2324: A Portal to Quality Filth

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One of the things the video games industry has had trouble with over the years is the issue of “adult” games. I’m not talking about M-rated violence-fests — those are seemingly fine. I’m talking primarily about those that contain explicit sexual content and/or themes a little more ambitious than you might find in your typical focus-grouped commercial blockbuster.

The stigma attached to adult games is largely due to retailer concerns. Specifically, retailers like Wal*Mart and Target in America have historically refused to stock games that have an AO (Adults Only) rating from the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board), despite the AO rating existing and making it abundantly clear that the title is absolutely not for children. The situation is almost certainly the same in Europe when it comes to PEGI (Pan European Game Information) ratings, with the added awkwardness that different individual European countries have different rules on what is regarded as “decent”. Germany, for example, has less of a problem with pornography than some other countries, but is very strict on depictions of violence, with many high-profile triple-A games either not making it to Germany at all or being gutted (no pun intended) of violent content in the process.

In other words, making an AO game would historically have been commercial suicide for a publisher trying to make money from their product. After all, if you can’t get stock on the shelves of popular retailers, your avenues for selling your product are inherently more limited, and when it comes to big budget titles, you need every sales channel you can get.

But now we live in the age of the Internet, of course, and brick-and-mortar retailers are less relevant to our buying habits. It’s still nice to be able to go into a shop, pick up a product and walk out with it (having paid for it, obviously) immediately, but a significant number of people now err in favour of the lower prices offered by online stores. And when it comes to computer and video games, the rise of high-speed broadband and high-capacity hard drives has made games with no physical component whatsoever a prominent part of the digital landscape. In fact, the ability for software to be released as digital-only has allowed more developers and publishers than ever before to be able to bring their products to market — without overheads such as duplication and distribution, developers can focus all their time on their product and, subsequently, promoting their product rather than boring logistics stuff.

And yet we’re still stuck with the stigma over AO games. Console manufacturers won’t allow AO games on their platforms’ storefronts — presumably because it would be all too easy for minors to circumvent any sort of age gate technology and buy porn on Mummy’s credit card (suggesting that they should perhaps think about stepping their age gate game up) — and Steam, while allowing a couple of games with boobs in to be sold on the platform, still seemingly stops short of allowing outright porn/hentai games to be sold. (There is, of course, a whole argument about why it’s okay for The Witcher to have fairly explicit porking in it, yet the slightest hint of an anime titty gets the big red cross, but we won’t get into that now; nor will we get into the “double standard” argument re: violence vs. sexual content.)

This has meant that until now, AO games have typically been sold direct or through specialist distributors. J-List, for example, sells AO visual novels in both physical and digital format from its own publishing arm JAST USA as well as third-party localisation companies like MangaGamer. MangaGamer also sell their own products on their own website. Localisation powerhouse Sekai Project, meanwhile, have their dirty little not-so-secret arm Denpasoft to sell their AO titles (or AO versions of titles that get a wider, edited release for platforms like Steam). It’s good that we have all these places to buy AO titles, but until now there hasn’t been a unified Steam-esque platform for them.

There still isn’t quite that, but what Nutaku (very NSFW link!) is building is a step in the right direction. Nutaku, for the unfamiliar, is a website that sprang up relatively recently and provided adult browser games — typically the sort of gacha-driven free-to-play fare that you’d get on mobile phones, only with more porn. More recently, however, they’ve decided to launch a digital distribution platform for a variety of AO titles — primarily visual novels, as they tend to be — in collaboration with the popular publishers I’ve mentioned above.

This is a big deal. A centralised place for AO games to be distributed and for players to build up a library is a great thing, and helps deal with the inherent fragmentation of the market we’ve had up until now with everyone only distributing their own stuff (with the exception of J-List selling physical copies of some MangaGamer titles). While Nutaku’s implementation of its storefront currently leaves a little to be desired — you have to buy games with the “Nutaku Coins” premium currency that is also used in their free to play browser games, and you can only purchase this in bundles rather than the exact amount you need to buy a game — it’s very much a step in the right direction, and a system that is hopefully going to allow AO games to thrive in the online market. Perhaps it will even inspire some competitors to come along, or for services like Steam to have an age-gated 18+ section.

And it’s started strong; some well-regarded titles such as the 18+ version of Princess Evangile are available on Nutaku’s platform, and Sekai Project has even released the 18+ version of Sakura Dungeon first on Nutaku — even before the all-ages version hits Steam or the 18+ version releases on its own Denpasoft store. Let’s hope it keeps up this momentum — and if you want some quality filth, be sure to support what they’re doing.

2106: Sex and Games Make Sexy Games…?

I penned a lengthy article about The Fruit of Grisaia for my good buddy Matt Sainsbury over at Digitally Downloaded, and it was published today. Please go and read it (it’s spoiler-free!); I was really pleased with how it came out.

In the piece, I noted that I believe the 18+ version of The Fruit of Grisaia to be the definitive version, and I stand by this statement, even with the all-ages version on Steam incorporating a few new scenes from the (also all-ages) Vita version to make up for the lack of rude bits. The story is mature and adult, after all, sex aside, so there’s really no reason to read a version that is neutered in any way when a version more true to the writers’ original vision exists.

