Returning from a U.S history class her young daughter who was studying The Middle Passage summed up slavery and its end under president Lincoln with the emotional detachment that is to be expected from education by rote. Brenda was in turn horrified and uncomfortable at the manner in which her daughter had been taught about this horrific period of human history with such emotionally detachment. At his blog Silveri describes the following events very eloquently:
She decided to do something about it. She devised a simple (non-computer) game for her daughter. First she got a bunch of wooden pawns of various sizes (she has things like this laying around for prototyping things) and pained them different colors with her daughter. A big green pawn and two small green pawns. Two big blue pawns and two small blue pawns, and so on. When she had several sets of these (that obviously represented families), she took some at random and put them on a piece of wood she called "the boat." Her daughter thought her mother was doing it wrong already because she didn't take all the green ones, but just one or two. The colors were now all mixed up and there sets weren't complete anymore because some were on the boat and some weren't. She told her daughter that that's how it was. You didn't have a choice to go on the boat and you didn't get to be with who you wanted. "Will the green one see the other green ones again?" the daughter asked. "Probably not," Brenda said.
Brenda devised some simple rules about making the ocean journey. It takes 10 turns to get to the other side, there are some certain number of food-units, each person needs X food units or they die, there was some dice mechanic somewhere in there to make it less deterministic and a bit harder to figure out.
Half-way through, the daughter said, "Mom, we aren't going to make it." Brenda said that maybe it would be possible to make if farther if we "put some of them in the water" (so there's more food for the rest). Brenda reports that her daughter had a look of understanding on her face, the same look she should have had when talking about the Middle Passage earlier. Her daughter cried, and Brenda did not continue the game any further. Brenda cried too.
I find this story very moving, not least because the act of realization by her young daughter that such an event is possible is an incredibly sad and momentous moment in anyone’s life, after which we see the world differently.
Here the use of the game mechanic and a powerfully simple message conveyed within it demonstrates almost perfectly the fact that games do not have to be ‘fun’. The element of interaction and choice making which defines the activity as a game, as well as the deeply embedded narrative revealed gradually through play seems as I read it almost clearer and more powerful than her more famous endeavour Train.
Train
Train is on the surface a resource management game. Although no rules have been published on the internet from what I can gleam players play cards to advance their trains on one of three tracks, collecting yellow resource tokens along the way and cramming them into their trains, to get them to their final destination card, which it turns out is one the Nazi death camps.
Both games rely on the connection between an abstracted metaphor of gameplay system and the reality of a situation. The abstracted yellow pawns are in fact victims of the holocaust, the pawns on the ship are in fact slaves ect… And the participation in the game system gains poignancy through play and indirect implication. The message of the games is not ‘you are responsible’ but perhaps more horribly allows you a brief glimpse into a dehumanised vision of mankind in which you have participated. Without the tangibility of the game objects and abstraction, the games themselves it would seem would not function in their primary goal, that of emotional implication. A game of management of resources aboard a slave ship would simply never be played like wise a train management game (of which there are several) that explicitly serviced the concentration camps would have no value. It is the dramatic reveal and abstraction of reality that allows for the power of these games.
There is a great deal of debate about Train and specifically as to whether it can be considered a ‘game’ proper. One of the accusations leveled against it is that it does not allow for replayability, as it only really functions in the reveal of its ‘meta-context’ and to play it again with foreknowledge of its system is to Play the game (note the capital P) as opposed to experiencing it. While the replayabiility is an issue I don’t think that this is what determines it as a game. It is clearly a game that functions as a vehicle for powerful meaning, that at the same time exists in a realm closer to performance.
There is only one copy of the game in existence, and the game itself is only ever performed with Brenda present and involves a certain amount of ritualistic preparation before the play session can begin. Namely the shattering of a window. Likewise the making process of the game consisted of the creation of entirely bespoke playing objects, train tracks, carriages ect.. all made by the artist herself including the rules and text which were typed up on an original Nazi typewriter.
The typewriter thing is the bit that makes a definitive statement for many commentators of the game as to whether it’s a game, whether its art, whether its 'just plain sick' (which thankfully and refreshingly there is comparatively little talk of). I like to think the art/game conversation is perhaps put to bed by now as I hope is the game/fun conversation, especially seeing as I am writing this whilst doing my residency at Blast Theory who themselves make beautifully meaningful games, and participations.
