future dating sims might be female romances only

[Thee Forsaken One]

This is a good reference. (Hint hint) still waiting for the game.

I hear he is very much into men.

[DarkWolf]

The yaoi and shounen ai genre has been evolving if you look at digiket or other sites at what's trending feminine guys have been on the declive, also, japanese male idols are not as popular os they once were, the Korean male idols on the other hand are, and if you see the similarities, the most popular ones are the masculine ones and are often portrayed in magazines like Men's Health, even companies like Voltage which release an stupid amount of dating sims has almost completely devoid their games of feminine looking guys in the latest releases.

How sure are you of this? Cause I just checked several latest Voltage games and most guys still look feminine like usual. I couldn't find their character set for their last game but for one before that:



Does this look masculine to you? Or a game devoid of feminine looking guys?

I also generally checked last 10 Otome games released on VNDB and noting seems to be changing from usual.

I also checked last like 30 Shounen-AI games on VNDB and there's also not much change there eater, especially for bigger games.

I also googled Korean male idols and went to images and it seems stuff aren't that different from Japanese ones, about 95% of them are clearly feminine.

Maybe masculine characters/idols you talk about are just overhyped by the people who like them, for their rarity witch makes it appear as things have changed while they didn't. If you are always hanging around a circle of people who like the same stuff you do it's easy to misplace popularity in that circle for general popularity especially if that is something you would like to believe.

[PaperDragon]

I've actually been thinking about this post for the last several days and I have to say, I'm very disappointed in people. (Not you, Jack. You're running a business and you have to give the majority of your customers what they want otherwise you will have to close. That doesn't make the fact that you're considering this any less depressing.) I just really hate it when people complain about something that didn't cater to them solely. And, honestly, there are so many yuri VNs and sims out there that knowing that WW offered BxB options (when not a lot of places do, especially ones that aren't all sex) was so nice. Truly, if I like a game, I often play through every possible romance path with very few exceptions. (I've not gotten there with WW last couple releases, but I will. ESPECIALLY because on Love Bites everyone is bi and if I'm given the option, I want to romance the LI with a player character of the same gender.)

My knee-jerk reaction to this news was that I'd probably be buying a lot fewer games from WW - mostly in protest, because there are some pretty awesome F/F and/or M/F paths in the games. (And if you don't keep all combinations in the RPGs, I'll almost certainly be gone permanently. Mostly because I just can't see how that would work for any sort of good story.) Then I realized, WW has never actually published a solely yuri game yet. (I know that's what Summer in Trigue and Volleyball Heaven both are, but we're still waiting on them.) And it's been years since we've had a M/F only game. (All the way back to Summer in Fairbrook which, if I'm not mistaken, was a very early release.) However, we've had several otome games and one M/M game in recent years. So...I guess I'd say I'll have to wait and see what I think of WW's yuri games. (Judging from the art, they seem a little more...fanservice-y than I like my games to be. So we will see.)

On a side note, (and a few things I found interesting and wanted to share) I'm not seeing any bad reviews on Steam where there's problems with the romance options. (I don't know if other languages would have different/more results, but in English:) I checked and Love Bites had 6 reviews (but today it's only 5 ) and they were all positive. Cursed Lands has 15 reviews and of the 4 negative reviews, none of them mention anything about the gender of the love interests being a problem. (And I just have to add, because I found myself looking through all the Steam WW games and comparing the number of reviews with how positive they are. Heirs & Graces, the ONLY solely M/M game from Winter Wolves, was released less than 5 months before Queen of Thieves, an otome/yuri mix, and H&G has over twice the amount of reviews (28 vs 12) and they are 93% positive vs QoT 66%. (The ONLY negative review for H&G ends by saying 'go buy a yaoi manga instead' and, yeah, if that's what you expect the game to be, you probably should.) I especially found this comparison interesting, because QoT is my least favorite WW game. Ever.)

Anyway, just had to say something, add my two cents, and am very curious to see what happens in a few years.

[jack1974]

The real problem is, that this market changes so fast that even us developers, don't know anymore what to do
I was just chatting last day with another indie (not making VNs, strategy stuff) and he said that for his new game he had to change COMPLETELY his ideas from his last one.
So what today seems a good idea, tomorrow might not be. At this point I think I'll just make the games as better as I can as always and hope for the best lol
But I want to repeat what I already said: that day I was probably in a bad mood / stressed so even just a simple (completely legit) review irked me more than normally do. Everyone should be able to speak their mind, even if I don't always agree (or like) what they say
And I don't need to base my choices on Steam review rating, but if people buy the games and so far both Cursed Lands and Love Bites, games featuring all romance types, did very well. So even if a few people don't like the fewer romances, I won't be influenced by that but only by numbers (of course after 6 months / 1 year I'll be able to draw better conclusions).

