Tragicomedy and morality Rimworld

Please pay attention: I examined the game from the point of view of public morality, so I ask the regulars to moderate my ardor. Morality in games is a difficult topic of which is difficult to indecent and I understand this, so I considered everything from the point of view of generally accepted moral norms.

I decided to conduct a kind of experiment how quickly Rimworld turns a person into a sociopath? Ahead of your curiosity and the answer “instantly” I will say that the experiment failed.

But I brought out some interesting conclusions about such games. I’ll tell you about them on the example of all the same Rimworld (seasoned with pickup memes).

7 stages of moral loss

Why players act By public The standards are immoral? There are several reasons that I painted in the probable order of their appearance:

1) Necessity. Take a situation in which a wolf attacked someone from the pawn. It was possible to fight off the beast, but in addition to a very affected leg, the victim found infection. Whether the player decides to amputate his subordinate leg in order to save life? The leg is not a large price for such salvation, especially considering that there are not so many drugs to cure infection, you can replace the damaged leg and be replaced with wooden, and the player himself will not feel anything. And then understanding appears ..

2) Renunciation. (At about this stage, morality dies) The player is not attached to the characters. Of course, when there are only three pawns, then the novice player begins to worry about working hands. Rather, he will begin to consider their corpse an obstacle and will try to get rid of it, but there is something little food in the warehouses ..

3) Convenience. Poor fellow can serve even after death. And then the player is either because of the need, or the reinsurance for the sake of deciding to let the fallen comrade into the meat. Few people like it (remember, this is a setup in front of the punchlin), but the survivors will have to eat a friend, and it doesn’t even matter if there is another food in the warehouse. Well, since the player realized that the pawns have another application besides the labor force, why not look for other applications?

4) Curiosity. The player quickly understands that rhino-bet.co.uk the pawns are a multi -purpose resource. Labor, practice for skills, a source of resources, both of first necessity and trade.

5) Efficiency. The player no longer tries to think about morality, wanting to develop the colony as much as possible, and the mental state of the pawns becomes only a parameter that cannot be lowered too low, otherwise the effectiveness of the colony will fall. But of course, all the minmaxes sooner or later the moment of the code comes ..

6) Boredom. The player gets bored sooner or later and the development of the colony will no longer worry him at all. How to dispel boredom in such a game? Of course, return to experiments, but this time their goal is not to increase the efficiency of the colony, but simply interest, excitement. What if I build a scaffold, but only for mortars? That if I arrange slaves with sticks and send them to a raid to a neighboring city? What if you understand, the most impractical solutions, but they already sound funny in the player’s head, well, just why not, I have nothing to lose. One way or another, the player will understand that for some “experiment” he needs certain conditions that are unattainable in this colony.

7) Restart. The player begins a new game, but with already acquired knowledge and new goals, he begins a new game for some tribe of cannibals or blind, mutilated fans of mushrooms. Now the player enters the game to try something, get some story, it doesn’t matter to him the end of the game and escape from the planet (the main goal of the game). And why? He has fun even here, isn’t it so?

Experiments that generated community

And in this way, in the community there is an unrealistic number of stories, on the one hand funny, and on the other terrifying and immoral, if they occurred in reality.

Game for cannibals is a meta, which with the release of DLC Ideology has become mass, due to the fact that now you can get a buff to the mood of the pans from human.

The mood of the pawns, in principle, ceases to have at least some weight, since most of the things that are upsetting them can be made positively: corpses, human, drugs, executions, slavery, etc. D. And many players do so, because the pawns will complain less about the entertaining player aspects, which means they will interfere with the player who funny is fun. As if the developers themselves knew what the players want. By the way about this ..

DLC as a trigger

I already talked about IDEOLOGY, it released the brakes of the players, allowing them to create chaos with impunity. In addition to him, DLC Royalty and Biotech came out and if the first was not so extensive in capabilities, then the second … Uff.

In addition to biomodding (fraud with genes, heredity and mutants), the game added fear of moralists – children. And they are not much different from ordinary pawns, except that clothes for adults are not suitable for them, but you can arm them with anything. What? You have never rag children? For the regulas Rimworld to capture a couple – ordinary Tuesday. And it’s easier to suppress children’s riots.

And now I ask you to remember Take Yana Gribovich from the results of the folk vote of 2022 about the same DLC:

Thanks to this addition, you will finally be able to steal two people of different xenotype, put them behind bars, planting their views on religion and ideology, force them to fall in love and give birth to children, steal newborn children, conduct experiments on transplantation of organs and gene, grow the received samples (this is reminded of children) in capsules or send them as a cannon meat, or force you to work in the name of your settlement, or make donors, or plant them already in jail and scroll the script first, and you will receive only a profit, instead of public condemnation, prohibition and all this way.

Jan Gribovich

And so it turns out that the game begins to praise for terrifying things, if you think about them a little more and get into the place of the colonists, but, as Yang said, the player is a measure of morality, and he decides how to dispose of the lives of the pawns, they are and, let them be useful, they are still not sorry for them ..

The villains of the theater production

Since I mentioned this take then I will adhere to it. Player – He decides the fate of his wards, but How he does it – Already another question. Everyone has their own moral compass, beliefs and views. I personally think that this is even good that such manic inclinations do not go beyond the video game, like in any way Play the role the villain and to be a villain are different things. Undoubtedly, sometimes it’s interesting to feel what it is to be an impartial gardener (but in fact we are not the same, yes?). Video games allow us to try ourselves in different roles. One day you replace Satan, and tomorrow you are already building an Eden garden. So it turns out that the player only plays the role of the villain in this production, where the pawns are not actors, but that the characters of the play, over which the villain builds his intrigues. From that and stories from Rimworld (and to him similar games) there are so many – Players in the community simply discuss the performances remembered by him.

Games according to the type of Rimworld, in which there are no brakes and morality as such, perfectly cope with their task – to let the player feel like a scum without particularly serious consequences. Yes, the player can still lose, however, what prevents him from downloading preservation or starting a new game? Nothing. In these games, no one can prevent you from doing what you want.