This prompted an interesting discussion on Twitter after the fact, not directly related to Grisaia, but to sexual content in games and visual novels in general. We’re still in a situation where a visual novel featuring explicit sexual activity — such as Grisaia, or numerous others like it — isn’t able to be featured on high-profile storefronts like Steam on PC, the PlayStation Store on PS3, PS4 and Vita, and the Xbox Live Marketplace on Microsoft platforms. And I’m not talking about nukige (the visual novel equivalent of a “gonzo” porn movie, where the sexual content is pretty much the sole reason for its existence) — I’m talking about eroge, which are visual novels that incorporate sexual content as part of their narrative.

The Fruit of Grisaia features a number of scenes where the sexually explicit situations are integral to the overall narrative. I won’t give specifics to protect those who intend to read it against spoilers, but suffice to say that in each and every case, the sex scenes serve a purpose, whether it’s to reflect the deepening relationship between the protagonist and the heroines, to provide a tragic juxtaposition between pathos and eroticism, or simply to demonstrate another aspect of the characters’ personalities. In Amane’s route in particular, the sex scenes are very much front-loaded towards the start of her individual path, with the remainder exploring exactly why she is, in her own words, such a slut. And boy does she have some interesting and compelling reasons. But I digress.

The unfortunate thing with this topic is that there’s a curious double-standard applied between Western and Eastern publishers in particular. Western publishers such as Rockstar and CD Projekt can get away with depicting explicit sex acts in their games such as Grand Theft Auto and The Witcher, but if a Japanese game dares to show a little skin, it makes the collected prudes of the world clutch at their pearl necklaces (not that kind of pearl necklace) and faint onto their chaise-longues. At best, we get “minor edits” to cover things up and make things a bit less explicitly sexual — Dungeon Travelers 2 on Vita, for example, had an image that depicted a monster girl apparently fellating a ghost changed so that she was just writhing around a bit instead — while at worst we end up with butchered “all-ages” releases cutting out entire scenes.

All-ages releases aren’t always bad if they’re done well, of course; one of my favourite visual novels, Aselia the Eternal, began life as an eroge but subsequently got expanded to such a degree in its all-ages console format (which was subsequently backported to PC, and this was the version that got localised) that the non-dirty version is now considered to be the definitive way to enjoy that particular tale. But there are cases such as The Fruit of Grisaia where I simply can’t imagine them quite working in the same way without the erotic scenes.

The discussion on Twitter turned to localisation specialists Sekai Project, who Kickstarted the Grisaia trilogy and were originally intending to only bring us an all-ages release. After considerable feedback from fans, they eventually relented and agreed to publish a localised 18+ version of Grisaia via their Denpasoft imprint, even going so far as to allow Kickstarter pledges (like me!) to upgrade their donation and get digital copies of the 18+ versions as well as the physical, packaged and digital Steam releases of the all-ages versions.

In my experience so far, Sekai Project know their craft and they understand the art form that is the visual novel. They recognise that eroticism is an important part of many of these works, hence the existence of Denpasoft in the first place. But the concerning thing for some people is that the 18+ releases don’t seem to get much attention, even from Sekai Project themselves. Denpasoft’s website is a pretty bare-bones affair, and its Twitter account isn’t particularly active, whereas Sekai Project is always tweeting about something or other, launching new Kickstarters and generally enthusing about their work — and with good reason.

Why, though, are the 18+ releases dirty little secrets rather than celebrated and promoted alongside the all-ages versions? I don’t have a definitive answer for that, only theories, but I wonder how close to the mark I am.

In short, Sekai Project as a brand is keen to promote the Japanese visual novel as a valid art form and type of game to be celebrated by as many people as possible. Their keenness to get their work on Steam shows a keenness to get these titles in front of as many people as possible, since Steam is an enormous market to tap into. Unfortunately, Steam doesn’t allow adult content — aside from the aforementioned exceptions for Western games — and so any originally 18+ visual novels that come to steam will have been necessarily neutered. Sometimes there are fan patches available to restore the cut content, though in situations like The Fruit of Grisaia, the all-ages and 18+ versions are completely different base games — the 18+ version is based on the PC original, the all-ages version on the Vita version — and cannot be easily patched.

Sekai Project, as a brand keen to get their stuff noticed, is probably aware of the way the games press has been in the last few years with regard to anything even remotely sexual. As such, their apparent unwillingness to promote the explicitly sexual versions of their games is probably less to do with them being “ashamed” of the content itself, and more an attempt to enjoy a quiet life without enraging the massed heavenly hosts of Anita Sarkeesian’s 43rd Puritan Squadron (Polygon Division). Can you imagine what those narrow-minded, sex-negative fun vacuums would make of your average visual novel sex scene? It wouldn’t be pretty. Fuck Anita Sarkeesian, and fuck what she has done to intellectual discourse about games as art. (I’m aware it’s not entirely her fault, of course, but the members of the press who endlessly bleat on about feminism and the like are pretty much following her cultish teachings to the letter.)

