I just finished a game of Civilization 6 with a religious victory, again. This is the strategy I usually take simply because it's the fastest way to win, and this game is pretty slow. The only...
I just finished a game of Civilization 6 with a religious victory, again. This is the strategy I usually take simply because it's the fastest way to win, and this game is pretty slow. The only nice thing I can say about religious domination is that it's better than military domination. Very little about the Civilization series can be defended ethically or historically.
One way out is to avoid realism and embrace abstraction. (Compact Conflict is a good example of this. You have "soldiers" and "temples" and earn "faith", but this clearly has little to do with any real fighting or religion.) In Civilization, the gameplay is abstract, but it still has a historical sweep that gives you a bit of a power fantasy. Sometimes it's not quite far enough removed from reality to be comfortable.
Nowadays most game designers avoid history altogether and stick with science fiction or fantasy. It's probably for the best.
Still have to read the whole article, but as someone who played a lot of Colonization back in the day, I find this to be an interesting read. Looking at it from a critical view, I think the two...
Still have to read the whole article, but as someone who played a lot of Colonization back in the day, I find this to be an interesting read. Looking at it from a critical view, I think the two obvious issues are 1 Slavery and 2 Native Americans. The strategy on the first issue ("don't have it in the game") seems irresponsible until you consider the mechanics of gamifying slavery in any way, which would have been patently offensive. I'm prepared to say they did the right thing there, only with respect to the game mechanics. It should have been called out more in the game documents, I think, but the thought of making it "part of the game" in any way feels gross.
As for the presentation of First Nations people, I think they could have done much better. The tribes present have a minimal amount of agency in that they can steal horses and guns and adapt to the "obviously superior European ways if doing things" but outside of that they are presented as "background set pieces" in a way that suggests they are just there to be steamrolled. It doesn't feel quite right, especially when the mechanics were there to make them "active cities" like the other European powers had.
I just finished a game of Civilization 6 with a religious victory, again. This is the strategy I usually take simply because it's the fastest way to win, and this game is pretty slow. The only nice thing I can say about religious domination is that it's better than military domination. Very little about the Civilization series can be defended ethically or historically.
One way out is to avoid realism and embrace abstraction. (Compact Conflict is a good example of this. You have "soldiers" and "temples" and earn "faith", but this clearly has little to do with any real fighting or religion.) In Civilization, the gameplay is abstract, but it still has a historical sweep that gives you a bit of a power fantasy. Sometimes it's not quite far enough removed from reality to be comfortable.
Nowadays most game designers avoid history altogether and stick with science fiction or fantasy. It's probably for the best.
Still have to read the whole article, but as someone who played a lot of Colonization back in the day, I find this to be an interesting read. Looking at it from a critical view, I think the two obvious issues are 1 Slavery and 2 Native Americans. The strategy on the first issue ("don't have it in the game") seems irresponsible until you consider the mechanics of gamifying slavery in any way, which would have been patently offensive. I'm prepared to say they did the right thing there, only with respect to the game mechanics. It should have been called out more in the game documents, I think, but the thought of making it "part of the game" in any way feels gross.
As for the presentation of First Nations people, I think they could have done much better. The tribes present have a minimal amount of agency in that they can steal horses and guns and adapt to the "obviously superior European ways if doing things" but outside of that they are presented as "background set pieces" in a way that suggests they are just there to be steamrolled. It doesn't feel quite right, especially when the mechanics were there to make them "active cities" like the other European powers had.