So I enjoyed BDO. Had a sense of humor, some hot sex, and even good spelling. And yet I found that even though I enjoyed the SSS (For our younger viewers, an SSS -- or Steamy Sex Scene -- is an entire sexual encounter from first kiss to last orgasm, while just "scene" can mean a single turn w/in a SSS, and "cut scene" is a one-turn description of a whole SSS. If that's not too confusing :), by the time I got to the fourth or fifth chick, I was kind of dreading "getting through" the sex scene. What we might call "Fornication Fatigue", or FF for short.
I'm not blaming Loops here, just using some examples from that game since I just finished it. FF has actually happened to me in quite a few games. And those things in his game that I didn't like are repeated in lots of games (and BDO got me plenty warm). So I thought a bit about what makes FF happen, and how it could be alleviated. The bad news is, I think it stems in part from limitations of the AIF medium. But maybe there are workarounds.
[Insert insincere apologies for my verbosity here.]
Thought 1: A good way to alleviate fatigue is to make every encounter unique. See WAIF or the current "What do you want in AIF" thread for suggestions on that. Basically, make your characters interesting and varied (not just a set of horny women with different colored hair, each missing a trinket), make the situations varied and interesting (plot, character motivation, etc.), make the sexual locations interesting and varied (not a bunch of identical bedrooms), and maybe even make the sex interesting and varied (via toys, positions, props like BDO's mirror, threesomes, voyeurism &c.)
I would also argue that having more than 6 or 7 NPCs in one game, it may be hard to (a) devote enough time and (b) have enough new ideas to make each scene unique. I'll go for three or four really great characters instead, even if it means we can't have every combination of hair color, eye color, and breast size. And note that having multiple interactions with one NPC can (in addition to its other benefits) still give you added variety without requiring you to think up a whole new character.
Another thing to vary is descs, aka the text you write when the player does something or looks at something:
1a) Make descs very short for some foreplay, e.g. Don't rack your brain coming up with something a page long. The PC is only rubbing her breasts in order to get her pants off, so only give him a one-line desc. Focus on sex. Unless the foreplay's more exciting for some reason (or there's no sex in the scene).
1b) Focus on an NPCs best asset(s) for longer descs. UNfocus on the rest. Think about the lavish detail NewKid gives to various ladies' breasts, while another body part is sometimes nothing but a "tringle [sic] of delight". That's naturally going to lead the player to focus on certain body parts during the scene. You can do the same thing with descs of actions.
1c) Epithet suggested once that, unlike most AIF games, an action desc doesn't need to describe the action itself or the direct object in detail. A dumb example: > Rub breasts They feel awesome as you run your hands over them.
Or even: > Rub breasts Kendra says, "Wow, they're so sensitive. Do that again!"
BDO did this sometimes. This slightly alleviates the unnaturalness of the "Type an action; read a description of doing that action" interface by changing it to, "Type an action; assume that the PC did that and talk about the action's effects.". As such it can make the writing a bit more realistic (although it might get stilted if overused). At the same time, it allows the author much more variety in writing style. (Think about how much in (A)IF is a clinical description of carrying out the action that the player commanded.) The IF interface is actually a plus here: the player already knows what action he's going to undertake, at least in a vague way, since he just typed it.
1d) Use the room, props, or clothes to make each encounter's descs quite different (e.g., BDO mirror and many others). See WAIF for more examples.
--------- Problem 2: It takes an awful lot of turns to get the NPC sufficiently hot via foreplay to actually get to the sex, and finally actually have the sex with every so-called "tab-in-slot" combination.
Thought 2: Actually have less sex per scene (but possibly with more scenes!) There's a ton of ways to do this. Here's a few I thought of.
