KickStarter Double Fine's MASSIVE CHALICE - Released... but nobody cares

[tuluse]

felipepepe's posts start from here: http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/9301/P150/#276712

EJECT! EJECT! I bet DF's forums have the same moderation policy as TVTropes.

What's the TVTropes moderation policy?

 

[felipepepe]

felipepepe Let's focus on the most interesting part of that, which is, should such politically charged questions be left out of the games altogether. Common strategies espoused by Internet Warriors are:
(1) Only put things in if they make sense in the game. Except they're the ones making the game from scratch, so they could easily, at this point, make gays or Brazilians 'make sense'... or not. So how do you decide?

Good questions, I think it's up for the developer's view, they have to be critical to what they aim to achieve and what that mechanic does to help reach that goal.

Example: Mass Effect 3 may advertise itself as awesomely written sci-fi epic, but we all know that it's mainly a romantic simulator/fanservice game. If they really wanted to write solid solid & characters, they wound't make it a space orgy where everyone is bi-sexual, as it's obvious that if characters had depth they wound't just desire Shepard regardless of genre or imminent threats to the universe. In ME3, making everyone bi-sexual/gay helps achieve the game's (pathetic) goal, so it makes sense to be in. In Planescape:Torment it would be absurd to have all character being bi-sexual.

Dragon Commander will have TONS of real-life/political issues, but the game is about that, is a core feature. Having an elf cry about gay marriage in-game and plead me to vote 'yes' makes total sense with the goals of the game, and even better, allows me to consider and choose, instead of just being there because people asked for or because it's politically correct.

(2) Only put it in insofar as it enriches the game. Well the problem is if you put too little effort in it mechanics wise it's a silly gimmick that looks even more like a random political agenda-pushing. If you put a lot of effort in it, well, someone could always argue everything gay heroes bring to the table could be done another way, and so, the question returns: how do you decide whether to implement such things through gays, or not?

Again, I think it's up the game's goals. But this is way harder, because gays/no gays is considered actually a political issue... Some stuff get free pass, no one will care if some characters in the game are gay, that's already common, but there are no mainstream games where you can choose Male/Female/FABULOUS at character creation, so you're aware that if you add that you're making a political statement.

Is up to the developer to weight if adding gays instead of elves (lol) to the game is worth it. My issue with kickstarter games that "listen to the community" is that vocal minorities are way more interested in the political statement then how it will affect the game, vide current example, so developers farming cool-points are inclined to make it INCLUSIVE, instead of good.

(3) One kind of political question should not be unduly privileged over another through agenda-pushing. Aside from the irony that this is precisely how aid, NGOs, art, etc. work these days in representing minorities, is there an inherent reason that a gay guy wanting gays to be in the game is bad? i.e. if they have a suggestion that may benefit the game generally, then why is it any different from a turn-based player wanting turn-based combat?

We are free to say we want game X to be turn-based, and will definetly call it DECLINE if they don't. Gay people are also free to ask for gay characters, but crying HOMOPHOBIA when they don't has a MUCH heavier weight, it becames a political struggle. And it's a very delicate matter, since you can't be neutral about it... having gays is pro-gay, not having is anti-gay, both stances can and will be read as a political statement.

And as I said in the forums, in-game inclusion is a insane Pandora's Box that people don't even comprehend. If gays ask form gays to be included and developers include in the name of "diversity", what will they do other "minorities" asks the same? Why do your game doesn't pass the Betchel Test? You can't pull out the "it's fantasy" card anymore, because you burned it when you heard gays...

So, in the same way that changing your first-person game to a turn-based one mid-develpment will cause massive butthurt on those that liked FPS, and proably dissapoint TB fans due lack of adequate pre-production, changing your game to fit demands from a minority is a very dangerous move that may annoy people that think you're pampering a group and offend other groups that were left out.

 

[Tigranes]

felipepepe
So if developers say, "we decided that the main game goal / one of the smaller game goals is representation of homosexuals and a statement about real world politics", that's fine, right? But it's not if, in a Kickstarted game that explicitly wants a large amount of community input, gay people say they would like that to be a smaller game goal? Now you're getting into the tricky bit of motivations - who's to say that x game dev has a bone to pick about gays (i.e. the Codexian version of Liberal Hippie Sawyer), or that some gay people think it really does suit the game very well, or that at least they think they found a good way to push their agenda and improve the game a tonce?

