Let's Plays of Arianeb

I recently noticed that one YouTuber was making Let's Play videos of herself playing Dating Ariane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24vnKeuFWB8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B44gxN4Tgwk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdgnrvLADpI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jLvgxTuSYk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJzaTpLG3gk

I've always felt that Dating Ariane was written for the male gaze. Watching a woman play the game definitely reinforces that feeling. Although she is obviously exaggerating her reactions for the sake of humor, it's interesting to see her reactions to behavior that would be considered normal in AIF. The videos also show how hard the game is. The YouTuber is an experienced gamer who plays a lot of dating sims and visual novels, and she can't get anywhere in the game. It might be because she uses the back button a lot though. I don't think Dating Ariane supports the back button properly.

I don't know what this has to do with anything. It's just nice to see reactions to AIF-style games from people outside the community. The player is open-minded about it and she seems to enjoy herself, but I can't help but wince at certain moments.

February Open Thread: Failure and Challenge

I think the only AIF game I ever failed* at was BBBen's Pervert Action: Crisis. From the beginning I tried to have a diverse set of skills and interact with multiple girls. At the end, I ended up in a relationship with none of them.

A somewhat similar type of failure though happened in Goblinboy's games where I didn't get the ending/relationship I was shooting for. I think in my first play of School Dreams 3 I managed to piss both Becky and Molly off.

Now, for me, those setbacks just made me want to start again from the beginning. What are other people's thoughts on the issue? Does the potential for failure, and challenge** to get better outcomes, make the ultimate result more worthwhile, or just frustrating?

*I'm using a broad definition of fail here, I enjoyed my first play, so on that criteria I didn't fail, but I didn't get what I wanted (which was possible to get)
**I'm speaking generally. I think people generally agree that too much or too little challenge isn't desirable, so I'm asking in general is more challenge good?

The Erins: 2014 - Results!

The results of the 2014 Erins can now be announced! 

The top three places are listed below, along with honourable mentions (listed alphabetically) for anyone else who got a significant number of votes. 

Game of the Year 
1st - Emily: Sister Attraction by Palmer

2nd - Magician's Nephew by Mister Flibble
3rd - Master of the House by Minterlint
Honourable mention: Circles of Desire by Cassgames; Study Date by Karrek 

Best New Author 
1st - Palmer

2nd - Mister Flibble
3rd - Minterlint
Honourable mention: BrokenKnightX, Cassgames

Congratulations to Palmer, Mister Flibble, and Minterlint, not to mention everyone else who released a game in 2014. Also, a big thank you to the 147 people who took the time to vote. 

In a year that was as dominated by new authors as 2014 was, it's not too surprising that the results for Game of the Year and Best New Author match up so closely. What did surprise me a little was how many people chose to split their votes. I would guess that's due to new authors not just being judged on what they've done this year, but also on what they might do in the future. 

On the subject of what categories could be added to the 2015 Erins, nearly everyone who made a suggestion mentioned either Best Character or Best Scene. We'll be looking at how we can implement those suggestions closer to the time. 

Now you have a couple of weeks to catch your breath before the voting starts for the 2010-13 Erins. I'm giving serious thought to doing multiple years at once, since I don't want to exhaust everyone by sending out poll after poll for the next four months.

The Erins: 2014

Given the relative success of AIF Hall of Fame 2014, it seemed a shame not to also give the games that were released in 2014 a chance to be honoured as well.

There are two categories:

Game of the Year - What was the best (however you choose to define that) game of 2014? This is open to any complete non-Minicomp game that was first released in 2014.

Best New Author - Who was the best (again, however you choose to define that) author to debut in 2014? This is open to any author who released their first complete game in 2014.

Voting will close 15 February 2015 at 1200 GMT. You can vote here.

The nominees are...

NB. Links to aifcommunity.org do not go directly to the file.

Game of the Year

• Circles of Desire by Cassgames
• Emily: Sister Attraction by Palmer
• The Henchman by BrokenKnightX
• The Magician's Nephew by Mister Flibble
• Master of the House by Minterlint
• Study Date by Karrek
• Taking Charge by whsprd

Best New Author

• Anna Nee Moss (Snowstorm*)
• AOneHitWonder (Dinner Plans*)
• BrokenKnightX (The Henchman)
• Cassgames (Circles of Desire)
• Karrek (Study Date)
• Louys Bilitis (One Last Pay Day*)
• Minterlint (Master of the House)
• Mister Flibble (The Magician’s Nephew)
• nowherecity24 (Slim Spady Detective*)
• Palmer (Emily: Sister Attraction)
• Shannon O’Donnelly (Friday Afternoon*)
• whsprd (Taking Charge)

 * was an entry in the 2014 AIF MiniComp and can be downloaded from the Inside Erin website.
 

