DAAAVE THE DIVER! Can We Dive It? 

I feel like I have to clarify the Disclaimer. Generally, I just put timestamps and a warning in the comments since Jacob and Julia most of the time address things during the stream, not something they could've done here given that the discussion evolved as the stream went on. I put a disclaimer in this video because there was generalized discontent with the writing in this game. The fact that NPCs would consider Dave's physical appearance "disappointing", and the connection between the Blue Hole and the Philippines. Especially given that a bunch of outsiders decide to pillage it for profit. From conversations a viewer had with the Devs, it was supposed to be a fun detail, since they drew inspiration from the location. However, it could also be interpreted as if the game set place *in* the Philippines. Since we heard a lot of concerns from people, I decided to put a disclaimer up front so everyone would know that we weren't ignoring the themes in the game. I'm sorry to the people who thought it was gonna be worse than it was, that's on me. We prefer to be extra cautious than to shrug off people's concerns, even more so with things that are usually overlooked. -Khaztaroth WARNING This game is very chill and very fun to play, however, there's an unfortunate amount of ruthless capitalism, colonialism. As well as some fatphobic lines directed at the main character. The capitalism and colonialism are kinda the theme for the entire game but Draz did mark the fatphobic / body shaming dialogue for me, so there's timestamps for that as chapters and as a response to this comment. Secret Sleepover Society is every Sunday & Wednesday at 9 pm EST www.twitch.tv/secretsleepoversociety

idk why jacob saying the narstiest things like "that crab is going right into dave's gooch" always catches me off guard when it happens all the time

Shoutout to all the work that Draz and Khaz do to make the vods comfortable and accessible for as many people as possible. Y’all are so appreciated.

Speaking as something of an (excuse the scientific jargon here) great big fatty boom-sticks, I found it refreshing to see a game where the main character is a hefty gent whose proportions don't stop him from being excellent at his job. The fact that Dave takes the ill-informed statements of the people around him and proves them wrong is kind of inspirational. In the end, Dave comes off as cool, professional and likable, and everyone else comes across as kinda judgey and ill-informed. And it's really nice to have that sort of representation. As for the ruthless capitalism, lot of that comes from Cobra, who seems deliberately portrayed as something of a dodgy snake-oil salesman. With that said, that's my perspective, and others are 100% welcome to theirs should they feel differently.

Is the capitalism more ruthless than Jacob's Capybara Spa?

TBH, I think the warning at the beginning of the video was a little overkill. I wouldn't call anything in this game "ruthless capitalism," and the fatphobic comments are pretty mild (speaking as a fat guy myself). That being said, I really appreciate the work that Khaz and the other mods put into all this, putting a disclaimer at the beginning and finding timestamps for any parts that people might find troubling. I'd rather have them err on the side of being too inclusive, rather than not inclusive enough. If that means the occasional disclaimer that I think is unnecessary, I'm willing to live with it. I think this whole thing is a sign of how caring this community is, and it makes me really happy to see it.

I agree with most of the comments - while the game contains 'not good' things (commenting on someone's appearance, exploiting an employee), it's never condoning those things and that's kind of the point. We're set up to side with Dave so see the rude comments said to him for the bad things they are. I assume that setting him up as someone too nice for their own good will pay off, story-wise, cause if everyone is perfect at the start then where's the story? I just wanted to add that, while I generally appreciate specific content warnings, the vague-ness and severity of this one made the entire first hour of this an anxious and uncomfortable experience. I was just sitting waiting for something awful to be said or done, and it wasn't until I read the comments that I realized that this is actually a pretty chill game.

olive oil and soy sauce? More like olive oil and joy sauce ammirite

Bummer discloser aside, I adore Dave. His design and movements are adorable.

