The Furries (and other origins)

Talk about things that are not making games here. But you should also make games!

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polkakitty
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Post by polkakitty »

Spoonweaver wrote:Vikings of Midgar isn't really a furry game. It's more like a furry gateway drug.
I was fully corrupted for many years before I ever heard of or played Vikings of Midgard, but that's actually a remarkably apt description.
BennyJackdaw wrote:But I think what really offends me the most about the games is that there was supposedly a big war between furries and humans where, again, humans and only humans were the good guys, while furries get shafted and have to be banished to this particular place. This does not make me feel good.
While I don't agree with your criticisms of Vikings, I can absolutely understand that feeling. I kind of have a love-hate relationship with the Elder Scrolls series for the same reason. I love all the lore of that series, the way it's conveyed through books that really seem to be written by different authors, ranging from spiritual allegory (the 36 Lessons of Vivec) to practical advice (The Art of War Magic) to goofy picture books (ABCs for Barbarians,) the way it presents its gods as beings with truly alien natures and thought processes, and the way it handles authors with different perspectives and agendas (the competing biographies of Queen Barenziah,) which is something that's rare in any form of fiction and pretty much unheard of in video games. At the same time, though, I find it a distinctly unpleasant setting to actually be in, and a large part of that is because of the way the beast races are almost invariably treated either as criminals and drug addicts or as pathetic buffoons (or as slaves, in Morrowind.)

I always felt, growing up, that you never seemed to see media with feline characters that weren't just about them getting beaten up all the time, and I spent an excessive amount of time searching for movies and video games with characters that looked the way I felt, and feel, on the inside, and obsessing over media that, by any objective standard, were pretty mediocre, like Captain Claw. (I even had the original Bubsy game as a kid, and was actually willing to argue for its merit, but even then, it was like there was some spectral force whispering in my ear "nah, you don't really want to play this, you want to play Super Metroid again".)

When I started getting deeply into the internet and found out that being furry was officially A Thing (by kind of a strange route, since I was first introduced to the concept of furries through MST3K fans making fun of original characters in Sonic fanfiction by calling them furries,) it really made a lot of things about my life fall into place, like the amount of time I used to spend basically roleplaying as Lion King characters with other kids in the neighborhood, until I scared them all off by being way too into the idea of being a big cat. For years, I thought I must have just been dropped on my head when I was small. I mean, I was, it's just that I was elated to discover there was actually a name for my particular kind of being dropped on one's head.
BennyJackdaw wrote:Then we have the antihero team. Instead of being completely limited to just humans and MAYBE two furries, it's made up of four completely different creatures.
There is actually a reason for this, and it's because they're characters from other OHRRPGCE games with widely varying settings and tones. (This is justified in-world using the idea of the Einherjar, who in Norse mythology, are warriors who fall in combat in their respective worlds, and are chosen by the Valkyries to join the gods in Asgard and fight alongside them in the battle of Ragnarok, which I think is pretty awesome.) Daguerro is really Dogero from Sword of Jade, Kyle was in various earlier games that Fenrir made, Triangle Man is Particle Man's archnemesis.... uh, I mean he's from Mr. Triangle's Adventure, and Master H is Housemaster from ARFENHOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (sic.)

While you don't need to have played any of those earlier games to understand those characters' roles in Vikings' plot, I feel like they are improved if you have. If you've played Sword of Jade, for instance, you'll recognize Daguerro's sad-sack personality as a humorous exaggeration of his personality in that game, and one particular monster he summons to fight the heroes will seem familiar.

(With that said, I could certainly live a long and happy life without ever again seeing the kind of "ironic" caricature of bad writing that ARFENHOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! is built on. So I suppose that's the reason why today, that exact same style of writing has become orders of magnitude more prevalent than ever, only instead of being used to mock "newbies" in game-making communities, it's now called "copypasta", it's the only form of political argument that's used in the world anymore, and we're actually expected to engage with it as though it's some sort of meaningful commentary on serious issues: are there any problems that geeky, neurodivergent men face in today's society? Obviously there can't be, because they think Rick and Morty is good! But that is a rant for another forum.)

