November 27 Update (Patreon)

I could write a rant, but I don't think it would do any good. I could try for erudite cultural criticism, but I'm even more skeptical about that. Instead, let me try to keep the negativity focused on the personal and simply relate how I feel.

FYI, this post is going to be long on analysis but also (unnecessarily?) personal. I thought about not posting it. A career is a marathon, not a sprint, so there are natural ups and downs of the process. What I wrote a month ago reflects how I sometimes feel, but this was delayed so much I'm actually in a great mood right now. This also felt like an awkwardly serious thing to post on Thanksgiving weekend. But I feel like I've been too coy about upcoming posts and this has been put off many times in the past, so here we go.

This isn't something I'm posting on a whim, but rather thoughts I've withheld for years. I'm not sure if this meets my standards of professionalism, but upon reread I still decided to post it. Maybe it will at least clarify.

MY TAXONOMY OF ADULT GAMES

I'm not sure how insightful this will be, but let me do a little taxonomy of the adult games industry as I see it. These are marker stones with overlap, not categories with hard borders.

Normal Games with Adult Content: A standard game subgenre with adult content integrated via the story or themes. I think most would agree that TLS and most of my work falls into this category. There's nothing wrong with it, but there's no fundamental discontinuity between such games and the entire field of gaming/writing, so there's not a lot to say.

Fetish Simulators: Interactive programs that may resemble games but have different goals. This category represents an evolution in my thinking.

The classic example is poorly-designed platformers where the only sexual content comes when you lose. It's sometimes said that the game's incentives are misaligned (because you only get content by failing), but I've come to believe this isn't accurate. In my experience, for the people who like these games, the act of failing is itself part of the fetish for them (and they aren't necessarily looking for a good platformer by conventional standards). I think it's useful to think of these not as "bad games", but products aiming for an entirely different goal.

This category includes a wide variety of examples of sexuality being integrated into the game mechanics themselves, and I think it has seen the most development from a mechanical perspective. Unfortunately, I haven't played any of these that focus on fetishes that interest me, so I'm not very engaged by this subset of adult gaming.

Porn Delivery Mechanisms: Free online pornography is ubiquitous, but some people prefer their content to be parceled out via another activity. I think this both relates to physiological rhythms (since the main game is usually semi-sexual and leads to warmup) as well as simple pacing and sense of progression. Oftentimes the mechanics of these games are tedious and repetitive, for which reason I've been negative on them in the past, but I've come to feel that this is actually the product working as intended. Extensive or elaborate gameplay would get in the way of mediating the sexual experience, because it's really just a wrapper for the main content.

Social Simulators: These games are generally less concerned with gameplay than narrative, so they're often VNs with some light interactive elements. In my experience, these tend to focus on pseudo-real situations: common real world scenarios (like high school if you're Japanese, or college if American) with standard character types taken from life, if not portrayed realistically. I think these are on the borderlands with standard erotica, porn, and so on. I assume these are largely serviceable, since they can be quite successful, but they generally don't interest me from either the gameplay or story side.

Memes: A non-trivial amount of the field is based on a sort of "art as object" view of things. You don't really play it for a game or story, but because it references internet fetishes, YouTubers are playing it, you can leave joke reviews on Steam, etc. I'd say these are more artifacts of internet culture than anything, but I think there's significant overlap with the other categories. While I don't really enjoy this, complaining about it would be complaining about human nature.

Note that in all this I haven't really written about integrating sex into gameplay as a meaningful axis for analyzing games. That's not to say that it has no validity, but I think it's secondary to the fact that different products are offering fundamentally different things.

THE FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE

No reason to sugarcoat it: I feel like it's far too rare for me to play an adult game that I think is sexy, or even fun. Has the industry changed? No, and that's the issue. Elements that felt novel when I started ten years ago have become increasingly tedious to me. To my eye, the industry seems dedicated to cranking out soulless product. Anime Tiddie Inc.

Heaven knows I like silly/over-the-top/unrealistic tropes, but after prolonged exposure to certain elements and long conversations both read and participated in, I've become more cynical about it all. There are a lot of things that I no longer think are self-aware fetishes (which would be pointless to criticize), but are instead rooted in a stunted understanding of human sexuality (which is also pointless to criticize, but I don't personally enjoy).

Some of you know that I used to write romance novels. I started adult games expecting them to be similar: an extremely popular product that is intentionally not for everyone. That's partially true, but my opinion has worsened. The adult game industry isn't equivalent to romance, it's equivalent to a toxic subsection like the Omegaverse. There are large numbers of people, possibly majorities in some subgroups, for whom the very concept of "sexiness" is inextricably bound with a lot of arbitrary elements that have nothing to do with eroticism for me.

