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[Detoxicated]

I feel that you should occasionally send your nobles of to the capital to vote on the change of laws, but this kind of system should be dependent on the civ. Not every civilization should decide on laws like that and also there should be some societies that do not meddle in the affairs of the subjects as long as they keep their quota.

[GenericUser]

I believe that the governments should be based on the culture. So, a culture that values tradition may tend towards a monarchy. With different cultural values, you get different governments. The government itself and culture can drift in ideology and values, say if a scholar named Urist Marks writes about the economy and the importance of people to band together, his writings may get twisted enough and influence enough people that it changes the culture enough to lead to an insurrection.

I envision governments growing decandant and unstable, and may slowly drift towards centralization. All of which could add some more spice to world gen.

[KittyTac]

Or maybe a Magocracy government where wizards rule the country.

[Detoxicated]

I would love to see a magocracy.
While I see your point about traditionalists, I would argue that there was quite traditional republics and democracies... Though I could see from what angle you are arguing and haven't found a better system yet.

[GoblinCookie]

I can tell the difference between fiction and reality. Do you really think I would massacre an entire town with a knife for fun like I do in DF? The fact that I am not in jail says otherwise.

Your logic about stabbing people is rather akin to, "My grandma lived to 105, she smoked therefore smoking does not cause cancer".

*You* might be able to tell the difference, but your brain on the other hand can't tell the difference, computer games are actually built upon this fact.  When we kill characters in a computer game all we are *really* doing is generally something along the lines of changing IS_ALIVE : 1 to IS_ALIVE : 0.  I rather doubt however that most people would find manually going through the database and deleting a lot of 1s to be as exciting as actually playing the game, even though actually playing the game is really just a long-winded way of doing that.

By imaging players’ brain activity before, during and after each violent encounter, the investigators found that immediately before firing a weapon, players displayed greater activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex. This area involves cognitive control and planning, among other functions. While firing a weapon and shortly afterward, players showed less activity in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) and amygdala. Because interaction between these brain areas is associated with resolving emotional conflict, their decreased functioning could indicate a suppression of the emotional response to witnessing the results of taking violent action.

When engaging in virtual combat the brain deactivates certain pathways related to *not fighting* in the real-world.  Why would it do this if it knows that it is really just rearranging data in the computer memory?

The basic issue here is that the brain learns from experience and does so unconsciously, so whether the player consciously knows the game isn't real will not necessarily matter.  It would be truly odd, given that the brain does not appear to know the difference between computer games and reality, for the brain not to develop according to the games you play, if I play as a bloody tyrant then the brain genuinely thinks I am a bloody tyrant and learns accordingly, that is it learns how to be a bloody tyrant if we assume the role of such a being; that is the problem with adding oppressive systems into DF. 

The key issue here is methodology.  To fail to determine a link between two things does not imply that there is no link, it can simply imply your methodology is incorrect to detect the link and that can be itself based upon the fact that your hypothesis as to how the two things are connected is incorrect, the two things can be connected but you did not understand how the two things actually work in order to figure out precisely how the connection would happen.

It is very difficult to make a test that would establish a direct relation between violence in video games and in real-life (not to mention unethical).  The main thing our proposed unethical test has to contend with is the Fundermental Attribution Error, video games might make people more violent but violence does not result solely from violent people.  If we have our test subjects play GTA all day long and our controls play Tetris all day long and at the end of the day they all sit down to a mug of coffee with not a care in the world out study will likely fail to produce a positive result, regardless of what is actually going on.  That is because the environment is sufficiently peaceful that both the test subjects and the controls will not behave violently, even if the test subjects are actually more violent people as a result of all that GTA.

In order to end up with actual violence we need a provocation.  Here we run up against another problem, if the provocation is too harsh both groups might universally end up becoming violent while if the provocation is too mild both groups might end up simply laughing it off.  Another issue is that of timescale, it may be that the brain is highly resistant to learning *certain things* for a good reason, that means that a single day of playing GTA might have no effect because the brain dismisses the experience as anomalous and essentially refuses to learn anything.  If you were to play it for 10 years every day however, then the brain may well assimilate the game into itself, but a short-term study would pick up nothing.

