Does anyone find it weird how paradoxical the male/MlM content is.

[Karakara]

Hi, I just went through the game again as a male champ, going through most of the guys (be they named, one off NPCs and whatever you have) and I have to say, it is quite strange how bottoming focused the whole thing feels.

Guys like Keros, Quinn, Tetsuyo (most of the twinks/twunks now that I think about it), minotaurs and so on only seem to acknowledge the fact that champion has an ass. And I am assuming that is because they were written with female champion in mind, since parsers allow you to just switch a butt for a pussy. Which is fine, but having a male NPC that pandered to the tops/Dom's of the world would not be to much of an ask.

Still, the fact that most of the guys seem to be written for women got me asking: are there any facts/personal incentives backing that up? Now, I am not saying that no girls play this game, but I would assume that something as niche as CoC2 would attract just as many guys interested in boys (be they gay/bi/pansexual/fundashi/whatever spectrum of colorful rainbow you inhabit) as girls. Yet the way the whole gay experience is structure seems to suggest that we are outnumbered 10 to 1 or something like that. Or that every guy that plays this game is a huge bottom.

Basically: did CoC2 ever conduct a pool to estimate the gender/sex and sexuality of malw enjoyers, and what they want?

How do other tops feel about it?

 

[Karakara]

Ah, I forgot to explain what is paradoxical about it. Basically.

"Hey champ, I am a female specimen; do you want me to be your bitch."

"Hey champ, I am a male specimen; be my bitch."

Feels weird how differently fueled the different sides of content are handled. When with women, champion is in control most of the time. While with guys it is opposite.

The priorities just seem to be mixed.

 

[WolframL]

Basically: did CoC2 ever conduct a pool to estimate the gender/sex and sexuality of malw enjoyers, and what they want?

They've conducted polls and also looked at the other FenCo games and by every metric they have the devs have determined that people who play for M/M content are a minority of the fans and that they're not particularly interested in catering to that fanbase specifically or adding characters in the name of some abstract notion of 'balance' because that's not what the overwhelming majority of the players are interested in.

There's a reason that pretty much every character (including, canonically, the Champ) is pan; it means that their content is at at least capable of being enjoying by every player if they choose, instead of being content that only a subset of players may see if they're gated behind requirements. This goes especially for strict M/M content because it would be writing not only for a small segment of the player base to begin with (since close to two-thirds play female characters based on one poll) but would be aimed at an especially small audience within that minority. It's not a good return on time investment for any of the core staff, nor is it something any of them are especially interested in. That's why any content catering to that demographic tends to come from community writers.

 

[Aelana]

Feels weird how differently fueled the different sides of content are handled. When with women, champion is in control most of the time. While with guys it is opposite.

The priorities just seem to be mixed.

*poking my head out of my hiatus-hole

Yeah, I pretty much agree.

(snip)

And I very much disagree with this statement. I know it's the official reason given, but IMO it might as well be: "It is this way, because it is".

As a start for my rant: I full-heartetly disagree with looking at CoC as a "product" with "customers". I think patreon has given the authors some power to write the weird stuff they like to write. I'd rather read that than any "customer focussed" text. If another anal scene is what the authors want to write, then I am all for it.

Now, when it comes to M/M stuff, I always get the same arguments

1. It is niche
2. Its only for male players, and most play as female.

About Nr 1: My counter-example is knotting back in the beginning of TiTs. Back in those days you could easily get a knot. But Syri was the only character which acknowledged the PCs knot, and also could knot the PC. There should be a thread lurking around about why it was only Syri, and the answer given there was pretty much the same. It is down to the authors to support, and it is a niche thing. Oh how far knotting has come. Nowadays in CoC2 it might as well be a standard feature. Knots are widely supported. IMO its support has pushed knotting out of its niche. So in a way, parts are niche because they are niche.

2. PCs being female. To which I have to say, really?

Since gender in these games is largely disconnected to the PCs plumbing, gender differences in scenes often come down to having breasts. And I as a female player do not feel it, honestly. Most scenes barely acknowledges the existence of PCs breasts. Like a kiss, maybe a grope. If You'd want some breast/nipple play, it is even less supported. I would bet there are more knotting scenes than breastplay-receiving scenes in CoC2 (OK, the numbers may be skewed a bit thanks to KM. But still... Isn't breatplay like super milktoast stuff?)


So IMO there is not that much female PC specific stuff anyways. That's why I disagree with this argument.

Back to Nr1. Something being niche has never stopped CoC before. Evelyn has a whole scene devoted to small-dick pcs losing their virginity. That is niche. And AFAIK her further small dick scenes are locked behind this interaction. So there is a considerable niche chunk.

And it is not that there is precedent in CoC2 for a similar thing. I might have argued in the past that F/F interactions mostly do not feel gay at all. And honestly, it does not take much. Aileh has a few extra lines that make the interactions with her feel wonderfully gay. There is a cheesy one-liner from a female shaman NPC if you sex her. I don't want every scene to be rewritten. All I hope is for variety. A new NPC which steps out of line.

And guys, there is a parser. As long as an M/M scene is not actively gender-locked, it will kinda work for female PCs as well. Because there is a real lack of male NPCs sucking girl-dick.

So all I am truly saying is, I do not like the justification, I just hope for some variety. Like Yonzan.

