u/platypodus

Optimizing the fun out of games is a concept in multiplayer games, that can make them almost impossible to play for fun, but even when you're playing single-player games, you're often faced with the drive to optimize (and remove the fun).

We all know these games; city-builders or colony sims that have some ethical dimension to them, which you should completely ignore if you want to run your build smoothly.

From herding people in games like Rimworld to forcing the children into the mines in Frostpunk and even sacrificing squad members in Darkest Dungeon. Even Rollercoaster Tycoon is famous for having free soda and to-pay bathrooms. You cut corners on empathy, because in a simulation it just makes rational sense.

Your factory runs best on human grease. They're just numbers, after all.

But in some of these examples, the developers have tried to punish you for forsaking compassion. In Frostpunk you have narrative reasons not to crush human spirits by military police force and in Prison Architect you're rewarded with a peaceful prison population if you fulfil more than your prisoner's most basic needs.

All of these are kinda weak, though. In the face of harder levels, you're still forced (by rationalization) to go back to the most efficient, most soulless setups.

What games have great mechanics to combat this? How do they work?

Example; when Echnaton tried to force Egypt to adopt monotheism instead of polytheism it failed.

This would have been a monumental shift affecting all aspects of Egyptian life. From the day to day down to the caste system of the priests.

Do you have similar far reaching changes for a whole society in your area of expertise? How did they work out?

The only big other example I can think of is the North Star, which guided nautical exploration in the northern hemisphere.

We live in the age of sequel movies nobody asked for. From two Indiana Jones "reboots" to Disney's live action recreations and musical adaptations like Wicked over yet another Sherlock Holmes or Batman or The Devil Wears Prada 2, there seems to be no shortage of a shortage of innovation.

But has there ever been a movie that was obviously made to be a cash-in on nostalgia that has been better than mediocre or even genuinely great?

Personally I think "Les Champs-Elysées" is really hard to beat, because it's just such a nice, upbeat song, that's really hard to resist singing along to.

Other contenders off the top of my hat could be, "Penny Lane" or "Telegraph Road".

Honourable mentions about fictional streets could be "Sesame Street" and "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", maybe. There are even metaphorical streets, like "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"...

What are ideas for the lowest barrier of entry job/profession that could lead people to wanting to settle on a (barren) planet or moon?