimer: I don’t think there’s any problem with people putting sex in their works if that’s what they want to do. Some people enjoy writing that stuff, some people enjoy reading that stuff; I completely understand that and say all the power to them.

That being said, I feel like I haven’t seen this talked about yet and that it maybe should be talked about, if only for curiosity sake. Has anyone noticed the major increase in people asking for sexual content in these games? Or people saying the content in some of these games isn’t sexual enough?

I did a poll on my WiP page a while back asking about sexual content and what readers would’ve wanted from it (this was before I decided I would be much too uncomfortable writing that kind of stuff for random people). Unsurprisingly, the majority voted for more detailed descriptions, and in the past few months I’ve noticed an uptick in people being vocal about their desire for things like that.

Before, from what I hear, it was uncommon to have romance options in a CoG/HG. It became pretty normalized after Wayhaven kind of opened the flood gates. I feel like that has kind of progressed and now, it feels like for the majority of the time (there are outliers of course) to get people excited or have a game sell well, there’s a need to have explicit content in it. That’s why I was so excited when A Green Journey did well, because I love to see games that go somewhat against the norm succeed.

I dunno, maybe my brain is just hyper-fixating on outlier type stuff. For author’s out there that write sex scenes into your games, especially those that hadn’t done it before but do it now, is it something you actively enjoy writing or do you feel an obligation to add them in order to get better numbers? I’m curious to hear what people think of the, what I perceive to be, massive uptick in sexual content in these games.

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I guess the recent (well, recent, over the course of the last few years) uptick in interest might be a result of the launch of the Heart’s Choice label. If I understand correctly the other two labels rarely contain content that could be seen as explicit because of app store, and specifically the Apple store, rules and guidelines.

As someone who is demi-sexual the only time I have issues with this trend is when I can’t opt out of sexual content or when flirty (or other) choices lead straight to it without player input.

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I’m supposing a great part of that is that you straight-up asked people, and they thought, “You know what? Yeah, add sex/make it more explicit.” I imagine most of them wouldn’t drop a WiP if the author doesn’t make those changes, but you did ask. Dunno what the IF equivalent of feature creep is, but most readers don’t care about it. More stuff is almost certainly better in the consumers’ eyes.

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I think that it might be the same reason that expectations for wordcount are getting longer and longer - which is that big, popular releases have it, and so it becomes standard. If you think about the most popular of recent releases and WIPs, Fallen Hero/Wayhaven/WLGYL/Blood Moon/SoH, a lot of these bigger names have explicit content, so readers get the idea that explicit stuff is the new normal and now everything should have it, and it’s the same principal as ‘well good big games are 1 mil+ words, so I’m not reading anything under 300k’. Which is totally their choice, in both cases, but it’s just something that keeps slowly ticking up.

Me personally, I have no idea if I’m going to write explicit content and I’m pretty far from that point now, so it’s not something I’ve ever worried about. I got my start writing in fanfic, and I never went past fade-to-black because I was uncomfortable writing full scenes. That was also years ago, though, so really we’ll see when I get there.

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I don’t know about the trend.

As a reader, I don’t mind if it’s there, I don’t mind if it’s not there. My opinion is that if the author wants to put it in, they should, if they don’t, they shouldn’t.

Asking the audience if they want something…

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Romance options weren’t uncommon before Wayhaven - I played plenty of CoG and HG games for some years before that, and it was the norm for CoGs to include romanceable characters. I have noticed people asking for recommendations of games with explicit content though, mostly on the subreddit, to the extent that I have a generic post that I copy-paste that I update when new games come out.

I haven’t personally noticed an uptick in people asking for authors to add sexual content to their games where it’s not there already (outside of a situation like @ViIsBae asking for player feedback). Asking authors to add that is against the rules of the forum so if someone’s doing it, authors are well within their rights to flag it for moderation.

