RUCHBAH-46, THE RIM — Rimworld player Phillip Mellar recently admitted that, despite the game’s reputation and the general tone of discussion in its online community, he generally strives to create a society which not only provides a decent life to its own citizens, but also treats its neighbors with compassion and dignity.
“Maybe I’m just soft, but I’ve never quite gotten the attitude that a lot of people take toward this game,” Khan told us. “I mean sure, the game gives you the option to do things like capture raiders and keep them imprisoned as a source of transplant organs, but I just don’t feel like that’s how I want to play the game. If the point of the game is to work to survive and build a society, it almost feels like an easy way out to resort to extreme brutality any time it’s convenient.”
We talked to /r/rimworld user TribalPaste for another perspective.
“Look, to me, it’s not about cruelty or kindness,” they told us. “It’s about what happens to be interesting in the moment. I didn’t start my colony of tree-obsessed naked cannibals to get off on inflicting pain on fictional characters, I did it because it sounded funny. And, okay, sometimes it’s just about expediency. Sure, I’ll lock prisoners in a room until they snap and try to kill each other so that I can train a doctor, but I’m perfectly happy to just dissect their corpses if I’m playing with that mod. That’s not sadism, that’s just being smart.”
In a bid to better understand the culture surrounding Rimworld, we looked into its spiritual predecessor, Dwarf Fortress. After climbing 3 298 steps to his hermitage in the high Rockies, we met with Dumat Urvadthîkut, an expert on that game.
“Ultimately, I think that this is about human weakness,” Dumat told us. “A dwarf doesn’t worry about cruelty or kindness, she just throws her child into a pit of training spears and knows that that’s life. There isn’t a why, or a why not. Dwarves are dwarves, and so they drop nobles into magma. It’s a simple and inevitable process. Well, except for being made to drink water. Or drink without a cup. That’s cruelty.”
“Oh, and to be fair, I just couldn’t make myself do mermaid farms even before they got patched. Maybe I’m just a hypocrite, but some things I can’t stomach.”
