A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Card is adamantly against same-sex marriage and is a member of the National Organization for Marriage’s board of directors. Even though Shadow Complex‘s writer is not Card but Peter David, a comic book writer and Star Trek novelist who is said to be “straight but extremely gay-friendly,” some gamers have proposed a boycott of the game because of Card’s views on same-sex marriage. Empire can be described as right-wing propaganda, but its video game tie-in really has little if any political message. Story is not a major emphasis of the game, and Card will probably receive a minuscule amount of revenue if any at all from the sales of Shadow Complex.

Those boycotting the game believe that purchasing Shadow Complex would be supporting Card and his anti-SSM stance, and thus preventing same-sex marriage from becoming reality in the United States. True, it’s possible that Card may use the royalties from Shadow Complex on organizations bent on hindering the efforts of SSM proponents, but he may also use it to donate to other causes or to buy food or to buy his kid a present. We don’t exactly know where this money will go, but those choosing to boycott are forgetting the other people in the process: the team at Chair that slaved over this game, the people at Epic Games that assisted with the development and localization, and those at Microsoft Game Studios that helped publish the title.

GayGamer, Gamasutra, and Kotaku have done a much more thorough job at discussing the issue. GayGamer’s Dawdle proposes donating money to gay charities to offset the cost of purchasing Shadow Complex, Gamasutra’s Christian Nutt brings this issue into perspective and compares it to companies in other industries such as Whole Foods and its opinion of Obamacare, and Kotaku interviews a gamer and reports on what Chair has had to say on the controversy. Even though this topic has probably been argued over to death in those articles’ comments and forums everywhere, there are still things to say.

If we were to keep track of every purchase and what cause or organization our money would or could support, we would effectively spend money on absolutely nothing. An Apple computer? May contribute to poor labor practices in China. A marriage in a Catholic church? May be supporting pedophilia. An orange from your local farmers market? What if he’s a Republican? It’s impossible to ensure that your money only goes to those that believe in the exact same beliefs as you do. Even if a company may publicly advocate a position in a particular issue, that doesn’t mean every employee does. Your spent money would end up in their salary, thus possibly giving them the chance to thwart the efforts of your preferred causes. So what exactly can you do? Lower sales won’t work, because Card will still maintain his views, regardless of his wealth. It’s possible to argue that by not supporting his work and by not purchasing his novels, his income shrinks, thus in a way minimizing the methods he can support the anti-gay rights organizations or movements and voice his opinion with a bit of weight, but given his established reputation as an author, that’s not exactly going to happen.

Nutt does make the important distinction in how a work of art or literature can promote an ideology and in how a company may promote an ideology. A company is “limited to marketing materials and product selection,” but a book, a game, a movie, a television show, a poem, has the ability to say so much more. Therefore in a way, it is still possible or even necessary to talk about these kinds of issues involving a video game. The same goes for anime and manga. When our beloved mediums have the potential to exude a political opinion, have the opportunities to influence its readers and fans with a much greater impact that a mere company could, then it becomes a noteworthy topic of discussion.

So when exactly does a creator’s voice become relevant in the discussion of a story? Of a game? Of a movie? In Shadow Complex‘s case, it’s almost stupid to boycott the game because its in-game content and story lacks even weak political overtones or social outlooks. It’s a game about saving your girlfriend Claire and saving the country from a terrorist organization. But what about something else? If Shadow Complex did have a very right-wing, anti-SSM message? What if Shinbo denied the occurrence of the Rape of Nanking in a similar manner as Dragon Quest‘s composer, Sugiyama Koichi, denies it? Should we refuse to purchase anything related to Maria+Holic and ef because he directed them? Or what if he somehow squeezed in his views into those shows? Is that the point at which you refuse to watch the shows and boycott any related merchandise? And to what degree do you take it to? The visual novel of ef has nothing to do with Shinbo, but do you boycott it because he merely directed the anime counterpart?

