This seems to be something I noticed. People who are into fat characters are also into things like weight gain, inflation, vore, blueberry, etcetera. Something where characters are just fat, but don’t gain additional weight or have other kinks involved don’t seem as popular.
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I like seeing the process of gaining weight and the troubles that come with it.
I genuinely wish more games dealt with shrinking outfits and (despite how bad it sounds) the fall into food addiction. I also like the denial-to-acceptance pipeline.
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Probably because game implies progression - and weight gain is a clear and straightforward way to show that progress.
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Fat = sexy
Slim = not sexy
Do I prefer to see sexy characters when I play in the game? Definitely! Am I going to play in the game just because there is sexy characters? Absolutely not! I, personally, play in video games only if there is good gameplay. If it is a fetish focused game which, usually, don’t have interesting gameplay then having a weight gain fetish in such a game might be enough for me to try playing.
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I wouldn’t really say limited, maybe something along the lines of underexplored.
As someone who likes the journey more than the destination, if fat is just a cosmetic aspect or an excuse for a character to have more hp, my interest falls off really quick. In that static weight scenario i would expect more palpable consequences
But then again, that kind of interaction is usually a lot more complicated to implement
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If a character is just fat, they’re boring. Nice to look at? Maybe, but still boring. The enjoyment I get from a game comes from the interaction I have with that game and the things that happen in it, not if a character happens to be wider than average.
It would take a lot of effort and creative ingenuity to produce an entertaining fat fetish game where the characters are just fat, presumably going about their daily lives. Where is the hook, where is the tension? There’s no progression to speak of, there’s no risk, no threat. You’d basically just be making a regular game but the characters are fat, not much to write home about.
Weight gain, inflation, expansion etc. are far easier to make fetish games out of, and more commonly enjoyed.
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I think it’s just a natural result of how the overlap between weight gain and plain fat fetishism. People who are looking specifically for gaining aren’t going to find it in a game where a character is just fat, but people looking for fat will still get that in a weight gain game. Plus having the player be able to participate directly in the fetish aspect (even as simply as it happening through normal progression) solidifies the experience as a fetish game, rather than a game that happens to have a fetish in it.
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I’ve been asking myself this question, too! I suspect that FA folks are more inclined to positively experience a game with attractive fat characters in it, that seems almost tautological, but if the game is explicitly “in this zone” then you need to lateral over into a related proximal fetish space to add something like interactivity.
There are a bunch of forum lists here about non-fetish games with fat characters in them. I’m not 100% sure how else ‘fat but not actively engaged in weight gain / vorism / whatevs’ games would manifest themselves onto this website beyond those posts.
(There’s an extremely cheesy 80s/90s era DOS game about taking girls out on dates, that plays like a series of very brief CYOA books. Success is largely based on your date’s stats, which are capped based on your dating experience, which stuck with me as an interesting version of typical RPG leveling. I’ve been wondering, while not working as hard as I should be on Heavy Lighthouse, if a remake would work featuring body morphology as one of the main stats.)
TL;DR - If the game is just images of fat people, that’s not interactive enough for a game. The proximal fetishes usually involve progression through time, which involves action, which brings in interaction. It’s a lower bar then succeeding in making a good game in a traditional video game genre that happens to feature fat people, so the incentive for programmers to indulge in proximal fetishes is pretty high.
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The community’s small enough that a lot of different groups are grouped under the same umbrella, but ask 10 users and you’ll get 20 answers. Everyone’s got their own set of kinks that may or may not overlap with everyone else’s.
I’ve always thought a dating sim with romance options that just happen to be fat would be lovely, but that’s not what a lot of people are here for. Some people are exclusively into furry/vore/slob/transformation/gaining/humiliation/stuffing/you name it.
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I do think there’s some cultural inertia on this forum at least. Didn’t it branch out from furry and general transformation groups? (I do like gaining, transformation, and the occasional humiliation, so I am part of that inertia)
And from another angle on this (good) point: there are communities that are hungry for fat rep and want NOTHING to do with us kinksters. And fair play to them! Attraction to a fat person is not inherently kinky or fetishistic. But that does mean a game with fat characters but no para-kinks sits in a weird space between these communities
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I think the best a person can do is make something they like and share it with whoever else happens to be interested. Attempting to please everyone is doomed from the start.
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Your definitely onto something there. If you talk to the people that have been online for decades, you’ll probably get told that they saw a whole bunch of different fetishes and eventually some of them stuck with them. I remember reading somewhere that around the time balloons developed, ideas about inflation fantasies started to happen.
I think part of the situation is, other than drawings there just wasnt enough content to supply the demand. So they went elsewhere looking for more things that would interest them.
It is more because people inside fetish spaces usually fully express what puts them on the mood, and people that enter such spaces are usually pretty deep into things.
