[Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives.

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[Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives.

Postby Aces » Sat Dec 22, 2018 2:43 pm

Edit: I thought it was pretty obvious that this post was an opinion but apparently it's not coming off that way. So, yeah. This is an opinion. I don't have sourced data to back this up except that I you don't generally see traditional published interactive books written in the format I am attempting to criticize. Why would I bother going into detail explaining why I think something is wrong if I could prove it with hard evidence? Also, this post comes off as confrontational, so I apologize in advance for that. I am criticizing something; of course it's confrontational.

Anyway...

Nothing pisses me off and breaks immersion for an interactive story more than this common mistake I see in these interactive stories. At least, I see it as a mistake. I can excuse terrible spelling. I can excuse iffy sentence structure. I can even excuse stories that are only a few pages long before the author got lazy and quit.

But I can't stand it when people make me play god in their interactive stories. It's terrible. Stop doing this.

For those of you who don't know what this means, let me give you an example of how I usually see this shit go down.

You enter the dungeon with sword in hand. The air is cool and misty. You see before you a set of two doors. Which door do you take?

>The door on the left.
>The door on the right.


This is generic on purpose so bare with me.
But, so far so good. You give the player a set of believable choices based on what they know.

So say we choose the door on the left.

You begin to approach the door on the left. It's locked.

>You try to pick the lock.
>You look for clues as to how to unlock the door.



Still okay. Let's say you pick the option to try picking the lock.

You start to pick the lock.

>The door suddenly opens to a naga attacking you.
>A hungry succubus eats you while you aren't looking.
>The other door opens.


WOAH NOW HOLD THE FUCK UP. DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM HERE?! This right here. This pisses me off. Option one spoils what's about to happen before it actually happens. DON'T FREAKIN' DO THAT!! Meanwhile, the second option is taking control of something completely unrelated and just happening out of nowhere, and again, why do I have control of that as a player?! As for the third option, HOW?! Just, HOW??!!? What correlation leads to that causation, and even if it does, WHY THE FUCK IS IT A CHOICE FOR ME? I have no control of the other door! I am not using my telekinetic powers open the door! If I was, it wouldn't say "the door opens" it would say "YOU OPEN THE OTHER GODDAMN DOOR!" This is crap! These options are crap! The story is immediately ruined! You've soiled it! My immersion! MY IMMERSION!!!

Image

Disclaimer: Sarcasm does not translate into forum text very well. For those who can't tell, the rage above is meant to be humorous, not a sincere reaction of abject fury. This would be a very silly thing to get that angry about.

Okay, so, being serious for a moment, this is a really bad habit I see a lot of writers doing with interactive stories, and it just ruins the experience for your readers. There's two reasons why this happens. One, the author thinks he's being nice and giving flexible options to his readers. You're actually doing the opposite, so if that's your goal, stop doing this. The second reason why this happens is the author is an indecisive dope who can't decide what they want to happen, so they decide to be lazy and make the reader choose instead. Dude, just flip a coin or something. Pick an option and stick to it.

People aren't reading your story to build their own story. If that's what they wanted to do, they could just sit there and daydream, or write their own story instead. They're reading an interactive story so that you can bring them on an adventure based on the choices they have within the world. They don't want to write their own story, they want to be immersed in yours. If I am an adventurer going through an ancient dungeon, looking for hidden treasures, I should have absolutely no control of anyone but myself. Therefore, don't give the player "God Options" that control their environment or other characters. If I were to do this in an RP, where I control the other player's character, it would be called godmodding and nobody would want to play with me. You're basically forcing the player to godmod and that just sucks the fun out of it for them because now nothing is a surprise to them.

Here's how to improve this passage. Let's revisit the previous options.

First, the entire last page is junk. Throw it out. Let's go back to the page before.

You begin to approach the door on the left. It's locked.

>You try to pick the lock.
>You look for clues as to how to unlock the door.



