I think people are missing the much bigger picture here. This is being pushed by governments and institutions that have already demonstrated just how badly they can fail children when powerful people are involved.

Look at Jeffrey Epstein. American prosecutors gave him an extraordinarily lenient deal and failed to properly inform his victims. Yet we’re now expected to believe that these same institutions are so deeply concerned about protecting children that ordinary people need to surrender their privacy just to access the internet?

I don’t believe protecting children is the only motivation here. I think we’re watching the normalisation of an infrastructure that could enable mass surveillance. And the particularly insidious part is how it’s being sold to the public.

“Protecting children” is practically impossible to argue against without looking suspicious. If you object to handing over your passport or having your face scanned just to use a website then suddenly you’re treated as though you must have something to hide.

It’s an incredibly effective way to shut down legitimate concerns about privacy. Nobody wants children to be exploited. But that doesn’t mean governments should have unrestricted access to everyone’s personal information or that private companies should be trusted to collect it.

You can protect children without treating every adult on the internet like a potential criminal. The responsibility for protecting children should fall primarily on their parents. If you let your child wander unsupervised into dangerous places every morning then you’d rightly be held responsible for neglecting their safety. Why should the internet be any different? If parents knowingly expose their children to serious dangers through negligence then hold them accountable. Prosecute them for criminal neglect where the circumstances justify it. Don’t use irresponsible parenting as an excuse to strip every adult on the internet of their privacy and anonymity.

And frankly I find it disturbing how readily people are accepting the erosion of online anonymity simply because they’ve been told it’s for a good cause.

Just to answer some of the questions that were asked:

Did I play Haven? Yes.

Am I willing to say who I played? No. I generally think leaving a digital footprint that lets strangers connect accounts and identities across different parts of the internet is a bad idea. That is not specific to Haven or this community. It is simply how I approach being online.

Do I have any relationship with previous Haven staff? No.

Am I keeping sexual assault as something that can happen in the game? Yes.

I am trying to steer Paroxysm away from obviously kinky content because I do not want that to become the tone of the game. At the same time I think difficult subject matter can have a place in a dark setting when it is being used as part of the story rather than treated as fetish content.

I think allowing that kind of material adds more to the setting than removing it entirely. It can create serious consequences. It can create grudges and conflict between characters. It can also make the world feel genuinely unpleasant in places which is appropriate for the sort of setting I am trying to build.

I completely understand that this will be a deal breaker for some people. I am sorry to lose anyone over it. I would still rather be upfront about what the game allows than have somebody discover it after investing time into a character. Nobody will ever be forced to roleplay anything they are uncomfortable with and players will always have the option to fade to black.

Is this a haven clone? It uses the Haven codebase so there is obviously going to be some shared DNA. That does not mean the goal is to recreate Haven. The audience I am mainly trying to attract is closer to the Armageddon MUD and Sindome crowd. The long term vision is a difficult survival focused and competitive game. That will not appeal to everyone and I am completely fine with that. I would rather build something with a clear identity for the people who enjoy that kind of game than try to make Paroxysm appeal to everyone.

@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.

Do you want to talk about Paroxysm or do you want to keep talking about sexual assault?

If it is the latter then that is fine but I am probably going to dip out and leave you guys to it. I have explained my position and I do not think repeating the same discussion over and over is going to add much. I understand that people disagree with the decision and I am not expecting to change anyone’s mind about it.

This is probably where I’m going to bow out because, yeah, you’re right about the fundamental disagreement.

What I’m going for isn’t really collaborative storytelling in the sense you’re describing. I don’t want every major outcome negotiated between the players involved. I want a game where the world, the mechanics and other characters can impose outcomes on you that you didn’t choose.

That is not going to be for everyone. I completely accept that.

I think collaborative RP where everyone is making sure everyone else gets the kind of story they want can be lovely. It just isn’t the experience I’m trying to build.

@Wizz said:

this is probably not the best place to advertise or engage given our generally intense distaste for both Haven and LLMs amd the fact you’re already bobbing and weaving around some direct questions, just sayin’.

I’m keeping this thread focused on the advertisement rather than turning it into a general argument about Haven, LLMs, or unrelated grievances. If the game isn’t for you, that’s completely fine, but please stop derailing the thread.

I made this thread for you. I hope it helps. https://brandmu.day/topic/690/paroxysm-split-off

@somasatori said:

@Shygaming said:
Remember: a citizen with nothing to hide has nothing to redact.

Your diligence has been noted, Loyal Citizen.

I get what you’re saying. However, given that there are bad actors who have attempted to masquerade as other people in this hobby for years, and who will often use the same language about privacy to justify said masquerade, I think one is liable to be a bit suspicious, no? Fool me once and all that.

I do not care. I am rapidly beginning to understand why Tyr barely spoke to anyone.

Nobody has asked me anything about the game. It feels like people are far more interested in the possibility that there is some scandal to uncover or in repeatedly telling me they disagree with a design decision than they are in Paroxysm itself. Nobody seems particularly curious about the systems, the setting, the direction, or what I am actually trying to build. The only things generating sustained interest seem to be who I might have been on some other game years ago and whether there is some design decision people disagree with strongly enough that we can spend another three pages telling me they disagree with it after I have already acknowledged that they do.

The code is open source partly because I sincerely hope somebody eventually forks it into the hugbox version of the game. Then they can have that and I can keep making the game I actually want to make without having this same argument until the heat death of the universe.

That is why I am finding this whole conversation increasingly difficult to care about. If people want to talk about Paroxysm, I am happy to talk about Paroxysm. If the real attraction here is trying to unmask me, reconstruct some ancient hobby drama, or repeatedly relitigate design decisions because my answer did not change after the first three times, I genuinely have nothing useful to contribute to that.

I’m going to take a break before this thread gets split into a fourth thread.

I wish I’d gone for a walk before posting that. I posted it out of anger and I don’t think it was a particularly useful contribution.

Anyway. Yeah. I can see this probably isn’t my crowd and I don’t think continuing to argue about it is doing anyone much good.

I’m going to leave the thread here and get back to working on the game. I’ll be in discord if anyone wants to talk about it.