Bay 12 Games Forum
Other Projects => Curses => Topic started by: Jonathan S. Fox on May 31, 2018, 12:45:15 am
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(http://www.jonathansfox.com/images/neolib1.png)
So there's a thing I've been working on.
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So there's a thing I've been working on.
:) OMIGAWD YOU'RE BACK! :)
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neoliberal crime squad? That could be interesting. I wonder what it will be like, I know it is at least a theme swap.
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Neo-liberal as in "new", or neoliberal as in the ideology?
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Holy shit, welcome back!
Is this going to be a modern version of LCS or something? LCS could use some new material, since it's kinda outdated politically.
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Always excited for anything new regarding LCS
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Thanks everyone. It's all warm and fuzzy to be welcomed back. ^_^
neoliberal crime squad? That could be interesting. I wonder what it will be like, I know it is at least a theme swap.
I had a feeling the filename wouldn't slip past undetected. ;)
Neo-liberal as in "new", or neoliberal as in the ideology?
Absolutely meant to be both.
Is this going to be a modern version of LCS or something? LCS could use some new material, since it's kinda outdated politically.
Definitely modernized:
(http://www.jonathansfox.com/images/neolib3.png)
With some alternate history mixed in, to make playing as a crime squad aligned with the existing world order more plausible:
(http://www.jonathansfox.com/images/neolib4.png)
It turns out doing a total conversion of LCS is A LOT of work, and there's still a ton of stuff yet to do before it's ready. I kind of wanted to wait to say anything until I was done, but the work so far has been exciting enough that I couldn't resist sharing a few pictures. :3
I don't want to go into too many details until it's closer to finished, but the overarching concept is that, rather than just reskinning the existing political system, I want to place the new crime squad in the center of the political chart with enemies on both sides of the spectrum opposing you.
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Wooo! You're back!
Edit: spoke too soon. Will be looking into this!
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I don't want to go into too many details until it's closer to finished, but the overarching concept is that, rather than just reskinning the existing political system, I want to place the new crime squad in the center of the political chart with enemies on both sides of the spectrum opposing you.
So... Moderate Crime Squad? Sorta? Since you're in the middle and all. Or would that be Centrist Crime Squad?
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I'm excited now.
Knowing my past experiences with the first LCS, I'll probably mess up here, but all the same, I'm excited now.
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Welcome Back! This makes me totally glad I checked these forums on a whim today!
Can't wait to see more of the new LCS!
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I'm torn between overjoyed shock at your return and vomiting slightly at the thought of fighting for neoliberalism.
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I'm torn between overjoyed shock at your return and vomiting slightly at the thought of fighting for neoliberalism.
This. :P
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I'm torn between overjoyed shock at your return and vomiting slightly at the thought of fighting for neoliberalism.
That's what everyone says, before their parents die and leave behind...
(http://www.jonathansfox.com/images/neolib5.png)
Enough of this left-wing nonsense! You're the 1% now. Time to start a proper crime squad befitting a proper ideology.
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This looks awesome. I'm always excited by new LCS mods, and this one looks really good.
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Great you're back!
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What even is Neoliberalism and what will make it different from the Liberal Crime Squad? Opposing an "Xenophobic, racist, sexist" agenda still kinda sounds like a Liberal Crime Squad thing, except more 2016-ish.
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Two competing definitions of Neoliberalism simultaneously inform what I'm working on:
The First: The currently dominant capitalist world order, favoring free markets and free trade, and always preferring market-oriented solutions to problems over government mandates. Got poverty? Take two capitalisms and call me in the morning. Got climate change? A capitalism a day keeps the sea levels at bay. Got social safety net? It's probably too big, have you tried capitalism? If the world has problems, it's usually because you haven't applied capitalism sufficiently. In this definition, the establishment, the rulers of the world, are neoliberals: allies include the "deep state" and foreign leaders.
