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We the Giants  Im Reading
 My third experimental gameplay challenge entry is called "We the Giants". It took me about 4 to 5 days in total and turned out totally different than the initial idea I had in mind.I don't want to spoil the experience so ill keep it short this time. Just go check it out at wethegiants.thegiftedintrovert.com Update (December 30th) Below are some recorded player sessions of giants trying to reach the stars. 18th Dec, 2009, 19th Dec, 2009, 20th Dec, 2009, 21st Dec 2009, 23rd Dec, 2009, Christmas
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Category: Experimental Gameplay Tags: Experimental Gameplay Sacrifice. Giants Wednesday, December 16, 2009 20:05 I'm so full of crap  Again the month November came with its yearly nanowrimo contest. Basically it comes down to writing 50.000 words in one month, which means there is no room for criticizing your own work. This can be frustrating as a lot of it will turn into crap due to the time pressure of 30 days.But maybe this is just what creativity is about, an ounce of knowledge and a pinch of crap. The knowledge part can only go so far and you soon face the limits of your own knowledge. I wrote about crime though my knowledge of this field is very limited and this is where the crap part comes in. Since there is no time to do research, whatever I didn't know i made up. It seems like an obvious thing yet, I find a lot of people have a hard time getting rid of their inner critic and need everything in clear predefined boxes in order to work with it. It needs to follow convention. Convention in itself suggest a set of boundaries in which you need to stay but there is an entire field of information to explore outside convention. In the contest I started out with the things I know, like and feel inspired by. I had a very global idea of the plot I wanted to write about which could be summarized in two sentences. With this I just filled in all the gaps with lots of crap and imagination. All in all, writing 50.000 words in 30 days isn't that hard in itself. The hard thing is to allow the crap part in. The end result : nanowrimo.pdf Six and a Half  September's theme for the experimental gameplay challenge was all about failure. I did not join until a week and a half before the challenge would end when a random brainfart got me motivated to explore it further.The idea from the start was to do show a young girl tying to keep her parents together while they are in the midst of a divorce. The failure from the start has been the parental failure as in the parents not considering their daughter in the process of the divorce. In this I wanted to express a few ideas being 1.) the effect the divorce has on the girl and her world, and 2.) her naivety in trying to make things better. I started out building a simple platform engine from scraps of code I had lying around and made them fit each other until a silhouette of a young girl could run left and right. From this point on I added some grass and flowers to represent her world as serene and simple. Initially I didn't add the parents visually but instead just showed their degrading marriage through words flying from left to right and vice-versa. I wanted to enhance this by having an audio-sample in the background that mimics a couple verbally fighting and wanted to add an echo to this sound to enhance the illusion of being in the girls world. Though, not being able to find a decent audio-sample that could fit I resorted to representing the parents visually and having one on the left side of the level and the other on the right side. The words representing their degrading marriage remained but now each parent would slowly fade out over time supporting the metaphor. At this point I had 2 procedures in mind for the girl one being to kiss and another to scream. The kiss procedure acted as the action which would bring the parents closer together. I liked the kiss procedure because I felt it could represent her naive understanding of the situation by thinking her parents marriage can be saved through giving kisses, mirroring the parental behaviour of when a child is hurt and a parent gives a kiss to make the child feel better. The scream procedure has been added and removed various times until I felt it was in the right place. The first time around I had the game tested among fellow Game Design & Development students the main lesson was that gameplay wasn't all that interesting though most could appreciate the message being put forward. With this in mind I started tweaking the game by making the parents this time really drift apart instead of just fading out. The words from the parents initially had not effect on the girl but eventually would release a monster that would crawl up from the ground. I personally felt that at some point I stacked so many metaphors on top of each other that most were missed anyway so I tried to make changes in these some more. Eventually I had the words affecting the girl, making her more slow and the scream procedure as a counter for this. I liked it best in this way because it was pretty easy to understand the real-life connection that the words also affect the girl. Also the fact that the words now would stay on the ground represented well how her world quickly changed from a decent environment to a chaotic environment. All in all, i think the game can be better balanced by giving the player the initial illusion that there is a win situation. I think many players might just give up the second they understand the game cannot be won. I feel, the entire game is carried by the message it portrays and I know the gameplay isn't all that interesting or challenging but never the less I think the message alone is enough for an interesting experience. Result : Six and a half
