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[GoblinCookie]

Unless you are able to control yourself and not just give in to your subconscious (like most people, as far as I'm aware). If you are able to tell the difference between simulated and real people (even on a shallow conscious level), you probably won't enjoy oppressing real people if you enjoy oppressing simulated people, simply because your emotions are much stronger for real people. The effect is negligible, even if it is theoretically there.

No, if you enjoy oppressing imaginary people it is because you enjoy oppressing real people.  Make-believe implies wish-fulfilment, you are doing what you want to do but don't allow yourself to do.  You tell yourself "these people don't really exist" therefore you suppress your conscious repression of the impulses of your subconscious so that your subconscious can enjoy oppressing what it thinks are real people.

Thing is that you enjoy this precisely because you actually are the subconscious person that enjoys doing bad stuff, not the person that is forced not to actually do the bad stuff in reality; that seems benign in practice, except that people believe what they want to believe.  If a person comes along with an argument as to why X deserves to suffer, the person who enjoys the appearance of hurting people is highly motivated to agree with them.

That means that if you depict an oppressive system, allow people to play as the oppressor and the player

dwarf fortress characters don't have a face, which matters waaaaaaaaay more than you'd think

Aha, we are in the territory of the symbolically real VS the actually real.  The human being is able to emote both to realities which are depicted symbolically and to realities which are depicted literally as they would appear.

Traditionally computer games worked solely on the symbolically real, like books do.  That was because graphics were not good enough to depict a literal depiction of the thing that was in the game.  We start with letters and then progress to simple sprites but in this case

Then at a certain point the game switch to being literal as graphics get good enough.  Thing is that there is a certain point in the middle, at which Neverwinter Nights 1 is pretty much at in my opinion, during which the graphics are too good to be taken symbolically but not good enough to be actually taken literally. 

This missed my point so utterly that I have no idea what you're actually replying to. First of all, no, they don't have to be wizards. There are many examples of otherwise quite normal people making large, sweeping changes in fantasy, since this is a fantasy world simulator, which purports to create fantasy stories. Yes, I agree the "great man hypothesis" or whatever it's called is a highly inaccurate description of reality, but it is an extremely common trope in fantasy, which this game attempts to emulate by including fantasy tropes. Your argument works just as well not to include wizards at all, since wizards aren't real.

The game tends to favour realism over common fantasy game tropes, hence we don't have for instance Hitpoints.  I am pretty much sure the devs aim at realism in the sense of "if wizards were the case then X follows", not in the sense of "only things that could exist in reality exist". 

A regular fantasy game or book can justify the GMT (Great Man Theory) because they select a particular point in the history of the verse to be their setting.  If we pick the right moment where the general state of things are correctly aligned for the great man to change the world then we can have them do so; all arguable great men in history have certainly had the fortune of being there at the right time. 

But 15th Granite 250 is not supposed to be a special day.  The game is not designed so as to have the player arrive at the right time that his intervention would likely be able to change the society.  That is to say, for him to arrive at the moment when the established society is being widely called into question.  If we arrive at an ordinary moment, the player can't do anything because in an ordinary moment the society is stable enough to thwart them. 

[KittyTac]

Unless you are able to control yourself and not just give in to your subconscious (like most people, as far as I'm aware). If you are able to tell the difference between simulated and real people (even on a shallow conscious level), you probably won't enjoy oppressing real people if you enjoy oppressing simulated people, simply because your emotions are much stronger for real people. The effect is negligible, even if it is theoretically there.

No, if you enjoy oppressing imaginary people it is because you enjoy oppressing real people.  Make-believe implies wish-fulfilment, you are doing what you want to do but don't allow yourself to do.  You tell yourself "these people don't really exist" therefore you suppress your conscious repression of the impulses of your subconscious so that your subconscious can enjoy oppressing what it thinks are real people.

Thing is that you enjoy this precisely because you actually are the subconscious person that enjoys doing bad stuff, not the person that is forced not to actually do the bad stuff in reality; that seems benign in practice, except that people believe what they want to believe.  If a person comes along with an argument as to why X deserves to suffer, the person who enjoys the appearance of hurting people is highly motivated to agree with them.