I agree that it's dumb to call it homophobia if there aren't any gay characters, which is why "OMG MISOGYNIST PIG YOU CANT PLAY AS A GIRL IN GOTHIC / TW / ALPHA PROTOCOL" is retarded. I skimmed the thread to be sure but I didn't see too much of that in this case? If we speak more generally, then sure that kind of polemic is always a risk, but avoiding it altogether may not be a solution.

Why please gays and not please Brazilians? Why should a game have to please both gays and Brazilians? Why does a single game have to choose to cater to both or neither? I assume that you will be fine with it if a dev were to make a logical case that X game is particularly suited to including gays in some fashion and not Brazilians. I could see that argument being made quite easily for a breeding strategy game like Massive Chalice...

I'm half playing devil's advocate, half genuine. I don't entirely disagree with you but at the same time it's hard for me to just agree 100%, and I"m trying to parse tha tout.

Edit: Also, I'm Asian, so we are totally fine to continue discussing this debate, if we were both White then clearly we would be terrible racist homophobic baby eaters.

 

[pakoito]

I always get my race wrong.

 

[Metro]

Update is up. And it is shit. It seems that they probably don't want to make stretchgoals (not now at least). While this is counter-intuitive to the campaign (more stretchgoals can mean more money), I think poorly done stretchgoals may have a negative effect on the production in the long run. Because offering the stars for an additional 100K dollars can result in the developer overpromising. And if they underpromise in the stretchgoals, it might not have any affect. So I'm not condemning DF for not doing extra goals. Nevertheless, they should have made a more interesting update.

of J_C

 

[felipepepe]

felipepepe
So if developers say, "we decided that the main game goal / one of the smaller game goals is representation of homosexuals and a statement about real world politics", that's fine, right?

Yeah, why not? As long as they do it before the kickstarter closes, or else it would be quite a dick move, lawsuits inbound.

But it's not if, in a Kickstarted game that explicitly wants a large amount of community input, gay people say they would like that to be a smaller game goal? Now you're getting into the tricky bit of motivations - who's to say that x game dev has a bone to pick about gays (i.e. the Codexian version of Liberal Hippie Sawyer), or that some gay people think it really does suit the game very well, or that at least they think they found a good way to push their agenda and improve the game a tonce?

On the thread I was debating against the proposing of the ideia, if the developer wants to do it I can't do little besides argue against or just cancel my pledge if it's a deal breaker for me. On a good game this wound't bother much, but on a kickstarter made of clouds like this one, him going full INCLUSION gives out massive warning signs, at least to me.

And seeing how we had things like Torment 2 being 400% funded without we even knowing the combat system, kickstarter seems a perfect place to be dissapointed by chances/features you don't like... nothing stops Double Fine from making the game a gay-only romance simulator set in ponyland due "comunity feedback"... but they have to be aware that's not what people pledged for (I think), and people will be angry.

If we speak more generally, then sure that kind of polemic is always a risk, but avoiding it altogether may not be a solution.

Larian is doing it perfectly with Dragon Commander, is all about how you handle them. It is definetly not something you'll want to do half-assed, or perhaps worse, present as something "open to debate". No one argues about the colors in traffic lights, but try to ask people to propose new colors in a internet forum and 5 minutes later words like Hitler, the Patriarchy, Israel and Monsanto will be flying around...

Why please gays and not please Brazilians? Why should a game have to please both gays and Brazilians? Why does a single game have to choose to cater to both or neither? I assume that you will be fine with it if a dev were to make a logical case that X game is particularly suited to including gays in some fashion and not Brazilians. I could see that argument being made quite easily for a breeding strategy game like Massive Chalice...

if the game is developed from scratch like that, there's nothing to be said, it's the developer's view on how the game should work, he should please nobody but himself. But if pressure/lobby from a group makes the spineless developer change his game, he is opening himself to all the other's groups lobby and outrage. He can make a game set in South America that has gays, feminists, transexuals, otakus and mayan gods but no brazilians, because we speak a different language. I get that, we don't fit the concept. But if then French Guiana players protests and they add a french-speaking group, you can bet there will be a righteous HUEHUE outrage.

Just think on today's most omnipresent activist groups, feminists and gays. If people complain that game X doesn't have gays or feminists representation, and the developers patch it to now have gays, of course the feminists will annoy them until they hear their pleads as well. He already threw away his "artistic integrity", he already compromised his work and opened doors to any group that feels under represented or offended.

