next »

[michaelplzno]

So I think we did "games are art" to death, and since games are art, where do you think the line is drawn for what isn't ok to depict?

I got in trouble in a gamedev community for joking that I had "size issues" via text when I was talking about how big my infinite terrain is. That was called "sexually explicit" and "thinly veiled" even though there were posts of art with powerful women in short skirts that to me seemed more titillating. Beginning to think no one wants me around?!? PLZNO.



These games will get ya banned on twitch, I just saw. Do you agree?

Games about racism and rape are really gross so I'm not (edit double negative)fighting banning those, but something like Genital Jousting just seems to be good-natured (<- this word is not in my spell check dictionary?) fun.

[Schoq]

no that's definitely sexually implicit

[michaelplzno]

I was told, in that case, the rules are all subjective so it seemed like I shouldn't use common definitions like "implicit" vs "explicit" to try to get out of it. It was implied heavily that one must be professional to be part of that community, which to their subjective view means you can only make jokes with your actual friends.

Anyway, where do you stand on the censorship debate? Are we entering an era where everything has to be Disney style 6y/o stuff?

[Schoq]

youtubers already need to bleep their swearwords to stay monetized so I'd say we're already there. I don't know if it's some investor dogma or lobbying from evangelicals driving this but there's definitely been a successful push to make every website child friendly.
I wouldn't connect this to private groups having rules and a culture where it's ok to post anime upskirts but not make a dick joke that could be from a pixar movie. (professional environments have a good reason to keep their creep radar tuned to very sensitive and I have no idea what kind of group you were in.)

[flowerthief]

A common problem with social media is that where the line is "drawn" is often not clear and creators aren't quite sure what will bring down the censorship hammer.

Censorship blows. It's one of my chief complaints with the internet today.

Though there are many things I don't want to see, at least those rape games do us the favor of having the word rape in their titles. If I clicked on them I'd only have myself to blame.

[michaelplzno]

The group I was in was called Boston Indies, I'm not so sure I'm going to leave or not, I wasn't banned, just told not to make dick jokes. Why their "creep radar" is so uptight I have no idea. I just posted some stuff with NSFW tags, I'll see if that's ok.

I worry that I'm going to mention size or measuring and that will be seen as inflammatory.

Now that I think about it, I did write a kind of a fuck you short story about how being too uptight ruins the fun of working in a creative field, so I guess I'm under double secret probation.

[woodsmoke]

I draw the line between the legs.

[DarkGran]

"Suck my dick or die!", exactly the name i wanted for my game xD .)

[michaelplzno]

I'm an advocate for consistent rules, yes. Though I'm told we are all subjective, what offends one may not offend others. And since we are all subjects of a subjective world, who's to say that anything is objectively funny or objectively offensive? That is, how can we have consistency when we are all unique delicate flowers? It seems impossible to object to anything.

I'm fairly bland in what I make, its hard to think I would be offensive to anyone, and yet, I really don't know what will trigger some groups. I literally made a match game called Matchy Star, about a cute star and friends taking care of pets. Who could that offend? I mean really. To some extent, my game's blandness is probably why I'm not as successful as I could be. If I made it so you could shoot the cute little star critters, that would probably get more clicks. "Matchy Bloodbath"

RE: Connecting the censorship of games vs censorship of groups where games are made: if professionals can't make certain types of jokes then work that includes that type of humor cannot be made in those groups. If you want to make it clear that your professional group isn't about making games, that's fine, but then whey are we there again? I'm not allowed to make games that have size jokes in them? Or if I do, I can't do it as part of the community there? Its a load of bullshit.

It's a bit like connecting soil and flowers. Some soil will not produce some types of flowers due to its composition. Once the plant is grown we can see that it may be poisonous or have thorns, and must be handled with care or removed from the ecosystem, but its another thing to try to make it so that it is impossible to grow some types of plants, or similarly, the idea that certain thoughts are verboten? that's problematic to say the least.

When we say that its wrong to think about size jokes as a form of art, but its ok to do art of a glorious woman's thighs in a short skirt, we are talking about controlling what kind of art can even be thought about. So there is a connection in my mind.