I have followed the development of Flexible Survival for quite a while now, and I recently stumbled upon the blog posts regarding the gender preferences poll and its results. Disclaimer: I personally strongly favor F/F interactions and have voted as such in the poll, so I have a bias regarding in this topic. Nonetheless I will try to remain objective. The blog post detailing the results of the poll notes that the amount of people who voted for F/F interactions was interestingly and surprisingly low when compared to other gender interaction preferences. The results of the poll were indeed interesting, but to me at least, not actually very surprising. I will try to explain why.
Over the course of the Flexible Survival development, I think it is fair to say that when it comes to content updates and additions, Herm and Male interaction additions have been more prevalent than Female on Female interactions. From the preferences poll we can see that this is actually a good thing for the majority of the people who voted in the poll. However, it is important to keep in mind that this can lead to a positive feedback loop (for better or worse).
For example, the developers and writers might look at the poll results and conclude that F/F interactions are not popular for the general player base, and they might instead shift their focus towards producing other types of content. Indeed, the December of 2017 update featured almost exclusively Male and Herm content, either as player or as NPC updates. This can lead to overall fewer F/F scenes and updates being added to the game, which in turn (and crucially) can cause fewer people who primarily enjoy F/F content to be drawn towards the game, relative to the rest of the player base. In the next preferences poll, the amount of people who are mainly interested in F/F will be relatively smaller, and so on and so on. Anecdotally, I find myself only infrequently checking up on the content updates, even though I greatly enjoy the game (and I almost missed out on voting in the poll in the first place, because of this).
This is just something that popped up in my mind when reading the blog post reaction towards the poll results. Obviously, at the end of the day it is up to the developers and writers to determine what content will be added, and especially in the case of Patreon polls and such, it only makes sense to choose the options that receive the most votes. I am just trying to warn of the possibility of this leading to something akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the player base might over time lean more and more towards a narrower set of preferences.
Thank you for your time!
tl;dr: please do not neglect your F/F fanbase
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_e_biggrin.gif)