Kickstarter campaign to bring 3 early "pink games" out of obscurity

The article

The campaign

I find this campaign quite interesting. The "pink games" in question are three games which were headed by one Theresa Duncan in ye olde 1990s. The plan is to make them available via an elaborate virtualization scheme.

I'm not sure this is going to make it. It would really help if a site like Polygon or Gamasutra would cover this. I'm sure they'd be able to give this the push it needs.

edited 22nd Nov '14 11:29:02 PM by lewattoo

Coverage on those sites would guarantee that the kickstarters and any backers would face non-stop harassment.

Said harassment would probably also result in a No Such Thing as Bad Publicity situation, where all the harassment would lead to people funding it even more out of spite and support for a perceived "unfairly maligned" cause.

What exactly is a "pink game?"

The Kickstarter page explains it a little better than I could.

Okay, so now that I understand what a "pink game" is, I'll back this. Obscure games are always nice, and ones as curious as these deserve to be preserved. Also, more inclusiveness = always good.

edited 23rd Nov '14 1:44:09 PM by MakotoYuuki

This is an amazing idea. :D

I vaguely remember another article from that site. "Why would someone say pink is stupid." but what came to my mind was "why would someone say "pink is feminine?" My favorite color is black. Before that it was red. I went through a phase of hating pink and maybe that was some form of societal induced feminine backlash but I also hated yellow, which I know was not. I also went through a phase where I wanted everything I ate to be pink and that was not some acceptance of feminine value, I was a silly kid who noticed the inside of my mouth was that color.

More software developed by and or for females would be welcome. But in the "male" games, the girly elements are almost always tertiary. Pink, purple, bows, blonde hair, "hearts"(actually valentine symbols), it's so pervasive I hardly even notice anymore. If you're a girl and like these things, more power to you. I haven't played the "pink games" (or that other project for that matter), they may very well be quite enjoyable. But deliberately targeting girls with the same tertiary cues already in the male games and pushing it as feminist agenda makes me skeptical.

Hopefully my skepticism proves unfounded. If this was higher profile than a TV tropes forum post I might just keep my opinion to myself, I don't want to tear down feminist efforts for a small gripe. But I've seen it again and again. It built up to the point I felt like venting.

edited 23rd Nov '14 3:06:06 PM by IndirectActiveTransport

Nah, don't apologize. Feelings are feelings, as they say. Better having some of those than the alternative.

Speaking of me, I threw some dollars at this Kickstarter. I hope to Abigor they get it funded, as it bloody well should be.

I can't think of a single good reason why this would happen.

(For the purposes of this discussion anything really, Gamergate does not count as a good reason.)

edited 26th Nov '14 6:23:04 AM by Midna

Pink = girly is a cultural shorthand and only in the last century, really. Not all feminists think it's even a good standard (google "Purple Moon Software" for examples) but differnt strokes ...

I wish them luck, though a game needs to be more than "pink" to get more attention, I would assume. Game doesn't look all that interesting to me, I admit. Not a fan of the art style.

But more older exclusive PC games getting some attention isn't a bad thing.

edited 26th Nov '14 12:26:24 PM by Thorn14

And here I thought "pink game" meant it used a very limited color palette.

God Damn Pink and Bloom games!

Just 41 hours to go. It's pretty close to it's goal, so I'm pretty pleasantly surprised. I've noticed that it's gotten a mention on Boing Boing; that probably has a lot to do with the last minute bump in funds.

Looks like it just met its goal with 14 hours left to go.

Dare I ask why you think coverage of this would cause the team to be Harrassed by Fat Pissbaby Neckbeard Virgin Shitlords?

Well they're "feminist games," and nearly anything feminist being covered nowadays would lead to hordes of those sorts of people coming in to deride it. Then again, as I mentioned before, it's possible for this situation to turn into a No Such Thing as Bad Publicity situation and the campaign would be even more successful than they are now.

Just checking to see if you buy into the stories about the marauding hordes of Fedora'd MRA Dudebros and their Unchecked Cishet White Male Privilege.

edited 18th Dec '14 11:52:13 AM by Bonerfart

How's the gameplay like?

I can't tell if you're joking or serious.

This depends on whether you buy into the story that Gone Home was panned because it features non-heterosexual characters.

Considering how reactionarily conservative some gamers can be, I wouldn't doubt that some of the panning was because of that.

Anyway, Nettacki might have a point. My understanding of the Feminist Frequency kickstarter is that it was doing rather modestly well until it got around people were harassing her and then bookoos of money was being chucked at it in order to piss those guys off. *shrug* The same thing could happen here.

Though looking at the actual page it appears to have gone a couple hundred dollars over its goal and already over, with no rage aimed at it just yet. So if anything happens it probably won't be directly because of the kickstarter. I hope they do well; a lot of people are concerned about preserving older games from outdated tech for later on. If this is successfully completed they might go on to preserve other old games!

edited 18th Dec '14 12:10:04 PM by AceofSpades

I don't think you understand. People didn't call Gone Home "door opening lesbian simulator 2014" because they hate the fact that lesbians are in it, but rather because of how undeniable it is that much of the praise is earned due to non-heterosexual characters being in it. I found the story extremely creepy. Creepy because of how it romanticizes very, very bad decisions and because of the age difference: are they even within the age of consent? Aren't there things about the older character coming onto the younger while she were asleep and they were not in a relationship yet? Is that not predatory? I have no doubts that the game would have been panned were the older seducer character a male.

It is ridiculous to paint gamers en masse as conservative. I, in fact, do not know any influential group of gamers that is conservative.

But enough about games that rely on shitty bait and switches to trick me into thinking this would be a decent horror story.

What is the gameplay like in the games about which the topic is. Why is no one focusing on that?

edited 18th Dec '14 12:37:27 PM by lazybanshee

What do you think the fact I capitalized all the common SJW phrases means?

And look how productively that money is being spent!◊

edited 18th Dec '14 12:52:13 PM by Bonerfart