Reminds me of the Mitchell and Webb sketch 'Kill all the poor', where they statistically decide whether it would solve their problems.
Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug or a Feature?
61–70 of 107 posts
Re: Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug or a Feature?
#62>How to get rid of homeless reproduces dozens of threads concerning "homelessness" that appeared in Electronic Arts' online forum between 2012 and 2013. This is the $ 150 book?! with 438 pages? This is easy money!
I wonder how they cleared all those copyrighted posts.
If the author cleared them, then it explains the cover price.
Re: Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug or a Feature?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of them. It is a common accepted reality in game design that players will take any shortcut offered. Players will go so far as skipping content just to "solve" a challenge with the fastest method. Players would jump at genocide if it solved their problem. It would be an interesting result if it was not so predictable.
Unless the outcome is not clear. Killing off all homeless people would get rid of homelessness(obviously) but it might have a long term negatives, so not everyone will elect to do it. Just like in many RPG games you can make "evil" and "good" choices. In many instances, going with "evil" makes the game much easier - instead of doing a 2 hour long quest to find someone's lost ring, you can just kill the person and tak…
> In many instances, going with "evil" makes the game much easier
I agree. I find that many games present the moral choices in a way that become a "what possible reward do I want" choice.
One of the best ways moral choices were presented were in Skyrim, with the Deadric Princes' quests. You usully had to do some horrible thing (murder, cannibalism, torture, etc.) and you would be rewarded with a cool magical item. The moral choice is glarangly present while not being explicitly stated. You either do the quest or you don't. And that resonated with me because I believe that while there are many motivations for being evil (selfishness, greed, desire of power, sadism), the motivation and reward for being good is itself.
Re: Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug or a Feature?
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Is Sim City really closer to real life than GTA? I am no more the near-omnipotent mayor of a new town than I am a crook for hire with a penchant for running over ISKCon members.
Mass murder isn't a real life option/goal of very many mayors so in that respect yes it would be dissimilar, whereas very nasty guns for hire occasionally do very nasty things?
There's an implied benevolence to being a sim mayor - keeping people happy and employed while keeping the city clean and profitable is "success" as defined by the game. I mean, feel free to play it however you want but that's the stated metric for the game.
Re: Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug or a Feature?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Is Sim City really closer to real life than GTA? I am no more the near-omnipotent mayor of a new town than I am a crook for hire with a penchant for running over ISKCon members.
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.
Re: Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug or a Feature?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a tendancy to treat real world problems in an overly abstract way. That you pursue an argument because of a particular dogma rather than actual empathy for the victims of a problem. For example people love to debate funding of healthcare (which we can all disagree on) whilst loosing site of its actual purpose (which we mostly agree about). The same is true of homelessness where it is easy to discuss it in br…
You got it. I have relatives who work with the homeless, and one of the striking things is the population that is growing now: veterans. Politicians love waving flags and "supporting the troops". But when some if these men come home and can't adjust, the flags get out away. Many turn to alcohol and start a spiral the ends on a street somewhere.
In Boston goes around to pick up the homeless and bring them to Pine Street or another shelter but you cannot force them to get into the van and they still die on the street. I don't know what the solution is but you will never be able to pass a law forcing them into the van.
Re: Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug or a Feature?
#67>How to get rid of homeless reproduces dozens of threads concerning "homelessness" that appeared in Electronic Arts' online forum between 2012 and 2013. This is the $ 150 book?! with 438 pages? This is easy money!
I wonder how they cleared all those copyrighted posts.
I'll bet you five to one that the EA forum terms of use have users sign away the copyright on their posts. So they only had to get a license from EA.
Re: Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug or a Feature?
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a common strategy was to make the nobledwarfs accommodation floodable with lava I've not played Dwarf Fortress for a while, but were there any consequences to killing the nobledwarfs like that? The game is so comprehensive I'm wondering if the creators considered that strategy.
As far as I remember it just makes his family and friends upset, and anybody who witnesses the death, which is usually always preferable to him going mental and sentencing your master metalworker to death because he refused to make -=* platinum trumpets*=-
He gets sentenced to prison, which is inconvenient, unless you don't have any space for him, then he gets sentenced to hammering (exactly what it sounds like), which is what kills or maims him, but it is possible to survive. Giving important dwarves (or just-sentenced ones) armour, removing Urist McHammerer's hammer or replacing it with a nonlethal one, or just walling him up somewhere are all viable strategies to keep important dwarves alive, but kill^H^H^H^H arranging an Unfortunate Accident[1] for troublesome nobles is arguably easiest.
[1]http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Unfortunate_accident
Re: Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug or a Feature?
#69It'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…
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 - Crusader Kingdoms 2 - this game is all about incests, backstabbing and assasination, but somehow it's funny not deep.
I agree it's probably not good idea for games targeted at children.
Re: Is 'SimCity' Homelessness a Bug or a Feature?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yeah, on the other hand they do indoctrinate, whether this is intended or not. Everybody talks about brutal games and how a twelve year may go on a shooting spree having played too much of Call of Duty or whatever. Causation never proven, given the number of players vs. rampage killers. Now isn't planting an idea such as that Democracy is inherently Coruption-free (or something equally nonsensical) much worse brainwa…
But it generally is, relative to the other forms of government. Democracy is the only form of government where you can prosecute corruption or end corrupt regimes without violence, and in my book that's close enough. For a simplified game mechanic, this is intuitive and makes sense. Anything more nuanced, and it isn't a game anymore.
http://blog.transparency.org/2009/11/17/cpi2009/
And Civ is not responsible for the CPI