Goodbye Kickstarter

I think it's OK to get squeamish about the implication of sex with underage girls.

WipEout wrote:

How many instances of tentacle-sex imagery and media depict the women as willing parties?

There's one!

If you want to take this a step further than lets take a game in the market that is loved: DnD or Dungeons and Dragons. DnD starts with picking from a series of psychotic murderers. Once picked you enter a dungeon filled with people who are different. You enter their home and start stealing their gold and shiny things. They notice your looting and ask you to leave. When you ignore their idle chatter they swing their sword at you and your job is to kill them. Your reward in the end is bring peace to the land. Sounds like a justified home invasion to me.

Would this game be much more palatable if the object was for a tentacle to get more "friends"?

CheezePavilion wrote:
WipEout wrote:

How many instances of tentacle-sex imagery and media depict the women as willing parties?

To be fair, those are her tentacles.

Sku Boi wrote:

Would this game be much more palatable if the object was for a tentacle to get more "friends"?

I thought the difference between violence and rape had been explained a few different ways over the last few pages.

Sku Boi wrote:

If you want to take this a step further than lets take a game in the market that is loved: DnD or Dungeons and Dragons. DnD starts with picking from a series of psychotic murderers. Once picked you enter a dungeon filled with people who are different. You enter their home and start stealing their gold and shiny things. They notice your looting and ask you to leave. When you ignore their idle chatter they swing their sword at you and your job is to kill them. Your reward in the end is bring peace to the land. Sounds like a justified home invasion to me.

If that's your D&D experience, you need a much better DM.

wordsmythe wrote:

I think it's OK to get squeamish about the implication of sex with underage girls.

That's a bold stand to take in this thread. Are you sure you don't want to retract that?

sex with underage girls is worst than murder.

wordsmythe wrote:
Sku Boi wrote:

If you want to take this a step further than lets take a game in the market that is loved: DnD or Dungeons and Dragons. DnD starts with picking from a series of psychotic murderers. Once picked you enter a dungeon filled with people who are different. You enter their home and start stealing their gold and shiny things. They notice your looting and ask you to leave. When you ignore their idle chatter they swing their sword at you and your job is to kill them. Your reward in the end is bring peace to the land. Sounds like a justified home invasion to me.

If that's your D&D experience, you need a much better DM.

Let me be clear: DnD is Call of Duty: Men at Arms. This evil was fine in its dungeon. You dont need to invade or vanquish foes.

But I was being serious about my question. If the idea of the game was to rehabilitate the tentacles image and in order to accomplish this he needed to befriend high school girls, in a platonic manner of course. Who ever has the most friends is the most popular tentacle at school.

Would this idea change the game? I don't think so and it would make the premise all the more hilarious.

Sku Boi wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
Sku Boi wrote:

If you want to take this a step further than lets take a game in the market that is loved: DnD or Dungeons and Dragons. DnD starts with picking from a series of psychotic murderers. Once picked you enter a dungeon filled with people who are different. You enter their home and start stealing their gold and shiny things. They notice your looting and ask you to leave. When you ignore their idle chatter they swing their sword at you and your job is to kill them. Your reward in the end is bring peace to the land. Sounds like a justified home invasion to me.

If that's your D&D experience, you need a much better DM.

Let me be clear: DnD is Call of Duty: Men at Arms. This evil was fine in its dungeon. You dont need to invade or vanquish foes.

But I was being serious about my question. If the idea of the game was to rehabilitate the tentacles image and in order to accomplish this he needed to befriend high school girls, in a platonic manner of course. Who ever has the most friends is the most popular tentacle at school.

Would this idea change the game? I don't think so and it would make the premise all the more hilarious.

But there is a difference between a purely abstract game (Go, Mastermind) and a game with a theme or narrative. That additional context does meaningful work.

I guess the ultimate point that I am making is that with a little imagination we can take an INCOMPLETE and UNFINISHED game and put our dollars and comments towards that.

When the designer himself says things about the game like "We can grab poor Sydney, drag her to the classroom, and we have ourselves a 'cram session'" while biting his lip, or that the player can "take a sexy student to the headmaster's office, and then get slippery when wet," he's kind of throwing out your innocuous idea of poor misunderstood tentacles making friends.

Were the game's premise based on your idea (making friends rather than raping them), you might have something. As it is designed, it's about rape. Even if rape isn't the primary goal (or even a performed action) of the gameplay, the "hilarious" implication of rape is the driving force.