Okay. Now, as the author, you have to decide. What option leads to what outcome? You want a hungry succubus in your story, and you want a naga in the story, and for whatever reason you want them both to possibly appear right here. So, here's what you do instead.

Say we pick the lock.

You start to pick the lock. As the door finally becomes unlocked however, you're met with the hiss of a startled naga in the shadows! You try to back away, but it's too late. She lunges forward, and swallows you whole into her tailgut.


Now you can add other options for the character to get away, or you can end the story here, but the point is that now the player isn't in control of what happens other than their own personal choices.

But let's go back, and say we chose to turn around instead of picking the lock.

You turn around to search for clues, but as you turn, you are shocked to see that a succubus had followed you in. She's too close for you to stop her before she pushes your head into her drooling mouth. She begins to scarf you down alive.


Once again, the player doesn't get a choice of what the world does to them. They only get the choice of how to react, or what they can do next. Maybe they can struggle, or maybe they have some special potion that can save them, or maybe this is a game over screen. The author provides the options of what the player can do... not the options of what happens next.

That's how interactive stories are supposed to be done. This is a choose your adventure genre... not build your own adventure. At least, that's how I have traditionally seen them done, and frankly, I don't understand how one could enjoy them any other way. It defeats the point, in my opinion.

So I argue, stop using "God Options" and start making decent stories. Bad spelling, bad plots, bad sentence structure, all of that can be forgiven. Just don't ruin your story by making it uninteresting to play in the first place. At the very least, stick with the format the author is using for the story already, and don't screw with it.

EDIT: One thing that has been discussed in this thread so far is that these "god options" are given so the player knows what they are getting into... but if I gave you the ending of a Star Wars movie so you could "know what you're buying a movie ticket for" wouldn't that just be spoiling the movie? What you can do instead however is foreshadowing. I didn't show that in my example very well above, but how I'd improve it to include foreshadowing is the player hears hissing behind the door. I'd also cut out the succubus just attacking you out of nowhere unless something earlier hinted that if I stay too long the succubus might eat you.
Last edited by Aces on Mon Dec 24, 2018 9:38 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby maleperduis » Sat Dec 22, 2018 6:22 pm

Aces wrote:That's how interactive stories are supposed to be done. This is a choose your adventure genre... not build your own adventure.


Uh... says who?

I mean, my taste on this matches yours, but that's all it is- taste. Some people want interactives to be like games, other people want them to be a collaborative form of writing. Why do you approach this as a "my way is right, yours is wrong" thing instead of "we have different preferences"?
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby TheVoreEngineer » Sat Dec 22, 2018 7:17 pm

Aces wrote:That's how interactive stories are supposed to be done. This is a choose your adventure genre... not build your own adventure.

I think you're conflating the meaning of "interactive story" and "choose your own adventure stories." I will preface saying that I do prefer the more choose your own adventure style more, and I personally also am not a huge fan of 'god options' because I do prefer CYOA's. However, I'm not everyone. At the end of the day, all Interactive stories are is, "an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment that allows a two-way flow of information between a computer and a computer-user; responding to a user’s input." This can be in the form of a CYOA story, but that ultimately is only a subgenre, if people want to create a more "gallery experience" with many 'god options' for stories to read, then that's absolutely fine as well. Different strokes for different folks at the end of the day, people can enjoy what they want to enjoy.

EDIT: Reading this back, It feels a little confrontational, so I'll add the part where your right, and where I suspect this frustration comes from, is when people add 'god options' to stories that are CYOA's. To have something you create and work on be altered in a fashion that betrays the original intent of the work is frustrating. I would maybe suggest trying to do a curated system where people send you submissions and you add them if they're up to the quality and intent that you hold for the work? It's not the perfect solution, but it's at least something, considering the, limited options the Eka's interactive system allows. :(
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby gullvy » Sat Dec 22, 2018 8:09 pm

While I certainly believe that the two first options stifle the story, I do like the third one.

