Didn’t want to derail Michael’s thread, but thanks for this insight, and I’ll definitely change that phrase once the update freeze is over. I’m definitely glad you both pointed this out, as there were likely many who read it but didn’t say anything, so I may have caused unhappiness to several others unknowingly. To those people, I am sorry! Amazing how much just a few words can change the whole meaning of a passage, and something I can work on to be more thoughtful of in the future!
Personally it was such a fleeting moment to me and the bullies were so cartoonishly flat, that I didn’t really take it very seriously! I took the passage as more of a “wow these bullies are kind of pathetic” note. Also it’s La Petite Mort, don’t beat yourself up on not getting perfect wording! I do appreciate your graciousness nonetheless <3
fwiw I found the game very silly and charming (odd to say for such horrific imagery, but still)!
For what it’s worth, while I gave the benefit of the doubt during my playtime that the intent was “which pronouns did they use while making fun of you” rather than “in order to make fun of you,” I also found it a clumsy and uncomfortable choice to make that particular passage do double duty. I really appreciate that you’ve been so responsive to the feedback!
Do you think it would distress other players enough that I should ask permission to change it, or withdraw the game from the competition and change it myself? While I enjoy being in ectocomp I’d prefer to prioritize peoples happiness so I wouldn’t want random strangers playing a game and feeling a gut punch of sadness or feel targeted for the next month.
(edit: I’ve contacted Ruber and will see what he thinks!)
Do you think it would distress other players enough that I should ask permission to change it, or withdraw the game from the competition and change it myself?
I can’t and won’t speak for anyone else, but I didn’t feel sad or targeted. It read as clumsy rather than malicious. I definitely don’t think it merits withdrawal, but I don’t think asking permission for a tweak was a bad idea at all given that others have felt more strongly.
Well, that makes sense, and I’ve sent a message. I’ll probably just change it to a straight-up passage saying ‘what pronouns do you use?’ rather than anything cute like I’d prefer (I considered changing it to ‘your friends are worried about you; when they talk about you they use your preferred pronouns. What are they?’
The reason I’d want to leave in some gender choice in general is because I needed that passage since the game refers to you in 3rd person later on. I could just make the character a woman by default, or ask to pick between man and woman, but I figured people preferred pronoun choice over gender choice and 3 options over 2. My original (poor!) idea was to incorporate it into a scene rather than jumping out of immersion; and since this is a horror game, it’d be a negative scene rather than a positive one. And now that I think of it, there really isn’t a good way to mix asking pronouns with a negative scene, is there? ‘What pronouns do you use while being attacked/injured/scared/hurt/etc.’ is always going to come off weird. My biggest issue was thinking of it as a standard gender choice (like selecting between Steve and Alex or choosing which bathroom to enter) rather than a personal event/choice that can have strong emotional ties.
In fact, while many things are silly, this wasn’t an attempt to parody romance games; I was trying to write a good one, and I remember advice when acting that instead of playing a drunk person, you should play a drunk person pretending to be sober; so here I was trying to write a romance game pretending to be horror. The concept was ‘horror game but the author is mostly good at romances so that can’t stop from bleeding through’. My inspirations were Wayhaven chronicles (the monsters correspond directly to the cast of that game) and DDLC. And I had heard that takes and spins on genres work best when the original genre was honored, which was my (clumsy) attempt here.
I did pick up on that earnestness and didn’t take it as parody or satire. I am with lionstooth that the pronoun thing only read as a tad clumsy, not malicious at all. I wouldn’t withdraw the game!
also I’m sorry for not reassuring you more in my initial message, it was more meant to give insight, not to say I was offended or hurt anywhere near michael’s level (I wasn’t at all). I didn’t want to contradict their emotions in their own review thread, which is why I didn’t elaborate further there.
To make things clear, I have permitted Brian to change the phrase.
This is not a change that would add features or improve gameplay, so I am OK with it; we care for the community, so it is ok to make this kind of exception.
Thanks Ruber (autocorrect messed this up earlier)! A new version has now been posted that changes one word on the hair page and also restructured the pronouns page. I did not fix any of the reported bugs and there are some more substantial restructurings suggested that I did not incorporate.
Feel free to message me if anything else remains as an immediate issue; otherwise I look forward to doing a post comp release!