Why do so many games force you to have Anal

Geralt_R

Geralt_R

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In my opinion the general issue is that of agency. I generally dislike it when a character I play in a game does things I don't want to do. It's not always a dealbreaker, I avoid certain genres altogether, but I think games, no matter what genre, would greatly benefit from giving players more agency and more choices, unless a certain game has it as its central theme (then you just don't download it if you don't like it, like NTR etc).

And again, saying "just don't download anything with certain tags"... would mean that otherwise completely wholesome games like "Life of Mary" or so would need to be avoided. And there aren't that many games that have good solo routes - that I know of, I don't have the time to browse thousands of games, I just look at what's popular and/or has high user ratings.

I am actually a bit surprised that quite a few people are apparently opposed to giving players more agency and choice. I can understand the dev's perspective, but as I said before, providing flags via dialogue or menu that will entirely skip certain scenes (even if that means no sex scene at all in certain chapters) is super easy to implement. And everyone would have a choice to say "I am ok with fewer sex scenes" or "gimme all there is".

And about AAA titles.... there is a reason Nexus Mods exists. Quite a few people love customization and modding.

But I guess speed pressing spacebar it is then ;)
 
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woody554

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Clitennestra said:
I have no clue. For example I despise BDSM but for some reason people think it is "deep and profound spiritual" and they do BDSM with some sort of intellectual posturing attitude that always makes me lose my temper. Of course if you join BDSM spaces hoping to get pussy you are kicked out "becuase you just want pussy" instead BDSM people are all "deep spiritual and intellectual" and they interpret their roleplay as some sort of bullshit for intellectuals
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that's not it. it's that they have a kink they're into, and letting in people who don't get the kink but instead want vanilla sex in leather or something forces vanilla on them. it's not that there's anything wrong with vanilla, but they're there specifically for the other stuff. the stuff the vanilla person doesn't get. like getting spanked until orgasm or getting their nuts stomped in a gimp mask. they're not looking for the intercourse the vanilla tourist is looking for. and even when there's intercourse, it's about the other stuff.
 
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woody554

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Geralt_R said:
but as I said before, providing flags via dialogue or menu that will entirely skip certain scenes (even if that means no sex scene at all in certain chapters) is super easy to implement.
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it's not impossible of course. but in a standard renpy game you'll already have hundreds or thousands of flags you need to somehow manage to not allow weird results with players doing things you never expected. so adding a family of new flags (just one is never enough) is always one more layer of complications.

it gets just so incredibly complicated, and a lot of that's caused by how renpy is designed. it's more or less like coding in assembler. isolating things is incredibly messy, so the average dev just doesn't.
 
Porthas

Porthas

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Deepthroatme said:
for those of you to young to know 500 years ago you would have been hung for it, 250 years ago you would have been deported to Australia, 50 years ago sent to prison, now it's legal. I hope to fuck I'm dead before they make it compulsory
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To answer the title of your thread instead of, well the post itself, I'm not sure why so many "force" you to have anal. In fact, there are quite a few who kinda act like anal is some sort of prize or better than vaginal sex in some way.

I don't get it. I'm not interested in it. I'm not opposed to it being in games, but I'd prefer it be strictly optional.
 
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chucklefuckarbys

chucklefuckarbys

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Deepthroatme said:
for those of you to young to know 500 years ago you would have been hung for it, 250 years ago you would have been deported to Australia, 50 years ago sent to prison, now it's legal. I hope to fuck I'm dead before they make it compulsory
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Fun fact, "Deepthroatme"! In Ancient Roman society, oral sex was considered far more taboo than vaginal or anal sex—It was thought to be the most humiliating thing for a man or woman to do, and was said to give extremely noxious, even toxic, bad breath.

An appeal to tradition is a poor argument. 500 years ago, you also would have been hanged (not "hung") for being gay, or Jewish, or being a "witch." Sexual standards change, and that's a good thing—what you consider "filthy" might be titillating to someone else. What matters is that it's safe, sane, and consensual.

Furthermore: you can literally just filter the "anal sex" tag. It's not hard.
 
chucklefuckarbys

chucklefuckarbys

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Jul 29, 2019
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Geralt_R said:
In my opinion the general issue is that of agency. I generally dislike it when a character I play in a game does things I don't want to do. It's not always a dealbreaker, I avoid certain genres altogether, but I think games, no matter what genre, would greatly benefit from giving players more agency and more choices, unless a certain game has it as its central theme (then you just don't download it if you don't like it, like NTR etc).

And again, saying "just don't download anything with certain tags"... would mean that otherwise completely wholesome games like "Life of Mary" or so would need to be avoided. And there aren't that many games that have good solo routes - that I know of, I don't have the time to browse thousands of games, I just look at what's popular and/or has high user ratings.

I am actually a bit surprised that quite a few people are apparently opposed to giving players more agency and choice. I can understand the dev's perspective, but as I said before, providing flags via dialogue or menu that will entirely skip certain scenes (even if that means no sex scene at all in certain chapters) is super easy to implement. And everyone would have a choice to say "I am ok with fewer sex scenes" or "gimme all there is".

And about AAA titles.... there is a reason Nexus Mods exists. Quite a few people love customization and modding.