In fact the manner in which the work of Blast Theory and Brenda’s is presented strikes me as similar in terms of the context. In both cases the gameplay (although this is perhaps not always true of Blast Theory) is mediated by the artist the play itself being contextualised.
The reasons why Brenda has neither circulated rules or mass distributed the game are obvious, the game’s message for her is one to be understood in context. On her blog she bemoans the mass of criticism her game has undergone without actual play, which she equates to expressing an opinion of a film without having seen it. Which is true and why I won’t dwell on Train specifically any. However the context of the performance/play of the game seems to me to be heavily embedded within the nature of the system. To play Train around the dinner table would be anathema to it in its current state. Although is that because we do not have a culture of play that we feel allows for us to undertake a relationship of serious play unsupervised. Many other blogs point (and rightly so) to Ayiti a poignantly powerful browser game of resource management where you control a poor Haitian family, and where the goal is to survive a fixed number of seasons with both at least one parent still alive. Its difficult, and its sad. For me the difference is that Ayiti poses itself as a closed system due to it digital nature. Whereas the interaction between players and contextually open system of the board game demands immersion and commitment to function, or at the least appears to demand supervision to complete its goal, both as a game (arriving at the terrible ending) and as a message (revealing its terrible ending). Is there a heightened interaction or involvement that accompanies the tangible interface of Trains? Or is the fact that Train reveals its real-life context as a coup-de-theatre which endows it with greater poignancy or the simulation of Ayitii that wears the potential of death on its sleeve in its rules and mechanics that permits for it to be a deeper and perhaps ultimately more meaningful system of play?
The term simulation is perhaps an important term to consider when looking at games with meaning or in this case “games that make you feel something”. Ayiti is a simulation, in a Sid Meyer Civilisation sort of way;
you make choices for your character, these choices play out according to the game rules which in turn direct you to make the correct choices to learn the appropriate lesson.
its great, and the simulation element allows for a closed system of play that in turn forces the player to really consider choices and consequences. However the blurb for the game shows up a potential problem with the concept of simulation:
What is it like to live in poverty, struggling every day to stay healthy, keep out of debt, and get educated?
Find out now in this challenging role playing game created by the High School students in Global Kids with the game developers at Gamelab, in which you take responsibility for a family of five in rural Haiti.
Now I have experienced first hand that the game does make you consider very carefully the choices that you’re taking and their corresponding consequences. My first response to the game was “its hard”, which might perhaps seem like a trivial assessment on my part of the plight of third world rural families but its true. The game is designed to hightlight that it is hard. The games’ full title is the “the cost of life” and its realisation is not miles apart from the young girl who exclaims “we’re not going to make” when playing Brenda’s early prototype and she in turn realises the cost of human life. But can simulation really promise to make find out what its like to live the life of a poor haitian peasant? no. But it does provide me with a series of choices that affect this simulation of a Haitian family. Simulation should not always mean reality, to simulate is not to replicate but to provide a version of. And within a game context a simulation when at its best provides that within the parameters of system, which allows for my choices to be contextualized. Playing Ayiti does not make me feel like a third world rural dweller but it does make me think about their plight.
So where does that leave Train which is not a simulation in any true sense of the word, it does not allow for a simulation of the transport of the holocaust victims. Instead it uses a synergy of gameplay interaction and narrative to create its meaning. The mechanics of the game demand the handling of the pieces and the rough placing and cramming of them into the train carriages in order to participate in the game. The mechanics themselves being the actions that implicate you the player into the meaning. Without play there is no meaning and it is perhaps this which means there is only one copy and the game can only exist in context.
On a RPG forum a Norwegian game developer very humbly asked for comment and feedback on a state funded RPG (role playing game) he is designing which had three distinct chapters all of which address the Shoa in some way. The reaction was not necessarily as measured as those to Brenda ‘s game have been, with sadly many not being able to get past basic issues of game/fun and a whole can of worms that I don’t want to open here of narrative ownership and entitlement of the holocaust. If you are like me and have the patience to trawl through 24 pages of forum posts you can find it here.
