In regard to being a father of daughters, I can share one thought, as a parent of one (now grown) daughter. Create a time or place where each daughter feels totally safe in sharing with you whatever is on their mind. This requires a serious dedication to honing the skills of listening. I find that total listening is no small feat.

> That aside, the game has a problem, in my view: it's too real.

Exactly. I don't play zombie-based video games because zombies scare me. I play them because zombies are fun to kill. This game seems a little too realistic.

Then again, it might be a good thing to confront some real-world fears in a video game. I could see a game like this working really well if it's designed right.

I think it's a neat premise. We've had several critically acclaimed games that dealt heavily with "realistic" things -- Heavy Rain, for example.

I don't disagree with your point, but Heavy Rain is a pretty out-there example. The game revolves around rescuing a child from a murderer. Though there were realistic aspects to Heavy Rain, the game itself is centered around a very unrealistic core story.

People are allowed to play games that aren't fun.

Dwarf Fortress, for instance, has lots of Fun.

> it reinforces the idea that you ought to be so awesome that bullies leave you alone — which will never happen.

Anecdata: bullies don't leave you alone because you're awesome, they leave you alone because their bullying doesn't work on you (because you're resilient to personal attacks, or you pretend to not care until they exhaust the possibilities and leave you alone etc.) or backfires on them somehow.

> bullies don't leave you alone because you're awesome, they leave you alone because their bullying doesn't work on you (because you're resilient to personal attacks, or you pretend to not care until they exhaust the possibilities and leave you alone etc.) or backfires on them somehow.

I can tell from experience that this is not how it works. Real bullies never leave you alone until you stand up and fight back. It's the amount of energy it takes for them to bully, not the amount of damage they do.

They don't care how resilient you are or whether you care about the bullying or not, when their bullying doesn't have any bad consequences or the potential for bad consequences. Only if you make it hard for bullies to bully it stops.

I'm rather disappointed that whenever the topic of bullying comes up, everyone seems to just extrapolate from their own experiences and assume that all bullying everywhere is identical. Or worse, claim that anything that doesn't match their experiences "isn't real bullying". I think the broad lack of agreement among people's accounts should make it pretty obvious that not all bullies are the same.

Personally, I found ignoring the few bullies I encountered in school to be pretty effective, but I'm also aware that what I experienced was pretty tame compared to some stories I've heard.

How big an N do you have to get to go from anecdotes to data? Basically my entire family, for two generations, where bullied. I am pretty sure my grandparents would have been bullied too, except it was long enough ago that nobody cared when boys smacked each other around.

Our bullying stopped when we fought back, or moved out of school. And yes the bullying continues to hunt us to this day.

It's not the size of the N, it's the method of sampling that turns anecdotes into data.

>Only if you make it hard for bullies to bully it stops.

One way of doing that, that many people have found successful, is to not let them bother you. If you're no longer interesting to bully, they'll ignore you for someone who is.

I wish it was easy like that. I don't know anyone who has successfully "not-bothered-away" bullies. They will stop as soon as it's socially no longer a gainful action for them. Not bothering may be part of it but it's certainly not sufficient.

It's hard to simplify something like bullying, but there can be a pecking order involved, where people who are bullied in turn bully other people whom they feel they can influence in some way.

So, in some cases you may only need to push back to the point where you're not the easiest target in the room. ie, you don't always have to be the fastest runner to get away from animal who is looking for easy prey. You just have to be faster than the slowest runner.

It's like stepping in the same puddle every day on the walk to school. It's not out-and-out fun, but it's a habit, a pattern, and if it might provide 3 seconds of entertainment, that's worth it. "Not being fun" won't make it stop.

That's a bit like telling people who live in dangerous areas that the best response to a mugger is not to let them impoverish you. Bullies select people who seem physically or emotionally fragile to start with.

It's more like telling people who live in dangerous areas not to walk around looking scared and confused. Which we do...

I have to agree with the sentiment expressed elsewhere in the thread, that bullies bully for different reasons. The only time I have been bullied, avoidance and not showing a response worked, because the bully had low self-esteem and was looking for acceptance from his peers by picking on smaller kids. When he saw that he wasn't getting anywhere with that, he stopped.

Which is what makes this game weird. Just some quick initial thoughts:

> The game tracks Gemma’s emotional state. When she’s running fast and jumping high, she feels good and the world is filled with light and color. When she gets laughed at, her mood darkens and the world darkens with her.

That just reinforces that bullying inevitably and inexorably leads to depression. And then it also reinforces that acting happy ("running fast and jumping high") is the way to counteract it.

In other words, it's the old standby advice of "just ignore them" in video game form.