oof, those disclaimers… well, if you're davely divin, you can cuddle cats 2:12 needy joy (only with jacob) + now with julia 4:10 baby joy 9:14 right in the butt, olive appears 16:22 hello miss olive (leggies) 17:35 more pets 18:35 sweet orange cat 42:32 snorin joy 50:12 + 50:41 adorable olive pics 51:30 joy, u twitchin? 58:40 i assume julia sound is because of cat 1:04:27 startled joy + joy gettin on the soundboard 1:20:02 momo 1:22:24 look at this cute kitty cat 1:42:10 orange cat acquired 1:43:03 noticing miss olive 1:52:00 oo joy

mild spoilers for some content in the vid: long comment warning! all this is intended in good faith, i appreciate you guys thinking about this stuff. imo these warnings are a bit over the top. i hate capitalism as much as the next hardcore communist, but i wouldn't call this "ruthless colonialism". it's just a dude opening a sushi restaurant. yes they're exploiting natural resources for (tiny) profit, and sure the guy seems greedy and shitty, but it's not like it's a foreign megacorp running a trawler through the whole place, polluting the environment, silencing activists, paying off local politicians, etc lol. it's a 1 guy diving operation, they're not really doing that much damage so far. more importantly, i have to imagine the game is going to show that there's consequences to their exploitation down the line (the giant squid destroying their restaurant or something maybe). i'm not in disagreement with pointing it out with a disclaimer like "game contains depictions of exploiting natural resources and poor treatment of an employee" or something, i appreciate when people are willing to question representations of capitalism - i'm just surprised because there's far MORE capitalist games on this channel that didn't receive the same acknowledgement (satisfactory being one obvious example). i would heavily disagree with the idea that the game needs to be rewritten to not contain a capitalist structure at all, i think that thought misses the point. the fat-shaming thing/general meanness is good to point out though, and i agree the writing could be made just a bit more sympathetic to Dave, as it definitely reads like he's just being exploited for being kind of gullible.

As someone who has been a certified scuba driver for 7 years and done more than 50 dives, I will testify: most divers look like dave. it's not a sport that discriminates based on size. its mostly just swimming, and it does burn calories but most divers only go diving like once a year bc it can be pricey to do. also in some areas with invasive fish the local divers will use a harpoon to kill the fish. in Belize they would try to kill lionfish bc they have no natural predators in the area. and then they would cook them at the surface

dave is honestly way too kind, get behind me dave i'll beat them up for u

smdh we all know Dave is hot and this game can't convince me otherwise. I always appreciate how body positive/overall accepting Drawfee pals are but I'm gunna keep saying how much I appreciate it

I resemble Dave WAAYYY too much. In like, every aspect. Hey nice people! It's OK to say no. Not letting someone else exploit your kindness and desire to be generally helpful doesn't make you less kind. It just keeps you more healthy.

Being built exactly like Dave I can confidently determine our boi I fatbuff, he's at the PEAK of human physical fitness!

Everyone will probably say the same but I feel like it can't be said too much. So thank you so much for your hard work and dedication to making sure this is an inclusive and safe community

Please never stop showing pictures of the cats on your phones I just love it

While some of the dialogue (in what I've watched so far, fit these videos in in pieces when I have the time) is indeed right on the edge of iffy, as someone who loves doing adventurous outdoorsy activities and sometimes has to deal with "you can't do this you're fat" comments, watching Dave do his thing well is on the balance giving me such size representation euphoria...

Dave is such a good character! I hope he gets treated better, I really like this game ty guys for sharing it!

More ruthlessly capitalist than Capybara Spa!? (jokes aside, well done on always putting in the effort for the viewers, Khaz and whoever else. Y'all help make SecretSleepover the lovely place it is.)

The funny thing is that the oldest cat lived to be 36 years old, so Jacob's not too far off.

