this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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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.

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[–] Inui@hexbear.net 39 points 1 day ago (2 children)

In Fable 3, all your political decisions as a monarch come down to "Do X or Y" based on what your advisors tell you. X is either 'do nothing' or 'do something reasonable as opposed to Y' and Y is the worst thing you can think of.

For example, one decision is "what do we do with all the poor children on the streets, of which you were once a part of?" and X is OPEN A SCHOOL while Y is INSTATE CHILD LABOR FOR THE CAPITALIST WORMTONGUE FIGURE.

Much nuance.

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 36 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 22 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 18 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 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours 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.

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

Also, the best way to win the game is to amass a lot of property and be a landlord who charges high rent. People will start hating you (shocked-pikachu), but you can just lower the rent to the minimum level and they'll like you again big-cool

[–] fox@hexbear.net 18 points 1 day ago

If my landlord dropped my rent to pennies because they had enough money I'd be hard pressed to hate them personally rather than as representatives of the class

[–] CascadeOfLight@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fable 3 taught me that there's no point collecting rent from the poor, because they have no money, so you should set their rent to zero so everyone loves you while making the rich pay double to give you a fat treasury. It also taught me that every public works project can be funded easily if the state just takes ownership of all land and housing.

[–] LaGG_3@hexbear.net 12 points 1 day ago

Monarcho-communism