El Goonish ShiVe: Look! Squirrel!

[Fyraltari]

"Warning contains spiders" can be the difference between someone bracing themselves and playing through the game and someone having a panic attack in the first dungeon and never playing it again.

The more I think about it, the more Ithink that's the best solution, just have game boxes/description on selling platforms have a list of triggers for common phobia in somewhere.

Just like how food have a list of common allergenes they contain.

[Windscion]

The more I think about it, the more Ithink that's the best solution, just have game boxes/description on selling platforms have a list of triggers for common phobia in somewhere.

Agree. It's not like it's spoilerish.

[Lord Raziere]

at this point, a lot of shopping is done online or involve downloads or pre-orders. warning labels on a box are too late in terms of a purchase for some people. you want those warning labels on their steam/amazon/random smaller online store page as well.

[Forum Explorer]

The more I think about it, the more Ithink that's the best solution, just have game boxes/description on selling platforms have a list of triggers for common phobia in somewhere.

Just like how food have a list of common allergenes they contain.

The problem is where do you draw the line? Everything is a phobia for someone, and there's a lot of common phobias in games, like falling, darkness, snakes, and clowns.

[Yuki Akuma]

The problem is where do you draw the line? Everything is a phobia for someone, and there's a lot of common phobias in games, like falling, darkness, snakes, and clowns.

Did an arachnophobe kill your father or something?

This isn't a slippery slope. You don't need to draw any lines. You can have as many content warnings as you want.

[Rater202]

The problem is where do you draw the line? Everything is a phobia for someone, and there's a lot of common phobias in games, like falling, darkness, snakes, and clowns.

Look, Forum, nobody is saying that you need to coddle people, but putting a trigger warning on something that contains something that is a well-known subject of common extreme phobias, like Spiders, is not coddling. It's a reasonable warning, much like putting "don't taunt the bear" signs up around a national park that is known to have bears living in it.

Fears of clowns tends to be less fo an immediate panic response and more of a general uncomfortableness, falling in games is really nothing like falling in real life, you're not in the dark when the game is dark.

Realistic spiders, on the other hand... No one's saying take them out, but a fair warning can go a long way and costs literally nothing.

[Forum Explorer]

Did an arachnophobe kill your father or something?

This isn't a slippery slope. You don't need to draw any lines. You can have as many content warnings as you want.

Not specifically spiders no, but I'm in a constant push-back against Ophidiophobia, which has contributed to 13 out of our 25 species of snakes being endangered. For no good reason! The Timber Rattlesnake can no longer be found in Canada because people killed them off. Do you know how many people have died from rattlesnake bites in the last 100 years of Canada's history? Less than 10.

So my level of compliance for people who hold an irrational fear of an animal that is not only almost entirely harmless to people, but is actively beneficial for us to have around, is pretty barebones.


I view it as a form of validation I suppose. By saying 'warning, contains spiders!' you are saying it is okay to be scared of spiders. That society can and should acknowledge your fear of spiders as being important and noteworthy. And that's where I draw the line. I can understand why people are scared of spiders. I can sympathize with them being scared of spiders. But I'm not okay with people being scared of spiders. It is something to be overcome and challenged. Not embraced in any form.

[Rater202]

view it as a form of validation I suppose. By saying 'warning, contains spiders!' you are saying it is okay to be scared of spiders. That society can and should acknowledge your fear of spiders as being important and noteworthy. And that's where I draw the line. I can understand why people are scared of spiders. I can sympathize with them being scared of spiders. But I'm not okay with people being scared of spiders. It is something to be overcome and challenged. Not embraced in any form.

It is important and noteworthy, because people have to live with it.

Phobias are disabilities.

It's not something people can just "get over" and if you want to say that someone usn't allowed to play video games until they've done to work to overcome their debilitating mental issues then nobody gets to play videogames because everybody has psychological damage because human civilization, in general, is actually kind of awful at making mentally healthy people.

I mean...

Like, I'm afraid of heights. And going really, really fast with no control of where I'm going.

I tried to treat this back in middle school by going to the sled hill in winter, climbing up as high as I was comfortable, and sledding down.

I'd just worked up enough nerve to go up to the very top... And then my jackass stepfather gives me a hearty shove before I was ready and basically destroyed all of my progress. Was not prepared, went into a panic, and as an added bonus I could no longer trust the people around me.

For some people who are afraid of spiders, encountering a very realistic model of a spider out of nowhere in the middle of a game that they paid money for expecting to enjoy without warning could cause the same effect. The sudden encounter with no preparation causes a panic attack that undoes progress made in managing and treating the condition.

A "warning: Contains Spiders" tag not eh box, on at the online retailer, lets people who can handle it with prep know that they need to prep and people who can't handle it at all know to avoid it and it costs absoltly nothing.

