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sullat
Jan 9, 2012
Weird everyone knows that the only true justice is that meted out by hammering the nearest crafter for failing to meet production mandates.

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BadOptics
Sep 11, 2012

Mantis42 posted:

It's a good book but also the moon anarchist should have sided with the USSR analog instead of whining about everything.

Look, anarchism can work! You just need to somehow get the capitalists to send you to a completely different planetary body!! I actually can't remember how they even got there it's been so long since I read that book; did they just annoy both the USSR/US analogs enough that they both sent them to the moon (that sounded like it was a pretty lovely place)?

Mister Bates
Aug 4, 2010
Yeah the anarchists getting the moon was essentially a compromise deal to try to stave off world revolution by shipping all of the radicals off to the colonies

The anarchists got the short end of the stick, too - not only is the moon a barren wasteland that can barely produce enough food to sustain a population, it's also explicitly stated that the only reason the anarchists are allowed to continue existing up there is because they keep the flow of raw materials the moon was originally settled for coming. They're described as a 'resource colony' and it's mentioned that the periodic shipments of mined minerals are major events for the capitalist state's stock market - so not only did sending them up there end the general strike and stop the revolution, the anarchists are actually directly perpetuating the capitalist state's existence and are functionally still participating in the capitalist world-system in every way that matters. This is explicit text, too, it's not just implied.

When she calls it an 'ambiguous utopia' it's ambiguous in more ways than one

Slavvy
Dec 11, 2012

Naturally the anarchists think they're totally free and independent, too

It really is perfect

fermun
Nov 4, 2009
the anarchists also operate under a system of societal pressure more oppressive than an actual authoritarian state would be to force everyone into doing exactly what the non-state state demands, idk if she actually did read it while she was writing but the tyranny of the structurelessness came out while she would have been writing

Cassian of Imola
Feb 9, 2011

Keeping her memory alive!

fermun posted:

the anarchists also operate under a system of societal pressure more oppressive than an actual authoritarian state would be to force everyone into doing exactly what the non-state state demands, idk if she actually did read it while she was writing but the tyranny of the structurelessness came out while she would have been writing

beginning to see a pattern here:

songs of syx dev made a nazi game by depicting racism

le guin wrote an anti-anarchist book by depicting colonialism and poverty (accidentally lol)

Fuligin
Oct 27, 2010

wait what the fuck??

Dont think it was by accident

Cerebral Bore
Apr 21, 2010


Fun Shoe
anarchists reinventing the state and just calling it something else you say?

fermun
Nov 4, 2009
it's a really good book, btw

Endman
May 18, 2010

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even anime may die


depicting racism isn’t the problem; making criminal behaviour a function of race is

Iriscoral
Apr 9, 2023

为人民服务
racism is fundamentally a feature of the superstructure; its a generated thought-system to continously enforce the inherent hierarchies and material differences within society, from different groups against others

any game or media attempting to model racism that does not understand this relationship is wasting your time

Iriscoral has issued a correction as of 12:49 on Apr 28, 2024

Endman
May 18, 2010

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even anime may die


throwing Pac-Man in the loving trash for its lack of thoughtful critique of cybernetic racism

Regarde Aduck
Oct 19, 2012

c l o u d k i t t e n
Grimey Drawer

Iriscoral posted:

racism is fundamentally a feature of the superstructure; its a generated thought-system to continously enforce the inherent hierarchies and material differences within society, from different groups against others

any game or media that does not understand this relationship is wasting your time

Even unmodded minecraft?

Regarde Aduck
Oct 19, 2012

c l o u d k i t t e n
Grimey Drawer
Oh gently caress I just remembered the endermen

Cassian of Imola
Feb 9, 2011

Keeping her memory alive!

Endman posted:

depicting racism isn’t the problem; making criminal behaviour a function of race is

They're different species created by different warring gods, not humans with different colour skin. The different species aren't a veneer or analogy for real-world cultural groups, they're the result of an alternate natural history influenced by supernatural forces. We recognise the impact of isolation and lack of sunlight on human behaviour, 'culture shock', etc. Why do you expect pacifist pig-men or communal insects not to commit crimes when wars of conquest force them to integrate into a civilisation that outlaws their longstanding customs and even biological imperatives? Why would you expect good behaviour out of a species that gets moody in the absence of water but is forced to live in the desert? This is all before you consider that elves are natural cannibals

The main issue, it seems like, is the game's genre. You can create apartheid rather than simply inhabit and navigate it like you would in an RPG, so you feel more responsible, and you don't think the option should be there. But other games in the management genre do similar stuff. Frostpunk famously allows you to be very cruel to people. You can go full fascist, or theocratic, or enslave workers, or create dependent colonies through coercion. But allowing you to govern that way isn't endorsing that kind of government even if it happened to become a meme hit on 4chan. Being able to create an Elves First empire in Songs of Syx that butchers humans like cattle doesn't mean the game is taking a pro-cannibalism stance; nor, obviously, does the game plausibly draw any analogy to a real-world culture/haplogroup with cannibal elves (or amphibian lizards, or giant demigods, or whatever)

Cassian of Imola
Feb 9, 2011

Keeping her memory alive!
the King of Dragon Pass/Six Ages series is another good point of comparison, in that you manage a neolithic tribe in a world where their mythology is true, and not just gods and spirits but trolls, elves, giants, demons, etc. all really exist. nobody to my knowledge seriously calls that game racist even though for mechanical reasons, depending on your traditions and who you worship, it's sometimes a good idea to discriminate against nonhumans or humans with different cultures

fermun
Nov 4, 2009
in rimworld i only accept baseline humans and pigmen in my colonies.

