Gay Furry Visual Novel Audience Survey 2024 Results
Hello everyone! The long-awaited results of the Gay Furry Visual Novel audience survey! This survey received a total of 556 responses! You can look at it all here and here. Here's also the assets for the survey which includes all the sketches for the body types and the descriptions for the character archetypes, both of which aren't visible in the results page. The link also contains a csv file for those who want to play around with the data. That's a lot of data, so this should be useful to some people. Thank you, everyone, for taking the survey and sharing it around, this will certainly help the community in small but impactful ways. Please look at the results while reading the blog, the blog is divided into the same sections the survey had to make things easier to follow along. In this blog, I'll be comparing the new results with both the original 2020 survey and the Bara audience survey I did in 2022. Please keep in mind that those two surveys had more respondents, with the original having over 1.7k respondents. As for the reason, I'm guessing it's due to social media having less reach nowadays plus some of the bigger members of the community not sharing the survey, but I'm not exactly sure why.
This doesn't have anything to do with the survey but if you have been reading By Your Hands, I'm hosting a little Q&A session in celebration of Owen's route now being updated. Send your questions here. Anyway, let's get on with the results.
But before we get on with that, I wanted to mention that the description of the survey says that there are over 100 multiple-choice questions plus some free-form questions. This came as a suggestion from someone who said that the long length of the survey would be daunting for most people so it would be good to give a small heads up just so that people would either be more prepared or wouldn't get frustrated taking a survey they didn't know how long it would be. Maybe there were fewer respondents because of that, but I have no evidence of that. I do have a feeling I got more quality responses as a result of that.
General Information
Over 90% of people of respondents are male. This shouldn't be a surprise as it is the gay FVN audience survey, so of course the intended audience is gay men. However, the portion of non-binary respondents is greater than in the previous two surveys, which I find interesting. On the other hand, the portion of women who took this survey is the smallest it's ever been, with only 0.7% of respondents being female. That means only four women took this survey. I would be interested in seeing a survey that targeted furry women. A question that wasn't in the previous surveys asks the respondents if they're transgender, to which over 90% said they weren't. A good 3.3% did say yes though, although 2.4% put in "prefer not to say", which is fair. Still, there are trans people in this community and we must remember that.
The next question asks about sexuality and the results mirror the 2020 survey better than the Bara survey as while the majority of respondents are gay, there is a considerable amount of people who said they were bi or pan, which might make female love interests or just characters who are interested in women less risky than one would think in this community. At the very least they have a strong niche. There's also a good amount of people who are asexual, with 6.6% of respondents answering with that, so SFW modes would be considerate for them. Another question that wasn't in the previous surveys was what romantic orientation the respondent had. Again, most people said they were gay, but a good amount of people said they were bi, pan, or aro, although fewer people said they were aro than they were asexual.
The ages of respondents are what you'd normally expect, with most respondents being between 18-and 30. If you have noticed, the age grouping here is different from the previous surveys. This is due to me talking to someone and them saying that the age grouping of previous surveys was arbitrary and this was a more standard way of grouping ages. Of course, very few people over 35 ended up taking the survey. The Bara survey indicates that the ages within the 18-30 age range are equally spread out, although the 25-34 group has a higher range of ages and it's still smaller than the 18-24 group, so that probably indicates something. For some reason, the 2020 survey has a much larger percentage of people in the 18-21 range. My observation was that the FVN community boomed around 2020, gee I wonder why, and while it's still growing with new members, it's at a slower rate which means there are more older members of the community. As for the portion of respondents who said they were minors, don't fret. The survey takes you straight to the end of the survey if you put in that you're under 18. I just couldn't reveal that to the public lest I got minors lying about their age to take a survey that asks you what sexual preferences you like.
Over half of the people taking the survey are from North America, with the second most common being Western Europe. After that, we got South America and South/Southeast Asia, two regions where a good amount of notable FVN creators are from. For the record, South Asia and Southeast Asia aren't similar regions demographically, those two regions are just usually two regions that don't typically have large demographics when it comes to English language fiction, so I just ended up smooshing them into one. Hopefully no one minded, although next time I will separate them. I was expecting East Asia to be more common, especially with the healthy community the Chinese audience has with FVNs but I guess it didn't reach them.
I don't think the way people found this survey needed but most people found this survey through Discord, Reddit, or itch.io. Discord was the platform I pushed the most on, with people on different servers sharing the survey and pinning it on channels. I think the big thing this question shows is that Twitter/X doesn't have a lot of reach compared to other platforms.
Social media usage among respondents isn't too wild. The most used sites are YouTube, Discord, and Twitter in that order. People underestimate YouTube as even if videos don't give immediate attention, they can boost traffic to your stuff in the long term due to the algorithm recommending videos that are years old. Does that mean you should become a YouTuber? Probably not, but consider asking established FVN YouTubers to read your VN. Reddit is high but lower considering how many residents said they found the survey through the website, which is quite interesting. Bluesky and Telegram are lower down but still have considerable audiences. If you are a dev and you're trying to cultivate an audience, please pay attention to what social media FVN readers are using as that's where they'll find your work.
Body Types
There's a lot of discussion to be had on what kinds of bodies the GFVN audience enjoys that's not often discussed among the community. I don't think a lot of people, creators or readers alike, don't think too much about body types. It's usually just "This type of body makes me happy" or something. However, with the following results, we can gain a few interesting insights.
One thing to note is that the results are split between the main character and the love interest. It's implicit that "main character" just refers to the POV character, and I think most people filled out the questions thinking that, but it can also refer to any major character that a story revolves around. Because of this split, the results might look a bit different from previous surveys. There's no option for side characters because I don't think it's relevant or super necessary to know what body type a side character has.
Another thing to note is that each of the body types has their sketches associated with them. Those might have affected the results a little as there's a visual reference for what the body types look like. As mentioned, they are viewable in the assets link above.
The results are considerably different from previous surveys, with a few exceptions, probably due to the factors I just mentioned. Average, Twink, Femme, Chubby, and Fat aren't as disliked as they were in previous surveys while Ripped, Strongman, and Musclechub aren't as popular, making for overall more even results across the different types. The biggest change was that feral is universally disliked when compared to the 2020 survey in which it was more mixed. I think the MC/LI split caused the results for feral to drop so much due to the distaste for zoophilia, although the survey wasn't asking how attractive you find the body type.
Generally speaking, the results for the MC body types were more mixed, with answers leaning closer to the middle. I can see why this is, as the MCs are usually characters that are attractive but not meant to attract you, rather being more like stand inside for the reader even if they aren't a blank slate.