This probably comes off as judgmental, because to some degree it is. I'm not sure that fetishes are exactly immutable human nature, but it's true that people can't always change who they are. But I feel that my own preferences should deserve the same respect, and due to the industry being wrapped up in an Omegaverse-style subculture, they don't receive it. While I might seem like an over-sensitive artist focusing on criticism, I've tried to do objective comparisons with random samples and I think the difference in reception is not imaginary.

So while my opinions have changed, I feel that the industry hasn't. In that case, I think it's time to accept that the machine is working properly and if I don't like the end product, that's my problem. Better to accept that my work will always be compared to these end goals rather than naively believing I can change what's viewed as a worthwhile goal.

There are a lot of potential reasons for negative reception of my work. I have all kinds of real or potential shortcomings and failings as a creator, some of which may be improvable or changeable. But at the heart of my fundamental problem is that my passion has slowly been withered.

I'm trying to avoid weasel words/phrases in this post, but I do use the passive voice consciously there. I still can't help but come up with tons of ideas for new adult games. Some of them have much higher amounts of sex, some I think are innovative, some I believe would be commercially successful... but when I think about finishing them and throwing them out into the current environment, my enthusiasm withers. Not instantly; it's a years-long process of erosion.

Is my sense of eroticism that rare or maladapted to this environment? I just feel like half of sex is personality and emotional variation. To my eye, much of the most successful work is incompatible with personality and offers only one type of content, no matter how many different things dongs are doing to a blow-up doll. I believe I'd be capable of producing this content, but it's wearying to think anything I create will just be compared unfavorably to these monotonous ideals.

REASSURANCE ABOUT TLS

I had hoped to get out at least one more TLS update this year, but I think I'm going to fall short. Not because it was impossible, but because the above feelings harmed my productivity. I aspire to be purely professional, so I consider that a failing and it's something I hope to curtail. However, I hope that people will also accept my honesty for the rest of this section.

(One reason I haven't discussed this previously is that I worry about having a negative impact on any patrons going through a rough time themselves. I'm not expressing frustration with anyone specific, much less you guys, just the industry at large. In my more rational moments, I'm incredibly grateful that such a large community has built up around my work.)

Some people will no doubt think that I'm dragging out TLS due to these reasons, but I want to stress that isn't the case. Yes, conflicted feelings have impacted my motivation and work. But my worst impulse is actually in the other direction: if I cut all optional content and rushed the ending, I could be done with TLS in a handful of months. In my bleaker moments, the idea of fulfilling my promises and then being rid of the commitments that come with being a creator paid monthly gives me a real sense of peace.

I'm not going to do that. I've been working on TLS for years and I intend to give it the ending it deserves. In particular the post-game, where all of the player's decisions and quests will have more dramatic impacts that wouldn't be sustainable in an ongoing game. After players put a hundred hours into the story, they deserve to see the final results of all their choices.

I don't know, has my career to this point been good enough evidence that I am not motivated primarily by money? I admit to sometimes getting frustrated reading statements that are ignorant of industry realities and how much money I could make doing different things if I really sought wealth.

So given everything I've said, why not accept that I've always been and will continue to be a niche creator with no impact on the broader genre? There's nothing wrong with that, to be clear. Niches are the beating heart of the Patreon age. Accepting this could be freeing in some senses, because I could focus on certain elements and ignore others. But I think this post has made clear that this whole process has worn down my creative passion. My question isn't "Can I make a living?" (definitely yes), it's "Do I want to keep subjecting myself to this field?"

As I've said, I can't help but come up with ideas. I think up new games all the time and I'm accumulating a huge set of notes for a science fiction epic that I think would be a fun successor to TLS. But more often lately this passion grinds up against the wall of everything I expressed earlier in the post.

All of you have given me a career and you deserve my absolute best. I will absolutely finish TLS as well as I can. But beyond that, I'm not sure I will be able to give what you deserve. If that is the case, I will do the professional thing and no longer accept money via Patreon. I give weekly updates and write out things like this because I take the implicit social contract seriously.

This has been a grim post, hopefully not at a bad time for anyone. Again, while this is an accurate reflection of some periods for me, I am actually currently in a good mood and working productively.

Please look forward to some of the fun things in store! The next two (more positive) longer posts should be interesting for many patrons and there's also a series of upcoming Christmas-themed TLS art that I believe everyone will enjoy. ^-^