PixlBit

I don't know where the people making the depression game are coming from. They could very well have made the game in honor of family members who are suffering from depression for all I know. I don't mind that "art games" like that exist, to be honest. Not every video game has to fit into the narrow box of escapism, in my opinion. 

Having said that, I do know the kind of faux-liberal activists you're talking about. They're ones who tell you how evil you are for not being active in the right political causes, but do nothing real to affect those causes except "raise awareness" on Twitter and act like condescending shitbags. I hate them too. I just don't know that the people behind Actual Sunset are those people. Having suffered from anxiety and depression myself, I don't think the game is inherently a bad thing or that they're bad people for making it. 

Conclusion #1: Insufficient evidence

I don't know what contest the second thing is referring to, but I don't think they're saying you can't bring up racism, sexism et al., you just can't expressly condone it. I remember when I did stand-up routines at SFASU, they always said you could have as loose a mouth as you wanted, but you couldn't be hateful. That to me is fair enough, except who decides what is or isn't hateful? For instance, under those rules, I bet Louis C.K.'s opening Chewed Up monologue about slurs would be considered hatfeul, even though in context, it's really not. 

Conclusion #2: I don't think saying you can't make a sexist etc. game means you can't explore sexism, but what constitutes sexism etc. needs to be defined clearly in the rules, which I assume it isn't. 

Conclusion #3: Petition signed, says it needs 93 more signatures. 

1# After a cool down period I agree on the people who made Actual Sunlight. I do not think they "meant wrong" though personally I do not always like playing games dealing with stuff that strikes that close to home. And if they do, I prefer there being a bit more to the game-play and perhaps an actual story line that's more intriguing than a typical "Day In The Life Of" biography. I also believe the time used to make the game in question could have been used helping a loved one suffering from actual depression. I'm not implying we should sweep that issue under the rug but I'm not sure if the interactive medium is the best way to explore it. But maybe I'm just being overly emotional and bitter about it. Personally I do not always prefer "opening up" about my experiences with bi-polar disorder but it might help other people. (And maybe this game will help other people as well!) 

 2# I dunno,Joe. What I found said "cannot consist of" as opposed to " not condone". Those are two different things. "Not condoning" merely means you can have sexism,homophobia,racism or other negative issues in your game so long as you portray them as such. (Negative) "Not consisting of" can be interpreted more broadly as stating you cannot even explore those themes in the first place. Both are censorship but I'm more in support of the "not condoning clause" than the "Not consisting of" clause.

 3# Thanks,bro! Any additional signatures I can get on that petition are appreciated! 

#1: I think what you're saying is a lot like the phrase about putting your hands to work instead of clasping them together for prayer. The thing is, you can easily make time for both, and I don't see how making this game necessarily prevented anyone from being attentive to a loved one with depression. The loved one with depression may have even been a consultant on it. Or, hell, the people making it could have depression themselves. Again, not enough information for me to feel strongly either way. I'd need to know more about the developers and publishers. 

As for not wanting to play something like this, that option is always there. I'm not trying to be a dick, but it's just a case of whatever floats your boat, I think. Like you said, the game can be used to build awareness etc. 

#2: I honestly think they just worded that a bit oddly and meant they didn't want a game that was all about killing homosexuals or something similar, but I see your point. Having said that, honestly it's their contest and therefore they get to set the rules for it. I'm not saying it's right, but it is their right. 

#3: No problem, man. We completely agree here, there's no way proving you're being bullied constitutes fucking wire-tapping, and even if it legally does, are they not going to address the actual bullies? Idiots. 

1# I'm old fashioned when it comes to games,perhaps too much so! For example, I liked Silent Hill 2. Akin to Actual Sunlight, it addressed a lot of real life issues. But in SH 2's case I appreciated the fact it was still a game and that you did not exactly know everything from the beginning. Yes, we knew James was troubled but we had to play through the whole game to understand "why".

Actual Sunlight simply strikes me as bland and a tad pretentious. There's no mystery,no urgency, and not much puzzle solving or exploration. It's one defining merit is simply "This is what depression is like" and I do not understand why certain people are so smitten by that.