Nope, you need to keep the game's context in mind. The task is to get the pizza from point A to point B as fast as possible. Thus Gemma isn't simply fleeing, she's ignoring the bullies and focusing on doing what she wants to do. Depression comes from letting the bullies control her and happiness comes from refusing to do so. This very concept is in fact expressly embodied in the game with a little sequence where letting them get to her makes her fall to the ground, and she has to force herself to get back up and keep going.

"You don’t kill the enemies in Ninja Pizza Girl. You can’t even knock them out. Sure, you can bowl them over for a second or two but if you hang around they’ll get right back up again. Running away is just as viable as attacking and sometimes more so. Running fast makes Gemma feel good about herself and feeling good is the most fragile resource in the game."

I'd say running fast isn't just about delivering pizza fast, it seems to be about avoiding bullies too.

This is the attitude of a bullying victim. Bullies leave you alone if you fit in, they don't leave you alone if you don't. It's not about being awesome or resilient, it's about conformity.

It is not about conformity, it is about power. At my high school people didn't bother the goth kids because they stood up for each other.

In the same way the openly gay (this was back 15 years ago) guy in the drama team was never bullied because he was friends with the cheerleaders who had the power to stop it.

The problem is nerds rarely stick up for each other. Whenever I saw a nerd get bullied in high school all his friends would be acting as small as possible in order to avoid getting involved. The conflict avoidance enables bullying.

It's not about conformity; it's about visibility. If you're conforming, you're a lot more invisible (and, it must be said, protected). There are other ways to become invisible, but I'm not sure the cost is worth the independence.

What you see as a problem is exactly what I like about the game. To me, parenting often feels like walking a tightrope: you have to preserve a delicate balance between presenting the world as it should be and presenting it as it is. The former is meant to instill values, the latter is meant to prepare and protect. Too much of the former sets the kid up for a huge disappointment. Too much of the latter would be crushing.

That's why I would love to see a game like this, a game that addresses the problem, but ultimately remains a game you can have fun with. The best works I've ever read/seen/played are subtle: they don't shove their ideas down your throat, but make you think about their nuances later.

I'm not a parent, but have had to "babysit" teens and young adults with slowed development (autism etc) for a while now. That's really the extent of what I teach them: Be awesome. Love can only be freely given and respect can only be hard-earned.

Sometimes we turn to art (such as games) to forget about the problems we face in our reality. Sometimes we turn to art because we're desperate to see our reality reflected somewhere else, to be reassured that we're not alone.

This is the most insightful comment I've read in a long time. Kudos!

Agreed -- reading it, it felt like it needed to be more allegorical. As for the lesson, I think it should be "learn how to love yourself, so people's negativity can't penetrate you," but I didn't see anything in the article that indicated that was the takeaway. Then again, maybe games shouldn't be purveyors of morality lessons.

>Then again, maybe games shouldn't be purveyors of morality lessons.

I don't see why not. Video games are no different from any other form of information delivery method, except that they're more interactive. Actually, I think this would make them even better tools for helping to teach morality. While you can pick up some morality from books or movies, those are other people's stories in which you're simply an observer. In a game, (especially more modern ones) you typically have more control over the character's actions.

Take, for example, a game which gives you a choice to steal from somebody and, if you do, it shows you the repercussions of your choice. Maybe you come back to that town later and the person is a beggar who pleads with you to give him some coin so he can feed his kids. Or maybe you come back and the entire town is like that because you stole everything that wasn't nailed down. Written well, I don't see why dialog and visual cues like these can't be powerful morality lessons- more powerful than any other teaching method we have except perhaps for real-life experiences.

Of course, the idea is to teach our kids those lessons before they learn them in real life, with real life repercussions.

I remember reading something by the designer of the Putt-Putt adventure games where he ran up against this issue.

The Putt-Putt games were adventure games designed for kids, say 6-10 years old or so. And obviously since they're adventure games, you have to pick up everything that isn't nailed down because it might be useful in a puzzle later.

But the publishers of the game didn't want to encourage kids to just pick everything up in real life! So the developers had to, every time Putt-Putt picked something up, make him say "This looks like somebody lost it; maybe I can find the owner!".

So Putt-Putt was training the wee 'uns to always prepare an alibi? :)

"As for the lesson, I think it should be "learn how to love yourself, so people's negativity can't penetrate you"

Agreed, so much of the hell experienced through other people can be averted by focusing on building up one's confidence and self-esteem.

Jason I am father of 12r old daughter, hang in there. It does not have to be like described in the article, try to show her that being liked is not important and know the families of her friends, those are the keys. It's tough, not 100%, but worth it, good luck.

Its a storey brought to life. As such it can explore what your children will inevitably encounter, and lets them experiment with responses without being really hurt. Its wonderful.

The game isn't even designed yet. How do you already know that it will be "too real" once it is ready to play?

