Making people look into a strobe light to progress

[Etton Veil]

...is
EDIT:
Less than optimal.

Can an option be added to tone down the effect?

Original words: asinine, downright disrespectful to the health and wellbeing of the player.

Never mind the epilepsy warning in the beginning. People have been used to epilepsy warnings in games at least since the PS1 era, so nobody really gives a damn and it's always been peachy. But this game takes the crown in assaulting neurons.
When you make me cover my eyes and turn away from the screen you're doing something wrong. The second you force me to look into what alredy hurts in order to progress the game you're.. I don't know what to say. This is hard to understand.

Give the game an option to turn that effect down to zero. A real options menu resembling that of an average PC game would be a real treat.

The flickering text in ep. 1 is also almost too much.

[Jon_NoCode]

Hi folks

So this has come up a few times, and I figure the thread is getting a bit busy to leave it to discussion.

I appreciate that the strobe sequence is pretty intense (by design) and that for some players it might feel uncomfortable. That discomfort is deliberate, to try and boost immersion and agency as much as possible. We put the warning in and we do take these things seriously, but during development it felt like the right thing to do for the game was to keep the effect in as originally intended. It's designed to be an intense, climatic moment, where the effect of the wild vision sequences are now spilling out into the 'real world'. We figured that it was no more intense than some live concert visuals (looking at you, Nine Inch Nails), which of course would carry the same type of warnings on the way in. It's an artistic choice to do something fairly extreme like that, and it naturally comes with pros and cons.

Is it overcooked? Probably. But again, no more so than what you would experience at a concert, so we felt like we were within reasonable/comparable use.

We will look at potentially providing an option to reduce the effect, although it's no trivial matter and might take some time before we can get to it (we're a small studio with a lot to do!).

However, A simple way to avoid this issue for now is to use this image from PawPawKitty's excellent walkthrough on Steam.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/158030755237274715/A23737B8647F9A11FB0497D9DA443AB9D2C37103/

Hope this helps!

J

[mb3]

Hi Jon, nice reply. For the record, Nine Inch Nails is awsome, and a brilliant musician, I love going to his concerts. Btw, I wouldn't call it a strobe eye, as those flash in a timed pattern that can cause distortions and effects, your effect is more of a medical light that gets shined in your eyes during eye exams, with some red light mixed in. And it did an excellent job of boosting immersion and my gaming experence. Liked it a lot.

What this thread is all about is one loud mouth who wants to police the world and make sure everything complies with her/his view on safety. This type of person tries to be as loud, and voicetrious as possable, to make it seem like a more important issue than it really is, because its only one, or two (or small minority) people doing the complaining. That way it seems like its actually more people complaining than it actually is.

I've seen this type of thing before, (for different reasons) where small church groups, will get there followers to write thousands of letters each, to advertisers of shows like "Howard Stern", to make the executives think its a much much larger group of people offended.

Etton isn't writing letters, just endlessly complaining over and over in a loud mouth type of way, (Standing on her/his podium of being safety concious) to try and gather sympathitic support and get the developers to have to spend time, effort and money to change something that doesn't need changing.

I got news for you Etton. WE DON'T NEED YOU TO PROTECT US.

Instead of wasting your time Jon, why don't you spend that time working on your next project. I thought Stories Untold was a very fun game, and it got me immersed into a game like no other game has done to me in a long time. I can't belive it, I actually jumped a little when the lights would spark out, or something in the room would change suddendly. Sucked me in bigtime!

Keep up the good work!


PS. I was sorta hoping your link would lead to a big picture of the middle finger. Hehe

[radioman970us]

He does go overboard, but if they did put an option to turn it off I think he'd stop complaining and go enjoy the game.

[Etton Veil]

Publicado originalmente por mb3:

Its NOT valid criticism, because they warned you and everyone else who played the game. What it is is invalid complaining. Give it up already, the developers arn't going to respond to your complaining. They don't need to respond or change anything because they complied with the law by posting a proper warning lable. Now, if you don't take said warning seriously, and choose to ignore it, then all liability is on you Etton. :kaizen_angry:

That's a non-sequitur, buddy.
Let me recap.
Epilepsy warnings have a place in any and every game. It does not apply to me since I do not suffer from epilepsy. No game ever has made me physically unwell as to be unable to continue.
People not suffering from epilepsy have found the scene unbearable. See the links posted above. You continue to treat me like a somebody with a known condition. That is factually wrong. Your argument has no basis.

