Discourse: Playersexual romance options vs set sexuality
Discourse: Playersexual romance options vs set sexuality
This discourse was going around twitter today apparently and im curious takes from here.
Which is it for you?
For me i prefer playersexuality. I want to be able to romance any romance option regardless of my charachters gender. I dont want to be stuck with only Arcade Gannon if i want to do m/m
I agree that sexuality can be important to a charachter. But if you wanna do that, seems like the charachter can just not be a romance option.
That said. In RPGs devs can do what they want. You want a charachter to be monosexual and a romance option, have at it. (Unless theyre all straight, then fuck you).
I do kinda hate what The Sims did by adding monosexuality. Felt like such a virtue signal that made the game less fun. All Sims being pansexual was always more fun for me. Especially since i usually play that game as a pansexual slut. Unless i decide my player Sim is mono, but thats on the player's end.
Monosexual townies in the Sims should at least be optional (is it? Idk havent played Sims 4 since this update).
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There should only be “romance” options in porn games.
Yeah lets make video games sterile, loveless, and sexless thats the solution.
Cant let artists try to explore a part of life because some but not all of the attempts at it so far have been clumsy, hacky, or undercooked.
Sorry im just tired of getting this answer. Its not the question i asked. And this answer just feels anti-art.
i usually don't like to do the le
or thing of being like "this!" but you covered this so well and I have nothing to add but that i agree so much that an upbear isn't enough.Video games aren’t art.
Are you trolling lol? Its a medium of artistic expression. How is Disco Elysium not art?
Games aren’t art. Not everything has to be art. Things don’t start off as art and get dragged down to some other classification. Things are elevated to the status of art over time as people recognize their importance. Disco Elysium is literally too new to be art even if it weren’t made in a non-art medium.
Thats not what art is lol. Art has nothing to do with age of the work. Nor does it have anything to do with quality.
If that is so then why are all examples of art as taught (reproduction of the institution has its own problems but even if you were to go with the vernacular understanding the results are the same) in school represent the most communicative, moving works that express a culture and why are they always determined to be so many years after the fact? Why are even the works that use unconventional techniques judged using qualitative language is art has nothing to do with quality?
To put it more simply: why is Etruscan boar vessel art and disco elysium not?
Im sorry but none of this defines what art is. Yes, classics are taught in schools, but whats taught in schools isnt what defines art. Also art classes in schools teach kids to make their own art.
Art is any creative expression. Its not a superlative qualitive label. Philosphers have been writing about the concept of "bad art" (usually stuff that was contemporary to them at the time) for centuries.
Art criticism has to do with quality (and is an art onto itself). But the actual definition of what art is has nothing to do with quality. Are video games a creative expression? Yes. So they are art and can have artistic merit.
Your definition of what art is seems reactionairy to me.
No, I’m sorry. Art is not any creative expression. We can both recognize that neither of us is talking about such a generalized use of the word. We’re not talking about art class, we’re talking about art. Art represents a different qualitative class of expression. Quality is literally how you understand its unquantifiable nature.
Even if you were right, and art were just any creative expression ever, and I was able to gain the sublime transcendence and understanding of a visit to the lourve by recognizing a well balanced composition in my pre-flush =|dookie logs|=, games have another impossible to clear hurdle in their lack of elevation.
We can’t simply say that the Pepsi logo is art. For pop artists to do so required them to define and establish a context for that work to exist in. Pop art was also a cia funded psyop and absolutely not art but that’s neither here nor there for my purpose of taking the most obviously non art thing and establishing that games cannot rise to meet even its made up fake standard of artworthiness.
Games are not art and that’s okay. Not everything has to be art.
Art is any creative expression. This is how the term is used by the masses, by most cultural critics, and how the term is defined by dictionairy. Any academic wank about "what counts as art" is just that, wank.b
Anything else, especially your implied distaste for modern art, is fascism. "removed art" bullshit.
Art represents a different qualitative class of expression.
No its not. Art is not a qualitative superlative.
Why do you feel that way?
Because the “romance” shouldnt be part of the mechanics in non porn games and it shouldn’t be part of the fantastical conceit in non porn games.
Which of these is cool and okay outside of porn:
I was able to make someone love me because i manipulated them according to the rules.
this game is different from real life not because I’m able to chop through three sentient beings heads in a row or conjure mystical fire, but because I’m lovable.
Neither is acceptable.
The first one the answer is that, well first of all thats reductive as hell but more importantly romanceable NPCs are not real people. You cant manipulate them.
The second is just a reason you pulled out of your ass to decide that something you dont like is a moral bad, like all anti-art freaks do. Fuck off to twitter with that mindset. Theres nothing inherently unacceptable about that. You just said some words.
How the fuck do you expect a game like The Sims to work under you rules? And hell, if youre right, which youre not, why is it acceptable in porn anyway? Wouldnt it still be (what you consider) harmful there too?
The sims is its own bag of problems (not a game).
Pornography is different, so what’s acceptable and harmful in it is different.
"The Sims isnt a game" lol. Do you just make up your own definitions of things to be annoying?
No. If "manipulating NPCs" is harmful then it always is. It isnt, but if it is its harmful in porn games too. Because the player is still performing the same actions and learning the same things from it.
We should talk about how the sims isn’t a game in a different thread. Why not make a post about it? There’s a lot of material to draw from.
Do you think people are learning the same things from say a pornographic movie and a non pornographic movie? What about a centerfold and a landscape? A steamy woodcut and a family photo?
If all those are a big resounding nope, then how come porn games and regular games are the same?
I do not want to make a new thread about that. Its my thread and i dont mind being off topic. If you want to explain why The Sims is not a game, do it here.
The core point here is that if "manipulating NPCs" teaches the player a harmful lesson then it doesnt matter whether the game is porn or just a romance sidequest. The context would not change the lesson in this case. Its functionally the same, it jusf changes whether there's a hardcore sex scene at the end or not.
Rather than tease out a point by establishing a shared understanding of the sacred and profane and building off it I’ll just cut to the chase: The mechanical or fantastical relationship is pornographic. It has no place outside of pornography. As I said, there should be no romance options outside of porn games. The pornographic mechanical or fantastical relationship needs to be confined to the medium of pornography so that its destructive, maladaptive influence can be applied judiciously instead of expanded to everyday consumption.
Porn consumers might actually be less likely to apply such a thing judicioisly. You have way too much faith that if you put it in the category of porn people will change how they process it. I think people who cant seperate fantasy from reality are going to do so regardless. Consumers of pornographic VNs tend to have even worse views of women than regular capital G gamers. Certainly worse views of women than SDV fans, many of whom are women. And SDV has dating mechanics, but a very wholesome fandom.
All in all theres no reason to limit what devs are and arent allowed to creativly explore. Because even with your weird idiosyncratic view of what art is, it still doesnt disqualify video games from being a medium through which people creativly express themselves.
Anyway, this "Hayes code/comics code is good actually" type thinking is extremally weird.
I’m not advocating for an authority to apply rules to media. I am explaining how romance options in games are pornographic.
If certain things weren’t pornographic then there wouldn’t be a classification of pornography.
Romance options in games portray an absurd and fantastical version of human interaction. If used as an empowering fantasy they can help people fulfill their unmet needs safely. If normalized they degrade people’s understanding of normal social interaction and romantic relationships. One of those is porn, the other is non porn.