
The Ripper: The disturbing Visceral Games project that never was - adrian_mrd
https://www.polygon.com/2018/8/24/17770668/jack-the-ripper-visceral-games-electronic-arts-canceled
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glangdale
There's something remarkably tone-deaf about ret-conning _real murders_ of
actual women (even to the extent of using their _actual fucking names_ ) as
Pretty Awesome because they are actually vampires. I'm surprised that this
concept got as far as it did.

"Many didn’t see an issue with using the real names of the murder victims,
however. The agreement within the team was that if they could not develop an
experience that was respectful of the history and the victims involved, then
they wouldn’t do it."

Yes, I'm sure that turning a sexually-oriented thrill killing spree of
powerless women into an interactive entertainment product was right on the
verge of being "respectful". Maybe the scenes where you rip out the uteruses
(uterii?) of the victims could be done in tasteful period-appropriate sepia?

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VladTheImplier
Many instances of media are giving a spin on horrible historical events for
the sake of entertainment. These are never meant to be "tasteful". Does
Wolfenstein condone the holocaust? All the Dracula books and movies make Vlad
III, Prince of Wallachia, a charismatic character, even though he murdered so
many innocent people in such a cruel way just to secure his position.

They do put a tasteless twist on a horrible event - that makes this thought
experiment so intriguing as a setting to explore. What if the Nazis won? What
if Vlad The Impaler was an interesting and charismatic person, what if
JackTheRipper was a hero under cover. It's all stupid, but interesting at the
same time. That does not mean they disrespect history.

~~~
glangdale
That's just stupid. The Nazis, and Dracula, in case you haven't noticed, are
the villains of their respective pieces.

Deciding that people who cut up women are in fact pretty _fascinating_ and
charismatic dudes "who had their reasons" is not exactly a new, intriguing
setting to explore, unless you're a sophomoric ghoul.

In the media we are drowning in handsome genius-level IQ serial killers, as
opposed to the sordid idiots that they are in real life. Thanks, no. There are
a lot of thought experiments we could do; strangely, we seem to constantly
come back to this one.

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VladTheImplier
It's a genre that keeps fascinating people who like that genre - what possibly
twisted mind could do such horrible things? It's indeed an often taken and
explored trope of fiction, certainly not for everyone. Also all of the Mafia
themes: So many of the media on that hides the gruesome reality of recruiting
people out of poverty to push them into a never ending circle of violence,
with notorious killers that tortured their victims in much fashion like jack
the ripper. (Think Richard Kuklinski, whose death count is without a doubt
much higher than Jack The Ripper) And yet many of the fictional books, series
and games portrait the Mafia as being about honour, family and pride. It's a
fictional world that if made well enough is interesting to explore.

Probably that game wouldn't have been for me either as I despise torture porn
akin to saw. But that doesn't mean, that this sort of fiction is inherently
bad. Tasteless for sure, yet in a genre of a grotesque deep dive into a
parallel universe where the gruesome and grotesque is justified by a
mysterious, higher cause.

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visualphoenix
I worked on this title for the last year of its existence. I’m not at liberty
to discuss much. The project definitely changed in Frostbite 2 era. IIRC the
behavior tree GOAP stuff made it into the 3rd Army of Two game, which was also
done in Frostbite 2.0. I left the project about 4 months after a major change
in senior project leadership. I’ll answer what I can.

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pwaai
I always wondered why there are no serial killer type of games or with
realistic gore simulation. It's bad PR for giants like EA yet they've
repeatedly opted for pay to play models which resulted in huge backlash.

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ppseafield
You can't officially license an Adults Only game on most (all?) consoles, and
even allowing that finding a publisher or a place to sell your X rated games
would be difficult. Major retailers don't want to be known for selling those
kinds of games.

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DanBC
> You can't officially license an Adults Only game on most (all?) consoles

There are a bunch of PEGI 18 games on consoles. Call of Duty World War II,
Farcry 5, Fallout 4, GTA5, etc etc - all of these are PEGI 18 and licensed for
consoles.

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esrauch
Those are all M in the ESRB rating though (not AO). Despite the parallel in AO
and PEGI18, they aren't really the perceived the same in the respective
markets.

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TranquilMarmot
Best case study for this difference is the "Hot Coffee" mod for GTA: San
Andreas. There was originally a very adult minigame in it but it was disabled;
the "mod" simply enabled it. This caused so much controversy the game was re-
rated AO by the ESRB and consequently pulled from store shelves until they re-
released a patched version with the minigame removed completely.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_mod](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_mod)

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nottorp
Funny, in the first illustration in the article the Ripper looks like a
Bloodborne character... top hat and sword cane.

Now this was an EA project, so it would have been design-by-commitee visceral
horror with in app purchases. I don't think we're missing anything here.

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MBCook
Did you read the article at all?

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nottorp
Until I figured out it's talking about an EA project. Sorry, it stopped being
worth my attention after that. No matter how old the project is.

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MBCook
If you actually bothered to read it you would see that it was about the time
BEFORE all that was there. The article went into the fact that during the
games development is windy company had decided that all games must have
multiplayer to prevent people from immediately selling the game after beating
it.

Basically nothing you complained about applied to this game.