[Maat Mons]

Canada has rattlesnakes? That surprises me. I'm a Minnesotan, and always imagined Canada being like northern Minnesota, but more-so.

The southeasterly corner of Minnesota is within the natural range of a species of rattlesnake. But the vast majority of the state has no venomous snakes, and so far as I know, didn't have any even before people got up to significant meddling.

Actually, some online sources claim that there's a second species of venomous snake native to Minnesota. But all the maps I can find showing how far its range extends into Minnesota show that it doesn't actually extend in at all, not even historically.

I've never heard of anyone around where I live being worried that they'd come to harm from snakes. So I kind of figured it'd be the same up in Canada.

[Forum Explorer]

It is important and noteworthy, because people have to live with it.

Phobias are disabilities.

It's not something people can just "get over" and if you want to say that someone usn't allowed to play video games until they've done to work to overcome their debilitating mental issues then nobody gets to play videogames because everybody has psychological damage because human civilization, in general, is actually kind of awful at making mentally healthy people.

I understand that, and am sympathetic towards it, but if your phobia is that bad, than you should check the game yourself rather than depending on the developers to do it for you. A quick google search of 'Spiders in X' will almost always tell you if a game has spiders in it.

Canada has rattlesnakes? That surprises me. I'm a Minnesotan, and always imagined Canada being like northern Minnesota, but more-so.

The southeasterly corner of Minnesota is within the natural range of a species of rattlesnake. But the vast majority of the state has no venomous snakes, and so far as I know, didn't have any even before people got up to significant meddling.

Actually, some online sources claim that there's a second species of venomous snake native to Minnesota. But all the maps I can find showing how far its range extends into Minnesota show that it doesn't actually extend in at all, not even historically.

I've never heard of anyone around where I live being worried that they'd come to harm from snakes. So I kind of figured it'd be the same up in Canada.

There are three kinds of Rattlesnakes currently living in Canada. Prairie Rattlesnakes, Western Rattlesnakes, and Massasauga Rattlesnakes.

[Rater202]

I understand that, and am sympathetic towards it, but if your phobia is that bad, than you should check the game yourself rather than depending on the developers to do it for you. A quick google search of 'Spiders in X' will almost always tell you if a game has spiders in

Why?

If someone's phobia is that bad, pictures might set it off too and a web search might have pictures.

Meanwhile, the developer knows if it has spiders and it's not even half a minute's effort to write "warning, some dungeons have realistic spiders" on the game's description.

[Vahnavoi]

This is a solved problem, folks. The PEGI content warning symbol for frightening elements is a spider, precisely because fear of spiders is so common. A developer cannot be obligated to put much more precise information than that anywhere, because most phobias (and other psychological issues) are not that common and it's impossible for a developer to predict and cover all possible causes of irrational fear.

It's the same for food allergies. For some food allergies, such as peanut allergy, a food producer can be obligated to put a specific high visibility warning label on the product, because those allergies are both common and lethal. For less common and less lethal allergies, most that can be asked for is generic list of ingredients, and it's the people with those less common and less lethal allergies who have to figure out themselves which products suit them.

There's no fault in Dan and Dan's characters expressing desire for some specific type of game, but there's no need for anyone to fullfil those desires either (no matter how technically possible it would be). This said, if enough people actually wanted these types of games and were willing to pay for them, it would be odd (in the sense of requiring an explanation) if none materialized.

[DavidSh]

Most of us would be fine if there were text reading something like "This game contains Lions, Hyenas, Wart Hogs, Meerkats, Pythons, and Spiders", listing all of the monster types. That's rarely counted as spoilers.

[Yuki Akuma]

"May contain trace amounts of wolves."

"This videogame was manufactured in a studio that also makes games about creepy little girls."

[Lord Raziere]

okay so lets find the ten most common phobias then and include warning for things like needles, heights, flying, thunder and lightning, oh and there are people that afraid of dogs, social anxiety oh and agoraphobia, which is the fear of being alone in a situation you can't easily escape, which y'know is so general that it can apply to everything adventurers and horror protagonists do ever. guess we have to warn people that a game has characters go into dangerous situations then:
"Warning character goes into situations that you can't easily escape."

[DavidSh]

I'll ignore any whataboutism, but ask, do people with a fear of flying have problems with movies or videogames of flying? (where is Erica Jong when you need her?) Mere photographs of spiders and webs can disturb arachnophobes.

[Maat Mons]

These guys came up with a short list of 82 warning tags for games, including such items as avians, darkness, dolls, existential despair, explosions, felines, reptiles, supernatural evil, unreality, and weapons.

I'm making fun of them, but that website would actually be really useful to a lot of people if it hadn't been abandoned long ago after only a very short period of active work. Sadly though, this is the most earnest attempt at such a resource that I can find.

