Is Civ 6 PC: A continuation.

[aelf]

Well one could make the argument that because the game allows such actions to be taken through it's mechanics than by default it enables discrimination.

Also while one particular nation might not be singled out by another AI led one for such treatment, that doesn't stop the player from only choosing to slaughter all the African nations or one's led by black leaders.

So at the end of the day it really depends on what type of human player is playing.

Moving the goalposts. This is what you said:

It wouldn't be a game if it didn't allow you to have a little fun and discriminate against certain civs. That's the whole point of Civilization!

The eccentric way some players play is certainly not "the whole point of Civilization", nor does not doing so mean you're not playing a game.

'Enables discrimination' is a nonsensical charge anyway - as much as saying knives enable murder and that has to be some kind of defining characteristic of knives.

 

[Joij21]

Moving the goalposts. This is what you said:



The eccentric way some players play is certainly not "the whole point of Civilization", nor does not doing so mean you're not playing a game.

'Enables discrimination' is a nonsensical charge anyway - as much as saying knives enable murder and that has to be some kind of defining characteristic of knives.

I wouldn't call it "moving the goalposts". It's consistent with what I said.

Now while it may not be "the whole point of Civilization", the game does in fact reward the player's civ for such strategies more often than peace.

Also you're argument with knives is essentially the same argument the NRA uses for guns. Nevertheless many woke people would contest such a defense of a videogame when challenging it. Like Anita Sarkeesian. They tend to argue, just like those for gun control, that if a game either allows or encourages a certain style of play than the developers must therefore be complicit in cultivating such negative playstyles in the player. Such leftists like Anita tend to be the ones who define what is PC or not, just like how those same leftists also determine what is woke or not.

 

[Lexicus]

Moving the goalposts. This is what you said:



The eccentric way some players play is certainly not "the whole point of Civilization", nor does not doing so mean you're not playing a game.

'Enables discrimination' is a nonsensical charge anyway - as much as saying knives enable murder and that has to be some kind of defining characteristic of knives.

Eccentric? It is "meta" play in Civ 4 to annihilate rival civilizations entirely so that you don't get unhappiness from "we want to join our motherland" or, worse, revolts in border cities attempting to flip back to their rightful owner. I would argue that the "eccentric" playstyle is the one that doesn't involve the types of atrocities that would make Genghis Khan blush. It is also "meta" play to play the AI like a sucker and betray it more times than the United States reneged on its treaties with tribal governments.

The fundamental premise of Civ makes it impossible to truly be "PC." You can argue about the level of representation in the game, and I, needless to say, come down pretty hard on the side of "more non-European civs, more non-man leaders" but the fundamental structure of the game is not PC. It reifies a liberal-teleological view of history as a path of ever-increasing progress, and the mechanics essentially force you into zero-sum competitions with other civs where the optimal strategy is the complete annihilation of their cultures.

 

[aelf]

I wouldn't call it "moving the goalposts". It's consistent with what I said.

Now while it may not be "the whole point of Civilization", the game does in fact reward the player's civ for such strategies more often than peace.

Eccentric? It is "meta" play in Civ 4 to annihilate rival civilizations entirely so that you don't get unhappiness from "we want to join our motherland" or, worse, revolts in border cities attempting to flip back to their rightful owner. I would argue that the "eccentric" playstyle is the one that doesn't involve the types of atrocities that would make Genghis Khan blush. It is also "meta" play to play the AI like a sucker and betray it more times than the United States reneged on its treaties with tribal governments.

The fundamental premise of Civ makes it impossible to truly be "PC." You can argue about the level of representation in the game, and I, needless to say, come down pretty hard on the side of "more non-European civs, more non-man leaders" but the fundamental structure of the game is not PC. It reifies a liberal-teleological view of history as a path of ever-increasing progress, and the mechanics essentially force you into zero-sum competitions with other civs where the optimal strategy is the complete annihilation of their cultures.

These fundamentally misunderstand the point I was responding to. So much so that they seem like a product of lazy reading. This is the post that was referred to as "eccentric" gameplay:

Well one could make the argument that because the game allows such actions to be taken through it's mechanics than by default it enables discrimination.

Also while one particular nation might not be singled out by another AI led one for such treatment, that doesn't stop the player from only choosing to slaughter all the African nations or one's led by black leaders.

How many players always set out to slaughter African nations? Yeah, that might be discriminatory behaviour in the context of 'PC'. But the game itself isn't discriminatory. There is nothing that encourages you to play that way.

