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Really fun game! The political commentary is *super* jarring

A topic by rafter613 created Jun 23, 2020 Views: 820 Replies: 3
Viewing posts 1 to 2
(1 edit) (+8)(-3)

Let me get this out of the way: I'm straight-up a socialist. I agree with pretty much all the talking points brought up. But it's incredibly annoying to sit through random coworkers with horrifying lidless eyes ask you "man, we're making giant death monsters. Do you ever think........ we could be the bad guys...?" or "man, people use religion to absolve themselves of responsibility... anyway, back to smashing buildings with titans!". It's incongruous, jarring, and annoying, especially with no way to skip it. I'm playing a game about controlling giant monsters to smash buildings because I want to control a giant monster and smash buildings. It's like if after you completed a level in Candy Crush it popped with "What a sweet play! Did you know 3 million Americans are food-insecure?!". There's also *zero* mention of this aspect of the game in the actual game descriptions. It's just...surprise! Political commentary!

Please add an option to remove these intermissions. It's the worst part of the game, by far.

Developer (1 edit) (+8)(-6)

I get where you're coming from. It was important to me that I didn't add a way to opt out of these narratives (except for playing in the Creative mode). The push-back against politics in video games made this an essential part of the game for me, and I didn't want to add to the heap of games full of violence and destruction without also forcing the player to pull out and acknowledge their complicit role in so many systemic problems. I knew going into it that some people really wouldn't like it, but compromising on that element felt like pulling the soul from my game.

I honestly do think that Candy Crush should take your suggestion and insert some meaningful  dialog between levels. 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts anyhow, and I'm glad to hear that you're not disputing any of the talking points at least.

(EDIT: Rude replies will be deleted. If you're not interested in meaningful discussion here then please don't bother to post angry rants. I'm just one person so please be considerate. Thank you!)

Deleted 3 years ago
(+4)

As also a straight up socialist, I think another big problem is that the reply options are pretty much always some variations on "no I don't care" and "Oh wow I have never thought about that before."

It would still feel a bit "Leftist politics and social justice 101" either way, but it'd help some to at least acknowledge that this is at best a surface level intro to these ideas with some sort of "you're preaching to the choir" type reply options.  The assumption that I'm completely unaware of everything they're saying feels a bit condescending, to be honest. 

Developer(+3)

Yeah, I definitely could have added more options for people who were already in full agreement. It was difficult trying to determine where each branch would end up, so I generally leaned towards trying to handle people who were less comfortable/familiar with the topics. I was wary of providing an easy out by way of full agreement too. Ultimately I think I tackled too many different subjects to go too deep into any one of them, and I'm sorry for the redundancy to folks already much better versed on the subjects than I am.