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.
SubstantialFrivolity I'm not even supposed to be here today
2yr ago
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Friday Fun Thread for October 14, 2022
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Notes -
Addendum - The Static Nature of the World
Something I kind of touched on in the gameplay section but didn't really expand on is how static the world feels. The nations in the games don't actually do anything of their own accord, things only happen when the factions make things happen. There's not really any true dynamic systems. It doesn't feel like a lived in world.
Additionally, the game doesn't really illustrate how what human society looks likes in the aftermath of alien contact, invasion, and rapid technological advancement. At best, you're given of couple of snippets of text explaining what the technology does and how it might affect society when you unlock it. But you never feel it or have it materially impact the world. As far as we are concerned, the world and society at large remains mostly the same as it is now ~40 years into the future. We don't really get any changing game mechanics about how nations work or anything. This is despite the introduction of technologies like self-programming AI, quantum computing, virtually unlimited clean energy in the form of cheap mass fusion technology and so on. Game terms these things mostly just translate into like 5% bonuses to investment in economy and welfare. The lack of vision in how society might materially change due to the events of the game is pretty disappointing.
Climate Change
One of the biggest political issues I forgot to mention is climate change is modelled in the game, with is providing an ongoing drain on world GDP supposedly representing the costs of adapting to a changing climate. It is possible to invest points into 'Welfare' which includes removing a minor amount of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. However, and this is where the game becomes expressly political/ideological, is that the game doesn't want you (and doesn't let you) actually solve climate change, you can only slow it down. Even techs expressly designed to address climate change like designer organisms and carbon capture technology do very little to address the problem. This is a deliberate choice from the developers as I've seen it been discussed, because despite being set in an timeline where mass advanced AI, nuclear fusion and plasma weaponry are quickly invented and adopted, apparently we can't develop a similar solution for climate change. The developers, and many of the fans who have argued about it in the forums and discord, believe in some green radical social change is the only way to deal with climate change and have inserted that view into their advanced sci-fi setting.
It's a general trend I notice that those who have some extremely strong ideological convictions about a topic, especially those who have almost no nuance in their worldview and can't steelman and inhabit alternative points of view, are almost never able to craft realistic worlds and narratives when it comes to their topic of interest. This is not necessarily a stock "politics in entertainment is bad" position, rather it's more that worldbuilding and the politics in it have to be handled carefully and can't feel like you are being aggressively force-fed a position or point of view. It's especially bad when the writers are tackling very different settings with very different material and technological conditions from ours and yet still feel the need to shoehorn Current Year politics into things.
It's for that reason that I think it's a good rule of thumb to politically disengage as much as possible when one tackles fiction, and if they do have politics one should make sure they organically arise from the groundwork they've set instead of trying to create allegories and messages that pertain to our current environment. The latter approach to things simply does not work, in my opinion, and ends up feeling ridiculously out of place and quite preachy.
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