Just writing to say my game is out.
I’m an indie dev (one man) who is doing art/critical/serious games with a special interest in issues of perceptions, politics and the future of gaming, in general.
Read the press release
Download the game at Propaganda Bureau
The game includes an artist’s statement, which might be an interesting read.
Forgive me for saying this and for ignoring the deliberately controversial title and design of this game, but this all sounds massively pretentious to me. I’m naturally dubious of anything that calls itself “art”, or of any game that neglects gameplay for some kind of “message”. I’m always keen to see games extend the boundaries of our favourite form of media, and I’ve been playing them for 20 years now and am constantly amazed with the creativity that continues to shine through out of the mess of generic garbage. I’m not sure I see that here, though.
I do understand the statement you’re trying to make with this, and I do understand that paranoia fuels a lot of the evils in society and serves as a misdirection from real issues, but… seriously, an on-rails shooter called “Don’t get Raped”? It just sounds like a cry for attention. Judged on the gameplay alone it’s awful. You don’t need to make a bad on-rails shooter to point out how crap these type of games are, as everybody knows that already.
Please don’t take this as a knee-jerk reaction to your decision to use something like rape to get your message across. If you have a message, then allow the game to tell that message. Including an “Artist’s statement” just makes me roll my eyes and picture you sitting around in a beret patting yourself on the back.
And just so that I don’t come across as another mindless philistine who doesn’t understand your work, here’s an idea of another way to have approached this subject matter:
Have your character wake up every day and watch the news. There is no better way to show how society is trained to live in fear than by watching the news or reading tabloid papers, so perhaps more focus should be put on this aspect to help with your message instead of clicking on bizarre words and insults.
Spread the focus out a bit into other sources of paranoia that the western government and media like to use, such as terrorism, racial minorities, communist governments, economical problems, etc. Focusing on rape just seems disturbing to me, even if that was your intention.
Either improve the on-rails bits or remove the player’s interaction with the game entirely. Having no player interaction at all in something like this could be more effective than having poor interaction, and may even help to point out that the players actions and thoughts are not truly their own, and that they are being programmed by the media/society to think and act in a certain way.
Just some random ideas here, as I felt pretty bad about leaping on you like that as there’s clearly a lot of thought and effort in this. I would just be careful about trying too hard to be controversial, and focus on whatever your message really is.
It is up to the public to decide if what you’re doing is art, so be careful about throwing that word around.
I not sure you quite grasp the intent and circumstance of works like this.
Congrats KFB. Some interesting directions here, however…
I’m having trouble situating your work with other art games. There appears to be a conceded attempt at critical analysis of your subject yet it lacks supporting references (scholarly or otherwise) that would lend a great deal of credibility to your work. </professor hat>
Sorry, occupational habit. I’ve just finished grading 50 research papers in 48 hours so my ego voice is jammed in stuffy-and-pompous mode. Of course I haven’t read your full artists statement yet so I may find more there, but situating works like this is, I think, really important. I find it helps to steer you towards the right kind of audiences.
Anyway, good to see Unity being used for less obvious endeavours. Downloading it now and very much looking forward to playing though it.
Update: Played it. I thought it worked really well but some ideas weren’t coming across very clearly. The general mechanics and interaction convey your concept well but the presentation was somewhat underwhelming.
What you have is very text heavy so you’re relying on cognition of the words to convey emotion yet you’re working in a visual and temporal medium so I can’t help but think there are more effective ways to do this perhaps to the point of making the experience totally language agnostic. I also felt the focus/control UI was problematic in such a way that I had to keep looking away from where I was heading and was incapable of reading the screen. This created some confusion and anxiety as to my embodied state, which may be intentional, but this feels like a mixed signal and does not appear to be the best source of confusion and anxiety for the intent of your underpinning concept.
Still, I enjoyed it overall. 
If you haven’t played it before I suggest your play though The Path by Tale of Tales. They use similar power-play and role subversion concepts in their game by exploiting the visual nature of the medium to it’s full extent.
http://tale-of-tales.com/ThePath/
Another really good game to look at is Every Day The Same Dream. I won’t say anything about it in case you’ve never played it before except that you must keep playing until you get to the end - and you will defiantly know when it ends.
http://www.molleindustria.org/everydaythesamedream/everydaythesamedream.html
Anyway, I think these are the kind of games you should be aiming to situate your work amongst. Good luck and I look forward to seeing what you do next.