It has an ernest message and it has good intentions behind it but it's not something I could enjoy personally. But hey,I cannot speak on behalf of everyone!

2# You're right of course. Their contest,their rules! It's just my opinion "their rules" are really hindering the creative possibilities. Sometimes good messages are put across by ocasionally being "politically incorrect" too. Sugar coating and censoring everything has never helped art.

3# It's crazy,isn't it? The sheer apathy of the principal and judge made me want to punch something. And accusing the kid of wire-tapping? I just....ugh....

I haven't played it or Silent Hill 2, so I can't say whether or not I'd enjoy either. Don't get me wrong, I want to be entertained by my video games, but I say whatever kind of game whoever wants to make, go for it and I'll judge for myself. 

I agree that artists should be able to send whatever message they see fit with their art. 

And as In was looking up wiretapping to see if indeed it legally pertains to the case, some good news: http://www.wtae.com/news/south-fayette-student-to-fight-wiretapping-charge-for-recording-bullying/25507510. Sane people have determined that it does not. Also, Wikipedia, whose article on the term I clicked on before seeing that link, says it only pertains to phone, Internet or other, y'know, wired communications. 

I'm glad that wire-tap charge was fake! Thanks Joe,that made my morning. Even without looking it up something about that accusation seemed very bogus. I could smell the wrongness in it!

  As for other "good yet depressing games" I would like to throw Dark-souls in there too. As in it doesn't take place in a "happy environment" and despair permeates much of the experience.

  I simply believe a game can bring up real life moods and themes without those moods and themes being the only focus. I mean symbolically you could argue a journey through Anor Londo is a depressed person's voyage through their own mind but what's great is it does not have to be that if you do not want it to be. Actual Sunlight on the other hand can only be interpreted one way.

  Regardless, I agree! Anyone should be free to make a game. Heck, if I believed otherwise I'd be a hypocrite on account having that freedom let me create my own game. 

Glad I made your morning. 

As for the game, I'm not at all saying that I'd like or want to play a game solely focused on depression, just that it really doesn't bother me that such a game exists. 

Ben, I fully signed the petition.  That principal is a hardcore douchefuck, with a side of fries.

Yeah,the principal is a douche fuck,Dan! Thanks for signing the petition!   

I just signed the petition. Hopefully it can do something to solve that.

Now, let's talk about the game you just brought up; first things first, I haven't played it so I wouldn't know if i'll like it or not, but I don't mind if they did that game just adress depression. There's many ways to raise awareness and to support it and for some a game like this may or may not work. Second, there's also the fact of the type of gameplay. I know you said your distate for this kind of just exploring or "interactive movie" type of games like Heavy Rain or how you can find them pretentious, but I actually like this kinds of games from some small experiences. It may be because I like indie games or my love for movies translate to videogames, but they work for me. Anyone can make a game of their liking and if they want a game that feels more like a movie, why not?

Just my two cents.

Just my opinion,keep that in mind

 The thing is with Heavy Rain was the writing was good and you were trying to catch a killer. There was tension and build up. I'm not really against visual novels. If that were true I would not have enjoyed Persona 3 & 4 or even Agarest war for that matter.

 No doubt Actual Sunlight has a right to exist. But it was simply my impression that most people have dealt with depression or know a loved one who has. I do not think it's overly difficult to imagine being miserable or contemplating if suicide is the only way out. Even well adjusted healthy people have been there at one point in their lives.

 I suppose if I was to make a game about depression it would be about ways to overcome it or ways to also help other people with their hardships. Personally I find Actual Sunlight to be kind of defeatist and even offensive. I'm also mad a person can put in bare minimum effort into a game but so long as it is about depression of the main character being different (Gay,Trans,or Disabled) everyone praises it to high heaven. The whole process smacks of dishonest ego stroking. In other words, "I like this game so I'm a good person!" I'm sure the maker of Actual Sunlight had noble intentions but I think many (Not all) of the people who support games like this are not as genuine as they appear. To them these games are a trend and a way for them to come off as "progressive" by showing their approval in public. (Again, this coming from someone who really is bi-polar.)

