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

Title says it all in this multicultural cover for fascist genocide:


"Sword of the Stars: Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate"

GameSpy Industries
2006

Judging by the subtitle, we can see why this game is such a hit in the united $tates. Gamezone.com called it "the best out there" and worthplaying.com said, "it's a must-have franchise in the making." Games like this are on the store shelf everywhere, and George W. Bush tells us the problem is that we need to find moderate Muslims in the world. The problem is that there are few moderate Amerikans, as proved by the availability of games like this and mostly games like this.

Bush would find himself right at home in the game box rhetoric: "Earth itself is ravaged by an unknown alien race. What was to be the dawn of a new age instead becomes the beginning of a new reality: We are not alone, [in space--ed.] and we are not safe!"

Unlike "Galactic Civilization," which has tried to move in a more politically correct direction with cultural conquest as an option instead of genocide, in "Sword of the Stars" it's very simple: if one does not exterminate the population of other species, one will have no living space as Hitler called it. In fact, the other species are referred to as "races" right in the manual for the game.

Here's how the manual describes the "Liir" species:

"The Liir have not been a star-faring species for long. Up until 150 years ago, the Liir were a peaceful race with limited technology. Various agrarian and nomadic cultures operated within the rich waters of their home world, and war was virtually unknown to them. Although they had not developed far in the sciences of architecture or ballistics, some Liir societies were extremely advanced in bio-engineering, aquatic horticulture, volcanic engineering and metallurgy.

"The Liir were conquered and enslaved by another star-faring race, whom they learned to call the Suul-ka. The Suul-ka established several lucrative industries on Muur, the Liirian home-world, and force-marched the Liirians through the Industrial Revolution by employing them as slaves in mines, factories and manufacturing facilities.

"After several decades of abuse, realizing that the greed and rapacity of the Suul-ka would destroy the aquatic environment of their home world completely, the Liir rebelled against their alien masters."

The manual says the Liir won their rebellion by devising a biological weapon to wipe out the entirety of the Suul-ka species.

The odd thing is that the fascism is done through soft-sell. There are no stentorian voices. In fact, there is a female medical voice of some Anglo accent and there is an odd scientist's voice, which this reviewer fantasizes is Indian and with no harsh male overtones. Then there are various sterile headquarters and battlefield voices.

Technically, the product is tight. Players should realize that the right mouse button is key to moving around. The 1.1 patch installed without a hitch.

"Sword of the Stars" does not require a mega-super-computer; although graphics will still be an issue for some. Yet from reading the game box self-promotion, it seems that reviewers are only interested in the novelty of sounds and voices in this game. There is sci-fi battle simulation just as in other games, and generally there is nothing new in this game.

The whole game is about weapons, weapons and weapons, but some of the weapons and scientific discoveries are the same as in other games. Everyone seems to think there has to be "neutronium" and "admantium" playing a major role in the future, not to mention fission, fusion and "anti-matter." There are biology and industry discoveries, but everything else is related to engineering of energy and the military.

We have destroyer, cruiser and dreadnought class battleships. Within those categories we have colonizer ships, point defense ships, deflector ships etc.

There is no class struggle in the game despite the word "exploit" in the title. There is a statistic for the population which is important and one can influence the pace of a planet's population and infrastructure growth, but in general the game abstracted away from these issues to leave questions to the level of designing and upgrading ships. Our fascination is supposed to be over 20 varieties of laser-style weapons and similar variety in torpedoes.

True to Nazism and also cultural views of politics, there is a kind of influence of struggle from Darwin. In contrast with Marxism, "Sword of the Stars" type fascists say the struggle is one of cultures instead of classes. Civilizations struggle for survival against each other and species are an easy proxy for race or nationality.

The underlying assumption is that there is a surplus available in society and what is interesting is the diversity of military struggles one can undertake with that surplus, mainly in the form of what weapons to build and buy. As war grinds on, one may lose or gain planets and then gain more resources for more war implements.

There is a slight tipping mechanism in the game, because by gaining more planets and doing scientific research, one increases one's budget. The more savings from the budget one has, the greater the budget gets each turn, because savings attract 1% interest.

The sad part is that MIM picked this game for review, because most other games do not have even that much non-militarist content. Too many games are only about designing the perfect militarist robot.

It would be tempting to say that playing this game might be better than watching a Saturday morning TV cartoon show. Yet while the cartoons have many military themes, the cartoons might not have such an emphasis on "extermination."

In some games, it is possible to land on a planet and enslave the population. At least the population lives on and true to imperialist design, that population can be better off than it was before, in say, "Master of Orion." In "Sword of the Stars," there is no way to interact with the population but by killing it off, unless one can ally with the leader of that other civilization. There's also no saying that a computer-generated humyn civilization might not attack another humyn civilization for Lebensraum. There's nothing the player can do about it in a universe with say only 80 stars, and thus seemingly limited space.

So when one takes over a "star system," there could be a billion people, but eventually one's ships will kill off the entire population of that star system so one can then colonize it.

Humyn civilizations may be forced to kill each other off in "Sword of the Stars." Then there is the usual ant-like civilization and one ocean-based civilization that looks like a dolphin. Even the characteristics of the species have only the slightest role in the game. This is the most dumbed down game one can play and still call it "strategy." In terms of games to play, dressing up a doll is infinitely better than outfitting a robot or battleship--if dumbed down is what we want.