Send Them for Reprogramming!

Via Boing Boing, an archive of amusing Maoist video game reviews. I'd always felt just the opposite from these folks about—well, everything, probably—but in particular Sim City, which they accuse of having "completely bourgeois assumptions" because you can't nationalize the means of production. I'd always thought the message of the game was rather statist—markets tend not to solve problems on their own; persistent regulatory tweaking is required—but clearly not statist enough for a Maoist. Kevin Parker wrote about the politics of video games for our April 2004 issue.

Comments

[stinking hippie]

"Knights of the Old Republic ... or should we say Cossacks of the Old Republic?" now thats a title. I also like how the reviewer in every instance uses a dollar sign in U$A... and here I thought we'd be getting a Fair and Balenced for the proletariet review.

[PapayaSF]

Sim City (the original, at least) had lots of weird assumptions built into it. Once your city grew to a certain size, it was impossible to solve the traffic congestion unless you replaced all the downtown roads with train tracks. I never understood how any city could function without delivery trucks or moving vans.

[Mo]

Papaya,
Have you ever seen a downtown of a city without congestion problems?

[crimethink]

Well, if the way to do well in SimCity was to sit back and watch people solve their own problems -- which is what most of us here would like our govts to do -- it wouldn't be much of a game, would it?

[Brian]

Those maoists have good taste - they sorta liked my favorite: Europa Universalis. It's usually compared to Civilization but it's a lot deeper. I learned more European history from EUII than from a couple decades of school.

[anon]

Mo,

Houston.

[Pavel]

Stalin too, if you played as Russia. The post-cold war Civ editions have lightened up a little.

[J. Goard]

Hey, going further, how about such ontological assumptions of most fighting games as: the impossibility of 'friendly fire', injured characters physically unimpaired until the point of death, or healing taking place on the same time-scale as combat?

[Solitudinarian]

You can still be Mao if you play China in Civ III.

If you want to be gay, you can choose between Greece (Alexander) or America (Lincoln).

[MK]

J.Goard,

The 'Total War' games are replete with deaths by friendly fire. I've played games where I lost more soldiers from friendly fire than from the enemy. Just like Desert Storm!

The assumption in those games is that a city-state cannot survive without constantly pillaging and sacking nearby city-states. Not much free-market action in that one either.

[mporcius]

This website is hilarious; check out the review of Eminem's video; Eminem's work "should be banned and he should be one of the first put in a re-education camp."

[Rhywun]

Houston

Houston has a downtown?

[Umbriel]

PapayaSF -- I believe that somewhere in the fine print of all the SimCity games it mentions that the roads you build represent only the major traffic arteries. Secondary roads are assumed to exist in all zoned areas, which I guess is how the bread is supposed to get to the Quik-E-Mart. And none too fresh, I'm sure.

[Mike]

I'd like to see a Khmer Rouge-style review of a SimCity game "It's too easy; one simply bulldozes all the buildings and roads and declares oneself to have properly reshaped society"

[Francisco Torres]

"Well, if the way to do well in SimCity was to sit back and watch people solve their own problems -- which is what most of us here would like our govts to do -- it wouldn't be much of a game, would it?"

No, but the fun part would come later when you introduce the Sim-society to democracy and start taxing them to pay for grandiose projects and wars abroad, and compulsory education, social security, welfare, etc... after telling them those come as part of the social contract which they never signed in the first place, and then introduce ID cards and wiretaps on their Internet and security checks with breast-fondling at airports.... Now, wouldn't THAT be fun??? 😀 😀

[Stevo Darkly]

You can still be Mao if you play China in Civ III. [P] If you want to be gay, you can choose between Greece (Alexander) or America (Lincoln).

Can you play Vlad the Impaler?

(Which, come to think of it, would be a really cool name for a male porn star.)