Games that have it all?

[LRM]

It is OK to torture, murder, rob, and show the worst carnage imaginable (after 19:00) but do not dare show a nipple clamp or the FCC will get deep in your pocket. We (Americans) are so stupid!

The movement toward legislated morality gets more intense every day. I am genuinely concerned about our future. How do we stop it? How do get the populace to get off their collective asses to look at the voting record before voting for the incumbent? The guy that every day whores himself out to the PACs and only when up for election gives a shit what his constituents think. And even then only until he is successfully re-elected.

How do we get our religious leaders to start preaching "love thy neighbor" rather than sway his entire flock of sheep to vote for the anti-abortion candidate? Why do we allow tax exempt status to continue for those that do?

I have to go! I need some time on the heavy bag.
L

[Graen]

Greebo wrote :
You laughin' at me? If you ain't careful you'll find a Bill Gates' head on your pillow! You suckers have been playin' on a crap system for longer than's good for you!

At least we be playin'!

Regarding the sex in the media, it's not as bad as people like to make it out to be. There are tits in the God of War games, as well as Dante's Inferno. Both games are rated "Mature" There is even full frontal male nudity in one of the Grand Theft Auto 4 expansion games.

It is getting better in America, slowly but surely. Even then, it wasn't taboo before the days of the rating system. Games like Daggerfall and Ultima Underworld had nudity, not just the Leisure Suit Larry games of yesteryear.

The perception that nudity is wrong in games, while not wholly an American product, is also not a world wide phenomena.

What is a world wide phenomena, is money, and trying to accrue more of it. That's the main reason there isn't as much nudity in Western games, the belief that some of largest markets for those games would be intolerant of any such subject matter.

Fortunately game designers are trying to push the boundaries, and that is why we're seeing a resurgence in risque material in Western games now. Because people are buying it!

There will be Hot Coffee!

[LRM]

My comments were completely off topic and I apologize. They have been copied to the beach under "Censorship".
L

[Franco]

I can't see the kind of game we're talking about sold in a store. If it were to be developed it would need to be sold over the internet by download or for on-line play, as Bone Town is.

[Craban]

LRM: I live in Europe and was in NY twice but it's nearly 20 years ago.

One of the things I remember and that fits here was the way the dummies in the shop windows of clothing stores in Manhattan were presented :-) We even took pictures because we never saw dummies with such long and obviously erect nipples before. We are used to more or less anatomically correct breasts on dummies but these were really extreme.

On the other hand each "fuck" is cut out or beeped. There is a show in German TV (called "talk talk talk") that makes fun of other talk shows. They take most of the clips from German talk shows and comment in a very funny way but there are always some clips from US shows as well. The difference is obvious: The US shows they quote go more into extremes (not that this may be representative, of course they collect the most extreme ones) but even the smallest partial nudity is censored and some of the arguments are hard to follow because there are more beeps than comprehensible words.
For us this is unusual. There is a certain limit of what you can see in German TV at certain times and this is mostly regulated in what we call the optional self control (FSK). From around 10pm onwards you can see partial or even full nudity (no hardcore of course - I'm speaking of erotic scenes, striptease, etc.) and after midnight this can get very annoying because of all the brain-dead sex hotline ads.
But the censorship that even blurs the top of a butt or a nipple is hardly known. Typically there is a screen that says that a movie is not suitable for minors and give a hint on the minimum age just before it starts. There are erotic movies that are FSK16 which means a 16 year old may watch it. Movies with more explicit sex scenes or brutality are typically FSK18.

[indipuk]

Try Japanese games, sorry but western erotic games doesn't stand even close to the Japanese made. They are true masters of erotic gaming.

[jimmyp]

it would be interesting to like get an idea of how much revenue bonetown has actually made and when they published it who gave them shit or was wanting to shut them down

[Thrain]

Think about first RGP games in 90s.
Nealy all basic mechanics of World of Warcraf already exist in 1995, and MUD game is 1997-1999 have all mechanics, except 3d graphic, that WoW have when it was launched in 2005. Those MUD games were made by very little staff (between 1 and 5 people).
To go to WoW level, which is a true "Game that have it all", you need a 250+ staff (Bizzard is now 1500+). Even with so much people, MMORPG games which target "Game that have it all" between 2005 and now, fail for the most.

