I keep wanting to comment on this thread, cause I'm very interested in themes as related to design. But... I can't think of a comment on this particular series concept that doesn't start with "wow that's depressing".

I keep wanting to comment on this thread, cause I'm very interested in themes as related to design. But... I can't think of a comment on this particular series concept that doesn't start with "wow that's depressing". :blink:

Then make this comment that starts with "wow that's depressing".

I keep wanting to comment on this thread, cause I'm very interested in themes as related to design. But... I can't think of a comment on this particular series concept that doesn't start with "wow that's depressing".

Then make this comment that starts with "wow that's depressing".

Well, I don't want to say anything insulting or impolite, and I don't know exactly where the line would be. I was speculating to myself about whether depressing concepts are correlated to unhappy team members. Do grumpy people choose negative concepts to work on or do negative concepts cause people working on them to become depressed or grumpy? Both, neither? It's only speculation, because as a person who has always disliked horror and tragedy I've never understood what motivates people to create or admire works of horror or tragedy. My personal feeling is kind of stuck at "Why on earth would anyone want to write or develop the theme, 'Humanity constantly sabotages itself, which is unforgivable, and in this context even the strong survival and rebirth drive of humanity becomes disgusting, and even children don't deserve any kind of happiness.'?"

I keep wanting to comment on this thread, cause I'm very interested in themes as related to design. But... I can't think of a comment on this particular series concept that doesn't start with "wow that's depressing".

Then make this comment that starts with "wow that's depressing".

Well, I don't want to say anything insulting or impolite, and I don't know exactly where the line would be. I was speculating to myself about whether depressing concepts are correlated to unhappy team members. Do grumpy people choose negative concepts to work on or do negative concepts cause people working on them to become depressed or grumpy? Both, neither? It's only speculation, because as a person who has always disliked horror and tragedy I've never understood what motivates people to create or admire works of horror or tragedy. My personal feeling is kind of stuck at "Why on earth would anyone want to write or develop the theme, 'Humanity constantly sabotages itself, which is unforgivable, and in this context even the strong survival and rebirth drive of humanity becomes disgusting, and even children don't deserve any kind of happiness.'?"

Alright, see, this is 10000% your failing. Let me run through why.

1. You can't look deep enough into horror to see what a good horror is really about. Any good horror is there to explore a concept or fear, not just to scare the viewer. When done right, it finds a way to discuss the fear in question indirectly and provoke thought on the topic in the viewer. They allow the artist to express their opinions and talk about the subject indirectly, and THAT is what people value.

2. Nothing here qualifies as a tragedy, but even if it did a tragedy is valued for exploring emotion and exploring the minds of the characters, as these inevitably end up being the primary draw of any good tragedy. They also carry morals, and cautionary tales, just like horror does, and when done right these are abundantly clear.

3. You not only completely misinterpret the story at work here, you do so massively in a way directly contradicting stated facts AFTER I've explained it. Let me elaborate.

A. Not only did I never say humanity's self-sabotaging actions were unforgivable, I said they were quite understandable under the circumstances. And the way the actions of the second game are described strongly supports this, as the positive motivation of the factions are emphasized quite a bit.

B. There is absolutely NO basis, AT ALL, for the entire rest of the sentence. All of this is 100% directly contradictory with the material you are supposedly pulling this garbage from. This interpretation is as insane as if you read a newscast that said it was going to be 120 F outside and reading that as "freezing cold, so much so that even ECW gear won't save you and and the world is an impassible ball of ice".

4. You completely ignored that I went into what the themes and morals of this story were, at length, apparently content to ignore everything right up to the title of the thread you were reading in order to claim horror is without value. But then, with an obvious idealist like yourself, completely ignoring everything about everything that ever was in order to claim your pre-existing conclusions and biases are completely accurate and without flaw isn't that terribly rare.

