Prora's Construction Quote Biased?

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MantaRevan

MantaRevan

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"This loss (of freedom) means the fading from human life of values infinitely precious to it. There only remain ironbound conditions of employment and trivial amusements for leisure."- Alfred North Whitehead

I don't know about you guys, but I've taken a little bit of an issue with the Prora quote. Besides sounding incredibly preachy and being from someone totally unrelated to the wonder; the in-game quote provided for Prora is one from the perspective of someone who advocated Freedom, not Autocracy.

This is unlike how Firaxis has presented wonder quotes in the past. For example, the Great Firewall stands out as a symbol of the increasingly paranoid and repressive Chinese government. But the quote provided in game doesn't blatantly mourn a "loss of freedom". The quote for the Kremlin is mostly positive and doesn't appear to be shaming the people who built it, unlike Prora.

Firaxis seems to understand that they shouldn't insert their own opinions or worldviews into the game, just look at all the other wonders, which are portrayed in either a positive or neutral way. But for Prora for whatever reason, they decided to decry the horrors of autocracy when the wonder is built, which sort of falls upon the deaf ears of the player who chose it.
 
Why should they shame the people who built the Kremlin? It's just a defensive structure that doubles as a palace. The czars who built it were just like any other ruler at the time
 
AgentTBC said:
How dare they take a stand against Fascism.
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It's not about "taking a stand against Fascism". It's about making a game that maintains objectivity. Civ players aren't little kids. We don't need them to tell us that fascism is bad. We already know that. Clearly they've made an effort to make the game objective before, for example defending as Nobunaga a "brutal man in a brutal time" and arguing that Montezuma wasn't much worse than the Europeans of his time. This doesn't really make any attempt.
 
Wait, you're upset that a quote for a Nazi resort is about the death of freedom? I thought that was the goal of Autocracy. :p

There's no objectivity to be had here. Autocracy is the concentration of power into the hands of a supreme ruler, which is neither subject to the law, nor external checks and balances. It is literally tyranny. A resort that was to be built to serve only the high leaders of the Nazi party and their families deserves a quote about the death of freedom.
 
Vidszhite said:
Wait, you're upset that a quote for a Nazi resort is about the death of freedom? I thought that was the goal of Autocracy. :p

There's no objectivity to be had here. Autocracy is the concentration of power into the hands of a supreme ruler, which is neither subject to the law, nor external checks and balances. It is literally tyranny. A resort that was to be built to serve only the high leaders of the Nazi party and their families deserves a quote about the death of freedom.
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Ummm......... Prora was designed as a low cost resort for the working class... The high class would never be caught dead there...
 
So the OP is complaining that the Prora quote is inappropriate for an autocracy wonder? I don't know anything about Alfred Whitehead but I guess a pro-fascist quote would have been more appropriate to symbolize the supposed benefits of autocracy once you build the Prora.
 
Vidszhite said:
A resort that was to be built to serve only the high leaders of the Nazi party and their families deserves a quote about the death of freedom.
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Wasn't Prora built as a counterpart to the british butlins, with the idea that every worker deserved a holiday at the beach? Hardly the death of freedom there.

Edit: ninja'd
 
That Other Guy said:
Wasn't Prora built as a counterpart to the british butlins, with the idea that every worker deserved a holiday at the beach? Hardly the death of freedom there.

Edit: ninja'd
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Well, it was still designed to be used by loyal, Blond, Blue-eyed Nazis only, so it's still a part of something pretty sinister.

True_Candyman said:
Yeah, this seems a bit preachy. All it does is further call into question exactly why it was chosen as a world wonder if they can't even get an appropriate quote for it
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Now that I've been properly educated in its actual purpose, it was probably picked because Autocracy needed something unique to itself, and it needed something that gave Happiness. What else is really unique to WWII-era Autocracy?
 
The quote is accurate. No autocratic leader is going to be offended if you say there people don't have freedom. Prora was a resort for the working class, and read the last line

There only remain ironbound conditions of employment and trivial amusements for leisure

How is this not exactly what Prora stands for?
 
Yzman said:
The quote is accurate. No autocratic leader is going to be offended if you say there people don't have freedom. Prora was a resort for the working class, and read the last line

There only remain ironbound conditions of employment and trivial amusements for leisure

How is this not exactly what Prora stands for?
Click to expand...

Said it better than I ever could.
 
firaxis should have quoted hitler in german (regardless of players language selection) as the quote for Prora. The resulting controversy and media attention would have sold an extra 100k copies.
 
Vidszhite said:
Well, it was still designed to be used by loyal, Blond, Blue-eyed Nazis only, so it's still a part of something pretty sinister.
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In that case the Autobahn is genocidal and should be purged with fire :rolleyes:

Not everything the nazis did were evil. The nazis themselves weren't evil either. They were all, surprisingly, humans no different to you or I. To generalize and call all of them evil beings and all their acts and the products of the nazi state sinister because of some (however loose) connection to the holocaust and their ideals of race is absurd...

There's really no need for "nazi's were bad mmkay" to be bundled in with the Prora as far as I can see.

Vidszhite said:
Now that I've been properly educated in its actual purpose, it was probably picked because Autocracy needed something unique to itself, and it needed something that gave Happiness. What else is really unique to WWII-era Autocracy?
Click to expand...

You're absolutely right of course. But by my book that just makes it included for token values rather than its own merits, which is a little disappointing. I like it for gameplay reasons, i just wish they could have found something better :(
 
The OP's concern is justified and I share his dislike for the quote. It is the only quote for a wonder that I can think of as being disparaging to some extent. It is shamefully obvious that the quote is by someone opposed to autocracy. Sure, you may find this opposition appropriate or even morally obligatory (and if so I'm guessing you're from some country or familiar with some country that champions democratic ideals) but autocratic dictators or prominent figures in autocratic regimes would hardly characterize their government or society that way. I'd expect some words regarding the strength or glory of the state. It would be akin to building the Statue of Liberty to find a quote by some religious guy in, say, the middle east making mention of the erosion of morals and ethical living that democratic states suffer, or building The Kremlin to find an equally inappropriate soviet-hating U.S. guy stating how bad communism is.

The fact is, is that these three wonders are all intended to be a kind of monument for their respective ideologies. They should all have an air of glory and achievement to them. Prora's quote detracts from this.
 
True_Candyman said:
In that case the Autobahn is genocidal and should be purged with fire :rolleyes:

Not everything the nazis did were evil. The nazis themselves weren't evil either. They were all, surprisingly, humans no different to you or I. To generalize and call all of them evil beings and all their acts and the products of the nazi state sinister because of some (however loose) connection to the holocaust and their ideals of race is absurd...

There's really no need for "nazi's were bad mmkay" to be bundled in with the Prora as far as I can see.



You're absolutely right of course. But by my book that just makes it included for token values rather than its own merits, which is a little disappointing. I like it for gameplay reasons, i just wish they could have found something better :(
Click to expand...

Exactly. Prora's a resort, not a deathcamp. To immediately start harping on about the evils of totalitarianism is irrelevant. They should have had a quote that represented that. I'm not terribly angry or anything, I just disagree with the way this was done.
 
I got that feeling from the entire opening video. It started off unbiased when talking about the rise of communism and fascism, but quickly goes on to say "but some people who were awesome and totally right went on to be awesome and free everyone" which, while I don't necessarily disagree with it, feels odd in an expansion based around the ability to choose different ideologies.
 
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