Playing the "meta" of Civ 4 is not discrimination. At best, saying so a misapplication of the term in a discussion where it refers to something else.

I don't know if lacking representation constitutes discrimination. Maybe. But that certainly isn't the point of Civ as a game.

Also you're argument with knives is essentially the same argument the NRA uses for guns. Nevertheless many woke people would contest such a defense of a videogame when challenging it. Like Anita Sarkeesian. They tend to argue, just like those for gun control, that if a game either allows or encourages a certain style of play than the developers must therefore be complicit in cultivating such negative playstyles in the player. Such leftists like Anita tend to be the ones who define what is PC or not, just like how those same leftists also determine what is woke or not.

It's so funny. Comparing knives to guns (very fundamentally different tools - and weapons) is a notorious talking point of the NRA and gun rights fanatics. Who's going to come across as aping the NRA here, I wonder?

 

[Lexicus]

These fundamentally misunderstand the point I was responding to. So much so that it seems like a product of lazy reading. This is the bit that is referred to as "eccentric":

Sure, I agree with you wrt that specific argument about only slaughtering the African civs or whatever (though I'll note I've played many times the other way, taking Shaka and having a lot of fun annihilating all the white devil civilizations, particularly the US and England) but the larger point Joji is making about civ being a non-politically-correct game, and this coming down not to player choice but to the mechanics of the game encouraging players to behave in certain ways is, I think, largely accurate.

 

[aelf]

Sure, I agree with you wrt that specific argument about only slaughtering the African civs or whatever (though I'll note I've played many times the other way, taking Shaka and having a lot of fun annihilating all the white devil civilizations, particularly the US and England) but the larger point Joji is making about civ being a non-politically-correct game, and this coming down not to player choice but to the mechanics of the game encouraging players to behave in certain ways is, I think, largely accurate.

We were talking about discrimination. So you're saying the mechanics of the game encourage you to specifically annihilate a certain race?

Uh, okay.

 

[Gori the Grey]

It reifies a liberal-teleological view of history as a path of ever-increasing progress, and the mechanics essentially force you into zero-sum competitions with other civs where the optimal strategy is the complete annihilation of their cultures.

I've sometimes dreamed of a version of Civ where one victory condition is to keep your civ in a sustainable relationship with the environment (however that would be modeled and measured) for some (long) number of turns, and maybe your population stable rather than growing. It might involve having a much lower-tech civilization, or be better achieved by having a lower-tech civilization. So there would be a way that game equivalents of our world's Native American tribes could win over (again, our world's) Western European style tecno-bullies. Maybe there'd be game mechanics by which those progress cultures could run out of oil or whatever and crash into utter ruin, where the more simple cultures stayed humming along. The danger with playing for that victory would of course be the possibility of being overrun militarily by the "progress" cultures, but it somehow wouldn't be a given that that would happen in the game.

They've been able to design the game such that one-city victories are sometimes viable, even though the norm is big multi-city empires. I wish they'd take a stab at making low-tech cultures viable even while most cultures charge forward on the tech tree.

 

[Lexicus]

We were talking about discrimination. So you're saying the mechanics of the game encourage you to specifically annihilate a certain race?

Uh, okay.

Not a real-world race, necessarily, but the mechanics absolutely do encourage annihilation of in-game cultures other than the player's.

 

[aelf]

Not a real-world race, necessarily, but the mechanics absolutely do encourage annihilation of in-game cultures other than the player's.

Again, that's not discrimination. The difference of cultures in the game is pure abstraction. You could change that into any other form of differentiation (such as different-coloured clothes) and it makes no real difference to the mechanics. You're simply fighting and destroying another. The method of differentiation between you and the other isn't key at all - it could be red vs. blue. And it would be silly to draw any parallel between destroying team blue and real-world acts or discrimination implied by the larger theme of PCness. Plus the mechanics do not encourage you to only destroy particular colours - just whoever happens not to be you. Once again, there is zero link to discrimination.

This is as absurd as claiming that an FPS featuring people with various skin colours demonstrates discrimination through mechanics that encourage you to kill other humanoids because there are those with different skin colours.

I don't really know what you're trying to do other than make a rather poor attempt at demonstrating that Civ isn't PC via this line of argument. Discrimination is just one way in which something can be un-PC, and there is pretty much nothing in the game that discriminates anyone or any culture. Except maybe through lack of representation, which, again, is far from being the point of the game as claimed by the other guy.

