Hey Ryder, I was curious - I know you're familiar with SelectaCorp, but were there any other specific creators or works that particularly inspired you when writing Descent, whether games, stories, movies, anything?
I really enjoy Selectacorp's materail, but I wouldn't say that it was a direct influence on Descent. There's a deliberate, conspiratorial theme running through his games and stories that isn't present in my game.
The first, and obvious inspiration for Descent was Katie's Corruption. While I wasn't trying to replicate it, KC was the game that made me want to try my own game (and, along the way, learn Renpy and Daz3D).
The real inspiration (if I can call it that) is an article I read some time ago, concerning a civil claim for sexual battery or breach of fiduciary duty. The allegation was that a young, drug addicted woman was taken advantage of by an older doctor, in that he would prescribe drugs for her in return for sexual favors. The defendant didn't really deny what had happened, but advanced the theory that the claimant was a predatory young woman who took advantage of the lonely old doctor, in order to get him to prescribe her drugs. I was interested by the fact that the identical set of circumstances could give rise to two completely different interpretations, depending on how you looked at it. Alternatively, both perspectives could even have been true at the same time, with each perceiving the events differently.
So, in Descent, I tried to present choices that stayed on the line between the different perspectives. Is the MC taking advantage of others in order to advance her career or are the others taking advantage of her because she needs them to advance her career? Either or both might be true at any particular time in the game. My goal was to shape the game where the MC was making those choices, at least from her perspective, and those choices might give rise to different interpretations.
Sometimes I think the game hit that mark; others times, I know it didn't. In trying to achieve this, I faced many limitations, not the least of which was my own lack of ability as a writer. Still, that was the goal.
Oh, and the smut, of course. That was also the goal.
