
The Antagonism of Human and Nature in Factorio - erlend_sh
https://molily.de/antagonism-human-nature/
======
sbergot
I think the developers are really smart about those design choices. Pollution
and alien relations are not something you can control in the game. They are
just an effect of playing the game. You are focused of producing more stuff in
order to unlock tools to allow you to produce even more stuff.

If you could somehow manage the pollution levels, the ecological message would
be weaker. It would mean that you can still increase your production as much
as you like and still keep the planet peaceful and green. In factorio the only
way to keep a peaceful environment is not to play. If you want to launch a
rocket, you will need to destroy forest and alien nests.

The game commentary about pollution & colonialism is stronger because those
elements are inevitable. Want to expand to get this new iron mine? First equip
a flamethrower and burn down the area.

~~~
aequitas
> Pollution and alien relations are not something you can control in the game.

You can (besides using the map creation settings). I've build a big factory
without suffering attacks. You can control pollution by using solar
(exclusively), efficiency modules and strategic building (build near forest,
don't destoy them, they absorb pollution). I did give myself a headstart with
a big starting area and lots of forest. And since the requirement to farm
aliens for resources has been removed a while ago, there is no reason to
attack and agitate them, reducing their agressiveness and expansion.

It does make the game harder and more fun in a way.

~~~
me_me_me
solar is late game tech, last time I played you couldn't possibly have been
100% eco play-through (feasibly)

~~~
aequitas
Solar is pretty early/mid game. Only red/green science is needed and for
construction coper, iron and steel. Of course before you get to solar you need
steam first. But with a bigger start area and enough trees, pollution can be
managed until you can go solar.

------
kccqzy
This is reading way too much into the game. The game is not a didactic device
that aims to teach a lesson about ecology, conservation, and the peaceful
coexistence with nature, just like plenty of works of fiction do not address
anything in the real world—they are simply figments of the author's
imagination.

> Also, a game is not a lecture in economy or ecology.

Okay good, because this sentence invalidates pretty much all of the author's
criticisms.

I feel that the whole article is just like the people who say shooting games
are harmful because they promote violence in real life (they don't). Why not
write about them? "Shooting games actively ignore the basics of human-human
interaction, and ultimately the basics of life."

Also, I don't think the author played this game where pollution is turned off:

> As a game device, the aliens force the player to build a machinery of war.
> If one would take out the products, the buildings, the technology research
> etc. directly or indirectly connected to military, there is only a fraction
> left. So for a great deal, this game is a war game, with little strategic
> value I might add.

When you turn off pollution, you turn off the militaristic aspects of the
game, and I can assure you there are plenty of interesting things to explore
without the military. From basics like fully utilizing the two-sided nature of
conveyor belts (you can totally have each half delivering completely different
products and prevent them from mixing up, therefore saving space), to
intermediate stuff like fluid mechanics (how many pumps and where), train
station design (how to load and unload efficiently) and railroad planning
(train signals are surprisingly rich), to advanced things like circuit
networks and combinators.

~~~
tsimionescu
Regardless of the intentions of the author, any piece of art can be read by
some as a reflection on the real world (perhaps one of the best examples that
is not post-modern is the often touted interpretation of The Lord of the Rings
as an allegory for WWII, which is very explicitly against Tolkien's wishes and
intents).

Especially in a pseudo-naturalistic game, it is interesting to observe which
aspects the game chose to model and which aspects it chose not to model, and
discuss the implications to the comparison between the game world and the real
world. This is as valid for Factorio as it is for Conquistador or Monopoly or
Civilization VI. If the reader believes that "important" (to them) aspects
were left out, they may legitimately criticize this reading of the game and
point out why viewing some aspect as realistic would be wrong, regardless. Of
course, it would absolutely NOT be legitimate to automatically extend this
criticism to the game itself, or even more so to the author, it is just a
criticism of a certain reading of the game.

