The moment that inspired this question:
A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.
The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.
One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”
I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.
… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.
I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.
We all learned life lessons playing Runescape. OK, that one’s a cop out. For me it was Stardew Valley. I completed the game doing the JoJa route and at the end you can use automation to do everything for you. I was just playing the game like I did up to that point, optimizing for maximum efficiency. After setting up a huge plantation of starfruits and junimo huts to harvest them for me after a few harvests of complaining about their dumb AI and other petty things, I had a realization. Oh my god. I was literally going through the exact same thought patterns that actual slavers went through.
Game has never really sit right with me ever since. Game developers, please consider the messages your sending through your mechanics. I don’t mind having little munchkins to help harvest materials for the farm but for the love of god please have them cost a lot to upkeep. I would mod a cost of 100% of the value of the materials harvested because it really isn’t about the money I just need to keep the wine casks full.