The Second: The recently "claimed" definition espoused in Sam Bowman's "I'm a neoliberal. Maybe you are too (https://medium.com/@s8mb/im-a-neoliberal-maybe-you-are-too-b809a2a588d6)" blog post, with adherents including a bunch of idealistic and disproportionately young white male econ and comp sci college students on reddit. The ideological tradition here is former libertarians who think true libertarians obsess about purity rather than focusing on outcomes, and former leftists who think leftists don't give capitalism enough credit. They imagine they're the "socially liberal, economically moderate consensus", but actually hold pretty extreme views on a number of economic issues, have no real skin in the game when it comes to social issues, and routinely come into conflict with both the anti-capitalist left and the nationalist/populist right.
As such, the Neoliberalism here is:
1. On one hand, just as opposed to the "modern politics inspired" nationalist-populist right-wing dictatorship as anyone. The game is Nightmare Mode only, and they hate it as much as the left does.
2. On the other hand, unlike the LCS, they're enthusiastically and dramatically opposed to leftist attempts to overthrow the capitalist world order. Did someone say "Socialist Threat"? Oh hell no, take those smelly Marxist beards out of here; better dead than red.
3. Thematically, they're perceiving the world from a throne of privilege rather than poverty. The LCS starts in the homeless shelter. The NCS starts in your inherited family estate. The LCS lets people join after getting them fired up. The NCS gets people into a room and then immediately talks salary. The LCS sees CEOs and corporations as a force of Evil. The NCS sees CEOs and corporations as potential allies and sources of funding.
It's important to note though, that in the world of the NCS, you are the good guys. Neoliberalism is a broadly maligned label, but the game is told from your perspective, and you're not the villains. You may have privilege, but that's not the same thing as being a bunch of white supremacists. You're certainly not going to tap your cigar ash onto the servants. Those are obviously bad guy things. You're not that. You're fighting the bad guys. You're the ones -- the only ones -- with a realistic plan to achieve a guaranteed basic income. You seek a global prosperity that benefits all people and reduces world suffering. You're even pushing for social justice, just without going into absurd nonsense, like trying to legislate the existence of seventeen genders (and everyone is legally defined to be all of them, to better maximize equality, comrade).
You represent the elites of the world today, as they dream themselves to be at their most enlightened: Your enemies are the stupid and the hateful of the left and the right, the wall-builders and arsonists who would divide the world up or burn it down. You dream of one world government, and of a social contract in which the rich are allowed, no, encouraged to make as much money as they like, they need only be okay with having some of it taxed away and given to the poor.
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It's important to note though, that in the world of the NCS, you are the good guys.
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Your enemies are the stupid and the hateful of the left and the right, the wall-builders and arsonists who would divide the world up or burn it down.
The "Stupid/Evil Dichotomy". Everyone opposed to us is either stupid, or evil. Presenting this as an in-universe fact is what makes it funny, possibly satirical, rather than depressing and/or infuriating.
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This is a beautiful project.
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Yes, this is great.
I'd assume President Kevin McCarthy is a randomly generated name, but uh (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_McCarthy_(California_politician))
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Haha, yes, Kevin McCarthy was a random name. Any resemblance to the house majority leader of California is purely coincidental.
I gotta get back into it again, I was working on overhauling recruitment to make it money based when my attention was drawn to the recently released Cultist Simulator. Ended up playing that for about a week in my free time.
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I am just glad that the NCS will be able to fend off the droves of conservative neonazi crime squad and stalinist revolutionaries and preserve the liberty and freedom for all to do business and sell newspapers full of lies for profit and to sway the people's opinion. 2025 is gonna be part of the roaring 20's followed by WW3 in 2045.
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All I hope is that bad pick-up lines are still involved.
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So since this is set in 2025, I'm assuming that the political content will be more up to date than the original LCS. LCS is kinda outdated when you compare it to American politics and stuff after 2016.
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Looks promising. I can't wait for it to be released
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So since this is set in 2025, I'm assuming that the political content will be more up to date than the original LCS. LCS is kinda outdated when you compare it to American politics and stuff after 2016.
Or, if you look at it another way, kind of scarily topical. This is supposed to be a silly game! The US would never REALLY be taken over by fascists!
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The game imagines a literal dictatorship as the inciting incident. I want the game to feel more modern and relevant to current events than the original, which was inspired by US politics in the early 2000s, but I also want to make sure it's still always expressing an exaggerated version of them. There's a kind of balance there and pushing the events into a dramatic collapse of democracy is the vision I have for how to do that.
