Ep. 21 An Adult Simulation Game That’s Actually Sexy with

Put down the Switch, drop the Xbox controller, and unplug your headset. This week on the Pleasure Provocateur, we’re talking adult simulation games. Lorrae chats with Pretty Ink, the anonymous creator of the College Craze role playing game.

In this playfully sensual game, you’ll escape into an erotic campus that’s a choose-your-own adventure of sexy exploration – exploring themes of consent, navigating relationship decisions, and following your desires – with no unrealistic, male gaze-led characters or slut shaming!

Pretty and Lorrae also discuss the importance of a sexual relationship with yourself first, the stigma around virginity (and what it really means), and the pros and cons of sleeping with the bad boys. 

Their chat encourages us to cultivate the crucial relationship with ourselves, allows us the freedom to prioritize our own pleasure, and reminds us that we’re always growing and always learning about our bodies.

Valuing Consent in an Adult Simulation Game

Lorrae: I love your game. I played it and had so much fun with it.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started an erotic game. I’ve seen advertisements that always felt really porny and focused on the male gaze and even kind of aggressive and exploitative. And it seemed like they’re not my cup of tea. 

But when I saw your game, I was like, this is really unique. It feels really sex positive and it gives agency and choice and that it’s consent-focused and female led. It’s just so incredible. I am curious what inspired you to create College Craze and start to approach erotic games differently.

Pretty: Thank you so much for taking a chance on it. I know in a sea of, like you said, very exploitative semen games or very aggressive games, it’s very hard for someone to look at an erotic game and go, “I actually want to try that.” So thank you for taking a chance on it. I really appreciate it. 

For me, it was sort of a pandemic project, like a lot of other people, a lot of other things came out of the pandemic, creatively I think. And for me specifically, I was just bored. I gave myself a challenge to write another novel. I haven’t published any, but I hadn’t done it in a long time and I just wanted to sort of kickstart my creativity again. So I said, okay, every single day, for as long as it takes, I’m going to write at least one word towards a novel. And by the end of about a year, I had a novel. And I remember approaching that last day going, okay, after I finish this, I need something else to do. 

At the time, I found another erotic game that was sort of a female protagonist game and it was erotic and all of that sort of stuff, but it still felt a little exploitative in my opinion. Again, we don’t really get too many female protagonists in erotic games in general, but to find one did intrigue me. I did have a fun time playing it, but I felt like there were a lot of things I would do differently here. And so I said, “This person made this game by themselves. What says that I can’t make this game by myself?”

The day after I finished writing, I think it was an 111,000 word novel, I turned around and said, let me make a video game now. And it was off to the races after that.

Lorrae: That’s really incredible. I think that it’s so cool, and we definitely need more representation and more options available.

It kind of reminds me of Sims – well, it is a sim-based game because it’s like a simulator, but it’s also like an erotic story that unfolds. It reminds me a lot of  a choose-your-own adventure because there are so many different paths and choices that you can make and so many different elements of the game. 

Before we had hopped on our call, we were talking a lot about the sex-positive ethos and philosophy that you want it to bring through with its creation. What are some of the elements of the game that really support that and players who are playing?

Pretty: I think a big thing for me that’s very important is that sexuality is not something that has to be experienced with other people. And in my opinion, I think it’s even better if you really explore that with yourself and have a good understanding of what you like, what you don’t like, and what you’re willing to try. And unfortunately in this world, we aren’t really afforded too many opportunities to figure all of that out without having to potentially put ourselves in situations that may be uncomfortable or awkward or what have you. 

So really being able to create experiences that allow people to explore so many different types of scenarios and people and kinks and all of that sort of stuff without having to put themselves in these uncomfortable or potentially uncomfortable situations. And it can be very safe and you have control over this experience. If you don’t like something in the game, you can press the back button and pretend it never happened and it’s okay. Or you could just not play the game at all. If you wanna just stop and take a break, it’s totally fine.

And it’s interesting as a developer, I’ve never developed a game before. So this is really the first time I’ve done a lot of things at the same time, but trying to juggle that consent aspect, not only within the storyline of the game, but also as a player with the game. There are certain levels of consent that players have when it comes to a game and trying to juggle that as developers was very challenging, but fun and important, I think.

Lorrae: It really is so exploratory and there are, like I said, some different plots that you can choose. I definitely found myself going back just because I wanted to experience something else, which was really cool that I had the option to do that because I feel like many games seem like you only have one option and that’s always to be increasing the intensity of the experience. 

But I remember that there were these options where you could even tell your partner in the game to slow down or take it easy or that there were just all of these different ways to play, no matter how far into the experience you are. 

So how have you found that that feature has really supported players to make different choices and how many different options are there in the game that folks can kind of be going through?

Pretty: Oh, there are a lot. I think the last time I actually tried to keep track, there are well over a thousand choices you can make in the game. And the combinations are really endless. 

The thing that I’ve discovered while creating College Craze was I understand why a lot of games feel like there’s only one track. Right? Or there are only a couple of tracks that you can play through. And while those games can be really incredible and life-changing and fun to play, on the developer side, it’s easier for them to be able to make these single tracks. 

