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Discussion (228 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
It's an amazing "playable story" unlike anything I have ever played. Super creative and well worth the couple hours it takes to play. I think it could use a few trigger warnings and it should be rated PG-13 / R, but there's stuff on Netflix 10x more disturbing so I don't quite grok the Google push back on this one.
Doesn't DDLC start with the following?
> This game is not suitable for those who are easily disturbed. Individuals suffering from anxiety or depression may not have a safe experience playing this game. For content warnings, please visit https://ddlc.moe/warning.
Then the plus version even added in-game content warnings?
https://teamsalvato.com/news/updates-to-content-warnings-in-...
Also, the game is rated PEGI 18, USK 18, M, CERO C, in various countries.
Doki Doki was created with the Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine by the way.
Plenty of games do amazing things with ren'py that you wouldn't think were possible just by looking at the dialogue DSL. Maps, HUDs, minigames, incredibly dynamic pathways through the game. But DDLC takes it to a different level, partly by looking so "normal" on its surface.
In college I made some spare cash writing Ren'py games for some creatives online who had the writing and illustration chops, but needed programming help. At the time, DDLC was the model for great game design in Ren'Py. There are plenty of more technically impressive Ren'py games nowadays, but DDLC is still a terrific example of technical sophistication facilitating the story.
Ren'py is awesome by the way. A tour de force of software design, in my opinion.
Games are still seen as something children engage in despite the average gamers being adults.
This ought to be grounds to litigate antitrust. This should not be happening.
We need web-based app installs without scare walls ("downloading from the internet is dangerous"), without hidden settings menus to enable them ("Settings > Apps > Special app access > Install unknown apps"), and without any interference or meddling from the hyperscalers.
Tyranny of defaults = 0.00001% of users will ever fall into these buckets = Google knows exactly the evil shit they're doing. Apple not even allowing it is almost less evil by contrast as they're not pretending.
These devices are too important for two companies to lord over us and tell us what to do.
I hope Lina Khan comes back, and I hope she has some absolute urgency next time. I also hope our pals in the EU and Asia put this shit to rest as well. No citizen of the world should have their devices cucking them like this. This is not what computing is supposed to be. (And let's not discount the fact that competition on these devices is in no way, shape, or form fair anymore. You're taxed to hell and back if you do distribution or outreach on these garrison states.)
These our our devices, Google and Apple. You do not get to control what happens after we buy them. You are both monopolies. You are both allelopathic parasites. Invasive species that have outgrown your ecosystem and invaded all the other ones. Doing damage to everything you touch.
The world needs a cleansing forest fire to restore healthy competition.
That and I don’t see how Google and Apple can both be monopolies in mobile. Is this the “Ford has a monopoly on Mustangs” argument? Never found that persuasive.
Now, reframe as duopoly, and maybe layer in that a platform owner who curates their App Store must allow alternative app stores on equal footing, and I’d be with you.
Also, I fully recommend DDLP+ too. The extra stories don't have any real gameplay, but they are really good, and add.some depth to the characters.
There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that trigger warnings have a positive effect and growing evidence they are either ineffectual or actually negative.
If you've experienced a certain kind of trauma, it's not a matter willpower. It involves a loss of control over one's emotional response and thoughts which can be triggered by things that relate to your trauma.
Don't knock on content warnings just because they lack rigorous evidence or because "trigger warnings" became the butt of jokes for a while. They have a genuine utility.
That doesn't mean it's a matter of willpower, but it does suggest that avoiding your triggers or trying to use trigger warnings to prepare you for dealing with them provides no benefit. Your use of the word avoid pretty much sums up the core problem here - on a personal enjoyment of day to day life level, avoiding your triggers makes perfect sense. On the long term healing and not being traumatized by them level, you don't want to do that. (Edit: This isn't to say try taking exposure therapy into your own hands and just surround yourself with the stuff. None of this is a replacement for guided therapy. But specifically going out of your way to avoid these things is 'avoidant behavior' and is pretty much universally recognized as being a bad thing when it comes to dealing with PTSD etc.)
That being said, I believe everyone should be able to disclaim what they want and that people can choose how they approach their own self-care, even if it isn't supported by the science.
