81–90 of 107 posts
Except the players were talking about beating the game, not the homeless/real-life homelessness. Not amused.
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Except current France doesn't operate according to socialist logic. It's much closer to neo-liberalism too (as most of today's world). Just because the current president has the label "socialist" for historical reasons it doesn't make it socialism.
"Socialist!" is one of those meaningless code words, like "neoliberal!" that just means "bad!" for the intended audience.
This is so totally dumb behaviour, that I can't even begin to describe it. What's equally dumb is assuming that if you agree with some group on one thing, then you should also agree on everything else.
Basically - for me, giving yourself a political label is a sign of subpar thinking. Giving others political labels is disingenuous.
It's an amusing thought, but I imagine that most of these people realise homelessness isn't really a problem you can simply fix by following some set of procedures. Ultimately it's a game to be played for entertainment, and if you can get some people to think about social issues as they play it that's wonderful, but it's still supposed to be enjoyable. Clearly homeless people in the game are impeding some peoples enj…
> it's still supposed to be enjoyable. Clearly homeless people in the game are impeding some peoples enjoyment and it's a problem that is not obvious to solve. This tough boss is impeding my enjoyment of this RPG because I can't mindlessly beat it. This tough level in an FPS is impeding my enjoyment of later levels because I can't beat it. I can't place first in this tough racing track and that is impeding my ability…
I have no idea which category this falls into, just pointing out that your examples can be legitimate.
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I don't think it is inane at all. Lots of games since Monopoly, Elite and running through Civilisation and SimCity have model economics, free trade, and free thinking ideas in-built into the game mechanics. And a lot of economics and free trade ideas seem to be justified by game theory and the naturalistic fallacy. And a lot of chasing GDP or national wealth or Educational policy sometimes seem to be maximising some…
It's a totally made-up analogy with no supporting facts. What does it even mean that "the real America operates according to a video game logic"? Does France operate that way? How about Morocco or Mongolia? It's nonsense.
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It would be more interesting if they had that option just too see how often players would resort to something like that.
In FallOut 3 I was given a choice between blowing up a town and saving it. I went with the evil option, as that seemed to offer a greater reward. Later I went back to the town, and I saw the used-to-be-good-looking NPCs now disfigured, but some still alive. That made me feel really bad about what I did. Also, later I also heard about it on the in-game radio multiple times, which really felt weird, and made me feel ba…
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The 'final solution' option? It's been done in real life of course many times in many countries, but I don't think adding an option to Sim City to round them all up and shoot/gas/incinerate them, or build a 'killing fields' facility is really what people are looking for in that game. In DF we can get some distance from it because it's explicitly a fantasy world, but Sim City is a bit too close to emulating real life…
There's value in giving people choice and making them uncomfortable with the consequences of easy options. The Witcher series is famous for that, and I'd like to see more games took that approach (show what can be done, even give in-game bonuses for evil behaviour, don't judge but show consequences). DF skips over this problem because it's more abstract, and it's just not this kinds of game. Another example - Crusade…
[0] http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Atrocities_%28SMAC%29
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"Socialist!" is one of those meaningless code words, like "neoliberal!" that just means "bad!" for the intended audience.
Totally. Those labels are instant mind-killers and in my book they are tools of the Dark Arts. When someone calls you a "socialist" or "neoliberal" or whatever, they imply you believe everything some ideology has to say, so they can go ahead, point any random weak point (every political ideology has some) and call you a moron. This is so totally dumb behaviour, that I can't even begin to describe it. What's equally d…
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I don't know about GTA, but Sim City is certainly closer to real life than Dwarf Fortress. I agree with the person you're replying to: having the "final solution" in a city management game would be extremely unpalatable to say the least. We do not expect mayors and city planners to behave like that.
I'd actually love to see a game going in that direction. If you try to set up some evil scheme for dealing with homeless, you'd have riots on your hand and citizens storming with guns into your office. Or say, you decide to create a police state, with full surveillance and all the like. You see everyone is happy... unitl the whole thing goes to hell - because people weren't actually happy, your metrics just were wron…
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I'd actually love to see a game going in that direction. If you try to set up some evil scheme for dealing with homeless, you'd have riots on your hand and citizens storming with guns into your office. Or say, you decide to create a police state, with full surveillance and all the like. You see everyone is happy... unitl the whole thing goes to hell - because people weren't actually happy, your metrics just were wron…
I don't think this is possible in a mainstream management game, for the same reason a mainstream extermination camp simulator is not feasible. Just imagine the outrage if Maxis did this.
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My main strategy for quite a while was to race toward Statue of Liberty, then use it to immediately switch to communism; I'm pretty heavily on the side of 'be careful about using games as a metaphor for life' re the OP.
There is no Statue of Liberty in Civ 1. :-) http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty