#HIST3812

6 comments

1. Permalink # OliverOliver Crosby said

   Spot on, great point you make. Some things aren’t about social justice, but we can still comfront complex issues with exciting fiction.

2. Permalink # Cole Labelle said

   I enjoyed the latter half of the post, but I wonder if there is some ethical or philosophical disparity between the introduction and the conclusion?

   The first paragraph validates rape and murder as possible player actions in GTA because they’re optional, not mandatory game mechanics, and because the game doesn’t present itself as being contrary to such an action (rather, it invites crime).

   But does that then mean it would be valid to make a colonization game wherein you can rape and murder your slaves? Would this be beneficial for a historical presentation of slavery, particularly in the context of player-controlled environments and player choice that isn’t intrinsic to the game’s design or victory conditions?

   Personally, I find it a difficult question. Society is much more sympathetic toward anti-slavery than the rights and well-being of prostitutes, yet both have a long history of oppression. Violence against prostitutes is common and there is often little visible advocacy or protections afforded them. So if questions of social justice are important in Colonization, if only for the purpose of historical theory/critical thinking (and I’m uncomfortable with the idea that ethics don’t come into play as part of those concepts), why don’t we give GTA the same critical approach? Aren’t they both fictional presentations of social and material history?

   Is there a great difference in the titles Colonization and GTA? I tend to view them both as essentially criminal practices, and both were intended by the designers to be ‘strictly for fun’.

3. Permalink # Devin Cross said

   I think we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot here. I’m afraid I may not have made it clear enough, but my use of Grand Theft Auto as a comparison for Colonization was meant to be more of a rhetorical device to comment a certain bizarre hypocrisy in our culture’s media. A level of hypocrisy that makes it permissible to allow rape-friendly mechanics in game, solely for its entertainment value, while it would be deemed insensitive to create a game that tells an honest and historically significant story.

   I do not personally want to include rape in any games whatsoever, nor do I think it needs to be included in games: even for the sake of ‘realism.’ To turn T.H. White’s line on its head, I don’t feel that “everything not forbidden is mandatory.” As an adult male with a wife, numerous female relatives and friends, I cannot condone rape culture in any form, including in games. It is not a ‘story’ that needs to be communicated in that forum- even for awareness purposes- violence against women is a prevalent enough theme in our society as is. If social justice were going to factor into Grand Theft Auto, an unhistorical sandbox game with the primary goal of allowing the player to simulate criminal behaviour, the game, as I alluded to in my post, would never have been created. However, I understand the programmers of Grand Theft Auto are (legally) allowed to continue coding their games as they please as an extension of their freedom of speech. Moreover, players who chose to play GTA also have the choice of whether or not they want to exploit that feature, and the ESRB has rated the game to inform conscientious buyers of what they are purchasing.

   For my own views of how slavery could tastefully be included into a game like Colonization, I highly recommend Trevor Owen’s article, “Sid Meier’s Colonization: is it offensive enough,” ((http://www.playthepast.org/?p=278)) which was the inspiration for this blog post. He briefly outlines how slavery could be included in the game for both its significant economic role in the process of colonization and as an educational tool to remind people of the horrors of the slave trade. The topic has inspired further discussion on Play the Past, and another well-worth article by Rebecca Mir about how modders have attempted to incorporate slavery into Colonization. ((http://www.playthepast.org/?p=2856)) The game outlined by Owens would give players the option to engage with slavery in the game, just as they have the option to choose whether they colonize first Nations People. But without these factors, the story of how the New World was colonized is merely reduced to a story of progress: which it incontestably was not. Colonization is about greed, about mass theft, and systematic racial oppression. It’s about how Europeans took a land that was not theirs and used slaves to do it. It’s an offensive story and a true one, and it’s one I feel we all could learn from. But as with all things, how it is portrayed should be mediated by good taste. What I had hoped to achieve while writing this post was simply to point out that while we attempt to be tasteful in how we tell historical stories through games, we also need to be careful not to cover up our ‘ugly truths.’

4. Permalink # Cole Labelle said

   Hi Devin,

   Please don’t take my response as an attack on the author! I made no assumptions about your general views on rape and murder, and my intention wasn’t to say that the article condones either. I was commenting solely on its treatment of these player actions in a game.

   As I read it, the first part of the post implies GTA is free from criticism because of the game’s presentation. This could have been a misreading on my part. In my mind I was comparing the opening sentence, which sets up a squeamish audience response as “astonishing”, and the last sentence, which states that “after all” the name makes obvious reference to its content and what we should expect. If the astonishing part is that audiences will react negatively to GTA but not to Colonization, that makes perfect sense. I just didn’t read that in the wording of the introduction.

   The rest of what I was trying to get at concerns the idea that GTA is ahistorical. It seems to me like the class is often getting stuck, or just presuming, that history is primarily an event or series of events. That’s why I mentioned social and material history. I would consider GTA a historical game in those contexts and thus equally worthy of criticism in its portrayal of society.

   • Permalink # Devin Cross said

     Hey Cole,

     Not a problem. After reading your comment I just realized that, given the controversial subject matter of my post, I needed to be explicitly clear on my own feelings.

     Given the medium, its really easy for us to misunderstand each other.

     I’m intrigued by your interpretation of the material and social history for GTA. To be perfectly honest, though I’m familiar with the in game mechanics, I have never sat down to play one through. I did a bit of reading on Wikipedia about the settings of the games, and realized the level of physical/aesthetic realism the game makers put into the games. I found the article on Vice City particularly interesting.

     “Vice City, which is based heavily on the city of Miami, Florida. The game’s look, particularly the clothing and vehicles, reflect (and sometimes parody) its 1980s setting. Many themes are borrowed from the major films Scarface, Carlito’s Way and Blow, along with the hit 1980s television series Miami Vice.[citation needed] Vice City also parodies and pays tribute to much of 1980s culture in the cars, music, fashion, landmarks, and characters featured in the game.”
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto:_Vice_City#Setting

     Sandbox games have a unique ability to convey a different sort of ‘truthiness’ than games like the Sid Meiers games ever could.

     I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the Driver series, but many of the games explicitly engage with these ideas. Parallel Lines was particularly interesting because it presented a fairly realistic New York City in 1978 and then again in 2006 and the player got to experience/ compare the two back to back.

     So, all that said, I would say I have to agree with you. I hope in your group project you can find a way to engage with the social and material history of gaming because, you’re right, I don’t think it’s been given its due credit.

     • Permalink # Devin Cross said

       Also, sorry, I’ve been trying to include links in my responses, but the “add link” feature doesn’t seem to work, so I’ve gone through and directly pasted the links in if you’re interested.