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#Feminism Is A Collection of 34 "Nanogames" From Designers Around The World
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7715207" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Earlier, one of the posters made a statement that if there was a game that focused on political beliefs he didn't subscribe to, that he'd be really excited by that and would purchase it and play it continually. </p><p></p><p>At first I thought that I could prove him wrong by suggesting political microgames that he would not want to play. </p><p></p><p>But then I realized as I was brainstorming that that any political microgame even if nominally was supposed to encourage discussion of things I actually believe would also be offensive to me, because it would trivialize things I consider too important (or in some cases, sacred). Further, any such game that took on a truly complex and serious topic, would invariably if it had just a simple tag line not actually teach the subject in a way that was respectful either to the subject or the mentality of those that I wanted to reach. </p><p></p><p>In short, I started to realize from this exercise that I had the opposite opinion of the poster completely. Not only was I offended by these games that didn't have exactly my politics, but I probably would have been even more offended by (and embarrassed by) a game that was trying to represent itself as having my politics and viewpoint. I don't think that there is such a game as #mybeliefs because I don't think you can put my beliefs down into some one page didactic microgame and record them correctly much less teach others why I believe like I do.</p><p></p><p>In another prior thread we had a discussion of the morality of Monopoly, which began as a game designed to teach a certain moral system, namely, a game designed to teach Georgist economics. In it I noted that, as in Georgist economics, the landlord and the taxman are the bad guys, and because the game is almost solely about rent seeking behavior, ultimately no one ends up winning. Someone ends with all the cash, but there is (if played by the original rules) generally less cash in play at the end than the beginning (free parking house rules tend to mess this up). The posters I was discussing this with noted that they had never known these things and never learned any of the lessons the game was supposedly trying to teach. As such, this made the game IMO a great failure, for the lesson that the other posters assumed that the game was about was 'Greed is Good' - something that would have broke the heart of the designer and made the designer regret they'd ever created the game.</p><p></p><p>Aside from that, Monopoly is also IMO, a very flawed game which has succeeded mostly out of people's ignorance of the alternatives or a lack of alternatives. In this day and age, there is no reason to play it accept as a historical curiosity.</p><p></p><p>I suspect that any attempt to teach complex lessons through simple didactic microgames are doomed to failure. </p><p></p><p>That got me thinking about what do I consider a game with my politics, which, to greatly simplify them to the point many will probably get the wrong idea, are often considered 'conservative' or 'Classical Liberal' (ei, Adam Smith, John Locke, Bastiat, Hayek, etc.) and so forth.</p><p></p><p>Well, it would probably look a lot like D&D, a game created by Gary Gygax, informed by the politics of Tracy Hickman, and in no small part inspired by the works of JRR Tolkien. It wouldn't look <em>exactly</em> like that game, because my views don't exactly agree any of those individuals, but the framework is close enough that it can be easily adopted to my purposes. Or it might look like a game like Civilization or Settlers of Cataan. What's particularly interesting is that there are games that I mechanically admire, but will not play, because they in various ways get too close to things I consider important. The very impulse to deal with a sacred subject through a leisure activity - that is to say, a sort of vanity - is not one that I approve of. Nor is it one that I think is particularly helpful and useful, because it results in bad art. Consider works like Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings', CS Lewis's 'The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe', George MacDonald's 'The Princess and the Goblin', Gene Wolfe's 'The Book of the New Sun', Orson Scott Card's 'Speaker for the Dead', JK Rawlings 'Harry Potter' series, or John C. Wright's 'The Golden Oecumene' trilogy. That is the art of 'my culture' or 'my politics', and it's at its best and more powerful and most important when it is the least didactic, and most cringe worthy when it gets overtly preachy (as in some of the later Narnia books or later OSC novels). And equally, when art that is not of my culture or politics is at its best, say Ursula K. LeGuin's masterful 'The Left Hand of Darkness', is when it's least preachy and most nuanced and is most showing and not telling. Now compare the works I mentioned earlier to the sort of dreary simplistic allegorical morality tales of the Victorian era meant to be instructive to children in good morals, which were so rightly parodied by Mark Twain. There is no contest. They may be try to teach something akin to my culture and my politics, but I will only castigate them as embarrassing, heavy handed, and counter-productive. </p><p></p><p>I think the same is going to be true of games.