I’m not saying that all visual novels have to have sex in them to be good, of course. But sex is an important part of art, which visual novels are, and sex is also an important part of relationships, which visual novels tend to depict with a strong degree of intimacy. Sex is a basic fact of life, of humanity, and the fact that there are so many roadblocks to exploring it effectively in video games and visual novels is kind of sad, really; thankfully, we’re not (yet) in a situation where publishers like JAST, MangaGamer and Sekai Project are giving up on publishing erotic content in the West completely, but we’re also sure as hell not (yet) in a situation where a mainstream press site would be able to publish something about a work of The Fruit of Grisaia’s ilk without getting a massive hate-boner and then spunking vitriol all over the page, completely missing the point of the “controversial” content in the process; I vividly remember just mentioning Kana Little Sister in one piece on USgamer, and getting attacked by one particularly puritanical reader for “promoting a pedophilic incest simulator”.

It’s difficult to know how this situation can be improved — or even if it needs to be improved. Could there be scope for a Steam-esque platform that allows adult games to be released and promoted, rather than relying on Web stores that many people have understandable hesitancy trusting? I wonder. In the meantime, I’ll keep banging my drum about the most interesting, compelling eroge — and, hell, nukige, since there’s plenty of interesting stuff there, too — and hope that at least a few people will listen.

2085: Be Good to Your Meidos

References to lewd stuff ahead. No actual porn though.

Largely out of curiosity (and in part due to being a filthy pervert) I decided to check out Custom Maid 3D 2 on the recommendation of some friends who also enjoy such things. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what this delightful package of filth offers.

Custom Maid 3D 2, is, like its similarly named predecessor, a sex game. I don’t mean that in the way that mainstream press tends to refer to visual novels with explicit content, though it is Japanese, much like the visual novels in question; I mean it’s a game where a significant component of the gameplay revolves around sex. I’ve long been fascinated with various interactive depictions of “virtual sex”; frankly, I find the whole scene to be a rather interesting means of living out all manner of fantasies safely and without hurting anyone, though naturally I hasten to add that nothing compares to actually having a real partner and doing things in the 3D world. I know that during “dry spells” over the years, though, stuff like this has proven to be an adequate substitute, if you know what I mean.

But anyway. I don’t want to focus specifically on the pornographic aspects of Custom Maid 3D 2 because although it is hot as hell, the fact it depicts sex is not the most interesting thing about it. No; it’s the fact that rather than being a straightforward “interactive porn movie” type of experience, there’s actually a surprisingly deep and involved game in there too. Whether or not it is in good taste is another matter, of course, but if you can deal with the sexy stuff, there’s an interesting experience to be had.

Custom Maid 3D 2 casts you in the role of the owner of an exclusive club. Your uncle passed it on to you, telling you only the bare minimum of details before buggering off to get married and leaving you with a failing business deep in debt. Essentially, the establishment you find yourself taking ownership of is an “adult entertainment” club where the maids who staff it, among other things, provide “night service” to paying customers. Unfortunately, owing to your uncle apparently being more of a playboy than a businessman, the club isn’t in a particularly good state when you get your hands on it; there aren’t even any maids left working there aside from your uncle’s loyal secretary, who is strictly off-limits for anything other than professional discussions.

What then transpires is that you hire a maid to your own specifications (providing a loose narrative excuse for a shockingly detailed character creator that is almost the most fun part of the package) and then spend ten days “training” her to be a… suitable employee for this type of establishment. This involves a combination of sending her out to classes in the daytime, each of which affect various stats, usually in positive ways, and at night… well, you bang her, obviously.

Here’s the interesting part: the sexy bits actually involve a certain degree of strategy and RPG-style resource management, of all things. Before you get it on, you have a certain amount of “stamina” you can spend on setting up a “playlist” of various activities. some of which are conditional on the location and whether or not she’s drunk; going over the stamina limit will cause your maid to pass out during the session and perform poorly the following day, so it’s in your interests to try and spend this as efficiently as possible.

Once you get started, each “activity” has several different actions you can take. Each one of these has an impact on a number of things according to what the action and overall activity is. Usually, an action will increase some sex-related stats significantly while reducing some of the more “innocent” stats (like “charm” and “leadership abilities”) to a lesser degree. At the same time, the action will impact the maid’s excitement, mind and reason levels; excitement affects the animations that play (and possibly the effect on stats? I haven’t researched thoroughly yet), mind presents a limit on the actions you can perform during a single activity — running out of it means you can’t do anything else, though it gets restored when you start a new activity — and reason causes negative impacts on stats to be stronger when it runs out.

On top of all that, the maid gains overall experience for each activity she participates in as well as “mastery” of the various activities. Improving mastery results in stronger, more efficient stat gains when performing that activity, and can also unlock new activities. Yes, we are indeed talking about a game with a skill tree that consists entirely of lewd things. Gaining experience can allow the maid to perform her various duties better — she has a separate level and “class” for sexy and non-sexy duties — and her disposition can change according to the activities she masters and does most frequently. In other words, you can “build” each maid as you see fit, and the game provides a number of special events and achievements as incentive for you to experiment with the maids you hire and discover the different types of character you can create.

It’s an oddly fascinating little game, really; while there are doubtless people out there who will likely take umbrage at the very concept (particularly the “training” aspect), those of you with a penchant for the lewder side of life may want to give it a look. Just don’t complain to me if you find yourself as engrossed by the gameplay as you are by the rude bits!

