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[Aramco]

So I was playing my Fortress, killing goblins, Processing elves, when all of the sudden I thought, "Y'know, I'm being so cruel to these Elves." I pushed the thought aside, and kept playing. But I couldn't stop thinking about the philosophical repercussions of Dwarf Fortress. You just kill countless people for no reason, and capture elves, melt people, etc. I often spend days pondering philosophical-type stuff. And know this is all I can think about. Does anyone else ever feel the same way?

[nbonaparte]

The vast majority of games ever made involve violence, DF just introduces its own special brand of it. It's not much different than any other game in that respect.

[Aramco]

The vast majority of games ever made involve violence, DF just introduces its own special brand of it. It's not much different than any other game in that respect.

I understand, but still. DF takes it to a whole new level. How many games are there in which you can make a fountain of blood built from the bones of random traders and elven skulls? I don't care about how violent it is, I am just the philosophical type of person.

[Umi]

I fancy that I'm a pretty philosophical person.  I figure it is just human nature.  We want control over others for power (In turn for protection in turn out of fear).  We just have redirected said lust for control on video games.  Healthier if you ask me.

Maybe you have a different question for this though.

[Carrion]

I understand, but still. DF takes it to a whole new level. How many games are there in which you can make a fountain of blood built from the bones of random traders and elven skulls? I don't care about how violent it is, I am just the philosophical type of person.

Building such a fountain, slaughtering with such an intent, is neither encouraged nor discouraged by the game itself.  This is the nature of 'sand-box' type games.  Still, depraved behavior is ever present in games of all sort because there are few, if any, repercussions.  Perhaps you should not be scrutinizing the depravity of Dwarf Fortress, but rather turn that scrutiny on the human mind.  Good luck with that.

[claer_runway]

how does one make such a fountain? I want one.

[Sir Finkus]

I don't bother myself with the ethics of turning little smiley faces and capital "E"s with black backgrounds into little smiley faces and capital "E"s with red backgrounds.

[ungulateman]

I don't bother myself with the ethics of turning little smiley faces and capital "E"s with black backgrounds into little smiley faces and capital "E"s with red backgrounds.

This.

Moral Guardians seem convinced that making pixels change colours is responsible for increasing violence. I'd theorise it has to do with sleep deprivation and bad parenting, myself.

[Dwarf]

Is the game violent, or are you?

[Blackdutchie]

Being a really free sandbox game, it is the players that are violent, not the game.
Itīs like having a shovel, pickaxe, axe, gun, and swiss army knife in one tool. You can do anything with it, and some many choose to be quite violent.

Better in DF than in the streets, methinks.

[Ephemeriis]

I understand, but still. DF takes it to a whole new level. How many games are there in which you can make a fountain of blood built from the bones of random traders and elven skulls? I don't care about how violent it is, I am just the philosophical type of person.

Well, first of all, most games don't have the mechanics available to build fountains of any sort.

But it's a sandbox game.  There's absolutely no reason, beyond your own amusement, to build a fountain of blood out of bones and skulls.

Dwarf Fortress, in and of itself, doesn't have much of a philosophy.

[Ullallulloo]

Yeah, my fortresses don't tend to have much violence beside the rather often horrible death by necrosis from a random FB, the get chopped up by a goblin/chopping up a goblin, or butchering animals for meat/putting them out of their miseries because they're animals and healing animals is broken currently. I have about a third of my fortress in the hospital with permanent, crippling, injuries, but I'm keeping them alive and they were in self defense.(Good thing too, one just got possessed and starting making a legendary artifact with his lower spine broken.) You pretty much have control over the amount out of violence in DF, because that's what a sandbox game is like. If your fortress has elf corpses lining a road to your fortress and elf blood strewn everywhere...avoid people with pointy ears.

[Darkmere]

I'd like to know at what specific point a vast majority of normal sensible folks just stopped drawing the line between fantasy and reality. There's murder in Shakespeare, yet no one accused the author of being violent or having violent desires. Spectators in the Colosseum didn't randomly charge out into the streets and fight each other. Chaucer wrote some pretty racy stuff in Canterbury Tales, but as far as I know he wasn't charged with indecency. Some people even managed to watch Saving Private Ryan without feeling the irrepressible urge to dig a foxhole.

But changing the background of a smiley face from black to red is a sign of mental disturbance.

And I realize it's not just this, and it probably isn't a recent phenomenon, it just gets under my skin a little.

[gtmattz]

True story:  I played Quake 3 Arena avidly for a few years, eventually becoming fairly good at killing people with the railgun.  At one point I moved from the urban area where I had been living, to a rural area where there are a lot of hunters and sportsmen.  One day a co-worker asked me if I would like to go skeet shooting with him after work.  I let him know that I had minimal experience with shotguns, and no experience at all shooting targets flying through the air, but that it sounded like fun so I went along.  It turned out that I was hitting the targets consistently better than he, who had been shooting skeet since he was a child.  The reason I was shooting so well was because I simply applied the same concepts I had learned when using the railgun in Q3A to shooting the clay pigeons out of the air, and it worked wonderfully. Funny thing though, I never had the urge to turn the shotgun on the other people at the skeet range.  I know this is only marginally related to the topic, but I just had to share 

[jei]

So I was playing my Fortress, killing goblins, Processing elves, when all of the sudden I thought, "Y'know, I'm being so cruel to these Elves." I pushed the thought aside, and kept playing. But I couldn't stop thinking about the philosophical repercussions of Dwarf Fortress. You just kill countless people for no reason, and capture elves, melt people, etc. I often spend days pondering philosophical-type stuff. And know this is all I can think about. Does anyone else ever feel the same way?

A game is a game. Instead I rather pity the real life iraqis and afghanis where real life shit is done to them by Blackwater/Xe people running child bordellos  for their service men, with impunity for all americans to do anything they want to them, no punishment due as they're above all the laws they set in place.

At least you can't rape children and run child bordellos for your mercenaries in Dwarf Fortress. Yet.

Then again, maybe the Universe is a giant Dorf Fortress game?

The elf-hate is rather insensible though, but then again, they seem to be made hateable by frequently using slander on dorfs for their tree-use. I would wish for more dialogue options and sensible alternatives that you could take to lead you to war or whatever you want.

Maybe some right wing republican is sponsoring Toady to make elf-environmentalists seem hateworthy? Lots of US military propaganda in entertainment, especially games. Wouldn't be surprising if someone threw money at Toady to make some for DF too.

Maybe we will soon see Dorfs enforce embargoes and sanction goblins for their illegal adamantine weapons production one day?
After all, adamantine weapons should be illegal to anyone but our dorfs.