Before I give my opinion: if this really was triggering to some people, your feelings are valid. My opinion on the game doesn’t make your feelings any less valid, and I’m very sorry people made or are making you sad. Love yourselves lovely peeps, you are beautiful! ❤ That being said here’s my opinion, lol. I totally appreciate the attempt to be inclusive with trigger warnings, I’ve benefited from them many times myself (jump-scare and arachnophobia warnings and the like,) but this feels a little overkill. I was bracing myself for some brutal body-shaming, name-calling, and depressing money-hungry tones. But there were like, a couple back-handed comments about Dave “not being what they expected” of him, and the side characters that run the businesses focused on earning money above anything else. Maybe it’s just me, but those seem like, SUPER mild..? I had to go to the comments to figure out what the disclaimer was even referring to, lol. I feel like it’s actually a little mean and insulting to the devs to call this “poor writing choices” and the like. Not all characters are gonna be nice, wonderful people with only nice things to say. I’d go so far as to say MOST games have somewhat antagonistic characters. Overall this was a super happy, cheerful game. Dave is a relatable, kinda down on his luck underdog character that you want to root for. In my opinion, the devs don’t need to change anything. TLDR: compared to some of the other SSS streams, I’m confused why this of all games needed a disclaimer/trigger warning at all, let alone such a dramatic one PLUS calling out the devs?

I think the disclaimer/warning would be more helpful if it was more specific, mentioning “exploitation of natural environment” and “killing fish”. The purpose of this warning shouldn’t necessarily be to condemn these topics, but just to inform players who are sensitive to them.

**Spoilers below that are instantly revealed in game play** So... For those wanting to know more about the disclaimer, the two "fat phobic" statements were both about Dave not being who the speaking characters expected. The first said she expected someone younger and hotter. The second said he thought divers were athletic and muscular. That's all. Take them how you wish. As for "ruthless capitalism" and "colonialism", the game seems to be set in a special place where all kinds of sealife exists in a contained area (the "Blue Hole") and this guy, Cobra, wants to exploit that for profit by setting up a sushi shop and ropes in Dave. Cobra is extremely obviously a horrible person only wanting money and not caring about anything else. I've no idea why these are classified as "bad writing decisions" and personally think it's a little insulting to the devs to suggest they change anything. The two characters who made the comments are just ignorant people uncouth enough to verbalize that Dave doesn't meet their stereotyped expectations. They have bad opinions. The gameplay is diving for fish for sushi, pouring drinks, serving customers. Basically like many restaurant type games. It's really not that bad. I don't see how this is called "ruthless"; SSS features far worse capitalist games. The major flag here is the exploitation of an ecosystem. I'm not sure this really qualifies as colonialism. Maybe they're targeting the native people, I missed who the customers are. I hope that's helpful to anyone who looked in the comments for clarification. Whether these things are problematic or not is a personal choice and you can skip them with the timestamps. Hopefully I made sense, since my sleep medication kicked in 😅

I love this game, but The NPCs are SOOOO MEAN. Dave is just a sweetheart that just keeps getting suckered into their schemes, and bullied...

I love the Duff animation, especially at the end when it references the Man and God painting what's name I can't recall by Michelangelo

Ash's name in Japan is Satoshi, so the Sato character is 100% a reference of an older Ash.

I’m so confused by the comments about the “unfortunate writing decisions.” I’m pretty sure the devs aren’t condoning fatphobia, colonialism, and capitalism just because the characters are fatphobic, colonialistic, and capitalistic. This feels like when men misread the themes of Fight Club. The disclaimers are still appreciated tho because it still might be triggering

Yes Julia. Many animals will play with things, actually. They recently found that bumble bees will play with balls by pushing and rearranging them at random. Also a pink pearl is a conch pearl. Since the conch lacks nascent, they tend to be dull and rough/powdery compared to the pearls you would normally think of. Every shelled mollusk is capable of creating a pearl, but the majority don’t have the nascent that makes it shiny, smooth and resistant to degradation in sea water.

I don't know what I expected from the France clip but that wasn't it I'm dying 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Thank you for the disclaimer! I am in Eating Disorder recovery and use these vlogs to distract me while I eat… I’m using the chapter references to help 💙 thanks for the work you do!

