Some good points. Something additional I hadn't considered earlier: Two of the big three people responsible for the GTA series are gone, and HAVE been gone since 5 came out. The entire dev cycle of 6 has been minus a lot of what helped to make the series what it was, which doesn't bode well.
You're correct though, it is entirely possible to make money cannibalizing brand identity: the live-action Disney remakes did VERY well financially despite being some of the most god-awful slop ever made, because people just see "Disney" and take their kids to it. See also the process of "rebadging", where random Chinese companies buy up previously respected AV and appliance brands and release garbage under them to the unsuspecting public. The problem of course is that this is fundamentally a scam, and thus can only go on for so long before the brand is worthless. There is certainly money to be made in clear-cutting, it just isn't sustainable.
But yes, like I said I don't plan on making any changes to my own trajectory or plans for the games from this. I've been struggling this whole time to articulate exactly why this matters to me, and I think it's something like this: I want to have a sense for the mindset of my audience. Not in a direct way: this or that kink, this or that character design or story element (Well I DO, but that's not the purpose here). But more broadly. Do they care about quality and thought being put into games in the way that I do? Maybe that's insulting to even ask, and maybe the answer should have been obvious. But increasingly I find myself in a room full of people insisting, sometimes violently, that there are five lights, when as far as I can honestly see, there are very obviously four. So I suppose on some level this poll is just a self-sanity check, like that guy in A Beautiful Mind. GTA 6 looks like it's gonna suck right? I'm not the only one seeing this, right? There's actually a guy standing there, waving, right?
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Oh yeah. I forgot to mention that and heard about the devs being long gone as well. I saw a YouTube video that mentioned it which also mentioned the DLC stories being bad with villains being sanitized and the like. It was an interesting watch. It is fine either way to talk about games like this (even though it might be a bit off-topic).
And the audience or players that play your games can have different thoughts to be sure. Not just about other games but your own as well. It happened to me for example. I basically have a controversial scene in my NSFW game. It was the first scene I commissioned art for too. A scene where the target for lewd things is getting gangbanged forcefully. A story scene too as the character the player plays as would only get powers to fend things like this off later. Problem is the target of lewds had his first NSFW scene with a third party and there were plenty of people who didn't like it. I didn't see the issue when I made it and had to implement a skip button for it. Unintentionally it was turning some people off which I hadn't considered. Of course it shows that I have to be careful with such scenes when the player is the one lewding a target instead of controlling the target that gets lewded like in your game.
Just as a little experience I had with game development. I hope it is interesting to read. xD Basically simply about me having a blindspot for something which can happen to other people as well as some things might not be too obvious until later.
Oh definitely, how people relate to a character matters a lot. And in that case especially: as I'm sure you know by now, a lot of people feel VERY strongly one way or the other about NTR/cheating/stealing, perceived or real, especially when you're playing the other side of that relationship. Which is understandable: if you're playing a game to simulate a relationship and then get involuntarily cucked, that's going to be a problem if you're not into that kind of thing. But as you said, not something I've had to worry about yet with mine: CS is mostly for people who want to self-insert into a character that gets thrown around and manhandled. In a more general sense though yes, absolutely. Always important to consider what the experience of playing the game is going to be for most people, and try to anticipate that as best you can.
Mhm. I started my game before the whole cucking thing was quite as mainstream, so only a year or two later was it mentioned. Though to be fair the MC hadn't really done any lewd interaction with the lewding target yet, so they weren't a thing so to say. Of course that didn't stop people from feeling a certain way about it and by then I was so deep into the writing that I couldn't simply change it easily too. I personally just like gangbangs and didn't think far enough ahead there. xD Anyway, hope to see more games from you. It was a pity MCs cute friend didn't get lewded in the game. =3