Thanks to ghostlightning and Molotov Cupcake for their input on the issue in preparation for this post.
Also read my review of Shadow Complex for the Xbox 360 on Spawn Kill.

Sins of a Solar Empire sells itself as a “RT4X” game, said to be a hybrid of the RTS and the 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate) genres. The game takes place solely in space; the actual gameplay is on a two-dimensional plane while the ships and planets appear as three-dimensional models. The goal of each game is simple: build up your fleets, expand your empire, and crush your enemies. The gameplay itself is much more complicated. To the average casual gamer, Sins of a Solar Empire may appear overwhelming with its multiple resources, expansive tech trees, and a wide variety of spacecraft and buildings. In actuality, the game takes many elements of the 4X genre and simplifies them into easy commands and eliminates the need for micromanagement. Avid RTS fans will just adapt easier and likely enjoy it more, and maybe possibly turn off much of the automatic functioning of the game in favor of micromanagement. Regardless of the player’s knowledge and experience, Sins of a Solar Empire will cater to both audiences with its well-structured user interface.

There are three races: the TEC (Trader Emergency Coalition), the Vasari, and the Advent. Each race plays similarly but have qualities and strengths that make playing each race a vastly different experience. There are three main types of ships: frigates, cruisers, and capital ships. In all three categories of spacecraft, each unit specializes in a specific task, whether that be exploring, colonizing, or simply blowing up enemy ships. Unlike other games, Sins of a Solar Empire doesn’t have too many units, which helps in simplifying the fleets the player must manage. Although the ships of the three races may vary in weaknesses and advantages, there are basically six types of frigates, four types of cruisers, and five types of capital ships. Some of these ships, namely a few of the cruisers and the capital ships, can house fighter and bomber squadrons that deal additional damage.

Buildings are split into two categories: logistics and tactical. Logistics buildings are focused on the expansion and growth of the player’s empire. Military and civilian laboratories fulfill requirements for research upgrades, and frigate and capital ship factories manufacture ships. Crystal and metal extractors gather their respective resources, and refineries increase the productivity of these extractors. Trade ports act as additional sources of credit, the primary resource, income, and the player’s trade port income increases based on the longest chain of adjacent planets with trade ports. Placement of these buildings can play an essential part in strategy because enemies often first attack specific targets. The tactical buildings narrows down to planetary defense and fleet repair platforms, including turrets and repair bays.

Games can be played on randomly generated maps, included scenarios, and custom-made maps. Sins of a Solar Empire lacks a single-player campaign, a problem that will be rectified in the upcoming expansion pack, but tries to replace it with scenarios. Although the scenarios give a short description of the map, the goal of each map is to dominate all of the enemy empires. Each game begins with each player on one planet. Only planets, asteroids, and other space phenomena directly linked to your planet will be visible, and the player must expand and locate enemy positions. Transportation between planets take some time because ships need to initiate a phase jump, so movement of ships are not immediate. The slow speed may turn off many players; although Sins of a Solar Empire offer different game speeds, the game is not all that quick. Especially on larger maps in which the number of planets and star systems could reach one hundred, the slow pace stretches games up to several hours, possibly even longer.

There are different aspects to Sins of a Solar Empire as well, and those involve diplomacy and economy and development. The diplomacy, when compared to that of other 4X games, is much more simplified; players can request ceasefires, create alliances, form trade alliances, and share planetary and ship vision. Relations with other empires are improved or worsened through missions given to the player involving demands for resources or requests to destroy other ships and structures. It’s a tad too simple, but there is another curveball thrown into the fray: pirates. Empires can place bounties on each other in 250 credit increments, and pirates will attack the empire with the highest bounty. These attacks take place in timed increments, so players exactly know the amount of time before the pirate raids are launched; it somewhat brings the feel of a simplified eBay auction. The pirates are not very helpful though, but they can serve as worthy fodder to level up capital ships. Adding to the economic play is the black market. Players can buy and sell crystal and metal; each resource has its own individual market, and prices are affected by player actions; e.g. a lot of metal purchases will cause metal prices to skyrocket. It’s a nice, dynamic element and proves itself as highly important because resource management is crucial to the player’s success.

