Gonna do this one out of order, partly because I want to start with:
>> >> (though since multiplayer has come up now I guess you'd need something...). <<
>> You could if you want to, but you don't have to. We'd just need a way to tell them apart, which could be as simple as Player 1 / Player 2 or names.
>> Now, I do think it'd be useful to allow players to customize their character based on how they want to play the game.
In this case I meant "something" as in, any player model at all. :p Because you need a bare minimum of "able to see where other players are in the world" unless you want things to get confusing fast.
But yeah, customizability is optional here. I'd at least want vague humanoid shapes ala Totally Accurate Battlegrounds, but I do so love me a detailed character creator... It's hard to balance "I'd love to have this" vs "would this actually contribute to the game?" and "is it worth the time investment?".
>> Do you really think it's good idea to practice wrecking a vehicle over and over in a game, when you drive a vehicle in everyday life? That might do unfortunate things to your reflexes. Meanwhile slaying dragons doesn't share the same risk because the planet we live on doesn't have giant flying doomcritters to worry about.
Huh. This reminds me of something that came up rereading the Valdemar books. One character with his psychic "teleport items" powers was contemplating using them in battle re: teleporting people's hearts out. And he was chided against "tainting" his powers that wa.y and you expect that to be rara your powers are only meant for good. But no it was "hey, the next time you want to teleport someone out of danger in a hurry you don't want to risk having the wrong reflexes". Which like. Fair.
On the other hand context can shape which of our reflexes gets expressed, and the physical difference in situation can matter a lot. On a couch with a control in your hand, wrecking cars by moving the thumbstick isn't going to translate as badly to sitting in your vehicle strapped down with your seatbelt, using a steering wheel.
And ordinary life situations can mess up your reflexes too. I once almost walked out into traffic because my brain triggered my "crosswalk time" function too early. Thankfully I barely even lurched an inch before stopping myself.
>> I'm a gender scholar,
Oh no y'all playing at the "professor" level while I'm sitting here in the 201 classes not exactly feeling the urge to graduate. :p
>> Some people put their politics into their games, with or without thinking it through
I'd argue unless you're doing some very basic, abstract gameplay, it's hard not to put your politics into games. If you're not doing it thoughtfully on purpose, you're doing it subconsciously. And that isn't always bad, but it means you're not putting consideration into what elements of your politics that you express.
Part of the problem of course is all the different meanings of what exactly "politics" is... But when you're taking is as "a persons worldview about how people should interact", then it's almost inescapable.
>> Now if you were simulating how to eat pussy, at least you'd learn what the hell a clitoris is and what to do with one,
XD I will neither make, nor play, the pussy-eating simulator game. But I would respect the hell out of anyone who decided to make it.
>> "Randomly generate characters for all these roles, of which 50% are female, 49% are male, and 1% are something else." Or whatever your gender breakdown is for that setting
When I was generating random DnD NPCs I was using D100 and broke it down like 2-50 = male, 51-99 = female, 100 = trans (secondary roll for ftm or mtf), 1 = agender. When you just want some rando filler character you don't exactly need much thought, just slap together a quick and dirty diversity option and trust in Corvax Our Lord of Randomness the dice.
>> You don't need gender or elaborate character development for a logic-puzzle game to work. Your character is not going to be hauling a 2000-pound gold statue with their sex organs. Their sex/gender just isn't relevant to their ability to deliver cargo.
:p
And it's just not a game where anything about WHO you are really matters to the gameplay. It's a puzzlegame wrapped up in an open world shell. Any sort of customization of your character is pure deco. There's no significant character relationships (having rep at doing your job at most). There's no in-built RPing, just what the player chooses to do.
...though it does remind me of an idea I had with my Discord friends about making a character generator that was exclusively about designing your hands in excruciating detail. If it would fit any game it would be this game where your hands are going to be central to the gameplay and the most you see about your character. :p
>> That way lies wretched art.
Oh for sure. Doing art by public opinion poll is performance art. It's not going to result in anything good in the final piece. :p
>> Now, I do think it'd be useful to allow players to customize their character based on how they want to play the game. It should be versatile enough to offer different strategies, which means one player might want to build a badass who can kill anything that interrupts a delivery, whereas another might prefer to build a sneaky character adept at avoiding trouble. In this regard, a big buff character (of whatever sex) would be better suited to the badass option while a small plain one would excel at the latter. Mechanical statistics like strength and speed will logically relate to muscle mass and height, but boobs are irrelevant.
Of course that's all only if you want players to even have character stats in the first place.
