Asklemmy

44176 readers

1283 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

769

What was a profound moment that a video game caused you to experience, and why? (reddthat.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

372 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The moment that inspired this question:

A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.

The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.

One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”

I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.

… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.

I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This will date me, Missile Commander. When you lose the game doesn't reset, you had to reset it. So if you don't you just see dead cities on a screen, with silence. This was right about the same time I saw War Game. The only wining more is not to play.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The creator of Missile Command allegedly had this very same revelation while creating it, and suffered nightmares about nuclear annihilation. I like how the game just gets harder and harder, meaning that no matter how good you are at it, once the bombs start dropping then eventually every city will be destroyed anyway.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Doesn't it say "THE END" instead of "GAME OVER?" desolate

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Oh man I forgot about that! Yeah it does! It's been an age since I've played it.

[–] mindbleach 1 points 1 year ago

Video game firsts fascinate me. You wind up asking, what defines a sidescroller, an adventure game, a first-person shooter? What is strictly necessary, to say a game involves sexuality, or contains gore?

I'm not sure what the first "political" game is. There's games about conflict and combat basically from the advent of video games as a concept. Most were digitized carnival games. Ducks move left to right, airplanes move right to left. It's just decoration that provides context for trivial mechanics. I'm not sure what degree of artifice separates the visual trappings of state power from glorification and endorsement. So I don't know when exactly video games first developed a political message.

But you can be damn sure it wasn't any later than Missile Command.