If something would benefit you, but would benefit your rivals more, Civilization would tell you not to do it. A game where you play a single country and try to make that country win is inherently nationalistic. This leads into the second way that games fail Gandhi. In a world so zero-sum, so fixated on a goal as the world of Civilization, Gandhi would have just been shot. But when history is presented as a game that only one player can win, ethics fall to the wayside. In real life, Gandhi’s non-violence highlighted the immorality of British colonial rule. When dealing with the abstracts of countries, games just don’t worry as much about things like public opinion or social power, both of which are much less overt than military power and much less fun to represent. Not even Gandhi himself can escape the arms race. The game may tell you that you are a pacifist, but the systems do not allow you to leave your army neglected. Various incarnations of the Civilization games try to disincentivise war against Gandhi by doubling war weariness or combat actions, but they always find that they cannot move the needle enough. The systems not only allow for warfare, but push the player towards it. The thing is that war is fundamental to these games, and more simply, war is fun in these games.
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