There are cases when this type of reading can be seen as an explicit intention
of the game design, and in those cases it starts to become more acceptable to
criticize the author(s) themselves. For example, while pollution was a major
problem in early Civ games, it was removed from the newer ones (until the
latest expansion for Civ 6). Given the known importance of pollution in recent
human history and discourse, and its presence in the other games, this
omission can naturally be seen as intentional and can be criticized or praised
based on the message it sends. This would not be correct for Factorio.

~~~
LoSboccacc
but often enough the blue curtain is just a blue curtain

~~~
monadgonad
That doesn't matter! Art is about what we, the readers, make of it.

~~~
LoSboccacc
no, that's the interpretation of an art piece, art in itself exist as an
expression of a singular intent (well, potentially from a collective of
authors)

further reflections are independent thoughts which exist because of the
interaction with the art piece, but not within the art piece itself.

as such, these are observations of one's self, and not of the art.

------
marcus_holmes
I was all set up to hate on this.

The remark about "If one would take out the products, the buildings, the
technology research etc. directly or indirectly connected to military, there
is only a fraction left." particularly struck me as untrue - yes there are
some technologies that are military, but the vast majority are not. I have
played several games with no pollution and no aliens, and if you remove those
then there is a significant game left. This game is not "about" killing bugs.

But, I also get the comment about interacting with the bugs. They do feel like
cardboard-cutout characters left over from the first implementation and not
touched since. They don't seem to interact with the world, and they do feel
like a missed opportunity.

It _would_ be cool to be able to trade with the bugs instead of destroying
their nests to get materials. Having to manage pollution because it affected
trade, etc.

I do feel bad when my filth-belching factory causes the bugs to attack me, and
my only response is to destroy them. Hence playing games with this turned off.
It would be great if there was an option to include them without inevitably
getting into conflict with them.

~~~
p_l
Some mods worked to make it worth to manage pollution by cranking the military
to 11 so that the conflict couldn't be easily solved by just more military.

Nauvis Day + Rampant, while unfortunately broken code, was a very interesting
setup (I think we also did Angel+Bobs with it), which led me to start building
complex reprocessing plants so that instead of deep underground release the
captured pollution could be used to recreate raw materials - we had a lot of
pollution mitigation because otherwise we probably couldn't defend despite
seemingly impregnable defenses.

~~~
marcus_holmes
yeah, interesting. I haven't looked at the mods much (still haven't got the
perfect factory setup on vanilla yet!).

------
js8
I am deeply concerned about human impact on our planet, but I actually liked
that aspect of the game. We have games to provide escape, so it's not morally
wrong to play a villain in a game (I guess in Westworld it gets blurry, but we
don't have that technology yet), as long as you recognize that the game is not
the real world.

That being said, I would love to see a (kind of educational) game somewhat
similar to Factorio, or Civilization, that would realistically show the proper
impact and scale of industry and agriculture to our planet and ecosystems (and
also properly account for laws of conservation of mass and energy). It would
probably be on a bigger scale than Factorio, with map squares larger than 1
km^2. I was fascinated by the montage in Michael Moore's Planet of the Humans,
which showed how many different resources and industries are required to
create solar panels (or anything really).

(I suspect in some sense, it would have to be a "hyperproject" \- like
Wikipedia or OpenStreetmaps, something that cannot be expected to be completed
by a single organization.)

------
sc__
As another comment pointed out, the game Eco has a very similar premise to
Factorio (accelerating technology to achieve an important goal) but includes a
complex environmental simulation that encourages players to work together.
Worth checking out for those who got hooked on Factorio. Here's a link:
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/382310/Eco/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/382310/Eco/)

------
aequitas
> The fact that the aliens look like insects and live in huge groups suggests
> they have a eusocial structure, like ants, bees and humans.

The aliens have a pathfinding algorith [0] and a function to calculate
aggression and evolution as product of polution over time. They are just as
much a social society as mold on the ingredients of a cooking simulation game
or algea in your Sims swimming pool.

That said, the creators are aware of the narative the game portraits [1]. I
just think they want to focus more on the complexity of factories to provide
the player with a challenge requiring a spreadsheet just start the lategame
[2] and the aliens are just a vehicle for statistics in that case.

But it's generally understood that trees are the real enemy [3].

[0]
[https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-317](https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-317)
[1]
[https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-69](https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-69)
[2]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/curn9m/if_a_game_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/curn9m/if_a_game_doesnt_need_a_spreadsheet_to_solve_it/)
[3]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/8ee3d9/trees_are_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/8ee3d9/trees_are_the_real_enemy/)

------
creato
> As a game device, the aliens force the player to build a machinery of war.
> If one would take out the products, the buildings, the technology research
> etc. directly or indirectly connected to military, there is only a fraction
> left. So for a great deal, this game is a war game, with little strategic
> value I might add.

I think this author is simply oblivious to what makes factorio interesting.
I'm pretty sure I've played hundreds of hours of factorio, the proportion of
that time spent dealing with the aliens was negligible.

Saying there is little strategic value to factorio without the aliens is
preposterous. Toward the end of my factorio playing I simply turned them off
all together because it was just a mild annoyance to have to deal with the
aliens.

I think the real purpose of the aliens in the game is much simpler: the early-
mid game in factorio can be kind of boring, because your factory won't be
consuming all of your time. The developers needed something to make this part
of the game more entertaining, and so the aliens provide something to do
during this phase of the game. In the late game, there's no need for a
distraction, your factory will be providing plenty to do by itself.
_Coincidentally_ , around that point the game gives you ridiculous firepower
and automated weapons so you don't need to deal with the aliens.