The Erins 2010-14: Eligible Games

After the return of the Lifetime Achievement Award, there seems to be general agreement that it would be a good idea to reinstate the Erins in a limited way, with Game of the Year and Best New Author being seen as the most important awards.

That being the case, I think it makes sense in terms of both fairness and completeness to go back and vote on the games that missed out due to the Erins stopping after 2009. To limit voter fatigue, the plan (at the moment) is to vote on one year a month, starting with 2014 (since the awards are going to be more meaningful for more recent years) and working backwards. This should also give people enough time to play (or replay) the eligible games.

Voting for the 2014 awards will start on 1 February, and close on 15 February.

To keep things simple, any complete non-Minicomp game is eligible for Game of the Year (since the winner of the Minicomp is already voted on). However, authors who enter the Minicomp will still be eligible for Best New Author.

The eligible games are:

2014

Game of the Year

Circles of Desire by Cassgames

Emily: Sister Attraction by Palmer

The Henchman by BrokenKnightX

The Magician's Nephew by Mister Flibble

Master of the House by Minterlint

Study Date by Karrek

Taking Charge by whsprd

Best New Author

Anna Nee Moss (Snowstorm)

AOneHitWonder (Dinner Plans)

BrokenKnightX (The Henchman)

Cassgames (Circles of Desire)

Karrek (Study Date)

Louys Bilitis (One Last Pay Day)

Minterlint (Master of the House)

Mister Flibble (The Magician’s Nephew)

nowherecity24 (Slim Spady Detective)

Palmer (Emily: Sister Attraction)

Shannon O’Donnelly (Friday Afternoon)

whsprd (Taking Charge)

2013

Game of the Year

Bad Sister by Another Wannabe 
Next Door Girl: April by Early Day
Pervert Action: Future by BBBen
Return to Pleasantville by Lamont Sanford
The Last Chance by Arthur McKingsly
The Midnight Room by Early Day

Best New Author

Another Wannabe (Bad Sister)

Arthur McKingsly (The Last Chance)

Early Day (Next Door Girl April, Midnight Room)

Hanon Ondricek (Briar)

stormcage1 (Spymaster of Tyria)

2012

Game of the Year

Another Friday Party 2 by lightwing_2001

Deadly Climax by Madquest8

Gasparillo by Lamont Sanford

Peril in Pleasantville Parts 1 & 2 by Lamont Sanford

The Adventures of Super Shlong by Lamont Sanford

The Mirror by Stormchild

The Tesliss Equation by GoblinBoy

Vicar of Dribble by Elsa

Best New Author

Armsteadhammerschlag (The After School Special)

Elsa (Vicar of Dribble)

Gary Plume (A Dog's Life)

kkennon (The Drunken Harlot)

Madquest8 (Deadly Climax)

Lamont Sanford (Peril in Pleasantville Parts 1 & 2, The Adventures of Super Shlong, Gasparillo)

Stormchild (The Mirror)

2011

Game of the Year

A Halloween Tail by Blue Satyr
Gifts of Phallius 3: The Valkin War by GoblinBoy
Last Horizon: Director's Cut by GoblinBoy
Pervert Action: Crisis by BBBen
Rex Ward by Artoreus
Something Broken by Jamesdesavoy

Best New Author

Archer (Buffy: Before the Date)

Artoreus (Rex Ward)

Blue Satyr (A Halloween Tail, SS Whore)

Dark Horse (The Wingman)

Jamesdesavoy (Something Broken)

Rogue AI (The Princess and the Dragon)

2010

Game of the Year

Witches Mansion by casandrakumsung

Meteor by GoblinBoy

Another Friday Party by lightwing_2001

British Fox and the Nationalist Conspiracy by Lucilla Frost

Kidnapped by UDat

Ziva by Cody Grant Smith

Aquila Station by Portmanteau

Best New Author

Begferdeth (Redskirt)

casandrakumsung (Witches Mansion)

Cody Grant Smith (Ziva)

lightwing_2001 (Another Friday Party)

LordYoni (Sibling Seduction)

Portmanteau (Aquila Station)

UDat (Kidnapped)

Please let me know (either in the comments below or at exlibris.aif@gmail.com) if there are any errors in the above list, or if you're the author of one of the above games and don’t want your work to be included for whatever reason.

January Open Thread: Dialogue Presentation

This is going to be a pretty simple question with only two answers that I can think of. I'm being selfish with the open thread here and asking something directly related to the game I'm working on.

Which of the following formats (script or book style is the best terms I can think of, not asking about the colors), in your opinion, is best in an AIF story (reader perspective):
Erin: I'm freezing. Isn't there anything we can use to warm up?

