What drives the demand for in-game bigotry when there are so many other things that need doing? Is it all Agent Smith of the Matrix, "the perfect human world was a disaster, human beings would not accept the program," as in people inherantly require a degree of dystopia because otherwise they refuse to properly immerse themselves with the setting?
As I see it, the desire for in-game bigotry stems from two very important things: Human nature (at least, as exemplified throughout history), and Fun.
Human Nature: Good vs. Evil, good vs. bad, and right vs. wrong are fun to debate, but they are all artificial constructs of an already-sentient mind. At its very most basic, pre-cognizant level, behavior is determined by two root impulses: Cooperation vs. Competition. Almost literally
all multicellular organisms engage in
both of these practices, to at least some extent, whether they know it or not, and whether we view a creature as being "good" or "bad" is largely a function of its innate tendency to either cooperate, or compete, with others--and most especially with
us. Humans tout their own understanding of such enlightened concepts as Good and Evil, but let's not pretend that Cooperation and Competition aren't lurking
just beneath the surface. They drive business, they drive the stock market, they drive politics, they drive culture, they drive war. The point is this: Every person, just as every other creature, has their own desired "level" of Cooperation vs. Competition, what
they consider to be a happy medium of Us vs. Them. People who feel that the local sphere has been
too competitive lately will try to make it swing back to Cooperation, and vice versa. People who feel beset by conflict will seek to create (or find) peace--and
people who cannot benefit from that peace will try to sow strife. That's essentially where Agent Smith comes in, virtually
all of humanity cannot be comfortable living in 100% Cooperation Teletubby Land. They will
always seek to find or create an Other, someone fittingly challenging against whom to strive. As for whether this Other is a foreign power or a domestic element--history has shown that to be of little consequence, other than developing different
names for the types of struggle.
Fun: Not that many people want to play Dwarf Fortress where they embark in 100% Cooperation Teletubby Land. Sure, that's fine when you're just starting out & learning the ropes, but after you've weathered your first few migrant waves and figured out how to make soap, you want to see if your fort can FIGHT something. And that's just Fortress Mode: Adventurers don't just want to randomly
adventure, they want to tell a Cool Story. How best to tell a Cool Story, other than defeating a Big Bad? And how can you have a Big Bad in a world that lacks Evil--real, moral, and ideally premeditated Evil? Sure, that's not an argument that there
must be bigotry . . . but you can't deny that bigotry would certainly be
interesting. And let's not pretend that a game that calculates the exact trajectory of a baby's severed head is set in the
nicest of all possible worlds.
Author
Topic: Add to the creatures thoughts about sex and be able to customize their values (Read 25007 times)