I’m trying very hard not to say anything that sounds patronising, and has “you’re 15 years old” in it. I’d suggest, rather than empathising with paedophiles, and arguing in favour of them, using their experiences as a substitute for their own, and ignoring the existence, and trauma of all of their victims.
Well instead of all that, you speak directly about whatever condition it is that you have and advocate for that instead. If you were older I would be suggesting that if you intended to hear both sides, well, you’re 15, I’m not going to suggest you start reading that sort of thing if you’ve no direct experience, because I’m a lot older than you, and I find reading stuff by their victims utterly traumatising.
Since you’ve said
Please let the matter drop. If anyone else brings up the subject, and you feel strongly enough about it, please PM them.
I just remembered I hate the stereotypical bad guy is insane because he has mental disorder. (Its offensive to me because people with disorders like myself are misrepresented as people can’t seem to belive that there are people that can function like a person and have a disorder. Apparently mental disorders = straight jackets and while straight jackets seem interesting they seem uncomfortable.)
I don’t like it when the game forces me to ‘feel’ something toward another person, whether it be good feelings or bad feelings. One of the games I’ve played on COG, I really liked one of the characters, and did everything I could to include them and say good things about them, and at one point my character and another were talking, and my character is telling me that I find them annoying and useless. Um, no?
Another annoyance is when games force a romance on you when you just want friendship. Zombie Exodus did this to me on two different occasions- I was trying to romance one character, and I got blindsided by another character, and the only way to get out of it (That I can remember) was for the relationship as a whole to take a hit. I didn’t like that one bit.
Rape as a plot device is usually a definite no-no, especially when done to make it look like it’s not all that bad.
Above all else, abuse in any way of children. It’s not that I have any children or even particularly like them, personally, but I absolutely refuse to take part in a game or read a story where it’s a thing. I remember reading a story, I absolutely loved it, up until the main characters romantic interest was arrested for suspicion of rape of his little sister. It was obvious who the true culprit was, of course, without a doubt. I tried to continue, but I just couldn’t. Just no.
Oh, and ‘embarrassing scenes’ make me uncomfortable. I remember watching Hey Arnold when I was a kid, and turning off the TV when that girl with the shrine started going on about her love for Arnold.
Edit: Imma derp. I don’t even know what I was thinking when I first started writing it out 'cause I knew the topic but still wrote about annoyances and not just what makes me uncomfortable. And then went on to end it with what makes me uncomfortable /derpityderp
Seconding discomfort with the “rape as plot device.” It’s an often poorly handled topic. It can be written about well, but to do so requires a lot of sensitivity that most writers won’t consider. Especially if it’s being done to be titillating, or for shock value.
I’m uncomfortable with stories that discount people’s experiences. Isn’t a game, but recently I saw a TV show where the frustrations of people of color were treated as over-reacting; a white person convinced a person of color to, essentially, ‘suck it up’ and accept some complicity in the status quo. It was meant to be uplifting but I was furious for hours after, because it discounted real people’s struggles and experiences in an incredibly patronizing way.
Tangent, but related: So I’m a slush pile reader for a small magazine, and we get a lot of (rejected) submissions that handle sensitive topics poorly. Generally speaking, if you are writing about something you have no experience with, it’s best to ask a more informed person about your portrayal of that experience. In fact, get several qualified people’s feedback. The way I see it, if the worst thing that happens is someone tells you, “The way you handled this situation is problematic, you should reconsider that,” isn’t it better to know that before you send your work into the world?
I say this because a lot of what has been mentioned in this thread seem to be unintentional instances of making the player uncomfortable. The pitfalls are real! It’s great that CoG forums give us a chance to run our ideas by a large group of people to get feedback on how our writing is perceived. It allows us the opportunity to make better games, and to be more mindful of what we’re crafting.
Mine is anything having to do with loli in general. I just find it incredibly uncomfortable playing many Japanese visual novel games. they have a clearly under aged char but either fudge the age for American, or say she is an insane amount of years old and never aged.
Embarrassing scenes make me uncomfortable as well. Like when you’re watching a show on tv and you have to turn your head away because it’s just too embarrassing to watch. (Happened to me a couple of times haha, especially when I used to watch Mr. Monk, USA network - great show)
Scenes like these in-games are more likely to make me cringe, but I don’t think there’s been an embarrassing enough scene in a game that’d stop me from playing.
Oh geez- Monk, definitely. The episode where he was taking drugs in order to combat some of his phobias, and in effect made him want to socialize by going out to a pool and trying to act cool in front of teenagers, gah. I watched the whole series and I adore him but little bits like that keep me from binge watching it again.
Haha, you know exactly what I’m talking about! (Watched the whole series as well.) And that episode where he goes blind for a little while - I struggled so hard during that one.
I don’t know if games have been able to incorporate this uncomfortable feeling all that well? I may be drawing a blank here but I can’t recall a game that had an embarrassing scene capable of drawing a reaction like that from me.
Oh, man. I used to have to leave the room whenever Disney’s Mulan had that scene where she tried to spit like a man and failed miserably, to the horrified stares of every soldier in the camp. Such secondhand embarrassment!
If you can’t take secondhand embarrassment, don’t ever watch WataMote. That show is practically made of cringe. More so than anything I’ve ever seen. Watching it was, at times, physically painful.
