Like, what the heck? When did this become the only game that people would review, play, and await updates on? People are unhappy because they can't get into a toilet bowl to watch somebody poop. Like, what?

I have no idea, I haven't seen any of those games.

Ah, I see there's a couple of mentions in the 'news feed', which is basically the most recent reviews. So maybe someone who's into stuff like that posted a link on a fetish forum or something, prompting a brief influx of shrinking fans at the same time.

There are a lot of "giantess" games on the site. It is quite a niche interest that would require some expensive effects to create videos, in contrast to other porn fetishes, and maybe interactive fiction is the best outlet for it. Quest has an easy entry into it, so I guess has become popular in the scene.

I recall years ago discussion that Inform7 would lead to an explosion of amateurish games. Squiffy and Quest are far easier, and therefore...

On the far larger other hand, I love being able to make text games and interactive presentations specifically tailored to my students' current English level. Squiffy isn't too hard even for my level of incompetence.

I took a look at the stats for the last few days. Zork is consistently top, and there is occasionally another non-adult game in the top ten. Shrinking games make up about half the top ten games.

...as discussed before, they really need to be classified as 'adult' and so disappear for those who don't want to see them. Alas, they are currently setting the tone for the site. :(

The issue may be that adult (and sandbox I guess) games are not filtered from the various feeds on the front page. Unfortunately I still do not have access to the forum software so cannot do anything about it

IMO, those games are ruining the site and game selection here. It’s hard to find good, quality games because they get buried in crud. I wonder how many games I’ve missed out on…?

I just select "top rated" from the front page. I also have my Quest app ignoring adult games

But I agree, it's an absolute infestation.

I like shirnked down adventues.

Ok... But the proble is the shrinking or the problem is the adult?

Honestly, I don't like most of the adult (and porn) games I see, especially here at Text Adventures. This is why, right now while typing thos very massage, I am working on a porn, really porn, very porn game. I dont know if I can finish it. But I'm doing my best.

Looking around people think that adult and even S*X content are an excuse for unfinished games, lack of story, lack of character and absence of any structure. I've been trying to fix that by starting with a small project.

So, in short, I believe and defend the Adult category. I just think perhaps we should, somehow, filter the content. And there are many types of filter, because banishing somethig is basically repressing it. So, we should open a dialog and try to figure out how to deal with the problem with this... trend.

I am speculating somewhat here, so bear that in mind.

I think a lot of games on this site are rubbish, and a fair proportion of those rubbish games are the porn ones. As the site owner, I probably should not say that, but it is the truth. A big part of the appeal of Quest is that it is easy to create a game, and lots of people do that. And a lot of it is junk. Compare to Inform or TADS... It takes a huge effort to get started in either of them, and that puts most people off. The difficulty in getting started means that anyone who gets going has already in effect passed an entrance exam, so the quality of authors is that much higher.

From one perspective, what TextAdventures does is great for the community, because it gets more people involved. So we have to put up with a lot of rubbish games here - though it is annoying that Quest gets a bad reputation because of it.

I would further suggest that good porn games are hard to write. NPCs are difficult to do well. I had a handful in House in Highfield Lane, and they were very simple - one you could ask to do some limited things, but did not speak at all; the others only spoke. For an NPC in a porn game, you are going to want a lot of interaction!

I suspect with porn sub-genres, shrinking and vore in particular, there are other forums that cater to them, but people use TextAdventures to host their games. They may not even care if a game is sandboxed, because they get the hits from the other forum. And that is okay; they still see the adverts so contribute to maintaining the site.

Oh... This post was very revealing! I had no idea about this matters of "entry cost" and the reputation issues. These are very important aspects to keep in mind. Not sure if for the specifics of the debate, but for life!

