[NeoKnight]

Just introduced this to my brother in law last year... he loves it. (He's young-ish). I'm going to show him the basics of modding next week. But more importantly, he has introduced this to our nephews (age 12).

Kudos.  I think it's vitally important for the long-term sustainability of this community that we strive to introduce FreeSpace to the next generation, kids especially. The original FreeSpace games were rated E, and in my honest opinion, intended for a target audience in a fairly young age range. My younger brother started playing the game when he was six (I'm not kidding), and still loves it. The world of FreeSpace has expanded exponentially since the retail release, and I've always been a little disappointed at how this expansion seems to be aimed towards a much older age group. The fact that we have very few "clean" campaigns out there really puts a limit on the number of people who will play and enjoy FreeSpace, and maybe even become members of the community. To address this issue I once mentioned the idea of adding a censoring feature to the game that could be enabled via the launcher, as I believe this would increase the appeal of the game to more conservative or otherwise young audiences. However, it was implied that having the SCP team devote time and resources to developing such a feature was not in the best interest of the community, so I did not actively pursue the idea. It's still a feature I would like to see added though, so if any people on the source code team are reading this in light of Lucika's recent observations, feel free to consider. 

[General Battuta]

Just introduced this to my brother in law last year... he loves it. (He's young-ish). I'm going to show him the basics of modding next week. But more importantly, he has introduced this to our nephews (age 12).

Kudos.  I think it's vitally important for the long-term sustainability of this community that we strive to introduce FreeSpace to the next generation, kids especially. The original FreeSpace games were rated E, and in my honest opinion, intended for a target audience in a fairly young age range. My younger brother started playing the game when he was six (I'm not kidding), and still loves it. The world of FreeSpace has expanded exponentially since the retail release, and I've always been a little disappointed at how this expansion seems to be aimed towards a much older age group. The fact that we have very few "clean" campaigns out there really puts a limit on the number of people who will play and enjoy FreeSpace,

The original campaigns had profanity and the deaths of thousands. I handled them fine as an eleven-year-old. If anything I think most fan-made campaigns (like Derelict)  are considerably cleaner and more gentle than the retail stories.

[NeoKnight]

Just introduced this to my brother in law last year... he loves it. (He's young-ish). I'm going to show him the basics of modding next week. But more importantly, he has introduced this to our nephews (age 12).

Kudos.  I think it's vitally important for the long-term sustainability of this community that we strive to introduce FreeSpace to the next generation, kids especially. The original FreeSpace games were rated E, and in my honest opinion, intended for a target audience in a fairly young age range. My younger brother started playing the game when he was six (I'm not kidding), and still loves it. The world of FreeSpace has expanded exponentially since the retail release, and I've always been a little disappointed at how this expansion seems to be aimed towards a much older age group. The fact that we have very few "clean" campaigns out there really puts a limit on the number of people who will play and enjoy FreeSpace,

The original campaigns had profanity and the deaths of thousands. I handled them fine as an eleven-year-old. If anything I think most fan-made campaigns (like Derelict)  are considerably cleaner and more gentle than the retail stories.

Yes, the retail campaigns are exactly as you say, but they were still rated E: The violence was bloodless (even hallfight) and the profanity was mild. Quite a contrast from Transcend or any other other campaign that makes good use of a far more liberal vocabulary. Personally I don't mind swearing, but we could open the doors to a lot more people by accommodating for those who do.

[General Battuta]

I'm...actually not sure I about that. I'm betting it's a concern for a relatively small fraction of the population, no offense.

Besides I think there are far less child-safe things about Transcend than the language! 

[NeoKnight]

I'm...actually not sure I about that. I'm betting it's a concern for a relatively small fraction of the population, no offense.

None taken.  You may actually be right about that, and there's really no way we can know. Although I'd feel far more comfortable introducing FreeSpace to many of my friends if there were a censoring feature, I know that the social circles I frequent aren't good representations of the vast majority of people out there. Fact is, we'll never really know if a lack of game censorship is dampening the size of the community unless we...give it a try. 

[mjn.mixael]

My post is about to go *slightly* off topic..

I don't really know how a censoring feature would work really... but I'm no coder. But censoring rarely get to the heart of the matter and really just prolongs the inevitable... I'm not really for or against a censoring feature BTW.

BUT (the off topic part)... specifically when it comes to profanity, I have noticed that it just isn't well used in many user-made campaigns. It's there because they CAN.. not because it works or makes sense. Battuta, surely YOU have noticed that. In a few of the campaigns I played, the dialogue sounded more like some 15 year olds were writing the lines and were so excited that mom and dad had no idea... just so much unnecessary profanity...

A better fix to the problem would be to encourage use of the language as what it is. A tool for portraying characters, not just casual conversation. I don't really know if that made any sense.. but there's my rant for the day.

[General Battuta]

I can't speak to most campaigns because I'm afraid I can't immediately recall any specific instances, but I'm sure you might be right.

I know that when I write profanity I try to emulate the peculiarities of soldiers in combat and the actual air combat recordings I've heard. Which, for better worse, are...not very polite. '****' is used as verb, noun, adjective and adverb -

Spoiler:

'****! Get the **** down! Hurry the **** up and shoot that mother****er!'

So believe it or not 'just so much unnecessary profanity' is probably realistic.   Doesn't mean it's good, but soldiers swear like Tarantino on a bad day.

[NeoKnight]

Agreed. Beyond the Red Line comes to mind as a good example.  What we could really use are more clean campaigns in the first place, like Procyon Insurgency. Seriously...that things was a freakin' masterpiece and I didn't hear a single swear word. Campaigns like that might help breathe new life into the community by providing gaming experiences that are acceptable to anyone who wants to play them.

EDIT: This post was in response to mjn.mixael's comment. The Batman just beat me to the "post" button.

