Should "forced sharing" be in the same category as "sharing"?
Just played 30 minutes of a very popular game and got a loser MC that feels insecure from the first moment. Keeps giving his wife involuntary hints that she's not sexy enough for him to parade in front of his friends and she takes his hints at face value, so he's never again in control of the situation and the game becomes about his wife's cuckoldress fantasy. The most "beta" MC I've tried to play in months. I wanted to see what the fuss was all about with that game, if characters evolved as you played, but a loser MC paired with a wife that gets off on humiliating him is all there was. Not saying there can't be games like that, it probably satisfies sadistic cravings in people who enjoy bullying and self-insert into his wife or "friends" instead.
I do love a good slut of a wife, some games get that right, but this one isn't even playful, she's heartless and egoistic - the game is about HER fantasy of cucking him, not at all about him having any fun in the process. There's zero empathy and tension in their first sex scene, just ego bashing. And to top it all off, the MC is portrayed as such a clumsy, insecure loser, he deserves it!
So, back to the beginning: sharing is definitely not the same as cuckoldry, and I must do a bit of self-penitence because the game DOES have the "netorare" tag and NOT the "sharing" tag, which is correct. Claiming there are two different paths "that are not that different" is what I find a bit deceitful, better just admit the game is about unavoidable cuckoldry, and there should really be a tag for that. I think MC humiliation is more closely related to "hard NTR" than to consensual sharing, unless it's very well contextualized in a playful event that doesn't shape the MC as a loser. That's what "blurring the lines" means to me, not writing a cuckold story and calling it something else.