There are so many other mechanics that you have to keep in mind. I kind of coded myself into a corner by making it so open. And it does make it harder for me, but it also is very rewarding because I allow it to be a very replayable game.

And it also sparks curiosity, like even if there’s a character that you really don’t like when you first meet in the game and you want to avoid them at all costs, by the time you’re at the end of the game, you might get curious and say, all right, let’s see what it’s like if I did try to romance this character. What kind of shenanigans can we get into? What are the other facets of that character that I can discover? And even if you don’t personally like it, I still think it brings a lot of depth to the story because people are not one dimensional. 

We meet so many people in our lives that we’re like, “Oh, I really didn’t like that person.” But who knows if you got to know them a little better, there might be some redeeming qualities. You still might not like them. But at least I think people are interesting. And at the end of the day, I really try to bring that into my characters.

Lorrae: Yeah, I loved that there was such a complexity to the characters and they were all so different. You had the barista bad boy who was such a dick and then a cute classmate. You also have your roommate’s boyfriend or your teacher, but they all have really different personalities that didn’t feel one dimensional or like it was just about sex. 

They all had dialogue that felt unique to them and then you get to interact with the dialogue and how you even interact with the dialogue influences if you’re even going to hook up with them or not which was so cool. 

Relationship Agency and Shameless Body Count

Lorrae: What are some of the different types of relationships in the game that really stand out to you and how can players choose which ones they want to progress or move forward with?

Pretty: For any given character, you can have no relationship with them whatsoever. You could absolutely decide to go out of your way to make their lives miserable. For some characters, not all of them because the game’s not done yet, you can go out of your way to do things to other characters and make an enemy out of them. You can be friends with them. You can choose to just hook up with them on a one-off thing. You can try to pursue a legitimate romantic relationship in the upcoming chapter. 

I actually have dates for the first time, so you’ll be able to go on full-on dates with these characters and what you do on those dates and the order that you do them really affects the successfulness of what the relationship may be after the fact.

But for the dialogue also, I try my best to make it multifaceted and make it so that you can discover a lot of things, not only about the character, but the entire plot of the game as well, just by talking to characters. Because one thing that I think is also very important is it’s a game that you can play without sleeping with anybody.

If you wanted to, you could do an entire run where you’re just avoiding dick left and right. And it should still be a fun and interesting and a compelling story. And from what I’ve heard from other people, you are still able to do that just fine. Because there’s a grander mystery. It’s not just about, I mean, you could make it just about sleeping with as many people as you want, but that’s not the point of the game. That’s not the reason I made it. And I think that sets it apart from a lot of other erotic games.

Lorrae: I really love that there was such a balance because there is this hookup element, but you’re also juggling school and should you go hang out with your friend or do your schoolwork or hook up with somebody? Or sometimes you go and hang out with your friend and it ends up being that you have an opportunity to hook up with someone. Or maybe you’re in class and you have that opportunity. There are these opportunities, but you can make different choices.

There are all these different metrics that it’s tracking in terms of your social media presence and your body count. And I believe that there’s even one that’s like you’re gonna get kicked out of school if you don’t get good grades. And it’s just, it was so much fun. I definitely went the bad girl track when I played and then I became curious – I wonder what it would be like to be the teacher’s pet or make some different choices.

I remember when the character wasn’t even sure what her body was doing. I felt like it was really authentic to what my early experiences with sexuality were like. For my first real toy experience, beyond just getting a super cheap bullet, I had a Magic Wand, which is like the most powerful toy of all time and I was really shocked that my body could even do that. It was so unlike anything I had ever experienced with my hands or with a partner. That was really central to me starting to understand that my body is so much more powerful than I give it credit for. 

You don’t just have to accept what’s being done to you and not have that much pleasure from it, that you actually get to have agency and power and control and be like, “No, touch me this way or use this or move this way.”

I also love how the game approaches body count because there is a counter but nothing bad happens the more it goes up, it just exists, which to me really removes a lot of shame from the idea that our worth is somehow linked to how many people we’ve been with. 

How does that feature and some other features of the game help people who are playing to find some more self-love and acceptance of themselves and their sexuality and their choices?

Pretty: As far as the ethos of the game, I try my best to be impartial to the choices that people make within the game. And body count is a huge example of that. It’s like a vanity stat. If you want to really do a game run where you’re trying to stack up the body count, you can, but there aren’t going to be any negative repercussions as a result of that on your main character.

And for a lot of other games that might have a female protagonist in the erotic space. typically that counter is the way that you’re supposed to measure the “depravity” of that main character, which sucks. It’ll be a thing where it’s like, the main character started the game off in a sweater and pants. And if her body count goes up above 10, then maybe she’s just in a bikini or maybe she’s naked by the end of the game. And I thought that was just not realistic. 

I think that a lot of the other stats in the game in conjunction with the body count are really just a way to unlock or lock certain branches of the game. So there are certain consequences to the things that you do. 

Sometimes if you, I don’t know, you’re having sex on campus in the middle of campus, in a very public space, nothing bad is going to happen to you necessarily, but there’s a chance that people might see you. And so people might talk about you on social media and that’s a consequence of a decision you’ve made. But that doesn’t mean that you’ve lost the game or that you’re doing bad. It’s just a natural consequence of things that you might do. 