2a) Skip the foreplay! Minimize sexual prerequisites in almost all SSSs. Sure, the mousy 30 year-old virgin librarian will have to be hugged & kissed for a while before she'll let you take off her blouse, and each "point" after that will take a while. But probably your wife -- or a prostitute, or a woman who's outrageously aroused by the fact that you gave her the pen she lost, or an NPC who got heated up in a previous flirting but no-sex scene -- won't insist on doing every kind of foreplay before getting to the sex. If the NPC is really excited for some reason, she can even push the encounter forward, which makes her a more interesting character too.
Note that some of the best sex stories involve lots of verbal or visual flirting followed by almost no foreplay & quick sex. Recall especially that at least right now, most AIF players are men, who're steretypically more into that kind of SSS anyway. And another benefit of few prerequisites: If a PC can take pretty much any path to sex, then the player will pick the descs he likes.
2b) Stop the scene after the PC's first orgasm (via a plot mechanism). Or stop it even before that by splitting a scene in 2 or more. BDO anti-example: your wife is I would think the *least* likely to be swept away by your marvelous looks and foreplay. Why not have some foreplay, & then she says, "I have to go to work!" and leaves. Whets the player's appetite, but gets the game rolling by leaving him wanting more.
2c) Reduce sexual variety (in a particular SSS) by having the NPC not be into some things. Lots of games allow anal sex in very limited situations. Same for titfuck. You could use it for oral too (though you might have a player rebellion for that one!)
2d) Use the environment to reduce the possibilities. Classic example would be a restaurant, where you could have hand jobs & maybe oral under the tablecloth, but nothing else. See WAIF.
An author could use these methods to make sex scenes at the beginning of the game pretty short, & then have longer & more gratifying ones at the end. OR make scenes long at the beginning, and then make them shorter at the end when the player just wants to get to the (longest scene, the) NHBFF. Whatever works.
There's also a couple AIF user interface issues:
2e) FF is a major argument against the "points" arousal method used in Moist, BDO, and some other games. IMO, the minor amount of realism you get from using points pales next to the reduced playability. Does anyone find it arousing reading the same desc eight times, no matter how good the resulting orgasm desc? Repeating the commands enough times to let both the PC & the NPC orgasm, well, it's just not worth it. And if you're unlucky enough to be playing an Adrift game with a 1/2 - 1 second interval between each turn...
2f) Not to mention the "You must be erect to do that" thing. Can't we just agree that any man living through what these games put you through would be erect pretty much the whole day/evening/whatever? And if you really want the realism of needing to get re-erect after orgasm, are you going to add the (at least) twenty minute wait, too? How about the total number of orgasms the average man can have in one day? I didn't think so. Can't we find other parts of the game to make more realistic?
Thought 2 and a half: This is a tough problem. CJCole's "show" verb might be neat, but would we really expect every NPC we encounter to want to show off her bodyparts while in a sexual encounter? And even if they would, are we creative enough to write descs for all of them? 2.5a) Instructions can mention that not all things work with each NPC 2.5b) Creative disavow writing. 2.5c) Creative use of plot/character to make it obvious to the player that Willemina the stripper might dance for you, while Fee might massage you. Then the player wouldn't *expect* the same verbs to work for all NPCs. 2.5d) Suck it up.
Thought 3: Reduce the number of clothes you start out with, or make the removal happen faster. Possibilities:
3a) (PC or NPC) Removal as part of a foreplay action. I'm told that in RL, people are sometimes kissing one thing while removing another, say. Including that in your desc not only makes stripping happen faster, but it also gives you lots more leeway in your writing. I.e., instead of finding the gazillionth way to write about how great rubbing legs feels, you can write about how you rub her legs & take her stockings off while you're at it. Or have *her* take them off as a result of the rubbing, and then she becomes a more independent (& thus real) character.
3b) PC/NPC striptease as part of plot. A number of people have done this. This solves the many-turns problem while giving you the chance to write a nice long (or short!) cut scene and have it happen in exactly the super-erotic order you imagined. And it does it without breaking mimesis!