Mister Bates
Aug 4, 2010
so the difference here is mostly that the dev is both fully aware of the game's popularity as a racist meme and is fully embracing it because it makes him money - per his own posts when the sseth video came out he made six months of normal sales in a single day

over time the racism system has been getting more and more fleshed out and made a bigger and bigger part of the world, and there's an obvious and annoying glee to it (there's a patchnote that's literally 'added more hate and racism. :)' with a cutesy little smiley at the end) and it's starting to seriously skeeve me out

I don't even dislike the game, it's a very unique and compelling take on the genre, but sorry, when something in it is worth criticizing I'm going to criticize it

like, the developer chose to put a detailed slavery mechanic in the game, and then chose to include levers in the game's systems that allow punishment to be meted out unequally based on race in such a way that race-based slavery is possible, and that's fuckin weird, so I am going to say it's fuckin weird. it's not a real universe, it is a fictional property someone made up, so it was a conscious choice to do those things, and it's one that's worth talking about

Mister Bates has issued a correction as of 14:43 on Apr 28, 2024

sullat
Jan 9, 2012

Cassian of Imola posted:

the King of Dragon Pass/Six Ages series is another good point of comparison, in that you manage a neolithic tribe in a world where their mythology is true, and not just gods and spirits but trolls, elves, giants, demons, etc. all really exist. nobody to my knowledge seriously calls that game racist even though for mechanical reasons, depending on your traditions and who you worship, it's sometimes a good idea to discriminate against nonhumans or humans with different cultures

They have metal tools and weapons they are more bronze age than neolithic

Mister Bates
Aug 4, 2010
you could, if you absolutely had to include systems like that for some reason, handle them in an interesting and thoughtful way, depicting them without implying endorsement of them, but I don't think he really did here

why is this system here? like, from a game design perspective, why is there a racism system in the game? it is mainly to make building a cosmopolitan multi-species city more difficult, to require you to put more effort into urban planning than just cramming everybody into blocks of the same buildings in the same layout in the same places, and introduce some costs to balance out the fact that different species are good at different things, which would by itself make having as many different species as possible just a straight-up upgrade over a city of a single species. that's not a bad idea, it makes sense, it adds an additional complication that makes for more interesting gameplay decisions - but it was not necessary to do it in that way, there were other ways you could have served up those same challenges and those same strategic decisions, without making an entire system to handle racial animosity. there should be a good reason you did that if you are going to do it.

now, does it make sense, in the lore of the setting? yes, absolutely, it does. of course it does. he wrote it. it's made up. he wrote it in such a way that it makes sense, but did not have to. that was a conscious and deliberate decision someone made. asking why you did that is something we should be allowed to do.

Minenfeld!
Aug 21, 2012



I played the demo months ago and liked it. I bought it during the sale but haven't played yet. Looking back at patch notes it's exactly as you say and it feels bad. I always thought the way the Witcher world did racism was interesting because of how hosed up the world was and it all seemed plausible during times of war, migrations, and economically. But then it also let you take stands to protect folks. This feels different in tone and intent.

Mister Bates
Aug 4, 2010
(also Glorantha, the setting KODP and Six Ages are based in, is really not a good counterexample because much as I love that silly dumb setting and its associated games it's also racist as gently caress lmao - not in a malicious way, but the setting was written by a white self-described 'shaman' in the late 1960s so yeah)

you just kind of have to accept that it comes with the territory if you're going to read fantasy literature as an indigenous person, and grit your teeth and try to find the fun anyway - I also love the poo poo out of Shadowrun and its depiction of indigeneity is a hilarious cartoon caricature written by white men who were really really earnestly trying not to be racist and missed so hard

Mister Bates has issued a correction as of 15:25 on Apr 28, 2024

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DJJIB-DJDCT
Feb 1, 2024

Cassian of Imola posted:

the King of Dragon Pass/Six Ages series is another good point of comparison, in that you manage a neolithic tribe in a world where their mythology is true, and not just gods and spirits but trolls, elves, giants, demons, etc. all really exist. nobody to my knowledge seriously calls that game racist even though for mechanical reasons, depending on your traditions and who you worship, it's sometimes a good idea to discriminate against nonhumans or humans with different cultures

Marchen aren’t racist per se, but they’re about the ethnogenesis of a race

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