 

[Samson]

Eccentric? It is "meta" play in Civ 4 to annihilate rival civilizations entirely so that you don't get unhappiness from "we want to join our motherland" or, worse, revolts in border cities attempting to flip back to their rightful owner. I would argue that the "eccentric" playstyle is the one that doesn't involve the types of atrocities that would make Genghis Khan blush. It is also "meta" play to play the AI like a sucker and betray it more times than the United States reneged on its treaties with tribal governments.

The fundamental premise of Civ makes it impossible to truly be "PC." You can argue about the level of representation in the game, and I, needless to say, come down pretty hard on the side of "more non-European civs, more non-man leaders" but the fundamental structure of the game is not PC. It reifies a liberal-teleological view of history as a path of ever-increasing progress, and the mechanics essentially force you into zero-sum competitions with other civs where the optimal strategy is the complete annihilation of their cultures.

If you play the optimal whipping strategy in Civ4 you kill almost everyone who is born in your civ. And you are their eternal god.

 

[Joij21]

The difference of cultures in the game is pure abstraction. You could change that into any other form of differentiation (such as different-coloured clothes) and it makes no real difference to the mechanics.

I mean the different teams are more than just colors. They represent actual cultures from history or the present day.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

In Civ4, the Chinese are purple, the Aztecs are green, the Zulu are yellow. If you think of it that way, it's totally fine.

And if you are playing a Civ game with the specific intent of wiping out all of "X" ethnicity (because they are "X" ), and do this all the time, you're either a bigot, or you need the services of a mental health professional.

In Civ4, the game is coded so that every AI has an equal chance at winning (ignore the bonuses for this example.) The AIs all have different "personalities" that cause them to behave in different ways. Shaka behaves differently than Montezuma, but I exterminate them both if I can because they are insanely aggressive and unpredictable. That's gameplay, and it is not politically horrific to do it. It's how the game is played, among other mechanics. The reason there are ethnicities in the game is to add flavour and realism to the game. That is the only time that should even matter as far as I am concerned.

 

[Lexicus]

Again, that's not discrimination.

You're right - it's (in-game) genocide. Or at least war crimes.

This is as absurd as claiming that an FPS featuring people with various skin colours demonstrates discrimination through mechanics that encourage you to kill other humanoids because there are those with different skin colours.

I mean, in Call of Duty: MW2, there is a level where you, the player character, rampage through a Brazilian favela full of black and brown people. Your squad even captures and (off-screen) tortures a guy, and it's difficult to argue that the game portrays this negatively.

In MW3 there are several levels where you're fighting African "militias", shooting down black people.

And I think it's pretty difficult to argue that the mechanics of an FPS don't, like, inherently encourage you to kill other humans. That's practically the whole point of an FPS! It is true that various FPS that try to be more kid-friendly or whatever use contrivances to avoid the killing aspect, but those games are a distinct minority in the genre.
One example is Chex Quest, a kid-friendly Doom conversion mod I got for free in a box of Chex cereal, where you're shooting these slime beings and "returning them to their own dimension" instead of killing them.

I don't really know what you're trying to do other than make a rather poor attempt at demonstrating that Civ isn't PC via this line of argument. Discrimination is just one way in which something can be un-PC, and there is pretty much nothing in the game that discriminates anyone or any culture. Except maybe through lack of representation, which, again, is far from being the point of the game as claimed by the other guy.

I'm not invested in the specific phrasing Joji used, but I think Civ is absolutely not PC and making it PC would require making it into a different kind of game entirely.
I play a game called Dawn of Man that's more of a building simulator than anything else, and I actually think it is very "PC" in the sense that your people don't specialize into different roles and all adult humans who aren't too old can perform the same tasks. The only possible warfare is defensive although you do have to hunt animals and fish to survive so I guess it might offend the vegans.

The wider point here, I guess, is that the 4X genre fundamentally isn't "PC", it's a genre that basically presupposes a world of violent zero-sum competition between groups that's best settled by annihilation warfare of the exact type that Adolf Hitler wanted to release on Eastern Europe. Bret Devereaux has a good piece on this here using Aoe2 as an example, for those interested. The thrust of Devereaux's argument is that the world depicted in games like AoE2 (but everything he says really applies to most if not all 4x games) is actually incomparably more violent and brutal than the real-world history of empire, which is obviously no walk in the park.


I'll quote him a bit here:

This is, to put it bluntly, not how empires work. The entire point of establishing an empire is to access the resources and labor of a subordinate population (the periphery) – exterminating that population defeats the very purpose! The ’empires’ in Age of Empires are not empires at all, but fanatically murderous nation-states, projected backwards in history hundreds – if not thousands – of years before any such idea of a state existed. Few states have really followed this vision of conquest, but those that have – Nazi Germany is the most obvious example – are not generally well-thought of.

