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interview Mr. Dots Games

I talked with the lead writer from MrDots Games the creators of our GOM of October 2023 Sunshine Love

Mr Dots Games are the creators of hit game and our Porn Game of the month of October 2023 – Sunshine Love. They began their development a few years back with a controversially named game called “Dating Your Daughter”. I talked with main developer MrDots and the lead writer Hearsz from the studio about how it all began, what the process is like to create adult games, what have they learned in the years developing them, what their take on AI is. I also asked them to share some behind the scenes takes on development and reveal what the future holds for Mr Dots Games.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT SUNSHINE LOVE:

Sunshine Love Complete Version (CH1 to 3)

From €12.20

Sunshine Love”, is a first/third-person choice-based adult visual novel

1. Let’s start with the basics tell us a bit about yourself and Mr. Dots Games, where are you from?

Hey everyone, I’m HearszAM, MrDots’ chief writer for the games we develop.

I’m from Australia, from a place called the Gold Coast. I’ll be answering most of the questions below on MrDots’ behalf, but there are a few that he has personally answered.

I’ve been working with MrDots since January 2017, a few short months after the first version of DMD was released (September 2016).

2. How many of you are working on the games?

Hearsz: For the most part, it’s been just myself and MrDots, but we currently have three full-time members

(Mistress Elemental being the other) and also one of our discord admins (HyperServer) helps us with game testing and ideas. We’ve had various other people help us over the past seven or so years. We also have someone doing social media promotions for us (Devank) and another (EvilWolf) who has been creating promotional videos for our games.

We also have a part-time animator, Sandem who mainly animates Mistresses’ scenes

3. So, what got you into the game development? How did it all start?

Hearsz: One night, I was searching through various sites for new adult comics and then stumbled on version 3 of DMD (Dating my Daughter) by accident! I was intrigued by the image (see below) and also the title, probably like most people who first discovered the game.

How it all began:

by @Spice

I’d been working a full-time job at the time but I’d spent the previous three years writing celebrity fan fiction (just as a hobby). That experience ended up being like an apprenticeship for me before I began writing scene scripts for DMD.

4. What was the first adult game you created? Tell me more about that.

Hearsz: So along with MrDots, DMD was the first game either of us had ever worked on. He started working on it midway through 2016 and then released the first update in September of that year. In January 2017, he put up a post on his Patreon wall, asking if anyone was interested in helping him with scene scripts, proofreading and also coming up with some new scene ideas.

At first, I was only interested in proofreading scene scripts as I didn’t think I would have the time to write any for him. Anyway, I sent him some of my fan fiction stories and he liked them so much, that he convinced me to write some scenes for the next update.

Somewhat reluctantly, I wrote the scene idea that he emailed to me. By the end of the month, I ended up writing all the other scenes he had delegated to other people who offered to help out, as they all failed to even get back to him!

I quickly got a knack for writing the new scenes and became somewhat obsessed with it, which I think you have to be with this kind of work, especially when you’re first starting out. If you don’t have that enthusiasm and drive, then you’re probably not going to last very long in this industry, so we’ve learned.

5. “Dating My Daughter” raised some controversy due to the name. Was that intentional?

MrDots: Not really. It was the best way I felt I could describe the game so that people would at least take an interest in it.

Having a catchy title can be the difference between someone checking out your game or dismissing it. After that, it’s reliant on word of mouth or forum/online discussions.

The Internet (and Patreon) back then was more free and open to game titles. Developers like myself were able to be a lot more explicit with the choice of name than devs are nowadays, where you have to be more careful. So we didn’t have any issues with that at the time.

Scene from DMD:

by @Spice

6. You started developing games several years ago. Tell me what have you learned during this time.

Hearsz: MrDotsGames released the first game around seven years ago now. In that time we’ve released three games, two have been completed (DMD and Melody) with Sunshine Love will be finished by the end of 2023.

We have a fourth VN already in the works and it will be released in early 2024.

We’ve learned a hell of a lot during the past seven years as you can imagine. Every day that we work on our games is constantly a learning process.

We ask ourselves all the time: “What can we do better?”, “How can we improve this scene?” or “How can we get the player more involved?”

We’re not perfect by any stretch, we make mistakes and overlook things just like any other developer. But we learn a lot more from mistakes than we would if everything was perfect all the time, just like in life.

One thing we learned from early on (which I tell new developers if they ask us for advice) is to not take criticism to heart and learn from your mistakes. And always be open to learning new things.