The link that Cathar gave me in his characteristic *throw down the book and leave* gesture did provide me with an example of what I was describing earlier about the exact hypothesis as to how they are connected being important as the connection itself.  It gave me an example of a study that fails to prove a link but whose methodology is flawed; unfortunately it has just paywalled me out since I read it yesterday  .  The study attempted to improve upon the methodology of previous studies (the sound one's that showed a link) by creating two versions of the same game in order to eliminate possible other factors.  They reskinned the same game so that for instance one game has people being killed while the other one has people falling down in a fit of laughter. 

The whole methodology rather than being improved is completely ruined, unless we operate under the hypothesis that it is aesthetic violence (blood and gore) that is the important factor.  If we work on the hypothesis that the connection is mechanical rather than aesthetic, the brain does not care if 'winning' means incapacitating the enemy with laughter or blowing them up into tiny pieces, the fact there is still mechanically a struggle and coercion means the brain reacts identically. 

In any case, this has gone on long enough.  I am not going to persuade the whole forum so let's end our no longer so little derail into video game violence and scientific methods.  Yes it is related to the topic of social class/oppression but there are plenty of things to talk about that do not require those things to be discussed.

The very idea that kings could make mendates that would be superimposed to the mendates of the mayor and local noble is extremely appealing. The liaison would give the mendate to the player in autumn, and leave him with one year to do a (substential ?) goal. Craft X amount of boots, or conquer Y territory, maintain an army of Z ammount of soldiers, depending on the monarch's personality and the state of the kingdom.

That system could be in return be used by the players to give orders to his own holdings, increasing the interconectivity between the fort and the world

I'm not too fond of the laws specifically, as I would prefer that the monarch leave this kind of decision to the local power

"I would prefer" is actually an issue.  Why we continue to play only as the local government of some specific place there any centralisation (even basic things like the central gov passing laws) is going to reliably be antagonistic to the player.  It is only when we have starting scenarios like palaces and the ability of the adventurer to meaningfully assume central government roles is the player actually going to support centralisation.  Then again the Laws/Property/Status release is I think supposed to happen after starting scenarios and one of the starting scenarios is the royal palace.

I believe that the governments should be based on the culture. So, a culture that values tradition may tend towards a monarchy. With different cultural values, you get different governments. The government itself and culture can drift in ideology and values, say if a scholar named Urist Marks writes about the economy and the importance of people to band together, his writings may get twisted enough and influence enough people that it changes the culture enough to lead to an insurrection.

I envision governments growing decandant and unstable, and may slowly drift towards centralization. All of which could add some more spice to world gen.

I don't think they should always be different governments as such, but rather they should determine how powerful different functions of government and different levels of government are.  The value of [POWER] would tend to favour the dictatorial tendencies, giving and entrusting more power to position holders to act unilaterally.  The value of [LOYALTY] would tend to favour centralisation, with more decisions being made by the central government of the civ.  The value of [LAW] would tend to favour a more powerful legal system, so more decisions are outside of the hands of both the local and central government alike.

In these three cases we are not really talking about different governments but rather the balance of power between different elements of a consistent government layout with three key elements (local, central and legal). 

[KittyTac]

Let's go back to discussing government types. GC didn't win, it's just that I'm bored arguing with him.

What about a government type where an avatar of a deity rules the country?

[Shonai_Dweller]

Then again the Laws/Property/Status release is I think supposed to happen after starting scenarios

Other way around (or, same release more likely). Law, politics and property allow the specific definition of a site/individual's relationship to the rest of the world from which starting scenarios can be made.

[LMeire]

I recall; a form of "powerless monarchy" designed by a fictional anarchist civilization; the randomly-appointed King has absolute authority in matters of war while a randomly-appointed council of landowners decide matters of peace. Random-appointments are done by getting the previous King incredibly drunk and having him throw darts at a map of their nation, the owner of whatever property a dart hits gets a title for the next 5 years.

