Haven

[Jumpscare]

@Kestrel said:

What if my five gfs are into that, who are you to tell us that sucks? Everyone consents!

Nobody consented to the hidden sexist game mechanics that apply to every character universally.

[Trashcan]

I’m reluctant to make this post but I can’t not make this post.

It reads to me that, in the interest of avoiding kink-shaming, some suggestions have been made in this thread about how to approach determining whether something is okay to write about and that the line should be set where “the authors are consenting adults” and “no actual X are involved.”

I don’t agree. “No actual X are involved” allows any sort of activity to be written about and as long as it’s somebody’s kink this is meant to be okay. It frees me to open Auschwitz MU, so long as no actual Jews are involved. I strongly hold that there is a line where something being a kink does not excuse engaging with that topic unequivocally, where it should not be shielded from society condemning engaging with that topic, and that “no actual X involved” is a terrible test for drawing that line.

I agree that kink-shaming in most cases is bad. However, if your priors could lead you to write things like “no actual children are involved in AI-generated or artist-rendered CSAM, so what is the harm?” you need to reexamine your priors.

[sao]

@Trashcan i kind of agree with you but going to the Aushwitz place during the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is a flag on the play.

[Juniper]

For all Haven’s flaws it does wonders for the activity of this board.

[Pavel]

So whenever someone says that they’re not worried about the extremes when it comes to MUing, you can remind them that Haven existed and enough people thought it was neat for long enough that it’s getting a spiritual successor.

[NotSanni]

@Pavel said:

So whenever someone says that they’re not worried about the extremes when it comes to MUing, you can remind them that Haven existed and enough people thought it was neat for long enough that it’s getting a spiritual successor.

technically still exists as the developer constantly reiterates the game, with two spiritual successors currently (duskholm i think, and then this paroxysm one now) done by people who aren’t the OG dev

[Yam]

I regret this thread so much

How do I delete my life choices

[junipersky]

@Yam

Live and learn young one.

[hellfrog]

@Yam said:

I regret this thread so much

How do I delete my life choices

drugs

[Shygaming]

@Pavel said:

So whenever someone says that they’re not worried about the extremes when it comes to MUing, you can remind them that Haven existed and enough people thought it was neat for long enough that it’s getting a spiritual successor.

People generally do not take on a massive unpaid second job as hobbyist developers unless the thing they actually want to play cannot be found somewhere else. If there were more roleplay focused games with a genuinely competitive focus I absolutely would not be putting this amount of effort into Paroxysm. I would just go and play one of them.

So I would not really take the existence of successors as evidence that people thought everything about Haven was great. Sometimes it just means there were parts of the game people genuinely liked and nobody else is making anything that scratches the same itch.

I also think people pleasers usually make terrible hobbyist developers. If you are constantly compromising your vision to try to keep everyone happy then eventually you stop making an actual game and end up with a chatroom that has some mechanics bolted onto the side.

I’m not going to play defense squad for anyone here. But I do think Tyr left the hobby in a better state than he found it.

Whatever criticisms people have of him personally or of the direction Haven took over the years. The codebase itself is an incredible starting point for anyone wanting to build their own project. It represents years of work and an enormous amount of his life. People can now build things that otherwise might have taken years just to get off the ground.

I think that deserves some acknowledgement.

[Jennkryst]

@Trashcan said:

I strongly hold that there is a line where something being a kink does not excuse engaging with that topic unequivocally, where it should not be shielded from society condemning engaging with that topic, and that “no actual X involved” is a terrible test for drawing that line.

I agree, and would like to curveball this into a somewhat silly scenario that gives further reason why ‘no actual X involved’ is a dumb defense. In the form of a meme. Perhaps a GIF, even.