Well, I don't want to say anything insulting or impolite, and I don't know exactly where the line would be. I was speculating to myself about whether depressing concepts are correlated to unhappy team members. Do grumpy people choose negative concepts to work on or do negative concepts cause people working on them to become depressed or grumpy? Both, neither? It's only speculation, because as a person who has always disliked horror and tragedy I've never understood what motivates people to create or admire works of horror or tragedy. My personal feeling is kind of stuck at "Why on earth would anyone want to write or develop the theme, 'Humanity constantly sabotages itself, which is unforgivable, and in this context even the strong survival and rebirth drive of humanity becomes disgusting, and even children don't deserve any kind of happiness.'?"

Alright, see, this is 10000% your failing. Let me run through why.

1. You can't look deep enough into horror to see what a good horror is really about. Any good horror is there to explore a concept or fear, not just to scare the viewer. When done right, it finds a way to discuss the fear in question indirectly and provoke thought on the topic in the viewer. They allow the artist to express their opinions and talk about the subject indirectly, and THAT is what people value.

2. Nothing here qualifies as a tragedy, but even if it did a tragedy is valued for exploring emotion and exploring the minds of the characters, as these inevitably end up being the primary draw of any good tragedy. They also carry morals, and cautionary tales, just like horror does, and when done right these are abundantly clear.

3. You not only completely misinterpret the story at work here, you do so massively in a way directly contradicting stated facts AFTER I've explained it. Let me elaborate.

A. Not only did I never say humanity's self-sabotaging actions were unforgivable, I said they were quite understandable under the circumstances. And the way the actions of the second game are described strongly supports this, as the positive motivation of the factions are emphasized quite a bit.

B. There is absolutely NO basis, AT ALL, for the entire rest of the sentence. All of this is 100% directly contradictory with the material you are supposedly pulling this garbage from. This interpretation is as insane as if you read a newscast that said it was going to be 120 F outside and reading that as "freezing cold, so much so that even ECW gear won't save you and and the world is an impassible ball of ice".

4. You completely ignored that I went into what the themes and morals of this story were, at length, apparently content to ignore everything right up to the title of the thread you were reading in order to claim horror is without value. But then, with an obvious idealist like yourself, completely ignoring everything about everything that ever was in order to claim your pre-existing conclusions and biases are completely accurate and without flaw isn't that terribly rare.

*raised eyebrow* First of all, I was replying to the first post alone because I wanted to respond to your initial question without 'cheating' by looking at posts lower in the thread that would have extra information. It just not accurate to claim I was ignoring 'everything'. In fact I was responding primarily to:

Human civilization dooms itself, then stomps all over its own attempts to fix it until the only solution is to let itself die and be reborn on another planet, and even then the nations sabotage their enemies' attempts to save the species, hurting the entire species' chances just to try and keep their enemies from surviving with them, and then goes to war on the new world. Humanity still doesn't go extinct, but not for a lack of trying."

I know I'm biased. I have only my own perspective through which to look at your stuff, it's not like I can choose to look at your story the way you or Thaumaturge or anyone else does. But I was actually looking at your words here. Specifically the idea that humanity in your story's universe is repeatedly taking actions that push itself toward extinction. The word choice "trying" here is particularly interesting to me because I interpret it as lampshading the fact that the humans didn't sit down and decide, "oh let's try to drive our species extinct". In fact many of their conscious efforts are aimed at survival. So the source of their drive toward self-extermination must be something instinctive or subconscious. I thought that you went to some effort to point out that the conflict here isn't some people vs. other people, but instead humanity as a species vs. itself.

That brings me to the part where I used the word "unforgivable". Unforgivable and understandable aren't opposites; an action can be both. Perhaps more importantly, I didn't mean unforgivable by you or me or some kind of morals, I meant unforgivable by the universe of your story, which seems (to me) to be pronouncing a vote of no confidence on your humans basic deservingness to live by repeatedly killing them off. In your universe, humans are so at odds with themselves that they keep getting closer and closer to failing at survival. It's like the phrase "too dumb to live" only in this case it's that humanity is "too self-destructive to live". But maybe my bias here is that I see competence as being equivalent to deservingness.