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Category: Experimental Gameplay Tags: Experimental Gameplay Divorce Serious game Thursday, October 1, 2009 23:05 4: The apple tree  This weeks assignment was about collection and reads,"You must create a game for two to four players in which players walk over objects and pick them up. What players need to collect and how much they need to collect is up to you. Mechanics that modify the primary mechanic are acceptable." I started out creating a grid of 10 by 10 on paper and trying to imagine a form of gameplay from there. I added four pawns in each corner of the grid making these the starting positions of each player. Next I added a die and basically found the simplest form of gameplay. I wanted to give a twist to this basic kind of gameplay so instead of each player throwing the die and moving over the grid I made it so that each player moves on the throw of the die. With this as a base I tried to come up with a theme so I could generate new ideas from this theme. For some reason I came up with the grid being a field of grass with a tree in the middle from which apples fall on occasion, which in turn need to be collected. Now, with basic gameplay and a goal and a theme I needed a challenge. When are the apples going to fall and where? How is it balanced between the players so that every player has somewhat of an equal opportunity to collect apples? After trying out some different kinds of play with cards I came up with my challenge. I numbered the vertical side of the grid with the number 1 to 10 and the horizontal side with the letters A to J. On the cards there is either a number or a letter corresponding to the grid. The rules concerning the usage of these cards are as follows. Each player takes a card from the stack and puts it facing up on the table adjacent to at least one other card if there are already cards on the table. With each turn a grid of cards will emerge of numbers and letters. Each number on the table adjacent to a letter represents a coordinate of an apple on the board grid. After a player has put his card down he roles the die and all players can move the die indicated amount over the grid in any direction as long as they don't cross a grid-point twice in one turn. If a player moves over a grid point where an apple is that player takes out the coordinate from the card grid so that this coordinate is no longer appearing marked with an apple. The player who collects the most cards has thus collected the most apples and wins the game when the stack has been exhausted. All in all, this challenge went surprisingly easy, for reasons unknown, and I'm quite pleased with the end result. Time invested: 3 hours Notes: theappletree.pdf 3: Bureaucracy  Due to a summer holiday trip the 3rd challenge was delayed for some weeks. The 3rd challenge is about exploration and reads,"For this exercise, you will focus on the exploration dynamic. First, consider how it is used in MMOs, adventure games, and RPGs. In some adventure games, the explore every location dynamic is the whole of play. Consider how it is used in board games such as Clue. You are tasked with creating a game that two to four individuals can play. Since the game involves exploration, it needs some kind of space to explore, even if that space isn't a physical one. You may use this dynamic in conjunction with another. It will be up to you to determine the theme, mechanics, components, and additional dynamics, if any, for this exercise." Before the summer holidays I was reading Kafka's The Trial which soon served as inspiration for a theme being bureaucracy. In Kafka's book he describes how Josef K., the protagonist, becomes caught up the legal system without knowing what he is being accused of. This "not knowing" seemed to me to have potential for the exploration dynamic requirement. I wanted to translate the idea of bureaucracy into the prototype in several ways. These were, 1.) Creating a sense of getting more stuck the further you go through a spiral like board. 2.) A simple goal that is hard to achieve. 3.) Abstract representations of simple types of information. 4.) Opening times The spiral like board game I had quiet easily done. I added squares on the board, at intervals, which would represent a change in opening times for all squares after that point which would make it more difficult as you get deeper into the spiral. The opening times are on a daily basis meaning one day the counter is open and another it is closed. This required a change of days in the game which I implemented through the die. As each player rolls the die in order to determine the amount of squares to move in the spiral the days progress with the amount the die indicates. Then I made each square represent a counter in some government building. I started looking for some mechanic that would trigger once you landed on such a square and in line with bureaucracy this became a hand out of forms. These forms, in the concept, are cards that direct you to a different counter and so I would send the players back and forth the spiral in order to achieve some goal, hoping to recreate somewhat of a frustrating experience like bureaucracy. The goal I wanted to be simple and has already been made hard to achieve through the forms that are handed out and send you all over the board. I decided that each goal, in the form of a "goal card", would require a player to visit a few of the counters on the board and if the player visited these counters he works his way out of the bureaucratic system by getting to the exit, being the starting point. The first player to visit all his required counters and get to the starting point is the winner. So far I somewhat fit the exploration dynamic required by the assignment as the player explores the board but this was far from the way I wanted to implement it. I was looking for something like partial information being shown with each square that tells something about a bigger picture on the board game. The problem I kept running into though was, 1.) The partial information and the bigger picture they make up. 2.) Random initialization of the board since it is not desirable to play the game again if you already know the bigger