Nudity

[Tessaya]

Perhaps SG could ship without children, with an official non required patch to include "reallystically" behaving children (same mechanics as other NPC). Actually nudity could have the same treatment, making this a "mature" patch that every player has to willingly install, and it wouldn't be specially advertised so negative PR and ratings could be avoided.

 

[mcmanusaur]

violence/mutilation/killing is inherently more pivotal to Sui Generis than Children.

That's the developers' decisions to make and as such I will respect that (and remain interested in SG for other reasons), but personally I feel there are already far too many RPGs that prioritize killing too heavily, and I can't say that I hope any other games follow suit from SG in this regard. I'd also like to clarify that combat and killing innocent civilians are two different things; a game can be very combat-focused but not allow random murder sprees on innocent children or adults (but I suppose that somehow goes against the rigid "everything must be subject to the same rules" rule?). Apparently that's a huge immersion-breaker for some people (including BM perhaps), but for me the ability to kill randomly NPC's who I have no motivation for killing isn't something that adds much to a game, because I don't go out of my way to do things I have no motivation to do (such as, again, killing children or stripping naked).

So to summarize, based on the design vision of Sui Generis, if you don't want to allow the killing of children you either have to remove children or remove killing.

The game would collapse without any form of killing and so the choice is obvious.

I think this is either a gross over-simplification or a betrayal of how dubious such a design vision is, but oh well.

 

[Tony]

I think this is either a gross over-simplification or a betrayal of how dubious such a design vision is, but oh well.

Sui Generis is being designed as a game where the player is not artificially restricted. Go where you want and do whatever you want... just be prepared to face the consequences of your actions. Here is a quote from the devs:

We have been asked about character interactions and such. Well, sometimes we want to chat and sometimes we just want to kill stuff. Must be those hormones. Thing is, when the latter mood takes us, and some whining NPC decides to illustrate their sensitive nature to us, the solution is clear: smack 'em in the gob, throw 'em in the river, then perhaps evaluate whether their home looks to be a suitable place to store our booty. If this errant behaviour should upset someone, well, let them come. That, to us, is role playing. What we tend to be presented with in "games with choices" is something like this:

1) Help the distressed peasant now
2) Help the distressed peasant later
3) Help the distressed peasant reluctantly

That is not role playing. We don't know what it is, but we don't like it.

You may encounter characters with sunny dispositions that are not always genuine and heartfelt. You may find yourself trying to divine your interlocutor's true intent, hopefully you are well versed in the arts of subtlety and sarcasm. You may also encounter characters with good or even noble intentions, and yet these intentions may not be in your best interests. Our game will certainly feature moral dilemmas and ambiguities.

Taken from this thread: LINK

 

[lvk]

I've been meaning to write a post but Tony basically posted what I was writing just now. But to add to that, I haven't seen any RPG bind consequences to your actions properly yet, so Sui Generis may be the first. People kill random NPCs in games simply because they might be bored and it hardly affects anything, so this is a good chance to change that pattern and add more meaning to the game.

What would add to the immersion for me is not simply the ability to kill a random NPC, but that this ability gives me the feeling that all NPCs are meaningful. Immortal quest-dispensers feel more like tools to advance the game than anything that attributes to immersion.

I'm not bashing games that have those and I've enjoyed plenty that do, but SG seems like it's going to be truly different.

 

[mcmanusaur]

Well, I acknowledge that "no inconsistent/arbitrary restrictions" sounds good in theory, but it's a really slippery slope. What happens when there starts to be as much opposition to violence against women as there is about violence against children? Are we then forced to take female characters out of the game in the interest of not having arbitrary restrictions? Is simply removing features from the game in this way not equally as restricting (if not more restricting) than the status quo?

 

[lvk]

@mcmanusaur Not having violence against children in games has been fairly standard for a while now, partly because the ESRB will go absolutely nuts if a game would have it. I don't see why we should treat violence against either sex differently (at least in video games), especially since we've all been working towards equal treatment for both sexes. I find that it would be more offensive to treat women differently as if they were too weak to fend for themselves.

I don't think the exclusion of children would snowball into the exclusion of anything else. It's a fairly specific issue that's been discussed many times over for other games as well, and it usually either results in their exclusion, or inclusion paired with immortality and other ways to avoid interaction with them, making them feel stale and unnecessary.

I hear there are games that did it right, but I haven't played any. I'm mostly going off Skyrim, where there was little interaction and the little buggers got in the way of your arrows (although rarely) without being fazed by them, and World of Warcraft, where they did absolutely nothing.

 

[mcmanusaur]

@mcmanusaur Not having violence against children in games has been fairly standard for a while now, partly because the ESRB will go absolutely nuts if a game would have it. I don't see why we should treat violence against either sex differently (at least in video games), especially since we've all been working towards equal treatment for both sexes. I find that it would be more offensive to treat women differently as if they were too weak to fend for themselves.

For the record, I'm not suggesting anything about whether video games should or should not feature violence against women, I'm just making the point that it's a bit of a slippery slope, and I just don't see why violence against children is such a singular issue that should be treated categorically different from other issues of what belongs in video games. Once you start the habit of making significant cuts based on such issues, you could end up with a world that feels significantly empty, and all for what, allowing people to cleave the skulls of each and every NPC in the game?

 

[Parco]

Killing/harming a child is looked so badly at because people look at them as defenseless (same with disabled people) and they are much more vulnerable to develop traumas. Women used to be looked at with almost the same view, but over the past years men and woman are being viewed more and more as equals, and because of that i can now slaughter thousands of women in games and no one bats an eye, well probably some extreme feminists would but no one really cares about them anyway. i wouldnt say this is much of a slippery slope, since its been like this for ages, its more likely go the other way, stuff are becoming more and more acceptable, not less. so for now we only need to exclude children for this game to be acceptable of its "everything is killable" policy, but that might quickly change in the future, most likely in the direction where killing children in games are more acceptable.
But how does violence against someone have anything to do with nudity? Nudity is natural and is also being more and more accepted in the public, we see it in more and more in movies and series, even seen it in children shows (child taking a shower with parent) and most people did not care.

 

[BrecMadak]

...But how does violence against someone have anything to do with nudity? Nudity is natural and is also being more and more accepted in the public, we see it in more and more in movies and series, even seen it in children shows (child taking a shower with parent) and no one cares.

Bigoted people will always think and equally feel guilty, as they themselves start to stare at nudes or even even partly seeing nudes will harass them beyond everything. Thus, reflecting that the person's reactions dramatically, which is why they overreact as they feel guilty.


When we look at the past crimes, criminals generally belong to such category as they have always been full of subdued feelings almost on everything, so when this is exposed out, the criminal cannot hold him/herself and commit a crime. Even though my statement is simplification of the entire scenario this is the sad truth about it.

So as a reply to Parco's example, there is nothing wrong seeing them, being seditious is people who just can not stand or look.