katt, migrating 🌟 🌈 @starkatt@awoo.space

@sev@witches.town Hey, thanks for having this conversation :) As you can probably tell, media criticism, game design, and consent are all topics I care a lot about, and I'm glad to be able to talk about them.

@sev@witches.town For the record, the three competing primary threads I read in the narrative are "carefree, spontaneous lesbian sex is fun", "situations of compromised consent are kinda hot", and "being a manipulative asshole is tempting but not okay". And those can't really coexist when the player can make choices that slide between any of them.

@sev@witches.town I'm not even saying I think the mechanical rewards ought to be synchronized with good behavior?

More like... the game has multiple warring visions about what it's trying to be, and those multiple threads actually clash really badly when it comes to consent.

@sev@witches.town That might be the key conceptual difference between where you and I are coming from, yeah.

I can't help but look at games through the framework of "what kind of gameplay is trying to be promoted here?" Mechanics and narrative aren't actually separable for me.

@sev@witches.town (programming note: that hypothetical game would have to tread *very* carefully, and the protagonist getting loudly and roundly called out for their behavior in-text would be a crucial element.)

@sev@witches.town And I think a game about "hey you're a skeevy-ass fucker who lies to get into people's pants" might actually have a purpose, but getting a gameplay incentivization to be a duplicitous asshole feels really jarring in a game that I feel was framed as sexy lesbian funtimes.

@sev@witches.town I don't think something has to have mechanics attached to it to have relevance in a game, but I do think mechanics have an important role in shaping player perceptions and choices.

Thinking more about it, the *purpose* of the points game was to give players motivation to behave manipulatively, yeah?

@sev@witches.town @DensetsuNoGomez When a game is pitched as "hey here's some sexy lesbians", it's kind of hard as a player to not seek those scenes out?

@DensetsuNoGomez @sev@witches.town I still felt like LKiaB treated sex as a reward, tbh. That's a big part of my negative feeling.

@sev@witches.town I might have had the thought during the first night. I honestly don't remember. Regardless, the fact that it's something we *both picked up on* is hella telling.

@sev@witches.town I do feel like the game implicitly penalized the choice though? Like, a fundamental gameplay concept in dating sims is "follow the relationship progression with a character to the narrative terminus." So once I had spent the first night with The Hacker, I felt like the game wanted me to follow up on that not just in the text but also in the structure.

@sev@witches.town And yeah, following more of the night phases with The Hacker probably contributed a lot to my opinion.

I said this in another thread, but through the second and further encounters with The Hacker, I kept having the though "this is *exactly* the kind of thing where someone might verbally say yes in the moment, then a week later question whether they actually *wanted* to."

@sev@witches.town Yeah, during my playthrough I tried to win the points game while not (for the most parts) acting completely unethically. I still acted hella unethically. That probably contributes a lot. I was a manipulative jerk who tried to keep a good opinion of themself anyway.

@grainloom There might very well be a reductionist explanation for why people experience a sense of there own gender, but for me any explanation was and continues to be utterly irrelevant.

There's no objective tests for whether someone is trans -- people have tried and failed to create them. What mattered is how I felt. Ultimately, that was the *only* thing that mattered.

@grainloom At this point, it's six years since I started transition. I've read piles and piles of text about gender theory -- everything from dense academic literature to microblog shitposts.

*And I still have no idea what gender is*. Really. Genuinely. I have no idea what it means to "feel like a woman". But, I viscerally and manifestly did, and had to act upon that.

@grainloom Cards on the table here: me being trans *greatly* informs my thought processes on the value of subjective experience, and was one of the first really important steps in my movement away from strict rationality.

@grainloom The value isn't a function of a rational evaluation though, right? Like, if you went to a rock show that you thought was great, but most people in the audience quietly thought was meh, you still would have had an amazing time, yeah? The subjective experience is what makes it worthwhile.

@sev@witches.town Like, I'm actually fairly okay with (clearly labeled) porn of acts that in real life would fall pretty far outside of genuine consent. There's a lot of room for fantasy there. What makes me iffy is how it feels like the game ends up claiming that asking permission makes the underlying structural issues no longer relevant.

Maybe this is my backlash against hearing that the game treats consent mindfully.

@sev@witches.town I'm okay with a VN about roleplaying an ethically malign person, but it feels like the game wants to have it both ways -- simultaneously exploring territory of manipulation and exploitation, while still wanting to (mostly, barring the end scenes) act like it's existing in everything-is-okay-here consent land.

@sev@witches.town

It's definitely clear that the protagonist was set up as a person of questionable morality. I mostly saw it as a roleplaying experience, but it's still hard to not feel like the decisions I made reflected *something* on my choices, at least?

Spending more nights with The Hacker is definitely a big part of why I feel the way I do about how the game treats consent -- I think you saw my post about mixed messages.