2056: Pete’s Probably Non-Comprehensive Visual Novel Primer

I posted the following over on the Squadron of Shame forums the other day, since we were getting into a discussion on visual novels. I thought it might be of some interest to people who don’t frequent the Squawkbox, so I present it here in slightly extended format for your enjoyment and information.

Pete’s Probably Non-Comprehensive Visual Novel Primer

What is a visual novel?

First things first, get out of the habit of thinking of a visual novel as a “game”, despite the fact that they’re typically sold as games, referred to as “games” and share a number of stylistic and mechanical elements with games. In Japanese popular culture, visual novels are treated as their own distinct medium, and in the pantheon of media which creators tell stories across, they comfortably sit alongside light novels, manga, anime, movies, live-action TV shows and, yes, video games. Transmedia productions often span several or even all of the above formats, and any one of them can prove the starting point for a successful franchise.

The reason I mention visual novels’ distinction from traditional games is because visual novels very often don’t have any “gameplay” as such, and coming to them with the expectation that you will be “doing” anything is often a recipe for disappointment. There are exceptions of course, since some visual novels do incorporate “game” elements — notable examples include Aselia the Eternal’s extremely deep and satisfying strategy game and its spiritual successor Yumina the Ethereal’s dungeon-crawling and peculiar argument-based battle system — but for the most part, visual novels are about reading reams of text accompanied by some combination of art, music and voice acting. In other words, they’re a dedicated storytelling medium that occupies a peculiar space at the intersection between manga, anime and traditionally written prose.

Danganronpa, Corpse Party and Ace Attorney are often described as visual novels due to their text-heavy nature and emphasis on linear storytelling, but there’s a strong argument that they are more adventure game than visual novel due to their balance between story and game being firmly in favour of “game”. Ultimately it doesn’t matter all that much; if you’re less than familiar with the visual novel medium as a whole, though, just don’t go in expecting to actually have any interaction whatsoever, and then you can only be pleasantly surprised if you do get to do something. The appeal of a visual novel is in the storytelling, not the interaction.

Types of visual novel

The presentation of pure visual novels can be roughly broken down into two main types:

NVL (“novel”) types fill the screen with text, usually in a semi-transparent box so you can see the artwork behind it, and read like a traditional novel. Examples of this type include Kana Little Sister and KiraKira.
ADV (“adventure”) types look more “gamey”, with a dialogue box at the bottom of the screen and a clear view of the art and characters. These tend to have a sharper demarcation between narration and dialogue, compared to NVL types, which will often mix both on a single screen of text. Examples of this type include Katawa Shoujo and The Fruit of Grisaia. This is probably the more common type we see in the West.

Visual novels can also be split into a couple of different categories according to structure:

Kinetic novels have no choices whatsoever. You start them up, you read them, you reach the end. You have absolutely no interaction whatsoever — it’s a pure storytelling medium.
Multi-scenario visual novels are the more common type. Most of these start with a common route, then branch off in a number of different directions according to choices you make in the common route. Some further split the branches into other routes, not all of them necessarily ending well; others guarantee you a specific good ending once you lock in a particular route.

You can then further subcategorise visual novels by basic subject matter and audience:

Bishoujo games — aka bishoujoge, literally “pretty girl games”, have a (usually heterosexual) male protagonist and a cast of heroines who usually correspond to the various narrative routes. The story isn’t necessarily focused on dating the heroines, but the girls tend to be the ones pushing the story forwards. This is by far the most common type of visual novel brought West.
Otome games — aka otoge, literally “maiden games”, are the inverse of a bishoujoge in that they have a female protagonist and a cast of heroes who usually correspond to the various narrative routes. Again, the story isn’t necessarily focused on dating the heroes, but the non-player characters are the ones who push the story onwards. We’re starting to see more of these in the West — both Aksys and Idea Factory International are starting to bring more over — and Western visual novel developers seem to favour these over bishoujoge, perhaps because of the disparity in the number of bishoujoge and otoge from Japan that get localised.
Yaoi games — stories that focus on homosexual relationships between men. These are often designed to appeal to women as much as gay men, so if you like some hot man ass, go nuts. So to speak. These are relatively rare in the West, perhaps because of our seeming hesitance to depict homosexual relationships in interactive media, but we are starting to get a few. The most recent example is MangaGamer’s No Thank You!!, but JAST USA have also released a few.
Yuri games — stories that focus on homosexual relationships between women. Like yaoi is designed to appeal to women as much as gay men, yuri is often designed to appeal to men as much as gay women. Notably, the first ever uncensored visual novel to make it to Steam unscathed is a yuri game.
Utsuge — literally “depression game”, these are visual novels specifically designed to be upsetting, depressing or emotional. A visual novel of this type is generally an utsuge alongside being something else; Kana Little Sister, for example, is both bishoujoge and utsuge.

Alongside all that you can also refer to visual novels by basic genre, much like a book or movie — there are visual novels of all types, whether they’re horror, comedy, romance, erotica, thriller or slice-of-life.

