Civilization is racist

[cavilier210]

Wow, i woulda just closed the thread due to its pointlessness, lol

 

[Androrc the Orc]

Just because you can expect tacky, ethnocentric behavior doesn't mean it's justified.

There's nothing wrong with ethnocentric behavior. You belong to an ethnicity, it's only natural that you view things from the point of view of your ethnicity. Furthermore, there is nearly nothing in Civilization that could be considered offensive. In fact, if anything, the game tries too much to be politically correct.

I took a moment to refresh myself on Civ IV leader traits and they were very general and the same ones applied to multiple leaders across the spectrum. It was better at trying to be more objective than the leader traits in Civ V.

But they were more bland; the point of the Civ5 traits is precisely that they are unique, which gives them more flavor. The traits in Civ5 are just badly designed, considering they are leader traits.

 

[Androrc the Orc]

Why the hell bring Poland into this discussion? Have you guys any problems with it?

I would like to see Poland in Civilization.

 

[esemjay]

A diplomatic victory announcement frames it as a competitive event, stating “you have triumphed over your foes” and your cunning has “divided and sown confusion among your enemies.” In Civilization V, enough riches can buy peace, and peace is just another form of selfish control. .

I feel like this is misinformation, now that I have completed a diplomatic victory. The actual quote is:

You have triumphed over your foes through the art of Diplomacy! Your cunning and wisdom have earned you great friends - and divided and sown confusion among your enemies! Forever you will be remembered as the leader who brought peace to a weary world!

An astounding misrepresentation and manipulation of facts on the part of the author, Mr Jorge Albor. That's journalism for you...

 

[h0ncho]

So is the original poster saying that the Civilization game itself (DVD, box, etc) is racist against Indians? I would think the OP means the publishers or developers. Because that would mean that 2K Greg and 2K Elizabeth are also in on the whole thing, along with Sid. Are these the people that are racist, or only specific people? Will you please name who you are talking about OP. Thanks ahead of time for clarifying for me.

lolno, didn't you read to the end of my post? People generally don't insinuate that authors they like write under the influence of drugs.

 

[esemjay]

lolno, didn't you read to the end of my post? People generally don't insinuate that authors they like write under the influence of drugs.

The quote was so long that I think that some people thought it was the actual post, and that you had written all of that.

 

[alpaca]

Finally, someone who finds hex tiles as racially and historically offensive as I do!!!
I wonder what shapes wouldn't offend the author? Circles? Maybe if we were all on the same tile holding hands...

Ok, we've seen the arts students rant. Now I want to see a rant blog from the physics student who complains about CiV going for "3D graphics" when really they should have been aiming for an 8th dimensional gameplay projected onto a 6D plane, or something like that.

You still need to project onto a 2d plane to see it, so any game that's more than 3d is going to be difficult to play because you need to rotate all the freakin time to get a useful projection (I tried 4D games, they're not very fun).

In fact, I was thoroughly pleased by the pretty 2d hexagonal crystal presented in my ICS empire and tempted to show it to my fifth-semester students as a "real-world example" of lattice growth.

Besides, everyone knows most of the dimensions are only visible at high energy and rolled up otherwise like the newspaper your dog brings you in each morning - if he's a good dog - even though string terrortheorists can't prove a thing (but still get a ton of research funding - way to go!)

 

[h0ncho]

Anyways, I think the author made the same mistake that many people in this thread also makes... They think that civ is history, represented by a game. It is not. It is a game that has taken certain aesthetical elements from history. As a simulator it fails completely at virtually all levels(which is understandable, if it was possible to simulate history someone would have done it long ago, the financial and political advantages of it would be immense).

 

[esemjay]

You still need to project onto a 2d plane to see it, so any game that's more than 3d is going to be difficult to play because you need to rotate all the freakin time to get a useful projection (I tried 4D games, they're not very fun).

In fact, I was thoroughly pleased by the pretty 2d hexagonal crystal presented in my ICS empire and tempted to show it to my fifth-semester students as a "real-world example" of lattice growth.

Besides, everyone knows most of the dimensions are only visible at high energy and rolled up otherwise like the newspaper your dog brings you in each morning - if he's a good dog - even though string terrortheorists can't prove a thing (but still get a ton of research funding - way to go!)

I don't play 4D games, because I think they're a scam. The majority of human brains can understand what 4D is, but cannot process or visualize it beyond a hypothetical. To then project that 4D down 1 dimension, it becomes 3D; then to put it on a surface, it becomes 2D. So, a 4D game is really a 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional "shadow" of a 4D object.

It's the equivalent of holding up a cube to the light, then tracing the shadow it casts... then trying to draw that shadow on a 1 dimensional surface. It would just be a straight line; a poor representation of the original object.

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

To claim that all civilizations have been the exact same is ignorant. Different civs have behaved differently and been good/bad at different things. This is something positive. It would be sad if all countries where identical.

 

[Drawmeus]

Yeah, I'm going to go out and spend thousands of dollars to understand a post, to your "intellectual" standard, yet is ultimately pointless. I guess now you're going to start throwing around phrases like "Intellectual Checkmate".

Condescending, much?

"I'm ignorant and proud of it" is never a statement one should make.