To put it bluntly, the artificial intelligence of Sins of a Solar Empire is irritating and cumbersome. The “Hard” and “Unfair” difficulty settings are not necessarily challenging but meticulous and annoying. Once nearing defeat, the enemy starts constantly moving its remaining fleets elsewhere, and the player is forced to chase after them as they hassle one of his or her fringe colonies or weakly-defended planets. The AI does take on a personality though, and it’s determined in the game options. The gameplay changes slightly but I did not feel the personality makes much of a difference.

Sins of a Solar Empire has an amazing user interface that makes playing accessible and feasible. My lack of familiarity with recent RTS titles may prove this incorrect, but Sins of a Solar Empire introduces a great sidebar tool. It’ll show each fleet created and each planet, and each of their ships or tactical buildings. This allows for quick access and movement of the player’s ships. Since the map sizes can be ridiculously large with multiple star systems and hundreds of planets, Ironclad Games (the developer) also ripped borrowed the zoom-in/zoom-out feature from Supreme Commander. A simple mouse scroll upwards will zoom-in on the planet, building, or ship the mouse cursor is focused on, and a mouse scroll downwards will scale out, eventually revealing the entire accessible galaxy to the player. When viewing multiple planets, each planet will have tabs around it to easily take control of ships or buildings near the planet, so the player does not have to zoom-in and zoom-out constantly to take control. Lastly, pop-up tabs that neatly detail the fleet or planet or individual ship targeted with the mouse cursor. It makes management and organization easy and intuitive.

The online multiplayer is solid and offers the same functionality as offline multiplayer. Both provide text chat and customizable maps and game options, and the former has a decent lobby and friend system that does an adequate job. One big flaw, which is not directly the game’s fault, is the length of the games online. While there is a save/load feature for stranger and friend matches, it’s problematic for games with random opponents. It is understandable for friends to save and play later, but it does not work so well for strangers; how enticed are you to finish a match later with someone you do not know? Since games can house up to ten players, a match can last for longer than ten hours but it is doubtful the majority will stick for more than a couple of hours.

Sins of a Solar Empire looks and sounds great but the graphics are nothing amazing. Perhaps what is most remarkable is the game’s smooth performance on a variety of machines. Low performance machines are able to run Sins of a Solar Empire well, and the game is quite pretty on the top machines too. Shifting from the detailed, single planet views (in which the other planets are still viewable at angles) to the star system views are seamless and smooth without loss of framerate or any hitches. If desiring to view an epic battle between fleets, simply zoom in to watch lasers and missiles fly across space and striking ships to create pretty explosions and debris. However, the player will rarely appreciate these visuals and effects because much of the larger games are played at a multi-planet view. In the biggest games, the chaos and incredible amount of empire management will prevent the players from taking the time to relax and watch a battle unfold. Sound in the game fits perfectly for the game; the score suits the atmosphere of massive empires clashing in epic war. Effects scale well, depending on the player’s zoom level. The voice acting is decent but not noteworthy.

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Verdict: A-

Not clinging to the traditional guidelines of the RTS and 4X genres, Sins of a Solar Empire effectively combines elements of both, providing a slow yet satisfying experience. RTS fans looking for heavy micromanagement and 4X fans searching for ridiculously deep levels of intricate economic and diplomatic management will be disappointed. Sins of a Solar Empire does simplify components of the genres, but does so to be accessible as possible. In the end, Sins of a Solar Empire is still complex and intimidating. The learning curve is high and casual gamers will be immediately turned off, but the reward is great if they last through initial play times. It’s a blast to see your fleets decimating the remnants of the enemy fleet or to capture a major chokepoint and disrupt the enemy momentum. You like strategy games? Get Sins of a Solar Empire.