[Rowanas]

I recall; a form of "powerless monarchy" designed by a fictional anarchist civilization; the randomly-appointed King has absolute authority in matters of war while a randomly-appointed council of landowners decide matters of peace. Random-appointments are done by getting the previous King incredibly drunk and having him throw darts at a map of their nation, the owner of whatever property a dart hits gets a title for the next 5 years.

It's not a thousand miles away from our British constitutional monarchy.  The monarch is technically in charge of the army, all bills are signed into law by her, all politicians hold position at her whim, but we actually elect them with a process that is, more or less, like throwing darts at a map.

[GoblinCookie]

Then again the Laws/Property/Status release is I think supposed to happen after starting scenarios

Other way around (or, same release more likely). Law, politics and property allow the specific definition of a site/individual's relationship to the rest of the world from which starting scenarios can be made.

Problem is that much of our ability to discuss forms of government very much depends upon how the world ends up working once the laws/property/status release is done.

Let's go back to discussing government types. GC didn't win, it's just that I'm bored arguing with him.

What about a government type where an avatar of a deity rules the country?

I will let you leave with you dignity intact. 

An avatar ruling the country is not really a form of government of itself.  It is basically a theocratic monarchy along the lines of Ancient Egypt, except that the monarch's divinity status is less questionable. 

[PlatinumSun]

I believe that the governments should be based on the culture. So, a culture that values tradition may tend towards a monarchy. With different cultural values, you get different governments. The government itself and culture can drift in ideology and values, say if a scholar named Urist Marks writes about the economy and the importance of people to band together, his writings may get twisted enough and influence enough people that it changes the culture enough to lead to an insurrection.

I envision governments growing decandant and unstable, and may slowly drift towards centralization. All of which could add some more spice to world gen.

So like Mein Kampf Or the Communist Manifesto?

[PlatinumSun]

Let's go back to discussing government types. GC didn't win, it's just that I'm bored arguing with him.

What about a government type where an avatar of a deity rules the country?

GoblinCookie needs to stop having people tell him what he actually thinks. Hes all like the brain cant tell the differance blah blah blah. Well Look I being myself can say with certainty that I'm pretty sure I can tell the difference between real life and a game. You are not us. I am my self. Detoxicated is himself. KittyTac is himself. If we say we aren't sympathizing with a dictator when we want the ability to be an evil overlord in DF we aren't, well atleast I'm not. Here is another example. Lets say I play this game made by Neo-Nazis called ethnic cleansing. I play it a little bit and  im pretty sure I wouldn't once think: Maybe the Nazi's were not that bad they only wanted to kill all the Jews and blacks.

Also DF is ASCII graphics anyways so I mean your point falls flat GoblinCookie.

Like as KittyTac said:

Thats how I feel but the points raised by gc are understandable, and one has to wonder what kind of atrocities actually need to enter a game to be fun. I for one wouldn't mind if things like torture wouldn't make it in the game, though it would be enough for me if it only wasn't available to the player.

They're letters on a screen. If erasing letters is a bad thing, then the backspace key is a crime against humanity.

[PlatinumSun]

Yes your correct racism did not exist in middle age Europe. Who cares. I want all the differant possibilities. This is DF not a historical documentary.

Look GoblinCookies, you the derailer, someone wanted torture added in to get information out of people or as punishment. You said I dont want it in because it hurts my sensibilities stop talking about it your derailing. He said he wanted it in the GAME as a SYSTEM AND FEATURE TO GET INFORMATION AND PUNISHMENT. YOU said no becuase of REAL LIFE implications you did the derailing if anything.

Any way who derialed what aside. The idea that we shouldnt allow violence in games becuase a violent person might do something violent is stupid. Becuase the kiddie winks poor little malleable minds. Look this game has ASCII graphics I dont a violent child will be that interested in it. Very few children even play this game. And they most likely wont get the kick they want vs playing school shooting sim. Besides these sorts of children who just want to watch the world burn like Elliot Rogers was imagining doing awful things in his head anyways. Having a kid play Doom wont have any effect like making them commit murder. Having mental illness becuase of shit parents or abuse or social deprivity is what causes this. And the idea if you play as a tyrant you will emphasize with them and turn into some evil horrible person is absolutely ludicrous. So I want your honest opinion should violent games be banned?