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7715207, member: 4937"] Earlier, one of the posters made a statement that if there was a game that focused on political beliefs he didn't subscribe to, that he'd be really excited by that and would purchase it and play it continually. At first I thought that I could prove him wrong by suggesting political microgames that he would not want to play. But then I realized as I was brainstorming that that any political microgame even if nominally was supposed to encourage discussion of things I actually believe would also be offensive to me, because it would trivialize things I consider too important (or in some cases, sacred). Further, any such game that took on a truly complex and serious topic, would invariably if it had just a simple tag line not actually teach the subject in a way that was respectful either to the subject or the mentality of those that I wanted to reach. In short, I started to realize from this exercise that I had the opposite opinion of the poster completely. Not only was I offended by these games that didn't have exactly my politics, but I probably would have been even more offended by (and embarrassed by) a game that was trying to represent itself as having my politics and viewpoint. I don't think that there is such a game as #mybeliefs because I don't think you can put my beliefs down into some one page didactic microgame and record them correctly much less teach others why I believe like I do. In another prior thread we had a discussion of the morality of Monopoly, which began as a game designed to teach a certain moral system, namely, a game designed to teach Georgist economics. In it I noted that, as in Georgist economics, the landlord and the taxman are the bad guys, and because the game is almost solely about rent seeking behavior, ultimately no one ends up winning. Someone ends with all the cash, but there is (if played by the original rules) generally less cash in play at the end than the beginning (free parking house rules tend to mess this up). The posters I was discussing this with noted that they had never known these things and never learned any of the lessons the game was supposedly trying to teach. As such, this made the game IMO a great failure, for the lesson that the other posters assumed that the game was about was 'Greed is Good' - something that would have broke the heart of the designer and made the designer regret they'd ever created the game. Aside from that, Monopoly is also IMO, a very flawed game which has succeeded mostly out of people's ignorance of the alternatives or a lack of alternatives. In this day and age, there is no reason to play it accept as a historical curiosity. I suspect that any attempt to teach complex lessons through simple didactic microgames are doomed to failure. That got me thinking about what do I consider a game with my politics, which, to greatly simplify them to the point many will probably get the wrong idea, are often considered 'conservative' or 'Classical Liberal' (ei, Adam Smith, John Locke, Bastiat, Hayek, etc.) and so forth. Well, it would probably look a lot like D&D, a game created by Gary Gygax, informed by the politics of Tracy Hickman, and in no small part inspired by the works of JRR Tolkien. It wouldn't look [I]exactly[/I] like that game, because my views don't exactly agree any of those individuals, but the framework is close enough that it can be easily adopted to my purposes. Or it might look like a game like Civilization or Settlers of Cataan. What's particularly interesting is that there are games that I mechanically admire, but will not play, because they in various ways get too close to things I consider important. The very impulse to deal with a sacred subject through a leisure activity - that is to say, a sort of vanity - is not one that I approve of. Nor is it one that I think is particularly helpful and useful, because it results in bad art. Consider works like Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings', CS Lewis's 'The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe', George MacDonald's 'The Princess and the Goblin', Gene Wolfe's 'The Book of the New Sun', Orson Scott Card's 'Speaker for the Dead', JK Rawlings 'Harry Potter' series, or John C. Wright's 'The Golden Oecumene' trilogy. That is the art of 'my culture' or 'my politics', and it's at its best and more powerful and most important when it is the least didactic, and most cringe worthy when it gets overtly preachy (as in some of the later Narnia books or later OSC novels). And equally, when art that is not of my culture or politics is at its best, say Ursula K. LeGuin's masterful 'The Left Hand of Darkness', is when it's least preachy and most nuanced and is most showing and not telling. Now compare the works I mentioned earlier to the sort of dreary simplistic allegorical morality tales of the Victorian era meant to be instructive to children in good morals, which were so rightly parodied by Mark Twain. There is no contest. They may be try to teach something akin to my culture and my politics, but I will only castigate them as embarrassing, heavy handed, and counter-productive. I think the same is going to be true of games. [/QUOTE]
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