Let's Write Porn!

"Do a nun, but with really big tits, covered by nothing but cross-shaped nipple pasties." This is an instruction I wrote to the art guy whilst working on a job last night. If anybody asked me to tell them what my job was, I'd need a moment. Freelance... writer? Sounds awfully generic, but I write quests, translations, reviews, columns, two companies even offered me PR jobs. Basically, if you need someone to write shit, then I'm your guy. I tried to live on game reviews alone, but I've developed some expensive habits like eating, living with a roof over my head and utilizing magical powers like plumbing and electricity. And you can't be a freelance games critic if you choose to live like a king. My luxurious lifestyle would not allow it.

So one of the many things I do in order to pay the bills is write a bunch of content for a kinky browser game. Those are totally a thing now and some of them are more filthy and explicit than others. The one I contribute to is still relatively tasteful and actually offers pretty complex and entertaining gameplay when compared to some of the more, ahem... mature porn games out there. And yes, having a look at some of those is absolutely part of the job.

Basically, your character is an aspiring porn star, who wants to be the very best, like no one ever was. So you bone your way across the world, meet all sorts of interesting characters, run your own production company, take part in all sorts of ridiculously sexual events and parades and I'm one of the folks whose job it is to make sure you won't run out of stuff to do. 

"I've already screwed all the bosses! Give me more sexy quests!"

Writing this stuff is difficult, but not for the reasons you might think. First of all, the game isn't dead-serious, the artwork is cartoony and often funny, so it's tempting to write quests, which are a bit on the silly side. And those tend to get rejected, because you're supposed to keep it sexy. I thought it would be funny to have the player show their latest home-made porno to a bunch of monks with popcorn buckets, but there's nothing sexy about it. Changing the monks into young, topless hippie chicks who celebrate free love is sexier, but describing in all detail how they all start eating each other out is over the top. Funny, but not stupid, sexy, but not XXX-style sexy. 

Finding the right balance between comical and hot isn't even the most difficult part, though. What almost put me off the job for good is the fact that, while some people really enjoy the game for what it is - a fun, mildly dirty browser game with a bit of witty, sexy writing - a certain part of the player base simply treats the game as some sort of masturbatory aid. You can put an insane amount of time, love and effort into a really well-written quest. And at the end of it all, there will be some teenager jerking it to all your hard work. I actually ragequit the job over this when I first realized that. They had to talk me into coming back. I like to believe they want me for the job because I'm a skilled writer. The fact I'm one of the few weirdos out there who are willing to do this sort of thing probably helped even more.

Besides, it's not like I had anything else to do with my time.

Writing softcore porn quest text isn't my dream job. I'm not sure how I'd explain this to my family if we were still in touch. On the other hand, it pays really well. Meanwhile, the average videogame review pays half, in some extreme cases even only a third of the amount I used to get when I first started writing for gaming magazines back in 2009. Imagine you had to sink 20-40 hours into some new RPG you're supposed to review within 72 hours. Fuck sleep, fuck your spare time, fuck all social activities - you're gonna grind that shit like a motherfucker, then you're gonna crank out some 6.000+ characters (not counting spaces), a dozen screenshots plus descriptions, five minutes of video footage, write another 3.000 characters for the video review, give individual ratings for each major aspect of the game and BAM - 300 Quid. If you're lucky. Granted, you get less play time when reviewing some little indie platformer, but good luck getting more than 200 Quid out of that one. It's an absolutely ridiculous amount of work and the pay is a complete joke. And don't even think about looking at the comments section, because obviously you should be fired, you're absolutely incompetent, your review sucks and readers don't even know why the fuck they're still bothering with your stupid website in the first place. Now that feels rewarding!

Alternatively, I can just write a dozen quests where the player tastefully fucks somebody without getting too comical, spend a fraction of the amount of time I put into a good review and still get more money for it. What would you do? You might feel a little dirty afterwards, but being told you can't write a negative review about some shitty Ubisoft browsergame doesn't really make you feel much better. I'm glad I don't write for those guys anymore.

"We can't piss off Square, they're too important!" Actual quote from a former employer.

The really bizarre shit, however, happens at customer support.

I mostly get to deal with complaints about users and harassment reports. Sometimes a user will report somebody who asks them for cybersex or to trade nude pictures, completely out of the blue. This isn't super surprising, given we're running a game about fucking people. But not everybody wants to be approached by other users that way, so we interfere when somebody doesn't understand what 'no' means. This is also one of the rare exceptions where we take a peek at a user's private messages. We don't ever touch those unless we absolutely have to. With harassment complaints, it often turns out that the reported account is only a few hours old and has immediately started offering dick pix to dozens of users with female avatars. They're not interested in actually playing the game. They're just looking for somebody to exchange dirty messages and pictures with.

What's really surprising is how many users are perfectly cool with this and respond to these guys. What's a little less surprising is how the vast majority of these users are men pretending to be ladies. They all have sexy female avatars, registered to email accounts like hank.mandude@bromail.com. So every now and then when checking on a user, who gets reported for harassment, you catch a bunch of guys with female avatars, virtually making out with each other.

"Damn, she's a total slut!"

And then you get the psychos. We had this one user, who kept sending harassment reports, always forwarding some seriously saucy messages he received from male users. So I looked into their message history. Turns out the user in question poses as a female user, flirts with random, clearly male users. He then exchanges a whole lot of really pervy stuff with the victim until they bite and send something in return. BAM! Harassment report. Wow.