I'm half playing devil's advocate, half genuine. I don't entirely disagree with you but at the same time it's hard for me to just agree 100%, and I"m trying to parse tha tout.

Cool, I'm all up for some debate on this, instead of juvenile name-calling...

 

[Vault Dweller]

That said, the weird thing is this - if you look at the initial KS pitch, yeah, there's not a lot of detail. But I'd say the amount of concrete game info is comparable to, well, a lot of other major game KS in the last two years.

The difference is, we had a better idea of what to expect from WL2 (just like WL but way more awesome!) or PE (BG meets your favorite game!) or Torment (just like Torment but with 100 more writers!). This one is something new and poorly presented.

Demonic invasion? Massive chalice in need of reforging? Dynasties? Game of Thrones meets XCOM? This game, if done right, may end up being more awesome and fun than all the other KS games combined, but many ideas sound very good on paper, but fall apart when implemented.

For example:

“The big twist is the epic timeline – this battle against the demons is going to last hundreds of years, so as the king you’ll have to make some really hard decisions with your heroes because they’re going to age over time. And so when your speeding up that flow of time on the strategic map, kinda like in XCOM, the heroes will age and the event will be very spaced out – the demonic attacks will be spaced five or ten years apart.”

Why is the big twist necessary? What exactly does it add? What kind of hard decisions would you have to make because heroes age over time? Basically, is it a real feature that will make this game unique or a useless shtick that would get in the way of gameplay?

I mean, if you had to fight against other nations and families, then playing with bloodlines and marrying off your kids to secure alliances would make some sense, but fighting against demons attacking once every 10 or 20 years makes it sort of pointless.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Wait. Wait. What?

And if you say sex and sexuality aren’t the main focus then why is it such an issue if two characters are arbitrarily gay? If two gay characters could reproduce because of fantastical game elements, and the outcome would be the same, or even different, why is it an issue?
Why does the word “gay couples” cropping up immediately set your minds to work on thinking up ways to keep it out of the game, instead of how it could work with it?

Because homophobia, that’s why.

Did this guy really just say if you don't support magical fantasy butt-babies you're homophobic? Because it's a fantasy game you should have gay couples even if dynastic shit is an important part of the game, and they shouldn't just take an opposite sex partner and lie back and think of England?

Help. HELP!

Edit: Oh god I can't stop reading that thread. Holy shit.

Edit 2: Speaking of holy shit, never trust anyone who types ":D!"

 

[20 Eyes]

I agree stretch Vault Dweller goals are iffy, but you don't feel like you're being spoken to by an ad? Really? I feel like that paragraph was entirely written by the worst of the New York coffee-sipping beanie-topped Marketing undergrad who left his brain in a vat of Absolut Vault Dweller the night before.

Not compared to how I feel when I read a bunch of nonsense Stretchgoals with arbitrary cash requirements. It doesn't really bother me, though. I know what Kickstarter is and I don't hold it against developers for trying to milk as much cash out of it as they can.

 

[Metro]

Summary: Tim Schafer worked on some cool games decades ago and six years ago made a neat game in Psychonauts. Tasha Harris was essentially the sole developer, artist, designer, etc. of Costume Quest -- she since left Derple Fine and now works at Pixar. The rest of Derple Fine games are XBLA download titles and pedestrian at best. The only thing the company really excels at is marketing and appealing to hipsters.

Development of their relatively simple adventure game is taking forever never mind the fact they somehow ran out of money when they got nearly triple (quadruple? More?) what they asked for and now they want to make a strategy game helmed by some nobody who finds it necessary to pander to the gay Biowarian crowd. Does anything else need to be said? Wake me when it's available for $1 in Humble Bundle 15.

 

[J_C]

felipepepe for speaking the truth in the DF forums.

 

[Trash]

Do hope that the whole generations and demonic invasion gimmick will play out as you desperately trying to prepare your constantly faltering kingdom before the next wave of hellspawn comes in. That's the idea I got from their initial pitch and that's what interests me. A game of balancing resources against an ever increasing threat. That's what I want to hear more about and that bullshit back and forth bitching about homosexuality has seemingly taken over is fucking tiresome.

 

[Overboard]

The only thing the company really excels at is marketing and appealing to hipsters.

Magical manginas producing glorious gay offspring approval confirmed then.

