Would you play this game?

[Nikolas]

Are we aiming for originality in games? Cause I rarely find it...

Why is it wrong to put something down that's been said before, to stress it?

[Emerald]

Are we aiming for originality in games? Cause I rarely find it...

Why is it wrong to put something down that's been said before, to stress it?

It's boring.

Lemme explain it like this: You're from Britain, right? You get those 'don't drink & drive' and 'don't give in to peer pressure' shock-ads, right? Notice how the general message remains the same, but the way they show it changes. Sometimes the ads are preachy ('you could run over little kids'), sometimes they try to appeal to the everyman, and sometimes they just show a gory mess and say 'this could be you'. The point is, the message stays the same (don't drink and drive), but it stays fresh because the way it is presented is fresh.

It's the same with anything else, really. Unless you're fresh and original, you probably wont get much attention. (Take, for another example, all those Monkey Island rip-offs)

[mouthuvmine]

I personally think it'd be great to play a game like this and come away having learned something about a new (to me at least) religion. Not in that statment of fact, the-way-your-teacher-would-say-it kind of way, but because the info was intelligently wound into the story.

[Nikolas]

Emerald. To the danger of getting told to suck your balls (again), I will reply!

I live in London, but I'm Greek! surprise, surprise! So I don't actually have the mentality of the brittish (fully). Nor their spelling abilities!

What you say about the "THINK!" ads is what I'm also saying. You're actually agreeing with me without understanding it probably.

The message, or story, doesn't need to be original always, because presentation can also save the project! Te ads of "THINK!" for me are pieces of art, and look great! The message is as unoriginal as always, but I like them for what they are.

Same with pixelia game. What if it's not original? (not that I've seen many games that deal with such an issue). In the end it might be a good game because pixelia will make it so!

Originality is dead long ago. Tell me 5 games that are original. And I'll hand it to you!



___________

Andail is talking about something else, however, and it is my fault for mixing up things. Feeding common misconceptions is rather bad and not nice. Pairing up with all the western media, and producing something which does seem, to the few who know, somewhat unfair, not because it doesn't happen, but because the % are small, in the end, is exactly that: unfair to those who care about such issues!

[Pixelia]

Pairing up with all the western media, and producing something which does seem, to the few who know, somewhat unfair, not because it doesn't happen, but because the % are small, in the end, is exactly that: unfair to those who care about such issues!

I'm not sure what you mean by "the % is small"...

Here I quote: "Over 5000 women and girls are killed every year by family members in so-called 'honour killings', according to the UN. These crimes occur where cultures believe that a woman's unsanctioned sexual behaviour brings such shame on the family that any female accused or suspected must be murdered. Reasons for these murders can be as trivial as talking to a man, or as innocent as suffering rape."

Should the issue not be raised and talked about because it "may" bruise egos?

http://www.stophonourkillings.com/?name=News

and

http://www.stophonourkillings.com/?name=Stories_Archive

The numbers seem pretty high to me, and...

"Islamist culture that we're already over-fed with."
"You're just feeding western egos."
"It seems like it's more about how fucked up Muslim people are..."
"...stereotypical..."

all seem like reasons not to avert the problem altogether. (quote: "It's talked, filmed, written about for ages.") Does that mean we have to forget all about it? Leave it alone and let the activists do their jobs? Even if you plaster "unoriginal" all over my game, it's still rings true, it's real and can happen to any Muslim woman/girl out there. It happens everywhere and whenever someone brings up the issue in public, it becomes "stereotypical" and "feeding western egos". Do you think it rubs my ego to see the pictures of young girls and women who were brutally murdered? No, it does not.

There's a man who was killed because he has made a short video about an issue like this. His name is Theo Van Gogh and he made a movie named "Submission" that's viewable on youtube. There's another man who's currently making another short movie and already he's received death threats.

I don't think my game is unoriginal, and I don't think it's a "small" issue.

[Andail]

I'm well aware of the problem. As I wrote in my previous post, my life partner since 2 years is from Iran, so I've got pretty good insight.
As much as there is a problem, there are other aspects of the culture you wish to portray that I would enjoy to see, just for once, featured in a book, film or game, because it be awesomely original, whereas high-lighting once again that muslims are woman-murderers and backward and extremists and fundamentalists and all that, is not original, not any way you slice it, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Nobody's forgetting about these issues! We know who Theo Van Gogh is, we know these problems exist!
You watched a youtube clip and now you feel you have to tell the world, well it's all fine and dandy, just don't expect that people will go "holy shit is it true!?".

You asked if the game will be original and fun to play, and my answer is that it won't be original and I doubt the gameplay will work for you (what's it gonna be like, a young girl chased by bearded evil-doers throwing stones after her?). But good luck anyway.

[Emerald]

I'm not sure what you mean by "the % is small"...

Here I quote: "Over 5000 women and girls are killed every year by family members in so-called 'honour killings'

Mathematically speaking, 5000 is a very small number compared to the 500 million people living in the middle east. That's what... 0.001% (bleh, I spent too long trying to figure that out, and I still don't think I got it)
Mathematically speaking, it pales in comparison to the 200,000 suspected gun-related civilian deaths (homicides, suicides, accidents) that happen somewhere in the world every year.
But few people do games or books about that, because that message just isn't juicy/controversial enough... (ehh, it's midnight, and my cognitive processes are failing... sorry if anything's incoherent)



The point is, if you're doing this because you think honour killings would make a good story, that's fair enough, but if you're doing it because of some sort of moral imperative, making an adventure game probably isn't going to be very effective for spreading the enlightenment...