It just has to be seen as the reader making the choice, not the character. It's a doylist perspective versus a watsonian one.

Personally, I'm very much a proponent of doylist decisions (that is, the player making the choice of what should happen, even though the character has no way of influencing it) when it comes to fetish material. Many people have highly specific fetishes, so making choices that can lead towards fuel for your own fetishes is always a good option to have. I wouldn't want to suddenly find myself in a paragraph with a bunch of scat material, and there are many people who want to avoid CV which I love.

This is especially true when it comes to vore games. One of my main gripes with Mysta's Myst Adventure is that it's easy to be locked into a prey scene, and I don't really like prey scenes, being a pred at heart. So, I always go for the pred options, but even then, I frequently need to sit through prey scenes in order to get through a game.

In my mind, being able to pick and choose among the fetishes that you like and don't like (because tbh, finding stuff that matches your fetish exactly is super rare) is more valuable than maintaining immersion.

It's good to have willing suspension of disbelief, especially when it comes to fetish material.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby Snorlaxkid » Sat Dec 22, 2018 8:15 pm

ITT: Opinions.

I personally disagree with OP, but in mainly because s/he seems to think their opinion is the gospel truth. News flash, opinions aren't facts.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby Aces » Sat Dec 22, 2018 8:38 pm

maleperduis wrote:
Aces wrote:That's how interactive stories are supposed to be done. This is a choose your adventure genre... not build your own adventure.


Uh... says who?

I mean, my taste on this matches yours, but that's all it is- taste. Some people want interactives to be like games, other people want them to be a collaborative form of writing. Why do you approach this as a "my way is right, yours is wrong" thing instead of "we have different preferences"?


Then it would be nice to maintain consistency over the course of a single story.

TheVoreEngineer wrote:
Aces wrote:That's how interactive stories are supposed to be done. This is a choose your adventure genre... not build your own adventure.

I think you're conflating the meaning of "interactive story" and "choose your own adventure stories." I will preface saying that I do prefer the more choose your own adventure style more, and I personally also am not a huge fan of 'god options' because I do prefer CYOA's. However, I'm not everyone. At the end of the day, all Interactive stories are is, "an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment that allows a two-way flow of information between a computer and a computer-user; responding to a user’s input." This can be in the form of a CYOA story, but that ultimately is only a subgenre, if people want to create a more "gallery experience" with many 'god options' for stories to read, then that's absolutely fine as well. Different strokes for different folks at the end of the day, people can enjoy what they want to enjoy.

EDIT: Reading this back, It feels a little confrontational, so I'll add the part where your right, and where I suspect this frustration comes from, is when people add 'god options' to stories that are CYOA's. To have something you create and work on be altered in a fashion that betrays the original intent of the work is frustrating. I would maybe suggest trying to do a curated system where people send you submissions and you add them if they're up to the quality and intent that you hold for the work? It's not the perfect solution, but it's at least something, considering the, limited options the Eka's interactive system allows. :(


My original post is confrontational as fuck so don't worry about it. It's a criticism. It's meant to be confrontational. :U The intention is to provoke a response whatever it may be. Maybe it's too confrontational. That's up to you to decide.

But I'm putting a strongly held opinion on the internet. If I can't handle negative feedback, well, you know how that sort of person would react.

So far I'm surprised to learn people actually prefer that format sometimes.

As a result I want to amend my argument, and an edit will follow my original post. I think that build-your-own-adventure format is lazy and boring. Apparently people disagree. What I think we can at least agree on however is that if you're going to pick a format, stay consistent to that format. Adding god-options into existing stories that use the more traditional choose your own adventure format ends up disrupting the flow of the story. I don't know of very many published books that use god-option format at all, but saying just because it's not common means it's wrong would be a fallacy, so I won't get into that.

gullvy wrote:While I certainly believe that the two first options stifle the story, I do like the third one.

It just has to be seen as the reader making the choice, not the character. It's a doylist perspective versus a watsonian one.