Really, with this kind of thing what I’d say is that it’s great to enjoy characters and erotica, but don’t be pressuring or weird to authors about it. Just because an author’s written an erotic scene about a character, they may not want to hear about your fantasy about that character, for example! And if authors don’t feel comfortable writing erotica, please don’t do it - why put yourself through writing something you don’t want to? People will enjoy your games and romances regardless; even romance-focused games without high-heat scenes can be and are perfectly successful (Creme de la Creme is an example of this!)

I think as far as numbers and proportions go, things become a bit skewed when bringing WIPs into it because sometimes players get enthusiastic about explicit scenes and talk about them a lot - and also a lot of authors offer explicit scenes on their subscription services which makes it seem like there’s more around than there really is. Although I totally agree that there is a general increase in explicit scenes in released titles coming out, it’s still very much not the norm across the board.

That’s not really true - the line is blurred and various HG and CoG games contain explicit scenes (the Werewolves series, Noblesse Oblige, and Heart of the House are examples of CoG games like this).

I forgot to co-sign this! Very much agreed - make sure that it’s clear that the player’s going in for a scene like that. Either through marketing copy (like the HC chilli rating), or giving detailed/fade-to-black options, or similar.

I wrote explicit scenes in Noblesse Oblige and Honor Bound because I enjoy writing them and I think I’m good at it, and I wanted to write the kinds of explicit scenes I like to read/play. If I didn’t enjoy writing it, I wouldn’t put it in (that’s how I feel about anything in my games!).

I generally think it’s cool for players to be openly enthusiastic about enjoying reading/playing erotica - I’d prefer that than they be ashamed about it.

But ultimately, I truly urge people not to write it if you don’t want to. There’s no need, and if you’re solely writing it in an attempt to drum up interest, you’ll feel miserable.

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What is WLGYL? I feel like I should know what that’s an acronym for but it’s just not clicking.

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When Life Gives You Lemons

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I knew that acronym sounded familiar! What an absolutely wonderful game.

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I enjoy explicit content in games (of any type) when they’re present but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest if there isn’t any.

Developers/authors should ultimately create/write a game they would enjoy playing/reading because the result will shine even more. It is painfully obvious when developers don’t enjoy what they’re creating or lose interest part-way through but force a product out anyway.

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Hm. I haven’t noticed a major increase in people asking for it, but I suppose there’s an increase in how many stories and patreons offer explicit scenes. But explicit scenes still don’t seem all that common in published works outside of HC and that’s considering the fact that there’s also just an increase in the sheer number of stories in general and sex simply selling, especially when coupled with how popular romantic stories are today.

Typically when people like something they only ever want more of it, in whatever form that takes. It’s definitely one of those things that, if you’re already interested in the work and intimacy in that way (because if you’re not interested then it really won’t make a difference at all), having those scenes will always be a cherry on top so it’s rare for someone to say no to more time in a private intimate setting with those characters. But not having it certainly wouldn’t deter anyone that was genuinely interested to begin with. You have nothing to lose either way imo.

I do hope no one feels pressured to add sex or even romance just to please readers though.

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For myself, as a reader and an armature creator, the reason that I like the option for adult content is that it adds to the immersive effect of the game and, depending on the genre, adds to the edgy tone say for Dark Fantasy and maybe some genres like Sword & Sorcery.

While I can’t say that I’ve done a ton of writing adult scenes I did have a few in Lives of the Star Child which made sense to me as that game is all about the mythologies of the world which are almost universally very adult and overflowing with sexual content (i.e. Zeus chasing nymphs, Loki and his horse, etc. etc.) … and honestly, the deeper you delve into the myths of the world, the more adult you shall discover they are. So for that game, it just made sense to have adult content. While I haven’t gotten around to it yet, I intend to have some adult content in my game Super Sorority cuz its a college sorority game.

I think one’s capacity for writing adult scenes will vary over time - some of the scenes in my game LotSC are fairly detailed, however, when I was writing The Ice King’s Call, I tried to make the adult scenes a bit vaguer and more for the reader to fill in the blanks. Writing anything is a testament to the writer’s current energies - sometimes you have it, sometimes you don’t, and that’s fine.