Honestly, from the perspective of Vikings being a showcase to demonstrate the OHRRPGCE's capabilities to people new to the community, I kind of wonder whether all the community references in it are a bad thing, because they'll just seem like completely random nonsense to anyone who isn't familiar with the people and games they refer to, or a good thing, because they'll introduce newcomers to characters and running gags that they'll see in numerous other OHR games, including future games. Granted, the fact that most of the references are in the form of one-time battles with characters from other games actually makes them quite appropriate as an homage to classic-era JRPGs, because in those games, you were always running into completely ridiculous and unexplained things as enemies in random battles, like floating eggs that open up and smaller eggs come out to attack you, or artichokes that open up their leaves and reveal a fish head that bites you, or evil dice with top hats that summon eyeballs with lightning bolts for eyebrows.
"It was right through those trees; I'm not insane
That's where the fin tried to drag me in
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Close your eyes, see what I see, Canajoharie..."
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Bird
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Post by Bird »

Vikings tries to balance between giving the different characters their own story and having a big group follow a bigger plan. A lot of textboxes are just general placeholders for the four characters in the active party, regardless of who they are. That also means, that all the characters can't differ too much from each other, else the "general textboxes" would feel completly out of place. And I must admit, that it sometimes happened with Hilda, my favourite character in the game, because of her own accent. However developmentwise everything has to be feasible! And Vikings is such a large game...

Something else. I'd like to share with you this internet browser, that was made by a programming furry. It's called Pale Moon (https://www.palemoon.org/). It's a crazy castle in times of total Google Chrome domination. If you want to make sure, that Google won't be ruling the internet one day, then the Pale Moon project by Moonchild Productions might be something.
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Post by ArtimusBena »

Soberly, I think I have to conclude that a game based on a fetish -- no shaming intended -- is rightfully destined for momentary fascination. Vikings isn't meant for that. It was never supposed to be that, from its inception to now. Its core purpose is to show new OHR users what they can do with the engine if they just put in the effort. Fen is a furry, but I think he *and* I are taken aback by the expectation that it's the kind of game you apparently thought it was, and that its value was detracted from by this expectation that neither of us ever, ever made a selling point.

And look, you can like or dislike anything for any reason, I'm just commenting on this. It's a rather shallow way to judge a piece of work in my opinion. I mean, in the least you're accusing a furry of furry oppression. Are you high? He just wanted to make a great game.
Do you make love with the same urgency you make games?
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polkakitty
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Post by polkakitty »

Bird wrote:Something else. I'd like to share with you this internet browser, that was made by a programming furry. It's called Pale Moon (https://www.palemoon.org/).
I've actually been using Pale Moon as my browser for about a year now. But my reason for using and endorsing it isn't just because the guy who made it is a furry, it's because it supports Tab Mix Plus, and all the other addons I used to have on Firefox, back when Firefox was good, and supported addons. (Everyone I know in real life makes fun of how many tabs I have open at any given time, but if you use any art sites, it's a requirement to have a browser with the ability to open multiple rows of tabs at once.)

Also, when you've been using Linux as long as I have (since 2005,) you find out that furries are everywhere in techie circles, and especially in the open-source community. I don't think that connection is just random happenstance; I think that furry fandom and the open-source community, at their best, both run on the same principle of what anthropologists call a "gift economy", where the greatest power and influence don't come from accumulating wealth, or from being descended from royalty, but from the reputation that one gains from freely giving away things of value to the community as a whole.

There's one argument people have always used to dismiss the idea of open-source software: they say that, if software is given away for free, there will be no way anyone can be employed as a programmer. And, as someone who's been working professionally as a programmer for years, I can say with some qualification that this is categorically not true: every programming project I've ever worked on professionally has been something an employer needed to have custom-made for them to work with the infrastructure and the databases they'd already built up, or something to run their machine-shop hardware that nobody else was going to write code for. As a programmer, the value you create doesn't come from exclusivity, it comes from the fact that you're custom-making software for someone's particular needs.