John: Here, I found this blanket.

Erin: Thanks!

John: Great, can we have sex now?

Erin: What? No, this is an example, not an AIF game.

OR

"I'm freezing," Erin said as she rubbed her arms together. "Isn't there anything we can use to warm up."

John opened up his backpack. "Here, I found this blanket."

"Thanks!"

"Great, can we have sex now?" John asked eagerly.

"What? No, this is an example, not an AIF game," Erin said as she pulled the blanket tighter.

Hall of Fame 2014: Aftermath

The recent resurrection of the Badman Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award (aka the AIF Hall of Fame) was something of an experiment, so I thought it would be a good idea to look at the results and see what lessons can be learnt from them.

First and foremost, someone who’s put a lot of work into the AIF community, both in terms of making games and in organising community events and generally trying to hold things together received (belated) recognition for their efforts. Purple Dragon richly deserved such an award, so from that point of view the experiment was a success.

The other positive was that using Google Forms for the voting seemed to work well. The only real drawback is that it’s not possible to stop people from voting multiple times, but that’s not something that I would anticipate being much of an issue anyway.

That said, voter turnout was something of a disappointment. I don’t know how many votes previous awards got, but I was hoping to break fifty votes this time around. That didn’t happen, which I think is down to a number of factors. The most obvious is that anyone who’s discovered AIF in the post-Erins era would  not be familiar with the lifetime achievement award. Likewise with the Erins being suspended, the AIF community lost a lot of its continuity and history. I suspect the result of that was that people either weren’t sure who to vote for and thus didn’t vote at all, or they looked at the award more in terms of who’d done the most in 2014. Palmer was the most obvious recipient of this, but he wasn’t the only first-time author to receive votes (Minterlint and Anna Nee Moss were the others, if you’re interested).

So while the number of votes cast was disappointing, I think there’s a case for not only doing this again next year but also adding additional categories (for example Game of the Year, Best New Author, and so on). Obviously, as it’s been five years since the Erins were last held, implementing those awards might be tricky. One way that occurs to me might be to have a separate vote for each year. A secondary question is when should the voting be held? The end of the year makes logical sense, but it’s also a time when a lot of people are on holiday or otherwise engaged and away from their computers.

So what do you think?

Should the Badman Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award be voted on again, in 2015?

Should other categories be added, making a sort of slimmed down Erins? If so, what categories?

And finally, when should the voting be held?

Now you can support me on Patreon!

Update: I have achieved my first funding goal! Now I will be improving the graphics quality for games after PAL. My next goal is...

Threesomes?

I've got room in the story of Pervert Action: Legacy to add three combination threesome sex scenes - streamlined so they're not crazy big (and therefore too much work to develop) but still interactive. These will be bonus scenes on top of the existing six one-on-one sex scenes in the game, and the other bits of sexual content, and they are still quite a bit of work. I've been trying to work on these anyway, but if this goal is achieved I'll guarantee they'll be in the game, and if you get two women in one run through and they match up correctly, you'll be able to have a threesome!

The original post is below:

Sorry everyone for putting this in the central site, but I need to get the info out there the first time. I'll only do it this once! One other way you could help me is to reblog/share/+1 this post.

Here's my Patreon pledge site!

I have to admit, I've been thinking recently that I'll have to stop writing AIF soon. I don't want to, it's been a really fun pass-time over the years, but it's just so time-consuming! I have work and other real-life time commitments just like everyone else, and even when I'm productive making content takes out a big chunk of my day. This is where Patreon comes in – if I can draw a little bit of money from my AIF work then I could totally justify continuing to work on it into the future. There are also some expenses involved, and hopefully this might cover them.

The lowest level pledges, $1 a month, are basically nothing. You'll never notice it. I mean, it's only $12 in a whole year, right? I've had burritos that cost more than that, and they don't last nearly as long as a good AIF game (or leave me as satisfied). But with a bunch of people giving just little $1, $3 and $5 pledges it would be like an extremely fun, low-paying part time job. (More info below.)

New Year Open Thread: How did you get into AIF?

As we start off the new year, here is a simple question: How did you get into AIF?

As gets pointed out pretty frequently, AIF is a niche that occupys a miniscule portion of all the adult content on the Internet. I'm curious to hear people's tale of how they ended up here.

Some suggested questions to answer:
What led you to AIF?
What year did you first come across AIF?
What made AIF appealing?/Why did you stay with it?

And the winner is...

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to announce that the winner of the Badman Memorial Lifetime Achievement Award for 2014 is Purple Dragon!

Voting was very tight, but PD emerged the winner and enters the AIF Hall of Fame:

"For services to AIF and keeping the community alive."