Some of the posts are of interest especially the ideas of RPG as simulation and as an appropriate tool for tackling serious subject matter. The conclusion that was reached come the 22nd page, is that the game designer, who himself remains gracious throughout despite the inevitable accusations of anti-Semitism and holocaust denial, is going to change the context of the game, and label it as an educational experience to be undertaken in a classroom or teaching situation. But most importantly he is going to remove the term ‘game’. This was in turn deemed acceptable by all. Most surprising for me about this is that it took place on a site dedicated to Role Play, a form in my view which is potentially incredibly potent. But fundamentally recontextualising the game itself as an activity was deemed an acceptable manner to approach this subject matter. So what was it about the ‘game’ element that offended so?
I remember when I was young Dungeons and Dragons the most famous of table top RPGs being declared as a social virus, a sign of decay in our youth, and sure to rot your brains (or in some notorious cases lead to you to commit murder) similar accusation that are levelled by society against rock music (Marylin Manson and columbine) certain films (Clockwork Orange just in general). However there is a special vehemence reserved for game and simulation. Although the cartoon below is from a hysterical website written in part by an ex witch turned born-again Christian I feel the comic is perhaps illustrative of opinions on role play:
at this point Debbie gets more and more into D&D and the occult, forgetting about her friend, untill:
and the resolution as you can imagine :
this is an obviously hysterical (in all sense of the words) take on role play, but is not in and of itself a million miles from people’s fear of it as a genre and for some games in general.
On the one hand the objection that people have to games that deal with serious subject matter (and here I want to be clear I am not only talking about the holocaust) is an innate reaction and misunderstanding of the word game and its inextricable link in many people’s minds with fun and leisure. I will assume however that this is not a case I need to make here. The second I think is one of representation and configurative action. By this I mean and action/choice inherent to a game or interactive environment that allows for a change in the game state that is then reflected within the system. So for example the implication of making the choice to remove two of the figures from the boat and placing them into the ‘sea’ section of the board is reflected both in the game as a micro-choice with effect on the play’s progression in terms of resources, and as a contextual macro-choice as the death of two human beings. And whereas the board game and the abstraction of Brenda’s gameplay allows for this to take place within a series of very strict mechanics that generate meaning, the playing out and configurative choices available in a RPG are far more broad.
In their broadest sense RPG s are systems for story telling. They present themselves as a series of rules generally in with a core rule book that provides potential players with a system within which to play out their stories/games with the rules providing solutions for conflict or obstacle resolution. These stories are conventionally led by a central player known as the Game Master or GM. The game master is as close to the author as an RPG gets as they guide and tease the players through the story presenting them with the narrative obstacles and conflict and monitoring and serving as referee of the mechanics (often dice roles that are subtracted or added to character profile points, so the GM decides a character needs to score a 10 to overcome an obstacle, a die is rolled and added to the characters’ relevant ability, like strength. So a roll of six added to a character’s strength score of four would result in a ten and the character succeeding in said task and the story then progresses according to the outcome. This is a gross oversimplification of many systems that are far more in depth and detailed so apologies to gamers). The rules however are there to allow for a relatively free style of improvisation and game play, as well as a potentially deeply immersive experience. The rules allow for parameters within which the stories of the games can be told but encourage tweaking and house rules to allow for the experience of play to be as group appropriate as possible. So why do we fear it? Is it its unregulated nature? The providing of a system within which groups are free to make up stories and reconfigure game environments at will? Although thousands have probably played this dungeons and dragons scenario, none of the stories that will have originated through play will have been the same, as the RPG genre by its nature is almost entirely dependent on play for its individual existence in the live moment. There is no prefabricated digital level that will be explored by predetermined digital characters in the manner of a computer game, where even the largest RPG have a finite amount of choices, here the RPG presents an open system of gameplay.
The famous GURPS (Generic Universal Role Play System) is system designed to provide you with the rules necessary for any world you want to create and play, and provided a huge series of books that detailed rule tweaks and specific additions for relevant thematic campaigns. They released an entire series with a set of WW2 rules, including one set for playing as German soliders. Interestingly this fact is mentioned in the same forum discussion as We All Had Names, and the potential for playing a German Nazi soldier, therefore inherently linked to the holocaust did not seem as controversial a topic. The focus on combatant characters in this game, reveals perhaps an inherent problem with the perception of what games can be. To create a system in which you can embody a soldier that participated in the Second World War and therefore fit into a paradigm of gameplay of combat and ballistic resolution, an iterative process that we understand as game is OK. However games that attempt to examine a subject matter through a different lens, mainly through that of the victims suffer a different fate.