I think I do, thank you. I’ve seen plenty of work like this, in games and elsewhere.
What is this, in your (expert) opinion, and which part of it sailed over my head? If this was made purely to be appreciated only by an inner-circle of self-proclaimed “art experts” and not by the public to which it’s being released to, then count me out.
edit: I suppose my point is that I don’t see this exploring the concept of rape in a particularly deep way, but I did see potential in this game format for exploring the concept of paranoia (not specifically rape) quite nicely. I may have got carried away with that aspect of things as it was distracting me while playing and it’s perhaps not the true focus of this work. My fault, of course, but it was difficult to truly appreciate what was going on here when all I had in my mind was “I’m playing an on-rails shooter called “Don’t get raped”, and the guy is throwing about the words ‘art’ and ‘artist’ in a rather pretentious way”.
I’m obviously approaching this from a game development background with just a side interest in art and philosophy, but from what I’ve seen people who focus purely on art or philosophy to the exclusion of all else tend to vanish up their own ass pretty quickly. The chosen format here is a game, and that is part of the overall package. I think that side of things is pretty poor, and needs some work so as not to get in the way.
That’s the side of things that annoyed me while playing through this. If an artist chooses to work with paint, then I would complain if the painting was poor as it would sully what they were trying to create. If it was an animation instead of a game, but the artist could not animate, that would also annoy me.
Hey look! It’s made me stop and think about it! Mission accomplished, oh beret-wearing one.
taking off my big vocabulary hat and my big brainy defined words, i will say my opinion about the game. I have played so many games for so many years and i am now starting to make them. That being said, you know where im coming from then. So, my opinion about the game is okay… im not into games like this …so im not against it and it is very different. I guess it is all a matter of taste… if you like to have next to no control on a game, then this game is for you. press these buttons and those buttons in the right order to make it to the end of the rollercoaster ride that you have no control over … i guess it is like the game title says " don’t get raped ! " like the game is raping you and giving you next to nothing to control it and hopefully it does not kill you like some rape does … in other words i don’t like to get raped , so i stopped playing it
edit** so im trying to make games now and so i know that this one is very complicated to make with all that programming going on (what button to press to live sort of thing) and the visuals are nice and all that …its just that the game is not my kind of game where there is not much control over it… maybe that is your whole idea ? maybe if i was you i would keep it the way it is with next to no control on character movement ?.. your game kind of reminds me of typing of the dead… very boring in my opinion since you don’t get to control any character movement that i saw when i played it…but that is only my opinion and im interested to see what the final game will be… so now i will jump off this track and check bak here later … Good Luck !
Don’t want to turn this into a debate (honestly) but we clearly have very different points of view here. I see this as art, the medium is digital and interactive. For me, the concept of a Game has a very loose and flexible context here. That it happens to be built in a game engine should not impose any kind of vocabulary or pre-defined functionality.
Oh course, both points of view are equally valid and offer their own unique insights and opinions. 
Well let’s not go there, because I’ve discussed the concept of “games as art” enough times with enough people to know that it doesn’t tend to lead anywhere of value. In my opinion (and that of the creator) this is a game. That’s based on the dictionary definition of “game”, not the fact that it was created with Unity. A game can be made out of a handful of pebbles if you wish, but that doesn’t make it art.
In my opinion, games can be considered art in the same way that books, movies, poems or paintings can be considered art, but that’s purely up to the observer to decide for themselves, not something that needs to be approved by a panel of talentless art critics or lecturers putting their stamp on it. You could of course argue that all movies or books are a form of art, with certain ones being “good art”. You could talk in circles like this forever, but I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know. My experience is mostly with practical applications of “art”, and I know (and have worked with) many incredibly talented people in the field of graphic design, 3d modeling, and 2d painting and texturing. These guys are experts at their craft, yet many of them would laugh if I called their work “art”. They’re creative and highly skilled in their craft, but artists? That’s up to people like you to tell me, I suspect.