[Rater202]

okay so lets find the ten most common phobias then and include warning for things like needles, heights, flying, thunder and lightning, oh and there are people that afraid of dogs, social anxiety oh and agoraphobia, which is the fear of being alone in a situation you can't easily escape, which y'know is so general that it can apply to everything adventurers and horror protagonists do ever. guess we have to warn people that a game has characters go into dangerous situations then:
"Warning character goes into situations that you can't easily escape."

Bit of a strawman, Raz.

Most of those can't be triggered by realistic pictures the way that arachnophobia can.

With heights or Thunder and lightning, for most people, it has to be a personal experience while planty of agoraphobes(fear of going outside, not unescapable situations) can play videogames that take place out of their house just fine.

Things like a fear of needles, on the other hand, are unlikely to come up uless the game prominently feature hospitals or medicine to some degree and even then, and most people who are afraid of needles are set off by getting one, not by seeing one.

Spider phobias are the most common phobias and are commonly extreme enough that a picture of one can set off a panic. Spiders or Spider-like creatures are enemies in games very commonly, even in cases where there's honestly no need for them.

It's honestly common enough an issue that a fair warning in the game's description on games that don't obviously involve spiders is not at all unreasonable.

I'll ignore any whataboutism, but ask, do people with a fear of flying have problems with movies or videogames of flying? (where is Erica Jong when you need her?) Mere photographs of spiders and webs can disturb arachnophobes.

Personal experience suggests no.

[Radar]

I'll ignore any whataboutism, but ask, do people with a fear of flying have problems with movies or videogames of flying? (where is Erica Jong when you need her?) Mere photographs of spiders and webs can disturb arachnophobes.

I have no problems with flying, but I do have a rather mild height fear (been far worse). Still played through Jedi Knight and many other games involving deep chasms, pits and loads of unsecured platforms without problems. At the same time I still have problems, when a mountain trail is steering close to a steep (not even vertical) slope. Consciously I might know I will not fall, but...

[Vahnavoi]

These guys came up with a short list of 82 warning tags for games, including such items as avians, darkness, dolls, existential despair, explosions, felines, reptiles, supernatural evil, unreality, and weapons.

I'm making fun of them, but that website would actually be really useful to a lot of people if it hadn't been abandoned long ago after only a very short period of active work. Sadly though, this is the most earnest attempt at such a resource that I can find.

Rather than some dysfunctional standard that wasn't adopted, maybe look at some industry standard in actual use, like aforementioned PEGI.

[Vinyadan]

These guys came up with a short list of 82 warning tags for games, including such items as avians, darkness, dolls, existential despair, explosions, felines, reptiles, supernatural evil, unreality, and weapons.

I'm making fun of them, but that website would actually be really useful to a lot of people if it hadn't been abandoned long ago after only a very short period of active work. Sadly though, this is the most earnest attempt at such a resource that I can find.

If you try to open a game on Steam, while you still are in the store, you sometimes get a confirmation page with the devs explaining what's scary in it and why viewer discretion is advised. For example, with Ghostrunner: “Blood and gore in realistic graphics. Violence on human and human-like characters. Mutilated and dismembered bodies. Mature coarse language. The fear-inducing atmosphere, events, and characters.”

It's for mainstream reasons, however. I don't think they would add such a page just for spiders. Skyrim does have such a confirmation page, but it doesn't say why you need to be an adult to see the page.

Steam could give a checklist of scary things to all publishers, and let them fill it out, then let the players add to their profile whether they have any particular phobia, then crossreference the two so you get a warning if the subject of one of your phobias shows up in-game.

[Lissou]

If being attacked by a Giant Spider in a video game is enough to trigger them than they have serious problems. I mean, imagine their reaction if a spider dropped down on them when taking a walk in the park?

Arachnophobe here. If I take a walk in the park, I know there might be spiders, because this is where they live. If I'm home and a spider falls on me though, I'll freak out for a few days, because it's supposed to be my place, the one I can control and where I'm safe. I don't open the windows if it's raining. I regularly check likely spots. I don't tolerate insects in my place, not because I dislike insects, but because they attract spiders. The list goes on.

Similarly, in a game, in the forest world, I'll be ready for potential spiders. In the tundra world and the underwater world, not so much. In a horror game, I'll expect spiders. And when a game is done well, you see spiderwebs before you encounter the first spider, and believe me, I know to get ready then.

The idea isn't to remove all spiders all the time or to coddle me. The idea is that back when the phobia was disabling, it would be nicer to know not to buy a game than to spend a month fixing the damage an unexpected 5-second cutscene caused. Yes, my phobia is my condition, and everything can be a phobia. But context is important, and warning the player, and not setting what looks like a safe space only to have it not be so.

Someone mentioned food allergies, and it's a good analogy. Allergies can cause death but often they're just a really inconvenient thing that makes you sick when you could have avoided it. There are warnings, and some places remove common allergens altogether. They don't remove shellfish from their lobster bisque, but they package their chocolate cake in a different factory so people with shellfish allergies don't get a reaction.

