Sun, 02 Jan 2005

Videogame player ethics

I have been wasting a few good hours tonight playing Street Fighter Alpha 3 under MAME while others re-edit the Tetrinet addiction that hit Debian a few years ago already. But this is completely offtopic.

A few minutes ago I was working on packaging Freeciv 2.0beta6 for Debian and realised I have refused to do a few things while playing due to ethical issues.

Freeciv is a free clone of the good and famous DOS "Civilization II" game, for UNIX and Windows. The player starts with a small civilisation and the goal of the game is to either defeat all the enemy civilisations or launching a spaceship that reaches Alpha Centauri before any other civilisation. You do this through population and military growth, and technology advances.

At some point of the game, you discover Nuclear Fission, and soon enough your people develops a nuclear bomb. Using a nuclear bomb against another civilisation has a few effects:

Well, it's a game and all, but until now, I have not been able to use the bomb against my enemies, human or computer-controlled. I haven't been able because "it is not right", and I think if I did, I would just quit the game and start a new one. This sense of not being a total asshole while playing Freeciv has also got me to invest more researchers into developing recycling technologies to keep my contamination levels low and not contribute to global warming instead of trying to discover new, more powerful war devices that would help me not being crushed by nearby civilisations.

I guess this makes me a bad Freeciv player. :)

04:29 | [] | # | (comments: 5)

I'm sure I saw a free SimCity clone around somewhere... ;)

Posted by G-LiTe at Sun Jan 2 13:38:50 2005

I feel that one of the things which makes Civiliztion such a great game is the fact that you can play in just about any way which suits you, and you still stand a chance of winning.

It certainly provides you with a lot more role playing opportunitys than most so called "RPG"s, which tend to just be a linear storyline, with not much room to choose what sort of character you are, unless you want to role play a goody-two-shoes save-the-world character.

Posted by Jon Wood at Sun Jan 2 15:45:55 2005

I feel the same when I play. I also always go for the recycling things. Maybe it says something about your character - I know some people who love the nuclear bomb.

But more importantly: where can I get my hands on your Debian package of the 2.0 beta release? :-)

Posted by Ole Laursen at Sun Jan 2 16:55:00 2005

It's only a (finite!) game.

Next on your reading list - Finite and Infinite games

Next on your present list a copy of Nuclear War - so you know where that Larry Wall quotation comes from.

"Tactical? TACTICAL!?!? Hey, buddy, we went from kilotons to megatons several minutes ago. We don't need no stinkin' tactical nukes. (By the way, do you have change for 10 million people?)" --Larry Wall (larry@wall.org)

Posted by Simon at Sun Jan 2 17:24:03 2005

Ole, I guess it's cool that I'm not the only one.

I forgot to mention I never attack first. I never attack another player, computer or human controlled, until they break the status quo and start a war against me.

But on the other hand, I seem to have little problems playing Grand Theft Auto (1, I never got to play the sequels). It's fun, and the goal of the game is quite horrid. :)

Anyway, working Freeciv 2.0beta5 (waiting for the beta6 release today) are in http://people.debian.org/~jordi/debian/ .

Please report bugs by mail, preferably to the address listed in the Maintainer field.

Posted by Jordi at Sun Jan 2 22:47:57 2005