Personally, I'm very much a proponent of doylist decisions (that is, the player making the choice of what should happen, even though the character has no way of influencing it) when it comes to fetish material. Many people have highly specific fetishes, so making choices that can lead towards fuel for your own fetishes is always a good option to have. I wouldn't want to suddenly find myself in a paragraph with a bunch of scat material, and there are many people who want to avoid CV which I love.

This is especially true when it comes to vore games. One of my main gripes with Mysta's Myst Adventure is that it's easy to be locked into a prey scene, and I don't really like prey scenes, being a pred at heart. So, I always go for the pred options, but even then, I frequently need to sit through prey scenes in order to get through a game.

In my mind, being able to pick and choose among the fetishes that you like and don't like (because tbh, finding stuff that matches your fetish exactly is super rare) is more valuable than maintaining immersion.

It's good to have willing suspension of disbelief, especially when it comes to fetish material.


There's another way to resolve the issue of getting "locked into" a prey scene however. This is something that comes as a lesson from the field of game design.

When you make a game, the goal is to challenge the player, but not beat them. Any code monkey with a hint of malice can beat the player with unfair surprises and outright bullshit. The best way to write an interactive is, in my opinion, to follow the lessons of a game. Drop hints that should be possible for the player to easily pick up on, things that (if they are paying attention) they will know what's coming without knowing exactly. For instance, with the centaur I show in my interactive, at least on the male side of things, it's pretty obvious that the taur is a lot bigger than you. A smart player will realize force is not the way through, and if they don't realize it, they'll get their bad ending and go, "Do'h, I should have known better" rather than going "Well that was completely unfair..."

This makes the story far more enjoyable to me as it would a game. I want to be caught off guard. I don't want to feel cheated. Literally giving me power of the scene feels like cheating, just I'm the one who's cheating.

Snorlaxkid wrote:ITT: Opinions.

I personally disagree with OP, but in mainly because s/he seems to think their opinion is the gospel truth. News flash, opinions aren't facts.


And you're welcome to disagree. Would just be appreciated if you actually elaborated on why, though, instead of pulling an ad hominem to paint me like some sort of irredeemable moron.

Seriously though. I don't mean to sound like an asshole, but no shit these are opinions. Come on, dude. I shouldn't have to spell that out. If you can give me something more substantial, I can respond to you more thoughtfully.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby TheVoreEngineer » Sat Dec 22, 2018 9:11 pm

Aces wrote:My original post is confrontational as fuck so don't worry about it. It's a criticism. It's meant to be confrontational. :U The intention is to provoke a response whatever it may be. Maybe it's too confrontational. That's up to you to decide.
But I'm putting a strongly held opinion on the internet. If I can't handle negative feedback, well, you know how that sort of person would react.
So far I'm surprised to learn people actually prefer that format sometimes.
As a result I want to amend my argument, and an edit will follow my original post. I think that build-your-own-adventure format is lazy and boring. Apparently people disagree. What I think we can at least agree on however is that if you're going to pick a format, stay consistent to that format. Adding god-options into existing stories that use the more traditional choose your own adventure format ends up disrupting the flow of the story. I don't know of very many published books that use god-option format at all, but saying just because it's not common means it's wrong would be a fallacy, so I won't get into that.


Your argument can be as confrontational as you like, I'm always happy to see someone have an opinion and stick by it willing to argue for it, doesn't matter how confrontational it is.
Also, I mean it depends on the person in the end. Some people come to interactives to go through an adventure, some people go through it to find a gallery of vore stories in a single setting without care for any greater story.
I do also agree that 'Gallery stories' are a much weaker format, and ultimately as a narrative, it completely falls flat since it more acts as a way to get to vore scenes than it does as an actual plot, and I highly put more value on people who are willing to present their stories in that format. But again sometimes people just want to get to the good stuff, what am I to stop them.
I do entirely agree with the "don't mix the formats" deal, however, it's frustrating to have someone add something like that to a story you've been working on. I mean at the end of the day I more agree with your argument that disagree with it, I might have a habit of playing devil's advocate in the forums. Still, I wish you luck on your interactive story endeavours.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby hernextmeal » Sat Dec 22, 2018 9:19 pm

