- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Controversial gaming opinion: video games are good.
What are controversial gaming opinions you have?
E.I.G.
Robo-Bird
- Pronouns
- It/They
For a video game example, HBS Battletech starts off with Arano showing up and bailing you out of debt that was about to kill you by giving you a fancy mobile base with the expectation that you fight her war for her.
The gameplay doesn't hard require obedience, but Battletech is also kind of a setting where subordinates going off to break things happens.
You essentially need a Deus Ex Machina to sweep players out of a TCS unless you go and No Bad consequences came of your actions taken to avoid your employer trying to screw you over ever .
Its one of the reasons why I haven't actually run such a scenario before.
ELH got released because Victor says go join the Star League. Wolf dragoons used their commandoes to enact the escape plan Hegira and then subsequently fought a vendetta against House Kurita.
On the eve of being absorbed by House Davion, They asked for Outreach to be given to them, revitalised Blackwell and managed to turn things around because Wolf Dragoons.
The usual suggested scenario is that your unsanctioned raid finds a SL outpost or other lostech.
That or.... Somehow maneveur your way around not getting caught in said trap.
- Location
- United Kingdom
- Pronouns
- She/Her
So you think non-op trans women who have been raped shouldn't be allowed into shelters?
Like, that's what this position is, we are just all meant to pretend this isn't what it is, because it makes you uncomfortable to say it, so you say things like "someone with a penis" or "male genitals".
You don't see protecting trans rape victims from rapists as being equal in moral weight to preventing cis rape victims from possibly feeling uncomfortable. Own that, don't pretend no one could "seriously" disagree.
A trans woman is more than four times more likely than a cis woman to be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. Why doesn't that matter?
I'm being rhetorical - the reason it doesn't matter is that you don't give a shit about trans people's lives and safety, because you're a transphobe.
Stop: Rule 2: Don't Be Hateful
- Location
- Void of Observation
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
While Davion is known for occasionally company-storing units, you have failed to accurately describe it, and it certainly does not describe their relationship with the Light Horse. The NAIS jobs were not, for example, part of their contract. They were a gratuity dressed up as a side job, essentially a tip for going above and beyond by fighting off Wolf's Dragoons. Free extra money outside the bounds of the contract.
Last edited:
Muhkat Lomorki
Draconic Sorcerer
Playing an imperialist fantasy isn't actually bad and it is perfectly fine to enjoy doing that.
Like, obviously, it would be bad in the real world and all that, but as long as you aren't being a shitty person it is fine since it's a video game.
Like, obviously, it would be bad in the real world and all that, but as long as you aren't being a shitty person it is fine since it's a video game.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
How is this controversial? I'm not aware of any significant number of people protesting Paradox games or something.
Just because someone somewhere had a dumb take on this doesn't mean it's a remotely common position. It's certainly not common enough to be controversial in any real way.
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
Around my peers it's a pretty commonly held position that maybe slavery shouldn't be a beneficial option in 4X games.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Wow, that's dumb.
Regardless my point stands. Most people don't mind the existence of the 4X genre or similar strategy games that permit imperialism. And even when we see the occasional critical article by some academic it's never an actual call for banning or moral castigating anyone for enjoyingit, it's just the bog-standard analysis that any other kind of art receives.
Last edited:
- Location
- Patriarchova
I'd temper that with it being important for said games to not try to justify it, or to pretend that you aren't playing the bad guys.
Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
All games with slavery as a mechanic should also have brutal, empire crumbling slave rebellions as a mechanic.
Same thing with imperial conquest simulators and both provincial rebellions and vicious civil wars that wipe out entire dynasties. 4X and strategy gamers just don't get enough pushback by the games for doing shit that historically could get real messy real fast.
Same thing with imperial conquest simulators and both provincial rebellions and vicious civil wars that wipe out entire dynasties. 4X and strategy gamers just don't get enough pushback by the games for doing shit that historically could get real messy real fast.