I'm currently working on recruitment; I want to emphasize money much more in this version, with your recruits collecting a salary. Following this, you can bribe anyone to join, it's just a matter of how high of a price they'll sell out for, making the choice to recruit someone otherwise difficult to recruit a resource allocation challenge. People who agree with you are relatively cheap, people with more skills are more expensive, and enemies will expect a premium before they'll sell out. But even your allies will expect something; your persuasion isn't useless, it can help to bargain down the price, but nobody will join your cause to live in revolutionary poverty.
To this end, you can only recruit people up to what you can afford using your stable income. Robbing houses may give you disposable cash on hand for one time purchases, but ongoing expenses, such as rental costs for new safehouses, and salary for new recruits, will need to paid from stable income. At the start of the game, that's your trust fund, but you may feel the need to secure additional sources of income.
I should note it's probably going to be awhile! Progress is slow because, at least at the moment, I don't have any sort of schedule for working on this; it is currently just a thing I'm doing in a bit of my free time, when I feel inspired.
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your persuasion isn't useless, it can help to bargain down the price, but nobody will join your cause to live in revolutionary poverty.
What about Seduction and Psychology, though?
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I'm currently working on recruitment; I want to emphasize money much more in this version, with your recruits collecting a salary. Following this, you can bribe anyone to join, it's just a matter of how high of a price they'll sell out for, making the choice to recruit someone otherwise difficult to recruit a resource allocation challenge. People who agree with you are relatively cheap, people with more skills are more expensive, and enemies will expect a premium before they'll sell out. But even your allies will expect something; your persuasion isn't useless, it can help to bargain down the price, but nobody will join your cause to live in revolutionary poverty.
To this end, you can only recruit people up to what you can afford using your stable income. Robbing houses may give you disposable cash on hand for one time purchases, but ongoing expenses, such as rental costs for new safehouses, and salary for new recruits, will need to paid from stable income. At the start of the game, that's your trust fund, but you may feel the need to secure additional sources of income.
It is not be a novelty since we used to have to pay for house expenses, modulated by the Cooking skill. It might solve the Money For Nothing issue and make user use more disposable persons (Hippies, Illegals), love slaves and maybe kidnapped persons.
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This is extremely good even though if it happens I will have to constantly scream into my pillow while playing it.
Can you put people into think-tanks instead of activism? Is hacking replaced by talking about Russian hacking on twitter? Can you respect the troops really hard, hoping that one day they will love you back? Can you achieve that exactly 50% of all torturers and drone pilots are women? Will there be a confusing amount of Neo-Liberals named Jon? Will there be a Marxist Crime Squad and can you leak their small donor list to the fascists?
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So there's a thing I've been working on.
:) OMIGAWD YOU'RE BACK! :)
Logged back in just to say WELCOME BACK!!!!!!!! Stoked for the new project!!
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This looks awesome. I might even enjoy this more then LCS, and I feel like I've been playing LCS for well over a decade now.
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The Legend Lives! Welcome back!
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I'm getting so hyped already. I always wanted an LCS written from the perspective of an actual leftist, which it sounds like you are from your insightful description of neoliberalism in the first place, although I don't want to assume anything. I love LCS and Toady, but it smells like it was written by a liberal in the Bush era, one who thinks that fascism could never actually happen in America. A world where horseshoe theory is real is already fertile grounds for satire.
Also, I really like how recruitment is limited by income, it not only sounds actually balanced in terms of gameplay but also like a great way to weave systems and narrative together. Similarly, now that there are no elected representatives, do you have any idea yet how the NCS will affect change if not by getting people elected to change laws? Are you cooking up an entirely new system to measure game progress by? I can't wait.
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I'm getting so hyped already. I always wanted an LCS written from the perspective of an actual leftist, which it sounds like you are from your insightful description of neoliberalism in the first place, although I don't want to assume anything. I love LCS and Toady, but it smells like it was written by a liberal in the Bush era, one who thinks that fascism could never actually happen in America. A world where horseshoe theory is real is already fertile grounds for satire.
