Very Occasional

[bryant]

Not doing a lot of politics posting these days, cause the game of gotcha is roughly pointless, but Redstate just caught my eye with this post about Freeciv. Quote:

It feels just so comfortable, so at home for me, that I stayed up far, far too late last night leading Jake Featherston's Confederate States of America to world domination by taking a commanding lead in technology, then grabbing air, land, and sea superiority worldwide, in order to be safe against the world war against me triggered by my (eventually successful) launching of an Alpha Centauri-bound colony space ship.

That's from the Redhot section, which is brief blog posts written by the editors, so I don't think it's unfair to attribute the sentiments to Redstate itself. Who's Jake Featherstone? He's a primary character in Harry Turtledove's Timeline 191 series, who serves as an Adolph Hitler analogue up to and including concentration camps and death chambers. He's racist, bitter, petty, small-minded, and his CSA is about as nasty an empire as Turtledove can write.

Who names their Civilization nation Nazi Germany?

Comments

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

I once named my Civilization nation after S.M. Stirling's Draka series, when I felt like playing an aggresive world-conquering, people-enslaving game.

A lot of people play Civ for an eradication or domination victory, and the only way to do that is to kill (almost) everyone else on the planet. Is it really that offensive if you name your civ after someone who actually fit that bill?

[bryant]

I think it's the crowing about it in public that gets me. There's a flavor of "look what I got away with" there in my reading, enhanced by the final paragraph.

And, hm. Featherstone's CSA isn't just like Nazi Germany, it is Nazi Germany -- don't know if you've read the books, but the history of the various North American wars in that timeline is directly parallel to European history, right down to specific battles transposed onto North American geography. You can't miss it.

It's kind of glib to say that Featherstone's CSA is worse than the Draka, but it is; for me, there's a difference between naming your country after a nation seeking world domination and one driven by racism.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Does the motivation for world domination really matter? Is there a good impetus for world domination?

[kodi]

What historical world conquests were unmotivated by racism?

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I think it does make you a bit more of a dick, yeah. But maybe that's just because i'm a wuss who's always preferred to win Civ via non-violent means.

[bryant]

There is not a good impetus, but the stuff you do along the way does matter. Being conquered is bad, and being a conqueror is wrong, but if I'm gonna be conquered I'd prefer the victor wasn't dedicated to extermination of my kind.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

A kinder, gentler invader? Yeah, i know.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

Napoleonic France? Macedonia, maybe (really don't know enough to say, though).

Clearly there's an inherent self-superiority image in any imperialistic tendencies, but I think bryant's on to something with "how they do it is also important".

[kodi]

Ooh, yeah, Napoleon and Alexander definitely gets a nod as a "Person you are allowed to imagine being while you conquer the world." Genghis Khan probably also gets a pass. (Based solely on the "racially motivated conquest" criterion.)

I do agree that it matters how they do it, but I'm really not sure what's a weirder "who am I, as I spend 6000 years conquering the world?" choice - Hitler, or Mohandas Gandhi?

Now I want to go through the default list of leaders available in freeciv and compile an Evil Index. But just to be on the safe side, I'm playing as Linus Torvalds from now on.

[dcltdw]

I think the public/private difference is relevant.

Sure, I might play Civ and, on the privacy of my computer, call my side Nazi Germany, and choose a paint scheme of all black (I'm handwaving that you can do that in Civ)... but that doesn't bother me, because it's just me and this game.

But it becomes something subtly different when I start talking about it on a blog.