SuddenDownpour

Art obviously by HappyRoadKill, beware the rampant NSFW furry art though

Cross-post from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/13765975 at Games@itjust.works (No idea how to properly link to the community)

Palworld has brought back a Pandora's Box that Pokemon let open in Black/White: Does Team Plasma have a point? Is the player in Pokemon/Palworld an evil entity just for playing?

Some preliminary context for those unaware. Pokemon Black/White's version of an evil team was Team Plasma, which argued that Pokemon trainers were evil for capturing Pokemon and forcing them to fight alongside them. While the game gave us the character of N, who is honest and sincere in his ideas and intentions, Team Plasma is presented as an hypocritical boogeyman that wants to force all other trainers to free their Pokemon, but secretly this is only a ploy to make sure no one can oppose them when they attempt to grab power for themselves.

Palworld has its own take on the idea: out of the different hostile factions, we find early on the Free Pal Alliance, which similarly argues that capturing pals and forcing them to do your bidding is evil, and we find again that their leader really commits to the idea, but her underlings are constantly attacking pals in the wild and sometimes even putting them in cages.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Pokemon fanbase was very defensive of this idea, often repeating the arguments provided by the games that captured Pokemon like the companionship anyway, dismissing the fact that wild Pokemon violently resist being captured unless you force them into submission to accept the Pokeball. The fact that you forcibly push them into a situation where their previous freedom to choose not to associate with you gets overwritten by a newfound willingness to obey means that they're being effectively brainwashed - if we were to apply our real life standards to this situation we would say without a doubt that the situation is exploitative and we're wiping our ass with the idea of consent. Palworld is even more "in your face" about this, given that the brainwashing mechanic of Pokeballs/spheres does not only work on the mons, but on humans as well. The general reaction of the Palworld community seems to be acknowledging that it's fucked up, but nonetheless jumping straight to the fact that the Free Pal Alliance are hypocrites as a whole or even calling them a parody of PETA.

My position here is: should these games even address the ethical dilemma? Once you put the ethics into the game's narrative, the designers are basically forced into going to "Yes, but" territory, since acknowledging the ethical issue leads you to the conclusion that the game only allows you to play as a morally dubious character at best, but given that that would be unwise from a marketing pov (at least for Game Freak), the narrative ultimately has to twist the argument into some sort of fallacy (The Pokemon actually want to be captured/The Free Pal Alliance is full of hypocrites anyway), which in my opinion is actually the heinous design decision, since you're pushing the player into twisting the moral dilemma in a way, thus training moral hypocrisy, rather than the much healthier position "Yes, capturing Pokemon/Pals is evil, but it's a game so no actual sentient creature is being harmed".

Both Pokemon Black/White and Palworld hint at the idea of human-Pokemon/Pal association out of free will through the character of N and the Free Pal Alliance, who do not capture their creatures, but rather they choose to cooperate with them out of real free will, but this option is mechanically impossible for the player (save, arguably, for rare exceptions where Pokemon freely join you through through scripted events). This ends up cementing the ludonarrative dissonance where the player has to justify themselves into thinking that what they're doing is morally acceptable, despite being presented with actually ethical in-lore alternatives that they just do not have access to. It is understandable that, from a game design perspective, the Pokemon/Palworld developers do not want to spend significant effort into reworking the mechanics of Pokeballs/spheres, which are already effectively fun for their gameplay loops, but that leads them into the position where Team Plasma and the Free Pal Alliance have to become caricatures of their actual ideas, which on the other hand is a waste for their respective lores.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my rambling. My Chikipis have already laid all the eggs I need for baking cakes, so I'm off to butchering them for meat, bye.

Crosspost from Reddit

There should be no question that oil-based car-centric cultures are unsustainable for the environment, and in some extremes like the US simply result in terrible city layout. No disagreements here, I hope.

But there's something I've never seen addressed, and it's how fucking miserable having to use public transport can get if the people you're sharing it with are simply rude.

You've just finished your 8,5 hours workday. Work was extremely dull, but even if it wasn't you could have barely got anything done anyway because there was were construction works right outside the office, and the hammering and drilling is still echoing in your ears. You need to get home at the other side of the city, and you don't have a car nor the money to take a taxi, so you take a bus. Can you finally relax away from that disgusting noise? Well, there should be no reason for anything being excessively loud, other than perhaps some vehicle's motor. Except that fuck you.

It's the year 2023 of the current era, someone has put 300€ into buying a last gen Xiaomi - but apparently they didn't budget appropriately, because rather than buying earbuds, that someone has decided to share with everyone else the sound of non-stop Youtube shorts. Apparently everyone else seems to have had a more sensible shopping list, because they start taking out their earbuds or headphones. Rather than, you know, have the person being annoying silence their phone.

On a different day, you sigh in relief when you find the bus near empty. Less numbers means less chances for disturbances, of course, you can even go at the very end of the bus to be alone. Someone enters the bus, talking through her phone. She stays near the entrance. There shouldn't be issues here, right? Normal people normally talk through their normal phones all the time. But does she need to SHOUT when she does it? Does someone in the literal opposite end of the bus need to hear all about her annoying kids and her annoying husband and her annoying life? Wouldn't she rather save herself the pain of a sore throat the next morning?

You take the bus again next week. There's a tough looking guy a seat in front of you. He is actually a polite person though, because he is using headphones. Not everyone seems to share the same impression, because two old women have clearly decided not sitting immediately near to him, to the point that one of them will take the seat next to you and the other one will stay up, just so that she doesn't have to share a seat with the other guy. No problem with their dumb prejudices yet. You do have a problem, however, when they start increasing their tone of voice further and further, as if you weren't right next to them, nor trying to read, nor blasting your headphones in a vane attempt to not to hear their rambling. Suddenly, two seats are freed up up ahead, directly facing the tough looking guy. You're finally about to find bliss, you think, as this lady who saw Tutankhamun be born surely needs a seat for her frail, old legs. But no. Their fear of young, fit men with cheap shirts is stronger than their desire to actually sit together, to the point that when you suggest to them to take the seats up ahead so that they don't have to shout to your ear they get offended.

I lived for some years in a city with great bus and subway infrastructure, but very early on I had to stop taking the bus because the people using it were indifferent to the fact that they were sharing a public space, that they don't have the right to make it as miserable for everyone else as they see fit. Do not dare to try and make them behave with some consciousness either, because it'll be a toss up between them actually recognizing the issue and doing better or actively turning into willing assholes.

Almost never had this issue in the subway, though, and I don't know why despite it being far more packed. Only exception was one night when an English football team was at the city, and so were its hooligans. I've used train far less, but I don't remember it being a problem either. People being annoying is obviously a cultural issue, we aren't naturally wired to always strive to be little shits. But when being little shits is the norm, having to share a space with everyone else becomes misery.

What would you do to incentivize good public manners, and to prevent antisocial behavior, at any level or scale?