ClerilCalamityStudios: My Name is Addiction -SteamGreenlight

[Cleril]

Please vote for My Name is Addiction on Steam Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =288952669

Want one of the wallpapers that comes with a purchase of the novel? http://cleril.deviantart.com/art/My-Nam ... -399407999

WARNING: This novel is for mature audiences only. The focus is on porn addiction. There is no porn within the novel itself. Contains some nudity (all drawn, not pornographic).

The novel does not in anyway preach for the banning of pornography. It remains neutral on that subject.

My Name is Addiction is to be my first paid for product. Cleril Calamity Studios is a one-man indie label turning company soon with the release of this visual novel. I've made games for 8 years, primarily using RPG Maker VX (I'm not a programmer really) and I want to see if I can actually pursue independent development as a career choice instead of signing on with another company.

I'm currently a junior in college for computer graphics. I plan to work in the game industry as an artist, writer, and designer. However, I am not ruling out the possibility of simply being an independent developer.

My name is Cleril and I am a porn addict.

A bit left field, eh? Well, that's good. That's exactly what My Name is Addiction is about, porn addiction. A topic recently springing up as 20 year old men (and women) find themselves unable to be sexually aroused with regular, old fashioned sex. My Name is Addiction follows the story (based off my own personal story, albeit very much still fiction) of a young man who tries to remove himself from his addiction.

The novel is planned to last around 1 hour and have 7 endings.

For more information you can find it on Steam Greenlight.

The link again: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =288952669

Thank you for reading.

[fleet]

I wish you well; it's difficult to make a career of being an independent game developer. Your art style is different from any I've seen in visual novels.

[gekiganwing]

My Name is Addiction follows the story (based off my own personal story, albeit very much still fiction) of a young man who tries to remove himself from his addiction...

...it is a paid-for product.

I have seen some indie creators sell unusual games. (As far as I can tell, the indie video game scene encourages creativity, but it has thousands of examples of "shoot zombies" and "build bricks.") The dilemma: how do you sell a game/story about sexual addiction? Will it be on the merits of its graphics, story, gameplay, or some other factor? Who is your audience?

A couple things to keep in mind: 1. Unless you only look at the EVN scene, it's easy to see that there's been a lot of overlap between visual novels and porn games. This has been true since about 1983. And depending on where you ask, you might find fans who genuinely like visual novels to be NSFW. 2. It's been just a few years since a few fans publicly declared their affection for fictional characters from LovePlus. Looking back, I'm still not sure if this was fans' lives spiralling out of control, or some sort of publicity stunt. And while LovePlus is worksafe, this seems like a combination of video game addiction and perverse sexual lust.

[Cleril]

I wish you well; it's difficult to make a career of being an independent game developer. Your art style is different from any I've seen in visual novels.

I figure I'm not a fan of drawing anime (although I do like anime, actual, anime, mind you) and this is created in the west so why not use a new art style? I'm having a very heavy handed oil painting theme to the novel and want the drawings to very much say "this is a drawing, it is made by a person, and it is fake." The drawings are a mix of realism and abstract but being heavy handed they reveal they are very much drawings.

My Name is Addiction follows the story (based off my own personal story, albeit very much still fiction) of a young man who tries to remove himself from his addiction...

...it is a paid-for product.

I have seen some indie creators sell unusual games. (As far as I can tell, the indie video game scene encourages creativity, but it has thousands of examples of "shoot zombies" and "build bricks.") The dilemma: how do you sell a game/story about sexual addiction? Will it be on the merits of its graphics, story, gameplay, or some other factor? Who is your audience?

A couple things to keep in mind: 1. Unless you only look at the EVN scene, it's easy to see that there's been a lot of overlap between visual novels and porn games. This has been true since about 1983. And depending on where you ask, you might find fans who genuinely like visual novels to be NSFW. 2. It's been just a few years since a few fans publicly declared their affection for fictional characters from LovePlus. Looking back, I'm still not sure if this was fans' lives spiralling out of control, or some sort of publicity stunt. And while LovePlus is worksafe, this seems like a combination of video game addiction and perverse sexual lust.

I've seen a lot of unique indie titles sell very well too. LIMBO, Braid, etc. have all gotten very good reception and are very nicely designed games. Those games discussed heavy stuff primarily in the background while My Name is Addiction puts everything on the foreground from the get go (you'll see this when I put a 5 minute build in the OP within the week) in plain sight. I'm glad you asked this question so I can explain how I see this selling pretty well. There's a bunch of factors but I'll try to keep it as short and sweet as possible.