And furry artists are a great example of an economy that already works on those terms: they get paid by commissioners who want them to draw their own characters in a particular kind of scene, and then, by publicly releasing their commissioned work on the internet, they promote the art they're able to offer on commission to other customers, and they gain a sense of connection to the community from the fact that most of the characters they're drawing actually represent people in the community that other people know. (Furry artists also often offer high-quality prints of their art, or CDs of previous commissions they've made, for sale at conventions. Technically, these are images that can already be downloaded for free on the internet, but those sales are able to happen because there's value in a higher-quality presentation for art you might want to put on display, and in the convenience of getting hundreds of images in one package instead of having to dig through the archives of art sites for them. They show that scarcity isn't the only possible measure of value.) And I think things like game jams and OHRRPGCE contests can also be described in the same terms of a gift economy.
ArtimusBena wrote:Fen is a furry, but I think he *and* I are taken aback by the expectation that it's the kind of game you apparently thought it was, and that its value was detracted from by this expectation that neither of us ever, ever made a selling point.
You're right, it isn't fair for people to judge Vikings of Midgard for not being something that it was never meant to be, or for not catering specifically to their own preferences.

For the record, I don't agree with Benny's characterization of the plot and setting of Vikings, but at the same time, seeing everyone piling on him didn't sit right with me, so I brought up an aspect of a game I had similar feelings about, to show him that, even if I didn't agree with everything he was saying, there was someone who could understand how he felt. I don't play furry games exclusively, I don't expect all games to be about how great furries are, and I respect the work you and Fenrir have done on a project that represents a community with diverse influences and interests, furries being only one of those interests.
"It was right through those trees; I'm not insane
That's where the fin tried to drag me in
Don't look at me, look at where I'm pointing
Close your eyes, see what I see, Canajoharie..."
-- They Might Be Giants
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BennyJackdaw
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Post by BennyJackdaw »

ArtimusBena wrote:Soberly, I think I have to conclude that a game based on a fetish -- no shaming intended -- is rightfully destined for momentary fascination. Vikings isn't meant for that. It was never supposed to be that, from its inception to now. Its core purpose is to show new OHR users what they can do with the engine if they just put in the effort. Fen is a furry, but I think he *and* I are taken aback by the expectation that it's the kind of game you apparently thought it was, and that its value was detracted from by this expectation that neither of us ever, ever made a selling point.

And look, you can like or dislike anything for any reason, I'm just commenting on this. It's a rather shallow way to judge a piece of work in my opinion. I mean, in the least you're accusing a furry of furry oppression. Are you high? He just wanted to make a great game.
Since I would rather avoid more conflict on the subject, can I just say that furry isn't necessarily a fetish? Just having anthropomorphic characters doesn't mean it's fetish related. I mean, I mentioned that I was writing a book, and a lot of the characters are sumo wrestling monsters. Does that make it a fat fetish book? Of course not, especially since it's written like a superhero book. While the characters follow e lifestyle that does come up quite a bit, the characters are generally treated as sumo wrestling crime Fighters instead of a fetish, especially when a lot of the things associated with the fetish, such as overeating, are actively avoided in favor of a diet that tries to stay more true to sumo wrestlers themselves.

I will admit, big guys are kind of comfort food for me when it comes to creating characters, but the way I see it, the fact that the characters are sumo wrestlers is more of a theme than a fetish. In my opinion, is something that a lot of people will find uncomfortable but some might actually like it, and I do not think anthropomorphic animals by themselves are uncomfortable.
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Spoonweaver
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Post by Spoonweaver »

It's not a fetish unless there's lewd stuff.

like disney cartoons, arguably, not fetish
rule 34 disney cartoons, yes fetish.

Your sumo book, maybe not maybe so.
A fetish is anything outside the realm of norm, sexualized.
so a book about sumo guys seems a bit out of the norm, so if it's a lewd book, yea it's a fetish book.
if it's not lewd, than it's not.

