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[Kit]

Maybe if you change it to cavemen instead of pirates, you know, for "historical accuracy" and stuff  

Really, are we going to have this discussion in some guy's indie game thread? Why not take it to a post that already exists in the general thread, or make a new post? :3

Asked a few girl gamer buddies of mine if they would play this and they thought it was lawls, so I really think anyone taking offense and making it into a rape or morality thing is just trying to get some attention. Now, is that stuff an important topic not to be discounted? Yes. Yes it is. But maybe the focus should be directed at something that's not so obviously satire. That's what I see it as. Comical graphics and satire.

On to the graphics, I tend to agree that they're sortof a turn off as far as wanting to play. The background is actually quite good in my opinion, but I really hope that the pirate animations are up to par. If you can get some decent animations, even if it's frame animations, I think it will go a loooong way. The flickering death retro throwback is something I always like to see in games though.

Again, if you can make the animations more aesthetically pleasing, I think that would boost the initial "I should try this" factor. I would recommend looking at sprite sheets for common videogames and see how many frames there might need to be, as well as there are some amazing walking/running character tutorials out there. It's suprisingly easy, once you learn the common motions of the body in respect to those activities.

[Miro]

Every rape discussion ever:
-Its bad to rape women in games
-But its ok to kill men!

Switching women to natives would be better. Also, its casual style is more suited for female gamers, so it would be as offensive, as "Faschist dicks in xeno world".

Not commenting on the rape thing anymore, since I feel that there are people who do not wish to talk about this matter anymore.

And yea, we'll mostly take that into a consideration. When I've presented the game idea to female gamers they haven't really been turned off by the fact. But I guess it's the fact how I've been presenting it, so they've kinda understood the humour and that we aren't even trying to be that serious. But we'll think about it.

And to Orihaus, it's either lazy or just effective. I see that we shouldn't always do thing the hard way, just so that we wouldn't use stereotypes. I see nothing false in the situation. In this case, the female is incapable to protect herself, and there could be multiple reasons for that. Maybe the pirates drugged them first (Doing this we'd probably be accused of promoting date-rape), or they are just physically weaker, or just simple fear to act against the pirates (Eventho they don't currently seem like it, since they feel safe in the village). I'd feel restricted if I couldn't portray these on a female character just because she's female. We also use stereotypical male characters, which in no way really gives males a good name. And you can't tell which gender the shaman is (Eventho I may have been referring to the Shaman as a he, but that just because I'm a male, the shaman is supposed to be the player).

[e_va]

Every rape discussion ever:
-Its bad to rape women in games
-But its ok to kill men!

Switching women to natives would be better. Also, its casual style is more suited for female gamers, so it would be as offensive, as "Faschist dicks in xeno world".

Not commenting on the rape thing anymore, since I feel that there are people who do not wish to talk about this matter anymore.

And yea, we'll mostly take that into a consideration. When I've presented the game idea to female gamers they haven't really been turned off by the fact. But I guess it's the fact how I've been presenting it, so they've kinda understood the humour and that we aren't even trying to be that serious. But we'll think about it.

And to Orihaus, it's either lazy or just effective. I see that we shouldn't always do thing the hard way, just so that we wouldn't use stereotypes. I see nothing false in the situation. In this case, the female is incapable to protect herself, and there could be multiple reasons for that. Maybe the pirates drugged them first (Doing this we'd probably be accused of promoting date-rape), or they are just physically weaker, or just simple fear to act against the pirates (Eventho they don't currently seem like it, since they feel safe in the village). I'd feel restricted if I couldn't portray these on a female character just because she's female. We also use stereotypical male characters, which in no way really gives males a good name. And you can't tell which gender the shaman is (Eventho I may have been referring to the Shaman as a he, but that just because I'm a male, the shaman is supposed to be the player).

[Miro]

Maybe if you change it to cavemen instead of pirates, you know, for "historical accuracy" and stuff  

Really, are we going to have this discussion in some guy's indie game thread? Why not take it to a post that already exists in the general thread, or make a new post? :3

Asked a few girl gamer buddies of mine if they would play this and they thought it was lawls, so I really think anyone taking offense and making it into a rape or morality thing is just trying to get some attention. Now, is that stuff an important topic not to be discounted? Yes. Yes it is. But maybe the focus should be directed at something that's not so obviously satire. That's what I see it as. Comical graphics and satire.

On to the graphics, I tend to agree that they're sortof a turn off as far as wanting to play. The background is actually quite good in my opinion, but I really hope that the pirate animations are up to par. If you can get some decent animations, even if it's frame animations, I think it will go a loooong way. The flickering death retro throwback is something I always like to see in games though.

