Looking at the results (it’s about 60 votes per choice at the moment), it seems that more voters are open to playing vampires/ghosts/aliens/demons than they are cows/cats/owls, BUT that the voters are more sensitive to gender when it comes to the first group of non-human characters. They don’t care as much about gender when it comes to cats, but gender matters more with aliens and ghosts. Hmmmm…
So perhaps this plays into your view of vampires/ghosts being a bit more “relatable” from our human vantage point, and thus sex/attraction/gender/identity/orientation comes more to the forefront?
Someone is. Check out the Winter of the Bovine thread for more info and some very terrible puns.
Interesting polls. Will post more about these later when time allows. For the moment, I find it funny everyone says they would rather have no romance than poorly-done romance, yet 9-10% of voters just said they won’t buy a game where romance and gender are not involved in the story.
That game is legit about a cow? I read ‘Bovine’ and thought it was a term for like, something else. Not a literal cow! I haven’t even clicked on the thread to read through what’s going on in there!
Although looking at these polls, my brief idea of writing a Hosted Game about: 1) an owl protgonist, 2) with a set personality, 3) who isn’t interested in sex or romance, 4) who is gender-locked female, 5) and whose story is told from third-person POV, was probably not the most commercially viable approach for me to take. Fighting 5 different battles against expectations is too much.
You’d have to have a pretty good story AND a pretty fleshed out world/character cast for me to pick that kind of story up, at least. Hoo mama, that is… different.
Another big caveat for me personally - the lack of gender choice. That just leaves me feeling like I am utterly detached and usually I stop playing before long.
Well, I picked leery because I might buy it, but there is 80 % chance I won’t. In short you would have to convince me to buy it, despite the genderlock. I can be convinced, but it is a lot of work.
Well, for the most part vampires/ghosts were human before the change took place. Meaning, sometime in their past they went through the same hardships and faced same dilemmas as most folk do, so in my eyes they’re very relatable, unlike animals, even if they’re described as sentient self-conscious beings, their goals are still mainly getting food/sleep and/or plot against their owner.
Unless you give it a meta narrative about the game developer who’s writing the owl game while exploring the nature of choice and free will, and the relationship between creator and consumer.
Bad ending: No one reads it
Okay ending: It becomes a cult classic.
Best ending: The author accidentally taps into the underserved owl-centered fiction market left vacant by the Guardians of Ga’Hoole and it becomes a smash hit.
