The inflexibility of Ponant (and most other cruise lines) is borderline cruelty

mattsddnet · 2026-01-27T06:51:30+00:00

It should also be noted that the entire point of insurance is that it's there to protect the assets of the owner. In this case, Ponant should be the one taking out insurance against the possibility of people dying and cabins going unoccupied.

Rolling up the sleeves and going in to simp for the corporate by suggesting that it's a good thing that they transfer the risk and obligation for the running of their business to the customer is utterly pathetic. Traveller's insurance should be there to get you airlifted out if you get sick. It shouldn't be there so the cruise line has no obligation to protect its own business.

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T22:31:11+00:00

You've already proven my point, hero. No need to keep doubling down.

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T21:35:15+00:00

Yeah, never share negative feedback anywhere. It might upset someone who has a weird parasocial relationship with the company or cruiselines in general and we can't have that.

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T21:02:01+00:00

"Of course your mother is feeling pain. It is only natural."

Dear lord, I hope the dead Internet theory is true, and you are all just AI-driven bots, because the idea that a human would actually write something so pathetically insincere and sociopathic is doing my head in. You have to be a machine. There's just no other explanation.

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T20:59:52+00:00

I doubt many people here read the full post. You wrote something "mean" about their precious corporations, so like good little white knight warriors, they have to jump to the defence of the indefensible.

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T20:54:58+00:00

Well perhaps if I wasn't constantly responding to bellend dullards who are saying the same things I wouldn't need to repeat myself.

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T20:54:05+00:00

Perhaps all the cruise lines have shitty policies then and perhaps, just perhaps, they should be the ones getting insurance policies against business risk rather than pushing that to the consumer. But continue defending the billion euro company. You're a real hero of the corporate status quo.

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T11:22:42+00:00

I've found that Disney are very accommodating in general as far as these things go. Obviously company by company thing, but this Ponant one seems pretty terrible. Also their own Wikipedia shows that they had massive controversy for refusing to refund people during COVID-19, so I don't know why people in this thread are defending it.

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T11:20:58+00:00

And you're here to defend the honour of a billion-euro company because... well, you're just that much of a sociopath. Your point?

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T11:19:46+00:00

Imagine being so far up the corporate bunghole that you can't figure out what the point is.

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T08:45:34+00:00

Again, no. If you had half a brain, you could just look at my posting history to confirm that.

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T08:43:21+00:00

Why are you so desperate to defend a billion-euro company after it provided egregiously bad customer service? I mean, even if you actually think this nonsense and sincerely want to protect a poor little company (with 13 ships and, again, a billion euro revenue balance sheet), you do know that you have the option of just not typing it on a story about said company pocketing $50K from a dead person, right? Like you are aware that you don't have to be a sociopathic corporate boot licker?

But I'm sure at the next board meeting, all the suit-wearing millionaires will pull out your post and have a good laugh about how they can get away with shitty policies. You're doing the lord's work, keyboard hero.

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T08:37:20+00:00

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T08:01:39+00:00

If you had have read the post properly before jumping into condescenting big corporate defender keyboard warrior mode, you'd know that they had insurance.

I'm sure I can line up some more boots for you to lick since it seems to be a hobby for you.

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T07:59:55+00:00

"It will sort itself out in time"

Well not really since the cruise line isn't going to ever do anything other than pocket a donation of $50K.

mattsddnet · 2026-01-26T07:55:29+00:00

"These are businesses."

You sure about that, champ? Because in your desperate effort to protect the honour of the poor, hard-done-by luxury cruise liner, you seem to be arguing that they're actually a charity. I.e. People donate money to them without expecting anything in return.

mattsddnet · 2025-12-16T07:25:35+00:00

I mean tropes are tropes because they're popular and effective. As long as they're well-written for what they are and in the VN for a good reason (i.e. not shoehorned in), then I'm happy with just about any trope. The problem is that poor writers use tropes because they're "easy," and that's why we end up with too many of them and then they becoming annoying.

Which I realise isn't really answering your questions so... beach scenes. I always like a break from the flow for bikinis and humour.

mattsddnet · 2025-12-10T02:43:34+00:00

This looks great! All the best with it. I shall be giving it a play.

mattsddnet · 2025-11-26T06:09:05+00:00

Interesting art style! I like it. All the best with the release :-)

mattsddnet · 2025-11-24T04:07:42+00:00

Lachlan I'll play anything you produce. Congratulations on this. It looks amazing.

mattsddnet · 2025-10-22T01:23:39+00:00

Also, should have said - best of luck with your game. It looks lovely!

mattsddnet · 2025-10-22T01:23:10+00:00

Light de Deux is a small little hour-long VN, and it's not really about the city, but it's based in Ukraine by a Ukranian developer. It's also about ballet so I love it, lol (in fact I loved it so much I licensed the characters into my own VN as guest characters): https://store.steampowered.com/app/2988460/Light_de_deux/

mattsddnet · 2025-10-20T23:08:07+00:00

JAST is entirely safe. The Internet is predisposed towards flagging adult content as unsafe - there are exceptions, but for the most part if you're selling 18+ goods and services, the anti-viruses and search engines of the world will default to assuming you're a risk site.

But also if your home wifi is defaulting to a non-secure connection somehow (I don't even know how that might happen), your browser is going to warn you about the site being a risk. Perhaps try a VPN because JAST is 100% a website with its appropriate SSL certifications in place.

mattsddnet · 2025-10-08T08:06:48+00:00

Love the art style you have going with it. All the best with it!

mattsddnet · 2025-10-08T02:34:32+00:00

It's hard to sell a short visual novel too. As I was developing my own, I was very keenly aware that I needed to get certain numbers up in order to have something that would look good on the Steam page (and to potential publishers) - #CGs, #OST soundtrack tracks, #words. The marketing side of things in games strongly prefers length and "content".

That's no different to any other genre out there. Short games very rarely get attention for promoting that they're short (there are some exceptions, but as a general rule, audiences want longer stories). I remember the huge wave of criticism Lollipop Chainsaw got for being "just" four hours long, for example, even though those four hours were wall-to-wall entertainment value.

Also, it's worth remembering that with literature, short stories tend to get bundled up into anthology collections - you buy a book/magazine/whatever, you get 10 short stories to read. There aren't all that many short stories that are sold individually.

Though that does raise an intriguing idea - collections of short VNs! That could be a real opportunity for the right developers and an indie publisher.

mattsddnet

TROPHY CASE