You sell a game explicitly about porn addiction (My Name is Addiction is not about sex or masturbation addiction, all three are different) by being tasteful, honest, and not deceptive. The novel will have drawn nudity to the extent of side boob. I don't plan to go beyond that, actually. There will be no porn and even the side boob image is coupled with its counterpart, the inside side boob image. That is, you'll be looking at a breast without the skin. Any image that is "sexy" in the novel will have a dual image revealing the duality of porn. Porn is attractive in one way but the reality is that porn is ultimately fake, an act, and progressively more disgusting as the years go on.

This is not a novel for kids. This is not a novel for lovers of hentai or porn. This is a novel for adults going through porn addiction or for those wishing to vicariously live through the life of a porn addict with artistic flair. My audience consists of these two folks but I imagine many teenagers would be interested in the novel because they are on their way to being porn addicts. We learn about drugs in high school and how sex works but porn is never discussed and there are recently many websites detailing how porn contributes to erectile dysfunction, sexual preference changes (albeit temporary at best), and so on. When I was a teenager I grew up watching porn on a near daily basis for 5 years. I wish someone explained to me that porn outputs dopamine about double the amount compared to having real sex and about 1/3 of the way to cocaine.

The novel is not education (although links to resources will be included in a text file or something for those who want help) as I want it to be a human experience. The story, drawings, and gameplay all fit the theme of "porn addict." You'll see for yourself when I put out the 5 minute release here so I won't go into anything right now (and will never fully do so of course).

1. I'm well aware that most visual novels are pretty much hentai. That makes it all the more reason for me to make My Name is Addiction into a visual novel. It's about the duality of porn so why not the duality of games or just visual novels? The creation of My Name is Addiction is allegorical to the situation of porn itself. I find it nicely ironic.

2. Just googled Loveplus. As you can clearly tell the drawings for my novel are nowhere near the level of naughty that LovePlus presents. My Name is Addiction will never have full body shots, instead focusing on individual parts of the human body (like porn). There will be no sexually suggestive image without an equally disturbing, disgusting image to counterpart it. You'll also note that LovePlus features anime (which is not present in my novel) and beautiful characters. The eye drawing in the OP is of the protagonist in his neutral state of addiction. He seems himself as a monster, his pupil is jagged (abstract), there is no blood running through his eye, and his pupil is white (like a ghost).

I see no similarities based off of images between LovePlus and My Name is Addiction. My Name is Addiction is about the wanting a lack of perverse lust while you suggest LovePlus is about, directly, perverse lust. They are on two totally different agendas I assure you.

I hope to hear more opinions after I release a 5 minute beta. As I said, I have it already (incomplete) but this is an uncontrolled environment so I don't want to show unpolished work past my own private well of beta testers. Continue asking questions but be sure that I have thought about the business side of things and the nature of the novel very thoroughly.

[merdeamour]

This is a very interesting concept, to say the least. The premise sounds very unique... I mean, I've never actually known someone to proclaim his/her wanting to escape *that* kind of addiction. I love the art.

Since you only posted an idea of what the story is about, I'm very curious as to what choices the player can make to arrive at an ending--or what even those endings are. I guess I'll just have to play the game to know (which is highly unlikely, as I can't afford commercial games T_T)...? Also, does '4 ways of approaching and altering' the endings mean only 4 choices or...?

Anyway, good luck on this project, and on your future ones! (:

[Cleril]

This is a very interesting concept, to say the least. The premise sounds very unique... I mean, I've never actually known someone to proclaim his/her wanting to escape *that* kind of addiction. I love the art.

Since you only posted an idea of what the story is about, I'm very curious as to what choices the player can make to arrive at an ending--or what even those endings are. I guess I'll just have to play the game to know (which is highly unlikely, as I can't afford commercial games T_T)...? Also, does '4 ways of approaching and altering' the endings mean only 4 choices or...?

Anyway, good luck on this project, and on your future ones! (:

All addictions, even porn, are debilitating. You can do research yourself on the matter with many 20 something year olds getting erectile dysfunction from porn use. I'm 20 myself and while I haven't had the chance for sex (I don't partake in casual sex and I never got into a relationship anywhere near worth sex) I can certainly say that if a woman was on my bed right now ready to go I would very much not be able to perform in the slightest.