In reality it’s often used as a sort of catch-all word to describe a piece of work that transcends the usual level of “quality” in that field of media; a piece of work that has substance to it and perhaps a deeper meaning than is immediately apparent. That’s a perfectly fine use of the label if you ask me, but creating something yourself and saying “this is art” is going to annoy the hell out of me until the day I die, I’m afraid. I don’t care if you can crap Mona Lisas on demand, it’s still pretentious. A few years at college does not give you the automatic right to wear that badge, and if my experience of modern art galleries are any indication, doesn’t teach much at all. Clearly it’s all too much for me to understand, though, and I’m missing the deeper message inside a lot of the half-assed work on display at such locations. Woe is me.
Glad that this has turned into a debate though, even if I’m just talking to myself. Surely that’s of more interest to the author than people complaining that there isn’t enough action in the game, or that it needs more aliens and guns. Sometimes it takes an annoying person such as myself to throw the metaphorical cat amongst the pigeons with a direct and honest complaint or a tangential post, but I’m thick-skinned enough to deal with the results and I’m sure the author of this game is too or he wouldn’t have given it a title like that.
The real meat of the discussion is perhaps “what is art”, or even “is this art”, but that’s another topic that leads to that that favourite activity of artists: omphaloskepsis.
Wow. Lots of stuff happening here. Let me fight my headache and get back to you ASAP, OK? Guessing there might be some debate, but god d**n, if this is not going to be fun.
Edit: OK, I’ve read this far and I’ll get back with some ideas of my own. Just so you all know, I think the general level is definitely over the one seen on so many other sites, I’m glad I put DGR out like this here. Just so we still love each other, forum peeps.
Hopefully you won’t take my whining personally, as it’s never intended like that no matter how bitter I may sound. I should probably stop to think before I start typing, but I calls 'em like I sees 'em.
I guess I’m not qualified to judge this on the level you were hoping for, so I’ll stop trying. What I can tell you is that the actual quality of the 3d models and textures is pretty impressive, especially if you did these yourself along with the scripting. Some parts reminded me of old-school demo scene productions for some reason.
Probably different time zones so I had to grab some sleep while at it. OK. There seems to be a few things that get discussed overall. Let me see if I can give my opinions in a fashionable manner.
@Ullukai - There is nothing to apologize for. I appreciate your honest opinions. At the same time, of course a “game” like this is created in a context and for a certain audience. DGR, especially, is pretty tight in its scope. It makes little sense, and is of little entertainment value, seen as a competitor to mainstream games.
Moving on.
Let’s put the record straight: I am quite aware of the broader gaming scene so I know of the demoscene and The Path etc. ^^ Thank you for your game suggestions. I’ve played both Every Day The Same Dream (which is -really- good) and The Path, although quite little of The Path as the controls somehow got screwed up at the time. It is however something I will try to get back to when I have some time over.
Thank you for the kind words on the actual craft of the work. I spent roughly 4 weeks creating the game while doing half-time work at uni and half-time studies among other commitments. Research and primary planning took a few weeks of August and September.
There is an artist’s statement because I firmly believe that some ideas are too complex to convey either directly via the medium of choice, or because there is no space in the work for another way in. As with most things, this is highly debatable, but I think a short analysis of my work (written by me, its creator) is needed if this is to be discussed in a larger sense. It provides an opening into the ideas contained. As we can see, a full analysis would be lengthy, even for a short game like this.
@xomg - I am not interested in doing all of my game projects as art for arts sake. Or any, really. As you said, those people probably just disappear up their own asses. Overall, there is an overarching theme about perceptions that I’m working with, which explains some of my interest in very particular interactions such as those in DGR.
Let me just briefly touch on my use of “art”. If you’d read the press release, which you probably haven’t and well, there is little reason for you to do, I call my games art/critical/serious, more or less of these terms depending on the project. Critical gaming, coined by Mary Flanagan, is a better, wider and less relative term than art games. Those kinds of games try to encourage thinking by opening up options, thus giving the player ways to interact that extend beyond the one-way propaganda of -most- commercial games. DGR however, offers few doors to open - thus being little of a critical game as far as that specific criteria is concerned. That is why I have no problems calling this an “art game” rather than a commercial game, entertainment game or even serious game. It is somewhat critical, perhaps, though.