Also, I really like how recruitment is limited by income, it not only sounds actually balanced in terms of gameplay but also like a great way to weave systems and narrative together. Similarly, now that there are no elected representatives, do you have any idea yet how the NCS will affect change if not by getting people elected to change laws? Are you cooking up an entirely new system to measure game progress by? I can't wait.
To be fair, the original LCS was uh... Early 2000's or something? Really was Bush era. The political aspects of it are very dated in a way, when you compare it to politics during the 2016 elections and after.
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I'm excited. PTW!
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There will always be a LCS, and we will always need a slogan.
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Maybe the game can be about forming a political action committee and can support candidates directly and spend money on funding campaigns and communicating messaging between the candidate and your political action committee as well as being able to collect dark money from special interests and running negative attack ads against other CONSERVATIVE candidates while supporting LIBERAL candidates. I like the idea of showing how the system works and how lobbyists have all the power and showing the effects of anticorruption laws making lobbyists and third party dark money have less effects on the candidates and elections.
I liked Fox's idea of bribing persons to join the squad, this would extend well to candidates and tv/radio pundits.
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This is genuinely really exciting and just found out about it today, looking forward to this.
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Ever since the back-to-back mail bombing attempts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2018_United_States_mail_bombing_attempts) and synagogue shooting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_synagogue_shooting) last month I've had an uncomfortable feeling that this project I'm working on is a little too close to life. LCS lives in a space where it references real-world violence and pretends endorsement of it, but operates outside the realm of the reasonable, beyond normal political discourse. It works because it commits hard to a fantasy far beyond the pale, and assures itself that this is okay because the fantasy is so far removed from reality.
Organizations like the original real-world SLA that the LCS was based on operate based on a sense of victimhood and distrust for democratic institutions, and are only absurd to the extent that people don't really feel that way. When they do, it starts to sound more reasonable, more relevant. LCS wants to be relating to whiff of relevance, but not too much; it keyed off of a bit of that feeling on the left in frustration about the 2000 election, anger that the president lost the popular vote and wouldn't have won the electoral college but for a badly designed ballot in palm beach county, a feeling that they should have won an election but didn't and now everything is terrible. But you didn't see people actually resorting to violence; it was still exaggeration.
Making a game that riffs off of those themes today in response to similar frustrations toward Trump on the left seemed like it was more relevant than ever, but I had to push further to keep things exaggerated; once again, the US President got fewer votes than his opponent, and once again, the left was full of righteous indignation, but I wanted to push past the political situation of the original game and cast things as actual dictatorship to keep things squarely in fantasy land. But now I'm having second thoughts about whether that's enough. What worries me more today is that the current US President strives to cultivate that sense of victimhood and distrust in democratic institutions among his own followers, a sort of eternal power struggle against widespread institutional oppression and injustice that casts him as a sole beacon of white light. Every election is a victory for his team, or illegitimate, or both. Every elected official is either his ally or corrupt. Every journalist is either favorable to him or a lying and despicable sack of shit. This is the sort of cultish SLA-style thinking that gets people into violence. It deserves to be parodied, and it should be opposed. Initially, I was thinking that makes LCS/NCS just more relevant than ever.
But there's a bit of a problem. It's satirizing the wrong people. And I'm worried that, under the current environment, that's potentially dangerous.
NCS, like LCS, would cast you as elements in opposition to the current political establishment, now inspired by the sitting US President. Then it portrays your opposition as violent, over-the-top, entitled, and disconnected from reality. There's a comedy there; there's a dark satire about how people out of power feel like victims and fantasize about taking things way too far. But part of the fun of NCS is playing into the idea of "what if those centrists were radical extremists who would do anything to hold onto power, ho ho ho isn't that funny". Unfortunately, there are real people on the extreme right who maintain this mentality of victimhood and distrust for democracy, and they do fear that those other guys are so unscrupulous, so evil, that they'll stop at nothing to maintain their hold on power. So sure, part of the idea of NCS is tapping into that, saying "oh, yeah, people on the far left/right think the establishment is corrupt and clings to power with inappropriate means, so let's play with that concept and cast you as someone like that". But it kind of stopped being funny to me when it became evident that this concept is taken so seriously and so far by a few folks that they're willing to kill because they already feel like oppressed victims of an imagined cabal of corrupt criminals. And I guess we already knew that, to some extent, but the events last month really brought it to the fore of my attention. Making a game that postulates that they're right could work, but it really needs to point its satirical sights squarely on at that crazy fringe, and this game doesn't really do that.