"Instrumental in keeping the Erins alive for a while and also as a beta tester."

"For running the Minicomp for several years on Yahoo! groups, which I hope continues on in strong form."

"The AIF community was on its arse for a few years between 2009 and 2012. PD desperately held everything together, trying to manufacture content for the newsletter and organise the comps at a time when most people just sat on the forum asking when GoblinBoy was coming back. Finally, he fell on his own sword in a glorious sacrifice that galvanised the whole community into what it has now become. Thanks PD."

Honourable mention to A. Ninny, who pushed PD hard all the way and has to be a favourite for 2015:

"He created games to a high standard, was the foremost tester in the community and ran things like the newsletter. His games were also under-recognized at the time."

"The Sex Artist."

"What didn't A. Ninny do for AIF? His work was mostly behind-the-scenes, but it was significant none-the-less. As a beta-tester, he wasn't one of the best. In my opinion, he was THE best. I do a significant amount of beta-testing for AIF now, and his methodology and reporting style has influenced my own ever since he first tested one of my games. His tenure as editor of the AIF newsletter marked a significant improvement both in the newsletter itself, and in the website behind it. As far as games, he didn't author a bunch of games, but the ones he did were all good. He took on the challenge of writing a sequel to Moist by Scarlett Herring, a daunting task when you consider the esteem in which that game is held by most of the AIF community. While I can't in all honesty say that he surpassed the original, he did an excellent job in following it up. Lastly, if I'm not mistaken, it was his idea to actually host an Erin's awards show (of sort) at the ifMUD. Or, at least he organized it (as it may have been the result of discussion)."

If there had been an award for Best New Author of 2014, Palmer would have been a shoe-in

"Really great game implementing graphics and good story into one. Possibly may become the next GoblinBoy."

"He made a damn good game."

"For his successful attempt at bringing character development to a new level with ESA, while blogging about his experience and listening to and implementing player ideas."

"For his innovative game Emily - Sister Attraction."

"Because great game."

Those three were the clear frontrunners in this year's voting. Clustered behind them were a number of people, including one of the unsung heroes of AIF, Matrix Mole ("Quietly and selflessly providing storage & web hosting to the entire AIF community."). Alongside him, a number of retired authors also received much deserved recognition, including Adam Hendine ("While Adam's been silent for a long time his work was some of the first that got me into AIF and the games are still well-written, witty, and extremely sexy."), One-Eyed Jack ("OEJ is one of 'big names' in AIF history. As the once-prolific author of a classic series (Sam Shooter), he deserves to be honoured alongside past recipients of the award."), Lucilla Frost ("I vote for Lucilla Frost, she changed the way in which female PC's and authors were portrayed and, to the best of my knowledge, no-one has come even close to matching her, for her efforts."), and Vachon ("For his persistence").

Finally, big thank you to everyone who took the time to vote.

Addendum: after thinking it over, I realised it was a bit unfair of me not to repeat all of the comments, so here they are:

ArianeB

"Because it's a shame she doesn't have one yet!"

"The 4 games (Date Ariane, Ariane Blackjack, Something's In the Air, and the 10th anniversary Date Ariane update) are thoughtfully designed and reasonably well implemented.

Date Ariane is identified as 'the original HTML dating game' from which many, many others have drawn inspiration. Ariane Blackjack has not received much press since it was a fairly unimpressive, somewhat banal strip blackjack game. The RenPy effort, Something's in the Air, was quite an opus; good graphics, good stories, high degree of replay value with a bit of 'gotta catch 'em call' hooks built in (it was surprising how much effort everyone put in to find all possible endings and reveal all the character diary text for each of the major characters.)

Also, the sheer amount of effort that went into revamping Date Ariane into the 10th anniversary edition; especially with the effort that went into reinforcing the continuity between the revamp and the Something's in the Air storylines was quite impressive.

While other authors inspired by Ariane, like HTML dating game authors Chaotic and the team of Tlaero and Phreaky, may have produced more games in the same timeframe, the cookie cutter nature of their works pales in comparison to the techniques implemented by Ariane"

Lamont Sanford

"Three solid full length games (well, two) with graphics. Biggest contributor not on the list."

"Pleasantville and RTP are both excellent games with lots of replayability and good graphics."

One-Eyed Jack

"Creating one of the best damn series going"

"Great writing, fantastic humour, and the only one who has made multiple games that I return to that has *not* already won the award."

Sly Old Dog: "For Rachel's Bad Day :D"

And finally, a couple of people who'd already won the lifetime achievement award, but got votes anyway:

BBBen: "Is the last real AIF creator"

GoblinBoy: "School Dreams 3 is an amazing AIF game that raised the bar."