[mastro]

Jack, you should know better than reading Steam reviews. Steam is literally the worst. They have this absurd concept of "power to the people". But people suck! People will mostly post negative reviews, they troll and insult. People who enjoy a game rarely bother to post something. This is already screwed up!
Then Steam had the great idea of making review of people who didn't purchase it "void". So all the fans reviews won't count towards that score.

And there are some people who post only to troll. No, not referring to Love Bites, I just saw a review on Cursed Land.
"Do yourself a favor. Don't waste your time on this piece of steaming garbage.

The writing is atrocious. The characters all sound like robots dispensing endless streams of useless information. The worldbuilding is utter ♥♥♥♥. My 12-year-old cousin could probably come up with a more interesting fantasy world than this pile of crap. And the artstyle makeks everyone look like potatoes with extra chromosomes.

Don't waste your money on this. This dumpster fire of a "game" wouldn't be worth your time even if it were free."

Now if this isn't a troll review, I don't know what it is. Writing for me was OK, in some path much better (nagas and political intrigue). Atrocious is a word I reserve for something... disgusting, that makes me vomit. And for sure, her 12 old cousin can write better, because why pay people to write when teenager can do a better job?
And the art... if there's something that rarely can be criticized of your games is art (apart original PSCD art maybe).
I'm glad I'm not making indie games, reading such bullshits would make me super angry. And I hope your writer and artist never read them as well. BUt YOU, you shouldn't read them, will only make you angry and maybe take irrational decisions that you will regret one day. Said from someone who don't even play yaoi romances.

[Franka]

At least only 1 person found that review helpful. Probably the one who wrote it.

[jack1974]

At least only 1 person found that review helpful. Probably the one who wrote it.

Haha this made me chuckle
Yeah I stopped reading reviews of my games after a while, but for newer games the temptation to take a look is too strong. But clearly "troll reviews" like that one shouldn't even be taken into account.

[anita]

Even the original review of Love Bites is a bit pointless. Complaining about the "romances:price" ratio is useless, since like all games it will be discounted. I have to say that I have waited to buy several games full price (not just yours) because they had only a few romances, or the setting wasn't one I liked particularly, and so on.
All complaints about "not worth the price" are useless on a platform like Steam that has so many discounts...

[Miakoda]

I apologize in advance as this post will reflect some ideas touched upon earlier.

First, while I can't speak for other games, I will say that my discussions on future games with Winter Wolves so far has included romances of all kinds (GxB, GxG, BxB) for those projects. At the time I write this, that hasn't really changed. Of course, whether you will like my writing for them is a matter of taste (and I highly recommend trying the demo first).

On the subject of yuri games, remember Winter Wolves hasn't officially released a yuri game yet either, so it is hard to say how well it will do. While some devs have done well, others may not (and some of the ones who did well went for nudity rather than quality).

Finally, a lot can change just on the Storefront itself. Valve is a good examples; often they will do an action or make a change which can make a whole genre unviable in the span on of a day. Apple makes it a big headache just trying to update stuff on its App store; hell, there are some big devs that haven't updated things because they got tired of dealing with Apple, let alone small ones.

As for the price per romance ratio; unfortunately there will always be someone who isn't pleased. I mean, I liked Roommates, but I was one of those who wished for an additional GxG romance...so that is something we tried to address with the range in Love Bites.

Of course, we might have gotten a few more romances in, but then we would have gone the Choice of Games route (for the curious, it is just a copy/past of pronouns/names in most romances, etc.)

[jack1974]

It's a bit tricky, with games having all romances like Love Bites you CAN'T have many love interests. With games having only one romance type or max two, you can have 4 love interests but only the ones interested in that specific romance will play the game (or people who don't mind the romance as long as the story is interesting).

Though probably there are people who will always complain, what Anita said it's true, if in your opinion a game is not worth the price it's enough to wait a year or two and you can usually get it at half price. I think in future I'll favor quality over quantity when deciding what to do, but as always depends on too many things to be sure