Last point, the word "tragedy". I see a plague that ends up pushing humans right off their home planet, causing a lot of suffering and death in the process, as a tragedy. I see self-destructive existence as an on-going tragedy. Also you use the word rebirth, and in my experience tragedy and rebirth go together in stories - tragedy is usually what something is being reborn after/from the ashes of. But, if you think of tragedy as something different, that's fine, I can agree to disagree about this point.

As far as horror and tragedy as genres go, they aren't unique in being able to explore emotions, psychology, and that sort of interesting topics. Certainly, stories of any genre can have interesting and valuable content. But personally I'm interested in negative emotions like fear mainly in the context of overcoming them. I don't personally find as much to be gained from a story of failure as from a story of struggle with near-failure that ultimately results in success. There's so much failure in real life that stories about it seem kind of redundant. Yes that's a bias, obviously so. But looking now at your response to Thaumaturge in post 3, if you want to communicate the message in your sig poem, that's a message that could be successfully communicated to me, just not with the approach you're taking. In fact I love reading stories about team-building and the formation of families of choice, which would be the equivalent of "Europe gaining a new clod of earth and becoming the greater". If nothing else I would think that might be an interesting audience psychology data point for you. But on the other hand, I've experienced how bitterly frustrating it can be to have a story I want to tell that people don't want to hear or don't interpret the way I intend it to be interpreted. So if my perspective isn't useful to you as a data point, maybe you can instead take away some feeling of writer solidarity in suffering and struggling with communicating a message to a definitely-less-than-ideal audience.

Anyway. Didn't mean to upset you, so I'm sorry that happened.

*raised eyebrow* First of all, I was replying to the first post alone because I wanted to respond to your initial question without 'cheating' by looking at posts lower in the thread that would have extra information. It just not accurate to claim I was ignoring 'everything'. In fact I was responding primarily to:

Even with just the initial post, the stance you held makes no sense. But go ahead.

I know I'm biased. I have only my own perspective through which to look at your stuff, it's not like I can choose to look at your story the way you or Thaumaturge or anyone else does. But I was actually looking at your words here. Specifically the idea that humanity in your story's universe is repeatedly taking actions that push itself toward extinction. The word choice "trying" here is particularly interesting to me because I interpret it as lampshading the fact that the humans didn't sit down and decide, "oh let's try to drive our species extinct". In fact many of their conscious efforts are aimed at survival. So the source of their drive toward self-extermination must be something instinctive or subconscious. I thought that you went to some effort to point out that the conflict here isn't some people vs. other people, but instead humanity as a species vs. itself.

It's not subconscious, it's just short-sighted and stupid. Each faction wants *itself* to survive, to hell with the rest of humanity, and is willing to sabotage their enemy's efforts at survival to improve their own. That's a conscious decision they're making and failing to recognize the consequences of. If every country but Japan, the American Republic and Europa died off to a lack of reproduction, but all of their nations managed to survive they'd consider that a 100% positive result. The same goes for each of the other four factions of this setting (none of which has been mentioned by name, but are there), they'd greatly prefer to be the sole survivors of humanity. And if another faction survives, then they see that as problematic because all these factions are enemies and that means they wouldn't be as well off and would still be in danger. The problem is they don't see that everyone trying to make sure they're the only ones with survivors likely means no survivors for anyone.

That brings me to the part where I used the word "unforgivable". Unforgivable and understandable aren't opposites; an action can be both. Perhaps more importantly, I didn't mean unforgivable by you or me or some kind of morals, I meant unforgivable by the universe of your story, which seems (to me) to be pronouncing a vote of no confidence on your humans basic deservingness to live by repeatedly killing them off. In your universe, humans are so at odds with themselves that they keep getting closer and closer to failing at survival. It's like the phrase "too dumb to live" only in this case it's that humanity is "too self-destructive to live". But maybe my bias here is that I see competence as being equivalent to deservingness.

Ah, a meritocratic philosophy. Not bad.