 It's okay to make a game about our own life experiences but for goodness sakes, put some umpth,heart, and sweat into it! Even if you just want to tell a story, tell an engaging story with engaging characters! Nothing that is boring and minamalist will withstand the test of time. Sure, it may actually end up in a mueseum but that doesn't mean that gamers still love playing it!

I think i'm following you now, you are talking about how the game doesn't work and it's boring, now that has to do with the quality of the game.

I guess i'll need to play the game to draw my own conclusions and see if the game turns out to be a boring slugfest or if I end up liking it. After all, one man's trash is another one's treasure.

Some of the dialogue is well written but beyond that it came off as a half assed rpgmaker ace game. (And rpgmaker vx ace is actually capable of much more) It's 5.99 on steam but there are still places where you can get it free.

It's just more could have been done. "Battles" could have represented facing inner demons had they been included and there could have been puzzles and a driving narrative. No doubt some people will enjoy it but I'd suggest IB, Schuld,Witch's house, and To the moon over it.

That's f'ed up.  I'm glad I home school my kids.  Where are all the speeches and marches from our "leaders"?  Those bastards will fight tooth and nail for a developing criminal than for this kid getting bullied.  

There is no such thing as a politically correct horror anything.  

Who wants depression in their games?  Are games suppose to be fun?  If I want to be depressed, I read the newspaper or watch the news.   

1# According to Joe and Amy Wilson, the situation has gotten better,James. The DA dropped the charges against Christian pretty quickly. I'm also sure the principal and teachers will be forced to actually do their damned jobs now. They're a hair width away from being axed and they know it! It's just sad they only "care" when threatened to lose their jobs.

2# Yeah,horror and political correctness do not mix well at all!

3# I think it's okay for games to deal with real issues. I just kind of feel "meh" when a person can put a very minimal effort into an interactive piece of entertainment and have it get instant praise just because the protaganist is depressed,gay,or trans. Such minorities deserve a better effort from their game making advocates trying to raise awareness. But hey, Actual Sunlight might be someone's first foray into game design. Perhaps I shouldn't be so grumpy!

As I said on Facebook, good on the Pennsylvania DA for dropping the charge. Milburn fucked up on discipline in his schools and he tried to cover it up with some good old-fashioned victim blaming. Nothing will ever fix the damage done to Christian by charging him under a federal wiretapping statute that probably dates back from Watergate, but at least the DA exercised the discretion PA law allows him and stopped this in its tracks, and hopefully the DA will be asking Milburn some rather uncomfortable questions. 

As far as the contest goes, though, I respectfully disagree. I really don't think the contest-holders are trying to act as "thought police" or censor anything, and their rules do not come off to me as such. What they're telling folks is this: "Don't use our forum as a platform to air out your ideological dirty laundry. If you want to throw stones at the people you don't like in this world, do it on your own time and your own dime." And you know something? I'd do the same. I wouldn't be looking for the video game equivalent of Piss Christ or The Birth of a Nation if I were running a contest for hobbyists, and I damn sure wouldn't be looking for such a mess if I were a mass-market business owner like Satoru Iwata, Kaz Hirai, Satya Nadella, or Gabe Newell.  Who needs that kind of headache for a damned hobby?!

They're trying to keep their platform as civil as possible. Maybe they should clarify what constitutes unacceptable racist/sexist/homophobic content in their rules, but beyond that, they're not being unreasonable. As Super Step says, their forum, their rules. Very few contests of this nature don't have rules like this, whether written or unwritten, and Steam, MS, Sony, and Nintendo definitely have restrictions on content. These folks are being up-front about their expectations and telling people bluntly, "Take it or leave it." The ones that want to "leave it" can do their own games on their own time and can make their own platform to distribute it under. And the folks who play their works can draw their own conclusions as to whether the person making the work was making the game to seriously explore the issue at hand or is just trying to be inflammatory.