>> Then again, you could ask players, "Who is sexually relevant to your character?" ( ) Men ( ) Women ( ) Other ( ) Nobody. Check all that apply, for whatever mix of sex/gender you've decided to build. This would tell the game what sex(es) the Important Significant Other or Dangerous Seducer could be.
While not an unreasonable way to set up the player's options, I do prefer the Stardew or Dragon Age methods. Either "here's everyone, they're all bi/playersexual", pick who you like. Or "here's everyone, they have THEIR preferences, pick whoever you like that you can convince to like you back". I wouldn't want to lock in my character's sexuality from the start even though I know that 95% of the time I'm going to pick my favorite of the boys.
>> Bear in mind that most people build from the surface in, not the core out, and it shows.
You're going to end up making me dig back out my Mccloud books. :p Not right this moment though.
>> You get better results if you start with geology, meteorology, biosphere, etc. and work up to "What kind of sophonts and societies would grow out of this setting?" But not everyone is a giant sciences nerds or cares about that stuff.
AUGH the speculative evolution community can be scary sometimes. I want to imagine the evolutionary paths of fun creatures! I know that knowing the chemistry would make them more plausible and help me with figuring out likely ways things would change under various conditions. But I'm not doing it. I'm not studying fricking chemistry I just want to play with animals. And to be fair, no one's actually trying to shove the chemistry on me. :p But it's still intimidating seeing some people like "I'm gonna make a planet with an atmospheric composition like so, which means these effects on ocean acidity, which means-"
Terrifying.
>> although I find it wildly distracting when I am staring up the back end of a kaiju and -- "Wait, where's the anus? This creature is the size of a building so it should be at least the size of a manhole and clearly visible from this angle."
PFT. Yeah the "huh its butt just is a weird little crease and no detail". I'm good at tuning that out and focusing on the way it's trying to step on my head, but I do notice. :p
>> So while all the mainstream superhero stories tend to be about punching people in the face as a way of solving crime (and how is that working out for you?) we're over here exploring what superpowers would or would not change in society and how society would deal with those changes. The entire superhero field is crammed into one narrow sliver, leaving ... everything else ... for the rest of us to play with.
YES. *rattling back and forth against the bars* I dropped out of following BNHA for a lot of reasons but one of which was just. I'm so frickin. Exhausted by stories that add some huge detail that would completely upset the status quo, *set themselves in the future*, and the changes stop just short of actually reshaping basic society.
BNHA is particularly annoying to me because it's actually ADDRESSED but dismissed by the story itself? Repeatedly? Oh we just made laws saying you can't use your quirk. You can summon items from your skin? Can't use it except as a licensed hero against villains, because it would change the economy otherwise! It's something particularly common in Japanese media I see but hardly unique to them. Have to always revert back to the status quo no matter what we throw at it.
I guess it does as you say, leave a wide untouched field to explore for the rest of us in "how would X change the world?". But sometimes I just. Don't want to always be putting in the work myself. I'm visiting this other world because I want to see what they do. And then they disappoint. :p
I could flail around on this subject going back and forth for longer than I have energy for so anyway! Lemme find another bit of your post...
...doing this out of order adds a level of chaos and searching around trying to make sure I'm covering everything I want to cover.
>> Now, if we wanted to add that for fun, we could. I'd have no trouble generating several cultures each with its own sex/gender dynamics; I've done it repeatedly. But it takes time, so you have to ask if that's how you want to spend that time. Would it make the game more interesting for players? Who's the target audience and what do they enjoy?
Also "how much can you fake a more complex culture by throwing a few minor details out there". Like if you make all the shopkeepers women and all the men in the town are wearing blue hats... clearly there is Culture happening here, but you don't need to write a mini-novel about why they're like that. :p
>> >> How do people treat gender in your world? What are the standards, what are the exceptions? What ways does it chafe some people? <<
>> If you want to go there, I can talk about gender for ages and if you want examples, here are some of my QUILTBAG characters. But I don't think a cargo delivery game would be the best context for that.
XD Ha, no. I was not fully distinguishing "talking about the cargo game" vs "talking about games in general"...
>> I gotta wonder how many guys died because they were too busy watching Lara's ass to spot a trap. Heh, yeah. I've had a guy fall into a swimming pool while staring at me.
My asexual ass once again baffled at allo behavior. :p
>> Or you are rude to a female orc and she pulls your arm off.
XD This is making me think... I'm sure there's a market for a game where trying to romance characters involves figuring out their culture-specific methods of signalling romance and making sure you're behaving politely by THEIR standards. I'd find it a lot of fun to work on!
But yeah also the idea of placing little "don't be a dick/don't get distracted by the horny" traps into a game is really funny!
