If you can believe it, Patreon decided to close our account for the following post. They supposedly thought we were making non-consensual content despite the fact the point of the post was that we weren’t interested in making those kinds of games… so we’re reposting it here.

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Hi everyone! Sorry I didn’t post last month, I started a seasonal part-time job and then the US election happened… so you can imagine that my energy was very, very low. I did make a new small eroge called CUTTING/EDGE with my friends R18bit and Gureii for the first Videotome Jam, and you can play it for free in your browser!

For this post, I wanted to talk about the reasons I wanted to make CUTTING/EDGE, and some of my thoughts regarding eroge in general.

Content warning: this post will contain discussion that includes, but is not limited to, noncon/rape, slurs, and other harmful tropes and stereotypes in fictional media.

What’s “Videotome”?

The Videotome series of engines, primarily developed by Freya Campbell (AKA communistsister or spdrcstl), are low tech JavaScript engines with limited features for creating visual novels that can be played in a browser. There’s beauty in the myriad of feature-restricted engines that are cropping up in recent years, from the well-known PICO-8 for retro-inspired games to the whimsical Downpour that lets almost anyone create a hyperlink game using photos from their phone, some text, and basic game logic.

To understand where I’m coming from, it’s important to read Freya’s own thoughts about the first three Videotome engines (the OG, ADV, and Super) in her blog post “Words, Friction, Syntax: Stuff I thought about when making Videotome”, which includes her experience using Ren’Py that I’ll quote here:

My main gripe with Ren’Py was how vulnerable it was to a single misplaced quote, tab, space, etc. Making SI was a constant battle against my own keyboard fumbles where I would cause a gamebreaking bug with a single missing quote somewhere, or sloppy indenting. Having never written in a language that actually cares how you indent your code (god bless javascript) it was a wild ride in trying not to fuck up.

Full disclaimer: I don’t come from a programming background. I write words about little gay people in your computer and whenever I look at CSS, C++, or Python tutorials, my eyes start to glaze over. I still freeze when folks talk about foobar, integers, strings, and classes. I cry if you mention MySQL or a fucked up DNS. One of the main reasons I’m even remotely capable of bending Ren’Py to most of my whims is because I’ve been using it for the past decade and it doesn’t crash my computer if I make an error, so the concept of other languages that are a little more relaxed regarding typos is foreign to me. Needless to say, I was intrigued by the idea that Ren’Py was somewhat annoying to work in for someone who could build a black box that is a game engine.

One of the unique features in Super Videotome, the engine version I worked with, is the ability to make “non-blocking choices” that players can choose or completely ignore until the author has withdrawn the choice. In the majority of other visual novel engines, the presentation of a choice menu automatically blocks progression, so the deliberate inclusion of this feature reminded me of one of the first eroges I actually enjoyed.

Inspiration and Dissatisfaction

For anyone even slightly aware of the adult games landscape, there’s still not many titles that are like SugarScript’s 2016 release Cute Demon Crashers. For starters, it’s a NSFW otome game, a sex positive one at that, and it includes a safeword function during intimate scenes.

(There’s at least one other contemporary title that I know of which stole the safeword feature wholesale without citing CDC whatsoever, but I’m not going to give that game any clicks!)

I remember talking to another developer I was working with after the full version of Cute Demon Crashers released, and she remarked that she didn’t understand why SugarScript included the option to censor CGs or stop sex scenes since “players downloaded the game for a reason.” While I was just one of many players who also came for the hot demon banging, I recall telling her that player agency is separate from the protagonist’s agency. Cute Demon Crashers achieves an atmosphere of safety and none of the sex demons will judge you or be disappointed if you decide to stop mid-fuck, and the fact that the option is there to begin with drives home the point that Claire is free to experiment for her first time. I don’t think my friend quite grasped this notion at the time. In fact, it’s been more than a few years since then and I still don’t think many eroge developers have internalized that design philosophy either, if they have ever considered it.

There’s an endless stream of eroge featuring cishet male protagonists on itchio who get to consent to sexual acts, followed by some yuri eroge meant for cishet men tied with yaoi eroge for gay cis men, a growing number of yuri written by trans women for trans women, and whatever games are meant for anyone outside of those audiences usually get buried under other releases. And while queer erotica thrives in the comic and book scenes of itchio, those mediums don’t give the audience a chance to engage with the direction of narrative by design. There’s got to be a few sexy games for horny trans men, right? Well…

I’m not going to drop the names of these next two Interactive Fiction titles that feature character customization. They’re impressive in a mechanical sense but fall into the common pitfall of defaulting to sexual violence towards a player character who may not be a cis man.

Case Study #1: “Teehee sorry for raping you uwu”

The first title is presented as some cutesy pink fantasy monster/furry world, where the player character has a certain condition that makes monsters around them aroused; this problem has plagued them their entire life and there’s an option to either maintain your virginity or lose it in exchange for more sexual skills during the character creator where you choose your pronouns, anatomy, and hair and eye color. Despite the ability to leave your virginity behind, leaning towards engaging willingly in sexual encounters is not framed in a positive light whatsoever; engaging in sex of your own volition makes you lose points and may lead you to a bad ending, if you don’t die in the wilderness from starvation first.

