Fortune's Run - retro FPS inspired by Quake, Deus Ex and E.Y.E - now available on Early Access

[Lemming42]

Thank you for the explanation, but I meant the sexual abuse controversy, as I'm out of the loop.

Oh - there's going to be a depiction of sexual violence at some point in the game, and it forms a "core part of the story" (devs' own words), and the protagonist's backstory. It's hinted at right from the start, with the mentor in the tutorial suggesting that something terrible has happened to your character, which you can't quite recall or confront.

The devs say that they've both experienced sexual violence in real life, and feel compelled to portray it in the game in a way that conveys the full gravity of the experience and inspires revulsion and sickness in the viewer, rather than the flippant or glorified depictions they feel tend to exist in other media.

It's not so much a controversy in itself as much as people just feeling that this isn't going to be the best medium/game through which to address the topic. I don't doubt that the devs have something they really genuinely want to get across in the game, and I don't doubt that their intentions are good, but I just don't see how something like that popping up in a sci-fi FPS/imsim game is gonna be anything other than a disaster. It's a sticking point for a lot of people and the devs response is generally just "don't play the game then" (which is fair enough).

 

[lightbane]

The typical "then don't play/watch 'x' if you don't like it!" is a typical woke response, quite overused lately. Extra points when that results in the producers losing money for being aggressive towards the customers, and then blaming the customers for being sexist or something else.

 

[Üstad]

When I saw Quake on the title I immedietly assumed the game takes part in dark-gothic setting which is a pure incline, but the game seems nothing like that. Stop playing with my feelings

 

[Lemming42]

The typical "then don't play/watch 'x' if you don't like it!" is a typical woke response, quite overused lately. Extra points when that results in the producers losing money for being aggressive towards the customers, and then blaming the customers for being sexist or something else.

It seems like a fair response to me - not everyone is the target demographic for everything, and I think it's not unreasonable for the creators of something to say "well if you don't like it then it's not for you, don't bother with it".

The only issue here is that it's been flagged up so many times as something people would rather not have in the game and the devs seem totally unwilling to hear out their potential fans. If they really want to stand by their "vision" or whatever at all costs then they should do it, but ultimately I think this is going to overshadow the game's many strong points and it'll go down in history as "that weird niche game where an alien rapes you at one point", when really it deserves to go down as a very interesting immersive sim. Also, I've been trying to avoid saying this because it opens up a whole conversational minefield, but it's also potentially a bit dodgy for two (I assume) men to be projecting their own experiences of sexual violence onto a female character (unless the protag is from some hermaphrodite race or some weird shit), and is probably going to go wrong no matter what.

They do seem to want to treat the subject seriously, but at the same time I just don't think it's even possible to have a game that's about pop culture references and somewhat-comedic violence, but also includes this absolute atom bomb of a topic in it. If that's their vision, then that's their vision, but I don't think they quite realise how badly people are going to react, and how much people just don't want to be confronted with this specific topic in this specific type of game.

 

[Jinn]

They do seem to want to treat the subject seriously, but at the same time I just don't think it's even possible to have a game that's about pop culture references and somewhat-comedic violence, but also includes this absolute atom bomb of a topic in it.

Exactly this. I don't think it's something they should remove because it's shocking or TRIGGERING. It's just completely inconsistent with the tone the entire game has been promoted with and that the game itself puts forth from the moment you start it. It's hamfisted in and apparently made a central theme because they don't know how to express themselves artistically in a nuanced way - which is exactly why they shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

I'm just so sick of this attitude, particularly when it comes to videogames. Such a total lack of self-awareness. And rather than taking a moment to understand the many angles as to why this could be a bad move, they pull the "well fuck off if you don't like it" move. If they had a track record and maybe had proven themselves extremely competent, it'd be fine. But that kind of arrogance when you're just entering the scene kind of speaks levels.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

It sounds like everyone is making it a much bigger deal than it is. The devs added a disgusting monster licking the PC as a symbolic depiction of rape, Steam's playtesters didn't get it and claimed the sexual violence tag was misused because they didn't see anyone getting raped, devs begin to huff their own farts about artistic vision instead of trying to figure out how to convey the idea of rape without actually showing it so they can tag it appropriately (maybe some "suggestions of violence" tag?), Dusk guy asks questions and the response gets his fanboys angry.

 

[Icewater]

If they really want to stand by their "vision" or whatever at all costs then they should do it, but ultimately I think this is going to overshadow the game's many strong points and it'll go down in history as "that weird niche game where an alien rapes you at one point"

In F.E.A.R. 2 your character gets raped by a ghost and I don't think that really happened.

 

[lightbane]

If they really want to stand by their "vision" or whatever at all costs then they should do it, but ultimately I think this is going to overshadow the game's many strong points and it'll go down in history as "that weird niche game where an alien rapes you at one point"

In F.E.A.R. 2 your character gets raped by a ghost and I don't think that really happened.

In Fear 2 the protagonist was a guy, and even back then when it was released, guys were still considered expendable (nowadays they are to be hated). I remember how the marketing for Dead Space 2 was about the many, many ways Isaac could die. If they did some actual brutal stuff to a female protagonist in current year, chances are the game could be canceled at lightspeed, unless it's something vague and abstract. I'm not sure the devs would risk that.

 

[Roguey]

If they really want to stand by their "vision" or whatever at all costs then they should do it, but ultimately I think this is going to overshadow the game's many strong points and it'll go down in history as "that weird niche game where an alien rapes you at one point"

In F.E.A.R. 2 your character gets raped by a ghost and I don't think that really happened.

In Fear 2 the protagonist was a guy, and even back then when it was released, guys were still considered expendable (nowadays they are to be hated). I remember how the marketing for Dead Space 2 was about the many, many ways Isaac could die. If they did some actual brutal stuff to a female protagonist in current year, chances are the game could be canceled at lightspeed, unless it's something vague and abstract. I'm not sure the devs would risk that.