Just a fat character isn’t a fetish piece, and so in a fat fetish community it won’t be found as interesting. Do fat people need more and better representation in general media? Absolutely! But it’s unlikely it is going to come from here.
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I think those who find what/who they are physically attracted to lies outside of societal norms tend to be more curious/experimental about other things too. If, on the other hand, you’ve internalised long-limbed blonde blue-eyed 36-24-36 as your ideal, then your needs are easily met by “vanilla” conventional media and you’re good to go.
Personal preferences (ie. something that you prefer, but isn’t required) often come with chains of associated kinks (non-normative thing that need to be planned for, but enhances the experience). If you can’t enjoy the experience without a specific thing/situation then it has become a fetish. Where liking fat falls on the preference/kink/fetish scale really depends on the individual.
As far as games about fat people go, then gaining is an obvious progression mechanic that’s analogous to levelling up, or progressing a skill tree. It appeals to the “number-go-up” progression players and those for whom it is a kink/fetish.
As the author of one of the few games here where gaining isn’t a required game play mechanic, people will choose to play a game without engaging with the gaining aspect. Kinks aren’t required for a game to be liked - but if it does include it then people who appreciate it will engage with it. So, yes, mere fat is good enough if the game is a good experience.
There’s an obvious temptation then as a developer to include “all the things” to broaden a game’s appeal. I find this often doesn’t really work (with the exception of “gauntlet” style games like the various “House on the Hill” games with multiple dead ends, and “survival” games reversible transformations - eg CoC, Nimin, Flexible Survival, Insatiable Hearts). Also, it’s often too easy to tell whether or not something isn’t the author’s “thing”.
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This is a fear I have with my game, Earthquake Warriors RPG. The main gimmick is that the characters, aside from being fat, can transform into bigger, fatter versions of themselves, but there’s no real weight gain or vore or anything. Just a short transformation.
They are linked fetishes, and for good reason. But the fact that multiple people like 2 given fetishes in combination doesn’t mean a specific player will enjoy them too. Try to package 3 of them in your game and the pool of people who genuinely enjoy them will further reduce. So we reach an equilibrium: The fewer distinct kinks you put in, the broader the appeal, but put more and the impact will be greater on those that do enjoy them all.
Personally, I love force feeding, roll my eyes at blueberry inflation and actively avoid farting / slob; so effects can vary widely.
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I mean the “your character is just fat but there is no weight gain” is usally covered by mods.
Skyrim had fat body mods before it had vore or weight gain mods. Games like Dragon’s dogma, starfeild, or saint’s Row that let you make fat characters are already popular among chub lovers, and may have mods to be bigger. Cause since 2, every saint’s row game has been lagging behind how big you could be in 2.
So that just leaves games that don’t meet needs to be made by the community. And if you are making a game may as well put in all the things people are hungry for.
it is a rather rare person who goes, “ I am going to make a game on a niche kink website that is a normal game but just happens to have plump characters.” Rare but not non-existent.
Been thinking about trying to learn to make games and have them be bog standard dungeon crawlers that just happen to have fat characters
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I’m alright with the characters just being fat though their character design must be interesting and good looking (body shape, clothing style, etc.) that’s it for me. There’s no need for them to grow bigger but if it does, it’s very welcome!
Lets extrapolate this a little further. “Just fat characters” could include other aspects that are also kinks in and of themselves that aren’t weight-gain or vore.
There could be games where character is fat, stays the same size but could also have things teasing, weight affirmation, the character complaining about how their weight effects how they navigate the world etc…
Hypothetical game scene: You play a Fat trucker guy in a zombie apocalypse, and your character makes comments like “I am too meaty to crawl through this window, but the smaller survivors can. I will keep that in mind.”
Or other characters saying: “Hey Big dude, we need your weight to hold this door. Mind helping?”, “we need someone to scavenge supplies, if you find food make sure to leave some for the rest of us tubby”
such things could also play into this board’s interests, and it is just character or world writing not extra mechanics. Would that be “Mere fat” or would that expand the scope of it?
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I don’t know if I understood correctly, but If you say about characters just being fat and nothing else, for me I think you need to make them more than just “The fat person”. Being fat is like a trait and a character has multiple ones, but if it is just reduced to “the fat person” then yeah, is very simple and not interesting in a game. If you have a game that let’s you create a character and you can make them or have fat mods, then it gets more appealing as is another of the traits and personal qualities of your character and you can also make them be fat for a reason other than fetish stuff or the negative aspects of it. I think is better to have a character that happens to be fat than a character that is just fat.
I do have to say that there are many games that doesn’t have fat characters that are just fat, is just part of them and not their entire persona. Or characters that gain weight to a comfortable size. In the fetish aspects most like the progression and characters ganing more and more, so is understandable for a game to go beyond regular fatness.