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Arachnophobia and Ashes
nanfoodle
Member, Founder, Kickstarter
Kudos on how awesome the spiders look in this game. They way they leap and move, right down to how they attack. It's creepy and feel so right.
About 15% of the population suffer from Arachnophobia and the majority of the people who suffer from Arachnophobia are women.
As a man who plays with my wife that suffers from this. I'm asking that you please have options for people like my darling wife. Some games have settings that turn all spiders into something else graphically. A blob, a bunny etc.
I can't count how many times my wife is hiding under her desk when playing an MMO and she is waiting for the spiders to be dead.
I know I will be bashed for this but watching my wife losing her mind in games and seeing how other games accommodate people like her. I am ready to be made fun of. Thanks to the Devs for considering this or just for reading my post. I make this post for all men that love to game with their wives that suffer from this. Families that game together, stay together.
About 15% of the population suffer from Arachnophobia and the majority of the people who suffer from Arachnophobia are women.
As a man who plays with my wife that suffers from this. I'm asking that you please have options for people like my darling wife. Some games have settings that turn all spiders into something else graphically. A blob, a bunny etc.
I can't count how many times my wife is hiding under her desk when playing an MMO and she is waiting for the spiders to be dead.
I know I will be bashed for this but watching my wife losing her mind in games and seeing how other games accommodate people like her. I am ready to be made fun of. Thanks to the Devs for considering this or just for reading my post. I make this post for all men that love to game with their wives that suffer from this. Families that game together, stay together.
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Comments
wow when you think youve seen everything, then this thread pops up about a year later than the exact same thread lol.
i dont really mind if they add such setting, but they would probably have to add it for everything...what if people have phobias to bunnies, or slimes, or zombies, or trees, or anything really...
Nobody would have ever asked for these things, but now that they see other games catering to this, they are getting bold enough to think they're so special that others should cave to their petty sentiment
Don't worry, he's very well aware it's not the first. after all, he never came up with this idea himself. Just repeating what's popular because it makes him feel like he fits in somewhere
hey dont be mean!
well u can be, freedom of speech and all that, but you dont know if he is saying that because of the reasons you listed
"Catering to phobias is opening a can of worms."
Which phobias are common enough to have a phobia-setting? Could the exclusion of certain not-as-common phobias be considered discrimination? What about availability for other kind of limitations? (Physical as psychological)
We players are responsible to manage our own fears and either overcome them or leave the game, as harsh as that may sound. My phobia of open waters caused me to delete characters when they got bugged into open water, and limited my quest progression when quest zones in oceans arrived .... However, as I grew up, I learned how to manage my phobia to the degree where I can do quests in open water and even handle certain ocean bosses even though it often brings me great discomfort. I'd go as far as saying all in all, through games I gained a controlled environment where I could face my phobia bit by bit... And I came out better for it in the end.
I suppose I probably should chime in here too again...
This one. Arachnophobia.
Devs didn't just randomly decide that this was the one they were going to cater to. So, for Intrepid, even if you don't care about any of the others. This one is the one you fix.
On the one hand, I am very pro accessibility options in games for people with various disabilities, and I can see why it might even make economic sense for Intrepid to help alleviate the most common phobias. At least if the game becomes popular enough to attract a large player-base, where even a few percent more players due to phobia settings makes it economically viable to invest the time and resources.
But.. phobias are very treatable in many cases. Exposure treatment in particular is very effective in curing arachnophobia. More easily than many physical disabilities at the very least. I don't think there's a cure for colour blindness, for example.
So at some point I also think it's the responsibility of players to work on those phobias if they become a problem in their lives, not the responsibility of a game company. So my advice to the OP and wife is to look into exposure treatment for arachnophobia in your area. It will improve your life way beyond just playing Ashes, if it's that strong.
Or germs, snakes, air travel, sea travel, birds, heights, dogs, stairs, hairless cats, mice, rats, public speaking.
thunder, lightning, needles, crowds, open spaces, chickens, intimacy, mothers in law, failure, rejection or loneliness.
Thank you.
The stranger's eyes lifted to the blood red cloud on the horizon.
'We have to move. It's not safe here.'
But I'll sum up some of the points I made back then quickly:
As an additional point I will now add that starting to add phobia modes will mean we have to start a whole debtate about various phobias as well and therefore potentially have massive amounts of redesigns to accomodate everyone affected by them.