Art for me signifies none of the “quality” xomg discusses, but rather the fact that the work/piece (game in this case) is created to enable lateral thinking - going past signifier-signifed language and direct relationships. It is about talking about something while actively detracting from a discourse about that “thing”. Even the title of the game is a pun on a tradition of directly-related titles (Adventure, f. ex.), but in this case it’s kind of a dud. Ergo, a game about rape that shows no rape yet implies a character relationship teeming with it. I think DGR has already gotten there, by creating a dialogue about expectations and especially about paranoia, the core of the game (which is not rape).
Also, you might have missed the papers and other media outlets (billboards, posters…) who all carry messages of declining civilization - increased crime, murder, ads for the “body” (personal security, underwear, night clubs…), closed community homes and so on. Rape in DGR is both tied to the player-character and to the society as a whole to create these notions of complete fear.
So, in short, why is not the usual commercial game deemed worthy of being in one of these “exclusive” categories? For several reasons, but I think there is some consensus in the fact that a game, for example Call of Duty MW2, does not imply questions (not ask, but imply via the medium). In a close-reading (hate that word, but that’s what it’s called when you take an inordinate amount of time to look at something) of said game, some broken-off pieces (such as No Russian) could probably be argued as having artistic qualities, but as an entire product, no, it has no artistic ambitions. The age-old example is Apocalypse Now versus modern FPSs. Let’s not wander further down that road, but at least I’ve clarified my personal stance.
I usually separate craftmanship, an old term used far too little today, from the actual design and meaning-making involved in creating games. Since I come from a humanities (sprinkled with art) background with a technical twist the animations won’t be the killer thing in any Propaganda Bureau game. This does not exclude me actually animating, but it will be less of an attraction than the metaphor and design. I am however very pleased that I now have a set of skills that allow me to create an entire game (with all of its necessary assets) on my own even if I did not take the computer science route.
@Cameron - if you, when you write about “the focus/control UI” as in the actual bars/elements, than I would agree. I am the first to admit it is not a perfect game in any sense, certainly not in the aforementioned craftsmanship sense. Anyhow, I still think the point is getting across (the main thing here) but I am willing to make some fixes for UI placement and such if need be.
Regarding the game being text heavy, I would disagree somewhat. The apartment scenes, as well as the path scene, and their respective audio tracks are created to tie in to the fear and subjective aural experience (lots of organic sounds: breathing etc.) so I’d say there are measures taken to -not- relegate this into a textual form. I would also suspect that the actual “meanings” and texts start blurring together after a few levels. Also, as always, a point - profanity means nothing past a certain threshold, just as the player meta-plays, only looking for the vague red text shapes instead of reading them.
In conclusion, this far at least, there is a need to address the need for an avantgarde in a “new” culture like games: people who do the suicide runs and try crazy stuff. Personally I’d like to contribute to that as well as to more commercially viable changes. So am I a stuck-up, beret-wearing ass hat? I hope not. ^^ I hope I covered most of the bases for now.
Waiting for someone to say “can I play as the rapist in an addon?”
It’s an explosive subject matter but it feels like drama without much reason. Women are aware of everything past the age of 12 these days.
Some subjects like paedophelia and rape aren’t comfortable topics even for the sake of art. They are the uncle no-one in gaming talks about unless necessary for plot development, and in those situations its usually very carefully worded or depicted. What you have done here is focus a spot light on it.
I don’t say you have a bad idea or a bad product, but I its not something I will look for so I will not try your demo.
You would probably be surprised as to how subtly all of this gets depicted, but yes, subject matter is important to ones “enjoyment” of art or entertainment built around it.
Also, it is not a game about women, rape, heteronormality, sexism or about minority people stalking white women in the most general sense. DGR does not inform women about sexual offenses.
If someone out here expects DGR to be Rapelay or anything similar to it…it is not.
I think it is cowardly not to bring up issues that get tabooed. Games also have many reasons to mature and broaden its very limited horizons. Film did this via psychoanalysis in the 40s and 50s. We are slowly getting there in games, now.
There was a small, dark part of me that was hoping this game was going to be a Pac-Man clone where you controlled a woman running around a maze chased by rapists, but I wouldn’t dare mention that in here. Oh, crap…
Thanks for taking the time to explain this in more detail, Bob. You’ve proved that the assumptions I made about you (if not the game) were incorrect.