I can't even comprehend the original argument here, but most guys thought getting dominated by the attractive ghost lady was hot (even if the character getting subjected to it didn't).

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

Huge missed opportunity, imagine the spectacle and press coverage if they shoved it into the Roadmap.

Roadmap
Q1 2024

• New weaponry: Explosives and Flammables
• Rape
• Episode 2: Fortune's Sprint

 

[udm]

It seems that both devs are trans
https://twitter.com/FortunesRun/status/1710438874248323312

Every. Damn. Time!

 

[Trithne]

Wasn't this a Doom TC originally?

You can't swing a chainsaw in the Doom dev community without a majority of your hits being troons.

 

[toughasnails]

Yeah, on the first page of this thread you actually have a working link for the old demo from way back when this was a zdoom TC.
And you are absolutely right about the Doom community. A number of older mappers and folks involved with various ports are trans, and as far as the newcomers go you can make a safe bet just going by their doomworld avatars. There is even a phenomenon of wads made to reflect or sublimate the transition related trauma, YukiRaven's (also known as "Remilia Scarlet" heh) newer stuff for example.

 

[orcinator]

I think I'd like to write more deeply on that + the harassment we've been facing in the near future

Should have just kept being a down low brother (and gave the twilek bigger tits).

It seems that both devs are trans

Edit: This isn't

this is especially since the chance this will never be finished is now 10x greater.

 

[orcinator]

If they did some actual brutal stuff to a female protagonist in current year, chances are the game could be canceled at lightspeed, unless it's something vague and abstract. I'm not sure the devs would risk that.

I'm pretty sure CD could easily shit out another NuTomb Raider game if they felt like it.
Wonder if nuPerfect Dark will also have loads of ryona.

 

[udm]

In Fear 2 the protagonist was a guy, and even back then when it was released, guys were still considered expendable (nowadays they are to be hated). I remember how the marketing for Dead Space 2 was about the many, many ways Isaac could die. If they did some actual brutal stuff to a female protagonist in current year, chances are the game could be canceled at lightspeed, unless it's something vague and abstract. I'm not sure the devs would risk that.

The world could always use more House of Velez

Spoiler

 

[Tweed]

Doom community likes to harbor pedophiles.

 

[toughasnails]

If they really want to stand by their "vision" or whatever at all costs then they should do it, but ultimately I think this is going to overshadow the game's many strong points and it'll go down in history as "that weird niche game where an alien rapes you at one point"

In F.E.A.R. 2 your character gets raped by a ghost and I don't think that really happened.

In Fear 2 the protagonist was a guy, and even back then when it was released, guys were still considered expendable (nowadays they are to be hated). I remember how the marketing for Dead Space 2 was about the many, many ways Isaac could die. If they did some actual brutal stuff to a female protagonist in current year, chances are the game could be canceled at lightspeed, unless it's something vague and abstract. I'm not sure the devs would risk that.

Would it tho... Around the same as Dead Space 2 we had Tomb Raider where Lara could die in a number of extremely gruesome ways, her death depicted in great detail. And then there's the whole trend in horror movies from 00 and early 10s that TR took a bit of inspiration from, extreme horror or torture porn. Remember what is done to female bodies in Hostel 2 or Martyrs or Poughkeepsie Tapes, whether it is explicitly shown or implied. And this is something that really goes way back in horror movies. Giallos depicting the prolonged act of murder or murdered female body in deliberately aesthetically pleasing ways. Slasher fans, male or female, signaling enjoyment at 'dumb bitches' getting the knife, preferably in particularly painful way. Japanese torture porn that predated the popularity of French and American works of that sort.
And I honestly doubt that such depictions in a video game today would get one into problems just on account of being such depictions.

Also, I've been trying to avoid saying this because it opens up a whole conversational minefield, but it's also potentially a bit dodgy for two (I assume) men to be projecting their own experiences of sexual violence onto a female character (unless the protag is from some hermaphrodite race or some weird shit), and is probably going to go wrong no matter what.

So yes, this is beyond sensitive. There are dimensions of female lived experience that male can never have access to as they are founded on the different ways we are embodied, as much as we, for a very long time now, tend to overlook that. I generally loathe it when a male author attempts to give a first person account of uniquely female experience. It is not something available to me or him.
But in this case, and this is indeed difficult to talk about here, the experiences these two might have been subjected as young boys might give them horribly 'privileged' position to other men (when it comes to being bodily overpowered, forcefully groped and penetrated, and you can see why this isn't easy to discuss).

 

[markec]

It seems that both devs are trans
https://twitter.com/FortunesRun/status/1710438874248323312

When I heard that there is a rape scene being a plot point I assumed its the main character being the victim. It got me confused since the protagonist looks like a man, but now everything makes sense.

 

[Roguey]

When I heard that there is a rape scene being a plot point I assumed its the main character being the victim. It got me confused since the protagonist looks like a man, but now everything makes sense.

A lot of nerds are into woman-mountains.

 

[Tweed]

"My game is all about how fucked up my life is."

This trope needs to end.

 

[toughasnails]

An artist sublimating his or her trauma into art is an old trope indeed.
What's in question in any given example of that is whether the art produced is produced out of honest confrontation with the trauma or is just another way to mask or escape it.

 

[Tweed]

These days t's more about trying to milk it for money.

 

[markec]

When I heard that there is a rape scene being a plot point I assumed its the main character being the victim. It got me confused since the protagonist looks like a man, but now everything makes sense.

A lot of nerds are into woman-mountains.

Not those which look like men.

 

[Tweed]

I don't think I'd want to pick women based on Robert Crumb's idea of beauty.