i havent played Boyfriend Dungeon nor do i play dating sims but
that doesn't stop me from having a fully formed opinion on the matter!
the trigger warning stalking incident sounds like a classic case of betraying expectations.
reminds me of stuff Chris Zukowski has said at GDC talks
**video games "Promise" to "Deliver" a certain experience.
Genre, Name, Key Art, Screenshots, and even UI all telegraph that experience.
if a game breaks it's "Promise" or fails to "Deliver" players will generally feel betrayed.**
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMGTcgsEN68
Boyfriend Dungeon is an aesthetically pleasing, cute, queer coded, narrative driven game.
real life danger of stalking and emotional manipulation breaks it's "Promise" of being cute and safe.
unfortunately, not sure any amount of editing of the Content Warning will remedy this,
as everything about the game is telegraphing the opposite of the real life danger.
best solution may be celeste style fine-tuned menu checkbox.
</s><i> </i>as developers we want to subvert expectations and hate being boxed into a genre. as humans we love to categorize and classify things. as consumers we need genres to browse a curated experience. <i> </i><e>
@“UnparalleledDev”#p41852 Boyfriend Dungeon is an aesthetically pleasing, cute, queer coded, narrative driven game.
> real life danger of stalking and emotional manipulation breaks it’s “Promise” of being cute and safe.
I'm watching the game's trailer now, the player literally fights a giant house fly. While the general in game art style could be considered cute, I'm not sure I would say the same about the character portraits.
Even so, I dont think a game being queer coded or narrative driven should signal it as being "safe". Even the fact that it's a romance game shouldn't signal this. Developers should be able to explore mature themes in romance and queer games, this helps the medium evolve and expand.
@“exodus”#p41813 I did mess about GB studio a couple weeks back just to see what I could figure out while poking around, but that maybe doesn't seem like the right tool for the days of thunder idea.
still it was fun to have a lot of little 'a-ha' moments.
@“esper”#p41394 What are some mundane activities that would make good simulator games? (21:19)
Has anyone had any experience with that The Magnificent Truffle Pigs game? It's published by AMC (the film channel) and appears to be only the second thing they've published, made by the lead designer of Everybody's Gone to Rapture (which I also didn't play). But point being, it's a Firewatch-like kinda narrative-on-a-walkie-talkie deal, but the gameplay hook is that you're using a metal detector to discover stuff in a field in the English countryside. And that seems like a supremely satisfying mundane activity to me.
Interesting that it's fairly straightforward to draw a hard line to not including a 'turn off emotionally challenging content' option in regards to preserving artistic intent, but also 'all games should include easy modes as a matter of accessibility' is simultaneously a thing. Yes I am drawing a false equivalence, but it did make me go 'hmm'.
Not looking to derail discussion here so just take me with a grain of salt and ignore me because I will NOT argue back if you disagree. I'm warning you!
@“esper”#p41394 How, when, and where should games present content warnings? (36:39)
While I do think that with the prevalence of smart phones, Jaffe’s idea about a lookup site database for triggers has some merit; However, I have another idea: What if PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, Epic, etc. all had a section in account setup for you to fill out and check off boxes for triggers you want to be alerted to? That way, for instance, Steam would alert you on the product page for Boyfriend Dungeon about the content in it that you may be triggered by. It could be a part of the process that all games have to go through to get listed on stores. These could even be hidden tags on games that would potentially be spoiled by the information.
There’s all kinds of account preferences in apps these days that easily optimize your experience. I think content trigger warnings could be handled by this kind of thing, but of course it would depend entirely upon how well implemented it is.
@“Syzygy”#p43092 I didn’t even think of that! not sure if anything bad would come of it, but could be potentially interesting data to have… I would hope that it would only guide the creation of games that more people would like maybe?
I get that nobody likes data about them being kept… it weirds me out, but at the same time, I don’t think anything bad necessarily comes of it. It’s typically just used to get a sense of the overall market. Steam surveys help guide game optimization (minimum/recommended specs devs optimize games for) for instance.
Idk… I get both sides of that issue though. Hard to win. Can’t please everyone all the time I guess?