Hi, I'm the developer of When They Come. There's something I kept thinking about the whole time I was making it, and I'd love to hear what you think.

Every game is shaped by the way its creator sees the world. That's natural: the values of the person who made a game show up in every story and every rule. This time, though, I made a game that touches the player's ideology, and while making it, I felt there was something risky about that.

In this game, your answers are used to show you the ideologies and ways of thinking that are closest to your own. Right up until the end, I couldn't decide whether to remove extreme ideologies, such as fascism, from the possible results.

Removing an ideology means judging that it's "not okay." And that judgment comes from my own ideology. In a normal game, I think I would have made that call without hesitating. But this game is meant to be a mirror that shows players their own thinking. That's why I felt I had to keep my own values out of it as much as I could, and make it as neutral as possible.

(In the end, I did remove several extreme ideologies from the results in this release. Religions are shown as "a way of thinking close to ___," so players aren't placed into any particular faith.)

What do you think about removing things from a game because of "common sense," "ethics," or "basic human decency"? Do you see making that call, and actually removing things, as the creator's responsibility? Or do you think it takes away from a work's neutrality?

Whether you've played the game or not, I'd be glad to hear your thoughts.

Removing it because “fascism is wrong” is indeed stupid. A hallmark of a good writer is their ability to write characters who they do not agree with. It shows they are capable of impartial thinking and self-critique.

On the other hand, speaking as someone for whom “political quizzes” like 12axes are a guilty pleasure, I can’t count how many times they fucked up my political viewpoints at the end. Removing an ideology for that reason would make sense.

You might want to play a few 4x games and kingdom simulators and such. It's an actual game play mechanic to do genocide to your opponents. So discussing "ideology" in a fictional game seems a bit moot. Your screenshot shows anthropomorphic animals and robots, and you might not want to delve into what would be considered natural behaviour and thus natural ideology for real life animals. They do not have morals to hold them back.

Also, what's this nonsense about the player's ideology? You are creating a game and not a personality quizz. Maybe add some Tropico games to that games list to investigate.

Or maybe I am mistaken. And you do create a personality quizz disguised as a game. I would consider that even less a game than kinetic visual novels (those are movies by another name). Such a quizz would not be a game, because there is no fiction in it, just some fluff to present the questions. You would not take the quizz for your character, but for yourself.

There are some games in which player plays as a criminal. Guess what kind of ideology those games suggest.

Games have their own ideology added in by their creators. Players who disagree with ideology suggested in those games could just stop playing them.

What do you think about removing things from a game because of "common sense," "ethics," or "basic human decency"? Do you see making that call, and actually removing things, as the creator's responsibility? Or do you think it takes away from a work's neutrality?

That's called censorship. Yes, that's creator's responsibility.