Created Works in Progress - Otome

[PyTom]

I've gone ahead and created a new forum, "Works in Progress - Otome". This was just a reaction to the fact that most of the Otome posts in WIP had a [GxB] tag on them, showing that there's a signficant community that's interested in these games specifically. By giving them their own forum, it makes them easier to find for people who are interested in that type of game. Since about half the threads in WiP were otome games, I think they've earned their own forum.

The split also makes it easier to find non-Otome games, for people who want to do that.

I went ahead and created the forum, and moved the first couple pages of GxB posts into the new forum. I'll move other threads as I notice them, and I've added a new "Wrong Forum" choice to the report button. (The red exclamation point.) When people report threads, I'll move them. If it's a borderline case, I'll leave it up to the game-maker to decide where the thread goes.

The basic motivation is to make it easier for people to find games in the WiP threads to comment on. I know that one of my goals going forward is to try to find more work in progress games to comment on, and having 30 Otome and maybe 25 non-Otome games should make that easier. I'm going to keep my eye and see how this develops, and in November, I'll decide if it should stay this way, or if the forums should be merged again.

Oh, for some reason all the Otome threads were marked as new for me. If that happened to you, I apologize, and you can hit "mark forums read" on the upper-right corner of the main page.

[Abeiramar]

Wow, it's interesting to see that Otome (girlxboys) games are more popular than boyxgirls games, ahah .

[papillon]

Doesn't this create a bit of confusion with, say, GxB games with GxG routes, which is not that unusual? Are they otome or not? Will this pressure some people to drop/add lesbian routes solely to affect which board they're in?

[Lekhaka]

I do not see enough reason for a splinter forum...but you're the boss.

[dstarsboy]

I think this is a good idea. I'm shocked at how many GxB games are in the works though.

[Jake]

I'm shocked at how many GxB games are in the works though.

I'm not, to be honest. I was more surprised to see a couple of people saying how few girl-oriented games there were in the works, a little while ago.


Whether it's a good idea? I'm not so sure. I've already been told more than once that my opinion on anything to do with games with a female protagonist - art quality, anatomical errors, interface design - should be ignored because I'm a man and therefore not the target audience, and I think moves like this are only going to serve to give an excuse to that kind of stupid segregation.

[papillon]

To be fair the opinion of people who aren't the target audience *is* less important, and I think we can safely disregard the complaints of an FPS fan who complains that our games lack sufficient 3d. That's no excuse for being rude though.

As for segregating, as one who *does* attempt to straddle that divide it's slightly annoying. If people hate GxB they could be annoyed at me being in general, and I've known some otome fans who got *really angry* at having any GxG in "their" games, so no matter where you put me it won't make people happy. It would be more of a problem if I took the WIP forums seriously and posted more often than once in a blue moon...

[fortaat]

As someone who thinks the stories here should be more complex as to be categorized by who's chasing who in this romance, I don't like the change. Admittedly though, I don't really care either way, as I never gave Otome games any special treatment in the first place.

[Jake]

To be fair the opinion of people who aren't the target audience *is* less important, and I think we can safely disregard the complaints of an FPS fan who complains that our games lack sufficient 3d. :) That's no excuse for being rude though.

If it were stuff like "I don't like the plot" or "I don't like the characterisation of the love interest", then sure - I'd agree, if I'm not in the target audience then there's less point listening to me.

But when you're talking about anatomical problems in drawings, for example, it really doesn't matter if the person giving the advice is male or female, if you've drawn the arms too long then you've drawn the arms too long. If you want them that way then - again - that's fine, but the reason to dismiss the critique isn't because of the gender of the person talking to you.

To give an actual example, I told one person "I like the line quality better on this character sprite than the others", and I got the response - no joke - "you like that sprite better because she has boobs". The obvious implication being that because I'm a man, I'm incapable of seeing past a pair of not-incredibly-well-drawn breasts to see that the line quality is actually just as bad as the male sprite I was comparing it to. Which is not only incredibly insulting, but counter-productive to the person whose sprites we're talking about. (As it happens they were commissions, so it's probably irrelevant, but I don't have any faith that the attitude would be different outside of that particular case.)




Not only is there no reason to dismiss critique like that because of the gender of the person giving it, but doing so builds an unnecessary divide between the male and female populations of the forum... and creating a separate forum for games with a female protagonist encourages that. Unless the intent is to pack up all those people making otome games into a little box on the side where they can be safely ignored?

[Glazed Donuts]

So why are the GxB games more popular? Do more females prefer this type of theme? or more males? or both?

[fortaat]

Jack:
I don't think anyone suggested the rules of criticism shouldn't be applied to the Otome board.
The tendency of said populace to dismiss criticism from males (which I was oh-so terribly afflicted by) has more to do with young developers, than anything else.
Given a reversed situation, where a new MAN KILLING MONSTERS board would have opened, you would have had 13 year old boys dismissing any female advice.

[Jake]

Jack

*Jake. :P

I don't think anyone suggested the rules of criticism shouldn't be applied to the Otome board.
The tendency of said populace to dismiss criticism from males (which I was oh-so terribly afflicted by) has more to do with young developers, than anything else.

I don't think anybody did. I noted that it already happens, and I'm just saying that I think separating female-led games out into their own forum is going to make this thing - which I see as a problem - worse, not better. The fact that it would probably happen with 13-year-old boys as well doesn't mean it's desirable.



(EDIT: And to be honest, I also totally agree that I'd prefer to see just Good Stories, which aren't just driven by romancing members of the opposite sex.)

[machinist]

i like being able to see just gxb in one nice section

[papillon]

i like being able to see just gxb in one nice section

... so what would you want to do with games that are both gxb and not gxb?

[fortaat]

Jake:
Sorry about the name.

If the problem stems from their age, how will segregating them could make it worse?
They have a hard time accepting criticism not because they are surrounded by kids of their own gender and age, they simply aren't experienced enough in someone bursting their bubble of self delusional grandeur.
This is where we enter the picture, criticize their work, and reduce them to weeping try to help them, explaining the meaning of ad hominem.