Realities in Games

A screenshot of the village view of the
game My Tribe by Big Fish Games

I'm going to try not to rant about the state of the world right now, because the people who should read what I often write about Being Kind to Others and Have You Tried Not Being a Hypocritical Asshole? and Maybe We Should Protect The Actual Living and Breathing Children aren't listening anyway.

What I want to talk about today is related, insofar as it touches on topics such as gaming culture and unrealistic beauty expectations, and even on the leave-the-poor-woman-alone-until-she-has-recovered-from-giving-birth.

I play a lot of different types of games - I have done so since the mid-1970s - from tabletop RPGs (and a LARP once or twice) to card/board/tile games to computer/phone/console games, and there's a lot to unpack here. And I've touched on my gaming before, most notably in this article over on Vocal.

In general, as technology has improved, especially in the videogame space, games have become increasingly complex, with deeper themes and more beautiful visuals. We can talk all day about the problematic issues that can come with that last, even in some of my favorite games, like Genshin Impact's skimpy costumes and lack of skin-tone variation, or the similar skimpy costumes and cultural stereotypes in the Final Fantasy franchise. As I said, I love these games, and they're some of my favorites of all time. 

And some of the potential issues in them are by the standards of the American culture in which I grew up (where we are finding more and more each day that they are even worse than we thought).

But I digress, again.

Anyway...

I keep going back to Big Fish Games.

They're a local (to me) company specializing in desktop games of various types since 2001. I've been downloading games from them since 2010, mostly Hidden Object games (complete with those that scared Abby back in the day, what with stone angel statues and all), with forays into other genres.

My favorite of these is My Tribe. It's a city (or at least village) builder, resource management type of game, that I can run in the background much of the time.

I think it's my favorite because, compared to a lot of others, especially in light of recent revelations in my country, it's just wholesome.

Infants (0-1 years) and Toddlers (2-3 years) just hang out, doing baby things. They toddle, babble, coo, giggle, etc. They are safe, in spite of village campfires and deep sea nearby, and the only way in which they can be hurt or killed is if you run out of food (or wood for a fire on which to cook the food) for long enough that the whole tribe starves. In fact, only old age or starvation can kill any of the Tribespeople.

Young Children (4-5 years) and Children (6-13 years) can do minor chores, like picking up potion ingredients.

Young Adults (14-17 years) can do the same chores, plus work by chopping wood, finding stone, constructing buildings, fishing, tending a garden, researching science, and making new clothes.

Adults (Women 18-45 years and Men 18-50(?) years) can do all that, plus Call the Stork with each other. Now, as Calling the Stork is specifically for reproduction, it's all very binary, and here's an important thing... Women can only Call the Stork every two years (that is, their most recent offspring must reach the Toddler stage before they can Call the Stork again). I find this to be a decent representation of a reasonable time between kids.

Older Adults (45 (or 50)-64) just keep helping out in the village. If you have Fountain of Youth Water and sufficient research knowledge, they can be rejuvenated back to 36 anytime after their hair turns grey at 65. I don't know the algorithm for when they die of old age if not rejuvenated.

Anyway, I find this sort of game - especially this one, which is relatively simple - to be... soothing, I guess? I mean, it's a little quirky on Windows 10 or 11, and I generally turn off the special effects. It'll crash if there's a power outage or the computer restarts while it's running, but them's the breaks.  

I realize this is kind of silly of me to make a big long post about. But sometimes you just have to acknowledge the good (or calming or soothing or regulating) stuff around you when the world is <gestures vaguely> All That Out There™. And if even one person finds it to be any of those things, then I've accomplished my goal of spreading even a tiny bit of cheer for the day.