So thinking a bit about choice in historical video games..., we've got a fair bit of evidence that most players - like 90%+ - when given a choice play games as the 'good' character.

'Evil' gameplay choices thus mostly exist to give weight and consequence to the 'good' choices.
I think that puts a burden on developers to either 1) make it really clear why 'evil' options were chosen (@PdxInteractive is, I think, pretty good at this) or 2) not hide all of the historical cruelty behind 'evil' choices no one is going to take.
If your game has the player doing imperialism, you can't have the character of it depend on their choices, because most players are going to choose the 'good' option and thus you get a game that presents relatively benign imperialism, a thing which didn't really happen.
It doesn't absolve the game if the player can produce historically bad imperialism by clicking the 'evil' options *because most players won't do that.*
And if the problem then is that gameplay would become too alienating with players doing all of this imperialism...well then maybe don't center your games on people doing imperialism?

There are other stories!
Anyway, this thought brought on by the juxtaposition of Expeditions: Rome, which has this problem (but not as bad as AC:Valhalla) with CK3...which is often really blunt with how morally horrible 'optimal' play is.

The game Tyranny is also worth noting here (go play it!)

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More from @BretDevereaux

Feb 15
So for one, if Putin is going to own the libs by not invading Ukraine, wow, yes, I am totally owned. Pwned, even.

But seriously if Russia actually withdraws the troops from the border, that is a huge win for NATO and Biden should do a giant victory lap w/ other NATO leaders. 1/8
Figure it this way: assuming Russia is backing down, there are really two possibilities here.

Possibility one: Putin was bluffing. He moved forces to the border and made threatening noises (and then followed up with demands) in the hopes NATO would blink... 2/8
...or that the stress would divide NATO. It didn't work. Allies mostly handled it well - sure, some posturing from all of the majors (inc. USA) but no concessions, no fatal split.

If this was a bluff, Putin got called on it and folded. Embarrassing. 3/8
Read 8 tweets
Feb 13
So I talk a lot about the problems in both the graduate school experience and the academic job market, I thought it would be worthwhile to shout out how my own PhD department, @UNChistory is taking what I view as the right steps to respond as a department.
(Obligatory note that I also have a temporary adjunct gig in the department, but did not have any say in these changes).

What @UNChistory is doing - I can't give any exact numbers for obvious reasons - but they're cutting back grad. admissions and using that to raise stipends.
That's tough for a lot of departments to do, because big graduate programs are a component of dept. prestige. Universities often don't like it for the same reasons.

But it's the right thing to do. While departments can't solve the jobs crisis, this is the one thing they can do.
Read 13 tweets
Jan 13
Fascinating response to me in @ForeignPolicy by Jerad I Harper and @DrJohnNagl : foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/13/us-…

I actually think we agree on more than the article lets on - a lot of what Harper and Nagl are laying out strikes me as modern operationalization... 1/8
...of the 'socially embedded' option. As I laid out in my own piece, past examples suggest two choices when raising 'auxiliary' forces: either total deracination or else you need to learn to work within existing social institutions. 2/8

foreignpolicy.com/2021/10/03/us-…
In arguing against military 'helicopter parenting' Harper and Nagl really to me seem to be saying that the more independent, socially embedded system - the way Rome treated the armies of Pergamum or even the Italian allies - is the way to go.

I agree. 3/8
Read 8 tweets
Jan 12
You know, I enjoy playing Hardspace: Shipbreaker as a sort of chill, zen experience.

But it really probably is an issue, storywise, that a game about being an exploited laborer in a ultra-capitalist dystopia is fun to actually play.
There's also a real tension between a story about being debt-trapped in an unsafe, brutal job and the gameplay fact that you can 'get gud' to safely navigate all of these hazards and also consequently steadily work down that massive debt.
The 'interest on debt' floor is 500k credits per work shift, but I regularly do 1.5-2m credits of salvaging per shift - sure the debt is made comically huge to prevent it being zero'd, but if each shift is a day the implication is you could do it in about 4 years.
Read 5 tweets
Jan 3
Today I've learned that if you tweet about Star Trek, one of the genre of replies you get are folks who maybe don't know their Star Trek so well, but are really convinced someone must have made the whole thing internally consistent and scientifically rigorous.
And...I have bad news for those folks: Star Trek can't keep basic, plot-essential things like beaming through shields or how many shuttles Voyager has straight.

The 'kill' setting on phasers was 1/4 and 3 and also 10, because they couldn't keep that straight either.
Consistency was *never* a priority on the classic Star Trek shows.

Also the science was more or less entirely made up. Like, the scarce warp fuel they use is 'Deuterium' - literally just a molecule of two atoms of the most common substance in the universe (it's H2).
Read 9 tweets
Jan 2
One of my sci-fi pet peeves? Weapons that fire like a magic spell that either happens or it doesn't; Star Trek's phasers are a frequent offender.

What I mean is the sort where 'oh no, we fired our techtech beam, but they had their techtech shield up, so it did *nothing.*" 1/13
Actual weapons nearly all work by delivering some amount of energy to a target; there are some exceptions (chemical and biological weapons come to mind), but a sword, a javelin, a rifle and a nuclear bomb all work by delivering energy, either as kinetic energy or heat. 2/13
Even if those weapons fail to defeat a target's defensive systems (armor, whatever), they still delivered the energy, which, thermodynamics being what they are, had to go somewhere. It might degrade armor, or knock the target around a bit, or cause collateral damage. 3/13
Read 13 tweets

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