Game Design Ramblings - The paradox of getting corrupted in games

[zeboftw]

Introduction
Just a heads up, this post is just my ramblings on game design in adult games. You don’t need to agree or even try it out. In fact, if you feel differently on these subjects, I would be more than happy to hear other opinions on these topics. In the first place, I only made this post because I don’t really have anyone with whom to share these ideas of mine. Without further ado, let’s jump in.

What are corruption games
Fundamentally, what are we looking for, when playing corruption games, regardless of sub-genre (NTR, trainer, visual novel, etc.) or POV (male or female protagonist)? We are looking to witness a character slowly becoming more of an evil or immoral person. To partake more and more in what religion calls sin, or what most of us would categorize as “bad behavior”.

This definition of the corruption genre is pretty solid, but it misses one fundamental aspect of what makes these scenarios so appetising. By this definition, one could even say a normie game like Mass Effect has elements of the corruption genres, simply because the protagonist has the choice to act “good” or “evil”.

But I don’t think any of us get the same excitement from picking some Renegade choice in ME that we get from reading a story like Good Girl Gone Bad. So what’s the difference? I think the most important distinction is character growth. What really makes these kinds of scenarios shine is seeing the opposition of the characters towards corruption and the inevitable fall these characters will suffer.

It’s very clear when you think of games like Hero Party Must Fall, Venus Blood or any trainer: what makes you want to play those games is conquering the heroines, slowly turning them to evil against their wishes (at least their verbal claims).

Problem statement
Those types of games are pretty straight forward and it’s very clear what your goal is and what your obstacles are, both from your perspective as the human player but also from the perspective of the character you’re playing as. But what happens in games where this corruption process is focused on the protagonist?

Your goal as the player is to witness as much corruption as possible, but the protagonist’s goal is actually the opposite. It is to fight corruption. You play as someone trying to do good, but, as a player, end up always choosing evil.

The narrative depicts one thing, but your actions tell a different story. They’re in conflict with each other. Thus, a strong narrative dissonance is born.

Worst offender
This problem is pretty evident when you look at games like Magical Girl Celesphonia. You have corruption points that you can get by making wicked choices in the story or by doing lewd stuff in gameplay. Only problem is, you will always want to do this. You end up maxing out your corruption status before even getting halfway through the story.

We are looking for the fantasy of watching someone slowly compromise more and more of their ideals, becoming what they once detested. But is that truly what we get when we pick every evil choice, or only use the lewd spells, or worst of all, allow the enemies to defeat us? Are we really seeing a strong character trying to preserve their morals, or just a slut pretending to do so?

Analyzing the problem

	Corruptor Character	Corruptor Player
Identity	Corruptor	Corruptor
Goals	Corruption of heroine	Corruption of heroine
Tools	Wickedness	Wickedness
Obstacles	Heroine's Resistance	Heroine's Resistance

In a traditional corruption game, you insert as the corruptor but you also play as the corruptor. Everything aligns. But when you play as the heroine, things get messy.

	Heroine Character	Heroine Player
Identity	Struggler	Corruptor
Goal	Resist corruption	Corruption of self
Tools	Righteousness	Naivety / Foolishness
Obstacles	Corruption	Righteousness

Nothing aligns anymore. It’s clear that as long as we are designing our games with this premise in mind, we are setting ourselves up to do the impossible. As such, we need to reframe our promises to our players.

The most glaring issue is the Heroine Player's obstacle. We have to design the heroine as a strong and smart individual, yet our players cannot use those advantages as it will stop them form reaching their goals. Righteousness as an obstacle has to go. It has to be replaced by corruption. Star Knightess Aura does this pretty well: if you acquire too much corruption too fast, you end up losing.

With this simple change now your goal cannot simply be corruption. You actively need to resist it. The fact that you end up getting corruption on the way anyway will have to suffice.
And since your goals changed, you cannot use your naivety anymore to achieve it. You have to make use of your abilities and righteousness.