~~~
SiempreViernes
> I think this author is simply oblivious to what makes factorio interesting

To me this is a text by someone that treats the game as if the game authors
have created factorio by a series of deliberate choices, that is they treat it
like a serious creative work.

> Saying there is little strategic value to factorio without the aliens is
> preposterous

What they actually say is that the wargame against the aliens is very shallow:
"this game is a war game, with little strategic value I might add". I don't
know from where you get the idea that they talk about the factory building
part.

Whether the aliens are for the just parts of the game or not, it is fact that
the authors state in the gameplay trailer that the aliens are there to force
you into making weapons:
[https://youtu.be/KVvXv1Z6EY8?t=88](https://youtu.be/KVvXv1Z6EY8?t=88) and
this is the trailer on their homepage mind you

~~~
creato
> To me this is a text by someone that treats the game as if the game authors
> have created factorio by a series of deliberate choices, that is they treat
> it like a serious creative work.

I think factorio is utterly genius. As a creative work, it is more
sophisticated and interesting than I think any game I've played. I personally
appreciate it as a harnessing of emergent behavior, which tends to be my
favorite kind of gameplay.

It's just that the aliens are a really small part of that. The aliens have
basically no impact on the game after a point not too far into it. Resources
consumed by weapon production become negligible compared to other objectives.

> Whether the aliens are for the just parts of the game or not, it is fact
> that the authors state in the gameplay trailer that the aliens are there to
> force you into making weapons:
> [https://youtu.be/KVvXv1Z6EY8?t=88](https://youtu.be/KVvXv1Z6EY8?t=88) and
> this is the trailer on their homepage mind you

Both things can be true at the same time. Yes, the aliens force you to make
weapons.

But of course they aren't going to just tell you "at first, the game can be a
bit slow, so here are some aliens to keep you busy until your factory is more
interesting"...

------
de_watcher
The gameplay is building a factory. An example of a more sophisticated
interaction with the in-game "nature" is Minecraft: there the living things
just become a part of your factory.

The simulation in Factorio isn't "harmful", it's just incomplete (in a way the
author of the post doesn't like) because the implementation has started from
the factory, not from the world (like Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress did).

~~~
nmeofthestate
The author believes the game is harmful because it doesn't teach players to
think the right things - the things that the author thinks.