The most popular body types were bear, musclechub, chubby, and strongman, while the the least popular were feral, femme, and twink. I wouldn't recommend making the love interest of your VN, if there is one, into a body type you aren't into just because people like it because there's a fanbase for pretty much any body type out there. Still, if you want to give the people what they want, you have the answers here.
For species, we have the results split into three groups: main characters, love interests, and in general. Like with body types, MC results hover around the middle, LI results are stronger, and the general results are somewhere in the middle, being closer to the LI results.
I don't think the results are going to surprise anyone in the FVN community; canines, bears, and felines are the most popular; bovines, porcine, and mustelids aren't too far behind; primates, amphibians, and birds are a lot more mixed in comparison. A big thing to note here is that reptiles are pretty liked among the respondents, with almost half of them saying they love them. I did bunch together lizards, dragons, and dinosaurs into one category, which might explain the positive results, but overall they are more popular than what you'd believe if you look at the number of scalie characters in FVNs.
Humans are a fickle bunch. There's a notable group of respondents who hate them in FVNs, but most are neutral about them, with a good amount not minding one being a love interest. Predictably though, humans were rated the highest as the main character.
Comparing this to the 2020 survey, there's not much to talk about, the results are pretty similar all things considered. The only two things I'll note are that bovines are less popular in these results and both porcines and mustelids are a tad more popular.
Character Archetypes
For archetypes, there is no MC/LI split because most of these aren't going to be the main POV character, and the ones that can be the MC aren't going to have a significant response between whether they're the protagonist or the LI. Another thing is that all of these have their own sample of dialogue below them, to give people an idea of what type of character this is. You can see what they were in the link for the assets. I have no idea what effect they had on the results.
A few interesting things I noticed comparing these results to the previous surveys: a lot of the results in this survey are similar to results of previous surveys just slightly less one-sided. One funny exception I noticed is that the closeted bigots have more favorable results than in the Bara survey, although it's still pretty mixed.
The most popular archetypes are masculine, daddy, himbo, and papa wolf. So if you want the ultimate husbando, you have to have a masculine, himbo, daddy who cares a lot about his children. The least popular are smokers and vanilla protagonists. Most of the other ones are fairly mixed, but one character type I'll mention is the red flags boyfriend. I included that mostly as a joke so it's really funny seeing the results being evenly spread. The only way this could have been a more accurate representation of the FVN community is if there were very few 3s and a lot of 1s and 5s.
Wrapping this section up, very few people see the protagonist of an FVN to be simply a surrogate character. Roughly 60% of respondents see them as a mix of a surrogate for the reader and their character. Making the MC their unique character with their character arc can be well worth the payoff, but you do have to keep in mind that it's their perspective the player is following, doubly so if the game is written in first person. They must be relatable or at least in sync with the player in terms of what they know of the setting and how they react to events within the story.
Tropes and Plotlines
There's not a lot to say here. The results are similar to the results from the Bara survey, the main exception being the tragic romance being only mixed versus having universal hate in the other survey. The most popular ones are enemies to lovers and age/power gap romances while people dislike homewrecking.
The world building is also important for a lot of people, although there are more 4s than 5s, so it's not too overwhelmingly important overall.
Then we get to content warnings and oh boy is this a spicy meatball. This was an optional question and as you can see, only 394 respondents put anything down on this question. This means that around 145 respondents, or roughly 26.9% of all respondents wouldn't avoid any VNs specifically because of content that makes them uncomfortable, which I'd say is a good thing. Violence and Mental Illness got very few responses while Incest and Child Abuse got picked by a lot more respondents. All the other default options got around a similar amount of responses. Mental Illness might sound weird as a content warning but it's more so that people might be uncomfortable dealing with trauma relating to mental illness when it's depicted in a dramatic way in fiction. Incest being the second most common response is funny considering something a little later in the survey, but we'll get to that soon enough.
Now I was told I shouldn't have so many free-form questions and I thought they just meant questions without multiple choices, but this question allowed you to put in any response you want and there were a lot of custom answers put in. I think I'll skim down the amount of questions with optional free-form answers in future surveys. Some people put in stuff that's less "This upsets me" and more "I hate this and I don't want to see this anymore". So I got gems like "Isekai story with Human main character with Wolf love interest", "flat main characters and only twink love interests", "Incontinence", "SFW", "skibidi toilet", and "A bland 'I wish Disco Elysium was about a little witch in the alps trying to find her cat uwu' cuteness." More serious free form answers usually say they don't like gore, politics, and extreme fetishes like scat or vore. But a lot of them say that they're fine with any content as long as the work doesn't glorify anything immoral and it's handled with tact, which is perfectly reasonable.
Going into the next question, most respondents value content warnings Devs, don't be afraid of writing more "intense" content, but do remember to handle certain topics with care and make sure to put a proper content warning for your VN.
On a much brighter note, the endings respondents liked are pretty interesting. People had a positive response to making the world a better place, going on more adventures similar to the story, and especially getting to marry the love interest. People are pretty mixed about being rich and famous. My insight says that people like endings that make the most sense for finishing the character's arc as a lot of more positively rated ones fit being the end for a strong character arc (except for having lots of sex but I can understand why people liked that one).
Sexual and Adult Content
Elvira knows what's up (Source: Elvira: Mistress of the Dark)
Most people like protagonists that are verse. It's the "porque no los dos" approach to sex in gay VNs. That said, the bottom only is slightly more popular than the top and the sub-bottom is the most popular out of the subs and doms. Knowing this, it shouldn't be a surprise that Top Only and Dom Top LI are the most popular alongside Verse LI. Closet Sub and Closet Dom are fairly liked, with Closet Sub edging out a little. People are pretty fond of non-penetrative sex. The Yaoi style is very much hated while most people like bara.
This one's fascinating: most people want a balance between length and frequency when it comes to sex scenes but more people want longer, infrequent sex scenes than there are who want a lot of short sex scenes. I think there's a lot of importance placed on sex that feels impactful as cheesy as that sounds. The next question is pretty similar with most wanting a balance between lustful and affectionate with more people wanting more affectionate, romantic scenes.
Surprisingly, people enjoy playing as a character who has a different sexual position they are. There's a lot of drama that goes on with love interests being the top/bottom when they want them to be exclusively a bottom/top, so this is good to see.
In this next question, the most popular pick is the penis, with the face and pecs being distant second and third respectively. Also a lot of love for the belly. I don't get why the ass is so low. Is it because I split it into cheeks and holes? Anyway, there were a bunch of free-form answers but I don't find them particularly note-worthy so moving on.
