How do you avoid rewarding for failure?

In game theory terms I think what you are talking about is called "ludo-narrative dissonance", if you want to read more about it.

I have also thought about somehting similar, as I have playing around with a prototype. My problem was this: How do I make punishments punishing without ruining the game? Obviously players of a spanking game will want to get spanked. But it feels wrong to have the players go around and search for punishment as if it was an egg hunt.

My solution will (if I ever actually finish the game) probably be something like this: Punishments will restrict the actions you can take, and what you can explore.

Let's say the player character misbehaves and gets grounded for the weekend. Then they cannot go to the party that weekend, and will miss that scene, and is forced to only take actions around the house for the weekend. Then the next play-through the player can decide to behave before the weekend, and thus unlock what ever scenes is there.

You can even have unique scenes for being grounded at home in addtion to what ever happened that weekend. Then the player is actually rewarded no matter what, because they made a meaningful choice.

I hope this helped! Good luck with your game.

[Dhazrulrunk]

One way could be to make taking spankings a "key" that unlocks further story progression. The secret club at school has a hazing ritual, or the magical door will only unlock when you moon it with a red butt, stuff along those lines. That can make seeking out spankings intergral to progressing further in the story, and introduce some conflict for your player character. Is needing to infiltrate the police station worth the judicial paddling that will get you physically inside the building? From a puzzle solving perspective you can also introduce ways to "balance" the naughtyness that you get spanked without suffering more game ending failures (getting a quick spanking instead of being spanked AND grounded)

[Shiro.kun]

Another aspect that just crossed my mind are multiple playable characters. Like if you have some sort of competition, you play as 1 character, loser gets spanked. But then during the scene the playable character changes from the winner to the loser, playing the scene as a sub. So character 2 is getting punished for losing, but the player still needed to win in order for the scene to happen.

[Izumi]

I would say depending on the programming skills of the person you could make it like with Undertale and have the game remember how many battles you lost on purpose (if losing doesn't result in a game over) and call the player out for going over a certain number of purposely lost battles

[aka]

Another thought is to tie spankings not so much to failure as to bad things happening. For example, in an RPG characters take damage. There's nothing you can do about it, you *will* take damage. Doesn't mean you failed (you may still win the fight after all), and if it happens too much you might still fail. So you still have that punishing aspect without forcing players to "play to lose."


The most obvious way to implement something like this would be spankings in an RPG style combat. There of course you run the risk of the spankings growing stale, or not being particularly sexy if the messages are too utilitarian.



But you could theoretically have it happen in other games too. Maybe a puzzle game that's built on trial and error. Everytime you make a mistake with the puzzle, you get a spanking, but it's still not a game over.


For example, a stealth game where getting caught wasn't a game over, just a spanking. Of course here you'd have to make sure the spankings scenes are either skippable, or have some variety in the context of a single puzzle (so you don't get the same 5 minute scene over and over again).

[psyger]

As a sub who loves playing spanking games, I absolutely feel your pain. Especially since I also love the fantasy of a disciplinary spanking.

Something I've thought about is having a task be impossibly hard. E.g. make the player do a list of chores which are essentially mini games. But have the mini games be very convoluted and hard (or even impossible to do on a first playthrough). This way you can convey that the player character is bad at them and make the player lose after giving an earnest try.

However, this approach has the disadvantage of feeling very cheap. Alternatively, you can have set events that trigger no matter what. E.g. a maintenance spanking, or a high chance of getting spanked by the headmistress as you're walking through a particular part of the building. I really liked how Godspeak did it in his Halloween game where you had to collect spankings. Although I wasn't a fan of the fact that in order to win, you had to avoid getting spanked (the game is still incredibly amazing, though - I especially liked the characters and the art style )

In terms of inspriation for sub-centered games, I think the best place to look is survival horror games. As a genre, it faces similar challenges to spanking games. In horror, players want to get scared, but yet they actively avoid it. I've noticed two approaches horror games take:
1. The easy approach is to basically neuter the player. Make movement clunky and slow, mame combat options non-existent and make everything pitch black. Thay way, players basically can't avoid getting startled. In terms of spanking games, that would be the impossible mini game example I gave above
2. Lean in on the atmosphere. Carefully craft an atmosphere of dread as you make the player jump at shadows. Then, you lull them into a false sense of security, before you pounce (with either a jumpscare or - if you're not a dick - with another ratcheting up of tension).