There's many communities for porn addicts and it's a recent medical discovery. You see, porn started as simple still images in magazines. With the internet you now have HD videos and upon doing research you'll find watching porn produces more than double the amount of dopamine you'd normally receive in actual sex. Your brain perceives every woman (or guy) as a new mating partner and dopamine spikes as a research. Your limbic brain (the one that controls sex) can't tell the difference between pixels and skin. I'll leave it at that but just at the very least understand that porn addiction is just as legitimate and serious as alcohol, cigs, or cocaine (the dopamine from porn use is at least 1/3 the amount received when using cocaine).

Glad to hear you like the art. I'm not even showing you any of the disgusting images or even the prettiest ones. I will do so perhaps later (currently there are 16 drawings, you've seen 5, planned to have 30-40 by the end) but know that you aren't seeing the top tier stuff at the moment.

I gave an idea because addiction is about your life. The novel discusses very many themes besides porn addiction due to this fact. It'd be impossible to detail everything offered and also defeating the point of a purchase. You'll get the first 5 minutes within the week and you'll see how it brings in a multitude of subjects raising from growing up to relationships (and how porn addiction affects possible relationships).

If you care to play my previous games you'll see I offer players an insane amount of choice in many of my titles (not Peekaboo so much but that's horror, I've made RPG games but most will ever be finished so I can't put them on Desura but they have several hours of gameplay). I asked my beta folks (the ones who play VNs) and they said that it's okay if the novel has no choices so long as the story is good. Personally, I have to hold myself back from giving players too much choice (my last RPG I gave as much choice to the player as Alpha Protocol or a Bioware game) but yes, there are choices in My Name is Addiction. One of the first choices you make is to decide whether or not to take a peek at porn (you're having an urge) or take a shower before you go out to work.

The choice itself ultimately affects (right now) very little but it alters the writing. Say you choose to peek. The protagonist may not relapse but later on when he gets the urge he will not have a choice because it's already been made. Personally, I know that the moment I willingly search for anything sexually stimulating (porn or not) I have relapsed, that's it. Anything I do past that point is just stalling the inevitable dropped pants and non-orgasm. The same concept is being applies to the novel. At first you have a choice and if you peek you will not have a choice later.

The endings aren't written in stone (very little is but I have a clear direction) but they basically reside in falling further into the addiction or managing the addiction. The four variants of the endings reside in whether or not you have a girlfriend. You can have the good or bad ending with or without a girlfriend. She is not mandatory for either one and in fact you will even have the option to dump her yourself at some point (or never start a relationship in the first place).

FYI, porn addicts can be females and the novel will address this. No, this doesn't mean the girlfriend is also an addict or involved with porn (an addict would not date someone in either category). That story arc will simply not exist.

I have no idea how many choices that have heavy impact (the one I mentioned has minor alterations but not significant in the grand scheme of endings) will exist but the novel is planned to be around 2 hours so I'd guess less than seven. This is all estimations on my end.

The price is to be at most 10 US dollars. This includes the novel (2 hours or so), full custom soundtrack at 360 k/b quality, unique drawings for wallpaper (not re-sized drawings from the novel), and developer commentary. No additional fees for anything. Originally I had said 5 buck for the novel but looking around and from the work I'm putting in I brought it up to 10. I know of two other novels on the market, one is 15 bucks for just the novel. The other is 10 bucks + 5 additional bucks if you want the soundtrack. I'm offering much more for a single payment of 10 bucks so I find that's fair.

Provided you offer significantly helpful (compliment or critique) feedback I'm more than happy to provide free copies. A few of my beta testers will likely receive free copies primarily for purposes of reviews/let's plays or just because I felt they helped greatly in development.

You'll be able to provide more solid feedback once I hand out the 5 minute build here within the week. That will be free but it is to be under wraps as I'm only providing it to this forum. The novel was officially announced on Desura but I will never give any of this information on that frontier since that's where the consumers are.

If you're interested in my other projects let me know in a PM. They're all free and you'll see how I work in more gamey game formats (I do RPGs and Horror primarily). Been making games for 7 years but this is my first visual novel. This is primarily to see how the indie market could work with me involved in it. As mentioned in the OP, I'm not ruling out being an independent developer after college if it works out.

[Cleril]

Figured it was built enough to be worth a public beta release: http://www.fileconvoy.com/dfl.php?id=g9 ... 7a5dc3f6ff

If you play it, please leave your thoughts. I'll be sure to ask you questions in response but I want to see what you feel was important or not important before I influence that.

[Cleril]

Surprised nobody has anything to say about the demo.

