The opening rant may sour the experience for many, if the price doesn’t first.
The Hidden and Unknown, a visual novel-style game, drew attention this week as it was released with a nearly $2,000 price tag, making it the most expensive Steam game ever. Now the expensive title is catching criticism over the opening text crawl and overall message within the game.
The visual novel with AI art is the debut project of a team called ProX.team. While it’s made headlines over the price tag, the contents within are also noteworthy, opening with an unskippable text crawl that espouses the supposed endless cycle of human reproduction and how it ties into the fluctuations of men’s strength. It also claims men in the modern age, due to extreme technological growth, are weaker than previous generations. Meanwhile, it states women have had to take up more masculine traits to offset this new imbalance.
The game’s commentary on deviation from traditional, binary gender roles as a source of western cultural decline is bound to strike many and odd or offensive. The reason behind this is that the creators are taking points from two social movement groups, which developer ThePro cites as part of his creative process. These two ideological groups are the Men’s Rights Activists (MRA) and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW). Both groups concern themselves with uplifting men in a society they believe has disenfranchised them. ThePro uses exact language that is more aligned with the more radical MGTOW, but MRAs are also being bunched into this criticism due to how both are associated.
The criticism drawn has been around the language of human reproduction and the stereotypical presentation of masculinity that ThePro believes is important to the survival of humanity. Speaking to Kotaku, ThePro elaborated on his choices, saying the game loosely followed his own life, though it isn’t a carbon copy. Given that the game has the young protagonist talking to his future self, it’s safe to say there are liberties taken. ThePro also states that he doesn’t truly believe all men are weak, instead claiming those with “easy lives” tend to become weak. This line of reasoning follows a quote from a G. Micheal Hopf novel, which is as follows, “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times”.
The rest of the interview that Kotaku had with ThePro is more indecipherable, with the anonymous developer vaguely hinting that his work hopes to save “what makes us human,” with no further elaboration as to what that might be. He did go on to explain that human energy, which he defines through testosterone and estrogen, must be balanced for harmony. In response to the criticism he’s received, ThePro had this to say:
“I have been accused of being ‘transphobic’ and ‘misogynistic’ and more, however, I would like to let everyone know that I have no problem with men, women, trans people, or any other group, as long as they are able to respect me as well. People that have been accusing me showed me no respect and went straight to conclusions, which doesn’t make a good image for them. It’s sad to see we have to live in a world where everyone grows aggressive straight away, however, I would like to have a positive belief that if we start working together instead of against each other, we will find a way to escape the dangers of extinction which are very possible during the current climate”.
It should be noted that not all men’s rights talking points are built upon misogyny, and it would be interesting to touch on some of those issues in the world of gaming. Many single fathers are MRAs due to their perceived disenfranchisement in a court system that seems to deprioritize their presence in the lives of their children. This would be a topic that could be explored with nuance if given the delicate touch this matter requires. Time will tell if ProX.team can accomplish such mature storytelling. As for The Hidden and Unknown, the price tag is already prohibitively expensive for most gamers, but if you are interested, there are walkthroughs available on YouTube