Again, if you can make the animations more aesthetically pleasing, I think that would boost the initial "I should try this" factor. I would recommend looking at sprite sheets for common videogames and see how many frames there might need to be, as well as there are some amazing walking/running character tutorials out there. It's suprisingly easy, once you learn the common motions of the body in respect to those activities.

I'll do my best to work on the animations, since I'll may have some time to polish them. We seriously don't have that much time, as I've said before, and we use 10 frames for the animations currently, but we could probably ramp that up a bit, we just didn't want the spritesheet to be too large in size. It's for a mobile after all. And we had this animated tv show called pasila as reference (which has kinda similar cartoony character style), so we looked into that since I felt that it would be fast enough to do so.

[Fallsburg]

Asked a few girl gamer buddies of mine if they would play this and they thought it was lawls, so I really think anyone taking offense and making it into a rape or morality thing is just trying to get some attention.

Appeal to popularity. Try harder next time.

Now, is that stuff an important topic not to be discounted? Yes. Yes it is. But maybe the focus should be directed at something that's not so obviously satire. That's what I see it as. Comical graphics and satire.

Because a game making light of rape doesn't continue the rape culture that is a part of modern videogames.

[Miro]

We have some gameplay footage on youtube.



(Sorry for the rather bad quality)

That build still had some bugs, which you can also see in the preview. Now and then tapping the character made it fly somewhere extremely fast. That is currently fixed also. We are currently fixing last bugs and making last updates. We'll have a PC playable version 22. day. It most likely won't feature sound effects, which we'll add next month.

[Jammo]

Switching women to natives would be better.

Except everyone would jump down your throat for being racist... choose your poison.

I like boobs. And that's fine. I am a straight male, it's nature at its best to me. Everyone automatically goes to extremes about how this game could possible inspire rape or gender attitudes, but this will be a very very small (perhaps non existent) part of the market. Or if everyone continues to be offended, just have a gender switched game mode.

I don't mean to be devil's advocate and be inflammatory, but let's get it in perspective, we are getting offended over pixels that happen to be put together and move in a certain way, and which is obviously intended as a joke. I recommend those jumping to defend feminism and rape issue redirect their efforts to real issues that have more tangible consequences.

[Fallsburg]

Except everyone would jump down your throat for being racist... choose your poison.

Because it would be.  Somehow I think that a game about stealing people from their native land, might not be exactly culturally sensitive.

Everyone automatically goes to extremes about how this game could possible inspire rape or gender attitudes, but this will be a very very small (perhaps non existent) part of the market. Or if everyone continues to be offended, just have a gender switched game mode.

This isn't extremes.  It is a game about *wink,wink* *nudge,nude* rape.  Just because the word rape isn't there, it doesn't mean the threat of rape isn't. 

And doing the right thing isn't predicated on whether it will affect your bottom line.

I don't mean to be devil's advocate and be inflammatory, but let's get it in perspective, we are getting offended over pixels that happen to be put together and move in a certain way, and which is obviously intended as a joke. I recommend those jumping to defend feminism and rape issue redirect their efforts to real issues that have more tangible consequences.

Oh wow, you sure are right.  There exists injustice elsewhere in the world, so obviously no one should say anything against this. 
[/sarcasm]

Look, this game is a horrible idea.  It only serves to continue the rape culture of gaming.  Are there greater injustices in the world? Certainly.  But just because there are greater injustices doesn't make this any less of an injustice. 

So, climb down off your tower of male privilege and maybe try to learn a little empathy.  Perhaps you can understand a game making fun of one of, if not the most, traumatic experiences that a human being can undergo and survive is a horrible idea.

[moi]

give the guy a break and don't play the game if you don't like it ffs

[Fallsburg]

No, I won't. 

I expect better from everyone here.  It's probably fucking stupid, but here we are.

[Evan Balster]

Ah, I was hoping for the other kind of Boobies.



Ah well.