As for when people want erotic scenes to start happening, most people are fine with them taking a while to get to that point, but there are a considerable portion of respondents who want them a lot sooner.
For kinks, you might not like the answers lmao. The most popular kinks are size difference, intense orgasms, and, of course, musk. Out of the defined options, fisting, cross-dressing, and macros are the least popular. A couple of things I wanted to point out. Non-consent is more popular than spanking and feet, which I found enlightening. Also, remember when I said there was something funny about incest being a common thing people avoid? Well, more people say that incest is their fetish than there are people who get the ick by it. That also means that incest turns roughly a third of respondents off, and another third on, which I find pretty hilarious. Feet being low despite being a rather common kink in the world reminds me of an off-hand comment I've seen once about how furries are much more likely to admit they're into incest, musk, and watersports before being into feet.
There were also a lot of free-form answers. Of them, male pregnancy, hypnosis, and vore were mentioned. A lot of different kinks have their audiences in the furry fandom so don't be afraid of showing off your freaky side.
Diversity (Women and Minorities in FVNs)
I think I can summarize this section aptly by saying that while there are a group of people who are against it, most respondents, as long as it's done well, encourage diversity even if they don't prioritize it as much as some other things. There was a lot less ambiguity with the one question that didn't ask if a visual novel was advertised with diversity and instead just included it.
General Preferences
There were a bunch of different ways respondents got into FVNs. The most common answer I got was that they saw fan content of an FVN and got into them that way. Other common responses included that an FVN came up during a search for games to play, an FVN came up while looking stuff up, and they saw a CG/screenshot of the game. Not a lot of people mentioned being recommended an FVN, which I guess is par for the course with them. There are also a lot of free-form answers and I won't be going through any of them but it is nice reading about how people got into FVNs.
For genres, none of them got any more than 50% of respondents, so there's a lot of variety within genre preferences. Not surprisingly, romance is the most popular genre followed by medieval fantasy and action/adventure. Historical fiction is the least popular (hard to put furries in a historical setting), followed by comedy and drama. If you look at FVNs right now, a lot of them have a good amount of both drama and comedy, but there are very few I would describe as pure drama or pure comedy. That's what my intuition is telling me. I've seen a few people who say there are too many horror FVNs, but only just a bit over a quarter of people who have horror as their top 3 genres, so don't feel pressured to make a horror VN.
For outside media, the majority of respondents said they play non-VN video games, which makes sense. Animation is a lot more popular than live action with comics being in the middle. Non-furry VNs don't have a lot of popularity it seems. I didn't include Music because it's one of those things that can be listened to while doing other stuff so I thought that would be a given that most people would listen to music.
As an optional question, I asked what genres of video games people played. Skimming through, some notable observations are that both action and turn-based RPGs are the most popular among respondents. Generally speaking, these results differ from what the typical PC gamer and console gamer plays. RPG and adventure are common for both console and PC gamers but genres popular with PC gamers (like 4X, RTS, and Builder) as well as genres popular with console gamers (Fighting, Battle Royale) aren't big hits here, so these results are very helpful for anyone interested in making a furry game aimed at the FVN audience. Fair warning though, just because a genre is popular doesn't mean that any game within that genre is going to do well. Action RPGs might be popular, but they're not going to play your small game when they only play AAA (maybe AA) games.
Most people are split on whether they'd play an FVN with no romance or sex, with over a third of people saying it's unlikely, while most people are very likely to play an FVN with either of them. This might be discouraging for some people, but remember that just because the results for some questions are unfavorable, doesn't mean you can't find a suitable audience. Related, but contrary to what the neighsayers believe, humanxfurry is generally well-liked among respondents. You might have a vocal minority hating on you if you do such a VN, but don't let them get to you.
For the types of VNs people enjoy, choices matter VNs are the most popular but linear and kinetic VNs aren't too far behind. A lot of people enjoy additional gameplay mechanics to VNs although fewer people enjoy more mechanically involved games. They also like their VNs mature and gay. On the flip side, most respondents prefer VNs with a quality over quantity approach to routes, with less than 4% of people saying they wanted as many options as possible. This is similar to the 2020 results, however, here they skew even more towards as few routes as possible whereas the middle-of-the-road approach was more popular in the previous survey.
The ideal length of a VN varies a lot among respondents. A lot of people picked 150k-200k words and 200k-300k words but there's also a way too large group of goblins who want to spend over 80 hours in a single VN. On the one hand, it's great that a lot of readers have such patience with a VN, but this also brings the question that some people *expect* VNs to be this long, which is concerning.
The amount of VNs people have read is also telling as over 30% of respondents have read more than 30 VNs, which is wild. Compare that to the 2020 survey and only roughly 10% answered that. There have been a lot more FVNs that have been released since then. Suffice it to say, the FVN community is a hungry bunch who are willing to try out a lot of FVNs.
Going off the results from a previous question, respondents are split on whether they would read a non-furry visual novel or not. Seems like the biggest appeal of FVNs for most people is the F part, as weird as it is to say.
Most people are okay with major changes during development, with only a small minority saying otherwise. The community generally understands that a lot of FVNs are WIPs and so as long as the writing is good, people will accept a lot of things that wouldn't fly in bigger-scale projects.
For art style, people like a balance between stylization and realism. With results leaning more towards stylized. I've noticed that FVN projects usually aren't more stylized than Adastra while also not more realistic than Pervader. I can't describe it but I can tell there's a distinct style when it comes to Western FVNs. Went through the answers for the free response question and some FVNs were mentioned but a lot of animations were mentioned as well. A couple of general aesthetics were put in response. Some people were confused at the question and a couple just liked whatever.
A lot of respondents don't have a preference between wholesomeness and edginess, which is probably for the better. There is a slight edge towards wholesome stories which further enforces that horror isn't as popular in the FVN community as some people think.
For queer content, fan works were the least popular defined answer. The most popular choice was "media that doesn't necessarily focus on queer content, but prominent characters are gay/queer". The other options were evenly spread, hovering around the 50%s. My take is that FVN readers aren't too particularly concerned with how queer a work of fiction is as long as the story is so good and it has gay characters. Some of the free-form responses say as much. Also, shout out to the one guy who put in "Devil's Gambit".