WipEout wrote:

When the designer himself says things about the game like "We can grab poor Sydney, drag her to the classroom, and we have ourselves a 'cram session'" while biting his lip, or that the player can "take a sexy student to the headmaster's office, and then get slippery when wet," he's kind of throwing out your innocuous idea of poor misunderstood tentacles making friends.

Were the game's premise based on your idea (making friends rather than raping them), you might have something. As it is designed, it's about rape. Even if rape isn't the primary goal (or even a performed action) of the gameplay, the "hilarious" implication of rape is the driving force.

I get it. I believe lots of people get that idea. Would changing the context from rape to platonic friendship change the game to you?

WipEout wrote:

Christ-- people keep bringing up the "what about violence" argument. The big difference is that physical violence has real-world consequences for the perpetrators-- there are strong laws and morals in place within our society that demonize violent acts. Thus, cartoon violence and depictions of violence are purely fantasy that are largely kept within the realm of fantasy.

WipEout wrote:
LarryC wrote:

It seems to me that the two are linked. Of course, I'm not really fully conversant with American culture. I don't know why Tom and Jerry are acceptable in any way. I get horrified just watching it.

See, you would think that, but being the United States of America, we glorify violence and consider sex the taboo-est of the taboo.

I think this is why violence is brought up: our cultural edicts are nontrivially unresolved. I predict that August 3, before I'm 30 minutes into The Bourne Legacy, I'll be fantasizing about kicking someone's ass for the sake of kicking someone's ass. Why? . I'm sure we all have some guesses, and I'm certainly not alone: it's the fourth installment in a very successful movie franchise. The violence in the movies is generally practical if aggrandized. This isn't a Schwartzenegger movie, after all.

It seems pretty clear that, at least in the U S of A, we do not only demonize nor only glorify violence, and further, that we don't have a consistently rational approach to it. I can't wait to see the x-ray gunshot violence in Max Payne, but I don't like my kids being angrily violent toward one another even given it's mild (they're young and are not yet predisposed). We publically abhor the violence of Columbine, but I intuit that ratings for its coverage was very high and it still may carry some of that weight in popular media references. Moreover, Michael Douglas epitomized the stereotypical "nice man who is pushed too far" in Falling Down and the movie was relatively successful, even if his character was not clearly justified in his actions. I heard someone reference it the other day, if I recall correctly, to characterize their impending behavior if a frustrating situation continued, so the archetype the movie portrayed would seem currently relevant.

The fact that real-world violence has consequences, legal and otherwise, doesn't imply we aren't irrational about it, culturally. We are at least an order of magnitude more irrational in our treatment of sexual abuse, but we don't deal consistently with either. The areas of overlap relevant to this discussion may be constrained but they exist.

I agree the action cards are named after school (or loosely school-related) activities, many of which have double entendre and innuendo. However, the demo I watched indicated the activity is the pretext you use, not some kind of "molestation method". At least, that's what the few activity cards I've seen have indicated. Yes, he says it a bit suggestively, playing it up to the camera, except kind of gets the timeline reversed (saying you drag them into a room for the action contradicts the rules explanation from their kickstarter video). And what's sexually suggestive about "talent show" or "final exams", which are also action cards? I think his (deliberate?) choice of some of the more salacious action cards has definitely skewed perceptions of the game as a whole.

In Saints Row the Third there is a part where someone is raped and a part where you can sell girls in sex slavery or keep them as your slaves.

Aaaaaand there's a new addition to the list of reasons why I will never play a Saints Row game! Aside from the blatant, senseless violence and dildoes. Mind you, I'm not a Family Guy or South Park fan either, really, so dick and fart humor, while amusing to me in small doses, isn't something I'll revel in.

Also, Volition and THQ did not crowdsource their funding on a third party site. Lot's of people boycott studios and publishers for all sorts of reasons, just as people had issues with Kickstarter and Soda Pop Miniatures for this game. Sometimes the people raising those issues are able to drive a change in the product or publisher, as they did here.

Uh. I don't remember a rape occurring in SR3. Remind me?

To be clear on the context of the sex slavery bit: This is after you've flown across town with the hookers in question hanging out of a freight container being carried by a helicopter. (Yes, it's offensive. Just like pretty much everything else in SR3. Like the pony-drawn carriages, for example. It's probably the thing that was most offensive after passing through the "what would a world really be like if the three pillars of the economy really [em]were[/em] sex, drugs, and guns" filter.)

I have seen a card that looks like it has the roles reversed, where a girl with heart-eyes has cornered a surprised monster. If there are more instances of that, or some other indication that the girls are consenting to being "collected", it would support the claim that it's really a satire of the genre. The comments he makes during the video make me think it's very likely that's not the case though.

