Hi, I'm the developer of When They Come. There's something I kept thinking about the whole time I was making it, and I'd love to hear what you think.
Every game is shaped by the way its creator sees the world. That's natural: the values of the person who made a game show up in every story and every rule. This time, though, I made a game that touches the player's ideology, and while making it, I felt there was something risky about that.
In this game, your answers are used to show you the ideologies and ways of thinking that are closest to your own. Right up until the end, I couldn't decide whether to remove extreme ideologies, such as fascism, from the possible results.
Removing an ideology means judging that it's "not okay." And that judgment comes from my own ideology. In a normal game, I think I would have made that call without hesitating. But this game is meant to be a mirror that shows players their own thinking. That's why I felt I had to keep my own values out of it as much as I could, and make it as neutral as possible.
(In the end, I did remove several extreme ideologies from the results in this release. Religions are shown as "a way of thinking close to ___," so players aren't placed into any particular faith.)
What do you think about removing things from a game because of "common sense," "ethics," or "basic human decency"? Do you see making that call, and actually removing things, as the creator's responsibility? Or do you think it takes away from a work's neutrality?
Whether you've played the game or not, I'd be glad to hear your thoughts.
