Link: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/civilization-7-devs-talk-20th-century-leaders-controversial-historical-figures-and-dealing-with-colonialism-in-4x-strategy-games

Big questions for a big game.

How does one design an anti-colonial 4X strategy game?

Maybe by not baking colonialism into ⅓ of the entire fucking game, and letting players make their own damn choices? That worked pretty well for 25 years, not sure why y'all had to fuck it up all of a sudden.

Always a tough question. If you look at HoI4 I really struggle with depictions of atrocities in games. On the one hand I totally get why you don't depict the Holocaust and if I look at the HoI community it is for the best. On the other hand, if you ignore the Holocaust you tell an incomplete story and white wash Nazi-Germany. Real damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario.

I am mostly into tycoon / economic strategy / indie RPGs games where the steam community pages are pretty vanilla, the most heated discussions are around nerdy gameplay design issues or perhaps the inclusion of Denuvo.

I never understood why so many people claimed that steam forums are a garbage dump. On the contrary, they seemed like a nice alternative to discord with its atrocious UX.

Then someone suggested to take a look at the HoI steam community areas. 😬