On that subject too, there are consequences and there’s also luck. Some things just randomly happen as a result. If your GPA is higher, you might have an easier time in your midterms versus if you have a super high follower count, then you might be able to get free stuff at stores. I’m trying to take into account all of these things in a realistic way without being a punisher or a rewarder.

Learning Self-Care to Support Creativity

Lorrae: Everything that you’ve created in this game has been from scratch, from the graphic design to writing the storylines and the business plan, promotion, social media. It’s clearly a project that you’re passionate about through and through and a big undertaking to do this project. 

What are some of the challenges that you face, whether it’s creating the game or promoting the game and how you’ve been navigating them?

Pretty: I’d say that early on, I really did take on a lot. As the years went on, I made sure that I found people who were able to support me along the way in things that weren’t specifically the game. So I had someone who was helping me, her name’s Zagia, she was on Discord. She helped me a lot with the marketing, I’d say around year two to three.

And then I also have some people on the Discord, Sina Rukos and Nicholas who have been helping me with the administrative aspect of things. And then I’ve also had a couple of different developers help with very specific things that I knew I couldn’t do, like implementing the graphics for the user interface, but I designed them. So it was kind of like a half-half thing.

But that was something that I learned, to bring those people on after I realized with that first run that I can’t do every single thing with such a big project. It was very, very important to me from the very beginning, though, that this was something that I felt full ownership over as far as creatively. 

I have a background in working with groups and teams and facilitating projects in the creative space. I just didn’t want to fall into the same trap of butting heads with other people because we have creative differences or different visions for the project. This really is my baby. And I was very motivated to touch as much of it as I possibly could.

The challenges that I have run into most recently have been keeping up with the cadence that I had before. When I did this for the first two to three years, I was cranking out about anywhere from 80,000 to 120,000 words every three months, as well as 90 plus graphics, like the images that you see for customizable characters. So that means different skin tones, different hairstyles and different hair colors for each one that I’m putting out.

I would be cranking out a ridiculous amount of content every three months for years. I don’t think that that was very healthy in retrospect, but at the time I was so into it that it didn’t feel like it was crazy. And then on top of that, I used to do these like character interviews where they’d be like 10,000 words and I’d put those on my Patreon so people can get to know the characters better and get bonus content and lore posts and all this stuff. 

Then I ran into a really life-changing situation at the beginning of last year and everything in my life just came to a stop. And it wasn’t anything that I could foresee. It was just suddenly my life’s one way and next it is completely different. And I suddenly, creatively, was just not there. I wasn’t there in any aspect of the word. I was just completely gone. But the project suffered from it because I couldn’t produce at the same amount that I was before. I was comatose really. And because I’m the only person who is producing the game itself,  if I’m not able to do anything, then the game is not going to be made. 

At this point, with how complex all of the characters and the plot lines and all that stuff is, it’s not like I can hire someone or ask for help for someone to create or continue to create for me. I have to do it. And so that has been a really big challenge. I’m just now getting out of that. 

I’m trying to get back into it so I can wrap this up. But that was a big wake up call. I’m glad that I’ve been able to creatively own this 100%, but there’s also a really big burden with that too.

Lorrae: It’s definitely a huge undertaking, I’m running a business myself. I totally feel that, when these big life shattering events happen, it takes all of our creative energy out, let alone to even just eat and take care of ourselves. It is so hard. 

As you’ve been gearing back up into this creative project, what are some of the self-care tools that you’ve been using to come back home to yourself and your creativity?

Pretty: One thing that I really took into practice was taking myself out on dates. I love this so much and I don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier in my life, but I think that it’s super important for people to get comfortable with being by yourself. 

I kind of was forced to be in that situation, but I learned to cope through dating myself essentially. I wouldn’t just say I’m gonna go to the movies by myself, but I’m going to plan out a date. I’m going to dress up. I’m going to choose an outfit. I’m going to set a time and a date that I’m gonna go to dinner and bring my journal and talk to myself essentially and learn more about myself and be intimate with myself. Be the best lover to myself that I can be because nothing in life is guaranteed other than the fact that you’re gonna be experiencing it from start to finish. You’re the only one. 

So I really got into taking myself out on dates and being mindful of that and not being as concerned with other people’s perception of me. If they have an issue with me, that’s their issue, not my issue. I’m still learning that. I haven’t 100% taken that to heart, but I’m still trying to take that to heart because it’s super important. And that was big, with the game it was a really big pressure on me for all these months that I wasn’t working as quickly and as hard as I used to.

I would get on myself and be like these people must hate me because I was doing so well for so long and they don’t know what’s going on in my life. They must think this. 

When I really started to be introspective and just care about myself and really take care of myself, that became less important and it became a lot more noise. 

On the other opposite end of that, taking care of myself and making sure that I am sexually satisfied is a 100% top priority as well. So using sex toys and making sure that all aspects of myself, physical, mental, emotional are being taken care of and that I’m able to do that for myself has been super important.

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