This is why they use Interns now instead, they're too busy worrying about their resumes to be bothered by the unpaid labor and whips.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm fine with games offering more costs to choosing a particular playstyle but let's not forget that games are supposed to be fun. If grappling with the downsides of a slave system or imperialistic foreign policy is fun then I'm all for adding it, but there has to be an allowance made for gameplay. HOI4 would not work as a game if the Axis had no way to win, this is no different.
Also thematically going too hard on "evil is self-defeating" can send a pretty bad message. Oppressive systems aren't ended by them just going over their time limit and self-destructing. They're fought and destroyed, either in the streets or in the battlefield. I don't think you're advocating for this but there is a risk to falling into that pitfall when designing drawbacks.
Last edited:
- Location
- Patriarchova
Historians looking back on the 2020's will acknowledge that that was what the slavedrivers thought at the time, yes.
On one hand, that's exactly what a slave revolt mechanic would simulate.
On the other, that struggle being covered by a random number generator in the background that the player can probably find ways to cheese might undermine the fact that this is an active human effort and not just something that happens from the dice rolling enough times.
Last edited:
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
Controversial opinion: I don't think that nazi germany should be able to win a 'normal' game of HoI4.
Just a reminder that in Civ 2, this effectively closed off any other choice rather than Democracy because unless u going ICS, a wide empire needed the anti corruption bonuses .
So, a war mongering nuke launching deploying bombers on a surprise war was always democratic in Civ 2.
- Location
- Northern Virginia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Sounds about right to me!
Ooh, political!
- Location
- Volksstaat Hessen, Deutsches Reich
Did it, though? Slave revolts, especially reaching the level of scale required to pop up in the game, were not all that frequent. Neither were peasant revolts, for that matter. That is, oh sure, you could probably list hundreds of them - but that is very localised revolts over several centuries. That is, a given area would go generations or centuries without any slave or peasant revolt in it, and what revolts there were could usually be dealt with by local forces. I mean, that is why Spartacus is so famous - it was a rare case of a wide-spread slave revolt where local forces were absolutely not enough to deal with it.
And noble or provincial revolts, well, Paradox games typically take those into account plenty.
The short and the long of it is that brutal subjugation worked. You are conflating workability with ethics - but being evil is in fact perfectly workable. That is why people are evil. People rarely are evil for evil's sake like in children cartoons. They are evil because that is in fact how they get the most out of stuff for their own interests.
This idea that if you do evil, it must come back to haunt you, that is merely the just world fallacy/bias. It isn't actually how the world works. Doing good is, in the end, up to us; it won't be taken care for us by 'systemic forces' or whatever. Those do in fact slant towards being ruthless.
You needed to go democracy... or communism. Going communism, i.e. authoritarian dictatorship sovietism, also worked for that. In fact, I usually went monarchy->communism, without considerations for Republic or Democracy. And communism actually made warmongering much easier, because in Democracy or Republic, your legislative could force you to enter peace.
Last edited:
Mandemon
Gentlemen, I love brawl.
- Location
- Cookie Jar
You would be surprised how often one runs into "If you play this game, where you can do bad games, you are promoting them!"
If I got a cent every time I ran into "If you like WH40K (and especially Imperium), you are fascist", "Paradox games promote genocide" and such, I would have enough to buy an WH40K army.
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
Now that's a bold scarecrow you're building.
Generally the take is "Maybe people using their 'interest' in the fascist space empire to poorly disguise their own real world bigotries shouldn't be welcomed into fan spaces."
- Location
- Russia
Yeah, it's less "If you like WH40K (and especially Imperium) you are fascist", it's more "There are way too goddamn many actual Nazis who are into WH40K (and especially Imperium)".
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
To be frank this is fundamentally bad game design, if they can't win there's no point making them playable and Paradox games (particularly HOI4) are all about maximizing playability.
Paradox would never do this and they're completely right not to. I don't see any benefit to this kind of moralizing. It does nothing to make a better society and in practice just makes for worse games. It's no different from supporting performative video game bans instead of substantive action.
4WheelSword
The original N-body Problem
- Pronouns
- It/She/They
Idk, maybe WW2 shouldn't be a videogame idk.
- Location
- SF Bay Area
I get not wanting to make light of a conflict that included the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking, but I think that ship sailed a long time ago.