I don't really know how you'd translate the 2nd one in spanking games. In any case, it's very hard to do, and it might be a cursed problem (I don't know if I can post links, so go to YouTube and search for "gdc cursed problems in video games" for an amazing talk on the subject by a dude from Riot). After all, as a player you want to get punished, but as a gamer you want to master the game and be good at it. And - by definition - you can't be punished for being good at something. Yes, you can be rewarded with a more sensual spanking, but that's a different fantasy from having a disciplinary spanking where you've lost control of the situation, and I'm personally much more interested in the latter.

But then again, I might be wrong. There are games that make you lose without feeling cheap. I really loved the way Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast did it with your first fight against Dessan. Spec Ops: The Line also did it well. But it's really hard to do.

[psyger]

Double post. Please, delete

[Kelsec]

Originally Posted by Someguy7116

What game is number 3 in reference to?

Sounds like maybe Little one in G.I.A.N.T world?

[javajava]

We have struggled with that question as we tried to design an XR multiplayer game (some details in the post re multiplayer and XR game posts)
https://animeotk.com/forum/showthrea...ame-42606.html
https://animeotk.com/forum/showthrea...eri-42321.html
https://animeotk.com/forum/showthrea...zio-42596.html
(and private conversations)

It is clear that both trying to be spanked and trying not to be spanked can lead to poor games.
The first doesn't make a lot of sense while the second either leads to no spankings because you easily avoid them (or fall into the first trap by trying to be spanked) or the game is impossibly hard and you can't avoid being spanked.


The approach we are trying is:
Our young spankees have a mission/quest/mystery to solve. One in which they will have to break the rules - and probably earn themselves a lot of spankings - but receiving spankings is not the character's purpose, it is just a cost that might need to be paid in order to achieve success in their adventure.
For spankers there can be a similar problem. Villains of course can spank cruelly and maliciously in order to prevent the spankees discovering their misdeeds, although making this too obvious will blow their cover, and if it dominates the game it is likely to make the theme much darker. And of course the villains will face the painful consequences of their crimes when they are finally caught.
Good adult spankers need other motivations. Usually they will have certain behavior or performance objectives for their children/students/etc in their care which might be assisted by spanking them when they don't behave. This only works for real players if the spankings are undesirable. However the spankers don't value spankings for their own sake (at least not as a game objective) and might find that unfair, inappropriate spanking harms their objectives.


Finally some characters may be both be spanked and may be responsible for spanking others. In addition to the mechanisms above, this can work especially well because -
If these players fail to keep order, then they could be spanked themselves or have the privileges they need to solve the quest taken away. As a result they may need to spank in order to obtain or maintain their privileges and avoid being punished, provided that spanking those who don't behavior doesn't hinder the main mission/quests/mystery to solve too much.

The combination of balanced competing motivations is key to making spanking a workable fun game, especially for a multiplayer game with open player communication on a voice channel.
The game should result in a lot of spanking without make it too hard to avoid spanking or motivate the player to play in order to be spanked. To put it another way - most of the players are constantly taking a calculated risk of being spanked in order to make progress in their quest, because while they can easily avoid being spanked, it is much harder if not impossible to succeed at the mission and avoid being spanked.



Join us if you are interested.

We would like other game designers who share this approach to spanking motivations, even if you don't have any experience with XR/VR

https://animeotk.com/forum/showthrea...ame-42606.html

[Breakfire]

I know this question is mostly meant for people who enjoy playing as subs, but if I may add my two cents, I believe I can vouch for my answer.

As someone who likes to play a dominant role, it seems obvious that spanking rewards being locked behind success is not the same thing. If you take away the roles of top/bottom, however, and just see it as content, I think the answer of "Player Agency" would solve the issue.

Letting the player make choices, cosmetic ones mostly, can be a simple solution. By cosmetic, I mean it doesn't have to be as rigid as right and wrong or good and evil. It's just a choice that results in different things. It could be simple as "I choose A" and that makes B, whatever it is, consequential. A and B don't have to be defined as anything particularly positive or negative, the fact that the player is the one to choose it is the immersion. They could both feasibly end up as spanking content. Something as benign as choosing left or right at a fork in the road. Unpleasantness could be waiting down both roads, but you picked the one with the pretty flowers and were betrayed by the flora... that dastardly flora.

Anyway that's my two cents. Keep the change, heh heh.