A "Game that have it all" is really very very hard to make, even for major. I don't think we will see one rated AO in next years.
But I am pretty sure we will see more and more small free games, with single target mechanism. And some of them with pretty high quality.

[TheBrain]

I think that comparing to WoW is a bit over the top, it's a completely different genre. You'd be better off comparing to whatever is considered the ultimate point-and-click adventure game, they come much closer in terms of complexity.

[Big Mike]

Just found this article...
http://www.cracked.com/article_18970_5- ... kable.html

[kessie8yl]

As far as I can see the only people with anything like the resources to produce an full-on AO game such as is being discussed here would be one of the larger porn houses.
The problem with that is - What's in it for them?
It's far cheaper and easier for them to get hold of a some chicks and a couple of cameras than it would be to pay a whole lot of code scribblers to produce a game that may end up being worth sweet fanny adams at the end of it..
Just think how many "regular" games end up in the special offer bin within months of coming out.. For every hit game there are probably tens or hundreds that flop. Every single one of those convinced somebody it was worth the cost and effort of publishing it - So even those who are supposed to be "experts" and are willing to put their money where their mouth is get it wrong far more often than they get it right.
I think AO is just seen as too risky, but not for the reason of social acceptability. Any firm pumping out porn all day long isn't going to worry about a little thing like that if they think they can make a buck.

[mgunter]

Try RAGS games.

[ExLibris]

Profitability is certainly a major obstacle. Games have become a lot more expensive to make over the last twenty years, and a lot of big budget games don't end up making a profit. Consequently the game industry largely sticks to established genres and franchises.

The rot set in with the original Wing Commander, which was supposedly the first game with a budget of over a million dollars. Despite its success it didn't actually turn a profit until the release of the Secret Mission add-ons (the proliferation of DLC these days is probably for the same reason).

I could see the adult industry producing small, low-quality games for the 'casual' market, or possibly subscrïption based online multiplayer games (for the stable revenue stream, and because emergent behaviours would allow them to keep some costs down).

But high-quality interactive adult games? Not until game creation tools massively increase in power and decrease in price. A cultural shift towards seeing video games as being not just for kids would help too, but that's going to be 10-20 years.

[Greebo]

I'm not a Second Life aficionado, but it seems to me that a special fork of SL has the potential to tick most of the boxes that have been mentioned so far if it weren't for the policies of SL's owners with respect to "adult content".

Maybe DiTo could enlighten us about this.

[kessie8yl]

Greebo wrote : I'm not a Second Life aficionado, but it seems to me that a special fork of SL has the potential to tick most of the boxes that have been mentioned so far if it weren't for the policies of SL's owners with respect to "adult content".

Maybe DiTo could enlighten us about this.

I seem to recall something like this was tried a couple of years ago but quicky degenerated into a place where everyone walked around stark naked, with unfeasibly large sexual organs, and the "game" consisited of propositioning total strangers... Not exactly mass market.

The perfect game wouldn't be multi-player in that sense.. There are far too many weirdos out there. The "average" person is going to be wary about signing up to stuff in case it gets found out and damages their real-life reputation and/or they get ripped off by card fraud, etc. Having a game populated by the weird and wonderful types you find on the web will just make them run a mile.

AChat has made a fairly good stab at making the main action one-on-one - but even there you find some real head cases in the opening "partner search" section. Once you are in a room however you are very much dependent on the imagination of your partner - and let's face it, most haven't got a clue. It's just click on one "pose" after another... Yaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwn!

The beauty of games by Shark, Chaotic, Leoniser, et al, is that it is all in the imagination of you and the author - Like reading a book.. A good author feeds your imagination - and imagination is what eroticism is all about.

If other authors stopped to think about this they would see that's what we are complaining about when we say games are too serial, we don't want to "Click next" time after time... In a www that is stuffed with porn who want's to just look at some dumb pictures? We need to be engaged.

It would be great if we could see more games being produced at the standards set by Shark, Chaotic and Leoniser and more often - but I feel we should be counting our blessings for the ones we have and not, as in the recent case of Chaotic, risk killing the goose that lays the golden eggs by making them feel they have to sacrifice quality to fill the demand for product.