Year-by-year analysis of Omnibus data (CoG and HG)

[Lan]

The spice level/spice rating system is probably the only thing about Heart’s Choice I don’t have any disagreements with. It’s entirely in-line with what I’ve seen and expect from romance novels. Romance isn’t the same thing as erotica, and there’s a gaping chasm between the median traditionally published romance novel and a self-published Kindle Unlimited erotica/Itch.io eroge game. Bringing the expectations of the latter to the former is bringing AAA expectations to the Atari 2600.

For comparison, this is the spice scale romance.io uses:

1. Glimpses and kisses - Meaningful glances and perhaps a kiss, but no sex on and off page

2. Behind closed doors - At least one intimate scene occurs, but without the reader present.

3. Open door - At least one intimate scene with the reader present, euphemistic language for act and body parts

4. Explicit open door - At least two intimate scenes, explicit language with a variety of sexual acts

5. Explicit and plentiful - Several explicit scenes, a variety of adventurous acts, dotted throughout the book

I think that lines up pretty well with HC’s:

@Mary_Duffy

Heat Levels
Mild, sweet.
Medium, intimate.

Spicy, sensual.

Hot, explicit.
Extra-hot, erotica.

@Mary_Duffy

Romance novel readers are largely women. Heart’s Choice aspires to engage that audience, and bring female, romance novel readers to the world of IF and our games. Women who enjoy visual novels will also be part of the audience we hope to attract.

I never got the impression HC was meant to be a “exclusively erotica” line, so I find it a little strange to see it be criticized for that. I always saw it as COG’s attempt at making interactive romance novels – they’re literally advertised as games where you “become the main character of an interactive romance novel and choose your path to love”, so using a spice system anchored to romance novel expectations is entirely reasonable in my book.

Believe me, I have my issues with HC games^[1], but spice scale is the one area I think they actually succeeded in feeling like romance novels.

More detailed content warnings on erotica games would be useful though. People looking for release material have a different use case than people looking for a romance story, and there’s a reason PornHub/sex games/etc use highly specific content tags.

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1. I could write an extremely long analytical breakdown of why they fail (for me) at being interactive romance novels and I see them as easier COGs with slightly more resources allocated to the romance-as-fishing-minigame minigame, but that is well-trodden ground at this point ↩︎