I don't feel like I'm quite explaining my misgivings properly. There's another component of this discomfort that is simpler to explain. LCS is a dark game and it's inspired by real-world political violence, but it's time-removed from its source material and operates on the premise that everyone who sits down to play it can see how ridiculous these people are acting, that no matter hard the game pretends to take its premise seriously, the concept is too outlandish. But today's political environment has seen multiple incidents in the run-up to the last election where real people in the US have been willing to kill political opponents, even killing just regular folks that they have cultural disagreements with, over these big picture political views. These are, thankfully, just extremists on the fringe, and extremists like that have always been a thing and likely always will be, but I'm worried that it's becoming too common these days for the game NCS to comfortably exist, and NCS would be making light of something that actually happens these days. If the material it covers is getting too close to reality is stops being safely in a fantasy space, and that would mean I would need to treat the subject matter seriously and with some amount of responsibility, more so than this game really wants. NCS wants to be irreverent and irresponsible, it wants to be able to excuse itself because it's pure fantasy; it doesn't want to be a responsible, ethical game that operates in an environment in which people are actually killing each other. This game doesn't want to be careful about not fanning that flame, it wants to be secure in the belief that absolutely nobody will take it seriously or get the wrong idea, because it's so ridiculous.
If someone else was making this game, I would be excited, I would download it, and I would gladly play it. I'm just having a lot of difficulty getting myself to work on it because I've been in constant doubt about whether it's a game I should be making in this environment. I'm not worried about you guys -- I'm not worried that regular decent people are going to play the game and suddenly go "Yeah, time to go be a political terrorist IRL, that's a good idea" -- and I don't think that anyone should feel bad for wanting me to make this game, or for disagreeing with my misgivings. I just worry, and don't want my actions to feed in, even a little bit, to the psychosis of actual political terrorists, or to promote a mentality of vilification of other human beings in a time when, if anything, our politics desperately need a larger dose of humanity and better understanding of each other. I mean, you could say the same of any era; but these days that sort of decency is in especially short supply, and I'd rather not be part of the problem.
I'm confident that I could get this game into a stable, minimum viable state in a month or two of focused and enthusiastic free time development. I might still go for that goal. But right now that's difficult to promise. I'm having a hard time mustering the enthusiasm to work on it when I'm having moral doubts about finishing and releasing it at all.
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Hey, this might sound like a really dumb question, but I want to ask it anyway.
If you felt motivated to make Liberal Crime Squad back then because of how you felt about the political climate at the time, why don't you make a game now that's motivated by how you feel about the current political climate?
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Jonathan S. Fox I appreciate that you have put so much thought into the consequences to your actions no matter how trivial they may seem to others. God bless you for not wanting to endorse political violence. You seem to be more considerate of the political climate of violence than our own President is. I think this makes you uniquely qualified to fix the problems in LCS that you have pointed out. If LCS previously had been a game to simulate the Velvet Revolutions and violent coup d'etat IE both means of political upheaval, why not focus on implementing protesting, resisting tyranny, sponsoring legislation, fixing a broken political system with civic engagement and holding the powerful accountable for their actions rather than implementing features that empower violence why not use this strange game as a way of accomplishing peaceful change in the face of unyielding violent oppressors. The irony is that the violent playthroughs I have had shows the LCS as the Conservative Boogieman who run amok of justice and destroy public safety to achieve their nefarious criminal goals of complete domination and as soon as they stop oppressing the people with violence Conservatism quickly returns to business as usual pushing their agenda.
Maybe the problem with LCS is that it was made as a parody to justify a violent political simulation. As it currently stands the game can be played completely peacefully or with an orgy of bloodshed.