But what fun would that be? Where’s the corruption in that? Well, we just need to slightly tweak it. Your righteousness is not quite perfect, rather, it’s a naïve justice. The heroine thinks it’s getting her closer to her goal of resistance, but really it’s slowly pushing her into the corruption pit we were aiming for from the start.

And with all those changes, will you really be playing as the corruptor anymore? No, in fact, you’re going to play your own struggle, the struggle of gathering as much corruption as possible while still maintaining the title of innocence.

	Heroine Character	Heroine Player
Identity	Struggler	Struggler
Goal	Resist corruption	Resist getting too much corruption
Tools	Righteousness	Naïve righteousness
Obstacles	Corruption	Corruption

What choices offer
Now, I understand the appeal of those choices. Obviously, we want to witness the corruption of our character through our own actions. There is a big rush of arousal when you see that choice of “Betray your loved one?” and you pick “Yes”. I would go as far as to say it’s a trick we, as designers, should treasure because of its potency.

So what happens when this option is afforded at every corner? It loses its magic. The story isn’t anymore about the protagonist getting corrupted, rather, they were corrupt from the start. Through this lens, was there really a choice? Was there really an universe in which I would have picked something other than the corrupt choice?

No. Those choices are meaningless, fake. Might as well commit to it and remove the choices completely. Just focus on crafting the best linear experience if that’s what’s gonna end up as anyway.

Fixing the narrative dissonance
Of course, good writing can help mitigate this issue to some extent. It can make you feel as if you’re not picking the evil choice, you’re picking the best option in a shitty situation. And if those choices appear at a good enough pace, one might not even notice this issue at all.

But I think we can do better than this. I think we can design our games so that the option chosen by the player is not predetermined before they even know the context. I would like to explore some ideas as to how we can bring back meaning to the player’s choices.

Unfortunately, this post is getting kind of long, so I will split my ideas in multiple posts throughout the following weeks. I hope I haven’t bored you to death and I hope this commentary gets your creative juices going. I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter as fellow developers.

 

[anne O'nymous]

We are looking to witness a character slowly becoming more of an evil or immoral person. To partake more and more in what religion calls sin, or what most of us would categorize as “bad behavior”.

No evil here, and near to no immorality.
It's not immoral to have sex in the wild. It's not immoral to have sex with multiple partners at the same time. It's not immoral to want to take it in the ass, nor is it immoral to be submissive or to be aroused by your own suffering.
It's sin, to the eyes of bigoted people, but it's something different. As for the behavior... As long as it happen between consenting adults, and only involve consenting adults, a behavior just can't be bad. It's only repressed persons, who wouldn't dare to let their lust speak for themselves, who think that it's "bad" ; precisely because they wouldn't dare to do it.

This definition of the corruption genre is pretty solid, [...]

Well, don't looks as solid as that, else you wouldn't have started this thread ; no one starts a, "we all agree on this, but I'll still say it" thread.

But I don’t think any of us get the same excitement from picking some Renegade choice in ME that we get from reading a story like Good Girl Gone Bad. So what’s the difference?

The fact that they are two radically different forms of corruptions, and therefore can neither be compared, nor opposed.

In Mass Effect, it's a question of moral self corruption, while Good Girl Gone Bad talk about sexual forced corruption. There's a part of moral corruption in the later, with the possibility to do drugs by example, but it's secondary and there's always a sexual implication hidden behind it.
Trying to oppose those two games, to then discover a difference, is like comparing a bicycle and a plan, then saying that they in fact don't share more than being means of locomotion.

I think the most important distinction is character growth. What really makes these kinds of scenarios shine is seeing the opposition of the characters towards corruption and the inevitable fall these characters will suffer.

Why "suffer" ?

While there's always a personal (MC) benefit in corruption, there's no need for suffering, nor even for any negative consequences.

There's three categories of sexual corruption in adult gaming:

• Forced corruption
  It's by example the case in Katie's corruption, where the female MC is blackmailed into it. Games generally give you the possibility to follow a purity route, but the intended design is force the victim into pure submission to depravity.
• Subtle corruption
  Like by example in Corruption, where the male MC use a potion to alter women's mind, opening them to a depravity they will embraces thanks to the said potion.
• Voluntary corruption
  It's where Good Girl Gone Bad fall. The female MC have the choice, she's never forced to do whatever and willingly embrace her own depravity.

