I have two major oppositions to capital punishment, and neither are rooted in the possibility of rehabilitation or not.

1. The state is not infallible. If you put someone into prison for ten years and find out you messed up, you can at least release them. You can’t give them those years back, but you can try to do right by them as much as you are able. You execute the wrong person? You’re just a murderer.

2. Personally, life in prison (and not a cushy wall street exec prison) seems like a way worse punishment. Even if I was only concerned with providing somebody the worst possible punishment, lifetime imprisonment would be worse.

Mostly though for me, it is number 1.

It makes the perfect excuse for the emperor to surrender on, no doubt about that. Put yourself into the emperor’s shoes. You’ve been lying to your people about their efficacy in the war, your country is devastated. Do you admit you led the country into war or that one singular scientific breakthrough that nobody could have seen coming was responsible? You shift all blame off your shoulders and that of your leadership, and all onto this one perfect excuse. It also placates the Americans. It enhanced the perception of US military power; whereas if the soviet entry into the war was a deciding factor, the same would be true for the USSR. Attributing the surrender to the bombs is basically better for every party involved, except the soviets.

There are a few reasons why, looking back at it, that it doesn’t make sense that the nuclear bomb was the deciding factor.

Well in advance of the surrender, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army Torashiro Kawabe said that “The absolute maintenance of peace in our relations with the Soviet Union is imperative for the continuation of the war.” Japan always knew that they would not be able to fight that front of the war as well and that the USSR entering into the conflict would end their ability to continue.

There are the timing issues I already mentioned. The second bombing could not have possibly be involved, and a three day turnaround from the first bomb to even starting talks to discuss surrender (in fact, directly rejecting that discussion at one point) seems extraordinarily slow. Did it probably come up in those discussions? I would be surprised if it wasn’t mentioned, but the details of those talks were never made public. Was it the impetus for calling the meetings? Decidely not.

At this point in the war, Japanese leadership had little illusions that they were going to defeat the United States. They may have convinced large swathes of the population of that, but their outlook wasn’t good. So what were their avenues for the best surrender terms that they could get. As outlined by Ward Wilson, a position I quite agree with, they had two viable paths. There was the diplomatic route, with the soviet union acting as a mediator for Japanese surrender to America. Sokichi Takagi wrote about this option in his diaries if you are looking for a primary source (I can provide the Japanese if you can read it, but I am not sure where to find an English translation) . Which would undoubtedly present better terms than an unconditional surrender to the US would have. Obviously an option that was not on the table when the soviets entered the war.

The second was the military holdout, which is what people often cite as the best justification for the bombing. However, in anticipation of the US invasion, Japan had moved the vast majority of their troops to Kyushu, leaving little to nothing to defend Manchuria and Hokkaido. A last stand against one super power from one direction is one thing, the same feat from two directions was impossible for what was left of the Japanese military. The Soviets would have had met little to no resistance moving into Hokkaido from Manchuria. Any hope of bleeding the US forces out in a month long war of attrition evaporated; large swaths of northern Japanese territories would be occupied by the Soviet Union in weeks.

I don’t mean to write a full on essay here, but I am happy to go into detail on any particular subject if you would like.

This is a really common line that is patently false, the nukes had very little to do with triggering the Japanese surrender. The meeting to discuss surrender occured days after the first bombing, and started prior to the second bomb. I wasn’t privy to the Council discussions, obviously, but it is exceedingly unlikely they would sit around for days after the first bombing before meeting to discuss surrender. What did happen immediately prior to the surrender meeting was the Soviet invasion.

The nuking, of primarily non-military targets by the way, was largely a show of force demonstration to the soviets. It was not a “necessary evil” to save lives, and it was sure as hell not a mercy.

Totally fair. Particularly in survival horror where saves are explicitly limited to highten tension, that makes sense.

I am not the expert on the genre by any means, but would limiting invasions to “only other people on the same difficulty” just segregate the player base too much?

I have definitely heard that argument, and I understand it, but at the same time there are a good number of us who would just simply not play the game then.

I realise it is up to the devs who they want to make their game for, and I am probably not their target audience, but banging my head against a wall until I get through something doesn’t give me any kind of feeling of triumph when I manage it. I just feel frustrated. Whereas the soulslike games I have played where I could turn the difficulty down, I enjoyed way more.

And I’m not going to be able to argue against your first hand account of rural North Korea.

Unless you are from the US or SK, when things open up a bit more that is looking to be possible again. I would encourage you to try visiting if you have the time and means. Even if we totally divorce things from the politics, there’s a lot of beautiful nature there.

Anecdotally, you seem relatively reasonable and I think it would be an interesting experience.

However, I don’t see the people of North Korea being able to put political pressure on their government to change policies.

It does depend to what extent, people can definitely enact policy change. While all political organizations do ultimately belong to the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea, they have multiple political parties under that umbrella that do different on some issues. Obviously they aren’t going to suddenly pass laws making the place capitalist, but they can do and do change some things. The Social Democratic Policy is notably more liberal in their attitudes as it was formed by a lot of the petite bourgeoise. They actually have published journal articles that are critical of the ruling party.

I probably would group those into the Manamement/Tycoon genre. More economic than colony builders, but smaller scale than city builders.

The Two Point games are pretty good versions of those, if you light the more light-hearted atmosphere.

I really liked XIII-2’s Mog. Probably the most integral moogle to the party, and the transforming mechanic was kind of cool. I like that his pom was more of a crystal.

I don’t like XII moogles either, the humanoid rabbit thing only seems not like a Moogle at first glance.

Should try Industrial Revolution 3. Electricitiy is like the third “tier” you get. You have to do burners for a while and then steam power where you are directly feeding steam into every machine.

I have a IR3 game going now, I am sitting around 20 hours with the first two science packs automated and just retooled my whole base around electricity.

