For real. Me too!
This is the one I’m most excited about, and I will pre-order via EA (even though I won’t play it in EA) just to help their development along. But they don’t even have that option yet. I just can’t get over how amazing this thing looks.
I feel like, though, more than most other genres, city builders are where announced games go to die.
Hi there, Folk Tale. Hello, Clockwork Empires. Look over there, it’s Forest Village.
That’s already on my wish list. I suppose I only have a half dozen or so but it feels like I have a 100 of these waiting to be released, for reals released. I’m trying very, very hard not to get ultra excited about any of them.
Disregarding the upcoming Pharaoh remake, I am most interested in Nebuchadnezzar partially because it is meant to be a more traditional release without an early access phase on Steam or GOG (as far as I know). The developers, Nepos Games, have been holding invitational Closed Beta phases the last few months in the lead up to release instead.
I went looking for youtube videos, gameplay previews etc.
Very sparse.
No surprise for what at least at the start was a two-person studio in the case of Nepos Games (Nebuchadnezzar), there’s been some dev-blogs but promotion could be better. We all know that a lot of ‘indie’ studios can be a bit hit or miss when it comes to the marketing side of things. And so far all testing has been behind closed doors, so people haven’t been able to share much publicly yet.
I know a few city-builder focused channels that are keen to investigate any and all city-builder-esque games though, so there should be gameplay videos closer to the release date.
Here’s an interesting video on colonialism and building games: https://youtu.be/d6i5Ylu0mgM. Minecraft is the main focus but it also discusses CB/CM games fairly extensively, and the focus of the video is really on the building parts, i.e. what Minecraft/Factorio have in common with city builders.
I’m normally the first person to say, “Ugh, skip the video, just give me an essay” so for the benefit of those who don’t make it to the end I’ll state that the thrust of the argument is not that these games are bad, just that we should be thoughtful about what the different impulses behind these kinds of games share with colonial history. (I liked his other video on Triumph of the Will, which was much better suited to a video lecture than this one.)
Also, content warning: humanities talk.
I haven’t watched the lecture or anything, but I’m not gonna lie that my first reaction to this is that some farts should go unsniffed.
But then you miss him (mostly) unintentionally recreate the trans-Atlantic slave trade in Minecraft. Or possibly the Trail of Tears.
Ha, like that phrase, but I think he raises some good points and TBH I was already sniffing those farts when I sat back in my chair when I was playing Anno 1800 the other day and thought, “Huh, I just clear-cut that whole island so I could cover it with sugar… farms (definitely not plantations, oh no) to ship back to the old world while providing, uh, sewing machines and beer in return? Yeah, totally equitable with no troubling historical antecedent, that.” (His points are about much subtler things than that, though.)
I got most of the way through the video before I decided he’s confusing some very specific colonial themes with some much deeper or more ingrained aspects of human civilization as a whole. Civilization across the world has exploited resources, modified the land, built grand buildings, and displaced/destroyed entire populations. Certainly different civilizations have done those things to differing degrees. All of these games tap into that built-in part of our brain but I’d argue that few directly tap into European Colonialism directly. Many of the Anno games definitely do as do things like Europa Universalis or even Greedfall.
I’m not arguing against game developers needing to be very careful in how they approach these themes(hell, my personal game project very much intersects with a lot of this and I still haven’t figured out an approach I’m comfortable with to deal with some of these themes), but it’s weird to imply that a lot of these mechanics are somehow unique to Western culture and European Colonialism and not humanity as a whole.
For what it’s worth, I’m leaning more towards including some things that may be controversial but to make sure they have consequences and aren’t treated as morally good or right.
Agreed. Homo Sapiens interbred with, displaced, or outright murdered two other hominid species in our earliest days. Hard to argue it isn’t in our nature.
I don’t think that’s what he was saying, or implying. I understood him to mean that from our current historical vantage point the most immediate and troubling expression of these themes are European/Western colonialism, but my takeaway certainly wasn’t that they’re unique*. I mean, he started from “hey look, I accidentally recreated the transatlantic slave trade in Minecraft” so he certainly used European colonialism to make the link, but I don’t think he intended to imply they were unique to western culture.
Also, FWIW, I don’t think “everyone else is also doing it” means that you should give it a pass.
*Disclaimer: I had followed the youtube link from a blog where they had just made the point that colonialism wasn’t uniquely European, so maybe I just skimmed over that part of the video.
I actually had started writing a follow-up talking about the “giving it a pass part” because I knew I would come across as saying that and didn’t mean it to. More meant it to mean that it touches on some pretty core parts of human nature that are far broader than colonialism and that’s probably a big part of why these types of games have such appeal. Is some of that nature okay to tap into as a form of escapism in video games? I’d argue yes, but not without limits.
To be fair, that video ended with a lot of nuance too about how those observations don’t mean that we aren’t allowed to enjoy any games that let us exploit nature or build mighty structures or whatever, but that we should be careful that our games don’t accidentally(or purposely, I guess) make an argument that the slave trade was good and exploiting other humans is good.
But I don’t know how far I can go arguing with this if we don’t break it down in to specific mechanics and talk about the morality of each type. There is a pretty wide gap between modifying the environment to construct a huge monument and abducting villagers to lock them in your iron factory as slaves.
I appreciate the thoughtful reply. For what it’s worth, I very much agree with you. I think one of the strongest points of the video was how it ended, as you say, with a lot of nuance. So part of the reason I was pushing back was to try to get you to get through the end of it, which in your first post you said you didn’t. (I probably should have just said, “Get to the end of the video!” but I didn’t want to boss you around.)
There are two points I’d go a little further than you on:
(Side note: I’m also very hesitant to claim that any particular feature is a part of human nature because I think it’s very easy to be blinkered by one’s own experience and miss the diversity of human experience. For every Egypt and Rome that built pyramids and aqueducts I’m sure there are other cultures that had no interest in great construction projects that I don’t know about, for example.)
I appreciate the thoughtful reply as well and agree with almost everything you said. Very much agree that video game designers need to be pretty thoughtful and deliberate when tackling these things. My game is city-builderish and right now starts with an empty map and I’m not particularly torn up about allowing civilization to build up in that space. However, if I start to put some pre-existing villages in that space, things get a lot more complicated and I’m not sure what I’m comfortable with. What if it’s just bandits inhabiting the space? Probably nobody takes issue. What if I add in an “evil” fantasy race like orcs? I think I need to start being careful here. Now, what if it’s humans? Then I really really better be careful about what I have to say with any game mechanics built around that. Does driving them out have consequences? Do they have agency? Can I exist peacefully with them? Can they contribute to my society? If I don’t include these other humans even if it would make sense or I don’t allow conflict with them, would that be its own kind of whitewashing? I struggle with these questions and hardly have it settled in my mind what direction I’ll ever end up taking here.
I tried to note in my first post that different civilizations seem to have done this to different degrees but I can at least think of examples from every inhabited continent(except Australia?) of great construction projects. Maybe it isn’t a feature of human nature, but does seem to at least become an emergent feature in more heavily organized societies.
Just posted some thoughts on Airborne Kingdom over on the indie game thread.
I’m just going to mention Medieval Dynasty here, but link to it’s own thread. This is a game still in early access, but man, I love it. It’s not exactly a city builder or colony manager. It’s more like a colony developer. Think Conan Exile’s building and crafting, but then you recruit villagers to come live/work in your village. It’s absolutely playable now in it’s current state, and very stable.
Yet another EA title coming.
I don’t recall seeing this one here, yet.