As for thoughts on romance and sex in queer media, each of the defined answers got a considerable amount of responses, but the one that got the most was "I don't mind that so much of gay/queer media focuses on them." I think this is a topic a lot of people have varying opinions on. I've certainly seen someone complain once in a blue moon about the abundance of sex and romance in FVNs, however, I think most people don't care, which is a good thing. Most respondents have also said that they take NSFW stories seriously and that they want more stuff like that. I don't think that's a shock to anyone in the community, just good to see it as a nice pie chart.
A majority of people don't like AI-generated assets in FVNs with the majority discouraging the use of them, especially in writing and character art. The main exceptions are backgrounds and coding in which people are more split, but that's still a third of respondents who will refuse to play a VN if it has such assets. I'm glad to be in a community where I don't have to be worried about being replaced by AI. With that in mind, it's no surprise that the majority of respondents say it's very important creators disclose they use AI, which is kinda funny. "You have to say upfront that you use AI even though I'm never going to play your VN because you use AI." But completely understandable. My recommendation is to just not use it in your VNs, it's simply not worth the hate and ire from the community simply for something that looks slightly better than royalty-free assets at most.
The final question of this section asks if you would encourage a creator to make a living out of FVNs and respondents were mixed, with more people leaning towards no. This is understandable as it can be incredibly stressful trying to make good and consistent money off your work and it might stifle your creative energy. Keep this in mind if you ever have to decide this.
Buying Habits
More than half of respondents have bought at least one FVN, with a third saying they have bought none but would be willing to buy one if there was one that caught their interest. Weirdly enough, the results to this question are very similar to the 2020 survey despite several paid FVNs having been released after that survey had ended. I don't know what's up with that. But this is good, it tells creators that over half the community would be willing to pay for an FVN outside of Patreon.
The vast majority of respondents prioritize good writing when it comes to what makes an FVN worth buying, with art being a close second. Romance also had a lot of responses. This is why a demo is important if you have paid VN because you need readers to know if your writing is up to par. Eye-catching art is also very important to have a successful VN. Romance seems to help a lot in terms of success.
The average price range people would be willing to pay for a VN is $5-$10, which is fair considering that's a common price for Steam games at an indie level. The average price for what they'd pay for an FVN they absolutely love is either $15-$20 or $20-$30, so around $20. There are some FVNs out there that I would price more than $20, and there are non-furry VNs that cost more than that, but I guess that is a safe price for VNs that have a lot of content and are of high quality.
Now I need to tell you guys something. Surveys might seem neutral at first but they usually have an agenda. Whatever questions that are asked in a survey tend to be there to fulfill an itch for knowledge the creator of that survey needs scratching. Or they need proof their beliefs are supported by a large group of people so they word it in a way that would cause a lot of people to pick what they want. So with this question, this was added by an acquaintance of mine for selfish reasons as he's an animator working on his own VN. Without beating around the bush, the average amount people would pay more for animations in a VN is +$10, which I'd say is fair.
The pie chart for the results here looks like a carnival lollipop. There's not an agreed-upon ideal length of a paid VN. The median seems to be 200k words, however, there are around 16% who would pay for an FVN of any length. Keep in mind though, that this is a required question for everyone (who's not a minor) and so even the people who have never bought a VN answered this question. Still, you might want to consider only making adequately beefy VNs paid to be safe.
Here's something that surprised me: almost half of respondents said their preferred monetization method was a single purchase, a stark contrast to most FVNs using the Patreon model. You might think the people who picked this option wouldn't pay for a VN at all. However, there is an option for people who would never pay for an FVN and that is around 13%. The vast majority of FVNs are either free or use Patreon as a form of monetization and only under a quarter of respondents said they had Patreon as their preferred monetization method. Now what does this mean? My take is that people want finished VNs that they can pay once and be done with instead of essentially putting their finances on a pseudo-subscription service on a novel that they aren't 100% certain will even be finished. It's more valuable for the audience and it's less stressful for developers as they don't have to constantly try to please a small but devoted audience financially supporting them.
Now should developers stop making free games and drop Patreon so they can work on paid games? I don't think so. This is a completely personal opinion so feel free to disregard this but a lot of the FVN community is composed of low-class people, especially from developing countries, who don't have the finances to casually buy dozens of games and might not even have home computers. The Patreon model is flawed but it allows devs to make their games free to everyone with access to itch.io while having financial support from people who do have the money and want to support the projects they love. Free games can also be whatever quality the creator wants to be while paid games have a certain threshold for devs to meet. Raising the budgets of FVNs and forcing people to pay for the full game is bound to make a lot of people unhappy. That being said, a gentrification of the FVN community will only happen if paid VNs become the norm. A couple of paid VNs aren't going to be a big deal. I think once FVN developers find their footing within the community, they can make paid FVNs and while they're not going to appeal to the entire community, you will find at least a good amount of people who will buy your game.
After that long-ass response, here's a question I have less to say about lmao. More people prefer buying FVNs on itch.io than on Steam. Also, I put in "both" as a joke, but for some reason, almost 15% of respondents picked that. Maybe they meant they'd buy one on either storefront depending on the situation but it's still funny to me. Anyway, I think the reason why itch is more popular is because more FVNs are on there, there's (usually) no DRM (short for Digital Rights Management), and some people don't want their friends to know they're playing a gay furry game. That's really about it.
The deluxe version of free VNs is pretty uncommon, but they do exist at least outside of the furry space. The more common responses say that the deluxe version shouldn't include any content that ought to be in the base game, but they would buy it either if the extra content was interesting enough or if they wanted to show support to the devs, which I think is completely fair. Options that are against the idea are a lot less common.
Remember what I said about surveys being a product of the creator's dirty little intentions to get the results they want? This question was to reinforce how important a demo for a paid VN is. Go back and read why it's important to keep having free games and you'll understand why I strongly encourage demos of VNs. If you don't have any way to offer your potential audience a free sample of your VN then how is anyone supposed to know how good your writing is? Just do it so my very biased brain will be happy.
Third of people have never pirated a VN. Another third might pirate a VN in the future if there's a VN they're unsure about paying for. And then the remaining third for various reasons, with the most common being a lack of money. Discourage people from pirating your VN but don't worry too much about people pirating it. Some people turn to unsavory means of obtaining media for various reasons and there's not much you can do to stop them without hurting the people who pay fairly for your work. That being said, readers should avoid piracy whenever they can. If there's a paid game you want to play but you don't have the money or buying adult media is difficult for you, watch a playthrough or ask a friend if you can watch them play through the game. If you do have the money and nothing's stopping you, then either buy it or just don't bother with the VN at all, you dummy.