I like to use LCS as a way of simulating the various criminalities of the world. However I started feeling weird about doing violent playthroughs after the Parkland mass shooting because while playing Terra Vitea one of my sleepers I recruited was a football coach and then I sent a lone suicide liberal to attack the reeducation prison with an AR-15 that one of my sleepers had stolen for me.
And then the actual news story happened in real life. :'( I got paranoid and thought that someone was using my play through to craft real life massacres. Then I realized that America has a problem and it isn't just me playing Terra Vitea or LCS, it is that there is an actual divide between the idea of Liberalism and Conservatism have been forgotten in place of partisan rhetoric and what people call the Left and the Right is increasingly growing.
LCS is a simulation that has its finger on the pulse of evil while pretending that it is for the sake of some greater good.
I always wondered why in LCS when someone dies during interrogation your Liberal loses juice but if you have them kill any other way they gain juice. Presumably it is because the Liberal is realizing that they are actually the evil one who is kidnapping and beating people to death.
TLDR:
Jonathan S. Fox maybe the answer is that LCS rewards both good and evil and if you want to stop endorsing political violence you need to remove it wholesale from any future game.
Maybe model the game off of the Civil Rights movement and the Indivisible movement of today and focus on political organizing and drop the facade of criminality and make this about a Patriot Protest Party or Civil Rights Activist Protestors anything other than the Liberal Crime Squad at this point would make me happy.
Get rid of the pyramid hierarchical limitations on recruitment, add the ability to help people in game become registered to vote, add the ability to canvas door to door, add the ability to run for office and to serve once elected this would put the power back into the hands of the people/player without encouraging them to commit violence. I would rather play as Gabby Gifford than the guy who shot her. Even just having an actual vote rather than a percentage and incorporating turnout into the in game elections would radically shift the game from being about being a violent crime syndicate (Pizzagate) and more of a political simulation (which I am fond of). Because the answer is that winning is not worth it if you have to resort to violence to accomplish it. This isn't a game about the American Revolution against the British this is a game about how Liberals have always been demonized because of their progressive approach to policy that seeks to other throw the states quo and how violence is always mustered against those who oppose the status quo but as Martin Luther King once said "Darkness can not drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate can not drive out hate, only love can do that." So Jonathan S. Fox I challenge you to infuse some light into your project and infuse love into your project. Maybe people will complain that LCS used to be more fun when you could just shoot, stab, beat up everyone who didn't agree with you. But that is not an argument you should care about. Because as it stands until I can march on Washington D.C and give an I have a dream speech in this game, Washington D.C only serves as a way to kidnap, murder or brainwash the President.
Screw the original LCS and its blindness to reality. Screw criminal groups masquerading as populists to recruit weak willed followers to do their bidding. This is a game about AMERICA, Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, where our forefathers fought and died to preserve our freedom and our rights. Conservative's and Liberals both deserve the same rights to Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Jonathan S. Fox if your game doesn't meet your moral standards then you don't have to release it no matter how many people ask you to. But I encourage you to consider what I have said just as I have considered what you have said. God bless you all and stay safe out there everyone.
Peace out.
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If you felt motivated to make Liberal Crime Squad back then because of how you felt about the political climate at the time
Jonathan S. Fox didn't make it. It was made, satire and all, by Tarn Adams (author of, other than Dwarf Fortress, such games as WWI Medic , Kobold quest, I'm voting for myself and Space Zoo.) It was supposed to be a Murder Hobo Simulator (specifically Oubliette (https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/oubliette)) transplanted from the land of fantasy into modern day. Mr. Fox just took the game and made it more stable and slightly broader, if anything toning down the wackiness.
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If someone was going to be a political terrorist, the existence or non-existence of your game would not have made a difference. I don't think you'd really be fueling the flame any more than pouring a cup of water into the sea.
Your worry are definitely appreciated, but please take care of your own mental health too!
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If someone else was making this game, I would be excited, I would download it, and I would gladly play it.
[link deleted by moderator]
Personally, I still like the idea of Revolt of the Elites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Lasch#The_Revolt_of_the_Elites:_And_the_Betrayal_of_Democracy): the Game. But, if you're looking for another setting, then... hmm...
