Dark Themes, Controversy and Why Meaning Matters

[Cataphrak]

@MahatmaDagon

We wanted to explore dark themes, but we tried not to glorify them or just use them for shock value. I don’t know to what degree we succeeded in doing it, but it was something that was always on our minds when making the game.

I do think, based on feedback, that we managed to make a “dark themed” game that scared/surprised people without offending or disrespecting them.

I think this touches on why simply relying on the guidelines as the only hard and fast metric for whether a game is “acceptable for publication” or not doesn’t work.

Ultimately, any curation system based entirely on the assumption that the guidelines in question can be objectively understood and adhered to is going to fail, especially when it comes to something like diverse and multifaceted as interactive fiction. Sure, you can create concrete rules over what qualifies as “glorifying racism”, for example, but any concrete rule can be intentionally or unintentionally circumvented. Likewise, works might just as easily violate the letter of the guideline without violating its spirit. It’d be trivially easy to use racist dogwhistles and innuendo to write around any strictly prescriptive “you can’t say this or that” rule, just as it’d be trivially easy to violate the letter of it.

I’ve written a lot of very ugly scenes, which comes with writing in a setting which is casually racist and sexist and a genre in which it’s all-too easy to revel in acts of murder, but I’d like to think that I’ve succeeded in placing those actions and attitudes in a context where it is made clear how and why those things are antithetical to any kind of society that most human beings would want to live in.

But a concrete set of “don’t say these words, don’t use these phrases” rules won’t be able to pick up on that context. If those were the only rules by which CoG and HG judged the suitability of content for publication, I would certainly not be doing this as my day job.

What I’m saying is that it takes human curation to judge the merit of a work as complex as a CoG or an HG, and while those curators (be they beta readers or CoG staff) are certainly subjective in their view of your work’s merit, so are you. Your authorial vision is not perfect. Your potential fans have the right to critique it, and take actions reflecting their opinion of it. CoG likewise has the right to choose not to publish your work for any reason they want before you sign your contract.

If you take issue with the decisions of your curators, that’s fine, you have that right too. You can take your ball and go home. But if you want CoG to expend the time and effort and resources to publish your work, and if you want people to expend their time and effort and resources to buy your work, then you have to find some way to compromise that authorial vision to make it fit - and in my experience, the CoG team have never been anything less than considerate and conscientious in making sure the resulting compromise is the best one that could be made given the circumstances.

[MahatmaDagon]

Dude. I really don’t know what you are trying to say. I was just talking about my own experience and clarifying some stuff.

[malinryden]

@Cataphrak

If you take issue with the decisions of your curators, that’s fine, you have that right too. You can take your ball and go home. But if you want CoG to expend the time and effort and resources to publish your work, and if you want people to expend their time and effort and resources to buy your work, then you have to find some way to compromise that authorial vision to make it fit - and in my experience, the CoG team have never been anything less than considerate and conscientious in making sure the resulting compromise is the best one that could be made given the circumstances.

THIS! Best comment.

I am touching on some darker themes in Fallen Hero, and they (and my testers) have never been anything but the most helpful to me. I would advise anyone that’s worried about their premise to just talk to them about it. Anything that are just scenes crossing any lines can be adjusted after input, that wouldn’t invalidate an entire game.

Honestly, I’m a lot more worried about the apple store…

[Cataphrak]

@MahatmaDagon

Dude. I really don’t know what you are trying to say. I was just talking about my own experience and clarifying some stuff.

I’m saying that trying to rely entirely on concrete guidelines to determine whether a work is “fit for publication” or not leaves no space for works that try to explore dark themes in a respectful manner (like yours), which is why it’s necessary to have human beings (be they beta readers or CoG staff) to make those decisions during the writing and submission processes so that there will be space for those works.

[poison_mara]

I have to say you personally are very considerate when comes feedback from people worried. I could be very critical with Cog close beta system I don’t like it. However, In few cases when I felt during betas that some scene of character could trigger some doubt of being out of guidelines of Cog They were fast and swift in change certain stuff and the authors were really thankful like heather.

In my book to writing be consider art has to have merit and the scene fill a purpose if you author in general, include an abuse rape or edgy stuff with all details just because… that’s pure utter pornography a lust for violent scenes and fame and triggering people. That is trivialize the theme, and destroy most of artistic theme. And no I am not talking of MMM as I think is a piece of art even if I personally won’t read it because triggers me deeply.

[AChubbyBlackCat]

@MahatmaDagon - Highlands was a great game, and I’ll never get tired of playing it, so kudos to you!