That means that if you depict an oppressive system, allow people to play as the oppressor and the player

It's not going to have any real effect, would it? As I said, it would be rather negligible, so said effect would not matter as long as the player keeps self-suppressing. People don't spontaneously start worshipping blood gods because of Dwarf Fortress, you know.

And you didn't finish your post.

[Bumber]

The game tends to favour realism over common fantasy game tropes, hence we don't have for instance Hitpoints.  I am pretty much sure the devs aim at realism in the sense of "if wizards were the case then X follows", not in the sense of "only things that could exist in reality exist". 

A regular fantasy game or book can justify the GMT (Great Man Theory) because they select a particular point in the history of the verse to be their setting.  If we pick the right moment where the general state of things are correctly aligned for the great man to change the world then we can have them do so; all arguable great men in history have certainly had the fortune of being there at the right time. 

But 15th Granite 250 is not supposed to be a special day.  The game is not designed so as to have the player arrive at the right time that his intervention would likely be able to change the society.  That is to say, for him to arrive at the moment when the established society is being widely called into question.  If we arrive at an ordinary moment, the player can't do anything because in an ordinary moment the society is stable enough to thwart them.

If supernatural charisma exists, then... the player can change everyone's values.

[Rataldo]

Unless you are able to control yourself and not just give in to your subconscious (like most people, as far as I'm aware). If you are able to tell the difference between simulated and real people (even on a shallow conscious level), you probably won't enjoy oppressing real people if you enjoy oppressing simulated people, simply because your emotions are much stronger for real people. The effect is negligible, even if it is theoretically there.

No, if you enjoy oppressing imaginary people it is because you enjoy oppressing real people.  Make-believe implies wish-fulfilment, you are doing what you want to do but don't allow yourself to do.  You tell yourself "these people don't really exist" therefore you suppress your conscious repression of the impulses of your subconscious so that your subconscious can enjoy oppressing what it thinks are real people.

Thing is that you enjoy this precisely because you actually are the subconscious person that enjoys doing bad stuff, not the person that is forced not to actually do the bad stuff in reality; that seems benign in practice, except that people believe what they want to believe.  If a person comes along with an argument as to why X deserves to suffer, the person who enjoys the appearance of hurting people is highly motivated to agree with them.

That means that if you depict an oppressive system, allow people to play as the oppressor and the player

Are you saying it's bad to allow this stuff in games? Like before, I don't see you taking a stance or making an assertion, you're just describing what you think is true. I don't know enough about psychology to say whether it's true or false but it sounds suspect.

Even if it is true that video games give some kind of wish fulfillment, its real world effect must be negligible (or going in the opposite direction), otherwise we wouldn't see violent crime going down with the ever increasing number of realistic and violent video games.

[Putnam]

The game tends to favour realism over common fantasy game tropes, hence we don't have for instance Hitpoints.

Hit points are a common video game trope, not a common fantasy trope. It's totally, utterly irrelevant, and also your only evidence of the claim you made. This makes the entire argument a non-sequitur. I might be more inclined to think your argument has any merit if you come up with an example from fantasy books.

[Dorsidwarf]

Does the Order of the Stick count? They have print books 

[GoblinCookie]

It's not going to have any real effect, would it? As I said, it would be rather negligible, so said effect would not matter as long as the player keeps self-suppressing. People don't spontaneously start worshipping blood gods because of Dwarf Fortress, you know.

And you didn't finish your post.

Self-suppressing depends upon the conscious stuff being out of agreement with the subconscious stuff, but it a general rule people consciously believe what they believe don't they.  People have been worshipping blood gods for a very long time KittyTac, indeed you have a whole suite of them to choose from.  If people cultivate their desire to oppress people and are only kept in check by their intellectual beliefs, as soon as somebody comes along with a justification for oppressing people, they will believe in it and it is not like it actually has to be all that rational.  Afterall in real-life, much of the oppression of homesexuals is intellectually based upon the Abrahamic blood god demands their death (quite literally) in the bible. 

It is very annoying I did not finish my post, that seems to be becoming far too common.