Things really are not as simple as you make out.  There is plenty of evidence that things work exactly as I described they do, evidence from people who are actual neuroscientists and not just the regular lying press.  See here and here.

Some work looks at the causal effect of game play by asking some individuals to play violent games in the lab, while others play non-violent games, then measuring the behaviour of each group in social tasks afterwards. These studies have shown that playing violent games results in immediate changes to behaviour[v]. For example, after playing violent games participants are more likely to ‘punish’ unseen opponents in a task with loud noise bursts, compared to peers who had played a non-violent video game. Young adults also show physiological desensitisation, as measured by less of an increase in heart rate and skin conductance, to scenes of real life violence[vi]. Individuals who had played violent, compared with non-violent, games were also less likely to report hearing a fight staged outside the laboratory, judged the fight as less serious, and were slower to respond when they offered help[vii]. Desensitisation to violence is thought to link violent game play with later aggressive behaviour[viii].

The effects vary across individuals

The effects of violent games don’t seem to be equal for everyone, however. Short-term effects in the laboratory are found to be larger for undergraduate men than women[xi], and younger children are more likely to be affected by violent games if they have a high score on the personality trait ‘neuroticism’ and a low score on the traits ‘agreeableness’ and ‘conscientiousness’[xii]. In terms of the game, playing with a personalised avatar has been found to result in more arousal and more aggressive behaviour than when playing with a generic character[xiii].

The bolded part is crucial to the initial point I was making about oppressive systems.  Not only is there plenty of evidence that doing bad stuff in video games makes the player more likely to do bad stuff in the real-life, this is also proportionate to the extent to which they personally identify with the character that they play.  That means that if we create a deeply oppressive society and allow the player to assume the role of one of the oppressors, they will start to see things through the eyes of a bloody tyrant and that is not a good thing and will ultimately result in bad stuff in the real-world. 

Also gooblincookie torture is not only used as punishment, sometimes as enjoyment, sometimes to gain information. It is a highly debated topic and brushing it off with one sentece like harsher than I want punishment you are indeed misdirected with your thinking, as you showcase that you are dismissing such a delicate issue while vehemently fighting for another quite similar issue... I mean if you feel that way it's good for you.

Punishments are also handed out by cruel people with little justification for the sake of fun.  You don't do what I say so I punish you, vs you don't do what I say so I torture you; it really is a matter of degree.  The only point I was making is that what constitutes torture has to be defined by the civilization culturally, it is quite possible for a civ to consider the other civ's punishments to be torture, even if both civs agree torture is bad in general. 

"Yes your correct racism did not exist in middle age Europe. Who cares. I want all the differant possibilities. This is DF not a historical documentary."
Exactly this. People want certain stuff in you don't like, so the middleground is people start creating united visions to actually make all people somewhat happy. In my opinion concepts such as classes and other social issues that humanity faced should be included to an extent that the simulation feels wholesome, and still playable and fun. I would have fun to free slaves from a slaver civ and then leading them to create a peaceful settlement from the ashes of their oppressors. Or imagine a woman wrestler who saves a young cheese maker in distress and they fall in love... These stories happen because of conflict, so therefore there should be levels of conflicts for these similar to the real world, unless they overcame them by ingenieuity of history gen.

I believe many people would love to play underdogs. I for one play demi-god but I heard of many who start as peasent outsider, which is a underdog story for itself.
Maybe most social classes shouldnt be portrayed so rigid more lenient than in real life though...

My only point was that the nonexistance of racism in the middle-age implies the nonexistance of racism in DF would not be unrealistic.  When we have thrown out the need to add oppression for the sake of realism, the question is why add it in at all?  That in turn overturns a lot of assumptions about the topic of this thread, which is governments (not violence in video games).