picture or all the partial information. I had great trouble fixing this and even after a week was not able to come up with a good and satisfying solution. So in a way this concept failed as it doesn't fit the exploration dynamic as I hoped it would do. Though its a good thing to run into this problem and experience that random initialization and partial information structures are much harder to establish in board games than they are in digital games. Although I'm not thrilled about the concept I came up with I'm glad to have realized and experienced this difficulty. Time invested: 10 hours Paper prototype: image 2: Apocalypse  Second week in my prototyping challenge. This weeks challenge is about territorial acquisition. "For this challenge, you'll be exploring the dynamic of territorial acquisition. If you havent noticed already this dynamic is present in the great majority of board games made today. A in the previous example, this game should allow two to four players. The game must obviously have some kind of territory which will be acquired. You may select from one of two win conditions. 1) The first player to get all the territory wins. 2) The player with the most territory after X turns wins." With the term "territorial acquisition" the board game risk immediately comes to my mind and so I started looking at risk. What I like about risk is the uncertainty in not knowing each others end goals but is slowly uncovered as each player works towards his goal. What I don't like about risk is the randomness in the attacks in which players roll the dice and the player that rolled the die indicating the highest value wins. So, liking the uncertainty but not the randomness of the attacking mechanic I started looking for a theme to derive inspiration from. I soon ended up with religion as my theme, it being a lively topic these days. From this theme I derived resources that I can use on the board. I came up with the more obvious concepts like gods, holy books, religion name and prophets and started looking for objects that could fit these concepts. Since the aim is to have a game for four players I only attempted to create 4 of each. These became, - 1) Yaweh - Torah - Judaism - Mozes - 2) God - Bible - Christianity - Jesus - 3) Allah - Quran - Islam - Mohammed - 4) Darwin - Origin of species - Atheism - Dawkins I did not care whether the resources mirrored reality truthfully so whether atheism is a religion in my game but not in reality didn't matter. My aim was to create content quickly. To indicate the player roles I turned these into "God Cards" which reminds a player of his role in game. Now, with 4 player roles decided I started looking for procedures. What will the players do? Since the theme is religion the main procedure is kind of obvious and became to convert from which I could derive my end goal being to convert as many people as possible. With user roles, an end goal and an abstract procedure in place I started paper prototyping to get new ideas on procedures so I roughly drew a world map on a piece of paper and started adding colored blocks on the paper while trying to imagine new possibilities. From this I added the idea that every x amount of turns a disaster will happen to the board. These disasters will be described on cards and range from earthquakes to volcanic eruptions. These disaster only apply specific parts of the world map and thus I added lines to indicate the earths crust layers and mountains to indicate where volcanic eruptions might occur and alike. When a disaster occurs and several people have converted people around the areas concerned then these people will die and each player will have won these people to their religion and thus acquired this piece of territory. Not knowing where the disaster will occur delivers a level of uncertainty which is something I liked in risk. So, all in all, I now have a concept in which each player takes the role of a religion with the goal to convert as many people on a world map. When converted people die of a disaster, which comes every x turns, these people have been won over to the corresponding players religion. I turned the board into a grid in which colored blocks can be placed in order to indicate the spread of religion. I added the rule that the board starts out empty and that players can choose where to start converting in the world but from that point on can only convert places on the world map adjacent to current blocks of their religion. When a disaster occurs the regions affected on the world map are marked with black color blocks and these spots can no longer be converted by players. Remaining now is the actual converting procedure. How does a player win new people over to his religion? I do not like the randomness of rolling a die and wanted something that fits my theme of religion better. What I do like, and derived inspiration from, is the bluffing in poker and after looking at it from different angles I came up with my converting mechanic. Conversion comes in the form of conversion cards which indicates different values. One conversion card might read "Preaching (2+)" while another might read "Spread the holy book (10+)" and again another might read "Perform a miracle (25+)". Each user holds 7 of these cards in hand from the beginning of the game and is not allowed to hold more. When a player's turn is up he can choose to convert people. When the player only converts empty grid points he can put down any amount of conversion cards on the table and the total amount indicates how many people are converted. When the player attempts to convert the people of another player's religion he again can put down any amount of conversion cards but this time face down. He then says to the other player "x, do you believe?" with x being a number. The defending player responds with yes or no. If the attacking player lies about the value indicated on the cards, for example being 24+, and says "32, do you believe?" and the defending player spots the lie then the attacking player