>> >> Yeah I'll... tackle that another time, too. Safe to say that this video has some really good points about how even playing a female character or romancing a man is still presented in a way to encourage seeing yourself as the man and the woman as being for you. It can be really uncomfortable! <<
>> Eh, it's the lack of flexibility and responsiveness. If you can build a character that you find relatable, whatever that is for you; and you can tell the game what kinds of sexual or romantic content you like and dislike; then the storyline can adapt itself to your interests. The awkwardness comes when players are stuck with options that don't match their interests.
I'm not sure this is addressing the same point I was talking about the video addressing?
The video brought up things like how you can get scenes where if you play a female character and romance a male, the focus is STILL on the female's naked body and you might not even see much of the man. How games are reluctant to sexualize male characters even when you're clearly actively romancing them. The unbalance in some games when you're playing a male character vs a female one in how much the camera highlights you vs your choice of romantic partner.
The game can present you things that match your interests but then still shy away from treating those interests fairly.
*wobbles hand vaguely* I'm not sure if my struggles to express this are a "it's 6am before breakfast" problem or a "this is just hard for me to express in general" problem. Probably the latter but the former doesn't help. :p
>> I like the idea of a butch with sideburns. :D
BEHOLD, Libera!
She's easier to see in bright light but it does weird things with her colors. :p
I really just. Love how natural the sideburns look on her? Like. Of course she has them. They belong there. She'd look weirder without them.
I love her overall face. The color (when the light isn't making her grey and peeling the orange out of her hair), the shape, the vibes. The MH: World version of her is entirely aesthetic, though. If I ever made her into a proper OC I'd pretty much have to grow her a personality almost from scratch. But I do... think I know what the foundation of it would be. Judging people on looks? Sure. But you can get away with that far better in character design than in RL. :p
Bonus (links to full size):
While I was out trying to get some good pics, this fricking anjanath comes running out and was WAY too close to me, but when I ran away and looked back, she was just getting a drink.
I probably would have been tempted to try fighting her, but A. I wasn't exactly prepared for a fight, I was just on an expedition so time would pass and the sun would come up. B. I'm used to playing World with an Xbox controller and I was on mouse and keyboard. C. It's been so long since I played and I'm SO FUCKING RUSTY.
It was not the time to test myself against a fire-breathing trex. :p
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2024-12-23 02:15 pm (UTC)>> >> (though since multiplayer has come up now I guess you'd need something...). <<
>> You could if you want to, but you don't have to. We'd just need a way to tell them apart, which could be as simple as Player 1 / Player 2 or names.
>> Now, I do think it'd be useful to allow players to customize their character based on how they want to play the game.
In this case I meant "something" as in, any player model at all. :p
Because you need a bare minimum of "able to see where other players are in the world" unless you want things to get confusing fast.
But yeah, customizability is optional here. I'd at least want vague humanoid shapes ala Totally Accurate Battlegrounds, but I do so love me a detailed character creator... It's hard to balance "I'd love to have this" vs "would this actually contribute to the game?" and "is it worth the time investment?".
>> Do you really think it's good idea to practice wrecking a vehicle over and over in a game, when you drive a vehicle in everyday life? That might do unfortunate things to your reflexes. Meanwhile slaying dragons doesn't share the same risk because the planet we live on doesn't have giant flying doomcritters to worry about.
Huh. This reminds me of something that came up rereading the Valdemar books. One character with his psychic "teleport items" powers was contemplating using them in battle re: teleporting people's hearts out. And he was chided against "tainting" his powers that wa.y and you expect that to be rara your powers are only meant for good. But no it was "hey, the next time you want to teleport someone out of danger in a hurry you don't want to risk having the wrong reflexes". Which like. Fair.
On the other hand context can shape which of our reflexes gets expressed, and the physical difference in situation can matter a lot. On a couch with a control in your hand, wrecking cars by moving the thumbstick isn't going to translate as badly to sitting in your vehicle strapped down with your seatbelt, using a steering wheel.
And ordinary life situations can mess up your reflexes too. I once almost walked out into traffic because my brain triggered my "crosswalk time" function too early. Thankfully I barely even lurched an inch before stopping myself.
>> I'm a gender scholar,
Oh no y'all playing at the "professor" level while I'm sitting here in the 201 classes not exactly feeling the urge to graduate. :p
>> Some people put their politics into their games, with or without thinking it through
I'd argue unless you're doing some very basic, abstract gameplay, it's hard not to put your politics into games.
If you're not doing it thoughtfully on purpose, you're doing it subconsciously. And that isn't always bad, but it means you're not putting consideration into what elements of your politics that you express.
