That... is literally the problem? Straight is the default, so it is not included within the tags, so you can not search for it to use it for filtering stuff. Which might be fine if you could exclude the various gay tags (19 might be an exaggeration, but I can think of four common ones: Gay, LGBT, Bara, Lesbian). But we can't, so we're trying to come up with a new workaround that does work within itch.io's ridiculous framework. And you're objecting to even that???
Oh, and just so we're clear: there's nothing wrong with all the LGBT stuff, I am glad that it exists and that this can be a platform to host it, so that gay players have stuff to enjoy as well. I just don't want to see it myself. And guess what: they don't want to force it down our throats either; during one of the ten thousand or so previous times this topic was brought up, the author of one of the many gay furry visual novels came in and made it clear that they are just as annoyed by the lack of tag exclusion as straight people are.
On a platform with a sane and reasonable search feature, sure, maybe. But that's not what we're dealing with; we're dealing with a platform where you can only filter content by adding more tags.
On itch.io specifically, it seems pretty easy to find both, just sorta mixed in with each other randomly, especially among the highest rated stuff. But the problem isn't even really, ease of finding what we're looking for. It's a matter of, excluding what we are explicitly not looking for. Let's take a look at the current top two rows of highest rated free nsfw web games, and what we can guess from their title cards:
1. Max the Elf: Looks straight at first glance? Then at second glance, nope, you can see screenshots of the male player character on the receiving end of cocks. Did not want to see that, did anyway. LGBT is right there in the tags, coulda avoided that with tag exclusion.
2. Sileo: Tales of a New Dawn: Looks gay, explicitly states that it is. Okay, cool, that was straightforward! Not gonna click it.
3. Five Nights at FuzzBoob's: Looks straight, judging by how the title card is literally just a pair of breasts. Haven't played it myself though so I can't be sure. After a brief look at the description though, I see the phrase "her two girlfriends", so... lesbian, then? Not seeing any tags to indicate this, though!
4. Superstition S1: From the title card, I can't even guess. I was even on the verge of suspecting it was one of those things that gets called "nsfw" for reasons like, horror or trigger warnings or some such thing? In the description though, I saw "Play as male, female, or non-gender specific, along with transgender choices.
Romance one of five characters, have flings, or stay single because life is hectic enough as is.", so... optionally LGBT, optionally straight? No way of guessing that without checking first, though.
5. Factorial Omega: My Dystopian Robot Girlfriend: Looks straight... and actually is!
6. After Years: Appears to be another obviously gay one.
7. Bad Ritual: Another where I can't even guess. Upon closer examination, LGBT and LGBTQIA are in fact in the tags (hey, there's a 5th gay tag!). No indication in the description whether it is gay, lesbian, transgender, or something else, but from a brief look at the comments it seems probably gay... unless it's actually bi and everyone is just focusing on the male characters.
8. The Forest of Love: Can not even guess from the title card. Or from the description. There is no LGBT tag in here. And yet, it seems that there is stuff with both male and female characters? So, this one is apparently bi, but just, poorly indicated in general?
9. Crown of Exile: No indication from title card. This one appears to have the ability to play as male or female, and romance male or female characters. No idea whether your own character's gender limits your options or not, though; there is no LGBT tag, but we already know that isn't completely reliable.
10. Some Sword/Some Play: Another with no indication from title card. Sifting through the description though, I see: "All three main romances are playable as any combination of M/F/NB with any configuration of naughty bits.". So, another that could be straight, gay, lesbian, or anything else depending on what the player chooses. No tags to indicate this.
11. He Fucked the Girl Out of Me: Can't guess from the image, but from the name, I would guess some sort of transgender thing? In the tags, I see: "Gay, Lesbian, LGBT, Queer, Transgender, Yuri". Wow that's a lot... okay we've gone from 5 all the way up to 8 gay tags thanks to this one. But: the description also states "Trigger Warnings are listed in-game.", and from the comments I am not even sure if this one is porn at all, but rather a deeper story which just happens to focus on nsfw subject matter?
12. Nicole's Risky Job: Would guess straight. Seems to actually be solo female though, no males involved, which means... would probably be equally fine for a lesbian as for a straight man. And would not be fine for a straight woman.
So, out of just these 12, that's quite a few incorrect guesses and stuff that is just poorly indicated without playing. Seriously, this is even worse than I thought, only like a third can be correctly guessed ahead of time without clicking on them. At this point, additional tags, even without the actual tag exclusion we all want, would be helpful for filtering for everyone.
How dare you bring an argument with logic and statistic in a discussion about lgbt!
But yeah, interesting idea. How many of the top listers are tagged in a way that you can find them easily. Or rather, distinguish them from stuff that would not interest you.