converts 0 people. If the defending player responds with yes then he bought the lie and 32 people, instead of the indicated 24, are converted. If the attacking player tells the truth about the value indicated on the cards, again for example being 24+, and says "24, do you believe?" and the defending player responds with no, then he was wrong and 24 people are converted. If he responded with yes then only half the amount will be converted being 12 people. All conversion cards played are lost and go back in the deck. A player can replenish his hand to 7 card in the next turn which takes a turn. I liked this mechanic because players will start to look for mannerisms in each other to guess the right answer which creates a level of play and uncertainty and fits the theme. The game continues in this fashion until the apocalypse which is the x amount of turns the players agreed to play. When the apocalypse occurs all people on earth die and the player with the most people converted wins the game. Time invested: 10 hours Notes: apocalypse.pdf Paper prototype: image 1: Foxes and Farmers  Coming month I partake in weekly prototyping challenge with a fellow student from the Utrecht School of Arts in which we each do one challenge from the book Challenges for Game Designers by Brenda Brathwaite.The challenge this week is to explore a "race to the end" gameplay dynamic for a non digital board game. The game should allow two to four players, be about progressing on a path, and make them go from point A to B. For a while I kept aiming for that insanely innovative unexplored mechanic that no one ever thought of only to realize, after some hours, that I'm not getting any further with this design strategy. Although I don't believe aiming for innovation is a bad thing I do realize that during the early phases of a design it is important to not be critical. This phase should be about generating quantity and not quality. So then I just started looking at what makes up a board game; what are all the usual ingredients and how can I rearrange these ingredients to make something unusual? I started to mess with the usage of the tokens, the die, cards and the board and ended up having the die represent each player in which each side corresponds to on of the four players, not including the top and bottom of the die. The idea was to create a tug of war amongst the player by forcing them to all be the same token. The direction they would take on the board was based on the direction that the die was facing. If four on the die is facing north then the player corresponding with that number was constrained to that direction. Giving each player a unique end point (point B) on the board would result in each player trying to achieve this personal goal while affecting the game of the others. I thought of it as foxes being bound together by the tail with a torch in between for which a biblical story was my main inspiration. I felt this idea had potential and started to paper prototype it to see what would happen only to find out I'm sending the players in an endless circle over the board without anyone ever achieving their goal. Still convinced of the potential of the idea but feeling the deadline nearing I changed back to conventional tokens in which each player has his own token on the board but kept the theme of foxes. From here I started adding different concepts related to foxes and soon came up with farmers and chicks. I wanted to establish a relationship amongst these elements in my board game which was quite easy since I could simply mirror the relationship amongst these elements as they are in real life. Both the farmer and the foxes care for the chicks but for different reasons which creates the conflict in the game. The farmers want to keep the chicks live and well while the foxes want to kill and eat them. This creates two different roles which players can take at the beginning of a game and steers away from the "race to the end" idea but I'm still feeling I should not be critical. With a core conflict in the game I started adding additional elements to create more choice for each player. For the farmer these are shooting or setting up a fence on a grid point on the board. I ended up not adding more choice for the foxes other then moving over the board and figured prototyping would show whether the balance is off or not. At this point I wanted to add a level of uncertainty for all players so that they become unaware of the outcome of the game. I did this by taking away a piece of information from both players being the farmers don't know the foxes position on the board and the foxes don't know the farmers position on the board. The problem is that with a board game this kind of information is available to all players unless I add another board, one for the farmers and one for the foxes, which was not something I wanted. But this was not the time to be critical, I felt. I now start to write down everything I have so far. The setup, the equipment, the procedures, rules, winning and loosing conditions. In short my concept is now as follows, A minimum of 2 players choose between being a farmer or a fox. With one player being a farmer and the other the fox the board is setup. The board is a grid of squares on which the farmer places his chicks and then places the farmer somewhere on the grid. Note that the only the farmer knows the position of his token on the grid. The fox start outside the board. The fox throws the die and can enter the board from any side he likes. Movement can go in all directions, for both players, but not in back on a square he has already been on in his turn. The fox works his way towards the chicks and tries to eat these by moving over them on the board. The farmer tries to kill the fox by shooting it. By throwing the die the farmer can move over the board but he can also use the die value to shoot at a grid point. If the farmer throws 6 and moves 2 squares on the board he has a remaining 4 squares distance in which he can shoot. So the remaining value