discussion The Difference Between A Quality AVN And Generic Waste Of Time Is...

[shortaru]

... writing quality.

I'm not just referring to the storyline. A mediocre story from a competent writer beats a superb story that looks like it was written by a remedial first grade student. The amount of "see Spot run" tier games in the genre is depressing.

AVN devs, for the most part, ignore the all important 3 C's of writing (clarity, conciseness, and coherence). Sure, most manage to hit the 3 C's of storytelling (concept, character, conflict), but those are in addition to the 3 C's of writing, not a replacement for them. They all have to work together or it all falls apart.

Let's be real, with art and animation getting easier to create, what sets a game apart from the morass of ubiquity is how compelling the story is and how much the reader gets drawn into the writer's world. Violations of the 3 C's of writing disrupt the flow of the story by kicking the reader back into their own head to problem solve the error using context clues.

 

[Republican Bear]

Well in my experience there are few Quality AVN's and thousands of generic AVN's.

Most of those bad ones don't get finished after one or two updates though.

Sadly quality ones are getting rarer and the ones right now keep getting reworked or update very slow.

 

[shortaru]

Well in my experience there are few Quality AVN's and thousands of generic AVN's.

Most of those bad ones don't get finished after one or two updates though.

Sadly quality ones are getting rarer and the ones right now keep getting reworked or update very slow.

I completely agree.

I just didn't want to post an empty rant that gave no path to addressing the issue at hand.

Understanding the underlying issue is a key component of correcting it.

 

[i_patchy]

... writing quality.

- nah, not that big of problem. You cant polish a turd to begin with. In the end, most of AVN's are just sexual empowerment fantasies. No matter how competently it is written, most celebrated AVN's are about a guys who bang sluts and thats it. They are essentially equivalent of romcoms and black tank t shirt egotrip movies.

I do agree, that extremely bad writing can deduct from experience... but look at steam releases, most of the games there dont even have proper stories to begin with. Which to me shows, that story and writing is least of concern for consumer. And this, in my opinion, is true for gaming in general. Good story can elevate mediocre gaming experience, but it will not be able to pull the game out of the gutter. Same thing works for genuinely good games with toxic/poisonous story, that can detract from experience, but overall not ruin good gameplay. Carmack maybe later said that he was wrong about story in videogames, but i will still stand by his quote. Which is even more relevant in case with porn games.

The amount of "see Spot run" tier games in the genre is depressing.

- well, duh! 99.99 of AVN's are crowdfunded. You need to get the money stream flowing and milk those people. The best way to do it, is to bloat content with that kind of scenes. Protag goes to place A, bangs someone there, than he goes to place B and bangs someone there. People like this shit. Otherwise they would not have paid.

Let's be real, with art and animation getting easier to create, what sets a game apart from the morass of ubiquity is how compelling the story is and how much the reader gets drawn into the writer's world. Violations of the 3 C's of writing disrupt the flow of the story by kicking the reader back into their own head to problem solve the error using context clues.

- fairly sure, that most devs jump in to development without any laid out plans for anything, story including and than just go with the flow and correct everything on the move. Hence why most ambitious AVN's crash and burn, burrowed by weight of their own ambitions.

Well in my experience there are few Quality AVN's and thousands of generic AVN's.

Most of those bad ones don't get finished after one or two updates though.

Sadly quality ones are getting rarer and the ones right now keep getting reworked or update very slow.

- also disagree. Initial "quality" doesnt guarantees that project will be ever finished. I currently slowly clearing my HDD's from dead weight and sometimes find very promising games that never had an update, even thou initial release was quite good. Good example is Come Inside, slowburn story with shota and incest, with non annoying minigames and nice renders, with properly implemented classic VN roots, instead of usual masked kinetic VN that we see now. Never got a third update. Hilariously enough, dev still gets 100$ a month on patreon and promised 3rd episode sneak peak in december 2025... after 5 years hiatus. And this is only one example of actually quality product made... for milking subs i guess?

 

[Republican Bear]

I can name at least ten quality AVN's and half of those are finished and from the same developer.

Problem is many dev's just want easy money, and milk subs with no intent of ever finishing a game.

 

[Swirlybird26]

I can name at least ten quality AVN's and half of those are finished and from the same developer.

Problem is many dev's just want easy money, and milk subs with no intent of ever finishing a game.

I think I have an idea who that one dev could be.

 

[shortaru]

No matter how competently it is written, most celebrated AVN's are about a guys who bang sluts and thats it.

Well sure, that's what gets the initial downloads, but there are thousands of games that do that.

If a dev wants to keep their audience, they need to offer more than what every other generic developer has available.

Kinda. The. Point.

