Can Slavery be A Game?
Putting the Game Before the Book What would your favorite piece of literature look like if it had been created as a game first? In a time when bits of Dante’s Divine Comedy are being carved out and turned into a hack-n-slash game, I find myself longing for intelligently designed games–games with a strong literary component–not merely literary backdrops. So rather than challenge you to imagine the conversion of your favorite literature into games, I challenge you to supersede the source literature and imagine a game that might have tried to communicate the same themes, the same message, to its audience.
This is not meant to be just provocative and I apologize for turning what was supposed to be lighthearted into a serious affair. The books I find most affecting are those in which the protagonist finds him or herself in a situation over which she has little or no control. The Road by Cormack McCarthy is a good example. Fallout 3 has tackled this narrative in a very good way. But let me go to a different extreme.
Beloved is a book I read about once a year. It is a story set during reconstruction in which we find that the protagonist Sethe had murdered her child years back so the baby would not be enslaved. She might have killed them all if she were not stopped.
In order to understand the choice Sethe makes in killing her children, the player would have to understand the world she inhabits. A world where she is considered property to used as her owner sees fit. A world where getting married and having children and being allowed to keep them is a privilege, not a right.
My initial thought about this game are that the game would have to be text based. The themes here are so off-putting that I already feel the need to shield the player (myself) from visual representation of what I'm discussing, which is slavery.
The scene is presented and the player is given a choice as to how to proceed. Such as:
Your name is Sethe. You are a slave.
a) Be good to your owner
b) Steal from your owner
The owner suspects you:
a) Confess. Take a beating
b) Don't confess. Take a bigger beating.
You have been sold to a new owner
a)Be good
b)Steal
Halle has proposed!
a) Say yes
b) Say no.
You are pregnant
a)Try to abort
b)Keep the pregnancy
The others are thinking of running away!
a) Join them
b) Stay put
Your owner is selling one of your children tomorrow
a) Run
b) Stay
c)
You have been caught!
a: Go quietly
b: Kill the children and yourself.
c: Kill yourself
d: Kill the kids.
As I type this, I am laughing out loud. Too kitschy? I think yes. Even with the best music, this doesn't work.
How about The Sims: Slavery
The playable sim (you) is the slave. The owners are NPC's on the screen. They can of course interrupt any of your actions to beat you or do to you whatever they please. Your actions as a slave are limited. You can interacted with just about anything with options to either clean it or steal it. Your living area would be a small box away from the main house with a potty to pee in next to your bed. You can of course choose to run away (you run off screen and disappear). If you escape, game over. More often than not, you will be returned by the slave catcher and beaten for it.
The playable sim (you) can be impregnated either by choice (by other slaves or NPC's using the usual interactions) or by force by an NPC. Once the baby is born, however, you may do to it as you choose. If you neglects its needds, your owner may choose to step in. She may also choose not to.
Should the child be carried to term, the child becomes a playable character subject to the same rules as you. The child may be sold away at any time.
The only way to escape is to either run away, commit suicide, or by earning your freedom. Suicide can be committed at any point in the game, although it could be an unsatisfactory experience for the player (which would be the point).
Earning ones own freedom can be based on terms set by the owner at the beginning of the game. Perhaps the goal of the game is to earn freedom. It can be cash based, although since you do not earn any money, any cash you have would cast suspicion on you and the likelihood that your owner would accept it instead of taking it and beating you for having stolen it is slim. Freedom could be time-based, that is, you will be set free after X number of years worked where X is 60 - 70. Basis for freedom could also be challenges like Keep mood high, for 10 days in a row. This of course is extremely difficult given your living conditions.
Skills like cleaning, sewing, cooking would be maxed out. These skills would not exist in the game. Skills like reading, logic would make the chances of escape higher when maxed out. Charisma would reduce the number of beating you take, making you a happier person.
Decorating your 'box' can also be accomplished by trading items for food, or teaching. Decorations can also be made. The size of your box cannot be increased no matter the size of your family.
I've let my mind run wild. I don't think that what I've described here is a game anymore. It does not seem like any 'game' I'd want to play. I'm alternately depressed and a little horrified. Perhaps it would be an affecting experience. This exercise certainly has been.