Imagine someone wrote a blog about how Space Invaders encouraged militarism
and xenophobia. It sounds like a parody, but then so does this blog post.

~~~
neel_k
See Ken Ishii's music video "Space Invaders 2003":

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p--
dHQIeagE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p--dHQIeagE)

It's super cute, and also hits like a truck. Detroit techno is a really
inspired musical choice for this kind of thing.

------
w_t_payne
I read it as a very cynical message about the inevitable destructiveness and
cruelty of human nature.

------
joshstrange
I'm not going to dismiss the author's comments on the game but I do feel it's
reading a lot into what is just a game. A game that I've sunk almost 2000
hours into and have only played with enemies/pollution on for <30hrs. They
weren't fun mechanics since, as the author points out, there are no options
but to fight and pollute. I've even tried to play with mods that let you clean
the air but they don't work well even once I've gone full-solar. I'm willing
to have my beliefs challenged but I'm not grasping how this game is inherently
bad or promoting bad/harmful ideas. I don't find the pollution or alien
aspects of the game well thought out but thankfully I can turn them off and
just play a factory-builder game.

As for the opening quote. I've seen the YT video of these comments being made
and I'm struggling to understand the line being drawn between a person with a
disability and AI/ML models trying to move. I'm not saying it's wrong but I
just don't understand. If someone can summarize it better I would really like
to better grasp what Hayao Miyazaki means by this.

------
raxxorrax
I would also like the aliens to be depicted as more peaceful. Would be nice if
they just started with protesting in front of your factories with a little act
of sabotage here and there.

It should only escalate to fighting after you mowed down protesters with your
tank and zapped saboteurs with laser towers.

Wouldn't mind a diplomatic expansion where you can trade democracy for oil and
help aliens get rid of terrorist cells and their backward religious believes.

------
est31
I agree with the observations that you are pitted against nature in factorio,
have to kill the bugs and claim territory from them. I've made those
observations myself. I disagree on the conclusion though (seems to be a half
sentence at the end that they indicate it's harmful).

This concept makes the game more truthful about what's actually happening here
on earth. Because this is what we currently do. We are an extinction event for
a large number of species (except for the subset of hemerophiles), and have
been for large parts of our existence (why did the megafauna suddenly
disappear? because we LOVED to hunt them).

I think the game is very helpful in teaching people this relationship, and
every individual can draw their own conclusions from that.

Also, the main story of the game is actually good for nature in the long term.
The TLDR is that you are stranded on the planet and want to build a rocket so
that you can leave it and get home. If you believe that humans are a threat to
nature, there is no better solution for it than us leaving earth and turning
it into a national park, like Bezos suggests. If we build our rockets one day,
we can leave earth behind and let nature recover.

------
kohtatsu
The opening quote is in reference to this;
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ0K3lWKRc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ0K3lWKRc)

------
pornel
Factorio is incredibly addictive and I've had a lot of fun optimizing my
conveyor belts.

Whether it's intentional or not, the game really does show how convenient it
is to depend on fossil fuels, pave over forests, and just kill all life
standing in the way of unustainable expansion.

The ultimate end of the game is factory engulfing the whole planet, using up
all natural resources, and making the planet a graveyard of steel and
concrete.

------
2038AD
The beautiful contradiction of this article is that it's a Marxist critique of
a game which represents a reality which is congruent with Marxist critiques of
our own. The issue is not that the game doesn't provide an opportunity for
paradise but instead that the player inhabits the role of evil without an
opportunity for reflection. Games can do this. Brenda Romero's Train is a
well-known example where the player is unknowingly complicit in evil until the
reveal. While I'm not a fan of the increasing politicisation of games, it
seems to me that gamer's insistence of total amorality in gameplay is a
barrier to games becoming a serious art-form.

------
LoSboccacc
it's an interesting take of the state of aliens as they exist in game today,
but there's also a very down to earth reason as to why alien feel an
afterthought: 2012-2013 had a huge surge in tower defense genre popularity,
while logistic optimization games were relatively niche.

------
jojobas
Another example of mild outrage culture.

I wonder if the author would blame Robinson Crusoe for thoughtless capturing
of goats and interfering with the locals.

------
someuser375
Well, that was a waste of time reading...

I have spent nearly 1000 hours in Factorio and to me this game was about
planning, optimising, getting perfect ratios, then you hit hardware
limitations and start experimenting on how to get things more optimised.

So yeah, you take from the game what you want to take, if you will try hard
enought you can make Tetris look like an evil game about destroying bricks...

~~~
lloeki
I recall a Mario vs Sonic article where Sonic is described as peaceful and
freedomish (Sonic only hits machines to free animals) whereas you could twist
Mario's story around from Bowser's POV where he defends against a relentless
invader that stomps, fires at, and overall kills everyone in his path.

~~~
wccrawford
By that same token, Sonic is destroying Robotnik's personal property wantonly,
where Mario is trying to rescued his kidnapped friend.

Sure, if you eliminate parts of the plot, you can twist is around. But if you
include the kidnapped princess and trapped animals, it's pretty clear what
side each of those characters is on.

------
m12k
The author might be interested in trying out Eco. It plays like a mix of
Minecraft and Factorio, but with ecology and economy added in - you need food
and other resources from nature, which you can preserve or cultivate, and
pollution causes natural resources to dwindle. There's less automation than
Factorio - instead the game is intended to be played by a community of players
working together (in a more or less capitalist way depending on what you're
into).

------
fallingfrog
The game is, just as the author says, basically a model of our own capitalist
system. Or maybe a model of the conquest and exploitation of the new world. It
features conquest, growth, exponential expansion, -and resource depletion. I’m
not sure that makes it bad though, from the sounds of it the game creators
were quite conscious of what they were doing- in fact they may have been
subtly making the same sorts of points as the author of the article. After all
the game of universal paperclips is not supposed to leave you with the
impression that converting the whole universe into paperclips was a _good
idea_. Exponential expansion is fun and feels like winning, even though from
the point of view of the people on the receiving end of historical examples of
such projects, it was no doubt no fun at all.

------
nmeofthestate
It was only a matter of time before Factorio got cancelled.