I guess this point also ties into what you said about the "Actual Sunlight" game you found on Steam as well. Did the folks making it have a vested interest in the issue of depression, were they just a bunch of social justice warriors, or were they mocking people suffering with depression? Either way, they found a platform to distribute their work, and like any other consumer, you played it and drew your own conclusions from it.

Using Piss Christ is an extreme example, don't you think? What about something like say Juno or Super? One movie deals with a pregnant teenager which in itself is controversial and in Super the protagonist's ex-girlfriend is almost raped while under the influence of drugs. Both are really good films but under "politically correct rules" they might not be allowed to exist. Game-wise Witcher 2, GTA 5, and even Mass Effect could be considered equally offensive and controversial but I guess they still get to touch on "those kind of themes" just because of "money" and they are popular franchises.

Yes,the forum has the right to enforce their rules for the game making contest but frankly I do not have to agree with them. (But I'm not trying to get them boycotted either)

Lastly, my problem is not so much people make these kind of awareness games. My problem is they get away with being very minalmist and hardly even put forth any effort but so long as the protagonist is "depressed" or "gay" we should call what they do high art and exalt them as innovators. I'm sorry but no, if a game is a boring slog it is a boring slog. I do not mind "real life experiences" being in games but I still want to have fun,Andrew.

The Internet is a world of extremes. Yes, even "extremes" are subjective. Somehow, Andres Serrano scored a $15,000 payday from the NEA for Piss Christ. Why? Who knows? I wouldn't have approved those grants if I had been working at the NEA or been on whatever House or Senate Committee that oversees funding for the arts back in 1987, but that wasn't my call.

The rules of "politically correct" do change over time. At the time The Birth of a Nation was released, Juno's producers would not only have not received $15,000 in art grants from the government, they would have served jail time and paid heavy fines to the government for distribution of obscene material, and if they were extremely lucky, the Supreme Court might have granted cert for their appeal. And the Supreme Court of 1915 was not friendly towards their viewpoint. A hundred years later, the rules and social attitudes have changed to where the situations would be reversed. Well, sort of. Nobody would imprison D.W. Griffith in 2014, but he would have had an extremely tough time trying to find a movie studio willing to distribute Nation, or theaters willing to show it. Keep in mind, Birth of a Nation is still considered by the serious film community to be the best movie ever produced at the time of its release in 1915, so it has artistic merit even among its harshest detractors. But that also isn't an issue of government censorship. That's private platform holders making a decision about what they are and aren't willing to accept.  The courts would readily uphold Griffith's right to make and release Nation, but beyond keeping the government's hands off of him, they can't do anything about current public sentiment about Nation. Pro or con.

I wasn't criticizing your opinion of Actual Sunlight or whatever it's called. I don't think it's something I would enjoy and it's probably something I would consider a "boring slog."

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." - Justice Potter Stewart's famous concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964), a landmark case that rolled back government censorship.

I see what you mean about forums. As in them not wanting to draw trouble to the community over a simple contest meant for fun. It's just when I come up with ideas they tend to be on the wild and dark-side. So when I see all those restrictions pop up it makes me feel frustrated and restricted.

And you're right about political correctness,it's constantly changing! I would not say I want an "anything goes" policy when it comes to design and entertainment yet I do not think any particular issue should be "off the table" either. For example, I do not mind rape being in a game. However, I would not want to be the character doing the raping. I'm fine with "rape" as part of the narrative so long as it's not being glorified as something positive and "the survivor" of that assault is not entirely defined by it. A good message would be even after going through something that traumatic a person can still find happiness and contentment in their lives! 

Regardless,hope I did not come off as angry at you,Andrew. I'm merely frustrated by the topics at hand. 

No, Ben, I do understand your frustrations to a degree, and I wasn't trying to come off as a bullying toerag. I offer my apologies if it felt like I was. I can't understand them completely, because I'm not you, of course. And I do understand that some of your frustration came from some of your struggles on the RPG Maker Community forums, where some of those folks were really out of line.