You can further subdivide visual novels by their approach to erotic content:

All-ages visual novels have no explicit erotic content, though the “all-ages” part is a bit of a misnomer in many cases; since visual novels tend to deal with mature themes even when there’s no explicit depictions of sex in them, you should still be aware that “all-ages” visual novels might include challenging subject matter ranging from violence to explorations of sexuality and everything in between; the lack of traditional “gameplay” in a visual novel means that they’re free to explore subject matter that wouldn’t be “fun” to play.
Ecchi games are often found under the “all-ages” umbrella. They stop short of explicit sex, but may include “teasing” content such as non-explicit views of naked people, people in provocative poses and/or people in their undies. They may also strongly imply sexual activity without outright depicting it. This is as close to the knuckle as console and handheld visual novels and visual novel-style games get due to the platform holders’ restrictions on what content they allow to be sold.
Eroge are visual novels that incorporate erotic content, but where the erotic content isn’t the main point. In other words, these are stories where the characters might have sex with one another as part of their developing relationships — or there may also be explicit depictions of sexual abuse, so be aware of that — but the point of the game is not simply to jump into bed with one of the heroines. Eroge are a strictly home computer affair, since Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are all unwilling to have fully explicit sexual material on their platforms for the most part, and you tend to have to acquire them through specialist retailers or direct from the publishers, since most regular retailers won’t stock unrated games or those with an ESRB “Adults Only” rating.
Nukige are visual novels where the erotic content is the main point. These are your porn movies of the visual novel sector; while they often do have plot and characterisation — sometimes surprisingly good ones, too — make no mistake, the main reason to play one of these games is to see some fucking as quickly as possible. Like eroge, these are usually only available through specialist retailers or direct from the publishers.

Other useful terminology

Bad/Wrong/Dead End — an ending in which the protagonist and/or hero/heroine dies, usually. Not necessarily a “fail” state; if the story is a tragedy, there might be nothing but bad endings!
Good End — an ending in which everything resolves nicely and cleanly, and (usually) no-one dies.
True End — an ending which is treated as canonical for the purposes of sequels, whether or not sequels actually exist. True Ends are often inaccessible until you complete all the other routes.
Decision point — being presented with a choice. Not every choice in a visual novel has an impact on how the story ends out, but most don’t tell you one way or the other, and some don’t even allow you to save while a decision point is on screen, so choose wisely!
Clear — reading a visual novel to one of its conclusions.
Full/100% Clear — reading all of the possible routes to a visual novel, including bad endings, and unlocking all the bonus content.
Flag — hidden binary variables that are set and unset according to the choices that you make. The most commonly referenced is the “death flag”, where a choice you made will result in someone’s death, not necessarily immediately. Some visual novels use flags to determine which route you end up on.
Points/stats — other visual novels have hidden “stats” according to your choices, and use these to determine which route you end up on. Kana Little Sister is an example of this; the choices you make in the first half of the game determine the personality of the protagonist and his sister, and this determines how the latter half of the game plays out.
Skip — the ability to fast-forward through text you’ve already read. All but essential for subsequent playthroughs to get different routes, unless you really want to read all the same text again. Most visual novels stop skipping when they reach a decision point.
CG/event image — a piece of artwork that isn’t a character sprite overlaid on a background, usually depicting something significant happening. You are considered to have 100% cleared a visual novel when you have unlocked every CG in the game’s gallery page.
H-scene — pronounced “ecchi scene”, these are the erotic scenes in an eroge or nukige. Many eroge and nukige allow you to watch these scenes by themselves once you’ve cleared the game once. You know, for… you know exactly why.

2012: Tentacle Bento

It occurs to me that I haven’t yet written about Tentacle Bento, a card game I picked up at PAX but have only recently had the opportunity to try for the first time.

Tentacle Bento is a fairly simple game whose concept made the Outrage Brigade piss their collective pants a while back, which these days, to be honest, is enough to make me want to check anything out. Essentially, it’s an anime-inspired (all right, hentai-inspired) game in which you and your friends take on the role of ill-defined tentacle monsters of some description, and your task is to sneak into the all-girls’ school Takoashi University and “capture” as many nubile young ladies as you possibly can before the end of term.

Lewd premise aside, Tentacle Bento is actually a pretty fun game. It’s largely based around playing sets of cards — known as “captures” in the game — in order to score points at the end. In order to play a capture, you have to play a location, a capture event and a character at the same time. Playing a location, capture event and character of two or more different suits is a “sloppy capture” and allows you to get something on the table, but only lets you capture one girl at a time. Playing a complete capture of the same suit, however, is a “noble capture” and allows you to capture up to three girls at the same time. It also allows you to add extra girls of the same suit to a capture from your hand once you’ve put it on the table, up to a maximum of three girls per capture.

Alongside the basic location, capture event and character cards are a few special types of cards. All-Star cards can only be captured through a noble capture — and, moreover, can be the only girl in that capture. They have specific special effects once they’re played; normally a noble capture has a special “mayhem” effect (ranging from changing the direction of play to passing cards around the table) according to the suit it was, but All-Stars override and replace this effect.

Special character cards, meanwhile, have (usually negative) effects to play on other players. Some prevent players from playing certain types of captures, others need to be dismissed via meeting a particular condition, and some can be passed around. Several of them complement and interact with one another nicely, making for some enjoyable moment-to-moment strategy.

Finally, Event cards occur immediately when someone draws them on their turn. These have immediate — and often game-changing — effects. They also act as the game’s timer — once the fourth Event card comes up, the game is over, and players score points according to the captures they have on the table, and lose points for the girls and All-Stars they still have in their hand.

