Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid!

Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.

If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutā€™nā€™paste it into its own post, thereā€™s no quota for posting and the bar really isnā€™t that high

The post Xitter web has spawned soo many ā€œesotericā€ right wing freaks, but thereā€™s no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iā€™m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged ā€œculture criticsā€ who write about everything but understand nothing. Iā€™m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyā€™re inescapable at this point, yet I donā€™t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnā€™t be surgeons because they didnā€™t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canā€™t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.

  • Soyweiser@awful.systems
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    7 months ago

    that thread is quite nuts, as his main complaint is some sort of ā€˜you can no longer take over the world as easilyā€™ thing, while civilization always had anti-snowballing mechanics. (He also doesnā€™t mention the spinoffs like alpha centauri, colonization and call to power, which (apart from call to power I think) should be part of the conversation as they were created by the same teams/software houses as the civs at the time. But the changes in those games would undermine his message of ā€˜ruling class (?? Firaxis ruling class really??) cultural declineā€™. And not just a higher focus on different game mechanics because they want every game to have a distinct different felling to try and get new people involved, the market has changed and pure 1991 style civilization games donā€™t do as well and donā€™t recoup your budget. The problem also seems to be that he is a ā€˜conquererā€™ type player while civ tries to also appeal to the ā€˜builderā€™ type players, and I think more modern civs also try to appeal to the ā€˜multiplayerā€™ type player which is in conflict with the ā€˜conquererā€™ type. (I made the specific types up here, but there are general types of players, and somebody interested in a ā€˜clash of civilizations I want to take over the worldā€™ type of game is going to want a different type of game than a ā€˜clash of civilizations I want to build the best civā€™ game or a ā€˜clash of civilizations, I want to play a game with my friendsā€™ game).

    This thread feels like a shapiro, and I have only glanced at game design theory as an amateur.

    Edit: sorry my comment is obviously bad as I didnā€™t first replay all the civ games before making this comment. ;) But if I had, I would remember that in the first game you could ā€˜winā€™ the game by building a spaceship to alpha centauri, as the game was score based (I think a successful big spaceship gave a massive score boost), not ā€˜win by taking out all other empiresā€™ based (which iirc just ends the game, aka he confused completing a game with winning a game). In civ1 you donā€™t play against others, you play against your earlier self via the high score system.

    • V0ldek@awful.systems
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      7 months ago

      Also any hardcore Civ player will tell you that full conquest is basically the only possible win strategy on Diety (the highest difficulty level), because the AI gets such sick bonuses to all stats that you canā€™t compete on science or anything else. Conquest is literally the meta!

      Honestly, I am more disgusted by this guyā€™s bad takes about Civ than the reactionary talking points. If you want to be an obnoxious white gamer dude at least do it correctly you piece of shit.

    • V0ldek@awful.systems
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      7 months ago

      In Civilization: Beyond Earth you can literally become an imperialist Earth puritanian faction whose agenda is eradicating all native life and colonising the planet.

      Woke?

    • V0ldek@awful.systems
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      7 months ago

      For example, in Civ V you can only play peaceful flower-smelling whimpy-ass woke hippies, like Askia