I’ve been quietly developing an RPG for a while with very light, not too in-your-face weight gain elements. My goal was to make a fun roguelike dungeon crawler that everyone can play while also subtly appealing to WG fetishers.
I sort of think back to many games that I played as a child that had maybe a single weight/stuffing scene or the ability to customize a heavier female character, do you guys think its worth the effort? If the WG elements are too light is it not enough for you? Do you think this sort of thing is viable for someone making a commercial game?
Honestly I don’t think it’d work. If you’re trying to make a mainstream commercial game, you probably don’t want it to be associated with sexual and fetish content; it would probably drive people away and only attract fetishists.
Personally I wouldn’t play an RPG just for a tiny bit of WG content, and anyone who did would probably be disappointed by the lack of content. I’d say leave any stuffing scenes out of the game unless you want to make it a game with an explicit focus on fetish content.
Edit: Just wanted to add, I don’t mean for this to come across as rude or anything, I’m just trying to give you my honest opinion.
Thanks for the reply, dont worry you didnt offend thats exactly the type of response i was looking for.
But just wondering if the game is already pretty sexual in nature, very fanservicey like the senran kagura series for an example do you think that would effect your opinion? Not a hentai or porn game to clarify, but if it had dumb fun stuff like characters being stripped or put into perverted situations.
If I want to play a game for fetish content, I’d like as much as possible. A small amount likely isn’t going to make me play your game. I will, however, look for screencaps of the relevant fetish bit.
If I want to play a game for fun, I’ll be mildly amused by the presence of the fetish content if the game is good, and simply be exasperated if it isn’t.
Overall, as tempting as it is to mix the two endeavors, it probably isn’t a good idea. As has already been stated, you’ll simply drive away players. People decide they don’t like the game, harp endlessly about it on 4chan… Bad times all around. Hell, you can’t even make games with animal characters anymore without everybody shrieking about it being “furry.”
If it’s already there, and is as subtle as you believe it to be, it’s probably fine. To definitively answer your questions, though: I don’t think it’s worth the effort. You’ll need more than “subtle” to scratch a fetishist’s itch. And fetish content in a commercial game is just asking for trouble, regardless of how toned-down it is.
I can think of two ways to make this work. The first method is to present any fetish content in such a way that most people wouldn’t make the association. In fact, people often acquire fetishes when they see, hear, or otherwise experience something when they just happened to be aroused, causing their brains to associate the two. How many people on this site picked up their fat fetish from something that wasn’t intended to be fetishistic or sexual?
The second method is to have gameplay that obscures, distracts from, or simply undercuts the fetishistic elements. It’s no mystery that many people bought games like Tomb Raider or Bayonetta for their sexually appealing protagonists. However, many others had no difficulty overlooking or accepting those aspects while they just enjoyed the core gameplay.
I personally think that a little less “in-your-face weight gain elements” would be a good thing, since most games on here are exactly this type and you often don’t have a choice whether you want to follow a given path or not. So things being optional is always a good thing. However I think that a single fetish scene is probably a bit too little.
Anyway, if you want to publish this game anywhere else, in my opinion, you should prepare a separate build option without kinks related to this community.
Interesting question, and one I have data for! So in the end it depends on your target audience. If you are going for a general audience (like in your question) it is possible, but a bit of a minefield.
So a few games had fat or Weight Gain content in it and some had it on full display and did well. 3 I could think of right of the bat would be:
Fat Princess - Fat and Feeding
Overlord 1 & 2 - Fat, Slob, & Gluttony
Evil Genius - Forced Weight Gain
The way these games got away with it is bc they made it make sense. Fat Princess had a feeding and weight gain mechanic as their central focus but pass it off as subversive, and make it fit with the amazing game play so well you cant imagine it without it. Overlord tends to work it into its themes and for comedic effect. The absurdity of it (since you are supposed to be mocking the forces of good) just fits with the game so well its not questioned. Finally Evil Genius has you fatten up one of the super agents to get rid of them. This is justified by the fact the agent is vain and you find out their worst nightmare is getting fat.
As you can see from the above it really depends on how you implement it. If it feels out of place, forced in, then people will accuse it of being fetish content, but if you can make it it feel like it has a good reason for being there that is not fetish related it will be accepted. But this can be a really hard line to walk.
On the other side you can loose the fetish audience you may be wanting to put it in for if they feel it was toned down to appeal to a general audience (this is bad bc it means the content is out of place enough to feel like it is just there for fetish reasons which means you loose some of your general audience as well). As you can see from this chart from my survey the general trend is towards will not buy:
So to answer your question, I think it is possible, but is very risky as you can turn off both audiences. Its better if you are looking to make a commercial game to choose one audience and go for them.