I appreciated the warning but I do feel the fatphobia was milder than anticipated, but the more I think about it the worse it gets so I guess it's worse in hindsight than it is in the moment. I think it could've been said for any protagonist, and the fact that they went for a fat protagonist in the first place as someone who, as far as I can tell, is never the butt of the joke in the story, makes me like this game even more.

Im kind of confused by the warning at the start, I feel like most of the themes are satyrical? Going under, which was also played on this channel, had similar themes of rampant capitalism

Jacob singing Dave the Diver in the voice and rhythm of holy diver absolutely killed me !!

I don't experience much of it myself, so take this with a pinch of salt, but at least to me the inclusion of fatphobia seems more like a commentary on it than intended cruelty? As in, Dave is clearly the protagonist and in the right and just knows a bunch of terrible people, so we're primed to be on his side, and then everyone has something to say about how he looks, and it feels like we're *meant* to dislike that because it's a nigh on constant thing that fat people experience in real life, when it's super easy to just keep our mouths shut about other people's bodies. That all said, I can't imagine it's at all comfortable for people who already experience it in real life so I can understand why it should probably be changed. Or maybe have it as an option in the settings or something?

27:57 Julia stares a sword through Jacob's soul

I feel like the way the disclaimer was made at the beginning was a bit much. Like, it’s really good to warn people about content that they may find triggering, but also saying that the devs made “an unfortunate writing choice” is a bit judgmental. Because of this I went into the video thinking that the fatphobia would be way worse than it was, and so it kind of put me on edge the whole time thinking some character was gonna say something horrible. I’d say in the future, either have the warnings listed under the video in the description, or have the warnings just be warnings, like just say “warnings for xy and z” instead of editorializing with judgement towards the devs and saying they should change it.

More explicit warnings of what exactly to expect would be more helpful in the future. This was very mild and it would have been nice if it was portrayed that way. Also it’s a bummer that the entire comment section is discussing the warning instead of a very cute game with a very good fat protagonist.

I hope they keep playing! I wanna see Dave's Arc! Thanks khaz for the vods!

I’m curious as to what “unfortunate writing decisions” means

i love haggard olive pic, she's such a delightful little creature

Considering the disclaimers and warnings, I know it's likely that they might not stream it again. However, I really enjoyed watching and for me it wasn't too bad. I hope they can play it again.

Thank you for the content warnings! I'm recovering from disordered eating and I really appreciate being able to skip potentially triggering dialogue. You're doing god's work, Khaz!!

i don't typically comment but i just so happen to refresh my page literally the second this was posted and thats so wild for me to see like. no views or comments so i'm posting this out of self decided social obligation- love Jacob and Julia, might not watch all of this one through cause of the warning, but i saw cat as the title so i had to at least watch the intro

always so nice to hear my sub being read cause it doesn't always show up :) but also loved this game, hope Julia keeps playing it on stream. i want to see dave get his groove back and break free of the chains of capitalism

Personally, as a fat person, I think the disclaimer was a bit over the top. However the disclaimer is not there for me, it's a safeguard for people who might react worse to what's going on. Obviously the game caused enough of a discussion in chat to warrant this disclaimer, and I think it's good that we try and be kind to one another and build each other up instead of invalidating other people's feelings. Better safe then sorry! I've played the game myself and I did react to some characters underestimating or even being rude to Dave because of his appearance, but I felt like Dave responded with the most obvious comeback and didn't accept getting bullied. In one way, a few of the characters underestimate Dave who is a very capable individual that actually makes everything happen. I guess you could see it either way.