Is Furry lewd? I think the term furry is meant to describe the fetish. People don't really call Disney movies Furry movies.
There's always some talk about that though. Take Zootopia, why do they have animal people with human female qualities unless to entice the furry audience? Honestly, The whole movie seems fine until that gazelle shows up. She has nothing to do with the plot, so why is she there?
In any case, I think what you're arguing is akin to the borderline argument of what is and is not furrty and what is and is not lewd.
It reminds me a bit of that terrible debate about the netflix movie cuties. Is that movie a pedophiles wet dream? Or is it a normal movie about women empowerment that pedophiles are ruining with their feitsh? Hard to say... unless you actually watch...

I think what you might be missing is that there are a good amount of games made on the ohr that venture into lewd country and those happen to also star animal people. So in those case, it's a fetish game.
Now, you are correct in saying that not everything is a Furry game on here.
However, I need to remind you that YOU stated that Vikings was a furry game and that your whole argument was that it wasn't furry enough for your liking.
And again, Furry tends to describe the fetish. Otherwise, animal people, anthropomorphism, disney cartoons, dog bros, etc are all terms you'd use instead. It's like balloons aren't a fetish. But if you call something a "looner" game, then yes it's a fetish game.
Last edited by Spoonweaver on Mon Dec 07, 2020 7:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Nathan Karr
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Post by Nathan Karr »

I remember one time someone wanted to get into making games and I suggested he download Vikings of Midgard and make a game using the sprites of Renard, Hati, Freki, and the unfinished jackal necromancer as a party of player characters.

I don't think he ever got around to it, but that's four sprite sets that can build a full party with distinct roles pretty easily. Is a lot of canine representation and none for the other groups of popular mammals, though. But then, I made a game with 14 rodents and nothing else.
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BennyJackdaw
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Post by BennyJackdaw »

It isn't so much that I called it a furry game. Normally, I just think of "furry" as being a universal term for anthropomorphic animals, not necessarily fetish related. Many cartoons and video games have anthropomorphic protagonist characters, and I generally call those characters as furries whether they are supposed to be lewd or not.

The problem I have with Vikings is the bait and switch, the sub plotline that gives anthropomorphic animals the rough stick, having to fight popular mascot characters as generic humans, and also having to wait till I've obtained pretty much everyone else before I get to play as an anthropomorphic character again. Really, it all starts with the bait and switch, and then it just feels like the story is trying to insult furries until you eventually obtained playable ones, but again, you have to go through a lot of game before you do, and the story, especially revolving around how the furries got banished and whatnot, was not enjoyable for me to get through just to play as two furries eventually. I feel like, if they didn't have that subplot line and they never took away the furry character you started out with, I would be perfectly fine with this game. I might even have forgiven them taking away the furry girl if one of the characters they replaced her with was also an anthropomorphic animal. Instead, promising anthropomorphic animal characters and then replacing them with generic humans just feels like a blow below the belt.

As for the book I am writing oh, it is not designed to be lewd. I mean, let me talk about three of the characters that are sumo wrestlers. One of them is part hippo, and the spontaneous Outburst that hippopotamuses are known for is present in her character oh, but she also likes outlandish fashion and has a past concerning that, in addition to a particular reason why she became a superhero that I'm not going to state because it goes into spoiler territory. In other words oh, she has several character traits besides being a sumo wrestler. The other characters are the same way. One of them is a preschool teacher who likes to fight an unorthodox ways, such as growing an elephant trunk to fight with. He also became a hero to teach young kids about the dangers of being a hero. The third character also practices Muay Thai kickboxing, rapping about himself and has a past with a kid in school that he went to. Again, when you get down to it, being fat is not that big a part of their character.
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Post by Nathan Karr »

BennyJackdaw wrote:and then it just feels like the story is trying to insult furries
Nobody's as good at insulting furries as actual furries are.