Post-apocalyptic might be interesting. Say that the United States federal government has ceased to exist as a functional entity (or at least in some way lost its claim to having a monopoly on the legitimate use of force) by the time the game begins and you're in charge of one of the successor factions. It could be a LCS-style direct action activist group, a gang/cartel, a rogue military unit, a corporate-backed PAC not unlike the kind being suggested here... just about anything. One part LCS, one part Syndicate Series, one part Shattered Union.
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Because the answer is that winning is not worth it if you have to resort to violence to accomplish it. This isn't a game about the American Revolution against the British this is a game about how Liberals have always been demonized because of their progressive approach to policy that seeks to other throw the states quo and how violence is always mustered against those who oppose the status quo but as Martin Luther King once said "Darkness can not drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate can not drive out hate, only love can do that.
MLK was getting a lot more radical by the time the CIA had him killed...
...anyway, there hasn't been a single political movement in history was able to take power without violence, the threat of violence, or the backing of people who were willing to do violence on their behalf. I know our institutions love to shove this (heavily sanitized) view of The Reverend down our throats, but fact of the matter is that he would have gotten nowhere if he wasn't seen as a preferable alternative to the likes of the Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, and Nation of Islam who were literally willing to burn down the cities of America if they didn't get their way. And then of course there was the Federal Government, which would be tasked with enforcing the changes that King et. al. wanted, violently if need be. Might is right and it always has been.
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Because the answer is that winning is not worth it if you have to resort to violence to accomplish it. This isn't a game about the American Revolution against the British this is a game about how Liberals have always been demonized because of their progressive approach to policy that seeks to other throw the states quo and how violence is always mustered against those who oppose the status quo but as Martin Luther King once said "Darkness can not drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate can not drive out hate, only love can do that.
MLK was getting a lot more radical by the time the CIA had him killed...
...anyway, there hasn't been a single political movement in history was able to take power without violence, the threat of violence, or the backing of people who were willing to do violence on their behalf. I know our institutions love to shove this (heavily sanitized) view of The Reverend down our throats, but fact of the matter is that he would have gotten nowhere if he wasn't seen as a preferable alternative to the likes of the Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, and Nation of Islam who were literally willing to burn down the cities of America if they didn't get their way. And then of course there was the Federal Government, which would be tasked with enforcing the changes that King et. al. wanted, violently if need be. Might is right and it always has been.
"violence, the threat of violence, or the backing of people who were willing to do violence on their behalf" is such a broad metric it applies to people shopping on black friday.
Personally, I still like the idea of Revolt of the Elites (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Lasch#The_Revolt_of_the_Elites:_And_the_Betrayal_of_Democracy): the Game. But, if you're looking for another setting, then... hmm...
Post-apocalyptic might be interesting. Say that the United States federal government has ceased to exist as a functional entity (or at least in some way lost its claim to having a monopoly on the legitimate use of force) by the time the game begins and you're in charge of one of the successor factions. It could be a LCS-style direct action activist group, a gang/cartel, a rogue military unit, a corporate-backed PAC not unlike the kind being suggested here... just about anything. One part LCS, one part Syndicate Series, one part Shattered Union.
That does sound interesting.
That said, I'd feel better if AG could go two sentences without antisemitism. Political ideology does not have to be tied to racial identity.
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If someone else was making this game, I would be excited, I would download it, and I would gladly play it. I'm just having a lot of difficulty getting myself to work on it because I've been in constant doubt about whether it's a game I should be making in this environment. I'm not worried about you guys -- I'm not worried that regular decent people are going to play the game and suddenly go "Yeah, time to go be a political terrorist IRL, that's a good idea" -- and I don't think that anyone should feel bad for wanting me to make this game, or for disagreeing with my misgivings. I just worry, and don't want my actions to feed in, even a little bit, to the psychosis of actual political terrorists, or to promote a mentality of vilification of other human beings in a time when, if anything, our politics desperately need a larger dose of humanity and better understanding of each other. I mean, you could say the same of any era; but these days that sort of decency is in especially short supply, and I'd rather not be part of the problem.