 

[Crime Meat]

Considering the prevalence of flat and uninteresting prose in highly popular books, it's hardly a surprise that the standard indie AVN has the writing level of an elementary-schooler. Most of them fail at story as well, as they let patreon polls dictate the flow of the narrative. It does need to be offensively bad in either regard for me to immediately drop a vn though.

 

[EasternCrop]

There is a good bit of truth in what you are saying. Some people think that quantity means quality, that all scenes have the same effect on the story, that characters cannot have their personalities be impacted after notable events, and so no. At the end of the day, it can be easy to see which narratives are at least being written by someone with some skill versus some which assume that the readers cannot tell the difference.

 

[magicace]

It's similar to any form of media. There are some diamonds in the rough that manage to work their way up to the top of their class. I just wish there were more of them

 

[i_patchy]

If a dev wants to keep their audience, they need to offer more than what every other generic developer has available.

- nah, if a dev found a paying subs, those will keep him afloat and can even dictate what they want to see... and you see... most just want to see red headed warrior entering moisty cave. Thats it. The audience is a bitch who makes their provider their bitch. Good story or good writing isnt really in the equation. Successful dev knows what his established audience expects and acts accordingly. Examples that would not fit this formula are a dime of dozen.

 

[shortaru]

- nah, if a dev found a paying subs, those will keep him afloat and can even dictate what they want to see... and you see... most just want to see red headed warrior entering moisty cave. Thats it. The audience is a bitch who makes their provider their bitch. Good story or good writing isnt really in the equation. Successful dev knows what his established audience expects and acts accordingly. Examples that would not fit this formula are a dime of dozen.

All that might be true for pervs that just want pictures to jack off to, but that's an entirely one dimensional take.

Appealing to pervs with standards will still net pervs without standards. Only targeting pervs without standards limits the potential audience as those with a working brain move on to better products.

 

[i_patchy]

All that might be true for pervs that just want pictures to jack off to, but that's an entirely one dimensional take.

- this is not a take. This is harsh reality. If it wasnt, you wouldnt have even made this thread.

Appealing to pervs with standards will still net pervs without standards. Only targeting pervs without standards limits the potential audience as those with a working brain move on to better products.

- what the point of bending yourself in to the pretzel or trying to do what you cant realistically do, if you just can make something single bit and sell? As for the "standards", as i wrote earlier - there are no real "standards" in porn fiction, lets be real. This is sexual empowerment stories which are often even serving as authors personal desires/fantasies/fetishes and hence by this fact alone are severely limited in their writing quality. This is without even mentioning, that 99% of avns are crowdfunded on monthly basis, which makes text bloat a financial incentive for dev, because its the easiest way to milk subs without appearing as a scum artist.

 

[whowalksbefore]

Writing and/or good models. Ideally both. I've read some that were good in the writing dept, but had just ugly/generic models (which is fine if its their first game). But I've also read some that had shit writing but good models. I personally prefer better writing.

 

[LadyCeleste]

Partially the context, and partially how generic it and the scenes/girls are.

If I start the game and see the same sexdoll-looking women I see every time, or the same identical scene/story beat I've seen a hundred times with no attempt at variance, I inwardly sigh.

 

[shortaru]

- this is not a take. This is harsh reality. If it wasnt, you wouldnt have even made this thread.


- what the point of bending yourself in to the pretzel or trying to do what you cant realistically do, if you just can make something single bit and sell? As for the "standards", as i wrote earlier - there are no real "standards" in porn fiction, lets be real. This is sexual empowerment stories which are often even serving as authors personal desires/fantasies/fetishes and hence by this fact alone are severely limited in their writing quality. This is without even mentioning, that 99% of avns are crowdfunded on monthly basis, which makes text bloat a financial incentive for dev, because its the easiest way to milk subs without appearing as a scum artist.

It's like you're intentionally missing my entire point.

I'm done with your obtuse takes.

 

[Scepter]

the ability to turn off transitions in the settings !

 

[i_patchy]

It's like you're intentionally missing my entire point.

- you didnt really made any, really. All you did, is singled out an "issue" that you personally consider important. I just pointed, that its not only not really important, but frankly hardly even applicable to a genre.

I'm done with your obtuse takes.

- bye bye.

 

[NoThanksMan]

This is more 'adjacent' to what the post is saying: dialogue writing quality. Inherently, talking about what separates the good from the great is subjective, so I can only speak for myself. The VNs I consider great have dialogue that sound like real people talking. The subject matter might be ridiculous which is ok, but when it is, they acknowledge the absurdity (unless it's obviously something the characters are very used to) and react to it in realistic ways. People are embarrassed when they should be but don't express that embarrassment like it's an extremely overemotional anime with exaggerated responses.

I can easily deal with poorly written plots and overall story beats. Bad dialogue is much, much harder to look past.

Another subjective take.