Aces wrote:When you make a game, the goal is to challenge the player, but not beat them. Any code monkey with a hint of malice can beat the player with unfair surprises and outright bullshit. The best way to write an interactive is, in my opinion, to follow the lessons of a game. Drop hints that should be possible for the player to easily pick up on, things that (if they are paying attention) they will know what's coming without knowing exactly. For instance, with the centaur I show in my interactive, at least on the male side of things, it's pretty obvious that the taur is a lot bigger than you. A smart player will realize force is not the way through, and if they don't realize it, they'll get their bad ending and go, "Do'h, I should have known better" rather than going "Well that was completely unfair..."


Yeah I don't think hints cut it. People want to know in no uncertain terms whether a given choice will lead to squick material even if they're not paying attention.

It's one of the reasons fetish fuel and proper game design/writing don't really mix.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby Artemis » Sat Dec 22, 2018 9:33 pm

hernextmeal wrote:Yeah I don't think hints cut it. People want to know in no uncertain terms whether a given choice will lead to squick material even if they're not paying attention.

It's one of the reasons fetish fuel and proper game design/writing don't really mix.



...Okay, here's another idea. What if you just put a disclaimer in the intro to the game, or heck, in the thread where you download the game, explaining exactly what content people should expect in your game? :u If you're so concerned with alienating some part of your audience due to a specific squicky subject, you can just ... put in an option to disable ends with that specific kink in it and let the player choose.

Just because people are willing to tolerate bad game design for the sake of 'porn'... doesn't mean the two don't mix. You just need to be willing to make smart decisions and put in a little extra effort instead of leaning on the fact that people will ignore flaws if the porn is good like a crutch.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby ArcaneSigil » Sun Dec 23, 2018 1:43 am

hernextmeal wrote:
Yeah I don't think hints cut it. People want to know in no uncertain terms whether a given choice will lead to squick material even if they're not paying attention.

It's one of the reasons fetish fuel and proper game design/writing don't really mix.


A lot of the time, at least before I had my near death experience and my mind hasn't quite been what it was, I liked having vague clues leading me to the end goal. "Look for the Eldergleam in the Forsaken Forest". Ok... first of all, what does an Eldergleam look like? Is it a creature? Is it a plant? Is it another tree? I don't know, and that's part of the adventure. Finding out. Secondly... where is the Forsaken Forest? I never came across it in my travels. Is it rife with mobs WAY beyond my level? Is it back near the beginning of the game? Is it where I started and nearly died a million times because I had to ESCAPE rather than FIGHT? Again, I don't know, but it's part of the adventure. Vague hints and clues are what make a story great.

If it's handed to you on a silver platter, there's no challange to it. It would be like if you were playing the Legend of Zelda on the Hardest Difficulty and as soon as you start the game, you've got 50 hearts, 5 stamina bars, the Master Sword fully powered (so it never has to "recharge"), a million of each arrow, an unbreakable bow, and infinite bombs. There's no challange there. I'd see that and just got STRAIGHT to Ganon. With 50 hearts and that much ammunition, there's no way I could lose unless Ganon was balanced to my strength and had over twenty hp bars.

I admit... my mind isn't exactly as strong as it was before, so now I like it when the answers are kinda right there. "Take the Ionian Power Flux Converter to the engine room, level B, and give it to the engineer standing beside the Flux Capacitor. They are wearing a tube top that leaves nothing to the imagination and will likely be jammed half way into a powered down turbine, completely unaware of your presence until you say or do something." I kinda like that sort of thing, but I still like some challange.