It's only in the first category that the consequences are generally depicted as negative ; yet it's not mandatory. For the two others, it's a happy end since the girl(s) opened themselves to new pleasure they crave for. They goes against their inhibitions, and by now living more freely, are also more happy.

[...] slowly turning them to evil against their wishes (at least their verbal claims).

Again this word, "evil", that have nothing to do here... It tell more about yourself than about the games you talk about.

Your goal as the player is to witness as much corruption as possible, but the protagonist’s goal is actually the opposite.

Not necessarily. And once again the proof of this is the first adult game you named as example, Good Girl Gone Bad.
Unlike what happen in Katie's Corruption, there's no penalties for the protagonist in the fact to refuse to be corrupted. The story is wrote in such way that you can really follow the purity path, or limit the level of consented corruption ; precisely because it's consented.
And this is without counting games where you can choose between a corruption route and a love one, like by example Babysitter (not the best example, but not other names cross my mind right now), while providing effective content for both routes.

The narrative depicts one thing, but your actions tell a different story. They’re in conflict with each other. Thus, a strong narrative dissonance is born.

Er, not really... It's a question of writing skills, and totally independent of the dichotomy between the player and protagonist goals.

[...] Only problem is, you will always want to do this. You end up maxing out your corruption status before even getting halfway through the story.

I'm tempted to say, stop playing with your dick, and starts playing with your mind.

In top of the "evil"/"immoral" part, there's another thing wrong in your starting assertion ; "we are looking to witness a character slowly becoming more of an evil or immoral person".
You assume that you are here to be a witness, while most games are designed for you to be an actor. What is probably also the reason why you misread Good Girl Gone Bad so much. You shouldn't face choices with the perverted mind of the player, but with the struggling mind of the protagonist. Therefore each choice can be summarized by "does the gain worth the sacrifice ?"
Starting there, a corruption game is badly designed only if the said corruption is the sole way to progress. Else it's the opposite, the game is correctly designed, and it's you who are wrongly playing it.

[...] Are we really seeing a strong character trying to preserve their morals, or just a slut pretending to do so?

Once again, this tell more about you than about the games you're talking about.

Why can't we be witnessing a perfectly rational character opening up to her true desires ? This will not necessarily make her a slut, nor will this make her immoral.
It's sad, but many women quickly stop to fightback when they are raped. Not because they are sluts, but because there's a moment where they face the undeniable truth, they can't escape this terrible fate. Therefore they minimize the possible damages ; even if it means being raped, it's better to end without broken ribs or worse.
And the same apply in corruption games. It's better to suck a dick than to be fired and then loose your house and car because you can't anymore paid back the loan. This make the character pragmatic, not slutty.

Nothing aligns anymore. It’s clear that as long as we are designing our games with this premise in mind, we are setting ourselves up to do the impossible. As such, we need to reframe our promises to our players.

Yeah, you are clearly playing all those games wrongly, thinking only with your own lust, totally discarding the story, whatever how thin or deep can it be.
The player have no say here, no other goals than to be entertained. All the choices must be made from the protagonist point of view, something that, accordingly to your table, you clearly never considered as being a possibility.

The most glaring issue is the Heroine Player's obstacle. We have to design the heroine as a strong and smart individual, yet our players cannot use those advantages as it will stop them form reaching their goals.

As if it doesn't need a strong mind to accept to blow, or more, someone you don't care about, and not want to kill yourself after that. As if accepting to blow this person, in order to achieve a further goal unreachable otherwise, can't be a smart move when you've enough willingness for that.

Star Knightess Aura does this pretty well: if you acquire too much corruption too fast, you end up losing.

It isn't doing it right, it take count of people like you who don't understand what they are playing, and then put forced game over where other games only have implicit "what the fuck man".

With this simple change now your goal cannot simply be corruption.

What never was your goal. "How far would you be willing to go", this is your goal. Corruption is the goal of your libido, it's different.