That means that if you depict an oppressive system, allow people to play as the oppressor and the player then enjoys oppressing folks in the game, if somebody comes up with an argument justifying oppressing some group; that player is highly inclined to agree with them.

Are you saying it's bad to allow this stuff in games? Like before, I don't see you taking a stance or making an assertion, you're just describing what you think is true. I don't know enough about psychology to say whether it's true or false but it sounds suspect.

Even if it is true that video games give some kind of wish fulfillment, its real world effect must be negligible (or going in the opposite direction), otherwise we wouldn't see violent crime going down with the ever increasing number of realistic and violent video games.

Ah, we are back to talking about violence-in-video games.  Well I guess it is not so far off oppression-in-video-games which is not so far off gender-in-video-games which was the OP.

Very little of what you are saying makes logical sense.  If a very powerful factor is pacifying people, it does not follow that a factor promoting violence is negligible in it's effect, only relatively weaker than the other factor. 

In any case, it just so happens that the fall in violent crime is no longer the case, it has actually started to rise again.  The funny thing is this is truly violent crime of the horrific kind but not minor violent incidents.  This however is quite consistent if you think that violent video games desensitise people to violence in general, it may be there is not actually less minor violence but people don't consider minor violence worth reporting because it does not appear so serious to a mind conditioned by violent video games. 

BBC
Guardian

This is quite consistent with the countervailing trend scenario.  If something has been undermining the violence of people for a long time and video games have been working in the opposite direction (slowing down the trend) and violent video games have been becoming either more potent, as in either more indiscriminately violent or more realistic or more prevalent then there will be the tipping point when the strength of violence promoting factor finally wins the race against the violence suppressing factor.  It seems that in Britain, that point may well have come. 

If supernatural charisma exists, then... the player can change everyone's values.

That was the point about how wizards could change history.   

Hit points are a common video game trope, not a common fantasy trope. It's totally, utterly irrelevant, and also your only evidence of the claim you made. This makes the entire argument a non-sequitur. I might be more inclined to think your argument has any merit if you come up with an example from fantasy books.

Your argument was about as tissue thin as it gets.  It amounted to "it's a common fantasy trope" therefore it should be in.  My argument was simply to make it Fantasy+Video Game.  You are right that hitpoints are a common video game trope not specifically a fantasy trope, but Dwarf Fortress is afterall BOTH things. 

You can't argue "it's a fantasy trope therefore it should be in," because same logic implies "it's a video game trope therefore it should be in,". 

[KittyTac]

It's not going to have any real effect, would it? As I said, it would be rather negligible, so said effect would not matter as long as the player keeps self-suppressing. People don't spontaneously start worshipping blood gods because of Dwarf Fortress, you know.

And you didn't finish your post.

Self-suppressing depends upon the conscious stuff being out of agreement with the subconscious stuff, but it a general rule people consciously believe what they believe don't they.  People have been worshipping blood gods for a very long time KittyTac, indeed you have a whole suite of them to choose from.  If people cultivate their desire to oppress people and are only kept in check by their intellectual beliefs, as soon as somebody comes along with a justification for oppressing people, they will believe in it and it is not like it actually has to be all that rational.  Afterall in real-life, much of the oppression of homesexuals is intellectually based upon the Abrahamic blood god demands their death (quite literally) in the bible. 

It is very annoying I did not finish my post, that seems to be becoming far too common.

The same could be said about most violent games or games where you can play a villain. They are nothing new, and the moral craze regarding them is over (and proven to be unfounded scientifically). So why are you railing against adding discrimination to DF?

[GoblinCookie]

The same could be said about most violent games or games where you can play a villain. They are nothing new, and the moral craze regarding them is over (and proven to be unfounded scientifically). So why are you railing against adding discrimination to DF?

Because the 'moral panic' was correct.  The ability to cherry-pick studies that fail to detect a link between two things does not prove something is unfounded scientifically.  That is because to detect the link between two things requires the correct methodology and that has to be determined, with the wrong methodology you will fail to detect a link even if it exists; thus you will always be able to find studies to disprove something other studies prove. 

[KittyTac]

The same could be said about most violent games or games where you can play a villain. They are nothing new, and the moral craze regarding them is over (and proven to be unfounded scientifically). So why are you railing against adding discrimination to DF?