Example of how the previous thing could be done for a better mental challange... "Take the Ionian Power Flux Converter to Engine Room B5 and give it to Engineer Liana." Ok. That's better. I've never spoken to Liana (probably), so I don't know what they look like. Is Liana just a fanciful name for a big burly dude in a jump suit? Is she the stereotypical "ugly chick" who didn't get married so she became an engineer? Is she an anthro-chick who as soon as I hand over the converter is gonna fuck me/eat me? That's where the risk comes in. That's where the challange comes in. I understand that some people like having the answers given to them. I understand that sometimes, it gets frustrating (trust me, I've been there). But the entire point of "Build your own adventure" stories is o go through the vague hints and if you fail, just remember to NOT do that again. If you're trying to NOT get eaten/killed by the same baddies over and over and over again, you'll remember what you did wrong the first time and NOT do it again.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby hernextmeal » Sun Dec 23, 2018 2:03 am

Artemis wrote:
hernextmeal wrote:Yeah I don't think hints cut it. People want to know in no uncertain terms whether a given choice will lead to squick material even if they're not paying attention.

It's one of the reasons fetish fuel and proper game design/writing don't really mix.



...Okay, here's another idea. What if you just put a disclaimer in the intro to the game, or heck, in the thread where you download the game, explaining exactly what content people should expect in your game? :


You could do that, sure, but then people with more vanilla tastes will just avoid the work.

Artemis wrote:u If you're so concerned with alienating some part of your audience due to a specific squicky subject, you can just ... put in an option to disable ends with that specific kink in it and let the player choose.


This is the ideal solution, and it works for games when the author is willing to put in the work to implement it, but I know Eka's Interactive Story section doesn't support such a feature, and neither does any other online interactive writing site I know of. I mean, sure, you could make two or several versions of the damned thing, I guess, but that becomes a mess fast for anything interactive.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby Aces » Sun Dec 23, 2018 10:28 am

Putting disclaimers at the start of the work is perfectly reasonable as far as vore is concerned.

"This story will contain the following kinds of vore with both male and female characters possibly involved:
Oral vore (duh)
Unbirth
Anal vore
Breast vore"

Maybe a disclaimer for other notably controversial things, such as underaged preds, references to politics, weird shit, etc.

Now the player knows what is kosher, and knows what to expect, just not when to expect it.

Using a Zelda game as an analogy, you buy Zelda, you know generally what you're getting into. If you don't like Zelda games you just don't play them.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby ArcaneSigil » Sun Dec 23, 2018 10:46 am

Like button please...?

Disclaimers would be the most ideal thing. Just have an author's note or something before the story actually starts with the disclaimer. Then if there's something in the disclaimer people don't like, they can either avoid the story itself or read it and avoid that part unless it's story critical.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby Jakar » Sun Dec 23, 2018 4:48 pm

Are we talking about interactives in general? 'Cause if not, well, I don't know about anyone else but I view vore interactives as a story with a few branching paths. First thing I do is view the outline, find an ending and if I like it, work my way back. I'd understand your points and the frustration more if we were awash with sprawling interactives one could get immersed in to the point it feels like a game but unless I'm overlooking them I don't think I'd say any on here or through all the years of writing.com before that have qualified as such. To me at least, until one does, it seems like a moot point. Your choices are either lots of inconsquential decisions and an undetailed story or many locked paths but perhaps one or two ends you might enjoy. No room for immersion, god mode should be the least of your worries.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby Bright » Sun Dec 23, 2018 5:42 pm

Normally the end goal of a reader would be to find the "good ending" of a choose your own adventure.

You can't satisfy everyone, but if you write your own story, at least you can satisfy yourself.

Personally my main gripe about interactives on Ekas Portal are that you have 100 ones that go bloody nowhere because people expect others to write for them.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby maraudingmarauder » Sun Dec 23, 2018 5:43 pm

Aces wrote:Putting disclaimers at the start of the work is perfectly reasonable as far as vore is concerned.