 I don't believe the guidelines highlighted were directed at work like your games. People just want to have a good time, and they want to feel safe on the Web. Rules like that are mostly in place to try to minimize the number of games advocating "kill/subjugate all the xxxxxxx" mindsets from the extreme fringes of society, and there are those in every corner of the political and social spectrum, rather than folks like you who may be perceived as risque at times (YMMV), but are certainly not out to hurt or denigrate others. Again, those are subjective because of what we've been discussed, but they try to arrive at a standard that will accomodate the biggest number of people, and they'll step on someone's toes no matter what.  Beyond the not-so-obvious fringe extremes is a huge gray area that hasn't been well defined, and that is where private citizens, companies, the courts, and Congress have struggled the most.

Well, I cannot understand them completely either so that makes two of us. lol. But I get what your saying about catering to a larger audience while trying to make everyone comfortable. (Even if it steps on a few toes)

It's just when you are indie you naively go into game design thinking you can push the boundaries a bit more than an AAA developer that has to worry about bigger demographics but alas,that's not always true. Even in the indie world you have people with subjective opinions trying to define what is right and wrong for everyone else.

Morality is a tricky thing because it's totally important to have and yet it can quickly turn into being tyrannical if taken too far in any direction. As such I understand why governments and leaders constantly struggle with it!

I'm tired of the gritty realism and darkness in movies lately, like the Batman movies, and I'm usually turned off by a game with serious or disturbing overtones like Last of Us or Walking Dead. I like weirdness and humor in my games. I don't want to be reminded of the horrors of real life and bad human behavior. I can watch the news for that any day of the week for free.

"Gritty realism" is not the only way to go, I agree on that! And I definitely do not want to be stuck playing a game where preventing my character from suicide is the main goal. "How long can Bobby last before he ends it?" No thank you! I've been there in real life and do not want to experience it again.

Creating a game based on saving a depressed person from killing themselves is fucking trendy bullshit. No one who suffers from clinical depression or is bi-polar would ever do something like that.

I can see having depressed and disturbed characters in a game like Silent Hill 2 but I cannot for the life of me understand why some asshole would create a game where the main purpose is to "fix" someone who suffers from such a condition.

I agree,Pete. Heck, I'm depressed but when making a game I chose an rpg. Yeah, my protagonists were troubled and had issues but that was not the only focus. I also wanted my characters to "get better" and find hope as opposed to them continously dwelling in cynical defeatism.

Frankly, people who suffer from clinical depression are not even miserable all the time. I know as someone with bipolar I try to find and pursue things that make me happy. If someone is going to make a game about depression it should not be "hopeless" and "self pitying". It should offer possible solutions for those looking for help.

I'm also tired of these minalmalistic short bare-bones games getting acclaim just because they deal with clinical depression or alternative life-style choices. It's like calling a chair better than the other chairs because it is a transgendered/gay/depressed/lesbian 3 legged chair!

I played one of those games a while back, I forget what it was called. I kept reading about peoples' experiences with it and after I was finished all I could ask myself was "is that it?". I get what it was trying to say but it wasn't even close to how it was described by the other people who played it.

Yeah, most of these "awareness" games deal with simply "walking around" and tapping the "interact button" to get responses out of the protagonist or other characters. There's rarely any puzzle solving,combat, or esculating urgency.   

I'd play this game only because I did work as a suicide prevention consoler. I was forced as community service. I ended up being let go after I used blunt indifference to get the people from trying to commit suicide with lines like "Do you promise to be through"? and "what kind of splat pattern are you aiming for." along with "What kind of gun are you going to use". In my defense there was no reports of suicides later that night but my supervisors were not pleased. I wasn't pleased with myself because I didn't realize they record all conversations...

I wouldn't mind trying to make a game with that many "limitations" put on it. I would be like trying to make a funny movie without the use of four letter words. But then again it'll probably be nothing more than random jump scares.

Should've done what I did. Tell the bully once to stop it. if they don't then tell the teacher, if the tearch is ineffective then it's fair game as far as I'm concerned. and when caught with a bloody baseball bat my defense would be " you had your chance. I'll bet you now he won't be doing that again..."