u/J__Krauser

I'm sure somewhere in the lore there are places with heavenly living conditions, but for most Imperial citizens, life is incredibly miserable. No one cares about you, no one cares if you live or die, and no one cares about your family. Under these conditions, being loyal to the Imperium doesn't make you a good person; it just shows that you're an idiot. Why would an ordinary person say, "Oh, I should keep protecting this system that promises me nothing"? With Chaos, at least you have the hope of climbing the hierarchy, a chance to achieve some power, or if nothing else, the chance to take revenge on the people who condemned you to these conditions. It's like choosing between two buttons: one offers certain death, and the other offers certain death plus a cotton candy. Even if the reward is incredibly low, at least one of them promises something a little extra. I'm talking about ordinary people, not those at the top of the pyramid like the Space Marines or nobles.

The title might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I’ve been gaming for about 20 years and have been watching others play for a long time. What I've noticed is that if given a choice, almost everyone chooses to be a good character, at least during their first playthrough. In fact, a BioWare producer mentioned on Twitter that 92% of Mass Effect players chose to be Paragon (the good character). And although I can't find the source, apparently Peter Molyneux once said something like this: 'My prediction is: all you guys, you’re just gonna be nice. Sickeningly, sycophantically nice to each other. And it makes me sick, because you know, in a game like Fable, we spent hours; we spent months, months and years crafting the evil side of Fable, and only ten percent of people actually did the evil side. Come on. You’re supposed to be gamers' And it’s not just Mass Effect or Fable. Even many non-RPG games without a formal morality system, I see that people always chose to be the good guy.

Is there a game where the player struggles to choose when the game asks: 'Do you want to be a hero loved by everyone, or someone who breaks the laws and oppresses the innocent?' The only exception that comes to my mind is Frostpunk. Even though the game doesn’t have an explicit morality system, unless you play exceptionally well, you are sometimes forced to make 'evil' decisions because being 'good' could cause you to lose the game. Are there any other games like this?

More loot, more experience for the soldiers. Also, if you capture the aliens, you might even earn more money, I'm not sure.

There is something that has caught my attention lately: games with millions of dollars spent on them are reaching incredibly low player counts, yet these companies don't close down and continue on their way as if nothing happened. Even more interesting is the almost complete lack of advertising for these games. It’s as if they don't do any marketing just so players won't buy them.

The latest example is Aphelion. It was released 5 days ago, but right now there are only about 50 people playing it on Steam. This would be a bad number even for a solo dev, so how does a game with dozens or even hundreds of devs survive this?