Interesting article. I heard SUPERHOT VR was a really good (if not one of the best) VR games when released. I’ll probably pirate it if I ever get around to playing it now.
I disagree with the author on whether ‘woke’ is an accurate term to use here, I don’t think it completely fits but there is no better widely used term for this kind of moral hypersensitivity where someone believes they have authority over what other people should or shouldn’t be allowed to see or experience based on how they _think_ a hypothetical person might react to said art, media, etc. It might be more accurate to describe it as illiberal but that is rather vague.
I would call this behavior solipsistic: the maker only engages with a caricature of their audience that happens to perfectly confirm their preconceptions, while handwaving away very simple and logical objections from the people in the room.
The weirdest part is them dressing it up as "you deserve better" when they are clearly ignoring their existing paying customers and retroactively stealing back content that was published and paid for.
The excuse that people didn't discover the toggle to skip disturbing scenes is ridiculous: just show it on first launch.
I suspect and wonder whether superhot vr was simply forced to remove this content to get first party promotion on certain platforms, and the reason it sounds illogical is because of Sinclair's maxim: they act like they don't understand because their income depends on not understanding it.
It’s made pretty clear that their motivations are entirely internal. This seems more like an artist defacing their work because they feel strong negativity towards it. He says the original story was written out of depression, so it seems reasonable to conclude he was maybe suicidal at the time, no longer is, and feels repulsed by seeing his own suicidal ideation reflected back at him. That’d be an understandable reaction. The only issue is that the work was already shared with the world and copies sold. Ethically, he's fine to change future versions, but eliminating the version that people already paid for crosses a line. It seems like consumers should be allowed access to at least whatever version was available when they made their purchase.
I disagree with the author on whether ‘woke’ is an accurate term to use here, I don’t think it completely fits but there is no better widely used term for this kind of moral hypersensitivity where someone believes they have authority over what other people should or shouldn’t be allowed to see or experience based on how they _think_ a hypothetical person might react to said art, media, etc. It might be more accurate to describe it as illiberal but that is rather vague.