Is this inappropriate?

[Eiwynn]

First off, this really belongs in the thread @Sovereign2Lilith linked but since this is dealing with a specific WiP I’ve decided to leave it as its own. The entire subject is covered in Choices to Avoid When Writing a CS Game

Now I’m going to write a Great Wall of Text be warned:

@hustlertwo

I dunno, it seems strange that this would be such a red flag when MCs get the option to commit far more dire crimes in many other published games without much complaint.

The reason that any choice in a CS game is red-flagged is the following (this is CoG policy btw):

@dfabulich

Games aren’t inherently trivializing, but when an author constructs a choice, the act of doing that does inherently represent the options as comparable. Thus, if you give the player a choice “to genocide or not to genocide?” it trivializes genocide.

In this particular case: if you are giving the player a choice “to rape or not to rape” it trivializes rape.

There is also the additional fact that the genre that @Zederikus is writing their game as a power fantasy. I’m going to quote a better writer then myself to explain why this matters:

@Cataphrak

Do I think power fantasy is inherently trivialising? Yes.

A power fantasy is, but definition, an experience where the player acts as an idealised expression of themselves. The player characters’ actions are, in this sense, the player’s actions, and the player’s expressions of opinion are one and the same as the player character’s, only expressed through a fantastic (as in unrealistic) set of tools and abilities which the game gives you. It provides “fun” by providing an affirmation of the player’s desire to do certain things they couldn’t do in real life.

While that sort of thing has a place (especially in the hands of people who find that sort of self-affirmation out of reach for reasons medical, political, or geographical) and it can play a serious role as a serious, or even therapeutic experience, it must be designed with the understanding that if the player character is presented with a choice, then the player is being presented with a choice, and the player should feen “satisfied” in choosing it for the sake of their own self-affirmation, whether that choice is justified to the player as “just” or trivialised as being a decision that doesn’t reflect on the player as a human being.

Not every game is a power fantasy.

So, to answer your question @hustlertwo, the reason why this draws red flags is both because the choice “trivializes rape” and as a power fantasy, that idealizes the reader, the author would be allowing rape to become part of an idealized MC. That is a real problem.

With this major issue defined, I’m going to quote myself here and my position on the author writing a “trivializing-choice”:

@Eiwynn

A choice given to an individual does not define its options one way or another. How those options are defined is an interpretive quality and it should be acknowledged as such. To say providing a choice defines its options as comparable is limiting at best and and often self-fulfilling.

Choices sometimes are not comparable and if presented as such, then they can become trivialized. Yet, if these same choices are presented properly (as non-comparable) instead of trivial, these choices become: powerful, flexible and impactful.

Construction of choices in a game is only comparable if they are designed to be comparable. This is a game design decision or execution not an inherit property.

Properties of games are never inherent.

This position as applied to every choice is not held by everyone. My friend and fellow author believes rape is choice a game should never allow. Here is my argument agreeing with him:

@Eiwynn

@Havenstone

The original topic was turning into a bit of a straw man; so let’s look at something where I think people will be more consistently willing to disagree. Are there choices that a game shouldn’t give a player?

I’ve agreed in the past that rape is such a choice:

I am still processing everything in this post; I do feel the need to speak on why I consider a choice to rape something a game designer should not offer up.

The definition of murder: An intentional act of deliberate killing of another human. is something that has been established for hundreds of years. This definition can be agreed upon by people in all the markets your game will reach. There are excuses that are accepted for murder such as self-defense which legally allow murder and there are circumstances where murder is seen as acceptable such as war.

The definition of rape is not commonly accepted in all the markets your game reaches. In some jurisdictions (for example) only a biological woman may be raped and a transgender woman has no protection from the identical act a biological woman would have. Even a post-surgery transitioned transgendered woman may not be protected in some jurisdictions.

In addition to this, what each of us understand as “consent” is different, again based on culture, legal system and tradition. There are also changing norms within each society you may reach. What was considered “the victim’s fault” in one jurisdiction may no longer be considered such in another. (the way a woman dresses is an example).

Due to this fact, when it comes to game design, if you desire to positively reach your audience in multiple markets, it is best to not even consider including this as a “choice” to be presented to the gamer/player/reader.

This does not mean you can’t deal with rape as a subject in your game - there are current titles published by this company that show rape scenes (or at least questionable scenes that can be interpreted as such) but they all (to my knowledge never allow the MC to chose such a path.

This is why I draw a red-line in development here. You can make a choice as weighty and non-trivial as you can but because the very definition of rape is in question in your markets, you can’t logically and with certainty design a choice with the intended consequences and results that you are aiming for.

As I said, I am still processing everything but I felt that I should get this out now before passions and emotions try to flood the responses given.

More to come later.

Finally, if you read all that: Thank you. It is a lot to read but this is a very important concept to master in game development. Here is a ;tldr version for those not wanting or able to read the entire post as stated much more succinctly then I can:

@Cataphrak

Yet there are aspects of it which I’d only want to be able to touch upon peripherally, because it’s one thing to describe the mindset of a soldier during a sack, but it’s another to try to put the reader in that mindset, while still keeping both author and reader’s grasp of their own human decency.

In other words: It is one thing to describe the mindset of a rapist but it’s another to try to put the reader in that mindset, while still keeping both author and reader’s grasp of their own human decency.