Raaaaape!

Hi all,

This is a post I've had sitting on my hard drive for over a month - I anticipate it might lead to a lot of typing for me so I've been reluctant to post it while my keyboard time was limited. 

I feel that I'm getting better day by day though so I'm posting it now before I forget about it completely. Just remember that I'm still not 100% so don't expect me to be getting into long written discussions!

I'd like to talk about a rather divisive fetish: non-consent.

Nonconsent is a popular fetish that's often requested by players. However, it has some key issues that prevent it being part of the main Newlife release. I'm going to put them in a bullet-point list, because I love bullet-points so much that I might put a path into the wedding scene where the player gets to marry one.

• Firstly, while it's often requested I also often hear from people who are happy it isn't included. While it could be gated behind a trait similar to block_rough, it's questionable whether it's a good idea for me to be dedicating my development/writing time to content that I know a significant number of players actively dislike.
• Secondly, "glorification of rape and sexual violence" is forbidden under Patreon's community guidelines. This seems like it would block a lot of potential nonconsent content.
• Third, it's legally questionable for a UK-based developer. While writing the guides for the user-submissions content I found the Crown Prosecution Service's guidelines on the Obscene Publications Act, a law which has been used to arrest people for text-only content in the past. This has a section on content most commonly prosecuted which includes "realistic portrayals of rape".

In summary: Non-consensual content can never be featured in the main Newlife release. It isn't something I'll be working on and it also won't be allowed on the PMW voting list or accepted in scenes submitted for inclusion.

However, with the addition of user-submissions, there may be avenues for it to be included as a separate add-on that wouldn't be affected by the above:

• The first issue is essentially a problem with the efficient use of my limited development time. However, if the nonconsent content is principally written by a team of volunteers then it wouldn't affect other content
• The second one is only an issue for content on Patreon. If it's an add-on distributed separately then that shouldn't be a problem
• The OPA only applies to people who publish content. If I'm not directly involved in creating this add-on and I'm not the one who distributes it then I think that would be safe for me. For example, the team creating it could host it on a blog that they control, and I could simply have a link to their site from this blog here. Of course the people who do make the non-consent addition might have to worry about the OPA, but that wouldn't be a concern if they aren't based in the UK.

I've set up a discussion board on Discord to allow volunteers to contribute towards a community-created rape add-on for Newlife.

This will be a sort of semi-official project that won't be written, edited or distributed by me but that I will link to from the blog so players have an easy way of accessing it.

It'll also need a way of hooking into the main game without being restricted to the testing scene, but that needn't be an insurmountable problem – I'll discuss this further with the NC writers when/if a group of them have got together and figured out what sort of NC content they want to add.

There are some ground rules I want to put in place. These should all be common sense, but my time on the internet has taught me to never assume common sense from every member of a group of random online strangers!

• First, the NC add-on absolutely must not risk legal consequences for players. As such, it must not include any sexual content involving under-18s, including sexualised descriptions of them or them being present while someone else has sex.
• Second, if I'm going to link to something and help it connect up to my work then it shouldn't risk negative consequences for me, be they personal, financial or legal. This shouldn't be an issue, but don't do anything dumb like using the add-on to rile up easily-offended people who are likely to form an online hate mob.
• The add-on should be the volunteers' own work and should not include any copyrighted characters or real-life people. I don't want to have to deal with people sending in cease-and-desists or plagarism lawsuits.
• The add-on should focus on nonconsent and related content only. Consensual content should be submitted for inclusion in the main-game, as this lets it also be enjoyed by people who aren't into rape.
• Extreme fetishes other than nonconsent shouldn't be included in this add-on. It's supposed to be the rape add-on, not the "every fetish imaginable" one! If the NC add-on is successful then I'm open to starting similar projects for some other extreme fetishes but the aim is that they would have separate downloads so people could pick and choose the ones they're interested in.
• Distribution will be something I'll discuss in more detail with the NC team: probably they'll need to set up a blog or something, but that can wait until something's ready for players. However, any distribution must be gated behind an "are you over 18" interstitial and it must make clear to the player what sort of content it includes (i.e. rape) before they download and play it.
• The add-on should be playable before being released. Something that crashes all the time or runs into a bunch of "to be continued" dead-ends isn't really suitable for Newlife.
• As I'm not involved in the add-on's development I also won't be able to help with bugfixing. As such, the people who make it should be prepared to take error/typo reports from players and fix them.

The first stage towards this is for NC volunteers to get together on the discord, talk about what they want to work on collaboratively and maybe start prototyping outlines for a scene or two. I won't be organising the group or working as part of it, but once they've got an idea of what sort of scenes they want to add first then we can discuss how they can connect into the game.

If you want to be part of this group and work on NC content then head to the Newlife Discord and check out the nc-discussion channel under the "Nonconsent Project" category.

Have fun, and remember, Newlife is entirely fictional and I do not condone using it as a guide on how to behave in real-life!