@sev I'm okay with a VN about roleplaying an ethically malign person, but it feels like the game wants to have it both ways -- simultaneously exploring territory of manipulation and exploitation, while still wanting to (mostly, barring the end scenes) act like it's existing in everything-is-okay-here consent land.

@sev Like, I'm actually fairly okay with (clearly labeled) porn of acts that in real life would fall pretty far outside of genuine consent. There's a lot of room for fantasy there. What makes me iffy is how it feels like the game ends up claiming that asking permission makes the underlying structural issues no longer relevant.

Maybe this is my backlash against hearing that the game treats consent mindfully.

@starkatt There's a statement in the structure of the game about which parts of the consent discussion are no-brainers, and I like that, because the line is drawn in a different place than most other stuff I've seen -- better than average and also better than feminism 101.

But I think I'm glad that consent wasn't gamified at all -- I made the diecision not to go back to the Hacker's room because the first night skeeved me out, but the game doesn't penalize that choice.

@sev I do feel like the game implicitly penalized the choice though? Like, a fundamental gameplay concept in dating sims is "follow the relationship progression with a character to the narrative terminus." So once I had spent the first night with The Hacker, I felt like the game wanted me to follow up on that not just in the text but also in the structure.

@starkatt I don't think I missed out by doing one night with the hacker & the rest with the Beauty,. I think I would have been less pleased had I done them half-=and-half... though the Hacker content is significantly more boring.

But there was no way to tell that beforehand.

@starkatt @sev

You don't get to say one of the main themes of your game is consent if the player doesn't have the *mechanical* option to withdraw their own, sorry not sorry, that's my opinion about that game and this hill, I WILL die on.

@sev @starkatt

I know mainstream, straight AAA video games treat sex as a reward you get for being nice and buttering up the person you want to bang (because of course they do) but my fscking standards are higher than the "alternative" Ladykiller provides.

Maybe I sound harsh, but I've thought a LOT about this game since I bought it in March, and its writing does honestly get worse the more and more I think about it.

@DensetsuNoGomez @sev I still felt like LKiaB treated sex as a reward, tbh. That's a big part of my negative feeling.

@sev @DensetsuNoGomez When a game is pitched as "hey here's some sexy lesbians", it's kind of hard as a player to not seek those scenes out?

@starkatt @sev

Not just a reward! A ~mandatory~ reward.

@sev @starkatt

Like, the only way, the only time, you can NOT spend the night with someone is if you go to domme girl and say no I'm good I don't want to have hitty sex and when the game goes R U SUUUUUURE~? you go YES GAME I AM GAGDANNED SURE

@starkatt @sev

Anyway I...don't actually like talking about this game at all, I just have a bizarre, compulsive need to voice MY VIEWS, and you folks are having your own thing so I'll bow out.

@starkatt I felt like the flashback structure really let me off the hook with regards to how much my choices matter (though a second playthrough suggests they mattered more than I thought they would).

In my second playthrough, where I was purposely going for points above other goals, I didn't feel like the game was trying to tell me I was still in the land of properly negotiated consent.

But my first time through I got a bunch of the "I'm a good person" content and a lot less of the manipulative jerk -- just that first night with the Hacker, which felt so iffy I didn't go back again...

@starkatt ...so I can totally see how a middle-ground playthrough could get you both the questionable-consent content from the hacker but also the opportunities for the protagonist to moralize about consent during the day, and that sounds like that's the experience you had.

And I'm still bothered by the contrast between the clear labelling of being-a-jerk (complete with color-coding!) for the daytime content vs. not, for the who-to-sleep-with choice. (also, no "neither" choice was uncomfortable.)

@sev Yeah, during my playthrough I tried to win the points game while not (for the most parts) acting completely unethically. I still acted hella unethically. That probably contributes a lot. I was a manipulative jerk who tried to keep a good opinion of themself anyway.

@sev And yeah, following more of the night phases with The Hacker probably contributed a lot to my opinion.

