The point I was making is that a player can't agree to the means with which you espouse a message if the communication of that message is a surprise.
Exactly, the onus lies on you to know who your audience is and what kind of things they'll be anticipating so you can design to that target market. Millions of dollars in research is done every year on markets and player types. Every game design document in the world has a section on research about the player and their mindset.
The point is that you should know exactly what kind of reaction you're going to get from the player, and it should be a positive one.
Games are different in that in general the buyer can't know whether a game is worth their time until they've already spent money on it.
How is that any different? A person goes to employ a service because they have an expectation of what that service will provide, and then the service doesn't provide in the manner which had been implicitly agreed upon.
Games, unlike the other two examples, have SIGNIFICANT promotional media, demos/betas, reviews etc. The information about what a player should expect is there, and if the marketing is deceptive, that is something the gaming community will happily scream about. As is this case exactly.
Not being good at game design does not cause harm.
Why, in your tiny mind, do you think the word "harm" only relates to physical or mental distress? I would take a look at
this Wikipedia article, where harm can very clearly come when somebody interferes with or intrudes upon a person's interests.
I treat game design as seriously as it should be; AAA Dev can involve 300+ people (in just the dev studio, not counting the publisher office or anybody else related) selling to millions of people globally. If you fail, hundreds of families may not get the cashflow they need to sustain themselves, and millions of people will have wasted their time and cash which they could have put to any number of better uses.
I give a stuff. You don't, apparently.
Wasting someone's time with your game is a bad thing, but if your intention is to make your game good, you've not committed an evil act.
A lot of psychopaths and sociopaths believe that when they commit a criminal act, they're doing it in the benefit of those they harmed.
(like considering a beginner artist a bad person for doing a commission for someone who had accurate information about the capabilities of the artist)
Expectation. You don't expect the beginner to do as well, so you can tolerate more mistakes. Runescape has existed for years now; you expect these people to know and understand their community very well.
Games are just interactive art IMO. They don't have to teach or employ these educational methods, though those are good methods to employ.
And this is why you won't ever agree with my arguments. I recommend you read A Theory of Fun and I recommend you give psychology classes a go.
I think if you make a product that your client doesn't like, (or get in someone's way) apologizing doesn't mean you've committed an evil act.
You're lacking the sense of scale and context. The client in this case is a very large, connected group with very clear interests and methodologies. They are a known element.
Why don't you just show me the tweets/comments that make you feel that way?
If I find the Twitter thread screenshot, I'll post it here. It's buried in a Discord discussion I was having.
I don't see what about this is "turning on your community". There are Runescape players who have no problem with this - I've seen many on reddit claim that most of the guys freaking out about this aren't even regular OSRS players so much as they're trolls from 4chan.
The problem here is that you're new to witnessing this community, but I am not. I can't point to any proof or throw any names about, but I've definitely seen what kind of people exemplify this group. You're focusing on a small minority, and I promise that they are not giving you the full truth.
Also having a character who happens to be gay but it literally affects nothing isn't particularly brave or progressive. It is nice normalization but that doesn't mean its the only way something like this can fit in a game like OSRS.
Normalisation is what the desired affect is, though. And that example was intended as just one solution, not the be-all-end-all perfect stopgap. The point is that you need to adjust the way you communicate the message so that it works within the context of the work and benefits the community, not marginalises them for complaining that somebody in power had enough freedom to manipulate the game in a way that sets a bad precedent.
Runescape, like lots of gaming communities, is still plagued by family values (even if it's by a vocal minority, they are still tolerated) and LGBT people cannot reliably turn to Runescape and expect a 'safe space' away from where their loveuality/gender identity means that they're inferior, to the point where the word "gay" is still blacklisted in chat because it'd otherwise be used in a pejorative way.
Are you genuinely believing that everybody trolling for the sake of trolling are real, bodafide family men who are playing this seriously and trying to take a stand against the gays ruining their favourite toy?
These are trolls, acting beyond their personal beliefs, becoming a part of a bigger whole. It's a subcommunity forming within a community. This is exactly the same as the "Pool's Closed" drama back with Habbo Hotel.
An explicit show of support is one way for the Runescape devs to make LGBT people feel welcome to play Runescape without having to hide a part of their identity.
Why should being gay affect the way in which you play
Runescape? Does the game ask about your loveuality? Are you forced to tell people about it? Is it such a big problem that people just being intentionally stupid for comedic effect (prior to PRIDE) are saying stupid things? I don't get why people feel the need to have segregated rooms simply because they have a different opinion on one issue of a million, especially when it comes to virtual worlds so removed from reality that there's no contextual link between characters and homoloveuality.
movies don't have to be exclusively about spectacle. (which is something, like "fun", that is unique to movies)
You've completely misunderstood my point.
I'm fine with games having deep, important messages to provide. That's critical to the learning experience, and social issues are a good place to touch. I'm making the point, however, that a game must never sacrifice its ability to teach and provide "fun" (in the sense of the chemical release) for the sake of a moral which isn't tied into what the player is learning to do inside the game. Papers Please is a fantastic example where fun isn't scarified; it's a sad, depressing game and has a big social message, yet it makes sure that its messages are tied into the mechanics and the player's time is never wasted. You get a dopamine shot as you feel you've done well, and it's taken away by the game's atmosphere. That works.
This event is completely unrelated to the core game experience, and doesn't offer anything to enhance or improve the learning/fun process, outside of some stupid item at the end of the event quest.