Well, even from that perspective, humanity *does* survive. Keep in mind the third game's set-up isn't even just one ship being sent out, all the factions are doing it and getting success. Also, personifying the universe for the disease it created isn't necessary. That's just how that went and it makes perfect sense. The most irradiated sections of the waste are a haven for disease, since they cause rapid mutations in the viruses and bacteria and weaken the immune systems of people in them (totally a thing, by the way), so diseases get a start there. Diseases that kill their hosts, however, don't tend to last long in these areas since they don't get time to spread. Diseases like radpox develop because they don't kill their host and are highly contagious, letting them spread in the irradiated deep zones, and when people return to civilization from the deep zones they bring those diseases into a place way easier to spread in. Radpox is especially good since it's not obvious is somebody had it recently and is still contagious. (Which you are for a while after having it, like with most illnesses.) And it's especially damaging because it leaves victims sterile, and they can't possibly realize that for a very long time.

The disease hijacks the gamete-producing organs to replicate itself, causing sterility. The radpox retrovirus isn't subtle and the immune system destroys the important, gamete-producing tissues to stop it, removing the virus. In the stronger sterilizing plague, however, the immune system is tricked into never responding to the infection of the testes/ovaries, no symptoms of any form are ever shown except sterility, and the person remains contagious forever as a carrier. This is also why they can't sterilise children or use them as carriers, the organs in question aren't active yet so it can't replicate itself and doesn't remain in their system or grow as strong.

There's no need for a personification of the universe here, because this disease is just a good disease for the situation and it happens to be apocalyptic in its very nature.

Last point, the word "tragedy". I see a plague that ends up pushing humans right off their home planet, causing a lot of suffering and death in the process, as a tragedy. I see self-destructive existence as an on-going tragedy. Also you use the word rebirth, and in my experience tragedy and rebirth go together in stories - tragedy is usually what something is being reborn after/from the ashes of. But, if you think of tragedy as something different, that's fine, I can agree to disagree about this point.

The event is a tragedy, but tragedy fiction isn't just any store with a tragedy in it or that'd be 99.99% of all fiction. Hamlet is a tragedy. A tragedy needs a sad ending, and this series just doesn't have one. This is a *drama*.

As far as horror and tragedy as genres go, they aren't unique in being able to explore emotions, psychology, and that sort of interesting topics. Certainly, stories of any genre can have interesting and valuable content.

That doesn't mean that they explore the same ranges of emotions, sections of psychology, or anything else. Horror and tragedy are also unique in their power as a cautionary tool.

But personally I'm interested in negative emotions like fear mainly in the context of overcoming them. I don't personally find as much to be gained from a story of failure as from a story of struggle with near-failure that ultimately results in success.

You know, that's kinda exactly what this story is. To the letter. In case you forgot: Humanity DOES survive. They get children to other planets, and those ships are ultimately successful enough of the time to get humanity a decent foothold on the worlds in question. Those children will grow up and reproduce, and humanity will continue.

There's so much failure in real life that stories about it seem kind of redundant. Yes that's a bias, obviously so.

Except that in the end, this series DOES have a relatively happy ending.

But looking now at your response to Thaumaturge in post 3, if you want to communicate the message in your sig poem, that's a message that could be successfully communicated to me, just not with the approach you're taking.

I specifically pointed out that one for free because it's not evident. It's only expressed through the mechanics of the games themselves. Specifically, how anything that impacts one character has an indirect impact on every other. This is particularly evident in the first game. If the military, for instance, kills some looters the player will find everyone gets substantially more poor since those looters are the main source of supplies for the entire region. Entire settlements will also react negatively to the death of any person, not just continue on as if nothing happened, and likely be for the worse because of it, and this influence spreads throughout the map to some small degree. Every death you witness or cause has a negative impact on the world. (The game actively discourages killing humans through a number of methods. This is one.)

In fact I love reading stories about team-building and the formation of families of choice, which would be the equivalent of "Europe gaining a new clod of earth and becoming the greater". If nothing else I would think that might be an interesting audience psychology data point for you.

Except there's nothing to LEARN from that. And fiction is only valuable in what it can teach us, everything else is just petty escapism.

But on the other hand, I've experienced how bitterly frustrating it can be to have a story I want to tell that people don't want to hear or don't interpret the way I intend it to be interpreted. So if my perspective isn't useful to you as a data point, maybe you can instead take away some feeling of writer solidarity in suffering and struggling with communicating a message to a definitely-less-than-ideal audience.

