Who looks more realistic?
Average looking dude
OR
Chippendale beefcake & underwear model
Average looking dude looks remarkably average, extra medium with a side of ultra beige.
Chippendale beefcake & underwear model is a poser, completely in character.
I think it became clear with the start of the Patreon clampdowns (which predated WIAB's Patreon demise) that Ocean faced a choice of making things somewhat vanilla in WIAB or risking losing the income streams on his investment. He's already been "bitten" twice, so I cannot fault him for taking steps to safeguard his investment, even if that means he cannot deliver the product he originally intended.
I recall having a back-and-forth in this thread several months ago with someone who seemed to think the likes of SS and Steam would never ban or censor WIAB-like content because they don't do it now. Boy, that position could age like milk in the future, who knows? The point is that any Dev who creates certain themes and content cannot trust third-party service providers in the current environment.
I accepted long ago that I prefer to have new vanilla SG/WIAB content rather than the demise of the projects and no new content all all because Ocean's income streams were cut off by third-party service providers. It's a bitch (especially for WIAB, because certain themes and content create much of the drama) but it is what it is...
This is mostly my attitude. I'd rather have a dumbed down epic that is still cared for and still treated as a creative endeavour by its dev than have a dev give up in general. What Ocean does to protect his stories' futures he does because he's still got something he wants to keep telling. It would be easier for him to get a wage in IT or design at this point, his skills and assets could land him a decent job without dealing with pirates demands for more dark questionable segs with spicy chicken burgers.
Given that he's skilled enough to find a job as a subordinate earning well and not being responsible for the project's outcomes, it's a deliberate choice for him to keep his stories' universe alive. I don't know Ocean's personal goals, but it's got to be easier earning money as a vanilla employee - being able to explain you work for a mainstream dev would be so much simpler instead of telling people "what I do for a living isn't exactly porn despite the stigma, gosh don't be so narrow minded!" I can imagine there's a whole bunch of people in his life he keeps the details from. I'm glad he's persistent and enjoys his stories enough to keep independent.
Edit: almost forgot - there's always a chance that the vanilla version becomes more compelling than the original. What we have in our mind's eye is the potential we saw, not the actual delivery of an awesome product. We were (in both Ocean's games) captivated by the direction. But there can be other directions worth travelling, even if they're not the same. As long as Ocean keeps trying to make a compelling story, I'll keep watching this space. Even with the inconsistencies, it's much better a plot than "man has donkey dick and fell into 20 vaginas while going for coffee" ...well that hasn't happened to me yet
