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Comment by binaryorganic | Hacker News Reader

Your sentiment put words to my feelings as I watched the gameplay trailer. As soon as the narrator shifted to the theme of exploitation and politics, with no reference to the indigenous population, I recoiled from the whole idea of it. The sorts of motivations these games ask you to align yourself with feel foreign and unwelcome compared to how I felt about them 25 years ago.

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The Fremen were also human colonists, not indigenous.

I consider them indigenous, though you’re correct that they weren’t always there. They were, to the best of my knowledge, the first people to inhabit that place. Much as, where I’m from, Native Americans weren’t always here, but are accepted as the first people.

The Dune wiki, for what it’s worth, describes them as a Native people:

https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Fremen/DE

I had the same uneasy reation when the trailer showed how you can "rally local villages or force them into submission." Hopefully roleplaying colonialism will eventually feel as gross as roleplaying something like racism.

Why?

Part of the appeal of games is harmlessly doing things that shouldn't/can't be done in real life. I think the millions of 'people' I've 'killed' across various bloodsport-themed FPSes over the last couple decades is a greater evil if we're talking about shoehorning IRL morals into consequence-free virtual spaces. And if you disagree, why? Is mass murder not worse?

Maybe I'm just oversensitive to moralizing in video games, but this line of argument was no less tired over a decade ago.

https://i.imgur.com/3e1obaF.jpeg

I think it’s because we all know murder is wrong and the FPS genre wouldn’t exist as we know it without that factor. In contrast, colonialism and racism, unfortunately, still garners support.

There is no support for video games glorifying rape. There shouldn’t be support for video games glorifying colonialism or racism.

Let me ask you the converse: would you be comfortable playing a game that roleplays racism? If not, why?

It's a strategy game. Do you really find this more offensive than say GTA?

And how far do you stretch this notion, can we still play games about ancient Rome for example?

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