I'm confident that I could get this game into a stable, minimum viable state in a month or two of focused and enthusiastic free time development. I might still go for that goal. But right now that's difficult to promise. I'm having a hard time mustering the enthusiasm to work on it when I'm having moral doubts about finishing and releasing it at all.
Yeah, political violence and terrorism are now too much near home.
An update might see more peaceful methods (i.e. running as candidates or social action) and might add more backlash for violence.
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To this end, you can only recruit people up to what you can afford using your stable income. Robbing houses may give you disposable cash on hand for one time purchases, but ongoing expenses, such as rental costs for new safehouses, and salary for new recruits, will need to paid from stable income. At the start of the game, that's your trust fund, but you may feel the need to secure additional sources of income.
I humbly suggest not doing this. It goes against the very grain of the game that you're creating.
Limiting someone to what they can afford is Socialist and Un-American. Rich people are always trying to leverage their future for an advantage today. Maybe the player has a surefire plan that will net them untold riches in the future by picking up more recruits than they can pay for today. Why not let them try it?
After all, what's the worst that happens? Your star recruits bail out - Their employees, not brothers-in-arms. You get new ones when you get the finances straightened out. Maybe even hire them back if they don't find work in the interim.
It seems to me that the player's character is the sort to think their smarter than everyone else, so they should be able to take such risks and face the consequences.
...and if the player gets raided just after their security guards walk out for insufficient pay, then maybe they'll learn something if they survive.
As for your doubts:
I was also worried about the state of American politics, until I went to an Art Museum and was reminded of our history.
1804: Aaron Burr and Hamilton duel. That's right, two duly-elected officials pointed guns at each other and tried to kill one another.
There were subsequent fights between elected officials in the Assembly and Senate leading up the American Civil War.
1861: The American Civil War starts. Our country actually splits in half along party lines into open warfare.
Early 1900s: Communists form groups dedicated to the overthrow of the capitalist world.
Domestic bombings and riots during the Vietnam war, The Black Day in July.
Honestly, things are pretty peaceful now, when you look back.
One flaw of the game is that it purports to represent a neoliberal against a populist regime, when we have a neoliberal leading a populist regime currently. The ideologies are off. You want satire? Imagine Trump lost to Bernie Sanders, and satire the supposed authoritarian socialist regime of Sanders as a neoliberal protaganist. You can poke fun at both sides and its completely ridiculous since it didn't happen...but it could have.
Now if you excuse me, I have to daydream about what if Bernie Sanders was president for a while...
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As for your doubts:
I was also worried about the state of American politics, until I went to an Art Museum and was reminded of our history.
1804: Aaron Burr and Hamilton duel. That's right, two duly-elected officials pointed guns at each other and tried to kill one another.
There were subsequent fights between elected officials in the Assembly and Senate leading up the American Civil War.
1861: The American Civil War starts. Our country actually splits in half along party lines into open warfare.
Early 1900s: Communists form groups dedicated to the overthrow of the capitalist world.
Domestic bombings and riots during the Vietnam war, The Black Day in July.
Honestly, things are pretty peaceful now, when you look back.
Aye. As people get older, all the forces protecting them from the terrible realities of the world tend to fade away. To the viewer, it looks like the world is getting worse, regardless whether it is. Heck, according to Gallup Polls, Americans were more open to Syrian refugees in 2015 than to Jewish refugees in 1938. It's one of the frustrating things about 'MAGA'. The 2010s have been better than probably any preceding decade in all recorded history. I expect that to be the case with most decades over the past 150 years or so. Not easy to measure, though, and obviously some places are worse off, but overall, I'm quite confident.
One flaw of the game is that it purports to represent a neoliberal against a populist regime, when we have a neoliberal leading a populist regime currently. The ideologies are off. You want satire? Imagine Trump lost to Bernie Sanders, and satire the supposed authoritarian socialist regime of Sanders as a neoliberal protaganist. You can poke fun at both sides and its completely ridiculous since it didn't happen...but it could have.
Now if you excuse me, I have to daydream about what if Bernie Sanders was president for a while...
I like to imagine Freddie Mercury sang at his inauguration, though my version of events diverge from reality in the late 1970s~early 1980s.