Thank you so much for your post about Did I Fall Asleep. It touched on a few points that are important to me.
This can indeed be a powerful game, and not only in a good way. That’s why I’ve been tailoring the safety mechanics and other components based on player feedback over the past three years. You pointed out the opening meditation, which was identified to me the last time I ran the game as a potential danger. Even though the closing meditation can be very effective in returning the players to themselves, the opening one needs work to be made safer. I have been working on an updated version of the game where the opening meditation guides players in a safer way, offering them the choice to moderate how personally they take the instructions.
The straightforward nature of the evil corporation in the game is an intentional design component. They know that their actions are fully legal, and they’ve got at least one governmental department backing them, so for them ethics are irrelevant. They don’t need to be deceptive: they hold all the cards when it comes to dealing with their agents and they know it. I feel this mirrors real life in an unsettling way. In the corporate world ethics has teeth only as far as it is legislated and enforced. As long as it is in compliance with local laws, a corporation has no motivation to act ethically if doing so would harm its profits. It will exploit its employees, buy its materials from overseas slavers and dump its waste wherever is cheapest. As long as it doesn’t explicitly admit to the public that its actions are unethical, it can be quite transparent about its business practices. Its shareholders don’t care, and no harm comes to the corporation.
Thank you also for mentioning the lack of combat mechanics. Funny enough, the exact hostage situation you described happened in my very first run of this. I feel I should include guidelines for physical touch within the game, but I want to be careful not to do so in such a way that I prime the players for a fight. That’s another design consideration I have for the version in progress.
Thank you again for taking the time to share your feedback on my game. If you wind up facilitating it I would love to hear how it goes.