But that’s hardly a concern when there are scripted encounters where certain NPCs will sexually assault you then “apologize” in a “cutesy” way afterwards. As far as I have played, initiating any sexual acts is presented as something horrible that you should have resisted to the best of your ability. You, the player, will always be a victim. After all, why would you dare enjoy sexual intercourse? Silly player!

This game is in early development but I highly doubt that future updates will address these issues.

Case Study #2: “We’ll dish it but we can’t take it”

The second title makes no pretense of being soft and demure; it’s a post-apocalyptic dystopia where life outside the city is nonexistent, and life inside is controlled by a few corrupt corporations. The customization is pretty extensive: you can choose to be a cis man, “dickgirl”, woman, “cuntboy”, “male-looking hermaphrodite”, or “female-looking hermaphrodite,” and pronouns are assigned accordingly (sorry they/them folks, you don’t have options). Then you can choose the color of your skin, eyes, and hair, how long your hair is, your height, your body’s build, how loose your vagina is (what does this even mean…) and/or how big your dick is, what gender (aka, what type of body) all the NPCs are, and your initial kinks, which affect some of your starting stats. Even if the default terms used for trans women and trans men aren’t ideal, that’s surprisingly comprehensive.

One of the first people you can meet in the default scenario is an evil amoral researcher who drugs you if you agree to “spend the night with him,” which would be really fun and great if he didn’t toss you into a test subject cell where you’re subjected to ryona-style torture. Now, I’m not exactly a fan of ryona, but the only erotic thing about it was the fact that you and other test subjects were stripped nude. In the event that you’re able to escape this and continue with the main storyline, you’re ushered into the police station where the officers will gangrape you for some amount of time. One officer will make a deal with you to frame one of their coworkers, but will still proceed to rape you a few times afterwards anyways, so it’s not like any of them have your best interests in mind.

I think the real kicker in this game is that even if you activate all the cheats to become this ultra dominant giga chad, I haven’t found a way to put most of the toys on NPCs. Feel free to put a spreader bar, vibrating dildo, or ball gag on yourself! But there’s no way to stuff a buttplug into someone else or make them put the bunny ears on. At least this game doesn’t automatically punish you for seeking sexual content. I think I felt the most euphoric when I got to whip a slave owner to the point of breaking his skin raw.

Wanting Media That Depicts Bodies Like Mine Having Consensual Sex Has Nothing To Do With The Hayes Code

Look, I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yums. If those games above sound like your cup of tea, then great! But the fact that trans men are largely left out of the majority of eroge, and usually put into submissive/bottom roles or forced to engage in extreme kinks if included at all, doesn’t feel great for the trans guys who are dysphoric at the thought of getting penetrated. What’s wrong about dudes wanting something a little more gentle?

I’ve already argued that games with character creators will always have some implicit bias towards being read with one audience in mind, and it’s pretty clear that I wasn’t the target audience for our case studies above. It still boggles my mind that I was somehow breaking ground with 8=D~<3 by including Quinton, a trans man who often uses his strap-on and harness on his cis boyfriend Renaldo.

One thing I keep hearing is this supposed counter(?) sentiment that trans men bottoms are valid and shouldn’t be forced to be tops, and that media depictions of submissive trans men getting penetrated are “allowed to exist.” And as always, I’m going to smack people who think I’m saying otherwise. We need more of this stuff in general! I’d just really like to see this secret stash of dominant trans guy games that all the search engines are apparently hiding from me too, I guess.

Recommendation Time

None of these titles are very long, nor are all of them games, but they do include the possibility of trans masc bodies in situations where they exhibit agency and enjoy sexual intercourse.

Just Bros Being Bros by Not Safe Or Sane

Bro, your bro just got a girlfriend. That’s so great for your bro, but you know, he’s never done it before… so a bro has to help a bro out, you know?

One playthrough of this IF is rather short, but the variety of options and dialogue is extensive, not to mention goofy and heartwarming. Shout out to one of the best things you can say mid-coitus:

I think god would appreciate, we’re helping each other like good bros

Some Sword/Some Play by Jemma Topaz

You are a professional duelist, bound to the service of your noble patron, the eccentric Marquessa. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun.

By eccentric, the game means that your Marquessa likes it when you regale her with tales of how you fucked around at the ball where she got kidnapped, and how you saved her after some more fucking around. It’s all around very queer, eloquent, and raunchy; if you haven’t given it a spin by now, you really ought to.

Gummy and the Doctor by DarkChhibiShadow, Cmakesp, & co.

Gummy and The Doctor is a comedic, light-hearted, trans erotica web series that explores gender, bodies, and embracing failures.

“When Dr. Edwin Glum tries and fails to create his own perfect, sexy partner, he unknowingly sends out a horny distress signal to a gooey, pink alien named Gummy! As Gummy touches down on earth, they soon see just how pent up the Doctor is (in more ways than one) and starts to wonder if there’s something to be done about that…”

Edwin is canonically trans masculine and has installed a way for himself to change out his lower anatomy as he sees fit from his collection of cocks and holes, even retaining his original bits when he’s feeling nostalgic. Gummy, the alien, is genderfluid and can change their body to any form they want to as well. There’s options for just the audio dramas or watching short animated episodes, which are still being created as of this time!

Thank you for reading! For part 2, I’ll talk about working in Super Videotome and some of the obstacles I encountered. Until next time!