My general position is that civilizations that are very oppressive should be non-playable, unless you choose to play on the wrong end of the bootheel as it were, which should be very hard.  If you successfully liberate a civilization, it could then become playable as a result of your actions while if you corrupt a civilization enough it should become unplayable.

All you really have to do is wander off when nobody is looking and don't get caught. If you can make it to somewhere you won't be recognized, you're basically an outsider peasant.

But now you are not really part of the civilization are you?

-Snip as I don't want to dig into that rabbit hole further-

The amount of text that needs to be written off to revive a drama that was closed in the 90' is just staggering.

There is a board for concerns about the ethics and gaming in this very forum. It's called "other games" or "general discussion". I believe the suggestion board is not the place to write an essay about feelings and concerns about how other people play their game.

Except in this case the question of ethics is very much relevant to what should be added into the game to begin with.  Because the video games cause violence folks are correct, we have to pay attention to what roles we are giving the player, especially when we are encouraging him to adopt those roles by the mechanics.  We know the video games cause violence folks are correct, not only because of evidence but because the consequences of them NOT being correct are one or several of the following stupid and extreme statements being true. 

1. Human personalities are absolutely fixed and immutable.
2. Human personalities do not exist, all behavior is in response to the immediate environment and responses of all humans are the same given the same environment. 
3. Human brains can clearly distinguish the difference between real and fictional stimulus, despite the evolutionary novelty of this distinction and the fact that they respond emotionally (and neurologically) in a similar fashion.

Only one side here has a clear reason to believe what they do.  The other simply likes playing computer games and seldom bother to actually consistently apply the actual conclusions that follow from violent video games *not* making people more violent. 

I'd like to stress that this isn't necessarily a problem. Dwarf fortress is a very detailed game, but it is not even remotely realistic. Furthermore, it will never be realistic, as the core premise of the game is unrealistic (i.e. Dwarves building subterranean kingdoms and fighting megabeasts, etc). At one point the most feared creature in the game was a giant sponge, for goodness sake.

Sure, we can rationalize thing like magma smelting away by arguing that they are somehow feasible in the fantasy setting, but we could do that for ANY game mechanic, including run away slaves starting their own isolated colony (or running off in adventure mode). Thus, not being realistic isn't a convincing counter-argument for me. I do understand where you are coming from though.

One way around the moral hazard of discrimination would be to make it come at a price. Say you are founding a new fort ruled by some horrible fascist regime. You're starting 7 won't be high ranking officials, they'll be ordinary dwarves looking for a new shot at life. Great. You get a few immigrants. That's great too. You're fort grows nicely and everyone is happy. Then the central government send an official to oversee your fort. Your legendary armoursmith turns out to be a secret worshipper of the Goddess Delga, so he gets put to death and your Mayor gets hammered for allowing it. Your Delga worshipping doctor suddenly disappears one day too. You're not sure what happened, but since there's no body you just assume he ran away before he got caught. You then find only the Pureblooded are allowed to perform any crafts, and lesser dwarves must clean fish and haul. And the local administrator has a nasty habit of sentencing anyone to death he likes, irrespective of how useful they are. Then the persecuted dwarves attempt an insurrection. Guess who the player is going to side with?

Is that realistic? Perhaps not. But it addresses the problem with discrimination while allowing for the mechanics tp drive narratives. And if the player doesn't want to be tlruled by racist a-holes, they can choose another civ.

Slaves running away and setting up their own outlaw settlements is very realistic.  All of the slaving powers in the new-world had a problem with exactly this situation, though of course those colonies were not in DF terms really part of their civilization.  I do think that if we add oppressive systems in the game then we should be prevented from playing as members of the elite in those civilizations *or* as a loyal government.  Playing as the oppressed should be allowed, but the mechanics should make having an enjoyable game rather hard if you remain a part of your own civilization.  An idea is to procedurally generate oppressive systems to degrees of severity dependent upon a token that defines how oppressive they are.  So for instance.

[HERO_CIV] = Dwarves : Pretty much what we have at the moment, no real oppressive class divisions.  Means we get to found loyal settlements and all characters are playable in adventure site.