That's one way to put it.

Anyway. Didn't mean to upset you, so I'm sorry that happened.

I wasn't really upset. I was slightly offended, sure, but mostly just frustrated. And, for the record, I still am.

I know I'm biased. I have only my own perspective through which to look at your stuff, it's not like I can choose to look at your story the way you or Thaumaturge or anyone else does. But I was actually looking at your words here. Specifically the idea that humanity in your story's universe is repeatedly taking actions that push itself toward extinction. The word choice "trying" here is particularly interesting to me because I interpret it as lampshading the fact that the humans didn't sit down and decide, "oh let's try to drive our species extinct". In fact many of their conscious efforts are aimed at survival. So the source of their drive toward self-extermination must be something instinctive or subconscious. I thought that you went to some effort to point out that the conflict here isn't some people vs. other people, but instead humanity as a species vs. itself.

It's not subconscious, it's just short-sighted and stupid. Each faction wants *itself* to survive, to hell with the rest of humanity, and is willing to sabotage their enemy's efforts at survival to improve their own. That's a conscious decision they're making and failing to recognize the consequences of. If every country but Japan, the American Republic and Europa died off to a lack of reproduction, but all of their nations managed to survive they'd consider that a 100% positive result. The same goes for each of the other four factions of this setting (none of which has been mentioned by name, but are there), they'd greatly prefer to be the sole survivors of humanity. And if another faction survives, then they see that as problematic because all these factions are enemies and that means they wouldn't be as well off and would still be in danger. The problem is they don't see that everyone trying to make sure they're the only ones with survivors likely means no survivors for anyone.

I think I could make a strong argument here that your version of humanity still comes across as having a clear self-destructive instinct. Thanatos would probably be the appropriate Freudian term. But, part of the reason I want to say that is just that it breaks my suspension of disbelief to consider human factions to be as stupid as you are painting them. It would take colossally bad luck to have the decision-making people in all factions be willing to waste resources continuing to attack each other once it's clear that their own survival is a desperate priority (around the quarantine dome stage).

Last point, the word "tragedy". I see a plague that ends up pushing humans right off their home planet, causing a lot of suffering and death in the process, as a tragedy. I see self-destructive existence as an on-going tragedy. Also you use the word rebirth, and in my experience tragedy and rebirth go together in stories - tragedy is usually what something is being reborn after/from the ashes of. But, if you think of tragedy as something different, that's fine, I can agree to disagree about this point.

The event is a tragedy, but tragedy fiction isn't just any store with a tragedy in it or that'd be 99.99% of all fiction. Hamlet is a tragedy. A tragedy needs a sad ending, and this series just doesn't have one. This is a *drama*.

But personally I'm interested in negative emotions like fear mainly in the context of overcoming them. I don't personally find as much to be gained from a story of failure as from a story of struggle with near-failure that ultimately results in success.

You know, that's kinda exactly what this story is. To the letter. In case you forgot: Humanity DOES survive. They get children to other planets, and those ships are ultimately successful enough of the time to get humanity a decent foothold on the worlds in question. Those children will grow up and reproduce, and humanity will continue.

Ahh, now I see where a big difference is. My interpretation was that based on their shown track record humans would inevitably exterminate themselves; I was expecting the fact that a few made it to the new planet would be a pyrrhic victory. Why? Because the problem all along has been human nature, and they haven't been transformed into post-humans, they haven't (implausibly) learned some big lesson that changes human culture to be no longer self-destructive. In fact the problem behavior has clearly followed them to their new planet(s) because of the sabotage resulting in the failed ship landing. And in any situation where there are only children trying to survive in a harsh environment, you're going to have high casualties and basically a Lord of the Flies situation. I figured that would be part of the third game, I was imagining it would be something like Warcraft III (or a lower graphics version, as indie projects generally are). You do imply that at the ending of the third game there will be basically the absolute minimum situation for human survival. Absolute minimum situations like that, IME, are extremely fragile and much more likely to fail in the future than to build back up to a global human civilization.

