Dark Themes, Controversy and Why Meaning Matters

[Avery_Moore]

@sviyagin

I’ve read the HG publishing information, but it didn’t list specific information about market projections, so feel free to ignore this if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that it COG reviews a submitted HG game and determine that controversial themes (which do not violate the guidelines) negatively affect market projections to such an extent that releasing the game would be a monetary drain, then it would make sense to reject the game without updating guidelines.

I also think it’s worth pointing out that we’ve already been having a discussion on what exactly the guidelines means (what is glorification?), and COG’s interpretation of their own guidelines might differ from mine or yours, and ultimately we have to accept their interpretation since they are the ones publishing the game.

These are both extremely good points and I do agree with them both, but the point that I keep making is that, if there are controversial themes that HG don’t want to publish because it might negatively affect market projections (or for any other reason) then it is their responsibility to let the authors know what content is acceptable and what isn’t, so that that the author doesn’t waste several months (or years) of their life on a project that the company has no intention of publishing.

Again, just to make it extremely clear, I’m not saying that either CoG or HG fails to do this. In fact, I think they both do a very good job of letting the authors know what content they find acceptable and unacceptable.

@rinari

For what it’s worth, I think the company has any right whatsoever to reject any game they like, whether or not it abides by the stated guidelines: we do not have a right to be published, and they are not contractually obligated to spend resources on us to do anything whatsoever.

@rinari

To state that they’re “too professional” to ever do this feels underhanded.

Well, that’s true, I guess. Any publishing company has the right to refuse publication to any book/game for any reason and they have absolutely no obligation to even explain to the author why they were refused publication. I guess “professional” wasn’t really the right word to use in this instance… Not quite sure what the right word is, but I do not think that CoG/HG would deny publication to games containing a certain kind of content, without at least editting the guidelines to specify what sort of content they don’t want to see.