Why did DPC chooses "School Setting" for his second game ?
I think that the main reason is probably the higher chances to make lewd scenes, and it would fit in the story perfectly. A horny freshman with a big club fucking around like a hound dog with teachers, lesbian couple, prostitutes restaurant, strip club girls... it's not shocking or surrealist. Either people (25+ years) had memories about college debauchery nor, younger ones wanting to live that (in same time going to college)
So, it fits perfectly, because most people went to college/ high school, so they have a background related to this topic.
Imagine, the setting is about a young doctor in the hospital, or a writer working for a journal, fewer people will relate to it. (like for acting lessons)
The second point is that in college, there's the most diversified cultures, peoples and mentalities. There are stereotypes, a lot, that's why it works perfectly in BaDIK.
I am sure that in the last episodes, there will be some consequences for the previous choices and behaviors of the MC, but it won't be dramatic as AL or as the players expect it.
This game is the best porn game (yes, it's a porn game) ever, and I'm sure it will be like this forever. DPC is at his peak of creativity, motivation and hardworking. That's probably why he's taking more and more time to create animations, deep down, he knows that the internal resources are not infinite.
College (and obviously school in general) are definitely a relatable experience, but also it's a good age group for the girls (most people's firsts fucks would have been when they were around this age group or younger - but we can't get into the younger
). If you consider the other powerhouse AVN in this genre (the one that's been sitting at the top of Patreon's AVN rankings for ears), it's clear it's a crowd pleaser.
But ultimately this was a genre that DPC said he enjoyed; inspired by many teen sex comedies of the past.
Oh, I totally agree on some animations being totally unnecessary (never played Josy&Maya path, recently discovered Maya's pool animation took half of EP8 production time lol) but could you elaborate on how those animations and the focus on them, which prolongs development time, indicate DPC lost the plot? Many people regarded EP9 as worse than its predecessors in terms of writing because it didn't move the story forward, something I hope will be fixed in EP10. But I don't know how it is connected to the plot.
"Lost the plot" is a phrase that means "lost focus". I'm not literally suggesting that DPC doesn't know what the plot of his own story is, but rather that he is deviating from what made his game so highly liked in the first place: It wasn't long-ass animations and never ending free roams, that's for sure.
But as far as the plot is going, it's progressing just fine, and even in episode 9 which delved into numerous broken flashback stories (even though the entire story is actually a flash back from the opening scene), the plot is still adequately evolving.
but look I'm not trying to convince anyone otherwise, but it remains that the most constant argument for praising BADIK's work is disdain for other similar works. that besides being a weak argument, I also find it quite counterproductive, if AVNs are such a dunghill, no matter how much BADIk emerges the stench will always be that.
if I then have to respond to your examples I find them really unremarkable and not particularly significant about the quality of writing. let's start with the fact that they are naturally very subjective, for example that the Jill cycle is coherent and well carried out is at least a controversial opinion...
American Pie, but like it many even worse comedies, have exciting moments, we are human beings, getting excited is easy enough, you just have to push the right buttons (as for example pixar movies do, even the less successful ones)
if I imagine Badik's transposition on paper I see an unreadable work, a concentration of characters who always react at the highest intensity (Mc drops out of college because he had a fight with Troy, Josy runs away from home to go to college, Sage goes to spy on her boyfriend with binoculars, Maya knows that her father has the keys to her room but is sure she will not use them without warning first, Bella stays over at MC's getting caught by all the DIks , Zoey asks MC to drop out of school a few months before it ends and again and again)
there isn't a single story arc that told really makes sense, that's not to say that there aren't funny moments (the poop and fart jokes still make me laugh) or exciting moments. there are qualities, but they aren't enough to hold Badik up as a story on foot
I wouldn't suggest the plot is anything marvelous in this game, it's just a bunch of petty, often contrived, teenaged drama. But it's the way that it's delivered that makes it something special. The dialogue between the character is so comfortable to read; not once during any episode did I ever start to get bored and want to fast forward through the dialogue to see where the game is going.
The story direction / telling method is really a strong point for the game (kinda let down by episode 9 though - I hope the game doesn't continue doing flashback story telling anymore, where the mc relays important plot points out of sequence they way he did in episode 9). There is minimal narration and mostly the renders and dialogue steer the story. I love this method. I don't want to read verbose narration riddled with embarrassing high school quality descriptive language as utilised by most games in this genre.
But there is something interesting to note: Reading the dialogue works well, but if it was played in audio, it sounds terribly stilted. The original voice acting that was used for Bella and Jill before it was dropped just sounded garbage. Not sure if it's the dialogue or the delivery, but yeah, I think the dialogue works best when you're just left to read it.
Lastly, I always read your name as felice mastronzo lol. All this time. Only now I realized the philosophy behind your name Felice Ma Stronzo. Che cazzo, ma sta bene.
This is a very important reveal!
Oh no, my fictional girlfriend who doesn't exist left me because of my decisions and started a relationship with another fictional character, I'm going to write a bible to DPC about what I think about it. You realize that people who think that way are mentally ill, their opinion should not be taken into account and DPC knows that.
It seems that it's a huge number of players that feel this way though (or maybe it's just a vocal minority...
), but I don't think DPC handled it too badly. Apart from Jill being 100% a virgin, which was specifically part of her character development, every other character has had implied sexual experiences, but DPC doesn't rub the more sensitive people's noses in it.