[NEUTRAL_CIV] = Elves : No real oppressive class division, but a number of oppressive, morally dubious practices which cause certain individuals to sometimes suffer.  We cannot found loyal settlements but we can play as all characters in adventure mode.

[SEMI_VILLAIN_CIV] = Human : Oppressive class divisions can exist, there are oppressive morally dubious practices that cause particularly the lower-classes to suffer.  We cannot found loyal settlements and can only play as characters that do not hold political power in adventure mode. 

[VILLAIN_CIV] = Goblin : Very oppressive society in all aspects that make sense for the creature and it's values.  We cannot found loyal settlements and can only play as oppressed characters in adventure mode.

Im rather sure violence has nothing to do with aggressiveness. Maybe to an extent desensitization. Think of it this way. If you have Quake. But you remove all weapons but the heart and it shoots a ray of hearts and you must love (to there point where they explode into rainbows and hearts) your opponent as much as possible and the game has no blood and its a nice peaceful meadow you love(fight each other in). People are still going to get full of Adrenalin because there goals conflict. Because you cant love your opponent as much as possible when he trys to love you. So you still going to get people screaming in chat and calling each other fags. And look the first violent game ive played was Call Of Duty: Black Ops when I was 6 and we just got an Xbox 360. And I can assure you. I would rather stay out of violence in real life I'm terrified by it, its horrible.

Also who financed these studies? I'm rather curious. Also these studies are from 2010. Any newer ones?

[Miles_Umbrae]

What about a government type where an avatar of a deity rules the country?

I wonder if there's a name for that...
*note to self; research mythical governance types*

[KittyTac]

Yes your correct racism did not exist in middle age Europe. Who cares. I want all the differant possibilities. This is DF not a historical documentary.

Look GoblinCookies, you the derailer, someone wanted torture added in to get information out of people or as punishment. You said I dont want it in because it hurts my sensibilities stop talking about it your derailing. He said he wanted it in the GAME as a SYSTEM AND FEATURE TO GET INFORMATION AND PUNISHMENT. YOU said no becuase of REAL LIFE implications you did the derailing if anything.

Any way who derialed what aside. The idea that we shouldnt allow violence in games becuase a violent person might do something violent is stupid. Becuase the kiddie winks poor little malleable minds. Look this game has ASCII graphics I dont a violent child will be that interested in it. Very few children even play this game. And they most likely wont get the kick they want vs playing school shooting sim. Besides these sorts of children who just want to watch the world burn like Elliot Rogers was imagining doing awful things in his head anyways. Having a kid play Doom wont have any effect like making them commit murder. Having mental illness becuase of shit parents or abuse or social deprivity is what causes this. And the idea if you play as a tyrant you will emphasize with them and turn into some evil horrible person is absolutely ludicrous. So I want your honest opinion should violent games be banned?

Things really are not as simple as you make out.  There is plenty of evidence that things work exactly as I described they do, evidence from people who are actual neuroscientists and not just the regular lying press.  See here and here.

Some work looks at the causal effect of game play by asking some individuals to play violent games in the lab, while others play non-violent games, then measuring the behaviour of each group in social tasks afterwards. These studies have shown that playing violent games results in immediate changes to behaviour[v]. For example, after playing violent games participants are more likely to ‘punish’ unseen opponents in a task with loud noise bursts, compared to peers who had played a non-violent video game. Young adults also show physiological desensitisation, as measured by less of an increase in heart rate and skin conductance, to scenes of real life violence[vi]. Individuals who had played violent, compared with non-violent, games were also less likely to report hearing a fight staged outside the laboratory, judged the fight as less serious, and were slower to respond when they offered help[vii]. Desensitisation to violence is thought to link violent game play with later aggressive behaviour[viii].

The effects vary across individuals

The effects of violent games don’t seem to be equal for everyone, however. Short-term effects in the laboratory are found to be larger for undergraduate men than women[xi], and younger children are more likely to be affected by violent games if they have a high score on the personality trait ‘neuroticism’ and a low score on the traits ‘agreeableness’ and ‘conscientiousness’[xii]. In terms of the game, playing with a personalised avatar has been found to result in more arousal and more aggressive behaviour than when playing with a generic character[xiii].