"This story will contain the following kinds of vore with both male and female characters possibly involved:
Oral vore (duh)
Unbirth
Anal vore
Breast vore"

Maybe a disclaimer for other notably controversial things, such as underaged preds, references to politics, weird shit, etc.

Now the player knows what is kosher, and knows what to expect, just not when to expect it.

Using a Zelda game as an analogy, you buy Zelda, you know generally what you're getting into. If you don't like Zelda games you just don't play them.


horrible flashbacks to writing.com interactives where the original author of a story would do exactly that, but halfway down one of the branches the writing style completely changes and suddenly the story goes off the rails into someone else's kinks, like I distinctly remember a college one where the premise was F/M where only girls were predators, and one of the branches where you start as a dude was like "OKAY BUT YOU'RE THE ONE GUY IN A HUNDRED YEARS WHO CAN EAT PEOPLE AND YOU START EATING ALL THE GIRLS AND YOU'RE BETTER AT VORE" and I was like... okay sure that's a valid premise for a story but did they have to hijack someone else's interactive to do it?
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby Artemis » Sun Dec 23, 2018 6:35 pm

hernextmeal wrote:You could do that, sure, but then people with more vanilla tastes will just avoid the work.


I would argue that this is not a problem exclusive to vore or porn. Video game and movie companies fall into this pit all the time. They try to appeal to the widest possible audience to maximize their profits. It makes great sense from a business and popularity perspective.

...However.

What I've also described is the phenomenon of "appealing to the lowest common denominator". That's not meant to be an insult. It's just a very useful concept for describing a problem some people have with certain design philosophies. And I do see that that is what happened in the OP's example. He wanted a better experience for him, but his experience was watered down by the creator's desire to appeal to a wider audience.

To use another example. Are you familiar with those artists who draw "vore" and give their characters beach ball bellies and then tag their art as "vore, inflation, pregnancy, stuffing" etcetera all at once, responding to anyone who asks what's inside that non-descript big belly by saying they don't know and suggesting the viewer uses their imagination? They do that in hopes of appealing to every audience at once, but because they cannot include details specific to any one kink lest they ruin the 'illusion', the overall result is that from the perspective of someone looking for any one of those given kinks, the art's ability to represent that kink with quality is lowered.

Personally, I hate that. It decreases my enjoyment of a piece of art, and personally, I'm a lot happier hearing from one fan who enjoyed my story/art a lot than I am seeing some big view/favorite counter. That's not to say that art that does this is bad, or that people should feel stupid for enjoying it. It's just that when we're judging a work's actual quality or talking about artistic passion, it does become valid criticism to point out how a story failed you, y'know?

For example, the Mario series. Miyamoto... has really crappy opinions on storytelling. He has mastered the art of charm and good gameplay to such an extent that he has consistently put out games that are ultimately good despite his horribly flawed views on storytelling, but... these games would almost definitely be a bit better if he opened his mind a little and stopped treating story like a poison that will ruin his games if he puts even a little of it in. Maybe you've even heard that he majorly soiled the Paper Mario series because of his beliefs, and nearly removed Rosalina's story from Super Mario Galaxy. That's the lowest common denominator taken to an extreme. He does this because some gamers don't like stories in their games. They just want that stuff to get out of their way so they can play their vidya. But he doesn't even try to compromise a lot of the time. And because he doesn't flex or try and find better solutions, he does stuff like dumb down the story in a turn-based RPG, where fans are usually more receptive to that.

But yeah. I think the ability to set up "options" for interactive stories here on Eka's would be a very helpful improvement for creators. I can understand why not having those tools might push creators to make sacrifices. vwv
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby Speedyblupi » Sun Dec 23, 2018 7:30 pm

"WHY THE FUCK IS IT A CHOICE FOR ME?"

In the context of interactive vore, this is because different people have different preferences and might not want to see a particular outcome. Giving the agency to the player's character doesn't necessarily direct the story in the direction the player wants, because the character and player don't know what the result of their actions will be.

