What can video-games tell us about socialism?

I’ve tried to review Far cry about three times now, and have failed on each time. It really says something about a game when one can’t think of anything interesting to say about it. This is the level of detachment from the game required to make myself capable of utterance in it’s regard. So instead i’ll talk about something very similar, city skylines. The joke is that their not similar, bet you never saw that one coming.

It’s never good to explain your jokes, explaining would increase the knowledge pool of your audience or might cause them to consider a situation from a different or novel angle, this goes against the very heart of comedy which is all about savaging those you disagree with and berating people for being different. Speaking of and: And city skylines is a game where you build a city and manage it’s policies and infrastructure. Since communism has never been attempted i felt his was the perfect petri dish with which to experiment.

I started by building a shopping district, not a great star admittedly. So i evened things out by cutting off their water supply, haha take that bourgeoise dogs. Everyone complained because their small businesses had no running water and all the designated drivers who ordered tap water were getting pissed, in both senses of the word. The resulting increase in car traffic collisions sent insurance rates for the locals soaring and forced everyone to reply on a public transport network that i hadn’t yet unlocked.

Feeling this wasn’t quite provocative enough i began a campaign of racial segregation only to find such core features had been scooped out and made into DLC. Disaffect by my unethical treatment at the hands of petty capitalists attempting to increase my spending to drive their machines of economic growth, i decided to double down on my communist utopia. A park was placed in every suburb, at this point however that was only a single suburb and then all the people were mad because i demolished their homes to do so.

Next came another problem with the water supply, some joker had placed the sewage output upstream of the water abstractor. People complained that they came home from working in the flower shops for a shower only to come out lathered in their own excrement. Other complained they couldn’t tell when their coffee had brewed and found its new nutty and full bodied flavour disconcerting. Most people agreed it was shit.

A hallmark of any great leader is their large scale infrastructure projects. The pharos of egypt built the pyramids for tourism, the athenians built the parthenon as a display of the financial solvency and china built the three gorges dam because they dam felt like it. Hence i too would leave my legacy for all to sea. I blocked off the local river and build a large sea wall around the growing town to leaving the town immune the cruel machinations of the waters. Thinking i had avoided a biblical catastrophe i went to go make dinner. When i returned i found, with no where to send their waters to, the rivers had burst their banks and flooded the town. Drainage being minimal due to the sea wall. This was brilliant progress, we were one step closer to the boy band busted’s manifesto of the future put forward in their song ‘year 3000’.

The trajectory of history is not linear however, some fool accidentally deleted part of the sea wall allowing all but the low lying areas to drain. No one lives there however despite my attempts to sell it as a libertarian wonderland. There were no more building projects. The costs of the build and the payout in court to angry locals claiming i was “negligent” left the town bankrupt losing more to interest than they were gaining in taxes.

This was when the plague hit, no one was sure which struck first the deaths or the disease, with no hospitals or graveyards the suburbs turned homeownership into a death sentence. Their homes became their tombs which caused the people living closest to catch and then succumb to dysentery, cholera, yellow fever and a runny nose. If that wasn’t bad enough the trashmen went on strike when i refused to pay them. While i was busy trying to crush their ILLEGAL unionisation the bodies piled up, those damned bin men would do anything to exploit a crisis.

I watched as the city burned with plague, numbers dwindling down to their hundreds at the binmens behest. When the chips were down they stabbed us in the back. Their betrayal will not be forgotten. Vengeance will be clean and swift. Our sovereignty will go unchallenged as claim our mantle, free of binmen, free of impurity a glorious future for all.

This game has no option to use horses instead of cars. That irks me somewhat.