We got rid of Eric what, 5 months ago? Since then the "game" hasn't been as good. I think if you drew a graph for the popularity of this game, it would be decreasing since we got rid of Eric. Why? Because it's been too one dimensional. There's been no contest. When you actually get to a sex scene it just feels too easy.
I saw this argument a lot in BB's early days. And I still very much disagree. If lack of a contest is what it takes for a game's writing to be considered "one-dimensional" that speaks more about the writer's incapability to write an engaging story more than anything else.
The game didn't suffer because Eric was taken out. The game suffered because of Eric's involvement. Let me explain. The game hasn't been good because DS pinned all his writing and effort on making an antagonist in Eric and a poor one at that. So now, since he's gone, DS doesn't know where to go from there because all that effort was scrapped due to the negativity. He backed himself into that corner.
He created Eric to give motivation for the incest story to kick off. This in itself,
wasn't the mistake. The mistake was having Eric be the center of
everything. There was no story without Eric. That was the problem. At the end of the day it's "Big Brother: Incest Story of Your Life" not "Big Brother: Eric's Invasion".
A story can be engaging without a competitor and there's nothing wrong with having a competitor either. Problem is, DS focused solely on the competition. The actual incest story, while certainly not nonexistent, took a back seat to Eric's shenanigans. And the female characters suffered as a result. Ann became a stupid mother. Alice became a sellout, flirting with Stupid Ann's man. And Lisa was hella dense.
Let me tell you how foolish Eric is too. How many times in the past could we catch him masturbating to Alice at night? How many times could we catch him fucking Kira at night? Suppose it was Ann who caught him even
one of those times. Even Stupid Ann wouldn't be able to brush that off the way she did the photographic evidence (which couldn't have been more moronic).
The combination of Eric's continuous shenanigans and convenient scenarios due to the girls' complete lack of common sense bogged the game down. He mishandled Eric's writing and mishandled the writing post-Eric. Now the conflict that he does have (earning money for the house) is being mishandled as well. Why? Because DS is not putting effort into making it a real threatening situation for the family. No eviction warnings. No game overs. No nothing. Everything is easy because he doesn't try to make the current conflicts he's given us any harder. Not because of Eric's disappearance.