Yeah, I don't doubt it. I think people and even devs themselves just have a tendency to expect too much. Very often these are solo or SMALL team (think 2-3 at most) projects, and thus having good art AND a good story AND good writing AND good/fast programming all in one game is very likely a...
I take issue specifically with you implying a "powerless loser" is an inherently bad thing with no room to grow, equating it to being a cuckold. You know who else was a powerless loser? Luke Skywalker. Harry Potter. Peter Parker, Frodo Baggins, Neo... all these dudes started off as nobodies and...
For sure. I just assume OP would like it known that there is an audience hungry for some variety. Whether there's any money along with that audience is another question entirely because, at the end of the day, money is why these games are made at all.
This is an entirely reasonable thing to want, but you have to understand the restrictions that devs are placed under. Like you said, these are porn games first and foremost. You know where else you can find long-term storytelling with slow-burn, believable relationships? Romance novels. When the...
Feel like there's a wide enough gulf (and plenty of options to fill it) between what the OP describes and what you've got here. Even small variations on what OP brought up could inject some life into things:
1) MC can be an average or ugly dude with an average or small dick that manages to...
John McClane is pretty much Santa, handing out gifts of sweet death (and even reuniting brothers!) and saving the day with the power of Christmas. He's jolly all throughout the movie, even sharing a laugh with the villain at the very end. How can it be anything but a Christmas movie?
Here's a few recommendations, focused mostly on lesser-known/indie stuff:
Horizon's Gate (You must be registered for see element.): Watch the trailer. If you don't vibe with it just skip this one, as it's easy for people to be turned off by the graphics, but the song sold me on first watch...
Give us some guidelines, some games/genres you're into. What are your top 5/10? Single-player, multi-player, online/couch co-op? "Endless" games or games with a story? Etc.
Think that comes from being wary of players themselves, though. People will say a story has NTR if one of a love interest's exes shows up, or if an LI talks about past sexual experiences, or if an LI has a male coworker, or if an LI says hello to another man.
From what I've seen the majority of AVNs cater to male tastes and have male protagonists but it wouldn't surprise me if women played them despite this. Most people enjoy porn in some form or another.
You're mistaking me, I don't look down on sci-fi/fantasy, just pointing out that speculative fiction in general has always been thought of as second rate. I'm not personally a fan of fanfiction but I know of authors today that cut their teeth in that arena and hold fanfiction up as valuable and...
I've always assumed sci-fi/fantasy of the past wasn't well regarded due to snobby critics/high-minded "intellectuals" not considering such fiction worthy of the label "literature", much like The Beatles had some see them as a simplistic pop group.
Gonna be honest, I can't imagine most choices as being more than just fluff. AVN dev seems very time consuming and typically made of small (1-2 man) teams, adding variation in the way people expect/demand would balloon dev times so much that there'd be even more abandoned games than there...
Funnily enough I wasn't trying to poke fun at typical AVN writing, I just didn't want a boring thread title while asking for recs. And yeah it's clear that a lot of AVNs are either translations or written in English by someone who doesn't have it as their native language, not something I'd make...