I think I could make a strong argument here that your version of humanity still comes across as having a clear self-destructive instinct. Thanatos would probably be the appropriate Freudian term. But, part of the reason I want to say that is just that it breaks my suspension of disbelief to consider human factions to be as stupid as you are painting them. It would take colossally bad luck to have the decision-making people in all factions be willing to waste resources continuing to attack each other once it's clear that their own survival is a desperate priority (around the quarantine dome stage).

Yes, but that's all war is. War is humanity hurting itself. Every time a war happens, it's bad for humanity. And yet, they still do it. All the time. Why? Because they believe it benefits them, and they care foremost for themselves above all others. The US is particularly guilty, real world and in-universe, and it's just a fact of life. But that doesn't make it a self-destructive impulse. They're not intentionally harming themselves, they likely don't see how their actions harm them (just how others' actions harm them) and they likely believe (accurately) that if they stopped they would be reducing their own odds of survival by letting their enemies survive. They are also likely assuming (also accurately) that their enemies will continue to attack them even if they stop.

Ahh, now I see where a big difference is. My interpretation was that based on their shown track record humans would inevitably exterminate themselves; I was expecting the fact that a few made it to the new planet would be a pyrrhic victory. Why? Because the problem all along has been human nature, and they haven't been transformed into post-humans, they haven't (implausibly) learned some big lesson that changes human culture to be no longer self-destructive.

Except now they've ditched the adults, and with them ditched the warring factions that were the reason for their abhorrent actions. With no warring factions and plenty of distance between eachother they can't fight eachother anymore... Probably. Maybe. Don't quote me on that.

In fact the problem behavior has clearly followed them to their new planet(s) because of the sabotage resulting in the failed ship landing.

Last curse of a dying world, don't give them the satisfaction of being remembered.

And in any situation where there are only children trying to survive in a harsh environment, you're going to have high casualties and basically a Lord of the Flies situation.

Not really. Kids are quite capable, certainly many times more capable than they're given credit for, and these kids are more capable than most. And besides, with how bad of a job the adults were doing, they really can't botch it any worse.

I figured that would be part of the third game, I was imagining it would be something like Warcraft III (or a lower graphics version, as indie projects generally are).

Nope. All these games are controlled from a 1st/3rd person perspective, with standard mouselook controls. (Or gamepad controls, if you really want.) You control individual characters, the rest are AI but you can give them tasks and goals and the AI is going to be quite competent, and you can switch between characters at will. The kids would have been perfectly safe if they had all their resources, but of course the ship lands in the ocean (for safety, normally, that's how spaceships land), the crash breaches a sabotaged door, ship's sinking. Gotta get out, don't have any time. Well, shit, now we don't have any items at all now and have to actually do some wilderness survival in our wilderness survival game. Well, damn.

You do imply that at the ending of the third game there will be basically the absolute minimum situation for human survival.

Let me give you a quick debating tip. See, I see what you're doing here. You want to make the case that the civilization will ultimately fail, and in order for that claim to be valid you've chosen to back it up by saying the minimum would be unlikely to survive, except that only works if it really is the minimum, so you need a way to make that the only possibility. So you put those words in my mouth, pretend I said it. The problem is, I know what I said and I never said that. So here's how that's going to go, the whole counter-argument to "You do imply that at the ending of the third game there will be basically the absolute minimum situation for human survival."

No I don't.

See, simple? And that's why you don't put words in people's mouths, it doesn't work.

Absolute minimum situations like that, IME, are extremely fragile and much more likely to fail in the future than to build back up to a global human civilization.

Yeah, sure, if it wasn't for the win condition not being a bare minimum because I never said anything like that, instead being absolutely overwhelming. It isn't enough to keep the foothold for now, or for a while, it's enough to keep the foothold full stop. That's enough that it is quite unlikely that, barring some massive and unforseen cataclysm like an asteroid impact or the storm of the century, they will be displaced in the forseeable future. If you hit that final goal, you haven't been seriously threatened in the short term for quite a long time. The game makes you get a good enough foothold you can be reasonably sure your little ones will survive.