There is a big rush of arousal when you see that choice of “Betray your loved one?” and you pick “Yes”.

No, there isn't. Or, to be more precise, there's one when, and only when, it make sense with the way I picture the protagonist at that time. What you're depicting here is netorare, not corruption.

I would go as far as to say it’s a trick we, as designers, should treasure because of its potency.

Please, never design a game...

No. Those choices are meaningless, fake. Might as well commit to it and remove the choices completely. [...]

It's you, as player, who make them meaningless. Those choices aren't their for you to systematically pick them. They are the constant temptation the protagonist is facing ; a temptation to which (s)he know that at some point (s)he'll have no other choice that to succumb to.
They are here to be ignored until the moment you feel, as the protagonist, that you can't refuse anymore without suffering from this refusal.

It's how female protagonist corruption games should be played, and how most of them make sense. But you play them like netorare games, and of course then it make less sense.

 

[zeboftw]

There's three categories of sexual corruption in adult gaming:

Right, this is why I started by defining what I consider corruption to be, which is only a third of what you consider corruption. I stated my definition so we don't waste time discussing games that do not fit the stated definition of corruption.

Your whole arguments are made with " Voluntary corruption" in mind, while my whole point was focused solely on "Forced corruption". The whole language I used is what befits the "forced corruption" definition. Where the party being corrupted clearly is opposed to it.

You shouldn't face choices with the perverted mind of the player, but with the struggling mind of the protagonist.

No. What you are describing is writing a story. We are making games, not books. The player is making decisions, not the characters themselves. This is why my whole point was about how we can make the players act more like the characters they are supposed to play.

Yeah, in "voluntary corruption" of course you only chose the corruption options when it makes sense to you. Why? Because that's what the games is all about. It literally tells you "This is the character you play as. They can be as corrupt or as pure as you want them to. Do whatever you want."

The problem only arises in "forced corruption". The player is told "The character you play as is completely opposed to anything corrupt. How do you help her avoid corruption?"

I'm tempted to say, stop playing with your dick, and starts playing with your mind.

We are here discussing adult games. Players come here, in part, for the adult content. Where is the adult content in a "forced corruption" game? On the corruption route. That means that is the route the players will go. Does the protagonist want to go down this road? No.

How do you fix this problem? That was all I wanted to discuss in this post. My intention was not to discuss whether exploring your sexuality is right or wrong, or whether rape or sexual abuse victims are sluts or unfortunate people who have been put in real criminal situations.

Please, never design a game...

Please, stop this whole personal attack. I thought this is a safe space, where people can discuss their favorite kinks in adult games without forgetting we are discussing fantasies.

 

[Tompte]

I think a lot of the problem comes from the choice being binary (become corrupted or not). It's also a false one, since the desired outcome relies on you choosing one over the other. That's fine if the scope of the game is small, but maybe not the most interesting.

I prefer training games that offer a few different paths to go down. That makes the choices more real. Slave maker 3 comes to mind. Even though that game revolves heavily around one stat (the slave's obedience), there are various sidetracks you can take to mold the slave in a few different ways, so it doesn't become too straight and narrow.

As for the player's POV, it can be dangerous to give too much agency to the player because they're inherent biased and, like you said, lacks the resilience or righteousness an NPC might have. Given the option, they're going to choose whichever puts their character in a sexy situation as fast as possible, regardless of narrative or character motivations.

Please, stop this whole personal attack. I thought this is a safe space, where people can discuss their favorite kinks in adult games without forgetting we are discussing fantasies.

This forum has a handy feature that lets you ignore individual members if you don't want to see or hear from them. Can recommend.

 

[xj47]

I think framing corruption as "evil" is over-simplifying it a bit, but I do agree that corruption tends to follow a narrative of making someone "lesser". This negative connotation is implied by the word itself. If something is gradually changing in a positive way people don't tend to call that corruption.
Whether someone considers the corrupted state to be bad in reality is a political & ideological question that I don't think is worth arguing about here.