A whole lot of people do make the argument that they are beneficial from a mental health perspective, though, and that's what isn't backed by the science. You can see discussion of it in-thread, even.
E.g. if i'm planning family movie night, i probably don't want an R movie. There is nothing wrong with R movies its just sometimes not what I'm looking for. Its nice to be able to see at a glance if the product is what i am looking for. Its really not that different than labelling something as sci-fi or rom-com, etc.
But is there any good reason to doubt that trigger warnings can be helpful in the obvious way: someone sees the trigger warning and makes an informed decision to avoid the content?
Just today I found a malicious version of Ledger on the macOS app store. It's been there for five weeks, and there are already some anecdotes out there of people losing their coins.
I guess that's somehow the developer's fault for not "staking their claim" to their name, as Apple seems to only monitor for malicious duplicate submissions if the original is in the App Store to begin with...
Any chance folks in the US can use these, in the US?
This is a genuine question, although I don't have my hopes up. It would be nice to have some actual competition / choices
For more significant things, you can still use cash. I'd go down to my landlord's bank every three months to pay the rent.
Tldr - you open the app on your phone and it gives you a 6 digit BLIK code, you give that code to the seller, then a notification comes up on the app saying "seller X is trying to debit your account by amount Y, agree?". It's brilliant because then the seller gets nothing identifiable about you. Even if someone overhears the code, it's only valid 60 second so it's useless. Unlike with regular cards there is no risk of losing one or using a fake terminal that scans your card instead. And any transaction has to be explicitly rather than implicitly approved. Love it.
The best credit and debit cards can do is PIN verification or biometrics (for Apple/Google Pay), but even there you still trust the terminal to not show you a different amount than you'll be charged (assuming the screen is even pointing towards you; I've often been asked to tap without seeing what I'm even consenting to).
Online, there's 3DS, but that's not required everywhere and for every transaction.
There once was a vision to extend both positive cardholder approval and cardholder authentication for each card transaction, but it turns out the friction of that is higher on average than just letting everything but the most egregiously suspicious fraud go through by default and handle the rest via the disputes process.
Out of curiosity:
> you open the app on your phone and it gives you a 6 digit BLIK code, you give that code to the seller
Is this the flow for online payments as well, or only for in-person payments?
Sure, great if you don't trust your government or whoever issues your local currency, but if you can, there are better alternatives. Trust is an asset, not just a liability.
Say what you will about EU inefficiency and regulations, but in my view, at least their financial ones have been largely on point.
Hope the EU or another progressive regulatory body allows users to fully control what they can/can't download and from where on to the phones they purcahsed.
Source: I use Windows and Windows VMs sometimes and install whatever I want without hassle.
The concern was serious enough that Valve took a defensive posture and started investing into Linux support. Which, at first, largely failed - but eventually resulted in Steam Deck.
No Steam on Xbox Series X/S, last I heard.
> Apple
Steam still works on macOS, last I checked.
The EU's DMA has been a step in the right direction, even if it's yet been fairly toothless with Apple and Google flouting it.
[Spoilers] For those who haven't played, DDLC has subject matter related to self-harm, mental health, suicide that sort of thing. It generally treats the subjects seriously. It has content warnings on it, so people know what they are getting into.
Its weird how we seem much more hung up on censoring video games we are than books or movies. There is way more disturbing books and movies out there. If this was a book i doubt anyone would care. There probably wouldn't even be content warnings on it.
On the other hand, maybe someone trying to ban you is how you know you have achieved the status of "great literature" like all the other banned books.
I could have sworn there was a discussion about this years ago but I went looking for it on HN and just found a comment I made years ago, funny how that shakes out.
It was only temporarily banned. It's currently still on the App store since 2017.
I played 30 minutes and realized my personal trigger is sickeningly "cute" anime girls, and there's no warnings for that. Maybe I'll keep going and try to treat it as an artistic experience but I'm definitely not enjoying it so far and I'm just in the introduction.
I was like "meh" too at first ("what are people TALKING about?") and, then, it just gets incredible.
wikipedia actually makes the game sounds interesting unlike a typical dating sim.