Anyway, I think that the hints at the two sexual predators “fit” within the game’s context. The main focus broadened into the Cthulhu-like mythos, but it didn’t completely overshadow the fact that sometimes… truth is stranger - and scarier - then fiction. And in the case of Highlands, the paranoia of what the victims of the sexual predators went through is enough to haunt the minds of the readers.

[RETowers]

@MeltingPenguins

Take as example Heroes Rise:

I mean, I’m not certain what you’re asking in the context of? Like if you’re asking my personal thoughts, they’re pretty cool dark ideas that I wish had been expanded on. If you’re asking in the scope of HG appropriateness, I don’t see how any of those would even begin to meet an offensiveness standard. (But assuming there was a game that did imply things that met a grossly offensive standard, well, we don’t ask authors about what their works say when we review them, we just read them, so WoG means jack all.)

@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.

Here’s the funny thing to me. In practice, we’ve never even gone even that far (at least since I’ve been hired). When something is grossly offensive (or otherwise not suitable for publishing) we outline to the author what’s wrong with it, and ask them to change it. (Occasionally when it’s one specific thing that just requires a word change, or a sentence or two to be cut, I’ll just do the change, send it back, and say ‘this was changed to meet guidelines, or would you prefer to handle it a different way’ to speed up the process.)

I’ve never said to an author “we won’t publish your work,” the most I’ve said is “we won’t publish it unless you make these changes.” (w/exception for legal complexities)

@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.

Here’s the thing with this, we don’t not publish things because they are controversial. I mean, if we were going to worry about that, we’d have stricter quality control with regards to writing quality long before that. It’s not about rejecting games because they won’t do well, it’s about removing things that we find morally objectionable.

@AChubbyBlackCat

It interesting to note that this penchant for ‘dark and gritty themes’ is the ‘new thing’ nowadays in the other forms of media i.e. movies, comic books, tv shows (the newest iteration of Titans comes to mind).

I mean, this is cyclical, isn’t it? “Dark” goes in an out of fashion like everything else.

@Ramidel

Well, I don’t think Slammed! would be Slammed! without its villain: the very archetype of the narcissistic, sexist, entitled asshole. Paul Prototype works because he’s a caricature, and his discriminatory traits are part of what make us love to hate him.

Here’s the thing: I believe this works in this case because he’s a caricature of a specific kind of real world wrestler, one that is still represented in the world today. He’s the “old school,” and the those wrestlers often times really do embody those traits. It’s not meaningless in that case.

@Jacic

I’m not sure if this is the right place to ask this, and if it might be a case by case situation, but I was wondering if there’s anything else specific content wise that would prevent a HG from being accepted for publication.

Only three times IIRC: 1) refusing to sign a contract, 2) game is too linear (specifically there was a wide branch at the beginning, but right after a third of the way in, at about the buy point, there were no more choices, i.e. it would be the epitome of a deceptive demo, so they were told to add some actual choice to the end, on par with the amount of choice in the beginning), 3) game was unintelligible.

[MeltingPenguins]

@RETowers

@MeltingPenguins

Take as example Heroes Rise:

I mean, I’m not certain what you’re asking in the context of? Like if you’re asking my personal thoughts, they’re pretty cool dark ideas that I wish had been expanded on. If you’re asking in the scope of HG appropriateness, I don’t see how any of those would even begin to meet an offensiveness standard. (But assuming there was a game that did imply things that met a grossly offensive standard, well, we don’t ask authors about what their works say when we review them, we just read them, so WoG means jack all.)

Thinking about it more, I think what I was going for is the question:
At which point should testers definitely go and say
‘hey, X sounds as if it means this and that is going on. Is that intended, because that’s really unsettling/etc’
if only to clarify what was intended.

I know I did things like this without intending them (e.g. making it sound as if a characters was crying instead of just being embarrassed over accidentally making people think they were having an affair with another character), and threw them out/reworded them.

And I agree the subtext themes in HR would have been cool to explore.

[Jacic]

Thanks for clearing that up @RETowers

[GoldenSilver]

@RETowers

I totally agree. I enjoy exploring dark and horrific worlds, but I’d day the majority of people that end up writing these kinds of worlds end up writing things that don’t actually explore them, but instead just brush the surface for the sake of “controversy” and fail to fully realize the meaning behind things. Without a grounding in the real world, “edgy” and “dark” just falls flat. (The most recent good, dark, world I’ve seen is Get Out .)

