Helllo guys,
i hope i don’t post in the wrong section tough but this subject is related to gamedesign decisions to me.
well, i have an idea that i keep warm since some times, but i’m affraid that this idea , completely politically incorrect but on the funny and prank humor side will probably make the game banned and hated by every kind of defense groups like :
anti alchool, peta, lgbt, anti drugs, morality groups, political and religious groups of every kind … (think South park if you want)
my goal is , of course, not to encourage any kind of bad behaviour not to harm other’s beliefs and feelings…
although i know this is bad, i also know it may be so good.
polemic game have pros and cons but they always make the buzz.
i know appla just won’t let it sell , i’m not sure Google will, steam maybe ?
the questions :
what is the room for that kind of ideas ?
have you guys faced such a situation ?
or simply what do you think ?
Well, on Google Play your game may be removed from the store at some point, but as far as I remember, Google Play doesn’t review the apps right away. So you might get away with it there. On the Apple App Store, not so much.
I am trying to touch a risky subject as well in the game I’m currently working on and I hope I can get away with it.
Do you think the title of the game matters? I mean, it can change the way recipients look at it.
Also, I have to think about Conker’s Bad Fur Day that was released on the Nintendo 64, which, of course, was completely targeted towards children.
You’d have to not only be careful of what the app stores may allow but what would be allowed in other countries. I’m not sure whether their is a way to restrict country downloads once the game is on the app stores. Maybe the app stores let you region lock games?
Apple banned a bunch of games just for having a confederate flag, so you know it’s easy or them to decide remove your app too.
Although they later allowed most of those apps back to the store.
Also interesting note: game Hatred is not about hatred, it’s about sadism, there is a big difference. I guess it’s because the ppl that would buy this kind of game would rather think they hate ppl than that they are simply sadists who want to hurt ppl for fun.
another example could be ALF ALF (TV series) - Wikipedia
Alf he hates cats, he eats cats… i can imagine that if you publish a game where you eat or kick cats, PETA will quickly ask to remove the game as “offensive” and “encouraging crualty towards animals” although most of people that will play won’t be sadistic psychopats.
the main question is : can such a game exist beside the official circuits and resist all “perfect-minded” people.
Depends on what situation you take it. Shaking babies to make them go to sleep, a bit in poor taste. Making jokes at political leaders, go on forth. South park have often been on the line, what some people find offensive of it, educates others and south park often has a message they get across.
If you make it a web app, and publish it on your own website, you can pretty much do anything. If you release it via retail service, it is up to what the service will deem fit. Looks at past works that they have banned, see the reason and if possible avoid it like the plague, try looking for recent examples, what used to be seen as to much gore, is now the norm.
Context will play a large part in how it’s judged, whether it’s offensive or just in poor taste, & how realistic it is. You can get away with more against cartoon aliens than realistic (human) looking npc’s
to explain a little more,
the “hero” is an anti-hero, a loser, a poor guy with poo judgement, has all possible deviant behaviours, he doesn’t really hate but like to make provocative fun and that’s where the game can be fun. call it poop humour.
the game mechanics include use of alcohol, drugs, protitutes and everything nasty.
so, some example of what could happen :
the hero may kick cats in the street.
he may have enter an afro-bar and say “hey , i’m looking for whitesnow…”
or enter a Church and play “highway to hell”…
enter a prostitutes-bar to gain stamina…
and so on…
to compare… HBO success is known to be due to that kind of provocative humour
Showing drug use or letting the player character use drugs will likely see it refused classification & be banned here. The other stuff you mentioned, as well as drug use, will probably see it banned on the app stores as they won’t take the risk of any backlash.
yep…politically correct, that was the OP question…
so, beheading is not a problem, shooting at any non armed person is not a problem .
but HBO shows would be banned of any store.
Not sure hbo shows would be banned as many are shown here, but for some reason games are treated differently even tho we now have an R18+ category for in store games. I just don’t think the app stores do have an R18+ raging (I could be wrong though) & they’d need one to enable that type of game to be even considered for release here.
That sounds really tame and kind of lame to me to be honest. Take a good look at Hatred, Postal and Manhunt. If you want to be offensive in my humble opinion you should aim to be more offensive than those, because every game that tries that stunt moves the bar a little. There is a great southpark episode about lowering/raising “the bar” btw,
I think this is a good example of something that might still stand out as offensive, but I don’t see how you could really make a game out of it. It sounds more like a novelty app that uses the accelerometer on a smartphone. I doubt that there is a big market for something like that.Or maybe an Occulus Rift VR experience, but I hope there is even less of a market for that!
Are you sure they care about things like this? Everything I have read about them leads me to believe they would rather kill an animal themselves than have it live a happy peaceful life as a pet. I didn’t do proper research, so take this with a grain of salt, but I’ve heard soo often that they operate “high-kill” animal shelters or release animals to the wild that are not able to survive in the wild on their own.
Doing a game where you mistreat cats is mainly a bad idea for other reasons imho. You should be more afraid of the wrath of the internet as a whole if you touch their “holy cow”, I mean holy cat.
You should make a game where you play as a cat and just be a dick to everyone. The stereotype is already established and accepted, cats are one of the most popular animals in the gamer demographic and there is little competition in the play-as-a-normal-cat genre of games. I’d totally do it, if I felt that was within my abilities, but it isn’t. God I’d love to play an open world first person cat simulator!
And 6 years ago even! Comes to show again, that I’m just not one of those creative idea guys.
Talk about shitty production values though! That was about the least effort that could be put into that concept…
so, what about indie projects?