I've thought about this disconnect with fem-protag games myself. The general dynamic is that:
- The porn content comes from the in-game character losing
- The in-game character does not want to lose
- The real-world player wants to role-play the in-game character
- BUT the real-world player also wants to see content

So the desire to role-play/win & desire to see-content/lose are at odds with each other.

In my opinion the main ways to resolve this are:
1. Add naive/plausible-stupidity choices. Choices that the player knows are bad but that the in-game character might choose, allowing the role playing to continue.
2. Introduce randomness so that even a player that tries to steer their in-game character correctly will occasionally see lewd content due to "bad" luck
3. Make the game hard enough that players will lose even when they are trying to win. The main challenge is that if the game's mechanics lack depth then it's hard to set a difficulty that straddles the line between trivial/boring & impossible. Still, a lot of games with good mechanics fuck this up and make the game too easy

 

[zeboftw]

I think a lot of the problem comes from the choice being binary (become corrupted or not).

Couldn't agree more. This is one of the two main solutions I found for fixing this issue. But this alone does not solve the problem that players are more likely to pick corruption choices. They will just have different "flavors" of corruption to choose from, which is definitely not bad, but it still does not solve the issue we both mentioned:

Given the option, they're going to choose whichever puts their character in a sexy situation as fast as possible, regardless of narrative or character motivations.

Agreed. It's even worse when you realize in most of these games, picking the corrupt choice gives you some kind of advantage over the "pure" choice. This is why I said we need to make the goal of the player not to get as much corruption as possible, but rather get the minimum amount necessary to get the sexy scenes without getting too much corruption.

This forum has a handy feature that lets you ignore individual members if you don't want to see or hear from them. Can recommend.

Good to know. I'm not gonna use it just yet. I've seen that person in other threads and I got a good feeling about them in general. I just hope they just had a bad day and couldn't keep a clear head in the discussion.

2. Introduce randomness so that even a player that tries to steer their in-game character correctly will occasionally see lewd content due to "bad" luck

Randomness is tricky. It can definitely have the effect you described but it can just as easily make the mechanics feel tedious or unfair. Imagine playing a game of chess, thinking about every possible way to counter your opponent just to lose to some RNG. That would be frustrating.

The same happens with randomness in story. If I randomly get put on a route I do not want to see, it's frustrating. If I get to see the events I want to see by pure randomness, I'll have to replay the game many times to see all those scenes, which is tedious.

Randomness can solve the issue if you fully embrace it. Hearthstone is all about luck but it makes the game more fun. In the same way, if every run of your game you see a different story, then it actually becomes fun.

3. Make the game hard enough that players will lose even when they are trying to win.

Totally agreed. All of the adult games I've played have a problem with difficulty. It's either grindy or easy. I don't think all games should be as hard as Dark Souls, but fundamentally games are about beating a challenge. So players should feel challenged to get the heroine to become corrupt, even when they are playing from her perspective.

 

[AlexFenec]

Two games that come to my mind are Going Deeper and WTM Academy.

In Delve Deeper, when I played it the corruption was always a bad thing since it reduces your stats. At the end of each level you are also given a choice between gaining an amount of corruption that depends on your performance or gaining a random Curse with a negative effect. There's a few more details to it, It's a complex system but it makes corruption both negative and inevitable.
Fortunately the game is built to be replayed. My first playtrough ended with a win with few curses and not much corruption. You can then play it again and test being less pure, see how much corruption you can accept before it snowballs out of control.
Most scenes happen when a character is in a losing situation against a monster. The mechanics push you towards minimal corruption and the lewd rewards require you to take risks, you are not encouraged to corrupt the characters as much as possible.

In WTM Academy you do want to corrupt your target, but you have to do so slowly or they will leave your grasp early. Here you gain benefits from corruption but the mechanics still punish you if you go too fast.

Both these games stand out as mechanics-based corruption games. There is no fixed corruption path for each character, their corruption comes from emergent gameplay, from the game mechanics.

 

[anne O'nymous]

I stated my definition so we don't waste time discussing games that do not fit the stated definition of corruption.