Why am I making this list and added percentages to it (I just googled these, I cant reliably say they are all accurate): There are a lot of phobias that could potentially be triggered when playing games and when we introduce a "anti-archnophobia mode" we find ourselves in a very long discussion on how to identify a "legitimate phobia" and how to address it, where all of the above could become relevant, with widespread implications on the game design.
Which is why I think this is a bigger can of worms than one might think at first. I myself suffered from trychophobia in the past, but since I cant avoid coming across gross porous nastiness in fantasy games at times I had to learn deal with it to enjoy my hobby more. I'm not the end-all-be-all in this but I think this can be an opportunity to grow in real life, face and conquer a fear, rather than just ask for accomodations of just ones own circumstances. while others are in a similar spot.
Wow, you poor poor person.
I completely understand that depending on where you live and how much it costs, it might not be an option for everyone, but if it's possible, it's worth looking into. She's happy she got the treatment at least, and it was worth it for her.
As for adding anti-phobia things to the game, I don't really have a strong opinion either way.
Thank you.
Signed,
Bubble Boy
The stranger's eyes lifted to the blood red cloud on the horizon.
'We have to move. It's not safe here.'
that looks creepy...when maxed
i learned to more or less "tolerate" and accept the Fact, that in WoW there are People in Raids of mine, who use HUUUGE Spider-Mounts when they basically "ride inside my Character" because there is no Collision that prevents it,
or that i sometimes run through a HUUUGE field of Spiders in Dungeons, Raids, etc.
For some Reason, i just know they are just Pixels and can not jump out of the Screen to crawl on me. 😅
I wonder how an "Arachne-Censor" Mode would function. Would be funny to see them all move around as mean-looking Slimes or something.
As someone who has a Slime phobia...
The stranger's eyes lifted to the blood red cloud on the horizon.
'We have to move. It's not safe here.'
Nothing.
Why is this the 'argument' people use here anyway?
I really don't feel like getting into it, but for the sake of at least once:
A lot of these are partially physiological overdrive reactions, and arachnophobia in particular is a reaction that is very visual. Games, particularly MMOs, utilize their spider mobs specifically in places and in ways that even people with minimal fear of spiders experience as 'scary' or intended to be, most of the time. This is in contrast to even snakes for most games (though I could see an argument for this one in MMOs at least, too).
Your list of other phobias are things that players can easily avoid and have personal control over in almost all MMOs. Very few games 'force you to fly without warning', and the fear of heights and flying are often different in game form vs not, whereas arachnophobia is usually not. Most games that trigger tryptophobia do it by accident, or certainly don't 'do it almost randomly, taking people by surprise or cutting off entire parts of the game'.
As for 'the work required', this is also something that doesn't hold up, but I trust that Intrepid knows that 90% of even remotely sensible spider movements, attacks, or behaviours, in MMOs, can easily be substituted with blobs/slimes, which are among the least difficult things to add or animate.
This is why arachnophobia is the one Devs fix. Empathy, I guess...
Ah well, good luck OP. I hope my trust in Intrepid isn't misplaced, and you only have to endure their 'bashing' until Intrepid makes some statement on the matter. But, since you already said you plan to stand up to it...
Aegis away.
My grandfather had aracnophobia and he couldn't stay in the same space as the spider if he saw a 2 millimeters spider, my grandmother would get so mad at him that she used to kill the spiders with her bare hands just to show him
Syngenesophobia. Fear of relatives, quite often grandmothers.
The stranger's eyes lifted to the blood red cloud on the horizon.
'We have to move. It's not safe here.'
Well said.
Btw I didn't say "Intrepid cant do XYZ", I am agnostic about the outcome of this, however I am interested in the reasoning behind potential the dismissal of other phobias if that were to happen.
The explanation is in the post you are reacting to. It's literally right there.
Same with the fear of heights. You just get that sensation in a video game unless you're in VR. That phobia can be triggered in VR.
Many of the phobias don't fully tigger in video games but arachnophobia is 100% triggered and as mentioned above Ashes has done a bang up job of getting spiders just too realistic. I have never seen an MMO pull that off this well as I posted in my OP.
People have pointed out that these other things don't apply - fair enough then let's go through the rest of the list. Can you comment on canines and snakes as well?