I perfectly understand what you say about the NPCs interaction as a hard thing doing. This is the main reason I honestly think that making a good porn should not be a parser game. Parser is fr puzzles and, unless someone comes up with an idea that turns human interactions into puzzles (what is possible), parser is not the best format. But Interactive Fiction also wraps the Gamebook, what I think is perfect for adult/porn stories. It helps to add value by storytelling, by hard choices, by interesting branches. So, the problem is not about the genre, I suppose. It is about the people writing the games. A good way of fixing it would be people intending to make a pornish game take a look at this debate and treat each project with the same effort and care of other projects, even researching and getting community advices during the process.

Parser is fr puzzles and, unless someone comes up with an idea that turns human interactions into puzzles (what is possible), parser is not the best format.

Except that some fetishes aren't about human interaction so much; which is possibly why there are so many niche games here. Shrinking and invisible voyeur are good examples – they're specific kinks where it seems a lot of people's fantasies revolve around the NPCs not changing behaviour depending on your interactions. I suspect that these games outnumber other porn games simply because they don't need the extra work of creating interaction with NPCs.

The difficulty in getting started means that anyone who gets going has already in effect passed an entrance exam, so the quality of authors is that much higher.

I think it's a complex question whether a barrier to entry is a good thing or not. I've seen people saying that it's bad for an 'easy' system to exist, because it leads to bad games. However, skill in programming and skill in writing aren't directly related. I've seen games on here that are loved by everyone who plays them, but if you look at the code they are terribly written (one of the first Quest games I saw, which I won't name because it's from a niche not yet mentioned here, has a whole legion of fans, but now has major stability issues because it's so bloated… I think the ASLX file is about 3 times the size it needs to be). Similarly (thinking back to my university days), I've seen people who have completely mastered the arts of programming and software engineering create some pretty terrible games (which get high grades) because they're efficiently executed and use an interesting mechanic, but the creators never stopped to ask "is this mechanic fun to play?"

I'm glad to find a tool that lets anyone come up with games. I would want any great writers, or great puzzle creators, to be excluded because they don't have a talent for programming.

Wow! I must say I am very happy for having a debate with mrangel and The Pixie - Right two people I strongly respect and admire in this community.

I dont thing the two ideas exposed by mrangel are wrong in the core, but they are shifted to a different angle. When I say that Parser is for puzzles, I mean there is a component of try and error, combine things and try the effect and this sort of things. Nothing is "impossible", but some approches are harder and some tools are more appropriate. For example, Quest has the Parser mode and the Gamebook mode. I shifted the approach on the Parser mde to write Gamebooks because it is a better tool for non-programming users to program. Actually, the point where the parser breaks the story telling is tryng things and getting weird inputs, but a story would support it or we could just pretend it is "believeble" as it happened so many times in games like Indiana Jones or the Monkey Island.

I also agree with you that an easy software for design games is a good thing and that if a given person is poorly writing a story or designing a game, it would be bad in any system. However, when you have to put some effort to make a game because it is hard, you have to make it worthy. I believe it was Pixie's point. A couple of days ago I did read a blog about a guy telling how mastering coding didnt help him on making actual games and that other skills are far more valuable as a starting point to develop a game and THEN bring the coder into the team than knowing coding and THEN bring other skills to the team. But this point we see everyday. 30 years ago, to mock or bother someone and feel as a troll, you had to write a letter with a pen, put in an envelope, walk to the mail box, pay for the stamps. Today, just log on server and say whatever comes to your mind. I suppose the same goes on games.

Reminds me a story I did read some years ago, set in Warhammer 40K universe. The nun had a pen covered in throns. If you are going to write something, it must worth the pain.

In the Spanish IF community there's a well-known author who goes by Incanus. He most often programs with Inform, but he decided IF was a dead genre and stopped writing. Then he discovered Squiffy, and he wrote a number of articles praising it. Then wrote two awesome sci-fi games with it. So just having an easy engine made a really good author reignite his interest.

Hey everyone. I am still new at this and I am trying to create my own text adventure game, yet I am not sure how to create a boss battle. Can someone help me.

LMFAO, I totally get it. It has been all over the place since a few months and no other game ty[e gets talked about lol.

As stupid as the game actually is, I can't get over it as well lol.