I'm as impressed as anyone with BaDik, but I really appreciate this list. As an AVN noob, I sometimes find the perspectives and/or arguments here a bit baffling. However, this convo, and the pushback that this post has been getting, has gotten me thinking about why, as much as I enjoy BaDik, I don't feel much for it, especially when compared to many of the games on your list. And it has to do with DPC's writing, but I suspect that the same things that make me bounce off the writing are what make DPC's fans so loyal.
I think DPC's greatest strength lies in writing a very specific dynamic, one in which a woman needs something from the MC and is afraid to ask for it. Maybe we can call this sexual tension, but it's really a type of a relationship, and I think that most of the storylines in Badik revolve around this type of relationship. When things get serious, characters look down demurely and bite their lip and the MC is free to make their day/night/life by coming to the rescue. Whatever weird plot contrivances get the characters to this point matter less than the scene itself, which DPC is very good at writing. The plot, despite huge melodramatic contortions, is simply not the point. I think you see this in the nonsensical nature of Maya's obstacles, or the way that this huge thing that Quinn is up to never becomes a part of the actual story.
What I described above is probably what good writing is for a lot of people. It is probably what is appealing about AVNs for many, is probably what they think of as romance par excellence, hence why so many people describe BaDik as the apex of the medium. And I agree, it takes a lot of work and a lot of talent to write a character that people fall in love with. But because the falling in love follows this rhythm and this genre convention so neatly, DPCs work doesn't feel personal in the way other game can feel. There's no room to breathe, no space for him to write his estoteric interests into the story, no vulnerability.
His authorial voice is bound up in moving the characters through dramatic moments, and in the quiet moments, instead of writing, we get mini games. The morning at Bella's comes to mind. You get a taste of what a casual hang out could be, which turns into a mini game, and then the next dramatic moment comes around the corner.
Again, this is probably what good writing is to many people. Forward momentum, no bagginess, new things happening. And here, at the nexus of gaming, writing, and porn, I would also guess that BaDik is popular because it feels much more like a game than most AVNs, and an enjoyable one. And totally commendable how the gameplay elements, like the planning board, reinforce the roleplaying of the MC, which is its own kind of writing.
But I question whether college farce is really the genre best suited to DPC's strengths. Because he relies so heavily on plot contortions to get his characters where he wants them, the kind of soap opera finale of Season 2 feels inevitable, and I see more of the same down the road. If the setting were different, perhaps these plot contortions would feel more natural, but as it is, it does feel very days of our lives.
None of these things make DPC a bad writer. I have seen some bad writing in games, even some of the more lauded ones, where the voices of the characteristics are undifferentiated, where authors rely on writerly ticks or cliches just to get sentences structured. But I think he is in some ways a victim of his success. Something like Chasing Sunsets feels so fresh and specific in comparison. Philly's work also, while totally bound to genre conventions, manages to find ways for so much of his own personality to come through. And this, ultimately, even in AVNs, is what art can do. It can convey one person's inner life to an entire audience through the manipulation of that audience's mental faculties.
DPC manipulates brilliantly, though maybe a little too obviously. Maybe he's just unpretentious in his desire to get his audience to the next psycho-sexual payoff. But BaDik ends up feeling more like a product than art as a result, or maybe in the porn-game-novel trifecta it just leans more heavily on the first two. I just don't feel much pathos beating underneath all the layers of polish and control.
So thanks again for the list. I look forward to trying out the half of it that I haven't played.