Books invite us to explore the human condition. Beloved takes the headline of a heinous act and takes me into the soul of the perpetrator; challenges me to search myself. Would I have done better in the same situation?
Games by their nature are reductionist. Reduce that civilization to set of cute graphics so I don't mind obliterating it. Those [combines, splicers, zombies] ceased to be human long ago , frag them all! to death! Fallout 3 is no 'The Road' and Bioshock is no 'Heart of Darkness' but maybe that's OK. If we want to keep calling them games, that is.
This is not meant to be just provocative and I apologize for turning what was supposed to be lighthearted into a serious affair. The books I find most affecting are those in which the protagonist finds him or herself in a situation over which she has little or no control. The Road by Cormack McCarthy is a good example. Fallout 3 has tackled this narrative in a very good way. But let me go to a different extreme.
Beloved is a book I read about once a year. It is a story set during reconstruction in which we find that the protagonist Sethe had murdered her child years back so the baby would not be enslaved. She might have killed them all if she were not stopped.
In order to understand the choice Sethe makes in killing her children, the player would have to understand the world she inhabits. A world where she is considered property to used as her owner sees fit. A world where getting married and having children and being allowed to keep them is a privilege, not a right.
My initial thought about this game are that the game would have to be text based. The themes here are so off-putting that I already feel the need to shield the player (myself) from visual representation of what I'm discussing, which is slavery.
The scene is presented and the player is given a choice as to how to proceed. Such as:
Your name is Sethe. You are a slave.
a) Be good to your owner
b) Steal from your owner
The owner suspects you:
a) Confess. Take a beating
b) Don't confess. Take a bigger beating.
You have been sold to a new owner
a)Be good
b)Steal
Halle has proposed!
a) Say yes
b) Say no.
You are pregnant
a)Try to abort
b)Keep the pregnancy
The others are thinking of running away!
a) Join them
b) Stay put
Your owner is selling one of your children tomorrow
a) Run
b) Stay
c)
You have been caught!
a: Go quietly
b: Kill the children and yourself.
c: Kill yourself
d: Kill the kids.
As I type this, I am laughing out loud. Too kitschy? I think yes. Even with the best music, this doesn't work.
How about The Sims: Slavery
The playable sim (you) is the slave. The owners are NPC's on the screen. They can of course interrupt any of your actions to beat you or do to you whatever they please. Your actions as a slave are limited. You can interacted with just about anything with options to either clean it or steal it. Your living area would be a small box away from the main house with a potty to pee in next to your bed. You can of course choose to run away (you run off screen and disappear). If you escape, game over. More often than not, you will be returned by the slave catcher and beaten for it.
The playable sim (you) can be impregnated either by choice (by other slaves or NPC's using the usual interactions) or by force by an NPC. Once the baby is born, however, you may do to it as you choose. If you neglects its needds, your owner may choose to step in. She may also choose not to.
Should the child be carried to term, the child becomes a playable character subject to the same rules as you. The child may be sold away at any time.
The only way to escape is to either run away, commit suicide, or by earning your freedom. Suicide can be committed at any point in the game, although it could be an unsatisfactory experience for the player (which would be the point).
Earning ones own freedom can be based on terms set by the owner at the beginning of the game. Perhaps the goal of the game is to earn freedom. It can be cash based, although since you do not earn any money, any cash you have would cast suspicion on you and the likelihood that your owner would accept it instead of taking it and beating you for having stolen it is slim. Freedom could be time-based, that is, you will be set free after X number of years worked where X is 60 - 70. Basis for freedom could also be challenges like Keep mood high, for 10 days in a row. This of course is extremely difficult given your living conditions.
Skills like cleaning, sewing, cooking would be maxed out. These skills would not exist in the game. Skills like reading, logic would make the chances of escape higher when maxed out. Charisma would reduce the number of beating you take, making you a happier person.
Decorating your 'box' can also be accomplished by trading items for food, or teaching. Decorations can also be made. The size of your box cannot be increased no matter the size of your family.
I've let my mind run wild. I don't think that what I've described here is a game anymore. It does not seem like any 'game' I'd want to play. I'm alternately depressed and a little horrified. Perhaps it would be an affecting experience. This exercise certainly has been.
Books invite us to explore the human condition. Beloved takes the headline of a heinous act and takes me into the soul of the perpetrator; challenges me to search myself. Would I have done better in the same situation?