But I guess speed pressing spacebar it is then ;)
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I think that this is a reasonable perspective. Rick and Morty: Another Way Home does the "make all scenes optional" thing really well. However, I think it might be more difficult for games that follow less of a "kinetic novel" format, or games that want to communicate story information through H-scenes. H-games, after all, are still art, just as much as any other game is art.

This debate has a lot of similarities to the one in wider gaming circles over
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. Ultimately, it's the same concept—how much should art be compromised in order to allow people to avoid content that would make them uncomfortable? I know the term "trigger warning" is usually the butt of jokes these days, but it comes from the concept in the psychology field of an experience "triggering" PTSD flashbacks. The same idea is relevant to sex games, in particular ones that have content which could dredge up trauma for victims of sexual assault.
 
Porthas

Porthas

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Feb 26, 2021
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chucklefuckarbys said:
Furthermore: you can literally just filter the "anal sex" tag. It's not hard.
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Kinda pointless, since the anal sex may just be an optional feature. Tags really don't allow for much nuance, which is why people should hopefully get a good dev who puts more info in the dev notes.
 
Geralt_R

Geralt_R

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chucklefuckarbys said:
The same idea is relevant to sex games, in particular ones that have content which could dredge up trauma for victims of sexual assault.
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For me it's not about trauma etc. but consent. I don't find it traumatizing, I just don't care for it at all and I really don't like it when things I don't like are forced on me, the player.
Of course it's nigh impossible for a dev to write an MC that will never do things you, the player, don't want to do, but sex is, usually, a very intimate thing and when something you (the player) don't consent to happens in a sex scene it just feels wrong and off. That is entirely different (for me) than scenes that depict violence or brutality or when the MC does something stupid (without a choice to prevent it) so the plot can keep going. That is just plot. You may say "don't open that door, idiot!", and the MC opens it anyway because the story demands it... but that is very different from something happening during sex you don't like.

In most VNs you usually do have choice, often you can pick love interests, you can - many times - decide if you want to get more intimate with any given character or not. But then removing that choice when it comes to intimate acts is what I am talking about. It just feels wrong. The game lets me decide whom to pursue, the game even lets me decide if the MC wants to have sex... and then when the sex happens... zero choice and things happen I really don't care for at all.

And I mostly talk about games that are otherwise more or less of the "wholesome" or vanilla variety. Not games that are about certain kinks to begin with. And the thing that I just find odd is that quite a few games have mandatory unavoidable anal sex at one point... only to make it entirely optional after that (played several games like that). That is just weird. Of course I don't know the development history, whether or not the dev received feedback from players and based on that made it optional in later releases.
 
morphnet

morphnet

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Aug 3, 2017
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Deepthroatme said:
for those of you to young to know 500 years ago you would have been hung for it, 250 years ago you would have been deported to Australia, 50 years ago sent to prison, now it's legal. I hope to fuck I'm dead before they make it compulsory
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So.... anal was illegal and concentration camps, murdering civilians and hiring murders in war time was legal..... not sure that is the moral high ground you thought it was.....:rolleyes:
 
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Wolf Larsen

Wolf Larsen

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Feb 25, 2018
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Porthas said:
To answer the title of your thread instead of, well the post itself, I'm not sure why so many "force" you to have anal. In fact, there are quite a few who kinda act like anal is some sort of prize or better than vaginal sex in some way.

I don't get it. I'm not interested in it. I'm not opposed to it being in games, but I'd prefer it be strictly optional.
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I'm on the same page. I don't have strong feelings against it, to the point that is a deal-breaker for me (like NTR and gay content is for example), but yeah, I prefer vaginal sex a hundred times, so it's a bit "alienating" for me when so many games treat anal as the ultimate goal or a prize.

I do understand why though. I conquered this pussy, now I'm conquering this ass, which is more difficult to conquer. So I do understand the mentality, but I simply don't share it. I don't need to fuck an ass when I can fuck a pussy.
 
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fyl3toys

fyl3toys

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Dec 24, 2021
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In all seriousness I think most of us here understand what you are saying. That there are people who don't like anal and would like the option to skip that content.

However you seem to gloss over an important point. You choose to take a chance on a game that has the anal tag in case the option is there to avoid it. That's on you.

Most of the advice given to a new developer making a game states that he or she should only work on the fetishes they like and are familiar with. 'Make the game that you want to make'. To spend an enormous amount of time making a fetish appear in your game, and then to throw it aside on the off chance that someone interested in your game doesn't like all the tags you included....just doesn't make sense. The tags are there for a reason.

You could argue that developers should try to appeal to a wider audience, but I imagine most developers would lack the passion to work on a vanilla game. It takes a lot of passion and dedication to make these games. Watering down a game in the name of universal appeal sounds like a recipe for disaster. That would only lead to more games getting abandoned, and we have enough of those already.
 
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Silentdeath8

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Nov 3, 2017
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fyl3toys said:
The tags are there for a reason.
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Imo the tag are here to tell you what you can expect/see in a game, but never be forcefull/unavoided...
forcing to play anal (or another kinks) each time you encounter a LI (in case of multi-LI) or in each game as 1st sex scene is not good...

Similary, why we can't have a true Rape kink or a true bad guy without getting either a "Game Over" or the MC who turn 360° after, even when the according tag is here ? why the need to make the MC feel bad after being bad ?
 
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