You also said that "[you] would be more than happy to hear other opinions on these topics"... But well...

 

[xj47]

Randomness is tricky. It can definitely have the effect you described but it can just as easily make the mechanics feel tedious or unfair. Imagine playing a game of chess, thinking about every possible way to counter your opponent just to lose to some RNG. That would be frustrating.

The same happens with randomness in story. If I randomly get put on a route I do not want to see, it's frustrating. If I get to see the events I want to see by pure randomness, I'll have to replay the game many times to see all those scenes, which is tedious.

Randomness can solve the issue if you fully embrace it. Hearthstone is all about luck but it makes the game more fun. In the same way, if every run of your game you see a different story, then it actually becomes fun.

With randomness it also depends on the kind of consequences. It's best paired with a game where the player can take gradual "damage" rather than getting locked into a particular path.

Take for example some generic RPG thing with game-over rape where the femc needs to defeat some boss to proceed. If a player that tries to win has a 25% chance of losing anyway and getting the game-over sequence then that's kind of lame.
On the other hand, if you have a game with battle-fuck mechanics, then that 25% chance to lose can instead become: You win but your character gets molested a bit in the battle and maybe gets some negative long-term points that need to be dealt with.

 

[NRFB]

Two games that come to my mind are Going Deeper

In Delve Deeper, when I played it the corruption was always a bad thing since it reduces your stats. At the end of each level you are also given a choice between gaining an amount of corruption that depends on your performance or gaining a random Curse with a negative effect. There's a few more details to it, It's a complex system but it makes corruption both negative and inevitable.
Fortunately the game is built to be replayed. My first playtrough ended with a win with few curses and not much corruption. You can then play it again and test being less pure, see how much corruption you can accept before it snowballs out of control.
Most scenes happen when a character is in a losing situation against a monster. The mechanics push you towards minimal corruption and the lewd rewards require you to take risks, you are not encouraged to corrupt the characters as much as possible

Some powerful skills also intentionally scale off of corruption, and now monsters that can do sex with the characters take more damage from characters that have higher corruption as well.
Also the game is in a state where long term narrative consequences/options that may come about from larger amounts of corruption don't yet exist (because alpha). But yes, corruption is negative and inevitable for both gameplay and narrative reasons. There is even some amount of dynamic difficulty built in where the level generation increases how threatening the obstacles in the dungeon are if you're taking less corruption damage than it would expect (based on some behind the scenes math).
Even with this though, in general the game is easier than intended. That's partially fine though. Balance around this sort of thing is difficult and there's still more dimensions to the problem of corruption to be introduced.

And yes, I do periodically do a full forum search for "going deeper", what of it?

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Just jumping on, and this looks like a fun one!

First, I'll applaud you, for being a corruption game coinsure, and sharing your insight. I will say that I think a lot of these issues come from the fact that most people don't think too deeply about it. the few people who do are either those who enjoy vast quantity of the media, such as yourself, or those who's profession gives them the time to study such things. I hold myself to a high standard, and I've dropped many projects because after planning them, in the end/big picture, there is either something fundamentally wrong, or fundamentally something not worth my time and effort.

the short and sweet of it is that: why make a game of good vs bad, when the whole genre is about doing bad?

If we know this is the root issue (or other root issue for other types of games), we can design or pick other game ideas.

the other side of the coin is, identifying why people enjoy the game, what is the true heart of the experience?

I'll accept your definition for corruption games, at least in terms of what they do, what happens in a corruption game, make a character do more 'bad/immoral' things. I'll add the nuance/caveat that we each enjoy corruption for different reason, so our definition for what is a 'good' corruption game is may vary, depending on what thinks we prefer or focus on.

for example

We are looking for the fantasy of watching someone slowly compromise more and more of their ideals, becoming what they once detested.

I think is a good definition for a trainer type game, where the emphasis is 1 making a character you like become lewd and slutty and like the MC and 2 becoming what they detest, the struggle and the journey it takes as a part of character growth. I'd say for most trainer games, things work out just fine. That's because as a trainer game, where you do bad things to a focus character, there may be little to no choice other than being a bit nice about it. There is even less ambiguity about the game's morality if the game is written such that its the world environment and not just the player driving such lewd experiences (ie lewd monsters or something).