Now, getting back to the main topic, I will say that when I run polls on the forum here or on patron (back when I used patron) the desire for more adult content was fairly strongly indicated - I think following the current norms on media consumption, adult content is fairly ubiquitous and sometimes when it is lacking content consumers may feel that it is needed. As long as the art of the story is still there, I don’t see the presence of adult content or the absence thereof either way as necessary - I do think an over fixation on such content can degrade a game; even purely adult games still need strong stories and the elements that make them strong.

Now, bit of a segway, but I should add to the discussion that I find it challenging to write fetish content that I myself don’t really fancy. Obviously, one option is to cut such fetish content from an adult scene, however, this might mean excluding a large portion of a given audience. Don’t really have a great answer for that, but that is one concern I deal with when writing adult scenes.

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CS games without romance have largely dropped off the map, but of the current ones (published and in progress) I’d be curious about what proportion does or plans to have sexually explicit content. To some extent, it might just be a case of a growing sample size leading to growing examples.

That said, I think reader demand for more explicit sex has been present for years. I can think of games that came out more than five years ago that got a lot of positive buzz around the forum based around the spice level of the romance. Authors don’t have to be responding to direct requests, and readers don’t have to be making them, for the public desire for explicit content to be visible.

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I’d say we all know that books with romance tend to be more popular than books without. Isn’t a demand on the part of readers for more explicit scenes something that isn’t new but just a deeper extension of this old and well-known desire for more romantic content?

I’ll just reinforce what I said a few months ago in another thread. Authors have to learn to say no and take control of the story they’re writing. If they’re not comfortable tackling this or that subject, there’s no point in forcing themselves to write it. Writing should always be enjoyable for the writer, otherwise the story suffers.

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I blame booktok. Open discussion of and knowledge of smut has become more common, its certainly affected traditional publishing houses, it makes sense it’d bleed over here. As for romance that’s always been around. Even Dragon had courtship options, its been a staple of the company since the very start. Nothing new there.

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God, I forgot how surprised I am after reading and playing the first Werewolf CoG part.

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I think that the demand on sexual content increased because it makes the readers more engaged and not because the content itself I mean it makes the readers consider their choices more carefully and seeing the relationship you have built developing to the next level is interesting especially if this relationship evolved more to things like marriage and having kids like what I read inthe lost heir and sword of Rhivenia

In fact , it was rare to see any choice script game without Romance options or minor sexual content

I don’t think that Romance and sexual content is an outlier staff at All . I think it’s something that writers should really think about during game making as it affects the whole game and adds to its popularity. But I don’t think you are obligated to do anything I have seen many new games that don’t have any romance at all and was successful
Like unexpected green journey and Daria kingdom simulator and they are both very recent games

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I feel like in any case, Adding sexual content should be up to the discretion of the writer and how they want to portray their vision. Not because the audience wants it.

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As with pretty much anything, if it’s well written, not excessive and it makes sense in the story, I enjoy erotica and explicit content as much as the next guy.

I’ve seen some options to disable explicit scenes every now and then, so that might be a solution. I understand if some player’s experience is sullied by these things and it’s important to accommodate for everyone’s tastes.

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I think tumblr IF has probably had an impact here. A large part of our community hangs out over there or found us through that sphere of the internet, and tumblr IF is even more so focused on romance. A lot of what we want to write comes from what we soak in around us and admire or desire from other writers, or what we consider to be in vogue. The culture over there encourages hopeful game developers to write heavily romance centered games with plentiful mature content—not just sexual but it’s most common to see a long list of content warnings in general. WIPs, of course, are separate from published games. But they do have an effect on the vibe of the space.

I myself would want to write that kind of content whether or not it were popular. I enjoy reading it and my interests as a writer come almost solely from what I want to read. But I very much echo other comments here that it’s up to the person; no one should be feeling pressured on it.

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