Part of the problem of course is all the different meanings of what exactly "politics" is... But when you're taking is as "a persons worldview about how people should interact", then it's almost inescapable.
>> Now if you were simulating how to eat pussy, at least you'd learn what the hell a clitoris is and what to do with one,
XD
I will neither make, nor play, the pussy-eating simulator game.
But I would respect the hell out of anyone who decided to make it.
>> "Randomly generate characters for all these roles, of which 50% are female, 49% are male, and 1% are something else." Or whatever your gender breakdown is for that setting
When I was generating random DnD NPCs I was using D100 and broke it down like 2-50 = male, 51-99 = female, 100 = trans (secondary roll for ftm or mtf), 1 = agender.
When you just want some rando filler character you don't exactly need much thought, just slap together a quick and dirty diversity option and trust in
Corvax Our Lord of Randomnessthe dice.>> You don't need gender or elaborate character development for a logic-puzzle game to work. Your character is not going to be hauling a 2000-pound gold statue with their sex organs. Their sex/gender just isn't relevant to their ability to deliver cargo.
:p
And it's just not a game where anything about WHO you are really matters to the gameplay. It's a puzzlegame wrapped up in an open world shell. Any sort of customization of your character is pure deco. There's no significant character relationships (having rep at doing your job at most). There's no in-built RPing, just what the player chooses to do.
...though it does remind me of an idea I had with my Discord friends about making a character generator that was exclusively about designing your hands in excruciating detail. If it would fit any game it would be this game where your hands are going to be central to the gameplay and the most you see about your character. :p
>> That way lies wretched art.
Oh for sure. Doing art by public opinion poll is performance art. It's not going to result in anything good in the final piece. :p
>> Now, I do think it'd be useful to allow players to customize their character based on how they want to play the game. It should be versatile enough to offer different strategies, which means one player might want to build a badass who can kill anything that interrupts a delivery, whereas another might prefer to build a sneaky character adept at avoiding trouble. In this regard, a big buff character (of whatever sex) would be better suited to the badass option while a small plain one would excel at the latter. Mechanical statistics like strength and speed will logically relate to muscle mass and height, but boobs are irrelevant.
Of course that's all only if you want players to even have character stats in the first place.
>> Then again, you could ask players, "Who is sexually relevant to your character?" ( ) Men ( ) Women ( ) Other ( ) Nobody. Check all that apply, for whatever mix of sex/gender you've decided to build. This would tell the game what sex(es) the Important Significant Other or Dangerous Seducer could be.
While not an unreasonable way to set up the player's options, I do prefer the Stardew or Dragon Age methods.
Either "here's everyone, they're all bi/playersexual", pick who you like.
Or "here's everyone, they have THEIR preferences, pick whoever you like that you can convince to like you back".
I wouldn't want to lock in my character's sexuality from the start even though I know that 95% of the time I'm going to pick my favorite of the boys.
>> Bear in mind that most people build from the surface in, not the core out, and it shows.
You're going to end up making me dig back out my Mccloud books. :p
Not right this moment though.
>> You get better results if you start with geology, meteorology, biosphere, etc. and work up to "What kind of sophonts and societies would grow out of this setting?" But not everyone is a giant sciences nerds or cares about that stuff.
AUGH the speculative evolution community can be scary sometimes.
I want to imagine the evolutionary paths of fun creatures!
I know that knowing the chemistry would make them more plausible and help me with figuring out likely ways things would change under various conditions. But I'm not doing it. I'm not studying fricking chemistry I just want to play with animals.
And to be fair, no one's actually trying to shove the chemistry on me. :p
But it's still intimidating seeing some people like "I'm gonna make a planet with an atmospheric composition like so, which means these effects on ocean acidity, which means-"
Terrifying.
>> although I find it wildly distracting when I am staring up the back end of a kaiju and -- "Wait, where's the anus? This creature is the size of a building so it should be at least the size of a manhole and clearly visible from this angle."
PFT.
Yeah the "huh its butt just is a weird little crease and no detail". I'm good at tuning that out and focusing on the way it's trying to step on my head, but I do notice. :p
>> So while all the mainstream superhero stories tend to be about punching people in the face as a way of solving crime (and how is that working out for you?) we're over here exploring what superpowers would or would not change in society and how society would deal with those changes. The entire superhero field is crammed into one narrow sliver, leaving ... everything else ... for the rest of us to play with.
YES. *rattling back and forth against the bars*
I dropped out of following BNHA for a lot of reasons but one of which was just. I'm so frickin. Exhausted by stories that add some huge detail that would completely upset the status quo, *set themselves in the future*, and the changes stop just short of actually reshaping basic society.