Games by their nature are reductionist. Reduce that civilization to set of cute graphics so I don't mind obliterating it. Those [combines, splicers, zombies] ceased to be human long ago , frag them all! to death! Fallout 3 is no 'The Road' and Bioshock is no 'Heart of Darkness' but maybe that's OK. If we want to keep calling them games, that is.
9 comments:
Beloved is a fascinating novel, and the idea of a game based on slavery is interesting. I like your idea of turning it into a simulation that depicts the lifestyle, but I think the reduction of it might be offensive in itself. Like you've mentioned, "so I don't mind obliterating it," games already do this, but of course some subjects are more volatile than others. It would be an interesting "art game," where all of the player's preconceptions of a Sims game are turned on their head because of the character's situation.
Hi dhalgren.
I think the game would be offensive as well. I can't over the thought that there are people out there that might try to play out some obscene fantasies although I suppose you could ameliorate that by making the game race neutral (all character have the same coloring). I'm not sure why I think gamers would do that though. There are films and books about this subject and I don't worry about readers doing the same.
I'm reminded of a
post Iroquois Pliskin made last month about procedural rhetoric. If anything a game about slavery in general, but particularly one about Sethe's choice is one in which procedural rhetoric is paramount. The way one plays the game, the goals that are set, the choices one makes and their consequences are paramount to getting the player to empathize with the position the Sethe is in, to making the player think "perhaps this is my best option". You'd have to meticulously construct the game play so that the player, despite their misgivings about such an action, can at least believe that the choice makes sense within the structure of the game.
But you're right in that there's a meta-level at which the player might not want to play the game at all. You talk about having the ever present option of suicide but say that it is ultimately unsatisfying. We always have the choice to not play a game, though we are rarely made explicitly aware of it (the MGS solid series comes to mind as an example in which this is sometimes explicit). Suicide and turning the game off are both ways of saying "I refuse to consent to this world". If a player comes to that point then the game is successful, no? Then again as the point of Beloved is also about making that choice for another the real meta question would be if the player refuses to allow others to play it, say, by refusing the recommend it to others. That then puts them in the position of asking whether they even have the right to make that choice for others.
In a sort of backhanded way, a game with that kind of focus could be successful if it were unsuccessful.
well i'm all for offensive material myself, but we are in a day and age where the people that play games, allot of them friends haven't picked up a book in decades, want something to draw them in or it just seems offensive and frankly boring. thats why we have graphics. the slavery part should only be the beginning of the game and a small part of it. the bulk of the game needs to be your journey to freedom. graphics can't be seen as only a pretty way to package a game but a tool to draw the user into the story. having to kill your child will be a harder choice to make if you had to see or hear it
My understanding of Beloved is that it is a book about love. So the question is, how to you make a game about slavery also be about love? By forcing the player to be a slave, you are taking a shit-load of love outta the equation.
Pi,
I suppose I could make a game about love, but is it the love of 2 twenty-somethings in manhattan, the love of two 60-somethings in the rural midwest, or the love of two slaves, one who goes on to murder her child?
The beauty of literature is that it is so very specific. The main character in Beloved is a slave. Her actions later on, though motivated by love, are predicated on this initial fact. She is a slave.
If there are no books, only games, how do I tell Sethes story without making the player feel what she felt? IMO, there is no other way.
There would need to be a gospel spiritual mini-game wherein you could employ the Rock Band vocal/guitar setup to sing sweet melodies about Jesus..If you ROCK, everyone's happy, If you SUCK the other slaves commit suicide and you get super-whipped
I like it. I think you might have concentrated on too many mundane details but I would like to experience this game.
And I don't think games are reductionist. Sure, the things that happen seem to be trivial at first sight but a player will develop very intimate feelings for those trivial elements. If it is a Sims clone it WILL be about love.
Reading your description I was reminded of gamelab's excellent Ayiti: The Cost of Life. Even if it has those cute cartoon graphics, every time one of the kids dies, it feels like a substantial loss. Maybe it's BECAUSE it's so under-stated.
the bulk of the game needs to be your journey to freedom
That would be the Hollywood treatment
is the Sims Slavery a computer game or lke a playstation game or sumthng?
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