indicates the range of the shot. There is only one shot possible in a turn. Once a grid point has been shot they can no longer be landed on by farmers and foxes though foxes can jump over them if the the die indicates a high enough value. Jumping over a shot grid point is equal to one step. The other option, for a farmer, is to use the remaining die value to place a fence. Having a remaining value of 4 means the farmer can put of 4 fences on four grid points. When a fox moves over a fence then this information is revealed to the farmer letting him know the area in which the fox is moving around. At this point I have a concept which, I feel, has potential but there are design problems that need to be solved and tested. So from this point on I tried to be more critical again and reviewed all the things that were wrong about it by testing it out. These problems are, - The players position on the board is public but should be private preferably without adding additional boards... - "Race to the End" dynamic is lost due to different player roles and goals, how can I get it back... And then the deadline has been reached! Its over, total time invested: 5 hours, result: flawed prototype with potential. We reviewed each others concepts and found we have similar problems in the design process being we start out aiming for that truly innovative design which is not bad but should not be at the start of this creative process. Start broad and work and then work towards a specific something! Being critical when you shouldn't can be very time consuming and counter productive! Lesson learned! Time invested: 5 hours Notes: foxes&farmers.pdf Paper prototype: image The kid still lives  November was National Novel Writing Month and never having heard of it before, despite its ten year existence, I'm glad I got introduced to it this year. It basically comes down to writing 50000 in 30 days during the month November. It doesn't matter what you write as long as you just write! Your natural tendency to be critical of your own work has to be shot down first. The site says the following,"Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create." Giving yourself permission to make mistakes! Why is this so difficult for people and especially for adults? Some of the worlds greatest inventions were discovered by mistake. Penicillin, patato chips, x-rays, coca cola, viagra and google were all mistakes at one point in time! A dutch documentary called "de rede van het kind" (the reason of the child) explains how children have the natural tendency to think in a philosophical way and that this is nipped in the bud by the educational system around the age of 8. In the book the creative spirit the authors explain how creativity is killed by surveillance, evaluation, rewards, competition, over-control, restricting choice and pressure. Note that these are the exact ingredients that can be found in school, work and society in general. Above indicates a level of creativity that children possess and lose when they grow up as structured rules and predefined ways of doing things is enforced upon them. In a sense they loose the kid-way of thinking and questioning as etiquette, formalities and culture takes their place. They learn of the social standards to which they should conform in order to be or present something acceptable. This translates itself throughout society into everything. From your physical appearance to your behavior it affects who you are and what you do and thus how you think. In this line, i hate the idea of child like creativity no longer being available to me because I'm too busy fitting in. Though having been able to reach 50000 words within less than 30 days is something that I'm quiet proud of and has me convinced this kid in me is still alive and all it needs is a simple reminder every now and then. The end result : nanowrimo.pdf Breaking the ice  When you become a new member of a team, functioning within a company or something alike, there is always some initial awkwardness preventing you from blending in seamlessly. A new environment, new people, new ways of doing things and on some occasions a new language and culture. The first few days you just feel like the "new guy" but because you are part of a team others will make an effort to include you and try to make you feel more at home and thus break down some of the social barriers so you feel part of this new team.Wikipedia marks the following social elements as important for teamwork: Listening, Discussing, Questioning, Persuading, Respecting, Helping, Sharing, Participating, Communicating. Keep these in mind! Now I noticed that, when their are language barriers within a team most prefer to speak their native language whenever it is possible. This is understandable but somehow not rational in relation towards building a team because you tend to create these small isolated islands within a team where people speak their native language and thus others are left out of the loop. Simple things like missing jokes and chit-chat remind you that you are the odd one out. Being part of a conversation creates rapport amongst its partakers and thus when you are the odd one out it stands team-building in the way. The solution seems simple: speak a similar language. Though this is very dependent on language skills and requires an real effort of the entire team. Another thing that comes to mind is location. When you cluster similar language speaking people over the available rooms in a company they will not be stimulated to resort to a language everyone can understand but will speak their native language because they are grouped into rooms with others speaking their own language. This is kind of like a country placing all immigrants in one building in one city and then wonder why they integrate so poorly. Off course companies cluster their teams by department (art, programming, marketing) and thus clustering similar language speaking people evenly out over the entire company is not a real viable solution but still it is