Hmm the only art style that sort of gives me a revulsion is the one with insanely overblown body proportions (and even then i'll still play Superhuman, literally for the plot) so i don't get this mentality pretty much at all.
Discarding any game with anime/manga style, that's probably missing out on half of the porn games out there if not more, right from the start. Which i suppose could also explain why you don't know any games better than EK's.
You might be surprised, but I actually agree with most of what you've written. My aesthetic mentality is specific and yes I know that I discard not half but pretty much 90% for the porn production. I take ownership of this fact. I am just not into this, I came onto that forum pretty much for EK and becaus of Covid. You can say it: I am not a porn game fan, just an EK fan.
It's interesting, I'm similar to both of you in some ways. I've never been into manga and my anime knowledge begins and ends with Akira and Cowboy Bebop, so that limits the games I'll look at. Outlandish body proportions also turn me off, and as the graphics for "regular" games get better all the time, I even find myself not bothering with games using Daz, unless it's someone who really knows what they're doing. That limits me to what, drawn and Unreal productions? Pretty much.
I started exploring porn games during Covid and found three I really liked and was impressed with: Our Red String, Areas of Grey, and Jessica O'Neil's Hard News. I kept looking around and followed maybe half a dozen seriously for a while, things that finished like Melody, Pine Falls, and City of Broken Dreamers (which just finished a few months ago), Dr. Amana, and Seeds of Chaos. AoG and Amana got abandoned by their devs, JOHN might as well be abandoned by how little its dev has released in recent years, and I faded away from Dreamers a few years ago but now that it's done it's been on my list to get back to - but I still haven't done it yet. SoC is an utter mess with some great art and writing underneath, but is so bogged down with an overstuffed story and clunky game mechanics, I find it unplayable now.
How often do you get someone who can write interesting characters in interesting sexual situations AND have strong visual design and game design skills (or at least unique ones) AND maintain at least a semi-reasonable production schedule while working a real job as well? It's pretty rare, and even more rare to be able to maintain it over the often several years it will take to deliver a completed game. I feel like we all see the same things on this site time and again. A new hotshot with good skills and a great idea, and they fizzle out after a year or so. Or worse, they get popular on Patreon and they bottleneck, milking subscribers and releasing content only drop by drop. Or someone with a mediocre idea and skills that churns out content on a regular schedule, but it's all half-baked and they're spinning their wheels without the game ever getting better.
I'm not the first to say it and won't be the last: Eva's a bit of a unicorn around here. She threads the needle pretty well overall, and sure we all probably have a gripe or two, but they're small complaints compared to what we've endured (or decided not to endure) from other devs. I used to be more of a porn game fan, but now I'm also only on this forum because of EK and ORS.