It’s a pretty simple game to get to grips with, and there’s a fair amount of randomness involved — particularly with the events — so it’s not especially deep, all told, but it is a whole lot of fun, primarily for the impromptu mini-narratives that the capture combinations inspire. Once capture might see three girls having a wardrobe malfunction in the headmaster’s office; another might see a lone girl attempting to have a cuddle party by herself on the school racetrack; another still might see two girls having a pillow fight in the nurse’s office.

Despite the morally questionable premise — if you know what tentacle monsters typically get up to, you know what I mean — the game is designed with good humour and wit. The cards all incorporate entertaining little snippets of flavour text, many of which are genuinely amusing both to people who recognise anime tropes and normies alike.

All in all, it’s very much a filler game rather than something you’d take particularly seriously, but I like it a whole lot and am looking forward to giving it another shot at some point in the near future. I was surprised how much my regular gaming group — most of whom aren’t particularly involved in anime culture — took to the game, so hopefully it will hit the table again soon.

1303: Pervert

Borderline NSFW stuff on the subject of hentai ahead. I’ll put a “Read More” tag in place for front-page browsers who want to skip past, though I’ll note there’s nothing outright explicit in this post.

Continue reading “1303: Pervert” →

#oneaday Day 972: H, and Not the One from Steps

For one to become a fan of the visual novel genre, one has to be willing to deal with one of gaming’s great taboos: the sex scene. You have to be willing to play games specifically marked as “adults only” and warning of explicit sexual content on the box; you have to be willing to explain that no, you’re not actually playing a “porn game” (in most cases, anyway) — you’re playing a game that just happens to have sex scenes in it, because there’s a difference. You also have to be able to say that latter bit without coming across as defensive, which is very difficult.

A good few years back, I played several of what I then knew as “H-games” — specifically, True Love, Ring Out, Paradise Heights and Three Sisters’ Story.

Of these games, two were pretty much out-and-out porn — Ring Out centred around a young girl who had been sold into effective slavery to repay her parents’ debts and who was forced to compete in an all-lesbian sex-wrestling tournament for the entertainment of pervy, disgusting men; Paradise Heights centred around a guy who both lived and worked at the titular apartment complex and seemed to spend most of his time either spying on or having sex with the residents. Interestingly, though, despite the clear focus of these titles being the sex scenes, they still bothered to put clearly-defined characters and an actual sense of narrative in there — Ring Out in particular, despite its eminently silly premise, was clearly designed to be an uncomfortable experience as much as an arousing one.

Three Sisters’ Story, meanwhile, was a title I actually can’t remember a great deal about, save that it was a character-heavy visual novel in which you automatically attained a bad ending at the conclusion if you gave in to base desires and slept with everyone who proffered themselves to you.

True Love was perhaps the most interesting, though, being an actual dating sim rather than a straight visual novel. You had a limited number of in-game days to find your “true love” (from among the wide variety of potential lovers at school, of course) and had to choose how you spent your time each day — studying, training, doing art, going shopping, that sort of thing. How you chose to spend your time affected various statistics, and the levels of these statistics affected your relationships with the girls. It was actually a surprisingly complex game that had a surprising amount in common with Persona 3 and 4. I really enjoyed it — and my past enjoyment of True Love is perhaps a big part of the reason why I enjoy the Persona games so much now.

Here’s the thing, though — at the time, I didn’t really feel comfortable talking about the fact I’d played these games to anyone. The popularity of the Internet was still in its relative infancy at the time, thanks partly to the fact that broadband hadn’t taken hold in this country yet, and I didn’t really feel that comfortable discussing them with my real-life friends at the time. (True Love was an exception — several of us ended up playing this through concurrently while we were at university.)

The sex was the reason. There was an air of “shame” about playing these games, and not in a Squadron of Shame sense. Because there was sex in all of them to varying degrees, I felt uneasy about revealing my association with them lest I end up thought of as some sort of weird pervert. (In the case of Ring Out, I probably would be thought of as some sort of weird pervert — there was some messed-up kinky shit in that game. Except now I’ve revealed the fact I’ve played it to all of you. Yay! I’m a weird pervert! AND PROUD.)

Yet now I feel perfectly comfortable talking about these games, and even promoting them through a regular column over on Games Are Evil. So what’s changed?

Several factors, I think. First up, my own attitudes towards sex have, naturally, changed over the years. Secondly, the rise of the Internet means that it’s much easier to find like-minded people to discuss these things with, even if they’re outside of your normal friendship groups. Thirdly, societal attitudes towards sex in gaming are changing.

We’re not living in a completely sexually liberated age, of course — there’s still a fuss any time a high-profile game such as Mass Effect or Dragon Age features bonking, and said games tend to skimp on the titillation by having characters writhing around in their underwear — but we’re in a place now where people are at least a little more willing to consider the possibility that games might have some sex in them.

Part of this is the fact that the general demographic of “gamers” has grown up somewhat and is demanding more “mature” experiences for their money. Mostly, “mature” tends to be interpreted as “more violent, more swear words and more women in suggestive outfits”. Sex is still seemingly considered somewhat taboo, so we end up with the underwear-writhing just described.

