Surviving High School: Freshman Year (WIP)

Right… especially when your pic is a version of yourself with blood dripping out of your eyes… yep no nightmare fuel here!

Idk maybe he’ll do. You know what. I got this i’m already this guy anyway so yeah

A ghostly pale version of me with tears of blood and ghoul eyes.

Now… can we harvest organs and sell them?

Yeeah, that was my joke lol. High School sucks man. Fun to play, rarely fun to actually go through.

Lies it was my joke. I thought of it long before you thought of it. =P

Yeah I’m in high school now.

I feel your pain raz. In the same boat. Actually a freshman :joy:

Snap! They’re onto me!

Oh yeah, lots of peer pressure in high school. Least it’s only four years. College is a lot better on the finding lifelong friends front anyway.

A stat? Maybe not a stat,but like say you were gay. In the game. Just date girls;then come out and b like “nah I’ll still date girls.” What you’re saying is that you could just date everyone and nobody would care? Uh,go to high school,please. Hating on everyone and angsting is what high school is about. Stat,unnecessary,but maybe their cluld be scenarios about the sexuality of MC and such.

If she starts writing a dark fantasy you better hide. Hide well.

@StarScry

No, what I’m saying is that if you want to talk about people’s reactions based on what you do, make it based on what you do.

Going with your scenario - unless turns into Everyone is Telepathic, people are only going to know you’re gay or straight based on what you do (or what people say you do).

So in your scenario, if you’re a guy who dates (talks about, lusts over, and so on) only girls as far as your peers know - does the fact that you like boys too matter?

If you say something indicating that you’re gay or bi, people will react to that. Sex_prefer = gay has nothing to do with it, "if option B is chosen’ has everything to do with it.

I don’t mind scenarios about PC sexuality, I don’t mind (in the sense of not wanting in the game) people being jerks about PC sexuality - but I see nothing to be gained by having a “Which do you like, boys or girls?” choice early on.

I like girls, but I never dated or otherwise wanted anything to do with relationships of that sort in high school. I’m fairly sure most of my classmates would have called me asexual if they had to put me into gay/straight/asexual/other. I’d like to be able to play that sort of thing - where your sexual preference and its influence on things is based on what you do, not a stat which no one in the game has any way to tell is there unless you do things.

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Dark Fantasy? Well as long as the schools not in Japan I should be fine. Only in Japan do curses, dark fantasies or legends send high schools into hell. Here in good ole Murica they just are considered nonsense.

My character will be pretty vanilla like me lol MC will be straight but not hit on every girl that walks by. Get average grades and on occasion go to a firing range or self defence class. If those are options which I sure hope they are. Then I will have made myself lol

@TheMeek I agree with @StarScry on this. It just wouldnt make alot of sense

I’m learning self defense via the force!

Japenese schools are awesome… your much more likely to see a death…

@Deathwriter how is having the option to try and romance whoever you want not make a lot of sense? The key word is try, you try and date them, doesn’t mean you don’t fail epically…

Surviving High School was a hugely popular game (currently: 99298 likes on Facebook) published by EA. It was created by the same designers that made Cause of Death. Both have been discontinued. The designers have now introduced High School Story, and recently a second game, Hollywood U.

If you introduce an app with the same name, even if that was not your intention, you are going to get people buying it who were fans of EA’s Surviving High School (who will then probably feel tricked and leave horrible reviews.) Sorry, but I think you have to change it.

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This is an interesting objection, but there are ways to code around it. First off, don’t ask the player, “Hey, are you straight?” Let them select it, as in Psy High, where it asks “Which of these two people you consider gorgeous are you checking out?” If you say “Neither” you are considered asexual/uninterested in sex and/or romance for game purposes. If you say “Neither because they’re in a relationship”, it accepts that and gives you the same question as a hypothetical.

You could then add another dimension, if desired, how “out” you are. If you haven’t come out or have kept it on the down-low by only expressing part of your sexuality, reactions could be different. In the game I’m writing, I just have it written in that if you choose to play a gay or bi character, it gives you a bit of dialogue saying that you already came out and it wasn’t too horrible (it’s an accepting kind of town.)

As for “which do you like, boys or girls?” (or both, or neither) - it can make romance options much more enjoyable. People won’t have to date a gender they are not attracted to in order to experience dating that character. Bisexuals can date both, if they like. Asexuals can have platonic options to advance their relationships with people non-sexually and/or romantically (or can ignore their intended “love interests” entirely.)

They should be able to read the title and see it is different (even with just 2 words) and see the picture and reliaze it’s not an ea game. She could also put a disclaimer at the top of the desc.

My objection isn’t to how you can or can’t code it. My objection is that I don’t see it as beneficial to the game to code it.

As regards romance options, these are my thoughts, and I say this as someone who plays both gay and straight characters, male and female (usually female, preference varies):

Referencing Choice of Broadsides - I don’t want Beatrice and Brendan (one could pick the other two, but that’s the one I went through when I first played) to be merely the “Historical gender roles/opposite of historical gender roles.” options - it ruins for me what little there is of them as individuals for them to be written so that they are literally exactly the same except for name and pronoun.

I think the fact that "boyish charm’ does not conjure up the same image as “girlish charm” - whether one likes either, both, or neither - is part of it.

I don’t think that people having to date a gender that they’re not attracted to in order to date Donald ( http://magicaldiary.wikia.com/wiki/Donald_Danson ) is in any shape or form a bad thing, unless failing to date Donald means something in regards to the completion of the game. The player who is only willing to play the game as (using my RL gender and orientation) a straight male and never deviate from that so as to experience dating one of the male characters is limiting themselves, and self-imposed limits are the problem of the one imposing those limits on themselves.

So given the option to vote, I vote against anything that makes dateable NPCs change genders based on anything the player does. Especially if playing a gay or bi character in an accepting place, so you’re not exposing yourself to anything by playing a m into Dave vs. a f into Dave. I’d be heartily in favor of (in a modern day-ish game) playing up the tolerance aspect for that reason, if there wasn’t any particular reason to explore dealing with intolerance here. Save “bigotry is normal” for less cheery settings - high school being high school is enough.

Different people are different. But that’s my vote - it makes it less enjoyable, not more, for “Alison” being just as easily “Andrew” and hair color having more relevance to whether or not I (try to) date someone than their gender and sexuality.

.

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You’ve made some great points. My original idea for my game was to carefully code in variations in behavior, appearance, etc. depending on which gender your love interest is (like an alternate universe version of that character who has been altered by being born a different gender.) But I’m seriously considering just splitting my LI’s gender-wise, making their character solid (unless it’s the one you’re playing, then you’d get more options) and letting people deal with it. It would definitely save a lot of time coding.