8/2/2023 0 Comments Imagined leviathansImmortal, they outlive the lawsuits of those who oppose them. Today’s leviathans seem invulnerable because of their scales. The Internet, for some a symbol of decentralization, was a piece of Cold War social science invented to ensure that the American leviathan would always have a head, no matter how many nodes were destroyed. Modern logistics, beginning with D-Day and the war in the Pacific, were largely created to overcome them, thus making our own leviathans stronger. Franz Neumann (1963) christened its fascist variant Behemoth. Robert MacIver (1939) called the modern industrial state a New Leviathan. These leviathans-legal entities treated as people-have an unparalleled capacity to organize time and space extensively and intensively. In the three hundred and fifty years since Leviathan, humanity has perfected the art of mastering bigness through corporations. The king was no longer the enemy of Leviathan he was Leviathan. Leviathan’s deductive philosophizing was defeated by an air-pump (Shapin and Schaffer 1985), but its publication joined punitive deterrence and the social contract in a marriage that continues to this day. Ernst Kantorowicz (1957) once wrote that the king had two bodies, but in Abraham Bosse’s frontispiece to Hobbes’s Leviathan, the king had amassed over three hundred. This Leviathan’s rule was rooted not in its calibration with mythocosmic order, but in a neo-Epicurean appreciation of the rational self-interest of citizens faced with overwhelming power (Kahn 2004 Stewart 2015). Searching for certainty, Hobbes imagined a new Leviathan who could secure an orderly world and ensure that England’s nasty and brutish civil war would also be short. The challenge turned into a beheading, and the war sent royalists like Thomas Hobbes fleeing to France. During the English Civil War, Roundheads challenged the divine right of Charles I. Sacred kingship had a good run-scattered adherents remain to this day-but took one of its earliest, most decisive hits in early modern Europe. In humanity’s first experiments in bigness, then, Leviathan was an enemy of the state (see Day 1985 Gunkel 2006 Levenson 1987). Even the Hebrew god defeated Leviathan, though this battle was redacted out of the Torah and relegated to the Psalms. Bronze Age kings legitimated their reign by styling themselves servants of the gods that slew chaos and brought order. These battles were also part of complexity’s first political theologies. All of them were symbols of chaos, threats to an abundant natural order subdued by Baal or Marduk or Yah. In Sumer and Ugarit, Urartu and Akkad, people told stories of dragons’ defeat: Tiamat and Leviathan, Behemoth and Rahab. As infrastructures-nutritional, mythical, political, material-began their slow, millennia-long thickening into the Anthropocene, gods slew dragons. Humanity’s first experiments with the state, city, and surplus were also experiments in myth. I have an extremely active discord of ~110,000 members (Discord.gg/idleon), and I genuinely enjoy holding polls and seeing player suggestions in order to get a grip on what direction that game needs to move in.Four thousand years ago they knew the world would end the same way it began: with dragons. “My community has been at the heart of my rise as a game developer, and I have every intention to keep my players at the center of development. How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process? “No prices of any items in game will change.” Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access? I want you to understand that I am here long-term, and have huge plans for the game.” The only reason for Early Access is my commitment to adding new content. “The game is fully playable, with many playing since launch back in 2021. What is the current state of the Early Access version? This is my second commercial game, the last one getting 16 months of free content additions, so I have experience with delivering on my visions!” World 3, with 25 new NPCs and 92 new Quests (DONE).“I hope to add the following, roughly in this order: How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version? The multitude of experiences and perspectives they have allow me to balance and adjust the game so that it can become utter perfection, as is the destiny of IdleOn.”Īpproximately how long will this game be in Early Access? “As a solo developer, I feast upon the suggestions and feedback provided by my supportive players.
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