For merch, most people just want plushies. The others are not as popular but they still have a bunch of popularity. Some of the free-form answers are interesting. I liked the people who mentioned dildo merch.
Patreon Habits
Around 47.9% of respondents are a patron supporter of at least one FVN so the rest of this section is only going to contain them. These questions that ask the respondent to put in an amount are hard to parse so I'm just going to say that a third are supporting 2-3 projects, almost a quarter are supporting just 1, while over a quarter are supporting 4-6 projects. Limiting to just FVNs, the majority of people only support 1-3 projects. This is one reason why Patreon monetization can be risky: there's so much competition but most people can only support 3 at most at a time. Almost half of respondents (at least the ones who answered this question) don't pay anymore than $10 per month, with 30% only paying around $10-$20. This isn't surprising considering how much that can get out of control.
Over half of people said that $4-$5 is a fair amount to be charged for early access to Patreon builds, while almost a third said it should be $1-$3. It's surprising to me that most people found the $4-$5 range to be a fair price considering most people I've seen are hesitant about becoming a patron for an FVN so it's good that the higher price range is considered fair by a lot of people. If you are planning to do a Patreon for your game, don't be afraid of having a $5 tier be the cheapest tier that gets you the early access build.
Most respondents are patrons because they want to support a project and get early access builds. Honestly, you should hone in on these two things to get people to support you as you'll figure out naturally what your patrons would pay more money for throughout development.
Most people are understanding when creators take an unpaid break for a month to recharge. I don't have much to say. Unless you are relying on Patreon money for income, take a break when you need to.
Conclusion
Most people are optimistic about the future of FVNs, which is great! Always great to see people being open-minded about the future.
I've read every free-form response and there are a bunch of common responses. Some people want more player choice in VNs, some people want fewer human MCs, some people want more active MCs, some people want more top MCs, some people want fewer wolves and more reptiles, and some people want more consistent scheduling. But the biggest thing I took from the responses is that people want creators to write what they want and not change their VNs to appeal to other people. They also don't want the VNs to prioritize on stuff like visuals over the writing. But most importantly, they don't want VNs to get abandoned. They want to trust that a creator is going to finish their VN eventually and not be blindsighted by a work they love ceasing production. We must take steps to prevent projects from entering development hell. A good way to do this is by cutting the scope of projects and making shorter VNs. Read the responses, they're pretty insightful. I've only shown you a couple before.
Lastly, we have the list of FVNs. Here you can see which VNs are the most read among respondents. I'm not going to say much about the results themselves as they're pretty self-explanatory. What I am going to say is that if you're going to look at individual responses, it might be worth it to look at what VNs they have read as that can majorly majorly impact how they see FVNs as a whole and what their tastes. This is also helpful if you are making a VN that's similar to another popular FVN and you want to see what fans of that FVN are saying. Now I did a few oopsies with this question. A few VNs were added later after people started already putting in responses. The majority of VNs were taken from itch.io where I filtered out the games that had all three following tags: "gay", "furry", and "visual novel". Then I ordered them from the most rated to least rated and picked roughly the top 190 and then added some FVNs I knew weren't on itch.io like Knights College and Chardonnay Romantica. Some VNs didn't show up because of that. Rusty Punk wasn't put into the list until after like 50 responses because it didn't show up in the top 200. Cleaved and When The Stars Fall were combined as one choice until I fixed around 200 responses. Remember the Flowers and Northern Lights didn't have the gay tag so I didn't add them to the list until 200 responses for RTF and roughly 300 for NL. RTF is notable because if I only included the responses the VN was included in the list, 54.1% of them have read RTF, which would put it in the top five, and that's an underestimate. I am greatly sorry for this mistake, I'll make sure not to repeat this in future surveys.
Holy Hell Was This Long Can You Just Give Me The TLDR?
What did we learn from this survey? A lot, but to keep things brief, here's a few important things to keep in mind:
- GFVN audience tastes haven't changed much from two or four years ago. What has changed is that they have read and seen more FVNs which means there's a wider variety of stuff they're willing to accept.
- You cannot get everyone to like your VN, even within the FVN community. The community has a lot of niches within it, all of them with their sub-communities. While there are several things the majority of people can agree on, a good amount of questions respondents were overall split on. There is no one FVN community, but rather a web of several FVN communities. Find your niche and stick to it.
- What people want more than anything from FVNs is to see the creator make what they're passionate about. They have their preferences, sure, but they want creators to express themselves and create art that shows who they are. Not everyone is going to like it, but it's better than trying to play it safe and only making FVNs that appeal to a large audience.
- Many people have zero tolerance for VNs AI-generated assets regardless of how little they are present within the game.
- Around half of FVN readers are willing to pay for games, but there's also almost half of readers who simply cannot pay for FVNs and paid games would exclude them, so it's good to make free VNs to attract an audience before making paid games.
- People like NSFW and romance, so VNs that lack either are going to have a harder time appealing to the FVN community.
- Writing is by far the most important thing for readers and is often the determining factor on whether a VN is good or not for them. Prioritize that before anything else. After that, art is the next most important thing.
- Finish projects. VNs with bloated scope are much more likely to cause burnout so make sure you're able to tackle a project that's within your capabilities of completing.
- Most people like bear bodies, daddies, himbos, canines, felines, bears, and dom tops, but that doesn't mean those are the only things FVN players will read about. Don't feel like you have to write your VN a certain way in order for it to find success, as there FVN fans who are passionate about less loved, but still popular, subjects. Himbo dom daddy wolves are great but that doesn't mean the intellectual verse chubby mouse should be ignored.
- Most of the community supports what you're doing, so just have fun.
I'd like to finish things off by putting in a few comments some respondents put in. Some of these are encouraging, some a bit critical, some funny, but a lot of them are trying to support devs in what they do. There's a lot here so I put some of the more interesting ones in a collapsable section right below:
Click here to see some of the comments I wanted to give attention to.
You're doing a great job. Keep going and have fun at making great stories for us, readers.
Thank you all for your hardwork an dedication, i admire your courage to post a part of your world and to share your story. Keep up the good work and hope one day, i will walk the same path as them.
just wanna say that its okay to listen your supporters what they want in your VN, but don't get influenced too much that it is affecting the core of the VN you're making
FVNs is what have inspired me to try and tell my own stories, even if they're weird or don't always make sense. Without FVN's I wouldn't have met my first new friends in a long time, and I value this space and community and the bravery of all of the authors who are telling their stories in their way, especially the unapologetically queer ones!