In 18+, adults-only visual novels, there’s none of that. In these titles, sex scenes are explicit, sometimes quite protracted and, in the words of their manuals, “not always exhibiting the level of sensitivity required for a healthy relationship”. They’re often highly erotic and titillating, and more often than not obviously aimed at a male audience — or at least presented from the perspective of a male protagonist.

Are they necessary? Probably not. Having played through two paths of My Girlfriend is the President now, I feel that game’s stories could probably have been told just as effectively without the flurry of shagging that occurs in the game’s third act of four. Some visual novels even allow players to turn off H-scenes altogether, and console or smartphone ports remove said content altogether, thereby proving that no, it’s probably not necessary.

They may not be necessary, but they’re actually pretty effective in many cases — at least from my perspective. Staying with My Girlfriend is the President, I found the erotic scenes to be incredibly powerful — largely because the writers had taken such great pains to build up a massive amount of sexual tension between the characters before anything truly perverted started happening. As the erotic scenes unfolded, a very “private” side of these characters revealed themselves. What were their attitudes towards sex and physical intimacy in general? How did they define their relationship with each other? Did they see sex as an important part of a relationship, or just something fun to do?

There’s also the fact that visual novels tend to take place with the player “riding along” inside the protagonist’s brain. The player is privy to the protagonist’s innermost thoughts, feelings and desires, however shameful they might be, It’s a uniquely intimate relationship between player and visual novel protagonist — not the same as playing a game where you feel completely “in control” of the characters, but one where the player feels “trusted” to find out things that, in some cases, other characters in the game world don’t know. Next to that, seeing Our Hero putting his penis into someone is a relatively small matter.

And with all that, there’s the fact that being turned on by something erotic is really just another form of emotional engagement. I’ll stay with My Girlfriend is the President for now, but it applies to many other VN titles, too — if feeling happy, sad, amused, upset or angry is a valid emotional response to the things you’re seeing unfolding on screen, why not feeling aroused or excited — or even just pleased for the characters?

There’s a distinction between these incredibly explicit sex scenes and straight-up porn, I’ve found. Seeing, say, Yukino and protagonist Jun getting it on is hot, sure, and the amount of panting, groaning and screaming on the game’s voice track (coupled with some truly stunning subtitles) makes it clear that these are scenes that are supposed to be hot. But they’re not hot in the way that makes me want to, well, not to put too fine a point on it, fap.

They’re part of a story; they’re something that is happening with these characters. Sure, they’re generally not saying anything meaningful to one another (“Mmmm… tch… slurp… aaaaaah”) but they are demonstrating part of their relationship to one another. The meaning of that outweighs any desire to flop it out and go to town — and the fact that I’m not treated as an idiot or a prude is also actually quite refreshing. Let’s also not forget that many VNs feature sex scenes that are not designed to be titillating at all — Hanako and Rin’s scenes in Katawa Shoujo spring immediately to mind — and instead are there to provoke some sort of emotional reaction, or afford a deeper understanding of the characters. Sex is, after all, part of life, like it or not.

Doubtless there are people out there who fap to sex scenes, and the fact that many VNs offer the option to replay just the sex scenes would certainly back this theory up. But, y’know, you want cheap thrills, there are certainly easier ways to go about getting them.

I am, of course, coming at all this from a male perspective and I do not apologise for this in the slightest. I find these experiences engaging, compelling and, on occasion, erotic. And anyway, if we’re being practical about this, what difference is there really between someone playing an eroge and the millions of people around the world who have read the Fifty Shades of Grey series? Think about that.

I’m off for a cold shower.

#oneaday Day 757: SEX!

Let’s talk about sex. Sex in video games, to be exact.

I read this article over on Eurogamer today. It makes its point in a rather crude manner, noting that video games “can’t do sex”, going on to cite numerous examples including popular media’s backlash against Mass Effect‘s sex scene and BioWare’s subsequent retreat into their characters’ underwear; sex-focused games such as 3D Sex Villa 2; Second Life‘s notorious sex industry (which likely accounts for a considerable proportion of that virtual world’s economy) and numerous others.

But I sort of think that the argument in that article is a bit flawed. There seems to be something of a confusion in the distinction between “sexual content” and “porn”. I don’t think anyone is advocating the inclusion of outright pornography in our games, though this is often the assumption that mainstream media makes when news emerges of sexual content in a high-profile game. But the Eurogamer piece jumps from discussing Mass Effect’s soft-focus sideboob to games that are just plain porn. There’s no middle ground, it seems.

Or is there? Well, yes, but you have to look outside of the mainstream and outside of the pornographic games industry to find it.

Probably the most common example you’ll find of this “middle ground” is in the dating sim/visual novel/eroge genre. I’ve played a few of these over the years for curiosity’s sake and while some are just interactive porn stories (Paradise Heights springs to mind — there are no choices to make and a lot of fucking) others like True Love, Kana Little Sister, Three Sisters’ Story and, yes, Katawa Shoujo use their sexuality as something more than just a titillating scene for players to jack off over or something deliberately provocative to attract the ire (and thus inadvertent publicity) of the mainstream media. (This latter interpretation is a cynical view, I know, but I’ve seen too much video game marketing over the last couple of years to believe it doesn’t happen.)

