In a post from the distant past, I mentioned that one of the reasons I was unwilling to search for other people to help create BFD's assets was because the game contained "a lot of uncomfortable content that few people might be willing to commit to". I want to clarify what kind of content one can expect in the final game, which will hopefully shine light on why I think I won't be able to find a person who's both comfortable with co-creating BFD with me and has the appropriate skill level for the project.
I don't think I made this clear in any of my previous posts, but BFD is a strictly 18+ game (in other words, an adults only title). Obviously I have no way of properly enforcing that minors don't play it (at most I can suggest on whatever website I publish the game on that you need to do one of those age verification things that people always lie on), and it will be especially hard to keep this rating in place since I plan to release BFD as a free game. Oh yeah, I guess this blog post doubles as the reveal that BFD is no longer planned to be a commercial project (I'll likely go into the reasons why in a future post).
When people hear that a title is intended for "adults only", the first thing that probably comes to mind is that the work contains pornographic content, especially in the case of visual novels. There are exceptions to the rule like Manhunt 2 and Hatred, which were given AO (adults only) ratings by the ESRB for their extreme violence. Now BFD is probably not going to get rated by the ESRB itself, and my rating is based off the guidelines on the ESRB website and the ratings listed on VNDB for various visual novels. I can say with a lot of certainty that BFD contains both sexual and violent content that is extreme and prolonged enough to earn it an 18+ rating in both cases. Sometimes these content types occur in tandem.
So, is BFD a porn game? Not necessarily. I intend BFD to be a story-focused work, but graphic sex scenes are prevalent. What about a torture porn game? Again, not necessarily. Graphic violence is prevalent, but the story still takes precedence. Essentially, neither of these are meant to be the main draw of the game, but they can act as repellents. So then, what specific kinds of content will BFD contain, and what does it mean that "sometimes these content types occur in tandem"?
First, let's get into what people can expect to find in BFD. Sexual content-wise, the sex scenes will feature completely uncensored (including no mosaics, sorry Japanese players) primary and secondary sex characteristics in various circumstances (including on-screen penetration). Some of these scenes are coercive or non-consensual, contain strange or unusual sexual acts/fetishes, and are mixed with violence and gore (there is actual eroguro in the game, it's actually an important part of the themes of the story, believe it or not). Violence-wise, people can expect the usual torture and murder, but there's also depictions of cruel and unusual punishments, cannibalism, desecration of corpses, suicide, self-harm, and of course, sexual violence.
I don't know if I'm ready to go into a more detailed content warning at this time, and I'd have to be conscious of spoilers anyway. Of course, this blog post won't be the only place people will be able to refer to when looking for a content warning. One of the screens that will pop up once the game has been started should contain roughly the same information in this post. I plan on putting BFD on VNDB once it's released, and I'll have to manually add in all the relevant content and character trait tags, including the spoilery ones.
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