Post by Dr Hyde in Hey, it's me again~

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Lovely response!
I know I have not had the opportunity to review your work but from what I can tell you're certainly not a bad writer, even though your English is not perfect. I wish I could help you improve it for your sake, if you even care anyway. I can't expect you to send me content to proofread for you though, nor would I ask you to, but I would offer my help if you were receptive. And in return maybe you'd improve my French haha. Anyway Thanks for the thorough and kind responses you've given me, it's always nice to talk to other kind people :)

Perhaps you are correct about the dark themes being a popular niche, at least in some places. I can't deny that I, too, have played eroge games with dark themes but I wasn't playing for that reason, and I'm surprised that even some of those were made so much better than some games without the dark themes! This is what upsets me most. I guess in Japan it's a big thing, but whatever. I certainly don't condemn it in video games, if it might even help prevent it in real life.

You need not answer this but I wonder what your favourite game in the genre would be? Or any that just cross your mind as enjoyable. I'd be happy to try any if I hadn't already played it.

MiaQc3 years ago(+1)

Honestly, I don’t really know.

My first foray into the world of Hentai was with Slave Maker and then a brothel sim game. The slavery theme did turn me off, but the reason I played and enjoyed it back then was for the all the characters backstories and the princess maker-like gameplay. As for the brothel sim game, it was a stat raising game and I liked those.

Now, I did try clicker/dating sim-lite games that I liked in the end. Crush Crush and Blush Blush come to mind but the Hentai content in those is tame.

There are also Belgerum visual novels for their voice acting, art style and RPG battle elements, but they all got dark content in them. For some reason I didn’t really mind those. I guess I’m so “used” to see them in a lot of erotica works I get unaffected by them? Or, if it’s in a visual novel, I just skip the scene and move on with the plot?

That’s what I did with my own works thus I can understand the person saying my writing is "terrible". I was rushing the dark content scenes to move on with the plot, but there was barely a plot in there to begin with. Can’t write good stuff in less than 2 weeks after all. Me and my dumb idea to “live off” my works on Steam by putting 1 visual novel-lite out every month to get 100$ minimum funds to get paid, but that also means 100$ Steam fess every mouth. Also, since I was feeling "bad" about writing them, I didn't take to time to look for "poetic way" to write them down thus they were highly repetitive.

Now, I could redo some of them with a better (aka more developed and longer) plot + with either 1) no dark content or 2) dark content but not explicit – like X character got assaulted in 1 text line and moving on – but since they were not selling enough on Steam before the delisting, I don’t even know if they will sell a bit here on itch.io, and I’m still not very comfortable with writing hentai, it’s not in my plans.

In fact, I don’t even want to work on something new right now. I rather focus on other hobbies, delisting 4 Alice MAG on Steam in January, and then I’ll see. I did plan a winter sale on itch.

Dr Hyde3 years ago

Thanks again for the response. I pretty much feel the same way about all the games you mentioned, but I feel that if someone intends to put in dark themes into their game it should be in a story branch that isn't necessary to follow. That way the user doesn't need to skip it.

As for your own content, I imagine if you rushed any part it would reflect poorly on the reviews, but at least you're learning a lot about it all and can figure out where to go next from that. Keep your spirits up, I'm sure you'll find your niche sooner than later and the money and fans will come along in no time :)

I had no idea Steam had a monthly fee for developers. I suppose it makes sense, but I always thought they just took a small cut off every purchase. Good to know.

Best of luck to you, in whatever you choose to pursue!

MiaQc3 years ago (2 edits) (+1)

Hi again. No, Steam dosen't have a monthly fee, only the Steam Direct fee every time you put a game out. Since I released 1 every month, well, it looked like a monthly fee. :D Plus the 30% cut + other cuts for taxes, money conversion fees, bank fees, etc.

Dr Hyde3 years ago

Ah, that makes more sense haha. Thanks for the info!