Rather, these games use sexual scenes in context. Katawa Shoujo is perhaps the best example, with sex scenes proving to be a way for us to get to know more about the characters. We learn that Emi is adventurous and willing to try anything once; that Lilly, despite her prim and proper appearance, enjoys her sexuality; that Shizune is dominant in all aspects of her personality; that Misha is confused; that Hanako believes no-one will see her as anything more than a “princess” to be saved; that Rin craves intimacy, to find some way to connect to another person. All of these scenes feature explicit erotic imagery and text, but none descend into being porn — sex for the sake of sex. During the sex scenes with Rin, for example, there’s a lot of philosophising about what might be going on inside Rin’s confused, creative head. Lilly uses one of her sex scenes to show Hisao what it’s like to be blind. Emi’s “Anal.” scene is endearingly awkward as only teenage sex can be. And Hanako’s encounter with Hisao is faintly horrifying after the fact.

“I can’t fap to this!” was the war cry thrown up by members of 4chan upon playing Katawa Shoujo, but that’s not a bad thing — do you jack off every time there’s a sex scene in a movie? No, because that’s ridiculous. Sex doesn’t equal porn.

The same is true to a lesser extent in True Love, another dating sim based in a high school, though in this instance it’s a regular education institute rather than a special school. In True Love, gameplay revolves around managing the protagonist’s schedule so he builds up a series of different statistics ranging from creativity to sportsmanship. Different statistics will attract different members of the game’s cast, and this then sends you down their various narrative routes where, again, along the way you get to know them a whole lot better and, again, you get to shag them at least once in a scene that, while erotic, is more focused on characterisation than providing something for the player to get their rocks off to.

Three Sisters’ Story actively punishes players for being promiscuous, though not until it’s far too late to do anything about it. Throughout the course of the game’s story, the player gets the opportunity to have sex with the three sisters in question, but also has the opportunity to turn them down, too. If the player elects to have sex with all of them over the course of the game, the story doesn’t end well for our protagonist, even after he saves them from abduction. A degree of self-control on the player’s part is required in order to get the best ending. Do they want the sexy scene now, or do they want the story to end well?

Moving out of the visual novel genre, Silent Hill is another series which has always used sexual imagery to striking effect. Rather than being outright explicit about it, however, it tends to make use of more abstract imagery, leaving the player to interpret things for themselves. At no point in the game do we see exactly what made Angela so wrong in the head, but we can interpret that it was sexual abuse from her father. At no point in the game does James speak about his resentment over his wife’s illness depriving him of sexual gratification, but we can determine that from the appearance and behaviour of Maria, the various times Pyramid Head shows up and the grotesque mannequins who form the bulk of the game’s enemies.

You can’t fap to Silent Hill, in short.

Look at Catherine, too. The game’s just come out in the UK so a whole new wave of reviews has been hitting. I was rather surprised to see at least a couple calling it out for not being daring enough with its visuals — i.e. not showing any tits, muff, cock and/or balls. Despite the game’s focus on adultery, sexuality and adult relationships, there are no explicit sex scenes in the game, and nothing more than sideboob in the nudity department. But the thing is, there doesn’t need to be. Catherine didn’t need explicitly pornographic scenes to get across its point. Sex is a key theme in that game, but that doesn’t mean we need to stop for a fuck break every so often. Sometimes implying something can be just as powerful as showing it and — God forbid — making it interactive: Heavy Rain‘s painfully awkward interactive sex scene says “HHNNNGGG” at this juncture.

So can games “do sex”? Why yes, yes they can. Unfortunately, those games which do do sex and do it well tend to be confined to the specialist interest, cult classic or underpromoted independent title department. So why don’t we see large publishers taking more risks, producing more adult games with sexual themes and/or content?

Part of it is a marketing issue. Getting too explicit with the sexytime in a game will net a release an “Adults Only” rating from the ESRB, and that’s a big no-no for a lot of game retailers, thus hurting physical sales for the publisher. Given the growth of digital downloads, however, at least part of this problem goes away — there’s no shame in purchasing an Adults Only title online, and publishers can simply sell it themselves, which is generally a better deal for everyone involved anyway.

Part of it, too, is fear of backlash from the mainstream media and, subsequently, politicians who don’t understand the first thing about the industry, assuming it to be toys for children. California had a narrow escape just last year, and it’s doubtful that publishers want to take the risk of making the people in charge think that censorship of a creative industry still finding its feet is a good idea.

Do we “need” sex in games? If we want to explore the full gamut of human emotions in the interactive stories that we tell, then yes, we do. We need to get over the assumptions that everyone playing games is too young to be able to handle sexual content. We need to get over childish tittering at every sight of sideboob. We need to have realistic characters who have realistic relationships.

What this doesn’t mean, however, is that we need sex in all games. And those games that we do have sex in should justify its inclusion somehow, otherwise we’re right back to accusations of peddling porn again. Katawa Shoujo and its ilk are doing it right. Mainstream publishers could learn a lot from the risks that independent studios and those who tackle the development of a game as a creative rather than a technical or marketing project.

Who knows what the future holds? I certainly don’t. But it’s clear that the industry as a whole still has a lot of growing up to do as yet.