I ultimately think that as distasteful as the game is, it shouldn't be banned or censored. However, I do agree that with those that think it's dangerous. However I don't think the danger it poses is anywhere near enough to warrant banning/censoring it. Putting aside the question of why the tentacles are capturing the girl, it promotes the idea that consent isn't important, and that women are objects to be used for what men (or male stand-ins in this case) want.

I was the guy on an old Rabbitcon Conference Call who made a big deal about slavery mechanics in board games, RUINING EVERYONE'S FUN.

Hypatian wrote:

Uh. I don't remember a rape occurring in SR3. Remind me?

The auto tune guy is forced into sex. You don't see it but he pretty much states what happens. Also I would say everyone in that club was raped or at least some of them were even though you didn't see it. They were basically being held against their will. Also I think your character was raped before the part you wake up nude and drugged, it is implied any way.

Baron Of Hell wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

Uh. I don't remember a rape occurring in SR3. Remind me?

The auto tune guy is forced into sex. You don't see it but he pretty much states what happens. Also I would say everyone in that club was raped or at least some of them were even though you didn't see it. They were basically being held against their will. Also I think your character was raped before the part you wake up nude and drugged, it is implied any way.

Yeah, and I think that line there has the most unfortunate implications. It gets a little bit of a pass for being 150% satire, but still. It's one thing to have a part that I'd rather skip, it's another to have an entire game based around it. (And it did dent my opinion of the game more than a little.)

I mean, we are also talking about a game that is ridiculously self-aware and about as serious as a cartoon. They were going for refuge in audacity. And, with better execution, it'd have been fine.

For example, in both cases, you, a walking WMD, are turned loose on the people responsible for it, so it's not exactly glorified. I'd have appreciated the main character doing one of those hilarious melee takedowns on the character who got them into the latter, though. He was most definitely not on my good side. Or, you know, have one of the NPCs call them out on it. Most of what bugged me was that it was played for laughs then ignored. I can't fault the attempt at taking a bite out of it with satire, that's what satire is _for_. It was just poorly done.

wordsmythe wrote:

I was the guy on an old Rabbitcon Conference Call who made a big deal about slavery mechanics in board games, RUINING EVERYONE'S FUN.

Heh, I remember that. I think Puerto Rico in particular received quite a bit of scrutiny, yes?

Minarchist wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

I was the guy on an old Rabbitcon Conference Call who made a big deal about slavery mechanics in board games, RUINING EVERYONE'S FUN.

Heh, I remember that. I think Puerto Rico in particular received quite a bit of scrutiny, yes?

Peurto Rico for its workers being collectable brown tokens, Endeavor for explicitly coding one deck of cards as investment in the slave trade.

LobsterMobster wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

The game isn't just icky and gross. It's dangerous.

Yeah, just like comic books.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/ppgXg.jpg)

Oh please.

Care to elaborate? I think it's too apt a comparison to dismiss so easily.

Sorry, after a few occasions in P&C where people have insisted on arguing with things I didn't say I've developed the nasty habit of walking away from discussions that can be worth having. So I'll elaborate now, despite the ship having sailed.

I think it's fallacious to take a comment made about a specific example of a medium and extrapolate it to the entire of another. I said that one specific game risks dangerously trivialising sexual violence, I didn't say all games do.

The CCA demonised an entire medium based on nothing more than distaste. If a comic, book, movie or game trivialises sexual violence I'll be equally critical of that while not applying that criticism to examples that don't.

Even if it is dangerous, is it dangerous enough to ban (or criminalize)?

Stengah wrote:

Even if it is dangerous, is it dangerous enough to ban (or criminalize)?

Nope, and I would never say that. What I would say, but not so eloquently, is:

Switchbreak wrote:

That good people can and may and should object to oppression in any form when they see it should be a given.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
Stengah wrote:

Even if it is dangerous, is it dangerous enough to ban (or criminalize)?

Nope, and I would never say that. What I would say, but not so eloquently, is:

Switchbreak wrote:

That good people can and may and should object to oppression in any form when they see it should be a given.

That might be where the confusion is coming in. You comment about it being dangerous was made in response to Malor posting about disagreeing with laws that criminalize virtual sexual violence (specifically about virtual child pornography, but also the rape of cartoon characters). In that context, it sounds like you're agreeing that virtual sexual violence (at least this instance of it) should be criminalized, not because you don't like it, but because you think it's dangerous.