I think there's a very loud minority of FVN readers that feel the need to be overly critical/cynical when it comes to new projects, and it really hurts newcomers on the scene. Meanwhile more established/connected people with subpar work get propped up just because it's a glorified popularity contest. It's really hard to enter into all of this without a platform or established following. I really appreciate those that go out of their way to highlight new projects and to keep people informed of updates/announcements/developments etc, it's something they receive next to nothing for but it really is like the *only* way to get projects to circulate. I wish there was more of that in the community, rather than faux intellectualism like everyone suddenly works for the New York Times.
Less pointless conversation. Every line of text should add to the experience. Some VNs contain entirely too much generic text that doesn't further the plot or add context. I lose interest in a story quickly when the dialogue is all pleasantries. I want substance.
I'm rooting for all the creators who want to make a FVN! Please remember to take breaks, and to keep your audience informed!
Please, I beg for all FVN devs to try to put sound effects in their games. It can be incredibly boring and somewhat tiring having to read long segments of text without some noise in the background. The more the better. Also, if it's possible in your budget, some variety in your OST is nice. If you're creating a horror story, don't be afraid of killing off the main cast. Creating red shirts is effective to a certain point. (also, extreme bias here, but please give me more gay bunny and scaly MCs/love interests/side characters in FVNs, please and thank you UwU)
I just want to thank creators for their dedication. I attribute FVNs to saving my life. I was in a dark place, and they allowed me an escape. I'm doing much better now thankfully, but I am still reading pretty much every day. So again, thank you all so much!
We can feel when you’re genuine about your art! Even if it feels like a risk, run with your artistic vision! FVNs can be absolutely gorgeous pieces of art. Stay true to your vision!!
thank you for all your hard work!!!!!! please keep giving the big men huge boobs. thank you
Some FVNs have spelling/grammar issues or poor English that persists through builds. It really takes me out of the story, and I don't think it's a huge burden to have a couple people who know decent English copyedit the script before it's released. Pacing/flow is also really important. In multple ways: 1) within conversations 2) within scenes, and 3) within the entire story. 1) One VN I know has the MC constant derailing dialogue by getting triggered mid-conversation and spending multiple lines on introspection and worrying mid-converstion. It's often enough that it sort of needlessly drags out and derails conversation (I had this feeling in No More Future, where the MC has existential crises constantly). It bothers me when I think 'I could cut out 30-40% of the script and not lose anything.' 2) Scenes shouldn't drag on longer than needed and should flow into one another. 3) The story overall should have some pacing to it, either some goal, some events to keep the reader ancticipating the next thing. RtF is good because it's told in arcs that basically build up and pay off within the larger story. Even something like Ad Astra gives the reader things to look forward to from the beginning (the trials). I would give No More Future as an example of a story that doesn't have great pacing/goalsetting....seems like every day the MC wakes up with no goal and events randomly happen, and nothing is really building up to anything. The story has gone on for a long time and I still have no idea where it's going. One of my pet peeves is a VN where the beginning and ending are really good, but the middle third slows down substantially and drags on and on. Examples of this are Lyre (MC is trapped in a dungeon for a third of the story) and Arches (MC is trapped in a trailer on a drug trip for a third of the story). I think it's important when designing the story to try to mitigate this.
I like when a VN says what position the love interest are... cause I for one just don't like wasting my time playing a game getting to know a character just to be disappointed that once again they swing as a top... and my MC is once again a submissive bottom. Would of been so nice to known that before I started playing... cause now I'm just mad... and irked I wasted all this time... just to once again get screwed... People might say it gets rid of the mystery but it really doesn't and saves people from writing angry comments after learnign their fav doesn't play for their team...
I love how VN's have given opportunities for creators from different countries to write and express their different world views and what it is to be queer. I hope to see new and fun ideas that I wouldn't be otherwise exposed to living in the US. Though I hope we see less VN's that feel like they're catered to an American audience or even an English speaking audience (though I understand why both are the case). I would also like to see less wolves/canines as main romance interest. I love me some canines but considering it's a trope now, maybe VN authors can do that less and diversify the species used as love interests?
Love all the fvn creators, even the ones from vns I don't particularly love, because ik you all work hard AF and put your heart into your work regardless of quality, I have given a try to almost every single FVN available in itch Io, and I can safely say I've never hated any of them. As for advice, to no be afraid to make more niche or small vns dedicated to something more specific or kinks ,not everything has to be a big lore and deep story, small stories ,full horny games, cheesy and cringe short stories ,isekai trash(affectionate ),I believe everything has a place in this small community of ours. Also also, don't be afraid of not having nsfw ,I know it's a big seller ,but it's not a necessity, if you don't want it in just don't put it in. And more personal, give me more fantasy medieval cliche settings 👍
When it comes to questions like "What do you want the protagonist's ending to be?" or "How long do you want the FVN to be," I think it's a matter of the quality of what the creator writes and whether it's right for the story they are telling. I do not care for a specific ending or for a specific length as long as it has good quality and makes sense for the story. A 2 hour FVN can be just as amazing as a 10 hour one with the proper effort. As for the question regarding kinks/fetishes, maybe a warning of some kind would help. EX: This character's route features kinks A, B, C. (I would personally love to see more safe vore or mawplay among FVNs)
I want to say thank you to all the creators for all your hard work. Making visual novels is a time consuming process and most of them are free. I think if anything needs to improve I would say we need more writers. There are so many talented artist when it comes to drawing, but so little substance with writing. I know visual art is what gets people to read visual novels, but the writing is what makes it memorable for me.
More FVNs need to experiment with kinks and species. A lot that I have seen focus on bland, vanilla sex, and generally have the same cast of mammals. There's always a wolf or dog of some kind, always a big cat, usually a bear, etc. Try to include more species like gators, snakes, horses, hyenas, and so on. I'm sexually casual, but moderately aromantic. I play FVNs mostly for the porn, but then get drawn into the story afterwards, so personally, a FVN is better if it lets me get to the dirty stuff relatively soon, at least as a taste, to draw my interest, and let me know if it worth putting in the time to try and unlock better scenes in the future.
NSFW or SFW is fine, but part of the beauty of the scene is that people can be more nsfw here then any other space. And the fact this is a largely queer space only adds to that. Don't judge others for weather their project is SFW or not, just focus on making your project the best it can be in your vision.
I love cock :>
To both creators and readers: read more and not exclusively furry stuff, diversify your influences. It's to prevent FVNs from feeling like they're all written and structured the same (a consequence of circular inspirations) and the medium from becoming stagnant.