This is an interesting thing to discuss and I actually brought it up on the Discord channel a few days ago. I disagree with what you’ve said but I may not be understanding exactly what your stance is though. For example, let’s imagine a story has racism and slavery (based on slavery era US) which I imagine is considered a controversial subject.

First what do you consider “exploring”? Because during that discussion people were considering any sort of “implictly or explicitly displaying a stance about the issue” (as if racism appeared in the story, any way of stating it being bad behavior means the issue was “explored”) and that seems more like a “nod” than some actual exploring.

@RETowers

So, all that said, we’re…no, perhaps here I should change to I am not against controversial topics, Ijust don’t put any stock in shock value for shock value’s sake. If someone was to write a story involving rape that 1) didn’t glorify it and make the player empathize with the rapist, and 2) actually went in and explored what that meant, and had a meaning and purpose, then that would be, well actually something I could get behind,

But going back to this part, do you mean that if this controversy appears at any time in the story like say in a minor or background role, if it wasn’t explored it would have been badly written?

For the example I said above about slavery, let’s imagine a story where some sort of medical doctor that is in a hurry visits some rich guy who lives in a big house and owns slaves. The doctor is greeted at the door by a slave and since he is in a hurry he quickly talks to the house owner about something important and leaves; the doctor does not question or comment at all about the slaves and no mention of slaves is seen again on the story.

Would you consider this as being something that had slavery for shock value and didn’t “explore” it?

You also mentioned purpose, but one could argue that it would be historically accurate so purpose is there; is it still negative because the controversial issue wasn’t “explored”?

The thing that comes to mind here is that if it should be like this, then it could be problematic as it would almost mean any sort of controversial issue must be shifted to be the focus of the story or at least take some time to be explored and the story may simply not be about that. I’m not saying one cannot explore or make commentary on controversial issues, I just don’t see why it is required.

[Gower]

@GoldenSilver

For the example I said above about slavery, let’s imagine a story where some sort of medical doctor that is in a hurry visits some rich guy who lives in a big house and owns slaves. The doctor is greeted at the door by a slave and since he is in a hurry he quickly talks to the house owner about something important and leaves; the doctor does not question or comment at all about the slaves and no mention of slaves is seen again on the story.

Would you consider this as being something that had slavery for shock value and didn’t “explore” it?

You also mentioned purpose, but one could argue that it would be historically accurate so purpose is there; is it still negative because the controversial issue wasn’t “explored”?

The episode you describe sounds perfectly reasonable to me. For example, in a story about ancient Rome, I would expect to see slaves in some citizens’ houses even if the narrative were not at that moment going to consider their story. That is hardly shock for shock value’s sake, and it may serve any number of narrative and descriptive purposes. Could it be handled quite poorly? Sure. But what you describe sounds fine to my ears.

[Eiwynn]

@GoldenSilver

For the example I said above about slavery, let’s imagine a story where some sort of medical doctor that is in a hurry visits some rich guy who lives in a big house and owns slaves. The doctor is greeted at the door by a slave and since he is in a hurry he quickly talks to the house owner about something important and leaves; the doctor does not question or comment at all about the slaves and no mention of slaves is seen again on the story.

Would you consider this as being something that had slavery for shock value and didn’t “explore” it?

Rachel will answer on her own initiative but I will expand on your hypothetical and show what I would consider having slavery for “shock value.” in your scenario would be…

Let’s imagine your story, except that instead of a hurried consultation between plantation owner and doctor in an entry parlor or at the door, the doctor is led to a torture chamber where a slave is being punished for some reason and the ensuing conversation occurs over the administration of the punishment to the slave.

In your original hypothetical, there is clear purpose involved with the conversation and all else in the scene is secondary.

In the expanded scenario, there is a real question of why the slave is in the scene and what purpose the torture being shown serves, in addition of the “necessary” conversation being held.

The conversation itself has been transformed into a devise to showcase specific actions occurring.

@GoldenSilver

You also mentioned purpose, but one could argue that it would be historically accurate so purpose is there; is it still negative because the controversial issue wasn’t “explored”?

With the expanded scene, I don’t think using the historical accuracy argument would overcome the “shock-value” possibility because the historical accuracy does not seem to be the center most motivation for including the torture in the scene.

So, I agree with @Gower, regarding the scene as you describe but would expect the reviewer for HG or CoG project manager to ask for revisions or changes in order to get the expanded scene approved.

[Avery_Moore]

I know I said I was going to stop following this thread, but the other thread was closed and I couldn’t sleep until I got something off my chest.

