This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

Maoist Internationalist Movement

Space Colony

Firefly Studios Ltd Space Colony
2003

To know who is to blame in the "war on terror," one need only look on the video game shelf in Circuit City, Best Buy or Game Stop. A single visit to these chainstores should be enough to persuade any observer that war is for fun. It's supposed to be a national secret though. Get caught revealing it like Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan at Abu Ghraib and one will receive a punishment.

The video game market for persynal computers has not changed much in the last few years. It seems to have reached a saturation point and the pc has lost out to Nintendo and its imitations. There may be a few new mystery titles on the shelf, such as Nancy Drew. We recommend oldie "Space Colony."

Players can choose Planet Hobu in sandbox mode. It is not necessary to be killing aliens in that scenario.

In contrast, in the latest hit, about a biological robot, one alters one's own DNA to become a weapon and use other chemical warfare. The advertising includes TV. The imperialists holding stock in the companies profiting from this have the nerve to talk about "terrorism" somewhere else. The key is to call what the U.$. team is doing a game as in Abu Ghraib. What the other guy is doing is called "terrorism."

In "Space Colony" there is less militarism. In the introductory scenarios, the military aspect is almost connected to weeding the agricultural farms, with "bugs" attacking. Of course, in all these imperialist militarist videogames, the enemy deserves to die. The games assist oppressor nation scum in imagining their opponents as worthless.

Economically, this game is white anarchist. Exploiters are far off, appearing only at the beginning of turns, when they announce that citizens must make their planets profitable enough or die, possibly from lack of purchased medicines.

We say the game is white, because the economy has reached the services-dominated stage. Hotels, casino games and restaurants dominate the economy in the advanced stages.

Yet as in most other games that bother to simulate an economy, at the beginning in "Space Colony" one must start with farming. Then one spreads into mining to fund later services such as medical or hotel services.

There is even a dialectical aspect in that it is possible for the economy to spiral downward into oblivion by making the wrong investment choices especially early in the game. Wrong economic choices may cause the loss of the game for a variety of reasons. Being able to run up a surplus is necessary to keep workers happy with recreation, fund the military and maintain other services. There is no socialist revolution option in the few scenarios that we ran.

We chose to review "Space Colony" for its economic element, but it has a cute political angle. Hippie Daisy denounces capitalist and fascist pigs at a regular interval. On planet Hubu, two out of eight characters have anarchist symbols on their bedding. The name of the corporate oppressor is Blackwater International. So this game seems appropriate at many levels.

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