I said this in another thread, but through the second and further encounters with The Hacker, I kept having the though "this is *exactly* the kind of thing where someone might verbally say yes in the moment, then a week later question whether they actually *wanted* to."

@starkatt that was my response to the first night. Actually, it was "this is exactly why I stopped kissing drunk straight girls" but, yes.

@sev I might have had the thought during the first night. I honestly don't remember. Regardless, the fact that it's something we *both picked up on* is hella telling.

@starkatt yeah, my take on it was: this game totally gives me the option to be gross and skeevy! I don't think that means the game doesn't treat consent meaningfully -- but I also don't feel like something needs to have mechanics attached to it in order for it to be important in a game & I know not everybody agrees with that.

Given my particular proclivities I felt generously rewarded for choosing to walk away from the Hacker. But somebody's who's not a piggy bottom would have a different experience, I'm sure.

@sev I don't think something has to have mechanics attached to it to have relevance in a game, but I do think mechanics have an important role in shaping player perceptions and choices.

Thinking more about it, the *purpose* of the points game was to give players motivation to behave manipulatively, yeah?

@sev And I think a game about "hey you're a skeevy-ass fucker who lies to get into people's pants" might actually have a purpose, but getting a gameplay incentivization to be a duplicitous asshole feels really jarring in a game that I feel was framed as sexy lesbian funtimes.

@sev (programming note: that hypothetical game would have to tread *very* carefully, and the protagonist getting loudly and roundly called out for their behavior in-text would be a crucial element.)

@starkatt I think when we chose to manipulate people in order to score points, we felt like assholes -- which holds in real life, too.

You're not wrong -- nothing you've said in this discussion, either today w/me or previously -- is incorrect. The game totally has lots of places where the mechanical reward isn't synchronized with good behavior.

@sev I'm not even saying I think the mechanical rewards ought to be synchronized with good behavior?

More like... the game has multiple warring visions about what it's trying to be, and those multiple threads actually clash really badly when it comes to consent.

@sev For the record, the three competing primary threads I read in the narrative are "carefree, spontaneous lesbian sex is fun", "situations of compromised consent are kinda hot", and "being a manipulative asshole is tempting but not okay". And those can't really coexist when the player can make choices that slide between any of them.

@starkatt Yeah, I can see how moving back and forth between those threads makes for an incoherent narrative.

@sev Hey, thanks for having this conversation :) As you can probably tell, media criticism, game design, and consent are all topics I care a lot about, and I'm glad to be able to talk about them.

@starkatt I'm glad too! My game design discussion muscles are rusty; I haven't done this in awhile. :)

I presume you've heard about Robert Yang's Hurt Me Plenty? I think I recall people Losing Their Shit when the game responds to a consent violation by locking the player out of the game entirely.

@sev I haven't, but am intrigued.

@starkatt https://radiatoryang.itch.io/hurt-me-plenty

@sev Just found it and am bookmarking to check out later. I think it's bedtime now for me though :)

@sev (oh hey, same author as Stick Shift, I've heard about that and was kinda interested too)

@starkatt The story I got was "womanizing cad gets what she deserves" where "deserves" means "gets the crap consensually and pleasurably beaten out of her" & that turned out to be super-enjoyable. But I got there because there were several points in the first day where the narrative explicitly pointed out that it would be in-character to not worry about the points at all, and I latched on to that and ran with it.

@sev That game sounds a *lot* more fun than the one I played.

@starkatt That wasn't how I responded to it?

I have this conversation periodically with my game design friends and they tell me that I have fun in spite of the rules instead of because of them, so this might be a recurring problem for me.

I picked the option that sounded the most fun to me, and the points helped me make decisions when the fun wasn't obvious.

@sev That might be the key conceptual difference between where you and I are coming from, yeah.

I can't help but look at games through the framework of "what kind of gameplay is trying to be promoted here?" Mechanics and narrative aren't actually separable for me.

@starkatt for me they ... inform each other? The mechanics provide boundaries for the narrative, so I work to avoid the lose condition (which I assumed was the Suspicion mechanic).