Historically, males compete and establish superiority by fighting and physical strength. Females do it with mind games. That's why females are more emotionally manipulative than males are, in general.

Wow, how incredibly simplistic and wrong-headed. You're discounting politics, which has been an all-male or male-dominated arena for millennia and which thrives on emotional manipulation.

The idea that women are mostly feelers and men are mostly doers writes off both men and women as useless stereotypes.

Context: We're talking about teenagers. Yes, teenage boys have politics, and emotional cruelty. Still, on average, teenage boys are more physically aggressive and less emotionally manipulative than teenage girls.

Fun fact: the physical aggression comes after the emotional manipulation. The difference isn't that boys are more physical; it's that they don't hide the results.

I don't think it is correct to speak in such absolutes. Sometimes a fight is just a fight.

I got into my fair share of trouble when I was a kid; both starting fights without any real provocation and being the recipient of aggression without any real provocation. Much of the time it was caused by an unnecessary escalation of previously fun 'play' violence (towel fights in the locker room was a biggie).

I can only think of two fights that were prompted by some form of emotional argument or dispute: In middle school I fought a bully at my bus-stop, and a year or two later a kid I had been bullying in boy scouts nearly broke my nose.

> some form of emotional argument or dispute

I think you're unnecessarily narrowing the definition of "emotional manipulation".

I also do not know what "real provocation" is and how it differs from "not-real provocation".

I am disputing that "the physical aggression comes after the emotional manipulation" is always the case. Sometimes it is provoked by little more than a snapped towel (good fun) accidentally hitting somebody's balls (not good fun, and likely to start a fight). Fights that break out during or after contact sports are another obvious example, unless you are defining "emotional manipulation" in such a way that you can say that hockey players tend to do it non-verbally while on the ice... Consider also a snowball fight that involves increasingly hard chunks of snow or ice which eventually escalates to grappling in a snowbank.

"Real provocation" in my above comment would be the sort of "emotional manipulation" that you are talking about.

Again, your field is too narrow. Widen the context. You're trying to pitch fights as spontaneous events between people whose relationships are completely unspecified.

Conveniently, this makes it impossible to map out any potential emotional manipulation. It's like saying that World War I happened with no real provocation; it was just these random nations snapping towels at each other and somebody got hit in the balls, boo hoo.

Tell me who these hypothetical people are, who flip a switch and kick their neighbor's ass for no reason. Tell me how many months older they are. What competitions did they win recently? What's their relationship to the teachers? How long have they known each other? Why are some of them friends, and others merely classmates? What do they look like, to each other? What are their parents' relationships? What clubs did they join? And so on and so on.

Do you mean a minority of alpha males and females? The environment and economics have changed, which might mean metrosexuals, beta males, and other groups have become desirable by some segments of society.

In order for someone to be a "beta male", it implies they are being competitive, too. They are just less successful than the "alpha males".

"Metrosexual" is just a more PC way of calling men who care a lot (relatively) about their appearance/grooming gay. The term has supposedly nothing to do with sexual orientation, yet the term is ostensibly about it since it has "sexual" as a suffix. (And I don't really see how so-called metrosexuals can't be competitive.)

In short a lot of this comes down to the distinctions between sex, gender, and sexual orientation. Over the past two decades attitudes have shifted to where most people can clearly distinguish sexual orientation from sex and gender, but society still has a way to go in figuring out how gender differs from biological sex. The distinction between these two does not affect the majority of individuals, however, which is probably why most people do not care to distinguish the two.

I don't think that being a so-called metrosexual has anything to do with gender identity. There are probably a lot of metrosexual men that don't self-identify with femininity any more than the average man.

As far as divorcing biological sex and gender - well a lot of guys insult each other by calling each other women for whatever reason. There is no allusions to being gay, and apparently a man can be a "woman" even though his sex is a man. But somehow this doesn't seem very constructive or inclusive.

I didn't mean to imply that the term metrosexual is strictly related to gender. I know that terms like this, as well as behavior about calling someone by the opposite sex or gender as an insult are things that differ a lot by culture and circumstance. I personally don't like it; in high school I was once (or more? I can't remember) labeled a "bitch" as an insult (incidentally I am male sex but prefer to identify as neutrois or genderqueer as my gender identity).

My point is that precisely because society tends to use these terms as insults, and because there is no approach common to society, we have a lot of work to go in revising our approach to views of gender identity, sexuality, masculinity, and femininity in society.

Everyone down voting you is most likely a guy.

Not that I agree or disagree with your statement, it's almost impossible for someone of the opposite gender to fully understand the extreme differences between genders in high school.

Edit: And everyone down voting me is also a guy.

I've heard stories from girls that went way beyond what I experienced as a guy in school. But I wouldn't extrapolate those stories too far. Just keep in mind that some people (boys or girls) might have gone through way more than you did.