something to think about because when you review the elements wikipedia marks as important social elements within a team and then take a language barrier into account then a lot of these skills are rendered impossible because of the language barrier. For example: I guess over time things will pretty much always just smooth out as a team has to cooperate in order to make some progress. But taking these things into consideration can be the difference between 1 week or 3 weeks before you feel part of a team. The meaning of signs  American philosopher Charles S. Peirce defined a sign as "something that stands for something, to somebody, in some respect or capacity." and is mentioned in "Rules of Play" (Salen & Zimmerman) that derives four semiotic concepts from this quote. The first being: "a sign represents something other than itself" and this got me thinking. On this first semiotic idea the book refers to Scrabble that once was campaigned against due to the OSPD (Official Scrabble Players Dictionary) containing words deemed offensive. Words like "Jew", "Kike", "Spic" and "Honkie". Hasbro, creator of Scrabble, then announced it would remove 50+ "offensive" words from the official rulebook. The Scrabble community reacted indignantly and accused Hasbro of censorship explaining that "the words as played on the board during a game of Scrabble are without meaning. In the limited context of scoring points the meaning of HONKIE, deemed offensive in the OSPD, is no more relevant than the meaning of any obscure but commonly played word.". Thus within the context of a game as Scrabble, words do not carry their conventional meaning as used in everyday life as they are carried by an intent. An intent to offend for example when it comes to racial slurs which is often enforced through tone of voice and volume of voice; factors not applicable to Scrabble. This intent to offend is thus obsolete in the context of Scrabble since the intent in Scrabble is to score points and not offend or even communicate with other players through the words on the board. So the usage and meaning of words in the context of a game such as Scrabble is not the same as the usage and meaning of words used in real life meaning there is no reason to be offended by words such as "Honkie" when used in the context of a game as Scrabble. In reference to signs in the Mario universe, being coins, magic stars, pipes, enemies and alike, "Rules of Play" states: "Although the signs certainly make a reference to objects that exist in the real world, they gain their symbolic value or meaning from the relationship between signs within the game.". So signs, it being words in Scrabble or coins in the Mario universe, derive their meaning from the context of the game that their used in. But to what extend can a sign only derive meaning from the context of a game and at what point does the signs meaning in real life kick in? For example take swastika's in games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. Personally i am not offended by them but i very well can understand others might. In the context of a game a swastika might have been included for historical accuracy or to mark enemy territory though most games that take place in a war setting omit the symbols or replace them with alternatives. So how come that swastika's in the context of a game are still so likely to offend? I personally think the meaning of signs in games are not delimited by the context of the game but have a great overlap with our understanding and interpretation of that sign in real life depending on the level of abstraction and the amount of emotional investment in the sign. A coin in the Mario universe is quit abstract and people are not emotionally invested in a sign like a coin but everyone will expect the coin in the context of a game to have value like it does in the real world. If in the Mario universe a coin was used for other purposes, like killing enemies for instance, the context of the game would give new meaning to the coin which is very easy for people to accept. But signs like swastika's, flags of nations, star of David, star and crescent, christian cross and alike are all symbols in which people are emotionally invested, positive or negative aside. Now imagine the Mario universe where Mario kills enemies by throwing stars of David, or whacking them with the christian cross. Now the context of the game tries to give new meaning a sign which people in real life feel very strong about. This would raise a controversy simply because people feel so much stronger about these signs in real life. So all in all, the meaning of a sign in a game is not merely derived from the context of game but overlaps with your interpretation, understanding and feelings toward that sign as it is used in real life which in its turn is influenced by culture, beliefs, age and more. Thus the context of a game lies within the context of reality. So, signs can invoke strong reactions, if people are emotionally invested in them, right? So how come it is mainstream accepted that movies about WW1 or WW2 or racism don't omit otherwise offensive signs? I guess this has concerns the maturity of the medium. Where movies as a medium have proven their ability to tell stories in a respectable context, the game as a medium mainly has proven it's huge entertainment value even though it is capable of so much more. I think this is the aspect of the game medium that offends people. In a western culture, swastika's and entertainment just don't go hand in hand since the context of the game gives the signs in the game an entertainment value which opposes the meaning of that sign in real life. For some signs like coins this is not a problem but again when people are emotionally invested in a sign it does become a problem. The movie medium, on the other hand, that tells a respectable story containing swastika's keep the serious context surrounding the sign in real life intact and thus it is accepted. |
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