Cool game and episode! The turks seem to have some interesting game-designers. I really like your critical and open approach to these games and the ideas in them. As DDD said, there is ambiguity here, maybe some insecurity about how to interpret and judge things like this is a good way to keep us on our toes and thinking, instead of getting fed talking points that we are simply supposed to repeat. Keep it up!
On the topic of altruism I really like Ivan Illich's take, summarized in "the corruption of the best is the worst", which I believe points to the folly of institutionalized virtue such as the one portrayed in Lord Blackthorn's Britannia in Ultima V - Warriors of Destiny. Giving to someone because your heart feels for him is one of the best thing syou can do in this life. But being forced to give to someone because some institution or someone else orders you to perverts this, basically amounts to theft and surely does not foster true morality.
On Ayn Rand: (I have never read her of course, but I know that she is despised by people who, like me, have only heard some quotes of hers, of course taken out of context. Still, some may fit the globalized society this game, or even our own..)
On February 2, 1905, American philosopher and writer (Russian-born) Alissa Zinovievna, better known in the literary world as Ayn Rand, was born in St. Petersburg, died in March 1982 in New York.
"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases while the citizens may act only by permission, which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history - the stage of rule by brute force."
"Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion- When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing- when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors- when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."
