next »

[Peace Soft]

I want to shoplift! Devlog plz!

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=54378.msg1231283#msg1231283

The shoplifting interface needs some work though, because testing it i just found out it's possible to get caught on the same frame you leave the store and you just lose the stuff you took without any fanfare. That's a small part of the game though. It's just that the store has stuff that is useful to you, and you have no way of getting any money ever.

[nathy after dark]

The "Mash X to escape rape" quip earlier in the thread is not terribly hyperbolic at all. If the character is getting raped, there's no way to retain the things that make a game a game without doing the subject matter a disservice. And there's no way to portray the subject matter without doing the concept of a "game" a disservice.

I think this is where metaphor can come into play. Problem Attic (in my interpretation) portrays a rape scene such a way that the player isn't literally mashing X to escape (which would feel gamey, simplistic, and awful), but instead is placed into an abstract, hellish environment where agency is being taken away and the normal game mechanics are disrupted to make that level especially shocking and emotive. It's been a long time since I played it but I would recommend looking at that for a game that puts serious issues in a game while treating them respectfully through abstraction.

I haven't played it, but lots of people have mentioned Papo & Yo as another example of a game with mature subject matter portrayed with abstract game mechanics.

I should mention, though, that I am also one of the people who consider VNs "games," so I disagree with your idea that stripping away traditional game mechanics does the concept of "games" a disservice. That just seems like a narrow-minded and limiting way to think about game design.

Edit: And I emphatically agree with those who mentioned the importance of being well-informed about any serious issues one might want to address in a game.

[Peace Soft]

That makes me want to ask yall - do you think when you're portraying serious issues, you should stick exclusively to what you have firsthand experience with, or is it OK to make a good-faith effort to pass on somebody else's story, knowing you probably won't get it 100% accurate?

Personally I think the latter is OK because it's a worthy pursuit to give a shit about what is going on in the world around you, especially to your loved ones and the members of your community, and to add your voice to causes you care about because you are a human being with like at least a shred of empathy. It's still important above all to listen to those who know for real and not just base your treatment of the issue on your own preconceptions.

If you feel differently I'd like to hear what you have to say though.

[voidSkipper]

That makes me want to ask yall - do you think when you're portraying serious issues, you should stick exclusively to what you have firsthand experience with, or is it OK to make a good-faith effort to pass on somebody else's story, knowing you probably won't get it 100% accurate?

Personally I think the latter is OK because it's a worthy pursuit to give a shit about what is going on in the world around you, especially to your loved ones and the members of your community, and to add your voice to causes you care about because you are a human being with like at least a shred of empathy. It's still important above all to listen to those who know for real and not just base your treatment of the issue on your own preconceptions.

If you feel differently I'd like to hear what you have to say though.

We would live in a very boring world if everyone only wrote what they'd experienced firsthand.

I think it's fine to write about things you haven't experienced as long as you do it earnestly, endeavour to be informed about it, and graciously accept criticism from those who have experience in the matter.

[Peace Soft]

Yeah that occurred to me after I'd written that -- I was gonna be like "well I could just write about fantasy warfare or superheroes or--" except, oh shit, war and violent crime are also real things that happen to real people, and it's only because we're so so gorged on fake media images of these things that it seems OK or "inoffensive" to turn them into flat stereotypical cartoons of themselves.

[oahda]

Which is why I really wish people would think more about including violence and stuff into games by default, usually presenting it in a nonchalant or even positive fashion. Glorified, even. I think people should think more about how that ties into the real world and experiences that are very real and quite uncomfortable to some people. Is it really respectful? Is it really the best representation?

But I dare not usually bring this up, because people tend to jump to kneejerk defenses like "games don't cause violence" even tho I didn't even suggest that. But I can probably expect more nuanced responses from people here, so here goes...

I think it's a very interesting question. Even some advocates of progressive content in games who would never accept "it's just a game" to defend sexist misrepresentations of people in games often seem to fall back to "it's just a game" when violence is offered as a subject to consider more in depth. I really wonder why. I really want to learn more about how people think about this sort of stuff, but it's hard to bring up very often because of how upset people get and I can't be bothered.

[Schoq]

I really want to learn more about how people think about this sort of stuff,

here's my not very well formulated feeling: depictions of violence as such don't bother me but the context may. I don't feel uncomfortable with say, the modern warfare games because computer people get shot, but because they glorify western military intervention in a pretty creepy way that feels out of place in a game about running around blasting things.
slaughtering 1000 orcs or demons or cartoon enemy soldiers won't trigger any reaction when it's violence so far removed from reality, on the other hand that danish domestic abuse awareness game made me feel awful and gave me a lump in my throat

[Peace Soft]

I think people should think more about how that ties into the real world and experiences that are very real and quite uncomfortable to some people. Is it really respectful? Is it really the best representation?