Another thing is to listen to your supporter base – the people who pay you to do this job. By doing that, you kind of get a gauge of what they like and what they don’t like soon enough, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t put your own input or stamp on the games that you’re creating.

And most importantly, if you believe in what you’re creating, then regardless of if people think negatively of your work, just keep going.

You’re already doing an amazing thing by at least making a VN/game, which most people will never do themselves. Some people create games, and there are those who talk about doing it but never do (or carry on like they know what it’s like to be a developer).

Who would you rather be? We’d pick the former every single time

7. What were some of the major obstacles you faced during this time?

Hearsz: Anyone who has followed us for a long time would know the complications we encountered with Patreon about 18 months after releasing DMD (around February 2018). This was due to rule changes with content that was no longer allowed to be published on their site or within our game.

Long story short, we were forced to take DMD down, otherwise, our account would have been closed indefinitely

and all our hard work would be lost.

So through no fault of our own, we had no choice but to take the game and all images down.

It was an incredibly stressful time for myself and MrDots as our one and only game, which was at its peak at the time, didn’t have a home for us to publish any new updates or content on.

I was stressing out because a few months earlier, I left my job and decided to write for MrDots full-time.

Neither of us was expecting this when 2018 began and we were left with two options.

We could either quit being developers and go back to working normal jobs, which would mean that DMD would have been abandoned. Or, we could start working on a brand-new game that fits in with Patreon’s new guidelines and rules and in that time, try to find a place where we could host DMD so we could continue and finish it.

However, finding a website or platform that could legally host DMD was incredibly challenging.

Before we discovered Subscribestar, DMD was hosted on two other platforms before they also pulled the game and closed our account.

To say it was incredibly frustrating would be a huge understatement.

Even though we often think about “what might have been”, had we been able to keep DMD on Patreon, our second game “Melody” was born, and it may never have been created if none of this had happened. So there was a silver lining that came from the most stressful time that we’ve had as game creators.

8. What attracted you to the genre of visual novels? Can you discuss any specific game that has inspired you or left a lasting impression on you?

MrDots: I based DMD somewhat on a game called “Date Ariane”. I also based the Dee model on a hentai called “Oni Chichi”

Hearsz: For me, the first visual novel or game that I played where you could date the love interest by making choices was one called “Lessons of Passion Extended” (featuring former porn star, Aria Giovanni). Another one I remember playing was “Ganguro Girl”. That was a big influence on my writing for sure. “Farmer’s Daughter” by a developer named Pusooy was also an early favourite. 


What personally attracted me to DMD specifically was seeing a story being paired with original renders that both happen in time with each other.  In other words, it’s like a comic book but you get to make choices throughout the gameplay, similar to a “Choose Your Own Adventure” type story.

by @Spice

9. Tell us a bit more about the story of “Sunshine Love”. Where did the idea come from? Who is doing the writing, who came up with the characters, the locations etc?

Hearsz: We had a friend of ours “Jeff Steel” who had worked with us during the backend of DMD and also put ideas to us for the opening parts of Sunshine Love.

I’ve done pretty much all the writing for the entire game, but Jeff did some writing for the opening scenes in the first couple of updates and Mistress has done some writing here and there more recently.

Now that we were on Subscribestar, we knew that we could do whatever we wanted in regards to including taboo content. But we also wanted to appease our Patreon supporters who are not interested in that kind of thing.

So one of the first things we agreed to do was to make two different versions of the game for each platform. One with taboo content and one without. Again, it’s been a challenging game to create but another thing we wanted was for the image quality to be better than DMD and Melody and we were convinced very early on that it would be.

And we want to go up in quality again for our next game.

10. With a story spanning three chapters, what is your approach when it comes to pacing the story effectively and keeping players invested throughout the series?

Hearsz: It’s always to not give away too much early but to also give your subscribers/players a reason to come back for the next update.

With every release, we always make sure to end the update with some kind of cliffhanger. We liken this process to TV shows that continue an episode from where the previous one ended. The story for us is just as important (if not more so) than the sexual scenes and animations.

12. Sunshine Love is now entering its third chapter. Did you plan for the story to be this big or did it evolve organically?

Hearsz: We had no idea how big it was going to be or how long it would take to complete when we started working on that first update. You can never know for sure when you begin working on a new project.

