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SubstantialFrivolity  I'm not even supposed to be here today  2yr ago (text post)   2535 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 14, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Comparing it to Alpha Centauri seems almost unfair; considering it's probably the game with the most philosophical depth of all games, ever. It's not a coincidence that Scott frequently inserts references to it in his posts (click the colon characters in his review of Albion's Seed, or read Unsong, where I noticed at least one chapter deal with and directly reference concepts introduced in SMAC e.g. the quote from a "wise woman" here, a reference to this).

The chief difference I think is that the writers clearly had a whole bunch of genuinely interesting ideas stewing in their heads that they wanted to express, and chose the computer game medium to do so. Other games have a plot and then attempt to come up with "deep" ideas after the fact, something which almost always fail.

(Tangentially, If you've played it and enjoyed it as much as I did, I can recommend this blog containing in-depth analysis of basically every quote in the game.)

Yeah, AC is a beast when it comes to writing in video games. Or, hell, writing in sci-fi in general.

And it seems to have cast a shadow on every 4X set on a planet's surface to come. Pax Nova, Beyond Earth, Planetfall, Terra Invicta. They all attempt the AC thing without having any of the necessary skills, and it cheapens the experience to a very noticeable degree. If they cannot even tell that they are out of their depth in writing, then why should I trust them on game design? Why play a game that will probably just waste my time, just as it wasted my attention with those crappy quotes?

I agree, and I would be more forgiving if it wasn't for the fact the game seems to be heavily drawing from Alpha Centauri in their faction design and presentation. It's pretty obvious. They set themselves up for unfavourable comparisons.

Yeah if your writing chops aren't impeccable, it's a bad idea to make a 4X sci fi game with ideological factions. I didn't even like SMAC, and I know that much. I'm color blind and the colors on the early map made exploration quite difficult the alien life that killed most early units was indistinguishable from the predominant map color. A few months later they released a color blind patch to change them.

Oh, that blog series is excellent, I've read it before. One of the things I loved about the original seven factions is that every one has a point to make, somewhere, and even though all of them are easily summarized in a few words, there's depth to the characterization that often comes as a surprise. It's easy to dismiss Sister Miriam as a religious zealot (and she is), but the common accusation that she's a Luddite is misaimed--she thinks technological development often has moral implications that should be understood before adoption (cough looking at you, Zakharov). Similarly, Chairman Yang, the Communist/Hive organizer, has some interesting philosophical thoughts about the nature of humanity and consciousness in a post-Singularity context. Each of the faction heads may be wrong--and you can usually point to pretty clear cases where they are--but none of them are trivial. (Sadly, the expansion writing is much less good.)

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