I distinctly remember seeing sprites about 10 years ago, where the enemies were eco protesters. The biters were protesters with signs, the spitters were protesters with Molotov cocktails, the nests were tent encampments.
I think I did not imagine that and it seems to me that the enemies’ mechanics make a lot more sense if they were people protesting.
Does anyone know what I’m talking about? Was this in the early builds or was that a mod?
P.S: the goal of Factorio is clearly to build a large enough factory to cripple your hardware, then apply the gained skills in a real factory to be able to buy new hardware, then get fired due to your addiction, freeing up time to build further
Seems like the very first, very outdated trailer from 2013 contains some of that - though in the trailer itself it seems more like bio-zombies than eco protesters. The game could only be pre-ordered at this point, though the video’s description suggests there was already a demo available. I don’t know if the game’s lore at this point was already “you play as an engineer that has crash-landed on an alien planet” – if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t surprise me that the decision to make that be the lore ended up convincing the dev team to abandon humanoid enemies.
In any case, starting from the following year’s (2014) trailer the fauna is already in the form of biters, spawners, and worms.
tagging @causepix@lemmy.ml in case they’re interested in this tidbit of history.
The game has long eschewed “good” and “bad”; thematically I’d say it’s more of a “water & oil” situation where you, the crash-landed engineer, don’t really have a way to both get off the planet and not pollute – you are of a fundamentally incompatible nature compared to the bugs. I imagine it could be possible to do a play-through that deliberately avoids automation and attempts to launch a rocket with the minimum of pollution emitted, though that’s more of a self-imposed challenge to try out when you already “master” the game (it will be long and dull, for the most part). As this analysis puts it, “Factorio is a game about building factories, and only uses environmental devastation as a minor background mechanic.” Another analysis comes to more-or-less the same conclusion.
It’s worth noting that, as of the Space Age DLC that released almost exactly 1 year ago, things get pushed even further away from morality. On the one hand, the dlc introduces a way to replant trees, including automatically, finally allowing players to get to a point where no blurb of pollution ever extends into the rest of the world/map. On the other hand, to complete the dlc you will need to farm the fauna by literally capturing the spawners and harvesting biter eggs from it. It’s a very fun automation and logistics challenge (harvested eggs hatch into aggresive biters if not used in a recipe quick enough, and nutrients for the spawners must be produced off-world and imported via rockets else the spawner reverts back to a “wild” state). Things are even less clearly moralized by the end of the dlc, where you obtain the capability to craft new spawners and plop them down wherever you want. This means you can add to the native fauna, not just take from it. In a sense, you get more agency in how your relationship to the native fauna ends up. The road to that agency, however, remains that of the base game. Neither planting trees nor creating new spawners is available without launching a rocket off-world (in fact, it takes many many rockets to get to this point). As the first analysis I linked so succinctly puts it, “[i]t is manifest destiny that a rocket be launched, so exploitation of the environment is unavoidable and the efforts of the bug race stand in the way of fate.” Cynically speaking, the DLC basically just lets you green-wash your dominion of the planet/solar system, after-the-fact.
just one detail though. you pretty much enslave the biters in a way that looks very gruesome. well technically you imprison and enslave the nests, but those are alive.
I’ve never played the game. Been meaning to for a while but so far have really only heard third-hand accounts of it. From the very little I know though that seems like a real possibility and honestly I prefer that interpretation.
@Jayjader@jlai.lu 's explanation gave me the impression it was nature’s way of fighting back against unsustainable practices. Like it lets you play as a bad guy and see the consequences of doing so, rather than pitting you against some diagetic evil and painting everything you do in a morally justified light.
I might have to eat crow on this one though, like I said I don’t even have entry level knowledge here.
I distinctly remember seeing sprites about 10 years ago, where the enemies were eco protesters. The biters were protesters with signs, the spitters were protesters with Molotov cocktails, the nests were tent encampments.
I think I did not imagine that and it seems to me that the enemies’ mechanics make a lot more sense if they were people protesting.
Does anyone know what I’m talking about? Was this in the early builds or was that a mod?
P.S: the goal of Factorio is clearly to build a large enough factory to cripple your hardware, then apply the gained skills in a real factory to be able to buy new hardware, then get fired due to your addiction, freeing up time to build further
Seems like the very first, very outdated trailer from 2013 contains some of that - though in the trailer itself it seems more like bio-zombies than eco protesters. The game could only be pre-ordered at this point, though the video’s description suggests there was already a demo available. I don’t know if the game’s lore at this point was already “you play as an engineer that has crash-landed on an alien planet” – if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t surprise me that the decision to make that be the lore ended up convincing the dev team to abandon humanoid enemies.
In any case, starting from the following year’s (2014) trailer the fauna is already in the form of biters, spawners, and worms.
tagging @causepix@lemmy.ml in case they’re interested in this tidbit of history.
The game has long eschewed “good” and “bad”; thematically I’d say it’s more of a “water & oil” situation where you, the crash-landed engineer, don’t really have a way to both get off the planet and not pollute – you are of a fundamentally incompatible nature compared to the bugs. I imagine it could be possible to do a play-through that deliberately avoids automation and attempts to launch a rocket with the minimum of pollution emitted, though that’s more of a self-imposed challenge to try out when you already “master” the game (it will be long and dull, for the most part). As this analysis puts it, “Factorio is a game about building factories, and only uses environmental devastation as a minor background mechanic.” Another analysis comes to more-or-less the same conclusion.
It’s worth noting that, as of the Space Age DLC that released almost exactly 1 year ago, things get pushed even further away from morality. On the one hand, the dlc introduces a way to replant trees, including automatically, finally allowing players to get to a point where no blurb of pollution ever extends into the rest of the world/map. On the other hand, to complete the dlc you will need to farm the fauna by literally capturing the spawners and harvesting biter eggs from it. It’s a very fun automation and logistics challenge (harvested eggs hatch into aggresive biters if not used in a recipe quick enough, and nutrients for the spawners must be produced off-world and imported via rockets else the spawner reverts back to a “wild” state). Things are even less clearly moralized by the end of the dlc, where you obtain the capability to craft new spawners and plop them down wherever you want. This means you can add to the native fauna, not just take from it. In a sense, you get more agency in how your relationship to the native fauna ends up. The road to that agency, however, remains that of the base game. Neither planting trees nor creating new spawners is available without launching a rocket off-world (in fact, it takes many many rockets to get to this point). As the first analysis I linked so succinctly puts it, “[i]t is manifest destiny that a rocket be launched, so exploitation of the environment is unavoidable and the efforts of the bug race stand in the way of fate.” Cynically speaking, the DLC basically just lets you green-wash your dominion of the planet/solar system, after-the-fact.
just one detail though. you pretty much enslave the biters in a way that looks very gruesome. well technically you imprison and enslave the nests, but those are alive.
Oh yeah, the graphics really insist that they are captured spawners, not converted, raised, or otherwise “friendly” spawners.
this is hilarious in a dark way
i feel attacked by it. lol
I’ve never played the game. Been meaning to for a while but so far have really only heard third-hand accounts of it. From the very little I know though that seems like a real possibility and honestly I prefer that interpretation.
@Jayjader@jlai.lu 's explanation gave me the impression it was nature’s way of fighting back against unsustainable practices. Like it lets you play as a bad guy and see the consequences of doing so, rather than pitting you against some diagetic evil and painting everything you do in a morally justified light.
I might have to eat crow on this one though, like I said I don’t even have entry level knowledge here.