But because of the plentiful love interests available in the game, compared to our first two VN’s, Sunshine Love was probably always going to take some time to complete.

13. How important is the sex in the games? Is this an element that compliments the story or is this more of an extra spice?

Hearsz: Without sex scenes, there would be no point in creating Adult Games.

However, we don’t base our updates around sex scenes, but we know that it’s inclusion in each release is vitally important and why a lot of our supporters subscribe to us and play our games.

We feel that it certainly compliments the story for each individual love interest in our games, and that helps to make the sex scenes feel a little more unique as well.

14. The taboo topics were always present within your games. What made you explore them?

MrDots: When I started out, the father/daughter topic wasn’t really explored in the industry, certainly not for Westernised adult games. Most games were focused on Milf/Mom content so I thought a F/D game would be a good way of being more unique around that time.

Nowadays it’s a lot more common, and Hearsz and I have had numerous developers private message us to say that we inspired them to create their own game with this specific love interest combination.

15. How do you create lewd scenes? Where do you get the inspiration from? Can you show some examples?

Hearsz: Various places. It could be from playing other sex games online, reading comics or sexual stories from authors that I know (if I’ve read their work), or even scenes from a film or porn flick. I use ideas from my own stories that I wrote before working with MrDots as well. I’ll take these ideas and try and re-work them so that they become our own, and fit with our characters and story.

by @Spice

16. Do your supporters play a major role when it comes to the content, especially the fetish content?

Hearsz: They have done so at certain times throughout our career whilst making these games.

In the early days of MrDotsGames, we would regularly run polls to ask our paying supporters, asking them what kind of content they would like to see, or asking them their favourite fetishes and getting them to choose from a list of possible scenarios or locations where this could take place.

We’ll definitely look at doing that again with our fourth game.

17. How do you address diversity and inclusivity? Is this an important topic for you?

Hearsz: Most definitely. All of our team are from various parts of the world, with different backgrounds, different tastes and different ethnicities. Just like our supporters. It’s part of the reason why there are so many love interests in Sunshine Love with various backgrounds and ethnicities.

18. How do you approach character development? Can you give us some insight into how the characters were initially created?

Hearsz: With all of our main characters and the female-MC’s, the way we approach developing their character throughout the game is to try and put them in several situations where by the end of the scene, they have learned something from it, which also allows for some personal growth.

Ideally, we want the main character (you) and the people close to him to be better people by the end of the story.

Sometimes the character development has been based on actual situations that I’ve been through or people who I know personally – quite a number of these situations happen in our second game, Melody, for instance.

It’s great when supporters tell you that they can relate to certain scenes that you’ve written/created and it’s helped them out in some way.

19. Who is your favourite character in the game? (no cheating by saying that you like all of them 😊)

Hearsz: I think it’s very easy to choose the lead female character (in the game you are creating) as your favourite.

I remember thinking after I started working on DMD, that MrDots couldn’t possibly create a more perfect character than Dee. But when he presented the first versions of Melody, I changed my mind on that! For Sunshine Love, I have a soft spot for Victoria mainly because I described to Dots what I wanted her to look like. And she also is somewhat based on one of my favorite celebrities. 😉

MrDots: As for my favorite character, it’s Dee, of course. Because if it wasn’t for her, none of the goals we achieved in the past seven years would’ve been possible 😉

Victoria:

by @Spice

20. Let’s talk about the art a bit. When comparing your first game “Dating My Daughter” with “Sunshine Love”,  it’s obvious that the graphical aspect of the game has improved dramatically. What are some of the most significant changes and improvements that were made in that sense?

Hearsz: We just wanted to move with the times when we began creating SL. Because we began making Melody while we were still working on DMD, the simplest thing to do was to make the game with the same programs, the same designs, and even similar facial expressions! It’s what we knew at the time and what had worked for us for the first eighteen months of game creating.

But the adult gaming world is always evolving and we’re always looking to move forward with it.

With SL, Genesis 8 (DAZ model) was still fairly new and that was a big change from using Genesis 3, and as you said, the difference in quality is noticeable as soon as you start playing the game.

21. Can you show me some early takes from when you first started developing games? Like from back then?

Hearsz: These images were used very early on in the game. Long-time fans will recognise some of these images of

Dee that we used for our tier levels.

by @Spice
by @Spice

22. The games have been animated since the start. Tell me was this a difficult thing to master?

MrDots: The games didn’t include animations when I got started because I didn’t know how to make them.

