I recently noticed that one YouTuber was making Let's Play videos of herself playing Dating Ariane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24vnKeuFWB8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B44gxN4Tgwk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdgnrvLADpI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jLvgxTuSYk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJzaTpLG3gk
I've always felt that Dating Ariane was written for the male gaze. Watching a woman play the game definitely reinforces that feeling. Although she is obviously exaggerating her reactions for the sake of humor, it's interesting to see her reactions to behavior that would be considered normal in AIF. The videos also show how hard the game is. The YouTuber is an experienced gamer who plays a lot of dating sims and visual novels, and she can't get anywhere in the game. It might be because she uses the back button a lot though. I don't think Dating Ariane supports the back button properly.
I don't know what this has to do with anything. It's just nice to see reactions to AIF-style games from people outside the community. The player is open-minded about it and she seems to enjoy herself, but I can't help but wince at certain moments.
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Showing posts with label lost trout. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lost trout. Show all posts
Thursday, 26 February 2015
Friday, 14 November 2014
Beach Fishing
After I made a post asking how to design an AIF game with more female agency in it, several commenters said that it's easy to write a female sex romp. I disagree, but the commenters seemed pretty sure of themselves.
To find out if I was mistaken, I decided I would start writing one. That's the quickest way to find out. Sex romps aren't my strong suit. Everyone complains that my AIF games have poor descriptions and weak sex scenes. A female sex romp has lots of men needing sexy descriptions and lots of sex.
I don't have much implemented yet. I only have one sex scene so far. The game will be called Beach Fishing. It is about a woman named Madison fishing for cock at a beach resort. I'm still figuring out how the puzzles and challenges could work.
I'm also trying out a new sex engine. I love how that sounds, sex engine, ha! In the mini-comp, I tried cramming a standard parser AIF sex engine into Twine. Snowstorm did something similar too. All the normal AIF sex interactions were listed in a long Twine menu and you chose what you wanted to do. Having all the sex options in a big list just didn't feel right. The interface dominated the sex. It didn't feel sexy. It was also limited because your sex partner couldn't make sexual moves themselves. I feel this feature is important in a female sex romp because I want to let the protagonist be able to lie back passively and let the man do the work if that's how she wants her sex. It's regressive but I think some players like the idea of letting an experienced man guide her and pleasure her so that should be an option.
I've decided on a sex format where if you don't do anything, the sex scene will unfold by itself. The man will initiate all the sex moves. But you can click on words in the scene to take control and direct the sex scene in a different direction. It feels more Twine like. I'm not sure if it feels sexy though.
This is just a fun experiment. I likely won't finish it. I'll just continue until I get bored. Hopefully, I will find something interesting about how hard it is to write female sex romps along the way.
To find out if I was mistaken, I decided I would start writing one. That's the quickest way to find out. Sex romps aren't my strong suit. Everyone complains that my AIF games have poor descriptions and weak sex scenes. A female sex romp has lots of men needing sexy descriptions and lots of sex.
I don't have much implemented yet. I only have one sex scene so far. The game will be called Beach Fishing. It is about a woman named Madison fishing for cock at a beach resort. I'm still figuring out how the puzzles and challenges could work.
I'm also trying out a new sex engine. I love how that sounds, sex engine, ha! In the mini-comp, I tried cramming a standard parser AIF sex engine into Twine. Snowstorm did something similar too. All the normal AIF sex interactions were listed in a long Twine menu and you chose what you wanted to do. Having all the sex options in a big list just didn't feel right. The interface dominated the sex. It didn't feel sexy. It was also limited because your sex partner couldn't make sexual moves themselves. I feel this feature is important in a female sex romp because I want to let the protagonist be able to lie back passively and let the man do the work if that's how she wants her sex. It's regressive but I think some players like the idea of letting an experienced man guide her and pleasure her so that should be an option.
I've decided on a sex format where if you don't do anything, the sex scene will unfold by itself. The man will initiate all the sex moves. But you can click on words in the scene to take control and direct the sex scene in a different direction. It feels more Twine like. I'm not sure if it feels sexy though.
This is just a fun experiment. I likely won't finish it. I'll just continue until I get bored. Hopefully, I will find something interesting about how hard it is to write female sex romps along the way.