The bolded part is crucial to the initial point I was making about oppressive systems.  Not only is there plenty of evidence that doing bad stuff in video games makes the player more likely to do bad stuff in the real-life, this is also proportionate to the extent to which they personally identify with the character that they play.  That means that if we create a deeply oppressive society and allow the player to assume the role of one of the oppressors, they will start to see things through the eyes of a bloody tyrant and that is not a good thing and will ultimately result in bad stuff in the real-world. 

Also gooblincookie torture is not only used as punishment, sometimes as enjoyment, sometimes to gain information. It is a highly debated topic and brushing it off with one sentece like harsher than I want punishment you are indeed misdirected with your thinking, as you showcase that you are dismissing such a delicate issue while vehemently fighting for another quite similar issue... I mean if you feel that way it's good for you.

Punishments are also handed out by cruel people with little justification for the sake of fun.  You don't do what I say so I punish you, vs you don't do what I say so I torture you; it really is a matter of degree.  The only point I was making is that what constitutes torture has to be defined by the civilization culturally, it is quite possible for a civ to consider the other civ's punishments to be torture, even if both civs agree torture is bad in general. 

"Yes your correct racism did not exist in middle age Europe. Who cares. I want all the differant possibilities. This is DF not a historical documentary."
Exactly this. People want certain stuff in you don't like, so the middleground is people start creating united visions to actually make all people somewhat happy. In my opinion concepts such as classes and other social issues that humanity faced should be included to an extent that the simulation feels wholesome, and still playable and fun. I would have fun to free slaves from a slaver civ and then leading them to create a peaceful settlement from the ashes of their oppressors. Or imagine a woman wrestler who saves a young cheese maker in distress and they fall in love... These stories happen because of conflict, so therefore there should be levels of conflicts for these similar to the real world, unless they overcame them by ingenieuity of history gen.

I believe many people would love to play underdogs. I for one play demi-god but I heard of many who start as peasent outsider, which is a underdog story for itself.
Maybe most social classes shouldnt be portrayed so rigid more lenient than in real life though...

My only point was that the nonexistance of racism in the middle-age implies the nonexistance of racism in DF would not be unrealistic.  When we have thrown out the need to add oppression for the sake of realism, the question is why add it in at all?  That in turn overturns a lot of assumptions about the topic of this thread, which is governments (not violence in video games).

My general position is that civilizations that are very oppressive should be non-playable, unless you choose to play on the wrong end of the bootheel as it were, which should be very hard.  If you successfully liberate a civilization, it could then become playable as a result of your actions while if you corrupt a civilization enough it should become unplayable.

All you really have to do is wander off when nobody is looking and don't get caught. If you can make it to somewhere you won't be recognized, you're basically an outsider peasant.

But now you are not really part of the civilization are you?

-Snip as I don't want to dig into that rabbit hole further-

The amount of text that needs to be written off to revive a drama that was closed in the 90' is just staggering.

There is a board for concerns about the ethics and gaming in this very forum. It's called "other games" or "general discussion". I believe the suggestion board is not the place to write an essay about feelings and concerns about how other people play their game.

Except in this case the question of ethics is very much relevant to what should be added into the game to begin with.  Because the video games cause violence folks are correct, we have to pay attention to what roles we are giving the player, especially when we are encouraging him to adopt those roles by the mechanics.  We know the video games cause violence folks are correct, not only because of evidence but because the consequences of them NOT being correct are one or several of the following stupid and extreme statements being true. 

1. Human personalities are absolutely fixed and immutable.
2. Human personalities do not exist, all behavior is in response to the immediate environment and responses of all humans are the same given the same environment. 
3. Human brains can clearly distinguish the difference between real and fictional stimulus, despite the evolutionary novelty of this distinction and the fact that they respond emotionally (and neurologically) in a similar fashion.

Only one side here has a clear reason to believe what they do.  The other simply likes playing computer games and seldom bother to actually consistently apply the actual conclusions that follow from violent video games *not* making people more violent. 