Please take a break when you can. Life can suck and the burnout a creator can have over their project often leads to them canceling it due to them being unable to meet expectations they set for themselves.
How are you guys?
Games that are in development forever, with no clear roadmap, or that get dropped from burnout. I’d rather have multiple smaller finishes games that one giant half finished one.
Read Nerus
I'm a simple guy, if you add at least one datable scalie I'll download it for sure, and I love buying merch of cute scalies. I like long romantic stories, and I'm not a fan of creators who tell the players nothing. I don't really care if people stop producing their games since it's almost always for a valid reason, but just let everyone know when you're able.
When I finish reading a FVN, it's not the nsfw that sticks with me, affects my outlook of our world or influences me as an individual. A good story that has succeeded in capturing and interpreting our own experiences will have a bigger impact on the reader than you think.
more MC topping the love interest
Good luck to all of y'all! I can only imagine that making a FVN must take an immense of pressure and patience that occupies your mind during every waking moment so I'll always give props and kudos to y'all! FVNs helps me reconnect a bit with the furry side of mine and I'm glad all of us are just chaotic about them as I am! [Even if I rarely show myself online lmao] Plus FVNs help scratch that itch for me so seriously good luck to all the aspiring creators and their teams out there doing the damn thing. ... But for the love god please give the MC a role in the story... I beg. Please. No more Vanilla. And they better not whine their ass off the entire way there or I swear to god. Being shy and awkward is cool but please. No more "I just have [insert hobby here] and it's nothing special." like... Please. Make the MC feel like an MC.
Bottom-core / Top-core are useful tags for a reader, funny enough.
Just wanted to send my love to all the creators out there that are working their asses off for us ! I really like transparency when it comes to games : having an update just to tell us that there is a problem / that the update / game will be delayed because of something instead of going completely silent. I know that they don't owe us anything and I hate feeling this way but if the project is cancelled or on a hiatus I think it's best to say it instead of dissapearing though I can understand why it's difficult to do so (some backlash is to be expected from people that think they are entitled to get the game no matter what). So yeah getting monthly / bi-monthly updates is cool (or whatever the creator chooses). I think I would like to see more protag that are not self-insert-ish. Some games will let you create your own character which is something I'm not a fan of in (F)VNS. I prefer when the protag is a character of is own (It's fine giving the choice of naming though again I prefer when there is a predetermined name ^^). Of course that's my opinion and I can see the appeal of self-insertion !. I'd also like to see more CGS that are not sex-related though I know it's costly to do so. Ennemies to lovers is a trope I adore and wish to see more often, on the contrary, even if it's stil appealing, childhood friends are kinda overused in my opinion :/. Not a fan of rape scenes and other non-consensual sex. I feel like it's something I see too often in gay VNS not just FVNS. A hate fuck scene is fine as long as both parties are good with it (to relieve stress or whatever) but when a character say something along the line of no / stop / please *begins to cry* I just skip the scene 'cause it's heartbreaking and really hard to read. I know sometimes it's used for character development but meh :(. Okay I think that's enough ! Thank you for reading ! Once again thank you for your hard work you all ! Love <3
honestly i think the idea of a deluxe option of a finished vn after a year or two just to support the work considering the patreon move on from that particular vn would move me to pay for it even if theres is a free complete version
Do your best, and try to write the story that speaks to you. It's OK to mess up, as long as you accept constructive critique. At the same time though, don't let asshats with bad faith criticisms ruin the vision that you have in mind. FVNs have legitimately changed my life, and helped me realize I'm a furry. So I thank all creators new and old for that.
Having grown up heteronormative, it is so nice to be part of community like this with such similar interests (and kinks). FVNs have been a big source of enjoyment for me and I really appreciate all of the creators we have.
It's hard to say everything I love/hate in FVNs to be honest. My opinion is that production quality (art assets/original music/CGs) will always be secondary to good writing. I've played plenty of VNs that put a lot of effort into including fancy animations/CGs/custom UIs, but they were full of typos and the writing was clunky. I'd much rather money be spent hiring an editor/proofreader to make sure the writing is as fluid as it can be. I don't really mind cliche genres or plots (like Isekai for example), as long as they're well executed.
More varied dick/body sizes plox. Everyone skinny as a toothpick or big as a stone wall with massive 10 inch schlongs is just so boring.
follow your passion and dont let twitter and reddit discourse dictate your course of action :3 you are all appreciated
Please don’t get discouraged by bad actors and people who refuse to read what’s actually written. The best thing you can do is being confident in work and standing by it. Take criticism from people that love your work and want to see you succeed but don’t bend to their every whim. The world is your oyster. Thank you for putting in the time into making these experiences for us. FVN’s make me feel seen and represented. I personally don’t hate self-inserts, there just needs to be room to exert a players will for it to be done properly. In my opinion a proper self insert mc has the option to take different paths. I don’t mind seeing human characters as long as they are not the only human. And that humans aren’t seen as inferior in every aspect. Especially the physical aspect, humans are endurance machines that will keep going no matter what. Our bodies are made to last. Lastly, take care of yourself! Don’t neglect your health to finish “one more scene” “one more sprite” “one more bar”. I love and appreciate all that you do <3
Write those words and draw those dicks you got this.
I wish there was an option to opt out of nsfw especially if it's not crucial to the story. If a story is purely a porn novel then yeah that's unreasonable, but if it has amazing story I don't want to be torn from that and forced into a sex scene for no reason.
I hope you all are doing okay and good IRL. I have seen several FVN creators had or having hard times and announced about it, so I hope the best thing and luck come for you all. I don't have really any advice to say, the only I can say is; hope all of your IRL situations supporting you all first so you all can make any progress for your FVN with ease!
Focus on the story you want to tell. Have as much of the full story planned out in advance as possible (things can change of course but it's important to know where you're going with it so you have something to write towards, without getting lost in the reeds or getting influenced by the audience). And for those using the Patreon model: when starting a new project, give yourself a buffer period! Don't start posting until you have at least two or three updates ready and on deck, and keep your update schedule consistent so you always have a buffer of content ready to go if you ever need to take a break, or if something is providing an additional challenge that needs more time to overcome. Having stuff that is already ready to go will give you some peace of mind when things get tough. It'll keep your customers satisfied with regular updates, too, so they don't even have to know if there's a delay.
Make sure that you have a clear vision and communicate it to your backers. It is not a shame if the VN needs serious changes in it's story, artstyle etc., as long as it's necessary and makes the product better than it already is.