BNHA is particularly annoying to me because it's actually ADDRESSED but dismissed by the story itself? Repeatedly?
Oh we just made laws saying you can't use your quirk.
You can summon items from your skin? Can't use it except as a licensed hero against villains, because it would change the economy otherwise!
It's something particularly common in Japanese media I see but hardly unique to them. Have to always revert back to the status quo no matter what we throw at it.
I guess it does as you say, leave a wide untouched field to explore for the rest of us in "how would X change the world?".
But sometimes I just. Don't want to always be putting in the work myself. I'm visiting this other world because I want to see what they do. And then they disappoint. :p
I could flail around on this subject going back and forth for longer than I have energy for so anyway! Lemme find another bit of your post...
...doing this out of order adds a level of chaos and searching around trying to make sure I'm covering everything I want to cover.
>> Now, if we wanted to add that for fun, we could. I'd have no trouble generating several cultures each with its own sex/gender dynamics; I've done it repeatedly. But it takes time, so you have to ask if that's how you want to spend that time. Would it make the game more interesting for players? Who's the target audience and what do they enjoy?
Also "how much can you fake a more complex culture by throwing a few minor details out there".
Like if you make all the shopkeepers women and all the men in the town are wearing blue hats... clearly there is Culture happening here, but you don't need to write a mini-novel about why they're like that. :p
>> >> How do people treat gender in your world? What are the standards, what are the exceptions? What ways does it chafe some people? <<
>> If you want to go there, I can talk about gender for ages and if you want examples, here are some of my QUILTBAG characters. But I don't think a cargo delivery game would be the best context for that.
XD
Ha, no.
I was not fully distinguishing "talking about the cargo game" vs "talking about games in general"...
>> I gotta wonder how many guys died because they were too busy watching Lara's ass to spot a trap. Heh, yeah. I've had a guy fall into a swimming pool while staring at me.
My asexual ass once again baffled at allo behavior.
:p
>> Or you are rude to a female orc and she pulls your arm off.
XD
This is making me think...
I'm sure there's a market for a game where trying to romance characters involves figuring out their culture-specific methods of signalling romance and making sure you're behaving politely by THEIR standards.
I'd find it a lot of fun to work on!
But yeah also the idea of placing little "don't be a dick/don't get distracted by the horny" traps into a game is really funny!
>> >> Yeah I'll... tackle that another time, too. Safe to say that this video has some really good points about how even playing a female character or romancing a man is still presented in a way to encourage seeing yourself as the man and the woman as being for you.
It can be really uncomfortable! <<
>> Eh, it's the lack of flexibility and responsiveness. If you can build a character that you find relatable, whatever that is for you; and you can tell the game what kinds of sexual or romantic content you like and dislike; then the storyline can adapt itself to your interests. The awkwardness comes when players are stuck with options that don't match their interests.
I'm not sure this is addressing the same point I was talking about the video addressing?
The video brought up things like how you can get scenes where if you play a female character and romance a male, the focus is STILL on the female's naked body and you might not even see much of the man.
How games are reluctant to sexualize male characters even when you're clearly actively romancing them.
The unbalance in some games when you're playing a male character vs a female one in how much the camera highlights you vs your choice of romantic partner.
The game can present you things that match your interests but then still shy away from treating those interests fairly.
*wobbles hand vaguely*
I'm not sure if my struggles to express this are a "it's 6am before breakfast" problem or a "this is just hard for me to express in general" problem. Probably the latter but the former doesn't help. :p
>> I like the idea of a butch with sideburns. :D
BEHOLD, Libera!
She's easier to see in bright light but it does weird things with her colors. :p
I really just. Love how natural the sideburns look on her? Like. Of course she has them. They belong there. She'd look weirder without them.
I love her overall face. The color (when the light isn't making her grey and peeling the orange out of her hair), the shape, the vibes. The MH: World version of her is entirely aesthetic, though. If I ever made her into a proper OC I'd pretty much have to grow her a personality almost from scratch.
But I do... think I know what the foundation of it would be.
Judging people on looks? Sure. But you can get away with that far better in character design than in RL. :p
Bonus (links to full size):
While I was out trying to get some good pics, this fricking anjanath comes running out and was WAY too close to me, but when I ran away and looked back, she was just getting a drink.
I probably would have been tempted to try fighting her, but
A. I wasn't exactly prepared for a fight, I was just on an expedition so time would pass and the sun would come up.
B. I'm used to playing World with an Xbox controller and I was on mouse and keyboard.
C. It's been so long since I played and I'm SO FUCKING RUSTY.
It was not the time to test myself against a fire-breathing trex. :p