Now, there are three caveats on that rather scathing statement I want to address. First, that the game is to be understood as an abstraction and that we are to imagine all of the complexities of empire building taking place ‘behind the screen’ as it were – and that’s fair enough for many games of this type (it is surely what Civilization seems to want us to believe), but I don’t think it goes for Age of Empires, since the non-combatants are so clearly on screen and are not capturable by military units.

And all of this matters insofar as it tells us something about reactionaries in the real world. I can't prove it of course, but I would suspect that lacking any background in the humanities, a lot of people encounter these games and come to believe that these games accurately reflect history and the real world. I trust I don't need to establish that the idea that the world is defined by violent zero-sum competition between groups that annihilate each other at the drop of a hat if they have the chance is not only far-right, but actually the basis of some of the most historically notorious far-right ideologies (including Nazism, as Bret points out).

In Civ4, the game is coded so that every AI has an equal chance at winning (ignore the bonuses for this example.) The AIs all have different "personalities" that cause them to behave in different ways. Shaka behaves differently than Montezuma, but I exterminate them both if I can because they are insanely aggressive and unpredictable. That's gameplay, and it is not politically horrific to do it. It's how the game is played, among other mechanics. The reason there are ethnicities in the game is to add flavour and realism to the game. That is the only time that should even matter as far as I am concerned.

Gosh, I'm so much more evil than you - my high-priority targets for destruction are Gandhi and Mansa Musa due to their annoying habit of being super friendly and tech trading with everyone...the warmongers by comparison are quite useful, since you can always trust them to tank their economies (and hopefully the economies of neighbor civs) by blowing all their income on unit maintenance instead of research

 

[shadowplay]

In Call to Power, there was an actual slaver unit.

 

[Joij21]

Shaka behaves differently than Montezuma, but I exterminate them both if I can because they are insanely aggressive and unpredictable.

Hmmm.... But would it be politically incorrect to portray a Native American and a black guy in such a way? Especially when such a portrayal encourages you to kill two leaders based each off of a minority?

 

[AmazonQueen]

Hmmm.... But would it be politically incorrect to portray a Native American and a black guy in such a way? Especially when such a portrayal encourages you to kill two leaders based each off of a minority?

It would be bigoted to depict a whole people that way. Shaka and Montezuma are individuals based on historical figures. Anyone who reads about Shaka will know he was a murderous individual with serious issues, but he isn't an entire people.

 

[Joij21]

Montezuma

What about the real life Montezuma?

 

[AmazonQueen]

What about the real life Montezuma?

Not sure. Aztec history isn't something I'm up on and I can never remember which of the Montezumas the one in Civ VI is.

 

[schlaufuchs]

In Civ4, the Chinese are purple, the Aztecs are green, the Zulu are yellow. If you think of it that way, it's totally fine.

And if you are playing a Civ game with the specific intent of wiping out all of "X" ethnicity (because they are "X" ), and do this all the time, you're either a bigot, or you need the services of a mental health professional.

In Civ4, the game is coded so that every AI has an equal chance at winning (ignore the bonuses for this example.) The AIs all have different "personalities" that cause them to behave in different ways. Shaka behaves differently than Montezuma, but I exterminate them both if I can because they are insanely aggressive and unpredictable. That's gameplay, and it is not politically horrific to do it. It's how the game is played, among other mechanics. The reason there are ethnicities in the game is to add flavour and realism to the game. That is the only time that should even matter as far as I am concerned.

It strikes me as rather odd to insist that metaphors do not exist in video games. Next you're going to tell me that Triumph of the Will was just a bunch of friendly chaps getting together and having a lark marching about, and that any communicated metaphors about the military and political power of the Nazi party, and the inherent singularity and force of the "Aryan people" is purely incidental and, frankly, is merely a sad reflection of your bigoted perspective if you interpreted it that way.

 

[Joij21]

It would be bigoted to depict a whole people that way. Shaka and Montezuma are individuals based on historical figures.

I think I'll make a second point about this.

Wouldn't it be bigoted to choose bad examples of leaders for civs that are primarily comprised up of a minority to the perspective of a Western audience? Think about it, by giving these nations bad leaders it forces the player to kill the ethnic group that makes up their population.

When you go to war with the Zulu's, who suffers? Shaka Zulu? Or all the black people that populate his cities when you raze them?