this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
94 points (98.0% liked)

games

20655 readers
390 users here now

Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.

Rules

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Plenty of games, especially strategy and simulator games, have game mechanics related to politics or economics. From Recettear’s “Capitalism Ho!” to Hearts of Iron 4’s focus trees, political descriptions can be added to flavor game mechanics, and because different game devs have endless variation in personal worldviews, these additions can be absurdly bad at times. Even if the mechanic itself is good, it can have dunk-worthy labelling. Post the worst that you can think of, even if they come from an otherwise great game.

I’ll start: In Civilization VI, different government types you choose have different slots for policy cards, which let you select political policy bonuses for your civilization. In the modern age, two of the government types you can choose are “Democracy” and “Communism”. Already this is liberal drivel conflating Communism with non-democracy and “authoritarianism”. But the policy slots for these governments are even dumber, as Democracy gets more “diplomatic” and “economic” policies, and Communism gets more “millitary” policies. Famously, America and the west (clearly what Democracy is inspired by) never destabilized the world with arms manufactoring and invasions, I guess.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 37 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Peter Molyneux is both a visionary and a hack. He's been trying to make "the game where your choices have consequences and real moral dilemmas" for decades now, and every time he tries it fails in a different way.

[–] ChaosMaterialist@hexbear.net 23 points 1 day ago (2 children)

As long as you ignore his own hype, he makes some of the weirdest and interesting games. I still like Black And White because of this. A true "missed the moon and landed among the stars" guy.

[–] BelieveRevolt@hexbear.net 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

He made some awesome games in the 90s. Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park, Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper, etc.

[–] dumpster_dove@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I've been saying there needs to be a Syndicate reboot that isn't a FPS but more like the old games, just with better mechanics

[–] TomBombadil@hexbear.net 17 points 1 day ago

Black and white is so weird and cool. Nothing like it. I love it

[–] NuraShiny@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago

Nah, he is just a hack that got lucky once.