3c) PC clothing removal is usually given short shrift in games. Perhaps because you & I do that all the time in non-sexy situations. So having a "strip myself" command is probably a good idea. (Make sure to debug the implementation though!) You can have scenes where the PC clothing removal is helped along by the NPC to make it more interesting, too.
3d) It might not hurt to have an optional "strip NPC" command that removes all her remaining clothes. Good either if the particular player isn't into the clothing removal, or if they're really excited & want to get to the sex, or if they're replaying the game & don't want to re-see the stripping part.
3e) Start with fewer clothes. Elementary! I don't know why more people don't do this. Nearly every game seems to have nearly every NPC wearing at least four pieces of clothing. Sure, removal is fun, but not necessary for every NPC, is it? Why not have the NPC in a bathing suit, robe, shower, hot tub, skinny dipping, pajamas? Or she's partly or totally unclothed because she's caught while changing clothes, a (mostly) naked prisoner, spilled coffee, got wet in the rain, got a run in her stockings, is in a wet T contest? Many of these are cliches, but that's cuz they work. And they haven't been done in all that many games, I think. And even if they're cliches, probably a lot of these could be done more realistically than clothing each character in 7 inch heels, lacy lingerie & a miniskirt & tanktop. BDO's Cathy is a perfect opportunity for starting mostly naked. And would be a not bad jumpstart to a game, wouldn't you think?
Thought 4: Avoid the "one puzzle, one SSS" paradigm.
4a) Multiple locations or scenes with the same NPC is an obvious way to do this. The payoff when you finally get to go all the way is heightened, too. (This doesn't have to be only for the "final NPC", although you usually do want to give the player some opportunity for actual sex before the NHBFF.)
4b) Make puzzles involve sex stuff. When the sex happens during the puzzle, or as a direct result of solving the puzzle, rather than a reward for the puzzle, I think that alleviates the problem.
4c) Use mini-sex scenes. E.g., a voy scene, a cut scene involving just foreplay or actual sex (No reason a full but quick sexual encounter can't happen in one cut scene, even though in the rest of the game the SSSs take 20 or 50 turns.)
4a-c are part of my belief that you want to have sex throughout the game, not just in little isolated scenes. Think Motown's "wall of sound". (Ok, dumb metaphor.) My point is, that keeps up the sexual energy level throughout, rather than cycling up & down in different parts of the game. It's the exact opposite of the type of game where it's possible to play all the way through with no sex scenes in it. IMO, the SSSs become throwaways, in that case.
Conclusion A: It appears that one of the most important ways to keep the player interested in all these SSSs is variety. WAIF has lots of descriptions of variety, but there were a few I think I hadn't thought of, like variety of the length of the entire encounter in game turns, variety in amount of clothes, or variety in desc length. And while you're at it, break down the wall between the isolated SSS and the rest of the game. Make it a truly ADULT game.
Conclusion I: You should give the *player* maximum flexibility in terms of which pieces of the SSS they want to spend more time on. The good news here is that, unlike non-linear plots or huge game maps, it doesn't require much extra coding. Cf. NewKid's comment in WAIF that you shouldn't force the player to read all of your prose. Especially since they may play the game a second time, in a different mood. This flexibility makes the game more responsive to the player, hence more INTERACTIVE.
Conclusion F: Sometimes realism should be sacrificed in order to improve game playability and player enjoyment. Heck, if we were really realistic, all these PCs would die of dehydration from all the sperm they're losing. Or VD. Or angry boyfrienditis. Remember: this is FICTION.
Extra Credit: Giving one character multiple scenes (with only foreplay in the early ones) is good for lots of reasons. Not to mention the way it opens plot opportunities, instead of needing to artificially create reasons for N NPCs to sit in one room throughout the game, then have one interaction with the PC, then disappear. In that game I never wrote, one character had a major SSS plus the NHBFF. Another had cut scenes and minor SSSs sprinkled throughout the game. Another was seen a bunch of times doing sexy things before you met (and "met" her).
So, what do *you* think about FF?
-Rap