Men’s Rights Activism, summed up in a single comment

@Nequam:

Molyneux never quite seemed to get the hang of actually making games user-friendly, did he?

Anybody else remember the UI and menu system for the PC version of Fable? That thing was such a mess that they somehow managed to make it worse in Fable III and then apparently still couldn’t get it totally workable and pleasant to use even in Fable Anniversary.

I want to try the Black & White games again now, actually. I think I only ever got to the third map of the campaign when I was younger.

“And yes, that means fabricating and exaggerating sometimes”

Color me shocked!

BTW, I came across this while looking for drinking games:

http://forums.avoiceformen.com/showthread.php?2262-The-MHRM-Drinking-Game-Super-Turbo-Fermented-Lucifer-Edition

You’re welcome 🙂

My favorite civ-like sim always and forever will be Afterlife. You managed Heaven and Hell simultaneously, and had to balance the needs of one with the other. I wish they’d remake it. So much genius.

That happens a lot. Because D&D was originally created as an adjunct to wargames, tabletop rpgs are pretty heavily biased towards a ‘kill things/people and take their stuff’ oriented play style. There are certainly other game types out there these days, but they’re almost all focused on at least the ‘kill enemies’ part of that; the ‘take their stuff’ part varies. There’s also an increasing trend in examining the motivations and backstories of the previous owners of the stuff in question, since if e.g. orcs aren’t killing machines purpose-built by a dark god (a la Tolkein) (Yes, technically not a god. I don’t care), then they’re people, and killing them and taking their stuff starts to have ethical implications, etc.

There’s a tabletop RPG called Power Kill, by John Tynes, in which you play RPG heroes undergoing group psychiatric therapy. Common questions include “Why did you kill all those people?”

I think it was intended to make a point, rather than to be playable. It’s hard to tell with Tynes.

@Alan

Indeed. But to give an example, that refrain of “If you’re paying a lot of interest on your credit card you might want to tighten your belt a bit and pay off some of the balance instead” was easily (mis)understood as an analogy for austerity.

I know. I hear it all the time, and it makes me alternately want to cry and break things. (Especially because, even in a household economics context, it assumes that it’s actually possible to ‘tighten your belt’, something which isn’t necessarily the case. I’m not certain how things are in the UK, but here in Yankeeland we substituted easy credit for increased wages 40 years ago, and most American households can’t actually live from paycheck to paycheck anymore, hence increasing debt.

It was absorbed, whereas talk of quantitative easing wasn’t.

And that’s the other part of the problem. The right wing lies using easy to understand false analogies, while the left wing lies using complicated bullshit. The left surrendered completely on economics 50 years back, and now sells a diluted version of the same garbage economics the right peddles. Quantitative easing is shit. I want to spit on the fuckheads who push it as the solution to anything. If the government want to put money into the economy, the solution isn’t to buy up private holdings and hope something nice happens, the solution is to SPEND A BUNCH OF FUCKING MONEY ideally on useful projects, like, say, universal high-speed fiber, civic wi-fi, affordable housing, high speed rails, and a myriad of other things that would improve quality of life and the economy. Instead of buying securities off banks and hoping the banks will lend the money in a useful way, just give people business loans directly, along with technical assistance, and suddenly they have jobs and the government has more tax revenue. It’s fucking magical how it works, it is. Pardon the profanity, but this is one of my personal bugbears.

Don’t forget, most of us don’t know the difference between the national debt and the deficit so using the terminology of economics went over people’s’ heads.

I know the usual level of economic literacy is pretty dismal, but if most people don’t understand the difference between total debt and current deficit, I don’t see how they can balance their checkbooks… Is it just the terminology that’s a problem?

Communication is key in politics and it’s something that populist politicians tend to be better at (by definition I suppose)

And, as noted above, the New Left kicked economic populism to the curb, and ceded that ground entirely to the fascists.

Or even have that possibility for units in general. Give each unit a morale stat, with a base that varies by unit type (conscipts have a low one, etc.), and then you can spend more money per unit to increase it (representing better pay, better rations, etc.), and it will go down if they keep getting thrown into situations where they’re outnumbered, or if they’re used in an inappropriate way (e.g. if you use light infantry as shock troops, their morale goes down). Officer units (and the player) would have a leadership score representing personal charisma and the like that would improve morale under their command. If morale gets too low, the units might refuse orders, desert, or even mutiny.