That said, the reason I got into furries was that I was insulted by Fenrir's games from the early 2000s. This thread has turned into a hilarious throwback in its tone all the sudden.
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BennyJackdaw
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Post by BennyJackdaw »

Nathan Karr wrote:
BennyJackdaw wrote:and then it just feels like the story is trying to insult furries
Nobody's as good at insulting furries as actual furries are.

That said, the reason I got into furries was that I was insulted by Fenrir's games from the early 2000s. This thread has turned into a hilarious throwback in its tone all the sudden.
XD

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Post by Fenrir-Lunaris »

[s]LIFE 2![/s]
polkakitty wrote:Honestly, from the perspective of Vikings being a showcase to demonstrate the OHRRPGCE's capabilities to people new to the community, I kind of wonder whether all the community references in it are a bad thing, because they'll just seem like completely random nonsense to anyone who isn't familiar with the people and games they refer to, or a good thing, because they'll introduce newcomers to characters and running gags that they'll see in numerous other OHR games, including future games.
Having sat in on a couple of Twitch streams of people playing Vikings, I can safely say that the overwhelming majority of people who would play OHR games are a little more accepting of weird stuff appearing for no reason in an RPG because that's literally what every RPG ever does. And sometimes, they're a little curious to learn more about a particular obscure character and.. ..down the rabbit hole we go!
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Post by ArtimusBena »

Fen did a great job. Period.

If your issue is furry representation and when and where and how much, and not if it's a great game... I don't wanna speak for Fen, so I'll speak for myself: I understand. But I also think you should stow it and grow up. A game (or any other medium) could have full representation of whatever group and still be a horrible, pointless, waste of time. Fen focused on fun and that's what a game developer is there to do.
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Post by Spoonweaver »

I guess the thread shifted from furrys to Vikings of Midgard, but maybe it's still about furrys?
In any case it was suppose to be about where they came from and why they came here.
Or why YOU, the reader, came here. (whether you are a furry or not)

Any notion that the "furry community" should be one way or another is completely incorrect. You are wrong for thinking that way, period. A community shifts and changes all the time. Like the literal crowd of people it is, you can move with it or you can attempt to stand still and get trampled. That's the harsh truth.

As far as Viking's of Midgard. Not liking a game for any reason at all is clearly fine. We are all entitled to our opinions. Even the best games ever made have groups of people who really and truly hate them. However, as a small community of indie game devs, I think we need to support each other and if you're not up for being supportive, even if in your own way, then you don't belong here.
Vikings is a completed game with a decent level of detail and polish. There's nothing about vikings that I would consider bad, which is a rarity in the indie dev world. We shouldn't be trying to tear it down.

As far as Viking's of Midgard being the included game in the ohrrpgce.
I think it makes sense to be included for a large number of reasons.
First, Fenrir has allowed for the graphics in vikings to be used by anyone so Viking's of Midgard doubles as a default gathering of graphics you get with the engine.
Second, it's been there for a while so it's got history as the included game, and we try to maintain history whenever possible here.
Third, the community references in vikings helps the game feel more like everyone's game. Unless we want to include multiple different games with the engine, a single game is going to be the work of a small group or 1 person. The compromise of having the game star characters from other games seems like the fairest way to go about it so that everyone feels included. I guess I just wish Vikings had more people's character's included, but I don't actually have examples of left out characters or games.
Fourth, it's a complete game that's fenrir has decided to give away for free. There are a lot of ohr games that are incomplete. And there are a lot of completed games that are being sold on steam. So to qualify to be the included game, the game would need to be completed AND free.
Lastly, there is not an alternative that we would honestly consider. Vikings is one of the better games made on the ohrrpgce. The list of games up to it's level isn't very long. Is vikings the best ohrrpgce game ever made? Arguably no, but the others in that realm aren't being offered up as possible games to include. So the argument becomes whether to include a game at all or not. I think we should include a game and I think it should keep being vikings.
However, we are an open community. If anyone has another game they think would work better as the included game, let's talk about it. A pro's and con's list is pointless if there's not another choice in the decision to compare things to.
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