Ah well, new screenshot in the OP revealing a location known as the "Hallway of Progress."

[Cleril]

New drawings hot off the computer screen.

Remember, there are more drawings already made I am not showing here (and likely won't due to again, being a paid-for product).

[Sapphi]

Just wanted to say that I find this premise interesting, albeit incredibly depressing. I once endeavoured to write a story about this too, although I explored it differently (female perspective with more of a focus on the emotional/psychological damage). In the end, I had to quit writing it because it made me too depressed.

Your art style is interesting, although right now it's reading to me as rather unpolished for a commercial release. It's not the style so much as it is your choices of digital brush. I think the newest drawings, those in black and white, would be more pleasant to look at if they emulated the pen-and-ink look a bit more and didn't seem so haphazardly fuzzy. (But that's just my two cents.)

The title theme is absolutely beautiful, though. I'd love to play a game with a soundtrack like this.

[Cleril]

Just wanted to say that I find this premise interesting, albeit incredibly depressing. I once endeavoured to write a story about this too, although I explored it differently (female perspective with more of a focus on the emotional/psychological damage). In the end, I had to quit writing it because it made me too depressed.

Your art style is interesting, although right now it's reading to me as rather unpolished for a commercial release. It's not the style so much as it is your choices of digital brush. I think the newest drawings, those in black and white, would be more pleasant to look at if they emulated the pen-and-ink look a bit more and didn't seem so haphazardly fuzzy. (But that's just my two cents.)

The title theme is absolutely beautiful, though. I'd love to play a game with a soundtrack like this.

I'm only showing you the "ugly" drawings for the most part right now. There is much more professional looking stuff but any hitches in the drawings are likely intentional/make sense for the plot. Mind you, I'm not intending the novel to look bad but I am intending for most every drawing to say "This is a drawing, it is fake" just as with actual porn which is at best fake sex.

The novel will have a female perspective and address that females can be porn addicts just as well. You can potentially have a girlfriend (and dump her herself, she isn't necessary but she alters the good/bad endings in obvious ways) and beyond that I may have other female characters (however subtle) who bring in that particular issue (or non-issue, really).

I'd like to know where you got the impression that this novel doesn't address the emotional/psychological damage? It certainly does. In fact, it opens up with a monologue from the protagonist who clearly looks at himself like a monster. Cognitive dissonance is abound and the black/white drawings are from a dream area you'll visit repeatedly (different drawings on the walls each time) to give a mental state sort of look as well as show time progression (the novel isn't day by day as it shows how over time the addiction gets worse and you either fall into it or recover).

Overall the "look" the novel is going for is a very heavy handed oil brush. Again, this is due to me wanting every drawing to say "This is a drawing, it was made by a person, and it is not real" due to the connection with porn. Only the Zap, Pow, and Blam stuff is fuzzy (smudged) really and it's a dream area so the rules i apply to the drawings are drastically different (only black and white is allowed, for example).

I'll PM you with some of the more beautiful drawings to show the diversity of the novel both in what you see and how things appear. The most beautiful drawings would be those of the natural world, reality. Most drawings in the OP are imaginations or the protagonist or porn duality images (in fact I haven't shown the nasty porn images in the OP).

Also, just checked the folder, and there are 29 drawings thus far. I estimated in the OP how many drawings would be in the final version but clearly we're talking more than 50 unique drawings at this point (the drawings I have would be around 20 minutes of game time).

Sound wise I expect no less than 20 songs. (there are currently 6 songs, 2-4 sound effects).

Always appreciate the feedback. My main concern is exactly how much market interest there would be for this. I do have my name out there in some capacity and most every one of my beta crew would buy it but publicly I have no real estimate for interest so if people just said "I'm interested" that would be enough feedback for me if they could offer nothing else.

I'll socket you some images now.

[Sapphi]

I'd like to know where you got the impression that this novel doesn't address the emotional/psychological damage?

If I implied that by accident, that's not what I meant.
(My story was about the emotional/psychological damage from an outsider's perspective - a girl who loved a pornography addict, but was not an addict herself.)

Only the Zap, Pow, and Blam stuff is fuzzy (smudged) really and it's a dream area so the rules i apply to the drawings are drastically different (only black and white is allowed, for example).