Because the 'moral panic' was correct.  The ability to cherry-pick studies that fail to detect a link between two things does not prove something is unfounded scientifically.  That is because to detect the link between two things requires the correct methodology and that has to be determined, with the wrong methodology you will fail to detect a link even if it exists; thus you will always be able to find studies to disprove something other studies prove.

You could also do the opposite: cherry-pick false positives. Are you sure that is not what you are doing?

[thompson]

I think much of this discussion kind of misses the point. It may be more constructive to think about the specific forms discrimination could take in the game, and consider their merits/demerits on a case-by-case basis. Toady has already ruled out racism (though what that means may be open to interpretation), so debate over that is purely academic.

Since this thread is about sex discrimination, perhaps we could keep it to that?

Also note positive discrimination is also possible. It may not be that men are banned from being priests of the goddess of bismuth, but rather only women are permitted due to some theological belief specific to that deity. There could be bans on breastfeeding women undergoing active military service to protect their babies (if you're reading Toady, please implement this).

There could also be differences in the baseline stat distribution between genders, which could lead to emergent discrimination (though that is unlikely). A more detailed implementation of genetics could actually produce discrimination naturally post economy, as low attribute individuals (of either gender) would settle at the bottom of society.

[Mystik]

Why should dwarf violence be supported?
1.The absence of artificial (unrelated to the world, outside the game) restrictions.
2.Violence is often present in many systems. Varhammer, whole books of rules (simulations of worlds, in the role plan), which describes the worship of dark gods. Bringing harm to others using "inconclusive" arguments.
Or. World of darkness Bloodthirsty vampires are doomed to hunt people. A world where fiction becomes true.
FATAL Again, the worlds simulator. It is considered the worst of the worst systems. Each of the races of creatures hates each other. A lot of racism, a lot of hatred, enmity. The mechanics of rape, where you need to choose the length of the anus, when you create a character.
Space station 13. Where is your task, pretend to be a good bunny to kill, steal, kidnap.
Simulator work on the space station, where someone may not be who he claims to be.
All sorts of military simulators, games, where the goal is survival.A lot of movies, books, anime, preaching violence, but not prohibited.
A lot of movies, books, anime, preaching violence, but not prohibited.

3.In the end, the definition of the game. A game is the definition of a winner. Inequality is embedded in every game. In chess, you need to sacrifice some pieces to get others. And that player who possesses the best skills or attentiveness, or compassionate wins.There is no justice.
4. Avoid the themes of good and evil.
A good player, seeing the opportunity to be evil, will decide not to be evil. The player sees the villains, it will become more careful to learn their intrigues, allowing themselves to protect.

An evil player will realize their desires in the game. If a player is evil, and realizes evil desires in a game, isn't it better than having him realize such desires in life? Moreover, he gets pleasure.

Some will say, "perhaps, seeing the villainous possibilities, the neutral will become evil." But is a dwarf fortress the only source of information? A lot of literature, in the media ... Ignoring problems, censorship, an attempt to hide information. There is no way out.

[SixOfSpades]

I'm just passing through, here, but a couple of things jumped out at me.

. . . If we pick the right moment where the general state of things are correctly aligned for the great man to change the world then we can have them do so; all arguable great men in history have certainly had the fortune of being there at the right time. 

But 15th Granite 250 is not supposed to be a special day.  The game is not designed so as to have the player arrive at the right time that his intervention would likely be able to change the society.

     Put aside, for the moment, the fact that "dramatic social revolution" is not currently implemented in DF, because of course it isn't. What is implemented, however, are quests to stop a ruthless gang of bandits, or put together a war party to go slay the dragon that's been terrorizing the countryside. Do you not save dozens, even hundreds of lives in this way? Do you not dramatically alter the future of the whole region? Do you not become a hero, whom other men will follow? Does this not satisfy the Great Man Theory? And what's all this having to be in the right place at the right time? Was Martin Luther able to shatter all of Christendom just because he happened to post his theses precisely when Europe was already at the tipping point anyway? Of course not, he sparked a revolution because his ideas were different, and a foreign adventurer character is very well positioned to point out what he sees as glaring flaws in a society, particularly if he's riding the popularity wave of just having saved a town or two. Your little quibble over "the moment he arrives" is pure misdirection--the only reason the player can't do that sort of quest is because that sort of quest simply hasn't been written (yet), and you know it. Face the facts and argue correctly.

