Superhot VR's Story Was Removed. What?
blog.giovanh.com
blog.giovanh.com
I disagree with the author on whether ‘woke’ is an accurate term to use here, I don’t think it completely fits but there is no better widely used term for this kind of moral hypersensitivity where someone believes they have authority over what other people should or shouldn’t be allowed to see or experience based on how they _think_ a hypothetical person might react to said art, media, etc. It might be more accurate to describe it as illiberal but that is rather vague.
The weirdest part is them dressing it up as "you deserve better" when they are clearly ignoring their existing paying customers and retroactively stealing back content that was published and paid for.
The excuse that people didn't discover the toggle to skip disturbing scenes is ridiculous: just show it on first launch.
I suspect and wonder whether superhot vr was simply forced to remove this content to get first party promotion on certain platforms, and the reason it sounds illogical is because of Sinclair's maxim: they act like they don't understand because their income depends on not understanding it.
I don't think it's right, but I understand the need.
Yes this was part of the story itself, but the issue with these techniques is that they often occur pre-cognition, where people are incapable of recognizing it happening/changing them. Everyone is different, but everyone succumbs with exposure to these techniques which are scientifically backed. For more material on the dangers, I'll refer people to read Joost Meerloo ("Rape of the Mind"), or Robert Lifton ("Psychology of Totalism"). The former has an overview of the effects, the latter are actual case studies from 1950s torture under Mao.
Many countries are considering the use of such techniques (elements, structures, and clustering) for what it is, Torture, and litigation both criminal and civil started catching up right around the time they removed the content.
This would almost certainly explain why they did what they did. I would imagine they rightfully were concerned that they would have suffered infinite loss financially in the courts, from the damages involved, and simply no longer distributing the game wouldn't cure the issue, but removing it via an update might provide some cover.
I'm no lawyer, so maybe someone aware of the legal implications on EU can comment on it. This seems entirely plausible.
I understand that everyone's psychology is different, but if you remove all art that could potentially trigger anyone there won't be much left when you're done.
The way these things work, you change your behavior as a result of the stimuli you receive, and believe that it was your choice to do so, but it wasn't. Its not something you question, or even think about because it all happens unconsciously subliminally.
There is nothing disturbing about the material referenced with regards to the game, unless the intent was to sensitize, or associate through operant conditioning, an irrational emotional state; which can occur via the law of reversed effect which you've likely seen when you have attempted to manipulate some person in a way they recognize as manipulation, and they go into a rage. This isn't poor impulse control, it happens to everyone under similar circumstances; some can hide it better than others but they hold onto it longer too in enmity.
If you don't know the mechanism and process, you are vulnerable to it, and even if you do, when the exposure is sufficient you still succumb and its not straight forward because you like most people are never taught about it. Many of these structures are taught in classical education under rhetoric, which only the elite receive at their private schools which follow a trivium based approach.
Here's a light example, You are at a grocery store coming out, a student walks up to you and asks you if you support your local schools. You say you do.
A few moments later, they then ask you to help them fundraise by buying some cookies for some trip adding that you'd be supporting the local school.
If you said yes to the first question, you buy the cookies, even if you didn't want to. If you don't, you fight your own psychology torturing yourself, and your psychology warps to remain internally consistent. Some people have more willpower than others, but you keep thinking about it, you feel a hollowed out negative feeling until you correct it or go to sleep, and you feel bad every-time thereafter making you more likely to cave at each subsequent exposure. The structure has elements of mental compulsion and coercion based in blindspots we all have.
There are similar blindspots with reciprocity and many other things that make one more susceptible to all manner of these blindspots or structures, that you can trigger subtly. High levels of dopamine for example makes people more susceptible, and this can easily be triggered.
The above example operated on the consistency principle, its one of several blindspots we all have, and the impossible to resist one is called distorted reflected appraisal, where you can't notice and this is how cults brainwash people, peeling the layers back of who you are without you understanding or noticing it happening. You may sense significant shifts in your perspective, but you don't question because you become compliant under these induced involuntary hypnotic states.
Most of these things are quite well known, any person in sales is aware of some of them. Game designers are well aware of most of these though they use reference material that following a separation of objectionable concerns has obscured the origin (which was real torture).