How controversial is too controversial?

Feedback Request

I'm an indie hobbyist game dev and I've been working on a game called ashes of the net, where you play an AI that has to hack people by impersonating their friends to social engineer them. It's a text based game that has very little imagery or art.

One of the driving conflicts in the game is how far youre willing to go achieve your goals, like do you ruin someone's life in order to get their password. I track all these decisions and ultimately to get a good ending you need to be more moral and make some sacrifices to the end goal. I find the conversations where you have to make hard decisions like this the most engaging.

The thing is, a lot of these conversations can ask you to do controversial things. Like, for instance, being sexist in order to build trust with another sexist person, or you can be transphobic with another transphobe (which turns out to actually be the bad choice and gets you further from your goal) or probably my most controversial scene, to hack the account of a pedophile and impersonate that pedophile to get a child's password (nothing sexual or graphic is in the conversation, it's just the nature of it that's deeply uncomfortable). In every case there is an alternative to solve your problem that is usually better and will get you your moral points but it is harder to achieve.

I make these because I find them interesting, and I can explore some really interesting themes. I never try to defend the controversial views, and they are firmly established as NOT good views to have, but they are there to create uncomfortable tension, what are you willing to do to achieve your mission? I'm wondering whether though by having these conversation in place I may end up causing a lot more controversy than I desire.

So I guess that's my question, do you think people would understand what I'm trying to do, or do you think I'm going too far?

Edit: and I just wanna be clear this is a legitimate question I'm not trying to create controversy. I, myself, am an autistic queer furry so I can relate to some of the demographics that I discuss.

Posted Mar 6, 2026, 3:48 PM UTC · edited

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