[Sakar]

Evan has the right idea

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

a suggestion: i think that if you're dead set on doing this game, then at the very least this game needs different sizes of breasts. most female breasts in games are abnormally large, it'd be nice to have a game that is more realistic. most games / comics are promoting the idea that only large breasts are attractive. i don't think there'd be as much controversy over this game if the woman in the animation had average or lower than average size breasts, it's just that they're cup size DDD or something that makes it distasteful

i'd also suggest better gameplay. the gameplay looks tiring on the fingers. you flick pirates away from the girl w/ your finger. that's it? no variety? it reminds me of those bad mini-games that were inside of ff4 for the ds, but even those were more fun than this looks from

. basically it looks like: do something, and then do it faster, and more and more pirates keep approaching until you lose? does anyone really enjoy games like that? that's worse gameplay than most atari 2600 games (and i owned an atari 2600 and have fond memories of it, so don't think i'm dissing that system or something)

suggestions for improvements to the gameplay:
- collisions; if you flick a pirate into another they should both be knocked away
- different kinds of enemies that require different kinds of motions to dispatch
- the ability to set traps, place barriers, cast "spells" (use special abilities), collect power-ups, etc., flicking pirates shouldn't be the only activity or the finger will get tired, there needs to be *something* to vary that
- different girls which affect different pirates differently (some move faster towards some girls and slower towards others)

[Gauss Jordan]

I can see how this game could be improved and actually take quite a clever stance in the debate of gender equality.

Give the game two modes - one where the lustful pirates are in for the women after all their manly ventures, and one where the indigenous population of only women try to cuddle up the pirates that just want to sleep under the palm trees.

The game could also benefit from a much cuter style. The game would only feel less awkward if the pirates looked a bit cuter and friendlier. For example, give one of them a print on his shirt with a heart with crossed bones behind. Emphasize on love instead of sex and control. Make the pirates hug the girls while smiling instead of carrying them away.

Also, let the girls be occupied with something instead of just standing there like fish out of water. Like, make them sit around a table drinking tea and playing cards. Maybe they actually want to give some love, just the don't want to be bothered right now.

Also, what Paul Eres said

[phubans]

1) Your objectification of women in this game isn't cool, but if you're going to go that route, you might as well put more effort into making them sexier and more visually appealing.

2) The graphics are derivative of a lot of other mobile games, but probably the game's strongest point.

3) The gameplay is probably the most lacking area of the game if all you're doing is flinging objects off the screen.

4) The music in the YouTube trailer was OK, but reminded me of a remixed version of Pop Goes the Weasel.

5) The "X vs Y" naming convention is very overused in indie games and doesn't speak well to your creativity or originality.

Are you sure you want to be making games? If yes, why? Is the answer because of money? If so, I think you should leave it to those who are passionate about the art of game development.

[DanFessler]

-removed old quote-
 

I'm sorry but wow.. that was probably the most asshole way to give critique I've ever seen in my life and is possibly more offensive than anything his game is offering.  Paul Eres gave much of the same critique but provided it in a constructive manner that is useful. In fact the vast majority of this thread has been blunt yet still a great and civil discussion. Why on earth can't people on this forum treat each other civilly?  Pixelation's #1 rule is "Don't be an ass" and I sorely miss it whenever I browse these forums.

Edit: this post is now irrelevant.

[phubans]

OK, I was annoyed with the subject material of the game and felt that it was cheap, uninspired, and boring. From both a technical and social standpoint, the game brings absolutely nothing new to the world. If anything, it only further supports the stereotype that gamers and game developers are sad misogynists that will objectify women at every turn.

As a developer it's frustrating to be buried among hundreds of bland, uninspired games that people only threw together to make a buck on the market, and let's not kid ourselves to think that this is really anything but that. It's an insult to the people who spent years pouring their heart & souls into a title to make something worthy of being shown to the world, only to have any effort dashed to the rocks when someone comes in right behind them with a game like "Pirates VS Boobies."

Yes, I was harsh, and I reworded my original message to be less harsh, but defending this game is defending the problem that will ultimately affect you; the dilution of the market and loss of visibility because anybody can make a game, but not everyone can make a good game.

[Jammo]

Yes, taking accusations of misogyny aside, it is a shame to see something so unoriginal on here. I'd like to think indie devs have more interesting ideas, and are a little more intellectual than mainstream counterparts

[Miro]

The game's name is Buccaneer Bombardment. The Pirates and boobies was just a working title.

And we do have 3 different kind of pirates, which all require different motion. And we are working on the special skills that will bring more variety to the gameplay and adding the collectible "treasures" that the pirates drop. We have now submitted the game to the Assembly 2012 gamedev competition, so few thousand people will hear of the game and get a chance to test it. Hopefully we'll get some feedback from the jury and the users.

And the game is supposed to be a no-brainer. We are aware that it's not the most original game out there and it's not even trying to be. We made the game because we had fun making it and the game is something we could do with our resources and skills (it's also part of our uni course). So we hope someone will enjoy a moment of it.

[Moczan]

@phubans: Oh, so now you are the judge which games deserve to have their DevLog and which don't? And all that whine when you make an iteration of Canabalt-style one-button game for mobile devices, with typical casual vector-graphics?