I agree with you for a story that's supposed to be an interactive adventure with a quest to complete, but I think it can be better to give the "player" "god powers" in porn, where the point is really just to show the "player" something that will interest them while using an interactive story to provide context.

I don't really play enough vore games to know which of these I prefer, but I think there's probably a better way to do it than immersion-breaking god powers. Still, that's probably the main reason why people give the player god-powers in vore stories.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby Aces » Mon Dec 24, 2018 9:36 am

maraudingmarauder wrote:
Aces wrote:Putting disclaimers at the start of the work is perfectly reasonable as far as vore is concerned.

"This story will contain the following kinds of vore with both male and female characters possibly involved:
Oral vore (duh)
Unbirth
Anal vore
Breast vore"

Maybe a disclaimer for other notably controversial things, such as underaged preds, references to politics, weird shit, etc.

Now the player knows what is kosher, and knows what to expect, just not when to expect it.

Using a Zelda game as an analogy, you buy Zelda, you know generally what you're getting into. If you don't like Zelda games you just don't play them.


horrible flashbacks to writing.com interactives where the original author of a story would do exactly that, but halfway down one of the branches the writing style completely changes and suddenly the story goes off the rails into someone else's kinks, like I distinctly remember a college one where the premise was F/M where only girls were predators, and one of the branches where you start as a dude was like "OKAY BUT YOU'RE THE ONE GUY IN A HUNDRED YEARS WHO CAN EAT PEOPLE AND YOU START EATING ALL THE GIRLS AND YOU'RE BETTER AT VORE" and I was like... okay sure that's a valid premise for a story but did they have to hijack someone else's interactive to do it?


That's when the original author steps in to just smother the new author like a disabled baby under a pillow, and also delete or otherwise make the new options inaccessible. I had to do that with my story as well. A whole branch was just so irredeemable that I just nuked it.

Speedyblupi wrote:"WHY THE FUCK IS IT A CHOICE FOR ME?"

In the context of interactive vore, this is because different people have different preferences and might not want to see a particular outcome. Giving the agency to the player's character doesn't necessarily direct the story in the direction the player wants, because the character and player don't know what the result of their actions will be.

I agree with you for a story that's supposed to be an interactive adventure with a quest to complete, but I think it can be better to give the "player" "god powers" in porn, where the point is really just to show the "player" something that will interest them while using an interactive story to provide context.

I don't really play enough vore games to know which of these I prefer, but I think there's probably a better way to do it than immersion-breaking god powers. Still, that's probably the main reason why people give the player god-powers in vore stories.


Are you saying that as the person who originally wrote the story, or the person who contributed to the story?

Because if you're the person who originally wrote it, then stick to a consistent format. Choose your own adventure and build your own adventure are separate genres.

If you're the person contributing to the story, I feel that you just achieved the opposite of what you were intending to do. The player doesn't want to know what will happen; that's called a spoiler. If I told you how the next Star Wars movie ends, that isn't "giving you agency over what movie tickets you buy", I really just ruined the whole movie for you. This argument, if this is your argument, is invalid. The intention is either too altruistic in that you're trying to satisfy everyone, or too selfish in that your effort to satisfy everyone is just so that more people contribute to the story. I can't decide which it is.

There's already a better way, which is what I posted earlier. If we can't warn the player by outright spoiling it, we can at least drop realistic hints as to what is about to come. In short, people should make more use of foreshadowing instead.
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Re: [Criticism] "God Options" and why they ruin interactives

Postby VVVx » Thu Dec 27, 2018 7:15 am

I completely agree with this, and had been meaning to put it into words myself. When looking for interactive ss, I want to be taken on an adventure. Adventures involve challenge, thinking, and consequence. None of those are present when you have "god options". A good interactive essentially plays like a game. Players don't choose their encounters, but they are chosen for them. How things play out depends on the actions the player can take in the moment.
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