However, this example my be a cop out answer. These kinds of games only work for those who like to watch a character in situations, this doesn't work for some of your other examples, where the player is the corruptor. Maybe those who prefer being the corruptor enjoy it because its is more one on one, more intimate, like two enemies becoming lovers. In this case, what I think is tricky, or the hardest thing that will be needed for the genre to improve, is that this case and some of your other examples, I feel like the limiting factor is the creator's limitation to world build, character build, character writing, and just general writing skills.



Something you said was interesting, and i think another sub-genre of corruption is:

The heroine thinks it’s getting her closer to her goal of resistance, but really it’s slowly pushing her into the corruption pit we were aiming for from the start.

reminds me of the anime, Shield Hero, a weak hero with an OP power, but the power may corrupt them. So they constantly have to play a balancing act, trying to avoid becoming reliant on the OP power and causing their downfall (ie letting the power of anger consume the shield hero), or finding ways to not be reliant on the power, allies, new powers, etc. If the player is the corruptor, then it would be about encouraging the hero to make the heroine dependent on the power and fall.

This is fine and great for interesting 'story telling' but as a game with player choices, as you have emphasized in your response to Anne, and commented on in your recent reply, it doesn't work when players have the choice. What may help, sort of making it less binary, is I would say, make things more abstract. I don't mean make it harder to tell what choice = which result, that's just frustrating game play. I mean, choices that only indirectly impact things. say for example, Superhuman is pretty good. It is a corruption game, loosely, but most wouldn't think of it or play it for that reason. ie mc is male, and as he gets more powerful and interacts with characters, he forms relationships, its normal/natural and no the 'forced' type that you are focusing on. but in it, you decide on what the character focuses on or trains on or how they spend their free time. You can doo something similar for the heroine, where they need to get stronger, and if you fail a role check, the heroine is forced to use the OP power to progress in a story mission (IE heroine agility < fast villain's death punch = use corrupt power to survive). the player wouldn't directly say 'use corrupt power.'

this would still have the issue, since the player knows meta information, ie they know this is a game and they know its a corruption game, and if they understand the game's design, they could easily not train and thus force the character to be corrupted by relying on the power... but I feel like most may not enjoy this since it essentially becomes a linear story, not a game.



So in this case, maybe the question we need to answer is, how to we make a corruption game fun and interesting, typically through character choice, in a way that fits the corruption format (why choose 'good' in a 'bad' game?). Again, I would suggest taking the corruption out of the player's control, either have it be the world corrupting the character of interest, or make it so that the player is playing a cool characters (ie the witcher format).

but if the player isn't controlling the corruption, then its like the trainer game cop out, it may be labeled as corruption (I hate games with +10 tags, I just want a game with 2 or 3 focus tags), but may not have what people want or would think of as a true corruption game. So in that case, transform the question again, how can players control the corruption that happens? They don't need to decide yes/no corrupt, they just need to control it in some way that is fun and meaningful (ie a trainer game can have you make a girl your lover, a public slut, mind broken, a butt focused slut vs a bj slut, emo vs bimbo, etc.) but maybe those aren't the kind of choices players want. But if we aren't worried about the long term results, just using corrupt choices, then it would be as simple as, use corrupt power A, B and C for scene X, just seeing the different actions is fun, but in the context of A B C, is it really corruption if it happens passively, not really under the player's control? This may be a case where a good definition for corruption is having the victim fight the player, resist the player, at as I'll mention in my last paragraph, this is a niche or focus I haven't explored yet.

as I mentioned, the best definition for corruption depends on the different reasons we enjoy corruption. We may not be able to outline all possible versions of corruption or niche focus, but what may help is to pair a particular type of corruption with having your game focus on another key fantasy. such as, the power fantasy. the power fantasy is a bit broad, and it can be broken down in two ways.

there is the op character, vs the character that becomes op in the end
and there are the 3 types of MC characters: being the mc is the fantasy (the witcher story format, only works for famous characters, such as pretending to be batman), the mc is the player's partner (A character with personality, the uncharted, or the last of us writing format, CoD falls in this as well a little bit), and the blank player avatar (the Skyrim format (a character with no personality), such as Gordan freeman, never talks, no personality). Superhuman uses the second type, an interesting MC with their own personality.