Thanks for all the feedback and the data, I feel that my idea might fall under the implementation found in the games you have given as example. Maybe you guys could tell me if you think it would be too obvious?
My game is basically a fantasy world where the main enemies are giant animated food wreaking havoc and the player character is thrust into role of hero/chosen one due to their ability to eat well(like a competitive eater), eating enemies/food gives exp but also adds to weight making weight management a feature (players can convert added weight into extra stats to slim back down).
I was mostly wondering if its worth it to add visual weight gain as the game features a fully customizable player party with many options which would result in large variety of weight progression across all the models/body types which might be appealing to the community while also sort of make sense in context? Otherwise weight would be just a stat with no visual effect.
I think if the goal is to pass off that premise as non-fetishy in a deceptive way then you won’t succeed. People are hip to kinks these days!
However, it also sounds cute and inoffensive and, imo, an open-minded normie who’s already onboard with cheesecake elements should be able to enjoy it just fine.
Yeah, I don’t think you’re gonna fool anybody. In fact, they’ll probably peg your game as one for vore fetishists… Which probably goes down even worse.
Granted, if the protagonist was strictly non-human (not an elf, dwarf or orc, either), you might be okay. Considering you’ve made gaining weight your character progression mechanic, you’re still not gonna shake the stigma, though.
I’m sure it’ll be a fine game… Just not comercially viable.
WG content preventing a game from being commercially successful? Sounds like a question for devs of the Fable series!
Honestly, WG material that is appropriate for its context and adds to rather than detracting from the game would be perfectly fine, though if the portrayal deviates too far from norms and/or overshadows the rest of its content, it WILL raise eyebrows.
Judging by few comments given so far, I guess, it’s probably impossible to decide untill you finish your game, since most of replies drastically contradict each other.
After filling out grot2lovers’ survey I think there’s something we may be missing here. Fat female characters alone lack a lot of representation in media and especially in video games. You don’t necessarily need to be aiming for fetish content(I’m sure a few nods here and there would be harmless) you could primarily aim for having fat characters in your game. If the game play and writing is compelling enough for a general audience I’m sure some people would be interested in your game for the mere fact it has someone with their body type in it. I may not be one of those people but I sure as hell have tried looking for games based on whether they would let me customize a fatter character. Since almost no game devs have larger sizes in their games I’m sure you could find a market by including more diversity in your game without turning off general audiences.
Seems the best solution as suggested before is 2 seperate builds, one for normies and one for this community.
Might be tricky to execute though…
In the past 2 days I’ve implemented a system that allows manipulating human-like enemies with multiple WG transformations, just Stuffing and Fat for now. I think with that addition it would make a pretty decent WG game so i might not have to worry bout disappointing people looking for that.
I’ll (hopefully) have something playable soon, anticipate.
Usually vanilla people will ignore fetish content in media, no matter how obvious, as long as it’s not actively grotesque and the media itself is good. For example, the indie game Bacon Man’s lead artist is a well-known fat fetish artist named eishiban, and one of the playable characters is a cute blonde SSBBW named Lard Lass who’s costume shows off her belly rolls and normies still buy it because they wanted Earthworm Jim 3 and that’s what they got.
When it comes to this sort of thing, I hold a somewhat controversial opinion in that I think it should be entirely up to the game developers. The thing is, in that case you should decide yourself what it is you wish to pursue with your project.
If you want to go mainstream, then I’m sure one or two scenes won’t turn people away as long as it isn’t something too strange or explicit. As @grotlover2 mentioned too, if it makes sense in context, then it’s even easier to pull off, even if you make it some kind of game mechanic. When it comes to the mechanics you specifically mention, I feel like adding a visual effect cooould be pushing it a little, but I don’t think it’d be that big a deterrent to mainstream audiences if the artstyle is something more cutsie, like with Fat Princess. If the gameplay is fun, then even more incentive for people to go with the flow of it.
If you want to pander towards the weight gain community though as your primary goal, then I’d say don’t hold back. It’d likely not gain traction outside the niche, but if you aren’t out to make a buck or build a resume then it probably won’t matter. Making a separate, more fetishy build could work out too, but you also risk discovery by those outside the community connecting the dots.
I think that the biggest factor guiding how people feel about fetish content is tone. A game’s tone is heavily dependent on its mechanics and presentation, and that tone influences how people interpret elements or events. For example, the overall tone of Fat Princess was one of comedy and absurdity. The game was about cute little chibi soldiers violently slaughtering each other. With the tone set to silly and stupid, one naturally regards the morbidly obese princesses in the same light.
