The Place for Purging Porn and Pedo-Pandering (AKA P5 flag evaluations)

Okay these are some guiding questions that we've come up with when trying to determine if an h-game is porn, or plot with porn:

• When are the sex scenes located?
  • Are they spread out over the game?
    • How much gameplay is there between sex scenes?
  • Are they only at the endings?
    • How hard do you have to work to get an ending?
    • Are they in every ending? Every good ending?
• Are the sex scenes optional via a choice in the menu?
• Would the story make sense without them with minimal or no rewriting?
• Are the scenes made up of stills, or are they animated?
• How explicit are the sex scenes?

Please note that these are intended guides only. It's ultimately up to the Panel to determine if something is primarily porn.

If the P5 ask for public input on an h-game, answering these questions or providing similar information is what's needed. Not just "oh, it's got plot, and the sex scenes are totally un-arousing."

Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.

Sounds like a good set of guidelines to me.

Nice. Could that be placed somewhere more prominent, like perhaps the "Decisions and Announcements" thread?

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

I put it there for easy linking.

Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.

@ccoa Okay, I'll do that for Sengoku Rance

• Where are the sex scenes located?
  • All over.
    • How much gameplay: Usually speaking, you have to conquer a province or trigger a plot event to activate a sex scene. Conquering a province can be Nintendo Hard at times, so it depends on the user's ability to manage troops and money as well as a good deal of luck and/or Save Scumming. Some sex scenes are triggered just by capturing someone, but again, capturing someone is pretty hard. You can get sex scenes by raising affection points with female characters, but to get the items to do so, you have to go through dungeons. You don't HAVE to, but it's tedious and wasteful to waste a turn on raising one person by one affection point instead of getting items when you need 7 affection points to change a character's feelings. tl;dr: A lot
• Sex scenes aren't optional.
• While the abundance of Rape as Comedy scenes are gratuitous, one Rape as Drama scene is vital, many characters wouldn't have gone to Rance's side if he wasn't such a Loveable Sex Maniac with a penchant for Brutal Honesty, and his Quest for Sex is why he's crazy enough to try to conquer Jidaigeki Japan in the first place. That and the cameos of previous Rance games are only there because of his antics in previous Rance games, the storylines of which wouldn't make much sense if he wasn't a sex maniac.
• Sex scenes are all stills.
• Sex scenes are explicit without a doubt, though the really violent ones with blood are Rape as Drama. There is implied rape of an underaged character, but you only see the end result of it and it is both clearly played for drama and horrific.

edited 27th Apr '12 10:19:03 AM by encrypted12345

Full Battle Mode

I should think that being Nintendo Hard with sex as a reward doesn't really mean the sex is less a part of the game.

Yeah, that doesn't really make sense to me either.

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Of course not. It just so happens to have a lot of gameplay and story, too.

edited 27th Apr '12 10:23:41 AM by encrypted12345

Full Battle Mode

The difficulty in getting to the sex scenes is largely irrelevant, yes. It only matters to say that the is challenging on its own and not an excuse just to give you porn.

Does that mean "if the sex scenes don't happen", or "if they aren't shown"?

I assume it means if they don't happen.

And if the story makes sense without them, is it a good or a bad thing? (I vaguely understand it may be related to sex scenes having/not having a noticeable impact on the story, but still can't quite grasp it)

edited 27th Apr '12 10:53:08 AM by OneMore

A good thing. Just look at Fate Stay Night and its series. The anime completely cut out the sex and was a hit, spawning a successful series.

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Generally, if it can be removed without drastically changing the story then that's a sign that it's just a bonus, not porn. For example, the FSN anime switches a sex scene to some weird magical surgery thing involving dragons. I don't really get it. The movie in turn replaces a sex scene with dolphins because the animators were really bored or something. This is only possible because the sex was never the point.

Thanks, I understand now. Sorry for being dumb.

Tomu, the point isn't "is the sex part of the game". That's easy to tell. The problem is in determining "is arousal the primary purpose of the game". A game that has interesting, challenging gameplay, especially lengthy bits of gameplay, in between sex scenes is less likely to fall under "porn only" or "porn with excuse plot."

When it moves out of those categories is of course subjective, which is what's making this whole thing challenging.

Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.

I would disagree-if the gameplay is treated as a challenge to which sex scenes are a reward, then it follows that the "focus" of the game is the sex scenes.

If on the other hand, the gameplay is its own reward, then I can see where you're coming from.

Of course, there may be no objective distinction between the two.

There's a line in Welcome To The NHK where Satou plays an H-game and complains at the end that he never got to see anything raunchy. I should think that just because the game has a non-sexy ending, doesn't mean that it's somehow less pornographic-the idea is that the gameplay challenge is to get sex scenes as a reward.

edited 27th Apr '12 11:59:55 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

...Um, Welcome To The NHK looks at the behaviors of seriously messed up otaku/hikkomoris, and that line was likely making fun of the usual "Buy Visual Novel, Fap" mindset.

Point is, I'm not 100% sure that sex scenes are universally seen as "rewards" in this regard, so...

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So you don't think that mindset is prominent amongst the user groups of those materials? That strikes me as counter-intuitive.

However, to my understanding, the only sexual content we're trying to cut is pure, or at least. mostly porn (and pre-pubescent/early adolescent characters in sexual situations, but throwing that in just complicates matters at the moment). The sex may be a reward, but if you have to go through hours of strategy gameplay, and non-sexual story sequences to get to it, then the game/whatever works on a level that isn't just arousal.

edited 27th Apr '12 12:05:52 PM by BadWolf21

... It's not. In all honesty, the only reason I like the sex scenes in Sengoku Rance is because they are hilarious and have this music. A lot of H-Game and VN players in tvtropes complain about forced sex scenes.

edited 27th Apr '12 12:07:06 PM by encrypted12345

Full Battle Mode

Play Fate Stay Night from beginning to end. By the time you get to the sex, you'll have seen so much text and so many screens and drama that you've pretty much lost interest in trying to fap and stayed for the story line or shut off the game.

edited 27th Apr '12 12:10:49 PM by Raidouthe21st

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That and the sex scenes themselves are terrible. Way too many food metaphors for my taste.

Okay, okay.

edited 27th Apr '12 12:16:57 PM by encrypted12345

Full Battle Mode

I don't think we're applying standards of quality to the porn. That way lies madness.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I think you misunderstood slightly, Tomu. It's not that you're going around conquering the place because you get a sex scene then, it's that conquering a territory is a measure of progress and thus the game is free to move the story along. If you're stuck in the beginning area for 80 turns in a row the story can't move because you haven't beaten anyone yet.

Yeah, put the mocking of the sex scenes aside. It'll only distract us.

edited 27th Apr '12 12:13:06 PM by Arha