Wow! Julia does such a good Tobey Maguire. Will you guys keep playing this one? I hope so, wanna see sea people

speaking as a fat gal myself, Dave's overly food-centric dialog is the more fatphobic element to me than the npcs who find him to be "not what they expected." like, those aren't nice comments either, but the fact is there's a multi-centuries long tendency for writers to unthinkingly make "LIKES FOOD" the primary character trait of every large character and it's so tiring. my advice to the devs, should they see this, is make Dave lean harder into his passion for diving and limit his comments on food to as little as possible. make the skinny characters the gluttons.

While I'm trying to be understanding of the disclaimer for fatphobia, it's really saddening that it will probably turn some people away from this amazing game. I truly believe that the explicit negative comments on Dave's appearance (the one from Duff mainly, since Ellie's, while unsollicited, could also be easily read as her personal preferences), were framed correctly, as a way to empathize with the protagonist, given by people we are clearly on the wrong side. It made me feel more for the Dave and it gave me more insight of what he has to deal with. Of course this is not a hill I'm dying on: I don't know the devs, their intentions and what they stand for. It might also just be a case of fat jokes for comedy sake, but I find that highly unlikely, the game has heart and, going back to the start, it saddens me that some people might be turned from it because of the disclaimer since they will miss that sort of pride I felt from Dave's representation and defying of expectations.

There's something about how there's never much comment about, I dunno, the much more frequent case of a game that has no fat major characters, but there's a warning for much milder negative treatment than I've received IRL on many occasions It makes it seem like we're expected to have a stronger emotional response to this than to not existing, and this is very much not my experience. Ditto the colonialism--it's totally a thing, but I'm not sure it's worse than games routinely only taking place in the same parts of the same countries where people can safely pretend it doesn't exist. It puts me off a lot more than the content, because I know sometimes fictional characters aren't always nice people, but the big warning--especially compared to the warnings that normally get put up!--makes it seem like a lot of people would have preferred the game was never played at all, when a lot of business sims with less cultural and body diversity would not have anybody batting an eyelash. Do viewers routinely get dev comment about lack of diversity? Are those games "yikes"? Not that I mind some warning, I just think this was more hurtful than the standard comment and timestamps format.

Love Jacob's jellyfish shirt. I would wear that

its so nice that caz always takes care to mark possibly distressing moments from the stream in the video chapters. as well as the disclaimers and warnings and stuff, but im not sure who does that. if its caz again thank u :)

top tier thumbnail, great work

Thank you for your work Draz and Khaz!!!!💜

I’d love to sea more of Daaaave diving

"I'm about to beat your ass, Duff" yeah! Get 'im!

I LOVE Jacob's shirt, I truly LOVE it

I hope we can see them play more of this game !!

God this gives me flashbacks to the one Arthur game with the mini game where you dived for treasure and had to avoid sharks and stuff. and i always played at the library. 90s kids know what im talking about

I really appreciate content warnings but I felt like this was an instance that could have been handled better, as in telling more explicitely what was going on that could be triggering. Since the warning was so strong yet so vague, I didn't watch the vod and waited for the comments to roll in to hopefully get a better grasp on what is the potentially triggering content and read a lot about the content warning being too overkill. Yeah, I don't know, I'll be sitting out on this vod.

38:42 Yikes, that's some not great game design, having an important tutorial prompt close when you press the same button that you were just mashing furiously. Hope that gets fixed.

If it's an issue of vsync/FPS capping then you can force vsync on through the NVIDIA control panel, I'm pretty sure, even if the game doesn't have the option.

1:37:20 Those dolphin noises sound so much like my cat I had to replay it a bunch to make sure it was the stream and not him screaming at me from like two rooms away.

I have no idea if they look at comments here, but Jacob, you could try setting an external frame rate cap from your graphics card settings. It’s what I ended up doing with a similar problem I had where the game had no frame rate cap and was stuttering like crazy, capped it to 60 with my graphics card’s setting app and had no issues

remember when Julia was gonna leave after completing the mission and Jacob said do a bunch more stuff and then it froze and lost progress

Jacob and Julia's outfits are perfect

That is a dope shirt. I want Jacob's shirt.

