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We’ve been wanting to make more ‘discussion’ dev logs like we used to in between the SoP-progress ones, so, just a warning, this is one of the former.
And today’s topic is ✨
censorship and adult content ✨
We’re pretty sure that, from that title, you can all guess where we’re coming from here, but, in case you didn’t know, there’s been a lot of fuss going on with adult content in games on Steam and other platforms. You can learn more about this whole debacle
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.
Now, the main reason we hadn't addressed this before was, first of all, because from our understanding of how this situation has been handled so far, SoP did not fit the same criteria as the games that have apparently been targeted. That being said, that criteria seems arbitrary at times, and there’s already been rumours of new changes that are being implemented, for better or for worse - which leads me to our other reason to be quiet on this, we were waiting to see how it all continues to develop.
The one thing that is certain for now is that there’s… a whole layer of uncertainty around this topic.
At the time of writing this post, the most recent developments don’t affect Strangers on Paper directly. However, they do affect how we want to approach future projects. The reason why we want to keep including adult content in future games goes hand in hand with the reason why we are making SoP as a whole - we wanted a game with characters that felt real, a look that felt cinematographic, themes that felt relevant to us. And this applies to the adult content as well. While there’s nothing wrong with different portrayals of adult content in games, for
ours in particular we wanted to depict it with all those same things in mind, leaning more towards something that feels more real, grounded and with a different visual approach than what we’re used to seeing - and we want to continue to do that.
Having some semblance of confidence in the future of GG helps us keep going. Right now, working on Chapter 3 of SoP also means working on Chapter 4, which is… the last one. And doing that feels kinda grim if we think of it as
“this is it”. Having a clear picture of what life after SoP looks like makes the development more exciting and less anxiety-inducing.
Aside from the censorship topic, the inclusion of adult content in our games comes up a lot in conversation for us because games without explicit adult content have way more visibility on Steam - and while we know this is Patreon, as you may have heard from other developers, supporting us through Steam is truly the best way to provide financial support for our games if that is something you wish to do. We’ve seen some games go around that with DLCs that are purchased separately from the game itself and we are curious to know how this is seen by the public. In my case, I had no trouble purchasing one from a game I enjoyed - the rate was low and it was more of a ‘supporter pack’, which is kinda the route we’d go down if we were to do that. We did think people would think we’re just looking for extra cash but… yeah, that’s the whole point. We want to reach a wider audience to hopefully make more money to keep making games, there’s no secret scheme.
OH, about that. So every now and then, I’ll pitch Grogu ideas I have for games, some have stuck, some will have to wait or may never see the light of day. We know
for sure there’s one game in particular that will
not be episodic, just a short and sweet full release, which is something we’d been wanting to do since forever, and it’s the one that is most likely to follow SoP. The DLC thing may work in the case of this game since the adult content, just like in SoP, is not the core of the story but it will definitely not work with other ideas we are planning on developing in the future.
So, we’d love to read your thoughts on this. How do you feel about the future of games with adult content in general? Have any games you enjoy been affected by this? Also, I kinda brushed over this, but what are your thoughts on short, single-release type of games? And the idea of adult content in DLCs? Is it too soon for us to hype up future games? We’re trying
really hard not to lean on that too much at least until after the release of Chapter 3 of SoP, but like I said, it does keep development exciting when we know there’s more to look forward to.
We’ll be reading your comments, but if you made it up to here, thank you for just reading. We’d been wanting to go back to dev logs in which we don’t just talk about SoP but also about things that, as stated before, help us keep going and take the pressure off.