I'm still figuring this out, since my focus is on girls getting corrupted by the world (girls who over time grow and mature as we learn more about them), I haven't figured out what to do with the MC or other reasons people play corruption in general since I prefer to focus on a particular niche of corruption. but my suggestion is trying to identify what things are the game devs focusing on, what are the major things inspiring them. Or, what are the main things you, or the players you want to focus on, enjoy that often works with corruption? I feel like the discussion would bottle neck until we can develop these sort of alternative ways of breaking down the problem. I have a lot of my own notes on such topics as these, and its why I appreciate discussion posts like yours, but knowing my own notes, these kinds of topics balloon out into many sub notes as we explore different rabbit trails figuring out how to break down the project into different perspectives. But as I just mentioned, unless we start exploring developing these sort of mental toolsets to break down the problem and find niches in the different focuses of various Corruption sub-genres, the conversation will bottle neck to the limitation of 'skill issue' (ie writing or game design). Breaking down corruption games will provide a technical outline for what it takes to pass or 'be good.' But I've given up such discussions since it seems like abstract thinking is a skill set that most try to avoid.

 

[zeboftw]

I will say that I think a lot of these issues come from the fact that most people don't think too deeply about it.

I wouldn't blame the players completely for this one. I mean, when I play Elden Ring, I want to scour every part of the map to see what it hides. But when I played The Witcher 3, I pretty much never explored outside the main storyline simply because there was no fun in that. The mechanics were boring so I had no interest in engaging with them.

if they understand the game's design, they could easily not train and thus force the character to be corrupted by relying on the power...

Exactly. This is the fundamental problem of this genre. You are always rewarded for picking the corrupt choice. We are making video games. Beating the game and reaching your goal should be challenging. What challenge is keeping the player back from just picking the corrupt choice?

They don't need to decide yes/no corrupt, they just need to control it in some way that is fun and meaningful

This is one of the points I want to expand upon in my future posts. While researching branching narratives and player agency in games, one important thing I learned is that the end result is not as important as the journey. It is much more fun to witness corruption as a consequence of your actions than simply choosing "Yes, I want to see the corruption scene".

but what may help is to pair a particular type of corruption with having your game focus on another key fantasy.

Agreed. This applies in general to any story. If you focus too much on one thing, it gets boring. If your whole premise of your story is "Have sex with busty elf", there's not much you can expand on it... You can only have so many sexy scenes before it gets boring. But if your premise is "Escape from an ancient labyrinth along with a busty elf", now all of a sudden you can have so many interesting scenarios happen, both sexy or just normal plot.

these kinds of topics balloon out into many sub notes as we explore different rabbit trails figuring out how to break down the project into different perspectives. But as I just mentioned, unless we start exploring developing these sort of mental toolsets to break down the problem and find niches in the different focuses of various Corruption sub-genres, the conversation will bottle neck to the limitation of 'skill issue'

This is what I hope to achieve with this series of posts. Not some Bible of "How to make a corruption game" but put out there some guidelines that people can use to improve their own creations. Saying a game is bad because of "skill issue" is the most frustrating thing ever. It tells you nothing about how you can improve or what your focus should be. Maybe if we think more analytically about those games, we will be able to come to a closer understanding of what makes them fun.

 

[zeboftw]

There is even some amount of dynamic difficulty built in where the level generation increases how threatening the obstacles in the dungeon are if you're taking less corruption damage than it would expect (based on some behind the scenes math).

Damn, hats off to you. That's a very smart way to approach balancing.

 

[Saki_Sliz]

Spoiler: Context: 2 character types

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Spoiler: Find different means of differentiating sub-genres

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Spoiler: The Ego Mechanic

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