Just to make it clear I don't agree with Patreon's ban, but I can see why they'd have issue with a game like Dreaming of Dana and not Game of Thrones. You seem to think that Patreon should not see a difference between the two, regardless of sex, because stories are stories, art is art, games are games, etc., and ought to treated as such, without sex, incest, etc. being a focus.
No. I say that, whatever they want to see adult content as a simple opposition between "art with adult content" and "none art with adult content", they shouldn't consider that everything falling into the "none art" category are the same and that they can look at them in the same way. This simply because it's a none sense.
To be good, a "porn" book must feed your imagination, while a "porn" movie must feed your primal sexual instinct. They are two different things and works in two different ways. So they also need to be judged according to two different kinds of criteria. And it's the same whatever it's a book, a movie, some audio track, a game, a live show, an educational content or whatever else can be possibly seen as "porn". In fact, I will even go further, the definition of "pornography" is completely dependent to the support of the content.
If it's a book, just writing about the intercourse itself and making more than generic description of the body, make it pornographic. Note, by "writing about the intercourse", I obviously don't refer to sentence like, "they had torrid sex", it need to be a little more specific.
But a movie like Top Gun, which have a torrid (at least in my memory) sex scene, isn't a porn movie. Depicting this scene in a book would have make it pornographic, but showing it in a movie isn't enough. Same for a lot of movies with (full or not) frontal nudity in them. They can be R-rated, but they'll not be XXX-rated. To be seen as pornographic, a movie must not only show the genitalia and the act, but it must also show the genitalia during the act.
This said, in the same time an educational movie can show the genitalia during the act, and still not be pornographic. Same for an educational book with detailed depiction of a human body. So it's not only the support which must be take in count. The intend and purpose also change the way the content must be judged.
And so, what about games ?
By nature they are way more statics than a movie. What can work for an eroticism or regular movie, two people laying naked in a bed in what seem to be missionary position, can't works in a game. In the movie you've what miss in a game, the motion. Two/three frames can't depict an intercourse with such a scene. Are they having sex ? Or perhaps an agitated sleep ? Oh, no, I know, they share the same nightmare, is it that ?
While a movie have the help of the motion and sound to depict the scene, a game rely on the (almost) sole static visual. Because of this, even softcore games needs to be more explicit. But, is the fact that they look more like a pornographic movie, enough to make them pornographic games ? To me the answer is clearly: no.
There's a difference between the average indie porn game and the "fuck her like you want, all in PoV" games made by the porn industry. And it's not in the fact that the latter use live characters, but in the intend and purpose of the game. In indie games, sex is a part of the story, whatever it's a good or a bad one, but the main purpose is still the game. There's a story playing in front of you, and you are part of it since you take some decision which influence the way both the story and the game progress.
At the opposite, in games from the porn industry, sex is the only purpose, while the game is just a pretext. You have only one choice, "how to fuck her now". In the end, you don't just see the difference will playing the game, you also feel it. You'll close the game and say that you had a good fap, not that you enjoyed playing this game.
They clearly are two different kind of games, despite the fact that they both talk about sex and show a lot of sex scenes. So, unlike Patreon, and apparently also you, seem to think, you can't just define pornography in a global way. You need to separate not only the supports (book, movie, game, whatever) and have separated criteria according to them, but you also need to separate the purpose/intend and yet have separated criteria according to them.
You seem to be saying that porn is also something else (art, literature, game), and that something else should makes Patreon's ban unjustified.
It is
always something else since pornography isn't a thing by itself but just a genre. As well as you have polar or SF movies/books/games, you have pornographic movies/books/games. So, like I said, you simply can't use the same definition of pornography to judge them all.
In a way, the problem is that the sentence, "I know porn when I see it" (and so qualifying something as pornographic), can only works when you know what you talk about. Puritans from the Victorian era would say that eroticism movies are pornographic... until they show their first porn movie and say, "no, in fact it's THIS which is pornography, the previous ones were just pervert".
And it's the same for "porn" games. If you only know games like the ones Winged Cloud make, you'll say that they are kind of pornographic. Then you play any average western "porn" game and say that, in fact, it's them which are pornographic, while Winged Cloud make eroticism games. Then you play some fucked asian games and change once again.
And it continue until you've seen all the different kinds of "porn" games. Just because now you have a better understanding of how things can be depicted in this particular support and how the intend and purpose are rendered.
I hope I've made my thoughts clear, whether we agree or not, I appreciate discussing this.
Same here. This said, I'm not sure that we still are on the initial intend of this thread.
