While this is true, there is a reason for it, which has come up on another thread. I’m just going to tag @Eric_Moser in on this one.
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Really, it’s not like we lack creativity: the trick is to be paid for it. Writing’s always been a field where you only got appropriately compensated if you struck gold - this is why things might seem a little stale from the readers/consumer’s perspective.
At the end of the day, if you want to get paid for doing what you love you need to compromise and be consistent. It’s the same for every artist. If you let yourself go wild - and artists often do if you know where to look - you can make and write all kinds of wild, indulgent and experimental art, but if you want to have fans you will draw titties and fanart. The trick to not going mad, I think, is to inject enough creativity and your own ideas into those preset frames. Or just not caring for financial gain.
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The bummer is when people get so caught up in the cynicism of, “If I want to get paid, I have to fit the mold” that they forget that it’s possible for people to enjoy that same work as a hobby.
I remember having a discussion with this one guy on the GaiaOnline forums (WHOOF, that just made me feel old) about writing just for the fun of it - I think the thread was a general question of “why do you write?”, or something to that effect - and I said that it’s just something I enjoy doing for the hell of it, and that completely floored the dude. (He wasn’t the thread author, he was just one of the people replying to it, like I was.)
Here’sa snippet of what I remember from that conversation:
Dude: “But, like, do you get paid for it?”
Me: “Nope, I don’t see a dime for my work.”
Dude: “So then what’s the point?”
Me: “There has to be a point to me enjoying things?”
Dude: “You just said you don’t get paid for it, why bother doing it if you’re not making any money off of it?”
To simplify an otherwise long-winded answer, what I ultimately said was that I have a regular day job that takes care of my paychecks, that I work out of necessity, not because I like working. I do my day job to keep my bills paid and food on the table, I write because it’s something that I just like doing, and that I like having the freedom to go my own way on. Simple as that.
Poor fella just could not wrap his head around that. He just kept repeating “but if you don’t get paid, what’s the point?” over and over again until I finally just told him, “look, I’ve given my reasons several times now, if you don’t get it, that’s a you problem, I’m not gonna keep going around in circles like this,” and I think he ended up blocking me for that.
So, that’s probably the big thing that’ll keep me from ever writing anything for CoG, or if I do, it’ll be strictly hobby projects. I prefer to set my own boundaries, and unfortunately, CoG - no offense to them! - has different boundary lines that I would be expected to fit myself into, and I just don’t enjoy that kind of restriction, regardless of how necessary it might be.
Anyhow, that’s my quota of off-topic tangent-having filed for the day, I’ll pipe down now.
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Or just say ‘Do you get paid for X (X being whatever they like, like gaming)? No, why you do it hm? Why aren’t you streaming?’ 
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I probably should’ve, that conversation went on for like an hour before I finally got fed up with it. Just my luck, though, that wouldn’t have worked either!
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Then just say its a Hobby, and if they get a clueless look on their face? Toss them a dictionary…and leave! 
could he’ve been trolling you pretending to be clueless?
Here a nice trick: Start talking about growing your ‘other’ Hobby!
Growing Turnip!
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I feel like if he was trying to troll me, he wouldn’t have gotten pissed and blocked me when I finally said that I was done talking about it.
That said, oh my God, that image XD
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A Jan story with no turnips or griffins? I didn’t even remember that one.
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I don’t know if it was you or some other person that recommend night market, which by the way is a wonderful IF and it needs more attention.
But your post is particularly true because as of current they been giving the night market author a lot of flake for “not catering or writing for the players”. Some of the players feel that their being “forced” in poly relationships or that the traditional masculine looking RO is actually pretty submissive. Or that the fact that the ROs aren’t all over the MC but have their own problems and complicated love lives. I respect that the author is putting her foot down and writing what she wants.
Or another great piece of work is Alfie, you could tell that the author was just getting tired of making it, but sadly had to keep going to cater to the fans. But if you ever checked his Twitter account, you can see what he really wants to make, lovecraftian and eldritch type stuff.
I wish people in general understood that forcing an artist or author to cater to them is literally robbing not only the creator but themselves from an different but wonderful experience.
We can have titties, ass and eldritch abominations all at the same time.
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I mean, finishing your project isn’t ‘catering’ to anyone and is pretty important. Continuing to develop a project even when the passion is gone (within reason) is actually a pretty important skill to develop, unless you’re fine with ending up with the bad habit of leaving unfinished projects behind (and it is an actual bad habit you can develop).
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I think I worded it wrong rather he was tired of doing the same thing within the story, it was becoming stale to him. But if he were to try something new with it, it made certain types of people upset.
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Just discovered something new I hate: IF games that have a whole ass tumblr blog where the author basically RP all day but the state of the demo is still ‘To be added / announced’ two or even 3 years after the initial post was made.
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It amuses me when I see on the blogs of such “authors” links to Ko-fi and Patreon…
Similar annoying thing in the IF community on Tumblr - someone makes pinned post about game with super-interesting game plot and characters. But the status of this wip is: very early stage. The person is active for a while (or made just one post) then disappears and never posts anything again.
It’s so frustrating, omg! I’ve followed hundreds of such blogs. Now when I see new blog with “upcoming IF”, I usually ignore it, even if plot description sounds amazing…
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Tone indicators in dialogues/choices (i.e. emojis in a flirt option or when it says which skill will be checked)
I know it’s just the authors trying to avoid misunderstandings, but I’m glad when they put a toggle for it :')
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100% agree with toggle options for these, but personally I love having them. I’m absolute garbage at subtext in these games. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tanked a relationship by confusing a hostile choice with flirting or friendly banter. God, no wonder I don’t have more friends
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I don’t know if hated, but I probably dislike the personality indicators the most. Because in most games like 9/10, they do basically nothing and have no influence on the game. So I feel like they are pointless, either weave them into the game or put a tracker for something more useful there.
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Anymore, I’ve stopped trusting the brief descriptive blurbs about characters you interact with on the advertisements for these games. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen something to the effect of, “romance a heroic Paladin!” only to then discover that said heroic Paladin is a complete shitwad in the game and my interest in them turns out to be less than zero.
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Yeah like, these games don’t have saves, I need to remove the doubt from the equation, or I’ll be here for hours because I had to reset 90 times.
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I really hate when games have something extremely trivial or that’s done in every other game in their tag line / advertisement.
Like that new teahouse of the gods game, one of it’s big points is ‘Eat vegetarian, kosher, halal, or try everything’, how empty must the game be for THAT to be one of the selling point?
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I’ve never understood what the point of dietary clarifications in these games even is, since it practically never comes up outside of some text flavoring here and there. Does the plot depend on me being vegetarian in order to counteract some villainous plot to poison all the beef in the land?
That’s only half a joke, by the way, a plot where being vegetarian to defeat a meat-poisoning supervillain would actually be hysterical.
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