I would choose to anthropomorphize it. I was thinking of the player as being like a "duke" or "plantation owner" who controls an estate, is responsible for its population of workers, is responsible for its revenue and spending (in this case, of biological energy instead of money), and is the main link between the fairly self-contained world of the estate and the outside world. The idea of a harem is also applicable (the more realistic historical type of harem which included a nursery, schooling for children, care for the elderly, weaving and sewing, and probably a kitchen which fed the whole estate's population.)

Maybe it's my background as a science fiction reader and writer, or maybe it's just that I'm a verbal/analytical type of person, but when I encounter an alien culture, although atmospherics and aesthetics are cool, I want a verbal explanation and illustration of their culture. The explanation part would be narration and possibly introspection, while the illustration part would be dialogue as well as cartoony interactions.

I do know how various kinds of insect societies work, yes. My interest as a science fiction and fantasy writer is to write about human nature, so I'm interested in creating aliens who are fundamentally human on the inside, though their culture will have evolved differently due to their different biology. In this particular case I want to create a reason for the player to be the leader of the aliens, making all the decisions for them, and at the same time I want the position 'leader of the aliens' to be a position human players will find gratifying and satisfying. None of this is about comfort zone, it's about what kind of story I want to tell and how I want it to appeal to the audience. I certainly don't always create feudal cultures in my fiction - sometimes a tribal culture is more fitting to the story I want to tell, sometimes a military bureaucracy is more fitting...

Oh, I have a friend who has that, and it does totally screw up her moods. I read your previous post as talking-down a bit, but if you weren't intending that then I apologize for overreacting.

Just as an abstract point of philosophy, I do think that being human gives one the ability to understand what is human without understanding much about what isn't human. In more practical terms, I feel like my education and my pleasure reading have had plenty to say about non-human mindsets, and I don't feel a need to explore that by writing about it. I've read several readers' and authors' statements in favor of creating 'truly alien aliens', so I believe I understand why some people think that's an admirable thing to do. I have no objection to other people writing that. It just is boring to me. I've also read some readers' and authors' statements about why the most important thing fiction can study and teach about is human nature and how individuals within cultures go about trying to solve their problems. This is more interesting to me. I think other humans are the single most relevant challenge in most people's lives, and humans are, ourselves, more complex than anything we have yet managed to create or imagine. I'm interested in science fiction and fantasy because they are great for putting people into unusual situations one doesn't encounter in real life. I'm also interested in the increasing ability of humans to modify their bodies, and the question of how being in a human body shapes our thoughts, and would then cease to shape our thoughts if this factor were removed.

As a side note, although feudal and similar cultures might be considered overdone within the genre of fantasy, I think they remain relevant because they account for almost 1/3 of all the cultures humans have ever invented. This fact is illuminating of human nature, because it reveals that feudalism is a type of culture people instinctively form and one that feels right and satisfying to us in subconscious ways despite its many problems. It's also a kind of culture one sees among animals - not insects so much, but groups of mammals where only the alpha pair gets to reproduce, and also get to eat first and boss the others around, as well as herds where one dominant male polices a group of females. If meddling aliens were to take 500 humans from around the world and drop them unexpectedly on another planet I think it's very likely that a feudal culture would emerge among them, at least until they felt their situation was stable enough to start demanding more rights and representation. If their memories were erased before being dropped there, if they survived at all there is a large chance they would form a really long-lasting feudal culture before coming up with concepts like democracy and socialism.

Having bigger waiting processes and smaller waiting processes can work very well for a more complex game like an RTS. Having a leader of aliens controlling the breeding, reproduction, and resource-gathering sounds rather like the Zerg singleplayer campaign in Starcraft, actually. But the breeding sims I've played haven't been complex enough to always give the player something to do, resulting in irritating do-nothing waits even when played at max speed.

I'm not a programmer, no. I'm a designer/writer/2d artist. I was intending to write up a brief design document for a breeding sim and then start making art for it, but I haven't decided whether to go with the aliens or use a different type of breedable.

In the zerg portion of Starcraft's single-player campaign, the first scene which establishes your character is this:

Awaken my child, and embrace the glory that is your birthright. Know that I am the Overmind; the eternal will of the Swarm, and that you have been created to serve me. Behold that I shall set you amongst the greatest of my Cerebrates, that you might benefit from their wisdom and experience. Yet your purpose is unique. While they carry forth my will to the innumerable Broods, you have but one charge entrusted to your care. For I have found a creature that may yet become the greatest of my agents. Even now it resides within a protective Chrysalis, awaiting its rebirth into the Swarm. You must watch over the Chrysalis, and ensure that no harm comes to the creature within it. Go now and keep safe my prize. ||||| Mission Start |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| *** Beginning of the mission *** DAGGOTH The Hatchery is the heart of any Zerg colony. It spontaneously generates larva, which in turn are used to spawn your various warriors and minions. DAGGOTH Now, create a Drone and start gathering resources.[/quote]

If you want examples of a sim game with a central avatar, Harvest Moon is a pretty obvious example. It's a farming sim, you are the farmer, you plant and water and harvest the vegetables, and you buy and breed the livestock.