EroFights News: Talking With GM Clara

Hello there! We've decided that while we enjoy the various erotica and guides being supplied in the blog, we could also use it to inform the community of current goings-on as well as introduce prominent members of EF!

So we'll start with a bang and tackle both today by talking with EroFights' General Manager and get the latest scoop on what's to come for everyone's favourite sexfighting website...

Hi Clara! First, tell us about yourself.

Well I’m Clara, 31, living in France and happily married. I discovered EF through the Chyoa story and joined about 2 and a half years ago now.

What is it that you like the most about EF?

The community and the friends I made here. I love the game, like most of us I think. But what made me come back and invest myself in EF is the community.

I made some great friends since I arrived, people that manage to make me smile everyday and with whom I can share stuff that happens in my life. EF is the first time I involved myself in a community ever.

I was never one to socialise before that, but the people here have something that made me want to be a part of it. And that is something to be treasured.

And what is it that you like the least...?

Paperwork XD. The amount of things we have to fill in behind the scenes while doing mod work is just….uuuuuurghh. Mostly kidding, it’s not that bad. I think what I like the least are the problem users that are just here to make things difficult for everyone.

Trolls and the like, that just enjoy making people miserable by harassing them. Thankfully, the community is on top of things and those people are reported fast, allowing us to deal with them quickly and keeping everyone happy.

Oh and Reddit duty, hated it.

Before you were the General Manager, you were a Moderator and then a Game Maintainer.  How did you think your experience in both roles has helped you for the top job?

It helped a lot. Being a moderator first is vitally important for any future GM. As a moderator, you get a view backstage as to how the community is run. You get to know the various teams and see how things operate.

Being a Game Maintainer for Hentai mode also gave me insight on the inner mechanisms of the game. This is really helpful to answer questions from users, see what kind of suggestions are doable or not and also help people who have questions on the game itself, as players or other maintainers or future maintainers.

Talking with game maintainers and their ideas and aims for their mode is much easier when you know the engine.

Can you explain to us what a General Manager does?

Basically, the GM is here to supervise the different teams of EF staff we have: the moderators, the game maintainers, writing and blog team, Reddit, etc. The role of the GM is also to set the policy of the community and to take care of the day to day running of things, so that lllusion can focus on the technical stuff.

Take us through the typical day of a General Manager.

Well, I usually check my Discord on phone when I wake up, to see if something big happened during the night. After that, it’s scrolling through the admin channels, checking that everything is running smoothly and helping the trainees with some decision making if needed.

Then, general chat to say hi and get my daily tackle from Foxy. I try to run a moderating help desk on EF to also help people that aren’t on Discord. While doing that it’s brainstorming about the next tasks ahead: monthly meetings, next tournament projects, ideas for Chyoa stories, etc…that’s usually it for a typical day.

What would you say are the most pressing issues the EF needs to solve right now?

There is nothing really urgent but there are some things I’d like to fix sooner rather than later. Some rules need to be updated or added, and I’d also like to bolster our Moderating team with members out of Europe to be able to cover the different time zones more efficiently.

How can someone become a Moderator or Game Maintainer?

First of all by being a good member of the community. You can have lots of ideas to improve things and have the best will in the world, if you’re an arsehole, you won’t get in a team.

EF is only run by people that do this for fun, they’re not paid to do anything, they just want to make the game fun for everyone. So if you have to deal with uncooperative people, it makes everything way less fun and so you don’t want to involve yourself anymore.

After that, for game maintainers you should ask to become a reviewer for a mode. Reviewers help the game team by editing new actions proposed by the community. It’s a great way to get a deeper understanding of a game mode and how things work.

By doing this, you’ll get in closer contact with the maintainers of that particular mode and they may end up asking you to be part of the team.

Becoming moderator is different. New mods are being scouted by the existing team. We’re looking for people that represent the values of EF, the ideas we try to promote and defend.

People that are well liked and respected by the community. Those are the foundations of a good moderator. If I have to condense this idea it would be : “Don’t try to become a moderator. You will become one if you have it in you.”

What would you like to see improve in EF and what are you doing personally to get the community there?

The main area of improvement currently is I think the imbalance of genders in terms of players. We have more guys than girls, making it tough for guys to get games. This results in the new girls often receiving lots of messages from hopeful players to get a game, scaring some of them away and keeping the status quo.

The last advertisement project with Lovense seemed to have brought new girls to EF so hopefully this trend will continue and things will improve. My personal contribution to that would be to try and think of new ways to bring new people to the community, and to welcome them with Moderator help desks I try to run regularly on EF.

You mentioned girls being scared away from boys sending messages. What should we do about this then? Should boys just not send messages? What can the girls themselves do to not be buried in countless messages asking for them to play with others?

No, we can't ask boys not to send messages. Sending messages isn't wrong. At the end of the day, everyone is just trying to have fun and get a game. Girls just have an easier time of it.

If a girl wants a game, most of the time she just has to jump in matchmaking and she'll get matched almost instantly or in less than 10 minutes.

Due to the unbalanced number of players I talked about earlier, guys have a harder time. They can just wait in matchmaking if they have the time, but some can wait for several hours.

I don't imagine this problem being easily fixed unless we can get a balance of player. In an ideal world, there would be enough players of all different genders and orientation for you to get a game in less than 10 minutes after entering matchmaking. But that's not the case now.

The way to fix it for me would be done in several steps:

Everyone should make an effort in their profile. A blog article was written about this already. Because just writing "Hello I'm Bob and I'm open for anything" isn't enough to get people interested in you. Which means that your only shot at a game is luck of the draw in MM.

Make your opening messages interesting. As I said, girls in particular tend to receive lots of messages from people wanting a game. So if you receive five messages with only "Hello, do you want to play?" and one longer message where the person tries to get to know you and present himself as well, or has a roleplay idea or even a funny joke, it will stands out.

This one is for girls: Don't forget that guys here has a harder time than you getting a game. That is something even I struggled with at first because I never experienced waiting in MM for long. Your experience as a female player is way different from a guy player. It's easy to get infuriated because you received 10 messages of guys that want to play, but you should also see the situation from their side.

Unfortunately, most of the players displaying problematic behaviour in messages are new players. With time, you get to see what works and what doesn't and you adapt yourself to the website.

So unless we can force people to read a kind of messaging etiquette guide when they join, I don't see this problem disappearing soon.

We've had the Lovense features and action pack come out this month. Can we expect anything new next month or in the near future at least?

Nothing in terms of big updates like the Lovense one. A new action pack is scheduled to be released soon but that's it.

Next projects from game maintainers vary from modes to mode but I expect first trying to make the Lovense patterns available on existing actions, like Bad End Battle just did.

And when will Bad End Battle be released to non-Patreon members?

No date scheduled at the moment. I want to always keep one mode only available to Patreon, to thank them for their contributions as well as enticing people to donate.

So Bad End Battle will be released when another mode becomes ready to be played, or until a long enough time passed for the novelty to be over but that is something I will decide with lllusion when the time comes.

Where do you see EF in 5 years?

That’s a tough one. EF has grown exponentially since its debut 3 years ago. We grew from 2 game modes with barely 300 actions to 11 game modes for a combined total of more than 10000 actions.

Who can say where we’ll be in 5 years? Maybe we’ll double the number of action and game modes? Or have even more interactivity with new mechanisms like the Lovense update.

Game listed on Steam and Epic? Patreon revenue high enough for lllusion to focus only on the game? Or maybe we’ll just build on what we have now and reinforce the community, having long roleplay stories about the various factions of EF displayed on the forum?

I can’t tell now but I’ll do my best to ensure that EF’s future is as bright as it can be.