Heart's Choice FAQ

Ummm, I thought the games under the “tag” Heart’s Choice would all be focused on adult-only readers because they’d include sex scenes or heavier content. I saw Jason said there is no age restriction to this one, so… Is it on Heart’s Choice just because it’s more focused on romance than most CoGs?

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That’s an interesting question, because it’s a matter of us not successfully communicating the brand.

Here are the points of difference of HC vs COG.

  • HCs can be as short as 60k words. Some of them, like AWPW, are as long as COGs, but the minimum is less than COG.
  • HC is encouraged to be gender-locked, both w/r/t to the protagonist and the ROs.
  • In HC, you’re very likely to get some sort of “happy” ending. Failure is heavily deemphasized.
  • The romance plot is generally the central plot of the game.

That does not mean that all HCs are “spicy” or explicit. There are some bordering-on-explicit sex scenes in Werewolves: Haven Rising and its sequel, for example. There are some very steamy moments in Heart of the House. There’s very little stopping explicit sex from being in a COG, but the sex isn’t the point of a COG.

That said, explicit sex isn’t necessarily the point of HCs, either. But it can be; sex is pretty much the point of AWPW. Jazz Age is more about the relationships.

Communicating the level of explicitness/“spiciness” in a given HC is something we’ll have to figure out as we go.

There will be omnibus apps on both iOS and Android for HC, and both will be marked 18+, but not all of the games will include explicit, raunchy sex.

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So they will be omnibus only in Android too?

That’s the plan.

In particular, that makes it easier for us to market the individual games. The storefronts require all storefront material be “family-friendly,” meaning no adult images or text. But if it’s a description in the app, we’re a lot more free.

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Pity i don’t want use omnibus as i don’t like their usage conditions. But Maybe i will bought them in web or buy on omnibus and instead use it asking you for a page code or something. lol. awe will find a way :slight_smile:

I think Mara has a point here. If there are only like one RO for each sexual orientation in these games and the romance is the most important part of a HC then I think it’d be nice to get more infos about the ROs than the normally used one or two keywords to describe them before we would spend money on a game.

Edit: Also is there a thread about HCs in general? If so could I ask a mod to move this there, please? So we don’t derail this thread as Mary asked already us to.

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Can I enquire as to why everyone is so averse to a m/f romance? I realize many men probably wouldn’t be interested in romance games but males attracted to females are probably something like 45% of the world population. Why exactly can you not see what it would look like?

I was really excited for hearts choice but it seems like I will only be able to play like 50% with any interest, and perhaps 5% in my gender and orientation.

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My personal opinion
M/f are in most cases pornography. Where women or are abused by alpha male and in many cases are discriminatory against rest of spectrum.

I like erotica and I have not find any fandom m/f in the females weren’t mistreated raped or directly forced to have sex with other women on several males. So with the inclusive and gender positive Cog is it is difficult that a M/f happens as sadly porn show demand is for a stuff Cog is against

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I agree with you even several old posts adobe I explain how amazing will be for representation a m/f gender positive that portrait relationship as normally are consensual and equalitarian. But sadly that is so rare and so out of common that the probability is not big that an author came soon with one. If someone is thinking in a good m/f positive Have from me all help and cheers possible

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You don’t need to search in Heart Choice for a M/F romance game/story… there some good M/F romance in both CoG or Hosted Games…

I would suggest you read/play Silverworld and werewolf haven rising of CoG

Tin Star, Great Tournament , Life of Mercenary , Doomsday on Demand 2 ,and Vampire House of Hosted games

House of the heart got a partial M/F story line while @OdicHastings latest WiP weakest knight and cursed lady have a nice M/F romance route on going as well

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I think he was speaking of a Erotica or more seductive game that average Cog or Hosted that’s the point of this branching in the formula. To see more direct content focused in relationship and the intercourse comes with it.

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I did enjoy those games, but romance isn’t the main focus. I was hoping for a game where it is - it doesn’t have to necessarily be erotica although I suppose it would have to be at least to a degree.

This doesn’t mean rape or mistreatment. I don’t watch porn in the first place, there’s a reason I enjoy CoG romance more than the drivel online.

Anyway, we should stop posting about it here.

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I know that you or anyone here dont wants a mistreatment any gender games. Cog is a gender positive company that’s why all of us are here. My comment was about how the industry lamentable is building upon. That’s why I agree totally with you about pornography and all that. And I want exactly same. I think most people wants.

Now just hope an author will come with that if This branching has success. So i cheer people to supporting these games.

For instance I am a cis woman no gay. But this game is really good and funny to read erotica is just a part the story itself is engaging. So to all people that is not gay I recommend check the demo when game is released

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To answer your question:

  1. I think it was mentioned by Jason that no author on the radar of the company has pitched an M/F romance plot yet. It’s difficult to publish a story based on M/F route if none of the authors have thought about it, or even if they thought about it, it hasn’t materialized into a story, not yet. So, if you look at it, the authors have or should have creative independence. They can’t possibly be forced to write something, because there are going to be ethical issues to be considered and the end product will be no better than a half-cooked meal.

