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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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.
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Are you trolling lol? Its a medium of artistic expression. How is Disco Elysium not art?
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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.
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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.
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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.
No its not. Art is not a qualitative superlative.
Why do you feel that way?
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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?
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"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.
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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.
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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.
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Like I said, this already happens much more with pornographic VN fans than with fans of farm sims where you can get married, The Sims fanbase (overwhelmingly female fanbase btw), or even people who play Bioware games. Your theory here has no basis in reality.