Today in class you had the opportunity to play either Super Columbine Massacre RPG or Settlers of Catan. Please post two comments describing and associating your experience of this game playing to issues from our recent reading on play. Regarding SCMPRG, you may choose to consider issues like the "ideologically loaded" contradictions between Batesonian and ethological theories as discussed on page 103; or experience, ideology, and/or frame as outlined on page 93. For Settlers of Catan, you might discuss structure and process in play (page 93), or ludus over paidia (page 106) and specific qualities of games.
If you are interested in an extra credit option, I will accept 500-word essays on this topic turned in to me or posted on the blog, but in academic writing style. However, for this extra credit, you must write on the game you did not play today. If you played SCMRPG today, you will need to write your extra credit paper on Settlers of Catan. If you do not own this game or know anyone who does, this can be accomplished by attending the Settlers of Catan-a-Thon / Exhibition Closing on November 17, 2007, 1:00 pm at the Gallery of Contemporary Art:
"We will host a Settlers of Catan-a-Thon at the Gallery to close the exhibition Manifest: Colonial Tendencies of the West. The “Game of the Year” in Germany, the U.S, and a host of other countries, The Settlers of Catan is a classic, stand-alone game for 3-4 players. You journey to the unsettled wilds of the grand new world known as Catan. It’s an exciting frontier, one rich in opportunity."
If you played Settlers of Catan today, you will need to visit the Gallery at your convenience and play SCMRPG for at least one hour. If you choose to write this extra credit paper, you can earn up to 15 points (the equivalent of your regularly assigned one-page papers) as long as it is completed by Tuesday, November 20.
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4 comments:
In the book on page 93 it talks about structure of play and relates it to baseball. Since I know baseball and how it is played it is easy for me to see how “at bat” fits into the structure of an inning. If I were to not know anything about baseball then every single thing, from the pitching and the fielding to the hitting a ball and the running on bases would make no sense to me. Somebody could probably explain it to me but I wouldn’t understand until actually watching or playing it. I would say the same thing was true for the game we played. We had the directions read to us in a kind of corporate business training video tape style (thank you Terrance) and none of it made sense. Then when it was explained by the one person who has played it before….it still made no sense. My biggest problem was the structure of the game. I am so used to games where you roll the dice and move and if isn’t that then I am probably playing a card game. Since the structure was not like that I was at a loss until the playing started. The structure was still really weird and it was confusing but after every turn I understood more about how the game was played and what the structure was like.
The ludus and paidia things are the things I touched on during my “presentation” of that section of the book. Paidia is of course the free play and ludus is the rule governed play. Obviously any board game is going to be a ludus kind of game; however the amount of rules may differ from game to game. I would say this game is up there in the amount of its rules. This was the kind of game to where you can do this only when you have that and that’s the only time that can ever happen unless someone else with a green shirt on and only on Tuesdays can override the play that just went down if they are sitting across from you and have the white pieces, well it wasn’t that bad but it was close. I would say that a game that has so many rules, being so high up on the rule governed kind of system, defeats the purpose of playing. That is like saying all these laws, from the really dumb ones to the necessary ones, are fun to abide by. I would much rather play a game like tag, still a ludus game but just not as much, then a game with so many rules. Tag there might be a max of three rules: 1) no tag backs, 2) this or that is a base and 3) I don’t know exactly, I only ever played by two rules max but that proves my point. I would say Settlers of Catan is hard to enjoy unless you can work around the rules somehow and that was possible. You are allowed to trade cards with people, (I will give you this if you give me that kind of thing), which, in a way, lets you escape the rules of you must trade this to get that in the “bank” rule governed system.
SCMRPG is an example of mimicry or simulation. The game is an illusory world. The assumption of the creator of the game is that the player will know about the realities of the actual event at Columbine High School. The game attempts to create a make-believe situation that mimics the actual circumstances in a safe and entertaining environment. The characters in the game are based on the actual people responsible for the massacre. The school and surrounding areas are also based on the actual setting around the school. Even the model and caliber of the guns used in the game were the same as those used by the actual perpetrators. The attention to detail by the game creators and the general public’s knowledge of the actual events and circumstances makes the game a simulation.
SCMRPG may be viewed from many different perspectives. First, it may be viewed as a sadistic prop which encourages voyeurism, in that the events depicted are based on actual gruesome events. However, there are hundreds of games similar to SCMRPG that depict situations equally gruesome and based on actual events, war games for example. Games with themes and processes similar to SCMRPG were played by the two boys who responsible for Columbine. The Batesonian view of violent games as doing good by separating play into the realm of performance is in this case questioned by the media coverage from the time of the shootings. The attempt was made to create connection between the games the boys played and the music they listened to with their actions, which would be contrary to the Batesonain view of play as a way to express aggression without doing harm. Violent games can then be seen as training for actions which will eventually transpire as well as those that have occurred such as in games of previous wars as with an ethological viewpoint. Because the vast majority of people who play violent games SCMRPG included do not go out and kill people I believe the it is this duality between the Batesonian and ethological viewpoints the artists addresses with SCMRPG.
Posted by heidirides at 11:36 AM 0 comments
In the Batesonian sense of the game Columbine School Massacre, the game is a shield, clearly defining what is play and what is not. This line is less apparent in more realistic and gorier games, such as Hitman, or Grand Theft Auto. But the stark contrast between this game and the popularly produced titles is how close to this reality people we know came to experiencing it. It was not a war mandated by the president or some deserved death by anothers hand; the school shooting was real, and greatly affected peoples lives for the worst. So is it true that video games have dulled our minds to violence around us? I don't believe so, but these messages sent in the video game are supposed to be "just play" and not "actually killing", but when can an individual draw the line when he or she has been exposed to this "violent" behavior for so long? The behavior becomes second nature and there lies the problem, we reach the point when a school shooting becomes a game, and the lives lost become meaningless.
The ideology for video games varies betwwen person to person, and the game Columbine School Massacre sets off all kinds of different emotions and perspectives of thought on the game. The game is just a game, a series of events that are based off of a school shooting. That already clearly enunciates the violent and unforgiving nature of the game, not to mention the game uses the exact same scenario, weapons, and order of events. The game is far more brutal because it is not in the confines of reality, so more people have the opportunity to die. All of this charges the game with emotion and I'm sure if a mother of a victim saw this game things would go awry quite fast. I even disliked the motive of the game due to the overall plot, I don't believe it's right to create a game depicting such a tragedy. But another person might play and feel no such remorse because it is in fact, "just a game".
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