I can't be sure that it's the same thing but that flicker happened to me once and I fixed it. I believe it was because of a windows update error. Check optional updates and I would suggest not using streamlabs

I genuinely appreciate the disclaimer at the beginning of the vid

Fawnce!

I have that same shirt Jacob

I appreciate the marking of distressing moments. I'd have to see how it's portrayed (I'm only about half-way through the video), but I don't think it's necessarily bad that there's capitalism and colonialism in the game. If they're shown as bad things, then I'm generally okay with it's usage. Having said that, I can see how those could be distressing even portrayed as such, so marking it is welcome and appreciated.

aw this is sooo playable go off

At Dink Loe sounds like the name of a video game lmao

Ohh a Yikes disclaimer at the beginning. I'm intrigued yet kind of worried. If it was worth posting to the archive channel though, I'm sure it can't be... THAT bad... right?

is it just me or… does cobra look like a surfer-dude Clint McElroy

I know Dave has the look of a Discord/Reddit Mod who unironically calls women he just met "M'lady" or "sweetheart," but Dave... just has a pure soul. He's very adorable and naive, and I kinda feel bad he's working with these circumstances, haha. And he's the best diver! Forget about touching grass, touch ocean water respecfully like Dave does.

Jacob: I don’t want to eat that. I know that the teeth won’t be in the sushi, but I’ll know that they were there. Me: it’s gonna get worse, Jacob. It’s gonna get way worse.

jellyfish shirt for a game about diving is inspired

I love their outfits for this stream 🐠

So VERY thankful that you include content warnings on your vods, but as someone with anxiety who catastophizes I think this one was too strong and freaked out a lot of viewers. Obviously there are some super rude characters and exploitation of the natural environment going on in this game, but I don't think the devs should be called out for game mechanics so similar to so many other games.

ahhhh i really want some sushi now

Dave is hot you can't change my mind. STAND UP FOR YOURSELF BBY

Everyone make sure to say your daily thank you mods to draz and khaz especially for all they’re hard work!

The little ringing noise in the game made me think someone was at my more than once, which made me go to my door confused af multiple times. This is a PSA for you to not be as stupid as me.

I fell asleep last night watching this stream on my phone and was rudely awoken by women yelling country names and only today, as I watched the final part while working, I fully grasped where they came from

i want a patch for an npc thatis nice to dave and helps with stuff.

1:15:38 i was playing fortnite when he said this and it cracked me up

wooo hi Julia and Jacob one of the first

I couldn’t just not click on that thumbnail

Super late to the party because I've been backlogged on SSS videos, but I'm curious if you two are running Windows 10 or Windows 11? I started having the irritating screen flicker issue in just about every game I was playing, and it didn't matter what display settings I set in game. It happened in windowed mode, fullscreen, borderless. Some games would recover, others would irrecoverably freeze until I ended the process. When I updated from Windows 10 to Windows 11, the screen flickers stopped. I haven't had an issue with it since. So I'm not sure if a Windows 10 update is breaking or causing conflicts with the display drivers, or if the OS itself is becoming corrupted. Simply reinstalling Windows might fix it but even that's a hassle. There's stuff about Win 11 that I don't like, but at least it fixed the most annoying problem I was having.

Have you tried an exorcism? Or maybe crystilopathy? Oh! Ask a Luigi board what’s causing it!

It Took The Pissboy Ship.

Car go box? Uh I think you mean a battery #duh 😎

Elle Woods for Fortnite when?🙏

Does anyone know why they have started doing two ad breaks instead of just one? The way they talk about it, makes it seem like it's not their choice.

1:12:59 Tommy Tallarico behavior

The warning had me really stressed out and I wasn’t even sure if I would watch this one but honestly I didn’t think it was that bad. Still kinda felt nauseous the whole time watching tho

i was positive thought it was a parody of Bob the builder when i clicked