IMO, it's the main thing that handicaps ORS from being more popular than it is. Lena & Ian are too average, too vanilla, and too close to real life. Especially Ian. Players who like to self-insert as the protagonists in smut games love characters that are 'bigger than life.' Swap Ian with Axel or Jeremy and maybe Lena with Cindy as the main characters, and I bet this game takes off to the next level. You can probably argue that even the fucking bouncer at the club, with some bare-bones character development, would be a better pick than Ian as the main character in a porn game in the eyes of the average smut connoisseur.
I'd disagree there. This is what some players want. Other players who like to self-insert prefer an average guy who is actually average (or, well, sometimes less than average with one
much larger than average appendage, as in the case of STS). I would not be interested at all in playing any of those male characters. There's often not much rhyme or reason as to what makes a game successful, beyond a low threshold of quality a game must pass. But the four biggest factors I've seen beyond that low quality bar that generally give the dev a better shot at a top spot are: Is it a male-mc-only game? Is there a harem involved? Is the male a "young man" of college age? Has this dev been around for 5+ years, building up a fanbase since before there was so much competition? Those four factors tend to add to a game's chances of being a top money-maker, whether I care for them or not (I either don't like or don't care about any of those specifics, personally). More often due to the demographics of a user looking for an adult VN & willing to spend money on it.
Plus, given all the amateur/indie adult VN games with a full-time dev, ORS is still up there as one of the most popular, despite not having some of those qualities. Doing a few things differently has helped Eva stand out from the pack, with the quality of her work being a very large factor as well. (Creating the first actually
good F-MC alternative game helped too, of course, I'm sure. Even though it'll never surpass a top-spot M-MC harem sort of VN). While hitting the right demographic is required for a top-spot, there is so much shit out there vying for that same demog that a creator also runs a greater risk of languishing in obscurity going that route.