Elsewhere in the world of computer games a Nintendo DS (small portable hand held device) game provisionally entitled “Imagination is the only Escape” was a Pan Labyrinth-esque game, where a young Jewish boy craeted a world of imagination and the player guides him to safety. The game was accompanied by haunting art work, and facts about the amount of Jewish Children murdered during the holocaust.
There is the sense of a faux-controversy surrounding the game mainly stirred up by the media, but it is clear that releasing such a title poses more problems than releasing a title such this one:
Where in campaign mode the player is a German General. Now I am not disputing the quality of it as a game, and it is a much decorated strategy game, however the fact that it is a decorated game and mainstream success, and there is still outrage at the prospect of a game that potentially engages with the human loss of war in an emotional manner rather than through a reward and goal orientated system is telling of our view of games in society and our misunderstanding of their true poetential.
Drifting away from the holocaust perhaps and closer to home, the controversy surrounding the rumoured release of “the Battle of Faluja” computer game, poses similar questions about acceptable simulation. The developers maintain that the game itself is made with over 40 marines that participated in the conflict, and with interviews with civilians, marines, journalist and historians. Now much like in the holocaust orientated games discussed above there is a whole load of pro and anti war sentiment that will cloud the conversation about this release, and many war veterans have spoken out against it. This article
talks of the marines wanting the developers to tell their stories and this might well be true, but i suppose there are a series of questions that we have already discussed on this page that the game raises, that are in many ways similar to the reservations for We All Had Names (I am of course not comparing the two historical events). Namely if a game provides a configurable environment that relies on feedback and response to allow the player to progress within it, how configurable is configurable? Will the marines who died in real life also die procedurally as the game progresses or can they cheat their real life fate? The game 6DiF punishes collateral damage yet at the same time features one of the most advanced “destruction” environments of any game to date. Is it the potential of configurable environment that can be mapped and the real world consequences of the in game choice that can be felt and seen that make it seem so impossible for this game to exist? Perhaps. But the war is all around us. The incredibly successful war game franchise Call of Duty does all but fly an Iraqi flag in its Marines Middle Eastern missions. What does playing CoD mean therefore in the contemporary political climate?
Now I like Call of Duty, as a game I think its great, it has the politics of a right wing Jack Bauer but as a First Person Shooter, its excellent. But what does it mean to play this game as opposed to playing 6 Days In Fallujha. The fear, is that 6DiF will trivialise the conflict, and its true it may well, however when a game like Call of Duty becomes such common parlance that a new US surge is named after it and the British Army release this video:
then I think the game is, so to speak up. Playing these games links us to the real conflict and the choices we make in games are definitely now politically loaded. Therefore does it in fact trivialise the real life event to play a simulation as in 6DiF or is playing an escapist simulation like CoD a greater trivialisation of a real life conflict. Is it a question of context? Is the idea of 6DiF that much like a loaded RPG, or with Train unsupervised play and immersion might lead to an inappropriate response? Interestingly the developers and marines involved in the making of the game talk about the need to tell the event's story. The existence of the game therefore as a narrative artifact is all the more loaded, and the action of playing it and the choices mad within it echoes of a real life conflict. The game still fits neatly within the genre of first person shooter, although the developers refer to it a survival horror, a term usually reserved for bloody romps through zombie infested game levels. Does this attitude suggest a different approach to a war game? Can a game that portrays a real life conflict deal with death, real blood, not pixel blood in a way that makes it mean something? Can we show a perspective on a conflict without mentioning one of the 600 civilians who died in the conflict.
Call of Duty is suspiciously devoid of civilians, its only you and the generic red scarfed terrorists, but if we want to tell the true story of war, should we not perhaps be telling it from the perspective of those who suffer the most. Not to belittle 6DiF which i think is a brave and potentially important game to make, even more important to get right, but where is the 'game that means something' about these conflicts now. In the brilliant bbc mini series The Occupation there is a memorable scene where Danny and Leicester, two military contractors on the blag to the US govenrment walk into a warehouse full of US dollars and the Governement official says to them:
" you know what this is, the future of the Iraqi people"
Well if that's not a good starting point for a game that means something i don't know what is
Its also worth noting on the same day Konami announced they were cancelling the release of 6DiF they also announced the release of Saw the game:
which incidentally has had terrible reviews.