You Can Do it ! , You are so special ,and thank you for letting me know your wonderful world ! Kiss and hugs !
I would love an interesting and well thought through story. The art may not be the best but as long as the story is good I’ll read it
You're all really impressive. Coming from when Morenatsu was the only western furry VN, I never thought I'd end up seeing so much great stuff! With that said, the sheer number of WIP VNs means I'm not checking out as many as I used to. I wish more renpy VNs played with the multiple-line novel mode. I find it more enjoyable to read. My favourite things are self-indulgent, drawn out scenarios like the Demons Within 7.5 bad end update. That shit's the bomb. A surprising number of even heavily NSFW VNs either make their sex scenes too short or play the themes a bit too safe. I can tell when a writer's heart isn't in it! So make them memorable. Any VNs that have a NSFW on/off toggle is a bit of a red flag too, my impression is if that stuff can be taken out easily it can't be core to the story. Sometimes sprites can be a bit of a crutch to not include enough description, like subtle differences in tone of voice/body language etc. I prefer VNs when they're more novel like than a comic book/manga direction. I'd love to see more other genre gay & furry game stuff if they're done well - something with the ambition of Karryn's Prison but gay would be neat to see. Marrying together gameplay and sexo stuff is difficult (the actual gameplay of Lustful Desires/Tavern of Spear as an example is woeful imo) but very rewarding when done well.
That took a while to get done but I'm glad you read it anyways! I hope this data is useful for you guys. Have a good day and see you later!
Get By Your Hands
By Your Hands
Take a deep breath in, let out a heavy sigh
Status | In development |
Authors | ChellayTiger, Nemo |
Genre | Visual Novel |
Tags | Adult, Bara, Boys' Love, Erotic, Furry, Gay, Horror, LGBT, NSFW, topcore |
Accessibility | Color-blind friendly, Subtitles, One button |
More posts
- Owen Day 4 Now Available To The Public6 days ago
- Day 3 of Owen's Route now available to the public.31 days ago
- Day 3 of Owen's Route now available to patrons.58 days ago
- Owen Day 2 Now Available to the Public68 days ago
- Build 0.14.3 now available + Gay FVN Audience Survey 202498 days ago
- Act 1 Survey (Kamil Edition) ResultsMay 17, 2024
- Build 0.14.2 is now available.May 01, 2024
- A Look Back At Kamil Act 1: “We'll figure it out.”Apr 14, 2024
- Answering The Most Common Question I Get?Apr 07, 2024
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Look Gary there I am, Gary there I am! 😿![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzE3MDg1ODg5LnBuZw==/original/wJXK%2BP.png)
Nice
Thanks for the survey and post. It was both a very insightful and pleasant read! Glad to see that people are becoming more receptive to the less popular body types :)
No problem! Just interested in what the FVN community thinks. And people being more tolerant of different body types is definitely a good thing!
If owens sprite is gonna look like in the thumbnail? Im gonna melt. Looka so good 🤩
Glad you like it! The sprite in game isn't going to have the same artstyle but the body and face are going to be similar.
Thank you very much for the results! It's eye-opening to read them, especially because furry VNs are a niche production in a very niche community.
I have one suggestion, though. For the Patreon Habits questions--or actually any money-related questions--I think it's quite important to filter them based on geography as currencies and buying power differ from region to region. For example, USD 5-10 might be considered pocket money for people in North America while in Southeast Asia it might be your weekly lunch money.
Then again, seeing that over half of the respondents are from North America and Western Europe, this might not be as relevant as I thought. Besides, this difference in currency strength might also be reflected in other items and products, not just furry VNs.
That's just my suggestions. Thank you very much!
That is a good point and something I had considered while making this survey, I just don't have the tools to be able to filter out results by region and the like. But yeah, I assume people from poorer countries picked lower prices. Anyways, I'm glad you appreciate the effort!
It was cool to see the opinions of other FVN readers, can't wait to see what comes next out of the community in the coming years🐲
Only time will tell.
Awesome VN, though from the survey, it is surprising that more didn't prefer body types that offer higher cuteness levels. Imagine getting characters that have all of the cuteness enhancements, thus allowing the main character to experience cuteness overload from a monster or slim to athletic build (others can work as well as long as cuteness levels are high), digitigrade legs, cuteness enhancing paw beans, etc.
High cuteness levels is always awesome to experience alongside an amazing story.
Thanks for the results, and nice walking through them. Just my two cents on some points:
I don't think the horror FVN "popularity" comes from authors trying to please the audience or feeling pressure coming from them, but rather that it's more so the authors themselves the ones interested in the genre (kind of like the joke that FNV authors are more interested in incest than their audience, which this survey proves false).
As for the Patreon vs single payment question, while unfinished games and "bad actors making minor updates just to cash in" are a reality, another thing to consider is total investment. Sure, 1-5 USD a month may not feel like much and it helps with development by covering art/writing/etc. costs, but your average FVN takes years to finish (if it does in the first place), and it would not be unusual that you'd end up spending hundreds of dollars in total (for example, if you had backed Echo from the beginning at their lowest tier, that'd be 207 USD, which is over ten times what the results consider a fair price for a FVN that they absolutely love).
People who make horror games with the intention of drawing an audience usually happens outside of the FVN community. As far as I can tell, no FVN that was made to please an audience are horror. It just so happened that the of the horror FVNs we have, a good portion of them became some of the most well known ones, like Echo and all the other VNs within its continuity, and Burrows.
And yeah, that is a good point I implied in the blog. If you look at Patreon as a service rather than a way to support your audience, it can be a bit flimsy and just buying it with a single purchase is a better value. Still, both have their own functions and Paid games are gated towards people who can't pay while free games (that are funded through Patreon) aren't. So there are reasons for either.
Nothing against patreon but I'd rather just buy the game outright. I know $1-$3 doesn't sound like a lot but it adds up. Especially if you already don't make a lot of money to begin with.
But I get its a way to support the team if you want
I hope this doesn't stop devs from giving us the option to solely top because those disgraceful bottoms are ruining everything
Its mean to kink shame. I feel the opposite, to many options to make obvious tops like Kamil bottoms. I believe the best choice is to allow the player to choose their preference when the scene unfolds. Instead of automatically slapping a label on them. Let the player choose.
This is so slay, thank you for the survey results as it does give insights on what people want! Ofc do want to encourage all people, male, female, non binary hoes to keep on creating, writing, drawing, as it's your own project (or with friends if you have any) <3
No problem! That's basically the whole message of the blog! More than anything, people want to see what you want to make.