This. This is precisely the answer.

  1. Reason number two.

As someone who identifies as a straight cis male, I can certainly sympathize with your concern @MisterFahrenheit, and to be honest, I would have liked to see more of M/F games from HC. But as stated aptly by Mary, market is a concern. You don’t invest in a project, either by means of time or monetary funding or intellect, unless you are convinced that the project will turn out to be a profitable one. Demographically, we straight males are far outplayed by other identities in number of romance readers. So I can certainly understand that it’s only wise that a majority of the project will cater to the other orientations, and not M/F.

While I can certainly understand your concern, and I am sure you have come across a lot that fit the stereotype of male dominant erotica, I would like to state that it’s certainly possible to write M/F erotica without encouraging toxic masculinity or aggressiveness. I wouldn’t equate erotica from a male POV to porn. That’s a bit of a stretch, a generalization that might not hold true for a substantial amount of cases.

Endnote: Even though I answered the question here for convenience, I don’t think this is the right thread to discuss queries on Heart’s Choice in general. There is a seperate, dedicated thread for Heart’s Choice FAQ. This thread should probably be left alone for the specific game, “All World Pro Wrestling”

The general queries should probably be discussed here for the convenience of everyone.

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So is this coming soon because it’s mid 2019 now

It’s kind of funny, considering how as far as Japanese narrative games (that is, visual novels) go, M/F far outnumber F/M or M/M or the vanishingly small F/F market by the mile. And no, I’m not counting the porn-centric games. (I actively play these games as they come out in Japan so this is really based on that and not on, say, the cancer that is Steam’s cheap visual novel softporn infestation. Or the lol that is the mobile visual novel market.)

I think there’s a lot of male interest in romance stories, judging by the shipwars I’ve watched in life. As far as the West is concerned, though, they seem to view it as ‘something to do in a non-romance genre’, where guys are perfectly happy to enjoy romance plots in space operas or whatever, but are unwilling to read something romance-focused for some reason.

I do wonder why that is. Guys are interested in romance, but for some reason the romance genre is viewed as ‘romance for ladies’ while the guys find their fix elsewhere.

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The problem is basically marketing and comes from first years of XX were cheap novels were created targeted to women based in a very gender stereotyped content as the only content suited for women based in found your men submitting to his will then marry and have babies. In Spain that genre appeared with a pink covers to make clear males that were romance books. So in Spain the genre is called novela Rosa Pink novel.

That made that during decades the mere fact see a man with one was considering socially unacceptable and almost like if weren’t masculine enough.

That pressure nowadays doesn’t exist but still men don’t want recognize they like romance

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This is pretty close to breaking our rules about asking when something is coming out. Per the FAQ: “Don’t ask when a game will be updated or released. Usually the author doesn’t know.”

And neither do we.

Currently the first Heart’s Choice game has completed beta testing and is moving on to continuity testing this week. The second Heart’s Choice game is still in beta. We don’t yet have a draft of a third game that is ready for beta. We hope to launch Heart’s Choice with at least three games.

We also don’t have a final build of an Android Heart’s Choice omnibus app (yes, we will likely release Heart’s Choice as standalone apps on Android as well).

Starting Heart’s Choice is not a turnkey operation. We have lots to do yet, and it’s an additional, entire new project for a very small group of people who already work full time to publish COG and HG. We’d love to launch it soon; we’re not sure when that will be yet.

ETA: I apparently said in September of 2018

The beginning of Q3 is more likely at this point, but that’s not really much of a shift in terms of missing the estimate.

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I would think that the best solution to be inclusive and having a strong straight male romance focused game with several female characters to romance for HC is hiring someone or someone’s with experience in writing that field, ideally also with good interactive fiction experience.

That’s not saying that there shouldn’t be a focus on romance games for other audiences, I just wouldn’t want to see us ignored entirely. I also don’t believe that the statement that all straight male romance has to lead to pure porn or dominant focused S and M nonsense (how anyone finds pain sexual is beyond me, but I suppose I have my own interests so I cannot entirely judge) is wholly true. It just requires more creativity.

This is probably something Hearts Choice can move towards after the initial launch with the intention of having specific games for all preferences.

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As someone who’s read M/F that made me cry buckets or wibble in pure cuteness, I’d agree with you. Granted, I haven’t ran into one without a very, very well-defined protagonist, but doing one with the CoG style protag should be doable.

To be honest? I LIKE that HC (haha, same abbreviation as the hurt-comfort trope) has as big a focus on non-MF as it does now, since as far as mainstream gaming goes the availability of things for non-male audiences has been…traditionally lacking. But it wouldn’t be amiss if an author decides to write more M/F, as long as it doesn’t swamp everything else. I think a lot of people are also leery of that after many of HG’s more notable releases are male genderlocked.

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