As I see it, the desire for in-game bigotry stems from two very important things: Human nature (at least, as exemplified throughout history), and Fun.
Human Nature: Good vs. Evil, good vs. bad, and right vs. wrong are fun to debate, but they are all artificial constructs of an already-sentient mind. At its very most basic, pre-cognizant level, behavior is determined by two root impulses: Cooperation vs. Competition. Almost literally all multicellular organisms engage in both of these practices, to at least some extent, whether they know it or not, and whether we view a creature as being "good" or "bad" is largely a function of its innate tendency to either cooperate, or compete, with others--and most especially with us. Humans tout their own understanding of such enlightened concepts as Good and Evil, but let's not pretend that Cooperation and Competition aren't lurking just beneath the surface. They drive business, they drive the stock market, they drive politics, they drive culture, they drive war. The point is this: Every person, just as every other creature, has their own desired "level" of Cooperation vs. Competition, what they consider to be a happy medium of Us vs. Them. People who feel that the local sphere has been too competitive lately will try to make it swing back to Cooperation, and vice versa. People who feel beset by conflict will seek to create (or find) peace--and people who cannot benefit from that peace will try to sow strife. That's essentially where Agent Smith comes in, virtually all of humanity cannot be comfortable living in 100% Cooperation Teletubby Land. They will always seek to find or create an Other, someone fittingly challenging against whom to strive. As for whether this Other is a foreign power or a domestic element--history has shown that to be of little consequence, other than developing different names for the types of struggle.
Fun: Not that many people want to play Dwarf Fortress where they embark in 100% Cooperation Teletubby Land. Sure, that's fine when you're just starting out & learning the ropes, but after you've weathered your first few migrant waves and figured out how to make soap, you want to see if your fort can FIGHT something. And that's just Fortress Mode: Adventurers don't just want to randomly adventure, they want to tell a Cool Story. How best to tell a Cool Story, other than defeating a Big Bad? And how can you have a Big Bad in a world that lacks Evil--real, moral, and ideally premeditated Evil? Sure, that's not an argument that there must be bigotry . . . but you can't deny that bigotry would certainly be interesting. And let's not pretend that a game that calculates the exact trajectory of a baby's severed head is set in the nicest of all possible worlds.
I know that part, the question was why? You are just saying what KittyTac was saying in more words, which is fine but the question is not really being answered.
Yeah, that'd just make the world feel more alive, wouldn't it? Seeing what prejudices and discrimination, whether real or perceived have arisen during worldgen(or due to your actions). then trying to figure out what's the cause of said discrimination. Then if you so desire, you can go ahead and try to change people's minds or even fuel that prejudice, if you want to. It is a veritable treasure trove of untapped potential for exciting stories.
No it would not, a world with prejudice is just as alive as one without it. The thing is those things are not realistically speaking within the scope of an individual or even a local government to change. Heck these things are pretty much beyond the power of civilization-level governments to quickly overcome in Real-Life.
I would see that as a good thing... Choices and consequences for your (in)actions. It's something that the game desperately needs IMO.
They consequences in this case mean there are no real choices. It is like, if you choose the red pill we will beat you to a pulp but if you choose the blue pill you get a promotion. They player is likely there to 'win', they aren't there to 'lose' by paying the price for doing things that in 50-100 years time *might* eventually bear fruit.
So are discrimination, oppression and prejudice, for any good story at least
They don't really make good stories, they make interesting worldbuilding but they make bad stories because they are beyond the scope of any one character to substantially change. Change makes for stories, bigotry does not *easily* make for good stories because bigotry is not very easy to change quickly or easily.
i dunno, seems like pretty thinly veiled attempt at name calling to me. Mixed in with a little strawmanning to boot.
It's just a potential motive behind why a person might not want to live in 100% cooperation Tellytubby land, it could be it makes them feel guilty; I never named anyone in particular as an example, because that would require me to know their innermost thoughts and would be insulting. To have everything just as bad or worse than reality seems comforting in a way because it means that you are not forced to face up to any better world full of people behaving better than you are.
The desire for a good story? Unconventional gameplay and mechanics?
It would be far more unconventional for Dwarf Fortress *not* to have those things than the reverse. Those things are ubiquitous in fiction.
Because it makes the world feel more alive, more realistic? "Also" "bigotry"(BTW, i hate this fucking word) isn't the only topic of this thread but a whole host of related and tangential concepts.
They all behave similarly so for the sake of argument I compounded them together. I could take about sexism in particular, or racism or whatever else but I may as well talk about them as one word since none of them exist (except maybe slavery, in a very minor sense) at the moment in the game and all of them raise the same issues.
Touching on what I said above, there is a difference between a computer game and a film or book. The reason is the game part, the player typically aims to win rather than lose and the player's actions are typically calculated to this end. In a book or film however, the reader-viewer is powerless to influence the course of events, this lends itself well to safely exploring such themes because their passivity distances them from the events and puts the victim on a par with the observer, the victim does not have a choice but to suffer and the observer cannot alter the plotline with their actions because they perform no actions.
A computer game with a bigoted setting, if it is at all realistic rewards the player for being a bigot like everyone else and punishes them for being otherwise. Even if the player for some reason were to choose to play as a person on the wrong end of the bigotry, they will still end up being punished more for challenging the system than they would otherwise, that is generally how slavery functions.
If we present the gamer with the binary of the boot stomping on the human face, the gamer's instinct when faced with this is to figure out how to be the boot. With passive media the viewer can empathise with the victim, the gamer on the other hand sees the boot as the winner and the face as the loser, getting to work figuring out how he can become the winner and it with the winner that he therefore empathises.
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Topic: Add to the creatures thoughts about sex and be able to customize their values (Read 26048 times)