The guy has a point on the one hand that Civilization enforces notions of the world which A) aren't remotely accurate (the enforcement of the State as the central unit of decision-making and the idea that the citizens of the State have no power or desires as long as the State throws them an occasional bone is, well, disturbing, to say the least. It's the central conceit of the book 1984, among others) and B) represent the ideals espoused by various euro- and america-centric groups over the years, who seek to reduce the narrative of humanity to one of progress to a pinnacle of civilization, which is of course the idealized version of whatever civilization the group in question happens to belong to.

On the flip side, that blog's critique fails to address a critical point: does it matter if Civilization is intellectually bankrupt? The answer is a resounding no. Unless the model was developed far beyond the possibilities within a game produced on a reasonable budget (even a AAA budget), it's not going to provide real insight into historicity or any real academic value (and it never was intended to do so). Unless the blogger is advocating sterilizing all media that presents stereotypes that they're uncomfortable with, Civilization is no worse than myriad other things, and to over-intellectualize it is to miss the point utterly.

 

[esemjay]

"I'm ignorant and proud of it" is never a statement one should make.

The guy has a point on the one hand that Civilization enforces notions of the world which A) aren't remotely accurate (the enforcement of the State as the central unit of decision-making and the idea that the citizens of the State have no power or desires as long as the State throws them an occasional bone is, well, disturbing, to say the least. It's the central conceit of the book 1984, among others) and B) represent the ideals espoused by various euro- and america-centric groups over the years, who seek to reduce the narrative of humanity to one of progress to a pinnacle of civilization, which is of course the idealized version of whatever civilization the group in question happens to belong to.

On the flip side, that blog's critique fails to address a critical point: does it matter if Civilization is intellectually bankrupt? The answer is a resounding no. Unless the model was developed far beyond the possibilities within a game produced on a reasonable budget (even a AAA budget), it's not going to provide real insight into historicity or any real academic value (and it never was intended to do so). Unless the blogger is advocating sterilizing all media that presents stereotypes that they're uncomfortable with, Civilization is no worse than myriad other things, and to over-intellectualize it is to miss the point utterly.

I'm posting to let you know: Yes, I am responding to you. I also want you to know that, because of how your post was started, I'm not even going to read past the first sentence.

 

[Drawmeus]

I'm posting to let you know: Yes, I am responding to you. I also want you to know that, because of how your post was started, I'm not even going to read past the first sentence.

I'm comfortable with that.

 

[esemjay]

I'm comfortable with that.

Also, because that conversation ended not too long after the post you quoted... with the person I was talking to accepting that I'm not uneducated.

 

[dguichar]

You still need to project onto a 2d plane to see it, so any game that's more than 3d is going to be difficult to play because you need to rotate all the freakin time to get a useful projection (I tried 4D games, they're not very fun).

In fact, I was thoroughly pleased by the pretty 2d hexagonal crystal presented in my ICS empire and tempted to show it to my fifth-semester students as a "real-world example" of lattice growth.

Besides, everyone knows most of the dimensions are only visible at high energy and rolled up otherwise like the newspaper your dog brings you in each morning - if he's a good dog - even though string terrortheorists can't prove a thing (but still get a ton of research funding - way to go!)

Our human senses allow us to perceive 4D easily. We live through a sequence of events, which are determined by a where and a when.

 

[alpaca]

I don't play 4D games, because I think they're a scam. The majority of human brains can understand what 4D is, but cannot process or visualize it beyond a hypothetical. To then project that 4D down 1 dimension, it becomes 3D; then to put it on a surface, it becomes 2D. So, a 4D game is really a 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional "shadow" of a 4D object.

It's the equivalent of holding up a cube to the light, then tracing the shadow it casts... then trying to draw that shadow on a 1 dimensional surface. It would just be a straight line; a poor representation of the original object.

A scam? Hardly. The mathematical mapping makes a lot of sense and you can actually get a kind of feeling for which parts connect to which in 4d. I doubt humans are able to really "visualize" four dimensions because we live in three and see only two but that doesn't mean the games are a scam. They're not a lot of fun for me (and I daresay most people) but some love such intellectual challenges.

Our human senses allow us to perceive 4D easily. We live through a sequence of events, which are determined by a where and a when.

Four-dimensional spacetime is not the same as four space dimensions. Watching a movie of a 3d object is not the same as a 4d object. With four (or seventeen) space dimensions, the object exists in all of them at one point in time. When doing quantum mechanics it's perfectly common to work with hundreds of dimensions, and many calculations can even be done with infinitely-many-dimensional vector spaces (even uncountably many), but that doesn't mean they correspond to any space dimensions.

I'm not claiming I can visualize or intuitively understand four dimensions, by the way. I can do the mathematics maybe, but even those are often complicated enough if you go beyond one dimension

 

[joyous_gard]

Why can't we all just get along? YAY ME!!

 

[cavilier210]

Wait, what?

A 4 dimensional game doesn't use 4 spacial demensions. Its dimensions of gameplay. Expand, Explore, and yadda yadda.

 

[esemjay]

Wait, what?

A 4 dimensional game doesn't use 4 spacial demensions. Its dimensions of gameplay. Expand, Explore, and yadda yadda.

That's 4X. 4D is geometry on a 4 axis system.

 

[cavilier210]

Ah. When I think 4D, its x, y, z and t

With 4 spacial dimensions, isn't it a 5 dimensional enviroment?