Can’t say I remember much about the blind one. Though, the college reunion one, when he’s talking about his little nickname (Captain Cool) and it comes to light what it really means, that even Monk didn’t even know makes me feel so bad for him.
I’m gonna move away from plot devices and tropes, and talk about game mechanics. This isn’t about ChoiceScript since the choice buttons and stats are more or less the only mechanics CS works have.
In general, it’s very irritating when a game makes you play in ways that are counter to the game’s theme. Like Bioshock Infinite. The first few scenes are sweeping, scenic plot and world development. You ascend from a desolate lighthouse to this fascinating, pretty city in the clouds and the people living there. For almost the entire rest of the game, the city remains bright and cheerful, like something you could get lost in.
But you can’t. You’re on rails. You have to get to the end of the level, hit the next plot point.
What do you do for the rest of the game? Explore? Learn about this fascinating, cheerful city in the sky? No! Shoot things. Have the girl you rescued give you stuff so you can shoot more things.
Another one is Deus Ex Human Revolution. This is a good game, relatively open world, but it does have some annoying points. There’s this big moral dilemma about robotic augmentations running through the whole game. Do the risks outweigh the benefits? Are we becoming less human? Does making some humans intrinsically better unbalance society?
You don’t get a chance to pick a side of this dilemma. For the player, augments are mandatory. Your character is given a massive bevy of invasive augments from the very beginning. And the only way to level up is to get MORE augments.
Y’all remember I asked about how questionable content is handled here? After finding out how it’s taken, I’m taking a rather liberal approach in my story… so…
I’m adding things that I expect will make people uncomfortable… on purpose. Because one of the things I want to do with my game is explore the human condition, which means seeing how different people are different, some are deeply flawed in certain ways, but might likewise have redeemable qualities.
And the way I think about it is- as long as I warn people that the story contains this type of content… the choice to read it or not is then solely in their own hands. Will someone read a section of story that completely turns them off, and quit? Or read through it, and find out later in the story that a point gets made from it that the player actually agrees with or can relate to? I mean, I’m not going to tell anyone not to quit a story if they don’t like it- but … I very much think, personally, that how an author approaches a sensitive topic is more important than whether or not they approach the topic. Hmm… how to explain?
Tell a good story. If it has uncomfortable things in it, so what? If it’s a good story. If the things the story contains make it feel like a crappy story… it’s a crappy story. I guess I just have a very pragmatic outlook on it.
Generally, having evil be portrayed in a positive light is enough for me to be uncomfortable.
Of course, some of them can use this effectively, coupling with the unreliable narrator. However, the message, implicit or otherwise should always inform you that what you’re doing is wrong.
Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal is fine with me despite discussing the merits of cooking children, because it’s implicitly denouncing the pragmatic attitude that sacrifices morals.
On the other hand, if a ChoiceOf game gives an option of dismembering a child and feeding on the corpse and only gives you recompense, I wouldn’t be okay with that. Take away my honour trait, have the protagonist suffer from nightmares, anything!
Again, as others have mentioned, inaccurate or downright slanderous paintings of groups may cause me to frown upon it. For instance, Choice of Zombies had the only Christians in the game be fanatical cultists. Yes, extremists exist everywhere, but when 100% of the game’s Christians are extremists, this feels like a thinly veiled personal discrimination. Mind you, the author may be a Christian, but my point is that the impression that I’ve garnered was as such.
I noticed that religious references popped up here and there, now I could maybe understand if the game was more of a sermon than a CoG, but even the small stuff? I just kinda want to get an idea at what point do you get annoyed. If even the smallest reference turns you away, then I guess it can’t be helped, because it’s such a huge part of my life, it bleeds into my work here and there. Now I won’t be trying to convert the reader or anything, but there is so much inspiration in religion. [side note: guess you hated Narnia, I liked it even though I was oblivious to the references until after the fact]
I don’t like religious themes in games, but only if that’s references to existing religions. If it’s a fantasy world with some pantheon of gods, I’m fine with it. Same if I’m not being forced to pick a side in religion debate and it’s used for important reasons, I can live with that.
It’s a little personal problem of mine, cause I come from a country where majority of people are religious and that religion really affected our history, culture and everything, I’m not gonna argue with that. But thanks to popularity of conservative politics movements the tolerance for non-religious people is really low right now. And it’s frustrating for me because a lot of my friends are really aggressive when religion topics pops up and besides that they’re really nice people whose company I enjoy so I learned to avoid that kind of topics and that’s why I’m not feeling comfortable when game is trying to force my opining on subject.
I really, really dislike what I see as ‘semi-religious superstitious nonsense’ in games. And with ‘semi-religious superstitious nonsense’ I mean when someone just blatantly uses terms from religion or religious superstition and then transforms those things into something completely different than what they’re supposed to be without regard or respect for the people who actually do believe in those things. (Eucharist and Droid, for example. Just reading the description was enough for me to never ever want to look at it ever again.)
For the less extreme dislikes, I really disliked the way the romances were initiated in Community College Heroes and could never bring myself to actually pursue a romance. It just felt weird and unnatural and just so not me to just begin flirting with a more or less random person (I mean, come on, you’d hardly seen them once before at that point). So yeah, that was a big disappointment.
Such secondhand embarrassment!
makes me feel so bad for him.