Opinions on Multiplayer Adult Games

[unsure]

I'm curious what the opinions are, from an end-user's perspective, towards multiplayer adult games. Specifically i'm interested in competitive multiplayer games, such as TCGs or a world focused on PVP interaction. Full disclosure, i'm working on a competitive game and trying to see if there's a market for this.

 

My thoughts:

I am mainly a solo-gamer, so i may be initially biased. But my consumption of adult material is almost exclusively a private thing. So i would be hesitant to engage in adult content in view of other players. That said, i can see a place for competitive play in a game that separates competitive mechanics from adult content. Such a game could reward players with content, or have non-competitive mechanics that serve other roles in the game. For example, any game with an attack and build phase could lump their adult material into the build phase mechanics. 

 

Is there a need for separation, or is that just my preference?

 

Something else i found interesting is that there's a correlation with this issue and including narrative in competitive play games. Given that adult material is usually part of the narrative this makes a ton of sense, and addressing one issue would probably provide solutions to the other. If anyone has good examples of narratives in competitive games, or has any other ideas, please share.

[JackBikwik]

I love the idea of a sex-themed MMO with a few caveats;

 

1.  I have an undying hatred for PVP equal to the burning intensity of 1000 suns.  I absolutely refuse to play any game with involuntary PVP.  PVP flags, PVP arenas or PVP specific map areas are fine, but if I can be ganked when minding my own business, I'm not playing it. 

 

You lump forced sexual content in and you're getting in to an extremely uncomfortable grey area that deeply concerns me and that's coming from an extremely kinky mother fucker.  You can have tags for this like PVP flags elsewhere.  Say, if a character wears a collar, they can be "forced" in to these interactions.

 

2.  Actual content.  There has to be a canon reason for all the banging and there has to be an actual story. E.g. sexual content would not be out of place in a game like Conan, but without a world to back it up, it's just Second Life porn all over again.  I'm going to need an actual game that can stand on it's own two legs without tits to keep it afloat.

 

3.  Addressing the issue you brought up, there has to be a system in place so that it's not just this weird orgy in the streets 24/7 with no delineation between play settings, especially if you want to give the impression that it's anything other than a porn simulator.  Perhaps NPCs can react negatively to rampant banging in cities.  What you want to do in the wilds with however much of an audience is your business, but in civilization, the guards are going to take offense to the shenanigans. 

 

FoxySoft was working on a game called Venus Rising that hit a lot of my points, but unfortunately it seems to have fallen into the ether.  Ultimately, what your vision is for your game is your business, but these are points that would need to be addressed for me, personally, to be interested.

[myuhinny]

Multiply player and PVP wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't rigged around the pay and fails who just pay and fail to a fake win. If they had where pay and fails were placed in their own group and can only play others like them then it wouldn't be that bad. But most of them don't do that so I don't waste time wtih most PVP.

[unsure]

@JackBikwik Yeah, i agree. Sexual violence is a large reason why i think competitive play and adult content might need to be separated from each other.

Additionally, what i meant by bringing up narratives in multiplayer games is that any adult content has to belong in some kind of narrative or as part of some mechanic, otherwise it's just gratuitous sex nobody asked for. My project has a pretty lean narrative and mature content is mostly relegated to the breeding mechanics. I'm going with a "time and place" kind of philosophy.

 

@myuhinny Micro transactions get a bad rep because they've become synonymous with pay to win. That's a symptom of poor design, not micro transactions. A lot of games successfully implement a F2P model in a competitive environment, such as League, Hearthstone, and if you look at non-computer examples Magic the Gathering. The distinguishing factor is that these games provide either A: sentimental content (skins, etc) or B: breadth of play. It's important to note that breadth of play is not equivalent to power or strength, but greater freedom of movement in that space. TCGs can remain competitive even with booster packs because access to more cards only equates to a larger variety of options in play style.