The oil-painting look images are fine. It's the smudged black-and-white images that look a bit amateur, mostly because they aren't smudged in a way that feels particularly stylistic to me. I get that they aren't supposed to look particularly pleasant, but I feel like for a commercial game, if I'm going to look at something unpleasant, I want "fascinatingly unpleasant", not "this is very basic, and looks like it took almost zero effort to draw". I'm a fan of psychedelic art, which can often depict very unpleasant things, but because it does so with intricate patterns and linework, it is pleasing (read: interesting) to look at even while the subject matter itself is very unpleasant.

[Cleril]

I'd like to know where you got the impression that this novel doesn't address the emotional/psychological damage?

If I implied that by accident, that's not what I meant.
(My story was about the emotional/psychological damage from an outsider's perspective - a girl who loved a pornography addict, but was not an addict herself.)

Only the Zap, Pow, and Blam stuff is fuzzy (smudged) really and it's a dream area so the rules i apply to the drawings are drastically different (only black and white is allowed, for example).

The oil-painting look images are fine. It's the smudged black-and-white images that look a bit amateur, mostly because they aren't smudged in a way that feels particularly stylistic to me. I get that they aren't supposed to look particularly pleasant, but I feel like for a commercial game, if I'm going to look at something unpleasant, I want "fascinatingly unpleasant", not "this is very basic, and looks like it took almost zero effort to draw". I'm a fan of psychedelic art, which can often depict very unpleasant things, but because it does so with intricate patterns and linework, it is pleasing (read: interesting) to look at even while the subject matter itself is very unpleasant.

Ah, well you'll perhaps be happy to know that the girlfriend in this game will have nothing to do from porn and very much be in that position. I've been asked if the girlfriend would be involved with porn but it makes no sense (especially since as I'm an addict I wouldn't date a girl involved in any way with porn) for a porn addict to date someone that has any involvement with porn (viewer or worker).

Perhaps your perspective on the Hallway of Progress isn't fully fleshed out. The Hallway of Progress is the location the player goes to every time time passes within the novel and it's the same 3 walls leading into the room where they then see how the addict has progressed (little dashes to indicate days before relapse). The difference each time is the music and the drawings are different on each wall each time.

I can't spend forever working on this novel. If I take too long then I'll ultimately be too bored and lose time on other projects I could currently be making (which arguably may sell better anyway). Take the First Female Lips drawing in the OP. That took me 6 hours to do (3 hours just for the lips). That image is seen several times in the novel but it is supposed to stand on it's legs each time with no changes. The Hallway of Progress drawings typically take me at most 1 hour in comparison (typically 30 minutes). The Hallway of Progress stands on a lot of different drawings (and music) each time it is shown and therefore I can't spend 6 hours drawing each wall as it'd be a waste of development time.

The design behind each drawing is entirely different and so the look and time it takes to draw each is different. I can make the most beautiful dream walls you've ever bloody seen but it would take me six hours. Is it worth my development time to do so? No, not in the slightest.

And remember that the Hallway of Progress evolves. For example, in the second visit images I posted in the OP, you see grey. The first time you visit the hallway of progress, there is no grey. There is only hard black and white images. I'm not saying there will ever be colors (unsure) but I am saying that it's the Hallway of Progress. The design intention is for it to change as the plot progresses. Will there be more complex drawings? I can't say for sure. Can there be? Absolutely.

Regardless, There will absolutely be complex drawings elsewhere (as I PMed you with some of the more complicated ones) in terms of drawing work. The design of the Hallway of Progress was not a matter of laziness but a matter of design, time, and effort.

Game design is often not what you can do but what you choose to do.

I choose to make the hallway of progress look the way it does and at the moment you'll have to either agree to wait and see how it evolves over the course of the novel or think it's shoddy work. I can't say whether it works or not because I haven't developed it enough for my beta crew to dig in and give me their responses. I can say that theoretically, it works.

If you want unpleasant, wait until you see the disgusting version of the porn drawings.

Personally, I get sick myself if I look at one of them for more than 5 minutes.

[Cleril]

I've added some (a small portion) of the writing for chapter 3. It's in the huge white spoiler box. There are no heavy spoilers but for those that are waiting for a full release I figured I'd leave the OP always spoiler free to all extents.

This is where the novel starts branching and getting in to the meat of characterization, setting, situations, and scenarios. This is just a start to the variety that will be found, remember that.

The previous chapters are more so introductions/foreshadows in order to set up the novel in tone and style.

[Cleril]

Deciding to share two more images from the novel:

http://s24.postimg.org/rz37k6pir/Tongue_Lip.png

http://s24.postimg.org/72bkt9gvp/Parent ... _white.png

There are currently 31 unique drawings in the novel.