[miguel]

Hi to all,
Pixelia, do your game if you want to. The subject is controversial as you can see what this thread turned out to be. Any form of art (even a adventure game)  is due to criticism so you made the questions and you got the answers.
Say what you want to say with your game, your only expressing yourself after all.
Good luck, and I think that the Key of the game is:   TOLERANCE

[auriond]

Pixelia, your latest modified storyline (where she gets help from her husband) reminded me of this case: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/magazine/23wwln-syria-t.html

For those who don't want to click on the link, it's the story of Zahra who was killed by her brother because she had lost her virginity out of wedlock. Her widower, Fawwaz, is now filing a civil lawsuit against the brother and the family. I haven't watched the video you posted, so I don't know if it's the same story, but just wanted to highlight the similarity: help from the husband.

Nothing's really original these days, it's all happened before. But it's all in the execution (bad choice of words, but you see what I mean).

I admit that I'm also quite disappointed by the focus on honour killings, since as I said before that's really very far removed from many Muslims' lives. It's like always focussing on starving children in Africa, as if the whole continent is full of them.

But well, at the end of the day these are important issues, and they're also more likely to stir people's hearts... in this case, to stir a gamemaker's heart to making a game. I guess this is something we'll just have to accept. I just hope that the game will include some nuance and not have the whole family immediately turn into bloodthirsty monsters.

[alkis21]

Tell me 5 games that are original. And I'll hand it to you!

I don't know about you, but I can think of ONE...

[Pixelia]

hey, I just want to apologize for being a pain in the ass.

[Gord10]

@Pixelia: A pain in the ass? I don't think so. You are just asking our opinions about something that was never done before (I don't know if such an adventure game existed before).

If you are afraid of what this game could bring, then just hide your name. It would be hard for the fanatics to find the house address of someone whose nickname is Pixelia. (Maybe they would threaten the owners of the AGS website for holding this game inside the Games database and the game would be removed?) 

I still advise you to be brave and do whatever you want. Violation of women rights in these countries is a serious issue.

[2ma2]

Raising controversy, no matter with what medium, is always fun. Must one respect everyone else's feelings? Well.. no. Putting up the finger to something you believe is wrong is never wrong by itself. But you see, both you and Andail has a valid point:

1: honor murders is a fact. Heck, there's a new way of killing them off here in Sweden, where actual murder is hard to prove as the girls are forced to jump to their death from balconies. Sly fu**ers indeed.

2: honor murders are an act most muslim leaders, both political and religious, disdaine. To portray a "backwater" community where women are stoned by western arab stereotypes is racist and not helping the cause.

So who or what are you going to attack? The fundamentalists? The law of the Koran? The abusing husbands and fathers? Remember too, that you (judging how you portrayed modern contemporary western life) are as brainwashed as any of us. We grow up with the dogmas of 60's humanism and hypocrisy, where religion is reserved for nutters in sects.

But isn't murder wrong? Isn't this an act of evil if there ever was one?
In our eyes, yes, but in theirs? Here's the punchline. They do not perceive the act as evil or wrong - but as salvation from sin and shunned honor. I'm certain a father loves his daughter no matter what religious faith, so think about this: You are completely convinced that to live as a pure muslim and accordance with Allah, you must murder your own child. Abraham did that too, but his sacrifice was hindered. These one's aren't.

Make the game. Raise hell. But think about WHO and WHAT you want to attack.

[Jack Sheehan]

Grim Fandango was original, I dont think you can argue with that.

[veryweirdguy]

Grim Fandango, the film noiresque story of a guy travelling across many lands to find a girl? The one with the Art Deco elements and the traditional mythical personification of Death as a character?

Aye, that's original.

[LimpingFish]

I'd like to ask Pixelia if they belong to an Islamic faith, or live within a largely Muslim community? When I first saw this thread, I had hoped that was the case, and the game would reflect this, allowing us an untainted representation of Islam as a whole, while highlighting an extreme situation within. The more this thread goes on, the less I am inclined to believe that this is the case.

For the most part, I'd agree with Andail's last point. Another outsider's view will struggle to be relevant. And seeing as the heroine is desperate to escape, it seems that Islam has already been condemned, before the story has even been told.

But then, honour killings aren't part and parcel of Islamic culture, so the Muslim world has been slighted from the offset.

To simply say that these are bad Muslims, and therefore shouldn't be taken as a representation of Muslim culture, isn't good enough, as it's just picking and choosing how you want to portray that world.

Any controversy caused by this game will be empty sensationalism, because in the end it will leave us with a limited understanding of the subject, with little or no room for debate.

[Emerald]

Fishy's right. I think you should do a decent amount of research (actually talk to some people who lived there, read blogs, etc. - don't just go off of a wiki article or something)
and then present the subject in a mature, unbiased manner, leaving the audience to come to their own conclusions. I find it's far more effective if the writer/director doesn't force their opinions down people's throats.



Edit: You should look into the Iranian comedian Omid Djalili. He's ingenious, hilarious and very insightful.