Firstly, I do want to say that I genuinely regret posting that comment. The thread ended civilly, with everyone having a better understanding of other people’s opinions, and I should have just left it at that.

Secondly, I’ve decided that I’m going to try to avoid posting in controversial topics from now on. I find that it gets me much too stressed and I should be spending my time doing more productive things (like writing)

[redacted – JSH]

[GoldenSilver]

So I gave it some time before replying to see if others would chime in but nobody else did so I might as well answer now.

To be fair both your and @Gower responses surprised me; in the discord conversation I had everyone thought that scene was inappropriate.

@Eiwynn

Rachel will answer on her own initiative but I will expand on your hypothetical and show what I would consider having slavery for “shock value.” in your scenario would be…

Let’s imagine your story, except that instead of a hurried consultation between plantation owner and doctor in an entry parlor or at the door, the doctor is led to a torture chamber where a slave is being punished for some reason and the ensuing conversation occurs over the administration of the punishment to the slave.

In your original hypothetical, there is clear purpose involved with the conversation and all else in the scene is secondary.

In the expanded scenario, there is a real question of why the slave is in the scene and what purpose the torture being shown serves, in addition of the “necessary” conversation being held.

This example is quite different from the previous, is the problem here slavery, torture/violence or both? Because such a scene could simply be of a mobster torturing another from a rival gang. Slavery and torture are different subjects that don’t require each other.

The fact that no questioning is made about what is going on may be weird, I agree. It would make sense there if there was a choice to ask if all that is really necessary or at least some sort of reaction to it, unless the torturer intimidates this watcher that they may suffer the same fate if they keep prying. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the same situation in several movies; a similar moment with Darth Baras in Star Wars the Old Republic also comes to mind as well as several other moments in that game.

Regardless, we could still find purpose in adding torture — gathering intel from the tortured is one probable purpose to add it. According to what was said before however, there should be some “exploring” of this controversial subject. I assume this would mean how it would affect the person or something? What if the tortured was killed after the information was acquired and the effects of being tortured were never expanded upon for the rest of the story? Was it unecessarily added?

[Gower]

@GoldenSilver

To be fair both your and @Gower responses surprised me; in the discord conversation I had everyone thought that scene was inappropriate.

I’m a surprising person. I’m told that it is part of my roguish charm.

@GoldenSilver

What if the tortured was killed after the information was acquired and the effects of being tortured were never expanded upon for the rest of the story? Was it unecessarily added?

It is very difficult for me to have any sense of what I think of a brief précis of a narrative without the context of the plot and characters that surround it. So I can’t really say whether something is unneccessarily added, or what should or shouldn’t be in there. It’s too abstract for me, at least, to have a meaningful response to it.

[Eiwynn]

@GoldenSilver

To be fair both your and @Gower responses surprised me; in the discord conversation I had everyone thought that scene was inappropriate.

@Gower

I’m a surprising person. I’m told that it is part of my roguish charm.

I am honored to have pulled off one of @Gower’s roguish surprises.

@GoldenSilver

The fact that no questioning is made about what is going on may be weird, I agree.

This gets to the crux of the matter (imo) - the purpose of having a slave doorman answer the door in your scenario is clear.

The purpose of having a slave tortured in my scenario is in question. Without further clarification by story-telling (ie the purpose was to provide a plot incentive to show the tortured slave leading a slave rebellion later in the story) or rewrite (the sole purpose was to show that slave owners could be cruel to the slaves and the tortured slave in that scene serves no other purpose and so CoG asks that you rewrite that scene without the torture) we don’t know why the slave was in the scene.

So, in your scenario, I would expect no review to be triggered but in mine, I would expect CoG staff to trigger a review.

[AChubbyBlackCat]

@GoldenSilver

we could still find purpose in adding torture

This reminded me of Wisecrack’s Youtube video about the Satire of GTA5 (I’ll include the video or link below). At one point, the speaker covers the torture scene in GTA5 (spoilers: it’s graphic). I don’t remember too much about the video, but it’s worth checking out - as well as other videos done by Wisecrack!

The Satire of GTA5

[will]

Oh hey time to abuse the “regular” badge I just got!

Here’s the best opinion on this topic that is also coincidentally the opinion that I hold:

For games that are about choice, being a good person is meaningless without the option to do evil instead.

[MeltingPenguins]

For a game about choice being evil for the sake of it it immature, uncreative and pointless.

Fixed it for you

[will]

What did you fix? It’s pretty clear we agree on that!