Borut
Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday.
After Twain, he was easily one of America’s greatest satirists.
I hadn’t read his very latest book, but the shelf-ful that I have read have each been really moving to me.
So that kinda bums me out.
This is really cool (late to the party, I know).
I agree with most of the points – well, ok, I agree with all the points – but a couple seem a bit unnecessarily specific. Let me explain… No, it is too much, let me sum up.
wherein the author explores the notion of games as satire.
Not to get all anal-retentive and semantic and shit, but let’s start with a couple definitions:
- Wikipedia: “The purpose of satire is not primarily humour but criticism of an event, an individual or a group in a clever manner.”
- YourDictionary (among others): “A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.”
Further proving you should never listen to Wikipedia.
What’s the difference? Well, the point of satire is to (as the second definition gets at) criticize an aspect of society to encourage positive social change, in a funny way (because, really, otherwise who would pay attention?).
If you’re just making fun of something with no larger purpose, it’s parody (well, or just straight up fucking mockery).
Now, I loves me some satire. Stephen Colbert is my personal hero (er, men know what men like).
So, SCMRPG! (getting back on topic sloooooowly… but not just yet) has been noted as having satirical elements (making fun of violent games like Doom). Before I get to that, lets look how other games have (not) been satire.
This post on The New Gamer Journal (via GameSetWatch) about Lars Von Trier’s experimental camera work on some of his films just tied in so neatly with what I was just writing about games as documentary. He has a computer selecting random objects & shots partly as a means of removing his perspective from shots. So could games in fact be a way of achieving (more) objective documentary?
Given my perspective as an AI programmer, I’d say probably not. The subjective perceptions that affect the system merely become indirect – the programmer’s subjective decision of what rules to include in the AI, instead of the filmmaker’s subjective decisions of explicit framing. But it would make for an interesting experiment nonetheless.
The rest of the bit about Lookey trying to inject more active participation into film’s passivity just strikes me as windmill tilting. Make games, Von Trier!
Super Columbine Massacre RPG! asks an interesting question (of many) – can games be considered documentaries? Even if you’d say SCMRPG is not a documentary, it leads you to wonder what would a documentary in game form be like?