[General Battuta]

Well I think you need to balance the desire to please a very small portion of the population with the desire to actually depict combat pilots under extreme stress. That's what Beyond the Red Line was - though the Diaspora guys say they want to take it down a notch as there was a bit too much 'frak'.

If I were in Transcend I'd have been swearing my head off. If I were in The Procyon Insurgency...well when I hit the'disarm the Saturn' mission I was swearing my head off. 

[Mobius]

As long as I'm in their respective dev teams, all INF/NTV missions will be free from swearing. While this may be a bit unrealistic for those who think that space combat is modern air combat in space, where pilots are free to say whatever trash words they want, I justify it by saying that one of the goals of severe training is keeping pilots educated and follow specific standards. For example, I have specifically stated that all Martian pilots in INFASA are trained to talk politely even if they're going to die, and that will be applied to the EA as well. You can't tolerate swearing when, for example, you're escorting a diplomat who's listening to military transmissions. What kind of reputation would military forces earn?  

/OT

As far as I can say, certain projects will be hardly released because of the skeleton crews working on them. The first episode of NTV, just to mention an example, would have been easily released over one year ago, but at the moment of writing it's 30-40% complete (and guess who did that work!  ). Same thing for INFASA, INF SCP and many campaigns for the FSCRP... basically, circumstances kind of force me to work solo on all projects I joined. Under that point of view, I think I'm unlucky.

Why does that happen? Mostly because of Real Life^TM and lack of dedication, which are equally dangerous to a project. Sometimes, RL can be far more serious than expected, as evidenced by Woomeister's latest issues I actually don't want to discuss with anyone.  

[General Battuta]

I have no problem with campaigns that want to steer away from obscenity; it's an atmospheric choice and (as you've demonstrated) you can justify it narratively.

But if you're going for the Generation Kill, Hurt Locker, Black Hawk Down atmosphere you've got to look at the language the real-life analogues of your characters use.

[NeoKnight]

Well, if a campaign has objectionable language, it can still please both crowds...or more like, admittedly, probably a very big crowd and then a few other people...by having an optional censoring feature that could be turned on or off, depending on your taste, in the launcher. It's really a win-win. Perfect balance. The only disadvantage is that such a feature would take time to program, and I know that time is a limited resource here at HLP. I'd be willing to help, but as I know less than nothing about programming I'm not sure how valuable my assistance would be...

And I'm now very much looking forward to both Inferno and NTV.   Regardless of how realistic swearing or lack thereof may be in the actual FreeSpace universe, I appreciate a clean campaign that I can openly share with other people. Thanks Mobius, and keep up the good work.  

[General Battuta]

Well, I do think there's a moral component to that censorship. I don't know how I'd have felt about a Saving Private Ryan or a Band of Brothers in which nobody swore. It would've felt almost disrespectful to the incredible pressure these people were under - as if we were saying that it was wrong of them to vent their terror and rage even in the middle of combat.

[Mobius]

Thanks.

[NeoKnight]

Well, the morality involved is highly debatable, but that really isn't the point. Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers were both historically based stories honoring real people. FreeSpace is totally fictional, so there's no one but the player to be disrespectful to. And I think it's more disrespectful to that player to have him/her barraged by volleys of needless swearing than to have them offended because none of the pilots match the gung-ho airman stereotype.

[General Battuta]

Well, the morality involved is highly debatable, but that really isn't the point. Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers were both historically based stories honoring real people. FreeSpace is totally fictional, so there's no one but the player to be disrespectful to. And I think it's more disrespectful to that player to have him/her barraged by volleys of needless swearing than to have them offended because none of the pilots match the gung-ho airman stereotype.

If the goal is to create a narrative that matches the intensity and veracity of historical events honoring real people, then you have a conflict. I'd say it's also disrespectful to the player to treat them as incapable of hearing words without being affected by them.

I'm guessing you don't like Pulp Fiction very much either. 

[karajorma]

None taken.   You may actually be right about that, and there's really no way we can know. Although I'd feel far more comfortable introducing FreeSpace to many of my friends if there were a censoring feature, I know that the social circles I frequent aren't good representations of the vast majority of people out there. Fact is, we'll never really know if a lack of game censorship is dampening the size of the community unless we...give it a try.  

Bear in mind that use of tstrings.tbl could allow any non-voice acted campaign to create a censored version in a matter of minutes. You'd simply create another language like #English-Censored and the game would automatically substitute the censored text for the uncensored when you chose that as your language option in the launcher. Of course it would be even better if the launcher offered a censor option which you could set but even there the changes required to the code should be fairly minimal.

Of course we'd need a good method of generating tstrings.tbl for campaigns but I've already posted the idea this thread gave me here.

[mjn.mixael]

But if you're going for the Generation Kill, Hurt Locker, Black Hawk Down atmosphere you've got to look at the language the real-life analogues of your characters use.

See, but that would work.

I guess my test is whether or not I remember the swearing... because if I remember it, it's because it was overused/unnecessarily used/sounded more like a 15 year old's YouTube video.

[General Battuta]

But if you're going for the Generation Kill, Hurt Locker, Black Hawk Down atmosphere you've got to look at the language the real-life analogues of your characters use.

See, but that would work.

I guess my test is whether or not I remember the swearing... because if I remember it, it's because it was overused/unnecessarily used/sounded more like a 15 year old's YouTube video.

I'd probably be all right with a censorship option of the type Kara described, though it wouldn't work for voice acted campaigns.

But bear in mind that a lot of combat soldiers aren't even a decade past your 15 year old's YouTube video.

[mjn.mixael]

But there's a difference and I think you would know what I mean if I could more clearly describe it.

And I'm positive you know the difference, if not on a subconscious level, with as much into writing as you are.