At first, I started using some pre-made animations that you could buy on Renderotica. After that, I started making my own but I’ve never been really good at it, to be honest. It’s perhaps the hardest thing to master when creating renders and I feel like I have a lot to improve on. Right now, part of my animations are done by a staff member, Sandem, who’s a professional animator and that has improved our content’s quality a lot.

23. Tell me a bit about how you approach development. Do you have a specific routine or schedule, or are you more of a free spirit when it comes to that?

Hearsz: For the past five or so years, we’ve used Google Sheets to list our scene ideas.

We add in things like when the scenes will take place during the week (start, middle or end) and on what week of the story these scenes will take place. All three of us can see what the other person is up to. So for instance, if MrDots and Mistress access the sheet for the update we’re currently working on, they can see what scene scripts I’ve written and completed, the one I’m working on (In progress) and the scenes I haven’t begun writing yet.

When they’re done, I label them as “Completed”. MrDots and Mistress do the same after they render and code the scenes I’ve written.

by @Spice

24. What does your typical workday look like?

Hearsz: We work every single day on our games. For me, because I have kids, I have to work around their school day during the week and I also need family time at nights and weekends.

So normally I’ll work between 9 am and 1 pm, and then continue on at 8 or 9 pm at night through til midnight, mainly due to me and MrDots being in completely different timezones – it’s the ideal times for us to chat with each other.  

MrDots: I usually work between seven to eight hours everyday on rendering and then two hours every other day on other stuff like responding to PMs, publishing previews, and other small tasks related to the game.

25. What is your take on AI, specifically AI art and AI writing? Do you use any of the AI tools for development at all?

Hearsz: I’m not against it but at the same time I wouldn’t dissuade anyone from using it as it could be the best leg up or introduction for aspiring developers to eventually create their own visual novel.

Just because it’s a simplistic form or art to a lot of people doesn’t make it a bad thing.

You’re still creating “something” and I’ll always have respect for people that take that step. I don’t even know how to make a render, so anyone making images by using AI is already one step ahead of me!

As for the writing side of it, I guess it could also be a good thing, especially for those who aren’t great with words or those who aren’t fluent in English. It can certainly be handy for people new to writing stories or scripts for a visual novel.

However, AI is still just a tool and a human writer is still required for things like proofreading and other edits.

MrDots: We don’t use AI in our games but it has been discussed for future projects. We’re considering including AI versions of our characters for a future rewards gallery. But there’s nothings in stone as we haven’t tried creating any AI art yet.

by @Spice

26. Chapter 3 is the latest of the game, Sunshine Love, so what is different, what is now and what can we expect more from it?

Hearsz: Chapter 2 was getting too big (in terms of size) for us to be able to add any more updates.

But now that we’ve added a third chapter, it’s allowed us to add the final two weeks of the game (Week 11 and 12), and also all of the game endings, of which there will be around twenty to look out for.

27. Is Chapter 3 the final season of Sunshine Love? Tell me a bit more about what is next for the game.

Hearsz: Yes, it will be.

Coming back to the question about if we planned for the game to be this big, we didn’t envision it to run for this long when we first started. But we also knew at the start of the year that we would have it completed by December.

Ideally, we’d like to start and finish games within three years. What we’ve learned from making DMD, Melody and SL is to not overdo your story. We’ve always kept our word, which is to finish the games that we start, and we’re very close to having three games completed.

DMD ran for much longer than we wanted it to but there were extenuating circumstances for that. With Melody, even despite working on DMD updates at the same time, it seemed like the perfect amount of time to create a visual novel.

SL somewhat suffered from us finishing off DMD last year, because it could have been completed much quicker. But with us now back to working on one game at a time, we shouldn’t encounter any more issues like this any time soon.

Anyway, we’re really excited to not only work on this final ever SL update but also releasing it and reading everyone’s thoughts and feedback, not only for the final release but for the story/game as a whole.

28. Are you working on any other projects besides Sunshine Love?

Hearsz: As aforementioned, we have a new game in the works that will be set for release in early 2024.

We’re very excited for this one as it will be the first time that we’ll have the team that we currently have, all working on the game from the very start. We’ll be taking a new direction with Game #4, but also look at including some of the best qualities and ideas that we’ve created from our first three VN’s.

Games are meant to be fun and that’s always been something we want our fans, new and old, to get out of whatever we are producing!

ALL GAMES FROM MR DOTS


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