WARNING possible spoilers, don't read if you plan to play, but just know it's not just a dating sim.
> while it appears to be a light-hearted dating simulator, it is a metafictional psychological horror game that extensively breaks the fourth wall.
> Reviewers pointed out that the game's horror was built on the destruction of a sense of control over what happens in the game and the feeling of helplessness that stems from the distortions in the game's world
And I guess it's not worth porting games for adults to walled gardens.
Note that i said games for adults, not adult content. If you're expecting porn, move along.
funnily enough one of the largest Youtubers made a gameplay video of the desktop game [1]. don't believe anything was modified when the port was made. hope this gets resolved just like the recent wireshark fiasco.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYH8WvNV1YEnYtfmH-sGR...
But no. The post mentions it was pulled due to a TOS violation with regards to its depiction of 'sensitive themes'. That would seem to suggest the problem lies with the game depicting suicide or just its other depictions of mental health problems in general. It could still be a mistake, in that they researched it to the point that they figured out it was dealing with those themes, but not to the point of figuring out it's a successful darling of a game. This seems rather unlikely.
Either way, fact that it's even possible to pull from the store, several months after it was first published without issue, without at least having a chat with the publisher first, is worrying.
(reference https://www.engadget.com/gaming/steam-now-bans-games-that-vi...)
DDLC is a __horror__ game that contains some gore, death, and self harm content, as well as small fourth wall breaking, disguised as a Japanese Visual Novel style soft/hard porn game. The entire game is a figurative jumpscare. Which makes it technically true to call it a "disturbing and shocking" game, but not as in """disturbing and shocking""" as in the euphemism for pornographic. It is technically correctly rated and marked as such. It just doesn't say viewer discretion of what kind is recommended.
And also: a lot of these Japanese pastel colored things, Visual Novel games included, are in fact not intended for kids, especially under 15. It's not like picture books for 6-12 year olds. Audience gender distribution is often closer to 50:50 than what many assumes.
https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/12/05/as-regards-spo...
Definitely not for kids, though, and it's worth taking the content/trigger warnings seriously.
(I've never played it.)
(I have played it, and I enjoyed it somewhat)
I distinctly remember sitting there in silence with my mouth open at a number of points during the game.
I went down the ~~MONIKA~_ route, though I was intrigued by %]~JUST_MONIKA%]€_ - She seemed like an interesting character.
If you still want to sideload dangerous unnaproved applications, first just ask Google for permission and then a day later they'll let you sideload applications to your device. I'm so grateful that they are allowing us to do this and protecting us.
I don't like this trend of every technology assuming I'm a child that needs to be protected from the world while simultaneously assuming I'm an adult with infinite disposable income that must be shown ads to all the time. This is insincere. Children need to be "protected" only when it's convenient and allows the platform to exercise unchecked control. Nobody is protecting children from ads because that would be inconvenient.
You are, but you're not.
Most of them are in the same league of violence that an aggressive debate would be in.
It's very clearly intended for teens+.
Google can suck on a lemon.
But the moralists are never satisfied, and their war on free expression, art and culture never ends.
If this game’s content is objectionable, where was Google 5 months ago when it was released? Are they admitting that they don’t review apps that are submitted? Do their reviewers have zero familiarity with major multi-platform game releases?
How are they justifying the availability of the Grand Theft Auto or Resident Evil series on the Android platform if this game can’t be published?
Hopefully this turns out to be some kind of error or misunderstanding that gets corrected.
This is just how moral panics are. We can say we just wanted social media to be 16+, but after the lawsuits roll in, no one is going to take a nuanced stance. Steam and EGS didn't stand up for Horses either, even after those devs changed the objectionable content, because earlier headlines made the work toxic in the current world.
It's disgusting, really, that most of the world is totally fine with this. Most people probably don't even realize how bad this is.
Provide the content, content provider
Take control of your computing, user.
Which invites censorship from morality police types.
The controversy is entirely because it deals with themes of mental health and suicide.
This is almost certainly not banned for pornographic reasons.
Now that I’m mentioning it I might just play the iPhone version to see…
Meanwhile the people that lead them go to certain islands.