Does anybody else get unreasonably annoyed at the vast majority of rpg games that are feudal societys on a surface level but are actually capitalist societys under a thin vineer. I was trying to play pillars of eternity but became incredibly annoyed at the frist quest of the game revolving around a mill which is in a lord’s domain but is privately owned and operated and which the townsfolk sell their grain to in exchange for currency (to later buy back with the same currency). I had to put the game down right there.
I think a lot of the time it’s an outgrowth from developers feeling the need to have a commonly circulated currency. Although the answer in my opinion isn’t to faithfully recreate feudalism but to create a unique social formation for the conditions of the world, I’ve always loved the eberron campaign setting for that reason.
Similarly, I hate when there are science fiction stories that have no reason for the characters to be engaging in capitalism. Like we’re all on a research vessel in space with one scientific goal of finding a suitable planet for life yet we still have to worry about money for some reason.
Eve Online’s setting is incredibly bleak for this reason. Millions of inhabited worlds over thousands of star systems, faster than light travel … and the only goal of anyone’s life is to work for or own a capitalist corporation. The only thing you can do in the game is make money. There’s no lore anyone cares about. There’s no story you’ll actually read the flavor text for. There’s nothing to do than find some way of making money so you can find ways of making more money. Like a million years in the future.
The only thing you can do in the game is make money. There’s no lore anyone cares about. There’s no story you’ll actually read the flavor text for. There’s nothing to do than find some way of making money so you can find ways of making more money. Like a million years in the future.
I… don’t know about that. I was never neurotic enough to play, but I read a few blogs and write-ups on various moments within the game. There was definitely an evolution in both the composition of players and play styles. There was plenty of in-game politics, factionalization, espionage, feuding, and personality-driven conflict.
Also, lots of meta stuff. There was drama around the exchange rates and interactions with developers. Drama between the players outside the game. Drama with bugs and exploits. Drama with the rise and fall of the game’s population.
There were definitely design limits. You couldn’t land on a planet and explore the xenobiology for thirty years. You still needed certain raw materials to build out your kit, and joining a corporation made that process much smoother. But its like saying “I can’t pull over and get out of my car, run off into the woods, and become a lumberjack in Truck Simulator” or “I can’t not-pick-up-stuff in Katamari Damasi”. If you want to play Minecraft instead of Eve Online, just do that instead.
the pretenses of “fantasy realism” were bogus
How could an oxymoron do this?
the system was glaringly capitalistic and the fighting over the Iron Throne was more or less a corporate hierarchy struggle rather than the intricate network of allegiances and vassalhood that feudalism entails
I don’t know about that. Some of the best moments of the series involved characters struggling with the feudal webs and snarls formed in prior generations. Everything from the Baratheon Succession to the Red Wedding to the Daeneryus slave-coup to the Revolt at the Wall involved characters exploiting (or falling victim to) allegiances and dogmas they’d failed to grapple with prior. Most of Arya’s arc involved traveling through the gritty underbelly of the feudal system and witnessing what keeps it rolling along. It’s no coincidence that her foil is The Hound, a shameless flak for the predominant ruling family, who routinely pulls her aside and delivers hard truths.
Past that, I’d argue that modern day corporationism has far more in common with the feudal system than we like to give it credit. Especially as the volume of real capital consolidates under fewer and fewer hands, while smaller businesses become subservient to larger ones… the comparison between GoT and Modern Day Capitalism only gets tighter the farther away we move from Martins last book release.
the 2010 three kingdoms series is way better for that it’s an adaption of a book actually written under feudalism. It’s in chinese but there are subtitles and it’s free on the internet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNHnX4xsplo&list=PL33A390995E9A7F00
it’s also pretty well made as it’s a classical piece of culture, like the Chinese equivalent of a Shakespeare play
what in skyrim? the economy seems entirely unthought through, like not enough thought to even default to capitalism
Ironically, the Telvanni in Morrowinds are openly based on ancaps and are the most feudalist of any group in eldar scrolls in terms of structure.
The Telvanni do follow the NAP. If you make too much of a nuisance of yourself a wizard will fly along and blow you up. Don’t do anything that will annoy the wizards. There are no other laws.
I always liked that Telvanni architecture didn’t have stairs because everyone who was important could fly and everyone who couldn’t fly wasn’t important. Nothing says “Slave Society” quite as hard as the masters simply levitating out of reach of their slaves.
Pillars of Eternity is deliberately set in an early modern-equivalent era, during the world’s dawn of capitalism. It’s not supposed to be strictly feudal. A better object of criticism would be Skyrim.
Your right that Pillars of eternity probably isn’t a particularly good example it just stuck out to me so much because the first actual quest of the game revolves around a moral dilemma that doesn’t make much sense. The currency isn’t as out of place as it would be in a medieval setting but the operation of the mill that way is still very strange.
It’s a lot more obvious in the second game, as it’s almost entirely about feuds between Caribbean-analogue trading companies
The second game is also interesting as the fantasy expy of Polynesians have totally different concepts of ownership and exist into some form of communes but sadly the devs had brainworms and so had to create some parts that didn’t really mesh and also had to include colonial exploitation.
It bugs me too. It’s interesting how you can tell exactly what an author does and doesn’t know based on how they write, and as expected 90% of people writing games don’t really know much about economics so they just plug in things from the modern world and expect it to work.
One defense of the commonly circulated currency thing though is that designing and implementing something more complex would be a lot of work for something that isn’t very fun. I think boiling cash down to gold pieces is fine, but it would be nice if a game world made it explicit that you only deal in gold because you’re constantly traveling and that most people think that that’s a bit strange.
I can kinda agree with the currency thing, The only system I’ve ever seen that works well is having a reputation with a faction that acts a currency with each faction , I also have seen games where your explicitly trading shavings of precious metals themselves and not a currency.
My favorite “currency” is the bullets in Metro, since being able to shoot your money is an interesting piece of worldbuilding and an interesting gameplay choice.
Metro’s bullet currency was such a great idea. It hammers in to your head that the technological mastery of the past is gone and it’s never coming back. All you have to show for the past is shiny brass cartridges that might save your life, either because they can kill a Nazi before he can kill you, or because you can trade them for food and shelter. It’s as far from a fiat currency as you can get. Every military grade bullet is rare and precious entirely because of it’s utility, and the state of the world is such that no one would think of hording ammunition that could go to the rangers that defend the station from mutants and Nazis.