Apart from that how hard can it be to add an option that allows turning down the gamma delta of those flashes?

Edit: Sorry for trying to make the game a little more pleasurable for everyone that had problems in the first place. Ever heard of accessibility settings in other games?
Take a look in the mirror for a moment. Your defense against what you don't understand comes over like zealotry.

And for the flippin record, again: I have enjoyed the game, have reviewed it favourably and have used a walkthrough to get past the scene. Does nobody read?

Why does one point of criticism always end up as "he hates the game"?

Edit2: There, I went and toned down the gamma on my flames in the original post. Is that better?

[Etton Veil]

I assume nothing has happened in that regard.

[3lives]

No. It's a horrible part of the experience, but I kinda like it that way and it does its job the way it is.
However I could see ppl spasm in front of their computers at that part ;)

Love the irony in this thread, btw, of ppl using the snowflake argument against you, all the while being triggered by a simple thread pointing out a good argument for an option to tone it down.

[mredge73]

Set the brightness on your monitor to under 50%. Mine is about 26% and didn't bother me a bit. This also improves your colors and contrast btw. I can see how this could be a big deal if your brightness is set high in a dark room; I would also be annoyed.

[⚜️CatSocietySempai⚜]

Publicado originalmente por jon:

Hi folks

So this has come up a few times, and I figure the thread is getting a bit busy to leave it to discussion.

I appreciate that the strobe sequence is pretty intense (by design) and that for some players it might feel uncomfortable. That discomfort is deliberate, to try and boost immersion and agency as much as possible. We put the warning in and we do take these things seriously, but during development it felt like the right thing to do for the game was to keep the effect in as originally intended. It's designed to be an intense, climatic moment, where the effect of the wild vision sequences are now spilling out into the 'real world'. We figured that it was no more intense than some live concert visuals (looking at you, Nine Inch Nails), which of course would carry the same type of warnings on the way in. It's an artistic choice to do something fairly extreme like that, and it naturally comes with pros and cons.

Is it overcooked? Probably. But again, no more so than what you would experience at a concert, so we felt like we were within reasonable/comparable use.

We will look at potentially providing an option to reduce the effect, although it's no trivial matter and might take some time before we can get to it (we're a small studio with a lot to do!).

However, A simple way to avoid this issue for now is to use this image from PawPawKitty's excellent walkthrough on Steam.

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/158030755237274715/A23737B8647F9A11FB0497D9DA443AB9D2C37103/

Hope this helps!

J

Etton Veil, you should already be happy that your computer screen doen't have HDR pixels to emit natural light. If you feel your sight slaughtered with non-HDR pixels, you would probably convolved right to the emergencies with real HDR computer screen.

Tho i guess it's right, games that "could" induce convolution episodes should probably have an intensity switch.

http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinion/hdr-tv-high-dynamic-television-explained-2927035

[Cosmoid]

I don't even mind the health concerns as much as that it was a really unclear, awkward puzzle (same goes for the morse code element - they were both not optimized for what they were trying to achieve - the sound and visuals were far too unclear). Still doesn't equal the horror that was the game breaking bug in chapter 4.

[Talon]

Thanks for posting about this OP, I was just about to buy this game but then I saw this thread. I cannot stand strobe effects, Hotline Miami made me sick enough to stop playing and now I know not to risk playing this.

Edit: Also to those claiming there's a warning about this, I checked the store page and there is no mention of strobing, seizure triggers or epilepsy warnings. They may be warnings in the game but that's after a sale has been made which then requires refunding the game.

[darknight]

man honestly.......give up,,,dont get a job at a disco

[David Blast]

Stop whining, OP and grow up. However, if you're, like, 12, I'd like to apologize in advance for the "grow up" bit.

[VNP]

Well, the thing is (what I think is a spoiler for the plot incoming warning warning and all that)

I felt like getting hypnotised especially by the red light. When you quickly want to hypnotise people you can use a red light for them to look into and you talk to them in a very calm voice.

Sooo, I guess that's part of the story :).

[Fart Biter]

Have you seen the award winning film 2001: A Space Odyssey? It uses loud noise and flashing lights to cause discomfort in viewers. Art doesn't always make you feel good it makes you feel emotions. You were upset by those flashing lights because that's exactly how the developer wanted you to feel. You're complaing about art that you don't understand.

[radioman970us]

aaaahhhhh, Kubrick mentioned. @Papa, you da man.

Kubrick was also magical with sound. Nothing like a movie that makes the dog(s) leave the room.