 

[Trash]

And Felipepe made an ass of himself. Started out strong but as soon as you start shrilly announcing how tired you are of pc correct bullshit in your games you're no longer having a discussion on game mechanics but turn it into ideological driven bull. And that you then went on with personal attacks on people and whining about the evil gay agenda only sunk that ship a lot faster. Fucking BR's going HUEHUEHUE and all that. Le sigh.

Anyway, hope we'll hear about some actual game mechanics soon. Or at least ideas into which direction they want to take the game.

 

[Grunker]

Linkage to felipe-thread bros?

 

[Infinitron]

Linkage to felipe-thread bros?

Scroll up.

 

[Grunker]

^I'm blind?

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

^I'm blind?

Yep.

 

[evdk]

^I'm blind?

Oh, so you've found the link already...

 

[SCO]

Seriouz bussinez.

I don't actually care if gays, trannies, bisexuals, hetero, assexual, genetic mules, or even furries characters are in, as long as where it impacts the narrative, it is consistent with the theme. Isn't that the whole cause of the butthurt about conquistador and females?

They wanted orange (period accurate sexism), it gave them lemon-lime (50% females). Apparently even kickstarter is not enough for all special interests even on a already distasteful theme.

The pc is strong

Just announce that gay characters 'do their duty' with a anonymous donor or adopt already, stupid meaningless fucking drama.

 

[Metro]

I'm still having a hard time believing this isn't a big troll with all the homosexual equality talk and a name like MASSIVE CHALICE -- they'll probably cancel it on day 29 with a hearty 'lulz.'

 

[evdk]

I'm still having a hard time believing this isn't a big troll with all the homosexual equality talk and a name like MASSIVE CHALICE -- they'll probably cancel it on day 29 with a hearty 'lulz.'

No, they'll cancel the game on day 229. Hearty lulz will probably be included.

 

[Trash]

I'm still having a hard time believing this isn't a big troll with all the homosexual equality talk and a name like MASSIVE CHALICE -- they'll probably cancel it on day 29 with a hearty 'lulz.'

Equality talk is just one forum thread on their website. Made by someone on their forum to which they replied that they'll think about it. That's all.

Thing is with this kickstarter that there has been so very little information. I take it that they don't know specific game mechanics yet but come on, some ideas about directions would be nice. So far their lack of updating and general info is what's pissing me off. Don't start a fucking ks based on an idea alone. Have something to show. To talk about.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

I'm more worried about the overall direction in terms of style and mood this game is taking, so naturally, I sent them a question:

Me: "Is this game going to use goofy comic-style graphics often associated with Double Fine games, or are you using a more mature and serious tone for story, art direction and overall presentation?"

And that was the answer I got from DF:

Thanks a ton for backing MASSIVE CHALICE! Double Fine’s games each have a unique tone, and a lot of that comes from each game’s Project Lead. Brad and Tim have different styles but all Double Fine games have a lot of character and personality - that’s a core part of the studio!
IRON BRIGADE is all about an over-the-top, slightly ridiculous world, but the main joke is that everyone inside the world is self-serious and never references the ridiculous aspects. This is Brad’s humor wheelhouse, and we’re expecting MASSIVE CHALICE to have a similar feel!

In other words, they don't have a clue themselves. BUT ITS GONNA BE OVER-THE-TOP!!!

Might consider canceling towards the end if this isn't made clearer. I don't want funny comic shit in my turn-based game.

 

[kris]

I chip in again.

As for this "issue" I don't see what there is to discuss. As for this game I don't see why the characters should even have an "sexual orientation" and that putting them together for children is just a gameplay mechanic. In that thread you linked to, people talk about relationships, but I don't see how that is in anyway included. I believe some people imagine more things to this game than there is to it. Like mentioned before, if someone wants to "roleplay" their heroes being of any sexual orientation or a trannie or whatever. but since it is a strategy game that is not about these things there is then nothing to include in the game. And if they want to include sexual orientation in the hero character sheet, then that would add very little to the game. Overall this might be just be the codex overeacting.

Apparently now politely asking for your existence to be acknowledged is a demand for “special privileges” and… er, somehow racist. We’re learning a lot today!

Things like this almost makes me register on their forum. What does he even mean? He wants to be seen! Look at me?!

You know what else is inherently a sexual issue? Heterosexuality. And our lifestyle is constantly being shoved in gay people’s faces.

But this one was one step further. "heterosexual lifestyle", is he talking about all the porn? Or when a heterosexual go out in town, do he do that in a heterosexual way? :D