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Wot I Fink: What Can I Learn From Zoe Quinn & Depression Quest?


McJobless

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Let's just get down to this in dot-point form. I'm barely in the mood for writing, but I want to get my thoughts out now.

  • Depression Quest showcases the entirely wrong way to make a game that is supposed to bring awareness to a significant health issue. Depression is very serious, and it's important people seek treatment options where possible. Normally, just like you would have seen with Coming Out Simulator, the developer makes a nice, small, personal game that is very engaging and relies on the age old "Show, don't tell" principle, so that the audience can come to the conclusion themselves, feel smarter for it, thereby making the message stick. Depression Quest did not do this at all. It is a poorly designed interactive fiction that has attempted to brand itself as a video game, while failing to uphold the tenants of any video game. It is nowhere near engaging, and actually makes me despise the main character and their struggle, as opposed to Coming Out Simulator, where I was VERY moved by the events of the plot.
  • As a common courtesy, do not take advantage of your partner in any relationship for your own game. The fact she cheated on her boyfriend (I'm sure he might not be completely innocent, but nonetheless) with at least 5 other guys is absolutely ridiculous, and it doesn't matter who you are, whether you're some random on the street or a world famous actor. The idea of being in a relationship is that you can trust your partner, and breaking that is a serious breach of any ethical code.
  • If you engage in any form of social media, don't be a f****ing dickhead and use death/rape/other serious threats, personal insults, pull personal information or so on against a target or their family/friends. You have the right to voice your opinion, but you should not (and probably don't) have the right to be an absolute prick to anybody about it. You may not understand this, but there is a person behind that monitor who will read those messages, and just like if you received the same level of hatred, they will suffer from it.
  • If you are a journalist and you know you have any form of bias towards something you are prepared to discuss, unless you're in some form of debate or you make it clear that you have that bias (and maybe let people know where the bias stems from, such as playing a game franchise since childhood or being friends with the developer), you should make it a must to remove yourself from reviewing or discussing the content. We right now are plagued with journalists who have significant biases, are not telling people, and allow those biases to shape the content that is published. It is a breach of free speech, and it is disrespectful to your audience. Furthermore, the developers who rely on the reviews as a means to get feedback on how to improve their games will suffer if you give them straight As, as they will never grow or learn and will continue to make mistakes.
  • If you do not play games, do not study games, or have only the most bare-bones relationship with games, you can only provide a very narrow scope of opinions about games. Until you are involved in any part of the industry (from player to developer), understand that your agendas may not be valid due to misinformation, and that you honestly should be discussing and focusing on issues that are closer to your personal interests, be that music, movies, politics, war etc.
  • Men and Women think about fundamentally different things in different ways. The games industry has been a male-centric industry for its entire lifespan thus far, but we are now reaching a point where more women are entering and bringing new opinions. We absolutely need to have a fair discussion about these issues, but we must remember to be respectful of each other, and know that there thousands of developers out there, making thousands of games, so that there will always be a game to fill every certain niche. We don't need every game to do the same thing, and that's okay. It's okay to have games for entertainment and games for education. It's okay to have AAA titles and indie titles. Let's be mindful that we are a community of many different ideals and interests.
  • The use of parody, deconstruction, humour and sarcasm is generally to allow for discussion of serious issues. It's a way of brushing out the harshness, and allowing for people to look at the issue in a much less negative light, and hopefully reach a more peaceful communication line. We all need to understand that life is not about being safe and ignoring the "dangerous" topics, because if we do not, life will become a more dangerous place. The issues presented by this entire scandal have to be discussed. We need to reach conclusions that will hopefully better the industry. It has pointed out flaws, and it is time to take a serious look at these flaws and reach a means of solving them. Aside from a few egos, nobody has anything to lose from this communication.
  • There has been a blatant stream of miscommunication and wrong facts in almost all areas of this entire situation. Everything from the people involved in the sex scandal to the semi-related Phil Fish/Polytron dox. It is massively confusing for the majority of people (myself included) who don't religiously follow the entire Internet during this time of "crisis" to see a line of "facts" with fictional evidence and no real supporting claims, and this creates a lot of fallacies during the ensuing arguments. If you are going to have a major opinion in this, please do your research.

I'm sure I had more, but I'm going to stick with this for now.

I've bounced between "sides" during the past 7 days, but right now I'm going to stay neutral, because in the end it doesn't really affect me as much as I thought. I'm going to make the games I want and I know will actually both engage and teach players, monitor and plan out my social communications, and I'm going to keep my professional relationships separate from my private relationships. Those are really the key lessons to take away from this.

Be mindful of your actions, be respectful, but also don't ask to sweep the issues under the rug. It is clear that, in the aftermath, problems inherit within gaming media and the player community have become apparent, and we need to work together to solve these issues.

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This reminded me of a game called Reunion which really got to me. Watch this all the way through if you haven't seen or played it before.

 

http://youtu.be/_Fj6Sl-h19I

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Can your next blog be on what we can learn from Phil Fish, he deserves one too.

On it.

 

Thank you :)

 

If you do not play games, do not study games, or have only the most bare-bones relationship with games, you can only provide a very narrow scope of opinions about games

It's amazing how many people attempt to talk about trending topics like "feminism" and "sexism" and apply it to games where it doesn't actually exist until people start picking on little details. If you pick on everything in small detail, everything will have some sort of problem, but if it doesn't suit the current agenda or have any benefit to them, it won't be discussed. Click baiting is at an all time high with headlines at the moment using these words. There seems to be a new attitudes of, if a woman says it, it must be right and any sort of disagreement from a male with them is seen as an attack and oppression because "misogyny".

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