Krastorio is probably still my favourite Factorio mod. It hits that sweet spot of complexity and new stuff for me. It’s the only mod I have finished to date. I loved the concept of Nullius, but the byproducts made my brain hurt.

K2 really does feel like Vanilla+, which is a good thing.

I would consider them a few different genres, but they are easily my favourite types of games these days. I cateogrize them in my steam list as below.

-Colony Builders: Games about building well, a colony, often from little to nothing. Often lots of You vs Environment friction, with the natural world. Tends to have a bit more focus on the individuals that comprise the colony. Examples: Rimworld (my favourite game of all time), Dwarf Fortress, Oxygen Not Included, Stranded Alien Dawn, Space Haven.

-City Builders: A bit broader in scope than a colony builder, working more on the macro level. Friction is often economic, sometimes adjusted with the natural world. Cities Skylines is kind of the prime exampe of this, but also games like Timberborn or Anno.

-Automation: Games about building a factory that…builds things automatically. Challenge tends to be logistical complexity but some games do feature combat as well. Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program (my personal favourite), Satisfactory, and Captain of Industry are the Four Horsemen of this genre to me. Techtonica is very early still but seems to have some promise as well.

For many of these games, there is a whole world of content to explore if you are interested in mods. Rimworld players regularly run hundreds of mods, my current game has about 350. Factorio has extensive overhaul mods that can take literally thousands of hours to finish in some cases (Py’s). Satisfactory has a surprisingly robust mod scene for an early access game too.

Finished what is available in Techtonica, so went back to Dyson Sphere Program for a bit to work on missing achievements. DSP is definitely my favourite of the Factory-Automation games at this point.

I still have a Factorio (Industrial Revolution 3) game going too, but am feeling DSP more at the moment right now.

I am kind of used to sometimes poking the bear on this one in particular. It’s what I personally dislike though, I don’t necessarily think they are badly designed. I totally get some people absolutely love that kind of thing in games, and I am glad they have games that scratch that itch. It’s just an instant turn-off for me though.

That said, I have never quite understood the people vehemently opposed to having a difficulty slider though; just keep it on hard and it’s literally no different.

Not a game I hear mentioned much, but man Secret World had so many great things going for it. The best quest design in a MMO* I have ever seen, and a really unique setting too. Shame it was managed so badly, in an alternate world where TSW took off and was still getting content updates, I would be thrilled.

*MMO-ish in Legends.

I feel save points themselves are becoming an increasingly archaic design choice. Just let us save anywhere, especially in a single player game. I think most people are just suspending games without expressly saving most of the time.

I am really conflicted on this, and I think there needs to be some balance or cost/reward. I mostly agree though.

An example I often use about this is in MMOs. WoW felt like a huge world, especially back in vanilla. You could fly end to end and never hit a loading screen, it felt awesome. If you gave me a map of Azeroth and asked me to label all the zones, I probably could. It’s moved a bit more to people teleporting place to place, but I still can fly end to end of a continent.

On the other hand, FFXIV is a series of maps with loading zones between all of them (a necessity because of the older console architecture, I understand) and teleports in every town. You never actually go end to end of Eorzea. If you gave me a map of Eorzea and asked me to label only the three majors cities on it, I doubt I could. It is definitely convenient to just be able to warp around place to place for a trivial amount of currency.

It takes a lot out of the feeling of “world” to just have a bunch of arbitrary areas, I admit. It’s a tough balancing act between player convenience and player immersion.

Hate:

-Real Time Timers: Think FF13 Lightning Returns. It doesn’t matter how many mechanics there are to alleviate the pressure, they make me so stressed out that I don’t enjoy playing the actual game.

-Unrepairable Durability Mechanics: I mean things like Breath of the Wild where you can use a weapon X times before it breaks with no way to repair it. I end up never wanting to use “my good weapon” and tryto beat entire games with a 2x4. If I can go to a vendor and repair my gear, I don’t mind as much.

-Superhard Games without difficulty options. Looking at you Soulsborne games; I appreciate that some people like a challenge, but I really think that whole genre would only benefit from giving the player options. I have noticed that seems to be getting more common though.

Love:

-Meaningful Choices: Not two dialogue options with the same end result, but things that shape either story or gameplay. This could be a major branching story choice OR something like a talent tree.

-Base Building: I like build base. It doesn’t have to be a city builder or strategy game (Though I absolutely love those), but I am a sucker for games including any degree of base building. It’s my favourite part of the XCom games as an example. Bonus if I have to make choices about my base, see previous point.

I was there in for several months in graduate school doing research for my thesis, wasn’t part of a tour. Based out of Kim Il Sung university at the time. I spent about a year in South Korea as well prior. Since I wasn’t on a formal tour, I was left to my own devices a lot of the time unless I needed a guide to help me get access somewhere.

Technically yes, every rural farming village could have been secretly micced with hidden cameras on the off chance that a foreigner was going to stop by, but that seems unlikely. This was a little over ten years ago so cell phones (which would be a fairly common metric of government surviellence) were not as prevalent in the DPRK yet as they are now, so a lot of people weren’t carrying one. I was a no-name graduate student, not a well-known diplomat, I don’t think the government was particularly invested in spending large sums of money tracking me. So yes, technically they COULD have, but just as much as any other state could have.

Obviously anecdotal, but from the people I spoke to in the DPRK, generally very well liked. And no, I did not have government minders making sure they said “the right thing”. Several programs were quite popular, particularly housing programs. There was a big push for community-based activities during my stay, even smaller towns had community centers where people could go after work to learn new skills or continuing education. The university I was based out of was pretty international as well, but even there people didn’t spend that much time thinking about the US, nor did they have a particularly negative view of the average American citizen. More curious than hostile.