I did read the press release and statement before playing, and that was part of the problem for me. If this game had landed on my desk one day and I’d played it without any explanation of what it was or any kind of statement about its intentions, I think it would have worked a lot better. It would have made me question what it was trying to explore and say for myself, and then I would’ve dug deeper to see what the actual intent and message was.
Perhaps that approach to experiencing something like this wouldn’t work, I don’t know, but to me it would be like trying to enjoy an abstract painting after the painter had told me exactly what I should be thinking and feeling while looking at it. I would prefer to puzzle over the message myself for a while and then talk with the painter to hear his intentions. This might be the exact opposite of how this type of experience is supposed to work in the “art world” for all I know.
I don’t have any problem with taboo issues at all, but obviously you do need to be careful unless you’re willing to endure (or even enjoy) the knee-jerk reaction that’s likely to ensue when you make the work public. I suppose that’s what the statement and press release is for, partly.
Well, the taboo thing was more directed towards hippocoder rather than you.As far as knee-jerk reactions go, I think it’s interesting to see how and when they suddenly go off, or erupt, so to speak. So I don’t mind them.
Regarding optimal experiences and stuff, I’m hard at work with that ^^ There really is no one recipe to get there. DGR is what it is, and got a reaction and release based on that. Other projects will most likely get launched under very different circumstances.
Thank you for your time and cunning wits, by the way.
There was a game getting lots of attention last week (even on CNN?!?) where you were a woman, faced with hoards of men delivering cheesy pick-up lines, and you get to shoot them. All of them. I expected something like that, only with an occasional ‘oh no, you got raped!’ thrown in there. It would have been horribly off-color, but frankly that’s what I expected from the title.
I really like the premise of this ‘game’. And yes, I see how you consider this art.
There are three problems here for me.
First, the title detracts horribly from the game. Reading over these comments, you’ll see that everyone expected this game to be about rape, first and foremost. And the target audience is also apparently women. At least, that’s what I get from the title of this game. Yes, I know men get raped. My point is that there’s a really interesting idea behind this game, and it’s lost almost immediately due to preconceived expectations. I realize you wanted to use a title that would be eye catching, and it is, but it sets expectations that aren’t in synch with the game.
Second, I use a MacBook, which does have a ‘right click’, but I can never remember if left click means normal click or right click means normal click. Instead, if you used three otherwise unused keys (zxc?), it would be much easier to remember what I was supposed to be doing, so I could concentrate on the game, instead of trying to remember which click I needed when.
And lastly, some of the messages said I needed focus, but the focus bar was full-ish at the time. It might be a bug, or it might be my lack of understanding of the rules.
Interesting idea though, and I look forward to seeing where you go with it.
-Chilton
Thanks, Chilton. I’ll look into the focus UI issue, and also implement keyboard commands for LMB/RMB interactions. All thanks to you!
I know of the game you’re bringing up, although I can’t remember its name. Not remembering the game title will most likely not be the issue with DGR ^^
The title issue is probably going to stay irreversibly under some form of unstable scrutiny. As the creator of DGR I think I’ve made my case for the name as a direct identifier for the fears in the player-character, and what it means to so misguidedly take part of the rest of the game with this preconception. It is therefore an active way of interrupting the player on the meta-level. Well. I accept and am totally content with all of the different opinions popping up regarding the name and whatnot. With some more distance, of course, my own interpretation may change.
I am also happy to hear that people understand DGR is not some form of be-all-end-all of gaming - it is an interlude to other things. Let’s just critique and possibly enjoy it for what it is.
So, got anything to say about the game? Say it! ^^
yep, because of the title I didn’t bother to check it out. It just sounds too desperate. He may as well have called it “LOOK AT ME!! LOOK AT ME!!”
I’ve nothing against Bob though. Artists tend to be attention whores and that’s what makes them great. But it’s all just a mater of getting the balance right. It’s not an easy thing to do.
I’m sure his next project will be awesome.
You are my Facebook status now, Unified.
The basic idea behind shock-art is that reactionaries react to it, artists call it avante-guarde and defend it. Its all about the idea of having a limit of what is deemed acceptable (the trouble is some people dont have any limit), for example in Germany they cant even use Nazi imagery in a game which is just plain dumb.