...

Even some advocates of progressive content in games who would never accept "it's just a game" to defend sexist misrepresentations of people in games often seem to fall back to "it's just a game" when violence is offered as a subject to consider more in depth. I really wonder why. I really want to learn more about how people think about this sort of stuff, but it's hard to bring up very often because of how upset people get and I can't be bothered.

Right? I think people get defensive because game worlds are made out of basically honors high school math and things knockin' into each other forcefully is the most dynamic kind of interaction they're set up to handle. There are exceptions-- Dwarf Fortress sometimes has really cool emergent interactions based on the way the dwarves feel (and, hey, the way they feel, and therefore act, has a whole lot to do with their material conditions, how about that)-- but that stuff isn't voiced, there's no dialogue, the game tells you what happens but doesn't represent how in the same level of detail that like God of War does with violence.

I get you though. God of War in particular, I had to stop playing that because it felt too sadistic. It already seems like a relic of that Abu Ghraib era when chinstrap beards and sadism were real hot. But then Doom came out last month with its Bind Torture Kill system or whatever for getting HP back so... On the other hand, I thought Metal Gear Solid V did an unusually good job with violence; you can have so many more nuanced interactions with the soldiers than just killing them, and killing them is horribly final.

IMO if I'm going to portray violence against realistic living beings I'm going to portray it as ugly and frightening, regardless of why the story says it's happening. Like, in Lonely Star, if you want to kill and eat an animal, you have to bleed and skin and clean and dismember it. I hope that it'll make people consider what they're doing, but maybe it'll just become routine to them. Although even that would be true to life, I guess.

[nathy after dark]

IMO if I'm going to portray violence against realistic living beings I'm going to portray it as ugly and frightening, regardless of why the story says it's happening. Like, in Lonely Star, if you want to kill and eat an animal, you have to bleed and skin and clean and dismember it. I hope that it'll make people consider what they're doing, but maybe it'll just become routine to them. Although even that would be true to life, I guess.

That's really awesome. Do you have a devlog?

This might be obvious but I think Undertale is a fantastic example of a recent game to subvert player expectations about violence and treat it with the honest gravity it deserves.

[Peace Soft]

That's really awesome. Do you have a devlog?

This might be obvious but I think Undertale is a fantastic example of a recent game to subvert player expectations about violence and treat it with the honest gravity it deserves.

Yeah! https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=54378.0 There's a demo up too but the current version is a little glitchy, I'm working on a patch right now.

Undertale did do a really good job and I don't know why I forgot about that.

[vaaasm]

I was actually having a similar conversation earlier today. We were talking about say like, some indie movies, have incredibly graphic scenes. I think that more content should raise awareness towards certain social issues, but I think it becomes a problem when it almost feels like a way to make the player uncomfortable.

Like let's say idk, in cod:mw2 there's this one scene where you play undercover along with terrorists, and you just kinda walk along with these dudes around the airport while they're shooting people (at least the player doesn't HAVE to kill anyone, but they still can which is kinda scary). The player is actually FORCED to walk around the beginning of this level, and can't kill the terrorists ('cause you're undercover).

So that kinda sucked. It made me feel pretty darn uncomfortable when I played it. The problem is that when your statement just becomes drowned by all the shock-factor, its kind of lost its value. It's crazy forced.

There's always a lot of game talk about violence and it's pretty recurring, and there's plenty of games that try to send a good message on that note. But what I'd like to see is more games that addresses problems like racism and sexism in a very casual and meaningful way, instead of it being forced. And I feel that the issue with that is that, like the topic states, right now it'd be kind of hard to step up like that without having your fanbase call you an "sjw" or whatever.

[voidSkipper]

The CoD example was quite interesting, because it definitely seemed to be trying to at least say something.

Usually in CoD games, you shoot the enemy and they die. Until they die, the fearlessly attack you. However, in that scene, we had people crawling leaving trails of blood, people trying to pull injured loved ones away from the shooters, uninjured people running away from the violence.

The stark contrast is apparant because in CoD games (and most other shooting games), your enemies always seem to be willing - perhaps even eager - to die. They die cleanly, and there are thousands other that look like them. It never feels like much of a crime to gun them down.

So, what were they trying to achieve with that scene? I doubt it was any particuar "war is bad" message - probably they were trying to make the bad guys look as bad as possible, so gunning them down in droves felt even more justifiable.

[oahda]

Thanks for offering some great thoughts and replies. Don't see that very often!