Sunday, 31 August 2014
Female Agency in AIF
I sometimes have ideas for AIF stories that involve a woman protagonist. When I try designing a game around these stories, I often have problems with not enough female agency. I cannot think of enough interesting choices or challenges in the game for the protagonist to make for an interesting game. Does anyone have any tips or ideas on how to build good AIF games with woman protagonists?
I may simply suffer from poor imagination but I've noticed that even women writers of AIF often choose to write from the male perspective. Do I just need to get over some cultural hang-ups? Can normal male-perspective games simply be rewritten from a female-perspective? The idea of a female-perspective sex romp where a woman has sex with anything that moves doesn't sound like it would have enough interesting choices and challenges to me, but maybe I'm not thinking about it hard enough. Am I simply locked into the standard stereotypical thinking that men need to convince women to have sex, but women have no problem convincing men to have sex? A game about sexy cheerleaders visiting a bible camp might work, but it would be outside my comfort zone.
Do AIF games written with a woman protagonist need different challenges and plotlines than AIF games written with a man protagonist? Would these games work better if they focus on women wanting sex but not too much? If they focus on women pleasing their partners so they won't leave for a more promiscuous partner? Are these very retrograde ideas for a modern story?
Would it be better to deemphasize the sex entirely? AIF games with a male protagonist often focus on having as much sex in the most extreme way with as many women as possible. The challenge is in figuring out how to satisfy some minimal needs of the women so that they have sex with the male protagonist. Would a better game design be to still have a lot of sex, but the sex shouldn't form the primary goals and challenges of the game? The woman protagonist would spend the game solving non-sex related goals and challenges, and sex would happen along the way? Is that the best way to handle a woman protagonist in an AIF game? On an unrelated aside, would this also be a good design for an AIF game involving a married couple?
I don't want to offend anyone. And I'm worried that even discussing this topic will lead to lots of unhelpful comments. But I would find it useful if others could make suggestions on how to handle female agency in AIF games.
p.s. If people don't like this post, say so in the comments, and I will remove it.
I may simply suffer from poor imagination but I've noticed that even women writers of AIF often choose to write from the male perspective. Do I just need to get over some cultural hang-ups? Can normal male-perspective games simply be rewritten from a female-perspective? The idea of a female-perspective sex romp where a woman has sex with anything that moves doesn't sound like it would have enough interesting choices and challenges to me, but maybe I'm not thinking about it hard enough. Am I simply locked into the standard stereotypical thinking that men need to convince women to have sex, but women have no problem convincing men to have sex? A game about sexy cheerleaders visiting a bible camp might work, but it would be outside my comfort zone.
Do AIF games written with a woman protagonist need different challenges and plotlines than AIF games written with a man protagonist? Would these games work better if they focus on women wanting sex but not too much? If they focus on women pleasing their partners so they won't leave for a more promiscuous partner? Are these very retrograde ideas for a modern story?
Would it be better to deemphasize the sex entirely? AIF games with a male protagonist often focus on having as much sex in the most extreme way with as many women as possible. The challenge is in figuring out how to satisfy some minimal needs of the women so that they have sex with the male protagonist. Would a better game design be to still have a lot of sex, but the sex shouldn't form the primary goals and challenges of the game? The woman protagonist would spend the game solving non-sex related goals and challenges, and sex would happen along the way? Is that the best way to handle a woman protagonist in an AIF game? On an unrelated aside, would this also be a good design for an AIF game involving a married couple?
I don't want to offend anyone. And I'm worried that even discussing this topic will lead to lots of unhelpful comments. But I would find it useful if others could make suggestions on how to handle female agency in AIF games.
p.s. If people don't like this post, say so in the comments, and I will remove it.
Friday, 11 April 2014
Development Diary: Friends and Yearnings
Update 1 (4/11/2014):
I've decided to write the story using Twine. After seeing mustcontainanumber's Test Lab, I realized that it's possible to write AIF in Twine that feel like traditional IF. Twine recently added using variables as links which makes this much easier. I tried writing an initial draft of the beginning section in Twine and the result feels like a menu-based IF. I like it. I might rerelease Nat Dewey using a similar interface.
I've decided to write the story using Twine. After seeing mustcontainanumber's Test Lab, I realized that it's possible to write AIF in Twine that feel like traditional IF. Twine recently added using variables as links which makes this much easier. I tried writing an initial draft of the beginning section in Twine and the result feels like a menu-based IF. I like it. I might rerelease Nat Dewey using a similar interface.
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