Ah, we are back to talking about violence-in-video games.  Well I guess it is not so far off oppression-in-video-games which is not so far off gender-in-video-games which was the OP.

In any case, it just so happens that the fall in violent crime is no longer the case, it has actually started to rise again.  The funny thing is this is truly violent crime of the horrific kind but not minor violent incidents.  This however is quite consistent if you think that violent video games desensitise people to violence in general . . .

     As Putnam pointed out, dwarves don't have faces. Yeah, a lot of people seem to enjoy video game violence, and I don't know what games they go to for those particular jollies, but I do know which game they don't play: This one. I can't put my finger on it, but there's just something a little anticlimactic about seeing ASCII violence rendered in full HD with surround sound.

     People trying to claim video-game violence causes real-world violence always seem to gloss over the innumerable atrocities throughout all history, and in places/societies that simply have no exposure to such games. And as for your report that violent crime is on the rise--if, as you imply, it is prompted by video games, then which game? Isn't the Grand Theft Auto craze long past its peak, at least until its next installment? Personally, I find it much more likely that this surge of real-world nastiness is caused by . . . real-world nastiness, what with the right-wing nationalism, intolerance, and violent rhetoric on the upswing again in Britain & other parts of Europe, Brazil, and of course America. People don't hurt, kill, or oppress people because someone on their screen tells them it's okay--they do it because they already had a latent desire to do so, and someone in their own culture shows them that it's okay. Blaming video games/movies/etc. for society's various ills has never made sense.

[Putnam]

You can't argue "it's a fantasy trope therefore it should be in," because same logic implies "it's a video game trope therefore it should be in,".

Wow, why am I bothering even engaging when you fundamentally have no idea what Dwarf Fortress actually aims to be?

Plus, that's not what I was arguing anyway, but trying to prop up what will inevitably be ignored to beat on another strawman is another waste of my time.

[Rataldo]

Ah, we are back to talking about violence-in-video games.  Well I guess it is not so far off oppression-in-video-games which is not so far off gender-in-video-games which was the OP.

Very little of what you are saying makes logical sense.  If a very powerful factor is pacifying people, it does not follow that a factor promoting violence is negligible in it's effect, only relatively weaker than the other factor. 

In any case, it just so happens that the fall in violent crime is no longer the case, it has actually started to rise again.  The funny thing is this is truly violent crime of the horrific kind but not minor violent incidents.  This however is quite consistent if you think that violent video games desensitise people to violence in general, it may be there is not actually less minor violence but people don't consider minor violence worth reporting because it does not appear so serious to a mind conditioned by violent video games. 

BBC
Guardian

This is quite consistent with the countervailing trend scenario.  If something has been undermining the violence of people for a long time and video games have been working in the opposite direction (slowing down the trend) and violent video games have been becoming either more potent, as in either more indiscriminately violent or more realistic or more prevalent then there will be the tipping point when the strength of violence promoting factor finally wins the race against the violence suppressing factor.  It seems that in Britain, that point may well have come. 

I said I don't know. You made a claim. I said why I had doubts about that claim. You tried to address my doubts with some data. Both of those articles link to the same data. Attached to that data is this disclaimer:

For many types of offence, police recorded crime figures do not provide a reliable measure of trends in crime, but they do provide a good measure of the crime-related demand on the police.

(emphasis mine)
You are trying to use this data to make a claim about the trends in crime. The publishers of this data specifically say you cannot do this. You have not sufficiently addressed my doubts about your claim.

If you think violence is bad, and you think video games that depict violence cause violence, isn't it your moral obligation to start a suggestion thread for removing all violence from Dwarf Fortress? If you don't you are complicit in causing violence.

If this is your issue with this suggestion, I doubt I'd be able to change your mind here, so once again I'm going to just stop. If you really want to continue, DM me or start that new suggestion thread.