Though optional content or possibilities are an interesting subject. There are games where the mc and interactions are freely choseable. This is more like a life simulator. Does this even qualify as "gay", just because you could play it that way. Even play it exclusivly that way. Would you search for something like that with a gay or with a straight tag? Well, I would not tag it gay, as it's focus is not. It's focus would be simulation and lewdness and customizablity. But this is my opinion, since there are no user tags, we are at the mercy of the dev, what tags are given.
As long as we do not have user suggested tags, tag filtering is rather moot anyways. You need to rely on tagging by the dev. And let's face it. They will have a different opinion about the tags of their game, than the players. I liked that example about the different lgbt tags. Will you find yuri, if you search for lesbian, but the dev did not tag gratiously? Is yuri even lesbian or is it specifically lesbian in a romantic way that may or may not be sexual and should have anime style graphics.... ;-)
You do realize, that you do prove my point, that I made as a joke? Your two responses show that you take it emotionally, instead of responding to the points raised. You try to shift it from complaining about the available content filter options to people hating on specific content. We just do not want to waste our time sifting through the description of a game to find out, that it would not interest us after all.
The discussion at that point was about being able to identify the content that interests you or rather, that does not interest you. Within the scope of what is currently doable on the platform. Like tags and short descriptions including screenshots, like the stuff that pops up when you mouse over a game. xlksk tried to do that to a random slice of games selected by their popularity and results were not really satisfying.
And what you assume is, that I do not play lgbt games, my dear furry looking friend ;-)
So what does a tag really say? Imho, not really much, and I do not really use them much to find games, because of how unreliable the tagging is.
I do not like kinetic novels for example, the tagging for that is ... lacking. Similar problems, I have to read very carefully to distinguish some "visual novels" from kinetic novels. Some devs do tag that, some do not.
If your main focus of the game is actually content aimed at people that like gay/trans/furry/ntr whatever content, you do not hide that. You want to be recognised by your target audience. If your "existing " gayness in a game is the focus of the game, it should be obvious from a short description, but if it really only exists, it should not even be tagged.
I do agree the tagging system on itch isnt great. A lot of people here just seem driven by a dislike of lgbtq+ people so I got a bit emotional with responses. Also whether or not Im a "furry" is irrelevant, and this pfp is a character in a project Im working on. With each persoanl project I hyperfixate on I change my pfp to the character I like writing about the most.
Of course it is irrelevant. Also, I called you furry looking and not furry ;-)
Not all people activate the viewing of adult content. The drive to exclude more than one tag stems from the fact that the browse features is often flooded by certain tags, mostly horror and visual novel.
But shifted to an adult gameing perspective, it becomes ridiculus, as there is quite an abundance of non-straight tags for lack of a better word. And most of them mean the same thing anyways. So if you would not be interested in that, you are out of luck. You cannot even try to search with positive tags, to avoid the content that you do not want to play, because there is no straight tag. If you want to avoid horror, you can search for puzzle, if you want to avoid vn, you can search for action or whatever, to thin out the results. But it gets better. Indicated by the testing done by xlsk you cannot even distinguish many games when looking at their short description or screenshots. Spotting furry is quite easy compared to that.
I do not know about the philosophy of itch, if they are "liberal" or whatever. But I highly doubt that the lack of multiple exclusion stems from any agenda about lgbt and to not give the ability to filter it out. The 5yo thread made it very clear to me, that this feature is not frowned upon, but hard to code. A single exclusion was coded rather quickly in that thread. Itch does not have the AAA money, and the feature, while being a QoL for some, is not essential for the platform. Just look at Steam, they do have that feature and I did not even know they have it. And I use Steam for over a decade.
I read a lot of descriptions and comments on adult games. "Queer" stuff is not a problem. In any game with enough complexity there will be some non-straight things. And if the mc is optionally or mandatory gay, that is clearly labelled, as the dev actually wants to attract players that are interested in that. What really is frowned upon is ntr. That can be like mineral oil in a drink of water for some players.
I get that! I have no problem with people wanting to search for that in specific, tag exclusion should exist by now, but my point is just that a straight tag initself wasnt necessary since straight content is so prominent you can just scroll past. However I get that one may be necessary now due to a lack of tag exclusion if thats what youre specifically looking for
In theory. But not gonna fly. For any such thing, there have to be accurate tags in the first place. No one would bother to tag "straight", even if it existed.
I know from visual and kinetic novels. Even though a kinetic novel tag exists, have fun finding games that clearly tag it. With luck, it is written in the description somewhere (yeah, some do tag it, but let me exaggarate). Should you not know what a kinetic novel is, it is visual novel where you can only press next. That is the only interaction possible. For me that is a movie and not a game. While there is nothing wrong with kinetics, I would not want to see them, when looking for games.