 

[WolframL]

As a start for my rant: I full-heartetly disagree with looking at CoC as a "product" with "customers". I think patreon has given the authors some power to write the weird stuff they like to write. I'd rather read that than any "customer focussed" text. If another anal scene is what the authors want to write, then I am all for it.

Think of it as a feedback loop. The staff writers like to write certain types of content, which also happens to be the sort of content that the majority of the players are interested in, which means that there's an incentive to write more of that content and less incentive to branch out and write things for niche demographics. That writing more male content doesn't result in a noticeable uptick in interest (based on things like increased subscribing after new characters are added or Steam purchases) acts as an additional disincentive to spend time writing things that they're not generally interested in writing in the first place. Yes, this does kind of come out to 'that's the way it is' because that's the writers for the game and the primary audience.

About Nr 1: My counter-example is knotting back in the beginning of TiTs. Back in those days you could easily get a knot. But Syri was the only character which acknowledged the PCs knot, and also could knot the PC. There should be a thread lurking around about why it was only Syri, and the answer given there was pretty much the same. It is down to the authors to support, and it is a niche thing. Oh how far knotting has come.

I suspect that there's a lot more people interested in knotting than are interested in M/M content though. Just because one thing was initially niche and got more support (in a game that's been around for years longer and has a lot more people writing for it, mind you) doesn't mean that other things can or will get the same treatment. Which is why people keep pointing out that the door is open for people who want to write or commission M/M content, because the staff writers really just aren't interested in specifically catering to that niche.

A somewhat closer example here would be the tailcunt situation, where it was initially supported for the Champ but only barely and Savin wasn't able to pay people to write enough submission-worthy content. So it was dropped because the effort that would need to be spent writing content that maybe 1% of the fanbase was going to see wasn't worth it when that same time could be spent writing content that a whole lot more people could see. M/M specific content isn't going to be dropped but when the people specifically interested in that content make up maybe 5% of the fanbase, the same logic applies in terms of effort spent writing it versus writing almost anything else.

Which is why the whole 'community writer' thing exists. Nobody on the staff was going to write Liufr, so someone else stepped up and did it.

2. PCs being female. To which I have to say, really?

Based on the metrics, yes.

Since gender in these games is largely disconnected to the PCs plumbing, gender differences in scenes often come down to having breasts.

Given that 'male-identifying Champ with a vagina' is about the most peripheral demographic the game actually supports in any real sense, the presence of a vagina is also pretty solidly associated with 'female'.

And I as a female player do not feel it, honestly. Most scenes barely acknowledges the existence of PCs breasts.

Give Aly's content a go; she tends to devote more effort to that.

So IMO there is not that much female PC specific stuff anyways. That's why I disagree with this argument.

See above; since the overwhelming majority of scenes written for vaginas are going to be seen by people playing a female-identifying Champ, they're about as female-specific as can be.

Back to Nr1. Something being niche has never stopped CoC before. Evelyn has a whole scene devoted to small-dick pcs losing their virginity. That is niche. And AFAIK her further small dick scenes are locked behind this interaction. So there is a considerable niche chunk.

Yes, but that's also niche content that's already written for a self-selecting audience (because you can't get to that point without passing a bunch of opt-in checks) and I cannot emphasize enough that this is content that, however niche, Wsan wants to write. If there was a staff writer who really wanted to write M/M specific stuff, they would. But there isn't and they don't.

 

[Savin]

I think patreon has given the authors some power to write the weird stuff they like to write

Literally none of the staff writers want to write M/M, so....

 

[B]

I'm totally willing to write M/M, as long as it also caters to me. See: the time I accidentally wrote 13k words of Berwyn cock worshipping

 

[Ace Hangman]

I'm totally willing to write M/M, as long as it also caters to me. See: the time I accidentally wrote 13k words of Berwyn cock worshipping

I hate when that completely reasonable thing happens. Just walking along, trip, fall on 13k words of cock.

 

[D'Angelo]

Wait, so male champs are a minority of only 33%? I would never have guessed that.

 

[Savin]

Wait, so male champs are a minority of only 33%? I would never have guessed that.

Yeah herms are far and away the biggest slice of PCs

 

[Ace Hangman]

Yeah herms are far and away the biggest slice of PCs

Wha...!? Well, uhm... only because I need to access all the options to check for typos and grammar...

 

[A79]

I blame Kiyoko's content for the predominance of futa PCs. lol

 

[D'Angelo]

I blame Kiyoko's content for the predominance of futa PCs. lol

I'm sure at least some pure female champs became futas just for that. But it can hardly be the main reason, don't you think? Especially since they made it so ghostlight could knock her up.

 

[Savin]

I blame Kiyoko's content for the predominance of futa PCs. lol

Nah it's the case in CoC1 and TiTS, too. It's a combo of futa enjoyers being a massive part of the audience + getting to see basically ALL the content on one character rather than managing two+

 

[D'Angelo]

Nah it's the case in CoC1 and TiTS, too. It's a combo of futa enjoyers being a massive part of the audience + getting to see basically ALL the content on one character rather than managing two+

I had assumed that since the games use "you" in narration to refer to the player characters instead of PC.name, that players would most of the time make PCs with same genders as themselves.
But I see now that's likely just a projection of my part. I enjoy futa as much as the next guy around here - btw I really like Subrona, so hats off to you. But in game if I were to play as one, reading "your pussy" "your boobs" and so on would be awkward and a turn off in my opinion. I assumed that was the norm.