The Jagged Alliance series used morale and disobedience in an interesting way. Turn-based tactics, rather than real-time strategy – the player is the commander of a mercenary group hired for various quasi-humanitarian campaigns. Troops all have individual identities, backstories, skills, likes, dislikes, etc. Some are civilian professionals; some are ex-military or -private security; some just like to get paid to hurt people.

The gameplay effect was that some units would refuse to carry out orders that went against their moral code – like attacking allies or civilians – and would quit in disgust if they ever saw such things done. Others were so stubborn or bloodthirsty that they’d refuse to retreat from battle. Plus, they all had to be treated responsibly, given adequate rest, and not forced to work alongside people with dramatically differing views.

@Dalilama

Eek! I’ve been told that I might have knee problems when I get older :/ I wear correcting soles all the time, hopefully that does something.

@dslucia

Fantastic! I’ll definitely check it out.

The Total War series has morale and units routing in battle as things turn against them. Total War Warhammer came out just yesterday, though not everyone in it has to deal with troops running away: the undead legions of the Vampire Counts have the morale system but rather than fleeing the magic animating them starts to falter and they crumble to dust.

1)’What do you think of morality systems in games?’ ‘I think it would be a good idea.’- Gandhi, I believe

Wasn’t Gandhi the one who was in favour of nuclear weapons being the most commonly used tool of diplomacy?

@ dalillama

You make a lot of very salient points.

There’s seems to be quite a lot in common with the UK and US experiences. Over here it used to be a traditional view that the Tories were good on the economy and Labour were good with public services (this was often reflected in the voting pattern “Tories in the general election, Labour in local elections)

That changed a bit with “New Labour” and Tony Blair. He stuck in a chancellor (the guy who runs our economy) who tried to re-establish a bit of confidence on economics. So there was lots of harping on about ‘prudence’ and fiscal responsibility. There’s now an internal schism between the Blairite wing and the new Corbyn set up. Although, despite being portrayed as a hard core socialist, few of Corbyns economic policies are particularly drastic. Re-nationalise a few key infrastructure things like railways and pump a bit of cash into the economy. But it’s that traditional left wing thing of spending more time in-fighting than getting the message out there. It’s very understandable of course why Corbyn doesn’t trust the media, but by refusing to engage he just leaves the field clear for the Tories to monopolise the debate.

All fascinating stuff. Could fill reams and reams with this. But back to our initial thing about communication, that still is a big problem for the left here and progressives generally. Great at speaking to the choir and people who take an active interest in politics, less so at engaging “the man (or woman) on the Clapham omnibus”*

(* that’s like our equivalent of ‘Joe Q Public’)

@NickNameNick, WWTH re: venting:

For me personally, I find venting can be helpful. But only when it’s about a specific person’s specific behavior that I’m having trouble dealing with or a frustrating specific situation. It also only works if you let it go once you finish the complaining.

Spending day after day talking shit about women as a whole is not any kind of helpful and healthy venting. They’re neither letting their anger go or resolving anything.
The person or people who you vent to is an important factor as well.

Like, doing so with a therapist can actually help you by dealing with a problem and moving on (perhaps even ways to deal with it better or avoid it in the future) – but many of these MRAs, MGTOWs, etc. are all about enabling terrible behavior further. They’re toxic individuals who seek out other toxic individuals in order to become more entrenched in their toxicity.

Adding: When done with someone you can trust to provide insightful feedback (or at least ask the right questions), I’ve found that venting can be useful in helping to clarify in your own mind why something’s bothering you – you know, like when you’re angry but can’t quite put your finger on why.
If venting becomes or incorporates “talking through” a problem, it can help to define it. For me, anyway, something needs to be defined before it can be adequately addressed (whether it needs to be eliminated, transformed, or accommodated).

/not a mental health professional

@Dalilama – *silently nods in agreement*

In many ways, my husband is one of the most astonishingly intelligent people that I’ve ever known, so it always surprises me when one off the blank spots in his knowledge base turns up.

A good portion of a weekend morning a while back was spent explaining neoliberalism to him after I said, “I wish that we had political options other than between different shades of neoliberalism.”