Similarly common phobias, which include fear off spiders, snakes, bats, all animals that are neutral at worst and good at best, should be taken into account. Can you have friendly snakes in a game? Yes, but it should be announced clearly in one of several manners.
Option one, it's a game that's very clearly about animals in general or snakes in particular. People will either know it from the start, or figure that's an option and do their research (in which case the description should have relevant keywords too).
Option two, general warning for common phobias, and a link somewhere to a more detailled list if needed. The PEGI system, already does that, one of the icons for warning is a stylised spiders, and that represent fear and phobias present in the game. It's vague but you can then check if it includes your specific phobia by getting info on the game.
Option three, the area that deals with that phobia is clearly foreshadowed in the game. At that point you've played the game already, but you can get yourself ready. So spider boss in a forest area that had webs, yes. Random realisitc tarantula boss in the underwater ocean without any warning, no.
Option four, which is the one I think Dan was suggested, avoid commong phobias altogether if it brings nothing to the game. No shellfish in the chocolate cake, and no bats in the cartoon robot birthday party game. Again, if that fits with the game, you keep it, otherwise, you don't add it just because it's a trope and you're lazy. Mario has enemies that are original, for instance. Lots of other games do.

For the rare phobias, like the rare allergies, you still get the extra work. My friend who is allergic to chicken needs to make sure nothing has eggs, chicken broth, etc. It's more labour-intensive than his nut allergy, because he needs to dig into the label instead of looking at the specific section, but it's possible to do. It sucks for people who have a phobia of cats, although some of the previous advice should probably still be applied, foreshadowing for instance is good for your game anyway. But hopefully they can also tell one another about infamous examples, and the very obscure phobias are less likely to be used lazily in a game at least.

I think you end up with a better end product. And for people who love spiders, it's better too, because they're not added randomly, they're added in a way that makes sense and explored better as characters and/or enemies. And you can work on fixing the silly stereotypes too.

This being said, obviously we can disagree on it all, but it's not as easy as "people with phobias should be doing their own work". We should and we do, but it took me most of my life to become better with spiders, and tolerance can be set back months or years if the exposure isn't controlled, so it would be nice for games not to work against the efforts we're making.

[Fyraltari]

About the latest NP, I've got one thing to say:




Wabbajack.

[Vahnavoi]

This kind of transformation nonsense is fairly common in roguelikes. Nethack and IVAN come to mind as some of the more developed ones, as far as unfinished ones go, there's Incursion which is a full adaptation of d20 D&D from the 3rd edition era.

The reason why this isn't as common in AAA graphical games is because graphical implementation of all of it is difficult. ASCII and sprites are far more forgiving. The other reason is that this kind of gameplay complexity just isn't that appealing to mainstream audience - Nethack & co were doing this twenty, perhaps thirty years ago, it had a niche audience then and now. Instead of the mainstream, such complex games are more popular among game developers themselves, who analyze them, mine them for ideas and then simplify those ideas for larger audiences. (For examples of such development, there's tabletop D&D ---> Moria/Angband ---> Diablo, tabletop D&D ---> Wizardry ---> Final Fantasy, tabletop D&D ---> Wizardry ---> Tower of Druaga ---> Legend of Zelda)

[Maat Mons]

Is it just me, or does that bear-man from the latest NP have a pig snout?

[Fyraltari]

Is it just me, or does that bear-man from the latest NP have a pig snout?

Noses are hard to make right in front view.

[Silly Name]

Is it just me, or does that bear-man from the latest NP have a pig snout?

It's not a bear-man, it's a manbearpig.

[Vinyadan]

I was rereading this very old strip from 2007 https://www.egscomics.com/comic/2007-11-24 , and I noticed that the imaginary buff guys Ted was afraid might steal Grace from him say, among other things, "our mothers love us". I had not realised that Ted had been written beating himself up over his mom abandoning him so early.

[Rater202]

So... If you could have any one individual spell from the entire comic so-far, including sketchbook pages and NP that are non-canon or questionably canon, which would it be?

Assumption: Not a wand or something you can lose. It's either your spell or a mark, you have the power to use it to its full potential, and you luck out and figure out all of the tricks fast.

To be completely honest, the spell in the wand you get for winning Hanma's board game seems like it would be the most fun. "Transform the target in any of the ways you can be transformed in the game, or custom forms combining or mixing and matching traits from the forms in the game."

It's also really versatile, could probably find a lot of practical uses for it if push came to shove. Does the lifeguard form make people good swimmers since lifeguards need to do that?

[Vinyadan]

Nioi's nose-bop spell. It's just so big. A whole new life for someone, complete with retention of anything learnt during it. An opportunity to be young again, without all the ugly things you get growing older, and lots of time to have hobbies and such.