I know it was precisely 279 days ago, but I found this post today and felt the need to comment on this: even the most logical of people, like myself, usually gets defensive on a emotional scale when arguments, even if not malicious, are made somehow in relation to opposition, against us. Since all we've faced historically was denial of existence and rights, humiliation, threats of violence and death... etc.
Any normal and sane person would be slightly offput by any negative criticism even if not made with derogatory intention. If you faced daily hate, you'd need therapy for life. That's most of LGBTQ+ of Gen Z. We all need therapy to not off ourselves in a soon future.
I see your point but nothing can "look" straight or gay without relying on heavy stereotypes and it is not our responsibility to warn you for gay people EXISTING in a game. NSFW should be warned for accordingly but I don't feel we should have to make everything stereotypically gay just so you don't have to deal with seeing two lesbians since that upsets you so much. But anyways I understand not wanting 2 see nsfw but seeing a gay game you thought might be straight bc its not a walking stereotype really isn't that big of a deal and if that upsets you you are the problem
From some of your other posts on here I am thinking you are probably just a troll, but I'll respond anyway for the sake of anyone else reading this in the future. To the overall points anyway; don't care enough to bother with the ad-hominem junk, this ain't about me.
When it comes to nsfw games, as in porn games, generally they're going to put a picture of a girl up front if it's for people attracted to girls, and a picture of a guy up front if it's for people attracted to guys. If they put multiple characters on, then you can sometimes narrow things down further depending on how they are posed; they could be together, or they could be different options. Also, justified or not, the target audience of any sort of porn tends to be men, even if the actual audience is much more varied. The end result is: if you see a male character on a porn game's title card (and especially if you see two or more male characters together), it's probably gonna be gay, and if you see a female character and in many cases even if you see multiple female characters, it's probably straight, though lesbian is still a possibility, especially on this site. Yes I know the latter half is half of what you are objecting to, please don't hyperfixate on just that.
If we were talking about actually safe for work games, that's a different story. Nothing wrong with lgbt characters showing up, or being in romantic relationships on screen, I fully support that. Plenty of awesome characters out there who happen to be romantically/physically attracted to their own gender as just one of their many character traits. Being openly out there and having representation is outright vital, not just for public support to acknowledge and accept it as normal, but so gay people don't have to deal with random police raids and shit like in the bad old pre-Stonewall-riot days. But we aren't talking about safe for work games, we are currently talking about porn.
In the sort of games being discussed here, the characters are doing a whole lot more than just EXISTING. Doing a lot more than even just kissing each other, too. They are having sex with each other, explicitly, on screen. Often, that is like 90% of the game's content; just the characters having sex. Nothing wrong with that, but depending on the genitals of the characters, not everyone is going to want to see it. In circumstances like these, male-on-male, female-on-female, and yes female-on-male as well, are all basically just fetishes, no different from stuff like bdsm or ntr or vore or poop or whatever. Some people will be into it, a lot of others will be outright grossed out by the sight of it. It is the responsibility of porn makers to properly tag the fetishes within the porn that they are making. And, more relevantly to this overall thread: it is the responsibility of the hosting site to make it so people can actually properly filter using those tags, and itch.io is failing in that responsibility.
Im not a troll, Im just a queer person who thinks it really isnt that big of a deal to see queer people in games but whatever. or straight people for that matter. Also while I understand that a sexuality isnt a fetish and shouldnt be fetishized???
My main issue is ppl getting upset over sfw lgbtq+ content, guess i didnt realize nsfw was the main focus. Thats a different conversation entirely. I responded the way I did bc the BEGINNING of the thread was VERY homophobic, "The truth is they are super liberal and they don't want people filtering out their 19 different forms of gay tags. They won't say it, but it's true."
Hmm, alright, a simple miscommunication over what the discussion was about; two sides were arguing over entirely different things without realizing it.
Anyway, I agree that it shouldn't be a big deal when it comes to sfw stuff (it objectively is a big deal, otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation at all, but it shouldn't be). For nsfw stuff though, it is pretty important.
No idea whether what Jhaerik said above was actually homophobic or not; I can easily see it as another unfortunate misunderstanding. As I discovered earlier, there are at least 8 gay tags... and upon seeing that "yuri" was among them, I have checked and confirmed that there is a "yaoi" tag as well, bringing it up to at least 9. Even without any problem with LGBTQA people or games themselves, that level of redundancy seems a bit excessive... and when there certain noticeably missing tag options, seeing that redundancy concentrated all to one area can be a bit infuriating. Regardless of their motivations though, they did have a good idea about adding a Straight tag. Because again, in certain specific contexts it is important to specify that, and this site lacks (and more infuriatingly, refuses to build) the infrastructure necessary for us to not need to add it for filtering purposes.