I'd like to stress that this isn't necessarily a problem. Dwarf fortress is a very detailed game, but it is not even remotely realistic. Furthermore, it will never be realistic, as the core premise of the game is unrealistic (i.e. Dwarves building subterranean kingdoms and fighting megabeasts, etc). At one point the most feared creature in the game was a giant sponge, for goodness sake.

Sure, we can rationalize thing like magma smelting away by arguing that they are somehow feasible in the fantasy setting, but we could do that for ANY game mechanic, including run away slaves starting their own isolated colony (or running off in adventure mode). Thus, not being realistic isn't a convincing counter-argument for me. I do understand where you are coming from though.

One way around the moral hazard of discrimination would be to make it come at a price. Say you are founding a new fort ruled by some horrible fascist regime. You're starting 7 won't be high ranking officials, they'll be ordinary dwarves looking for a new shot at life. Great. You get a few immigrants. That's great too. You're fort grows nicely and everyone is happy. Then the central government send an official to oversee your fort. Your legendary armoursmith turns out to be a secret worshipper of the Goddess Delga, so he gets put to death and your Mayor gets hammered for allowing it. Your Delga worshipping doctor suddenly disappears one day too. You're not sure what happened, but since there's no body you just assume he ran away before he got caught. You then find only the Pureblooded are allowed to perform any crafts, and lesser dwarves must clean fish and haul. And the local administrator has a nasty habit of sentencing anyone to death he likes, irrespective of how useful they are. Then the persecuted dwarves attempt an insurrection. Guess who the player is going to side with?

Is that realistic? Perhaps not. But it addresses the problem with discrimination while allowing for the mechanics tp drive narratives. And if the player doesn't want to be tlruled by racist a-holes, they can choose another civ.

Slaves running away and setting up their own outlaw settlements is very realistic.  All of the slaving powers in the new-world had a problem with exactly this situation, though of course those colonies were not in DF terms really part of their civilization.  I do think that if we add oppressive systems in the game then we should be prevented from playing as members of the elite in those civilizations *or* as a loyal government.  Playing as the oppressed should be allowed, but the mechanics should make having an enjoyable game rather hard if you remain a part of your own civilization.  An idea is to procedurally generate oppressive systems to degrees of severity dependent upon a token that defines how oppressive they are.  So for instance.

[HERO_CIV] = Dwarves : Pretty much what we have at the moment, no real oppressive class divisions.  Means we get to found loyal settlements and all characters are playable in adventure site.

[NEUTRAL_CIV] = Elves : No real oppressive class division, but a number of oppressive, morally dubious practices which cause certain individuals to sometimes suffer.  We cannot found loyal settlements but we can play as all characters in adventure mode.

[SEMI_VILLAIN_CIV] = Human : Oppressive class divisions can exist, there are oppressive morally dubious practices that cause particularly the lower-classes to suffer.  We cannot found loyal settlements and can only play as characters that do not hold political power in adventure mode. 

[VILLAIN_CIV] = Goblin : Very oppressive society in all aspects that make sense for the creature and it's values.  We cannot found loyal settlements and can only play as oppressed characters in adventure mode.

Im rather sure violence has nothing to do with aggressiveness. Maybe to an extent desensitization. Think of it this way. If you have Quake. But you remove all weapons but the heart and it shoots a ray of hearts and you must love (to there point where they explode into rainbows and hearts) your opponent as much as possible and the game has no blood and its a nice peaceful meadow you love(fight each other in). People are still going to get full of Adrenalin because there goals conflict. Because you cant love your opponent as much as possible when he trys to love you. So you still going to get people screaming in chat and calling each other fags. And look the first violent game ive played was Call Of Duty: Black Ops when I was 6 and we just got an Xbox 360. And I can assure you. I would rather stay out of violence in real life I'm terrified by it, its horrible.

Also who financed these studies? I'm rather curious. Also these studies are from 2010. Any newer ones?

Guess what? I'm coming back into this by supporting this argument.