My take on: Empathy Game Posted by abell32

abell32 posted: Empathy Game

https://narrativedigital.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/empathy-game/

I took some time to read the article and wanted to comment of the post by Ashley but I found that my comment was a bit too long. Therefore, I decided to write my thoughts on the article as a post.

So I read this article, and found it interesting. I also read a good number of the comments at the bottom and found those even more interesting. So the article describes a new type of game, that focuses on teaching empathy to children. The article never says that these empathy games are suppose to substitute parent teaching. Yet many of the comments reflect that type of thinking:

“Now a game is teaching kids something their parents should of taught them.”

“Learn empathy by helping needy people in real life? Community service, Volunteer, Maybe??”

“Computers and the Internet playing the role of the parent, making many people further desensitized and detached from the real world, and now video games–once an outlet to let out your stress and detach a little (and to let out your inner homicidal maniac)–are to teach their children how to play nice and live in the real world. Right, right, right. How about a good book, being a good role model, and some family quality time without graphics or a hard drive involved?”

I don’t understand this type of thinking…….. Why cant empathy games be an addition to what parents already teach their children? That’s how I see a lot of the learning games that I let my son play. I don’t let him play them so that he can solely learn from them, I let him play them so that he can practice and improve on what I am teaching him. He doesn’t find me holding up cards with letters on them and asking “what letter is this?” quite as fun as playing a game that involves learning the alphabet. Yet we still do both because I think both methods of learning are good and together are better than one.

Story – From one Medium to Another

“In 1964, Claude Bremond wrote: “Story is independent of the techniques that bear it along. It may be transposed from one to another medium without losing its essential properties: the subject of a story may serve as argument for ballet, that of a novel can be transposed to a stage or screen, one can recount in words a film to someone who has not seen it. These are words we read, images we see, gestures we decipher, but through them, it is a story we follow; and it could be the same story”…Nearly forty years later… the question of how the intrinsic properties of the medium shape the form of narrative and affect the narrative experience can no longer be ignored.” (Ryan 1)

Marie-Laure Ryan introduces Narrative Across Media: The Languages of Storytelling, by expressing the belief that story can be transferred from one medium to another and yet still be the same story. In my opinion, transferring a story from say a narrative text to a movie doesn’t have to change the story, like Ryan says, but it usually does. If story was completely unchanged from one medium to another, we wouldn’t have been discussing the movie and book representation of V for Vendetta two weeks ago.

When a story is in the form of a book, we create our own images of the characters, the setting and all other details. We do so based on the information that the author gives us through the text, as we read those self-created images form part of our story. Those images along with the text help us form opinions about the characters in the book and different stages of the plot. When a book is made into a movie, we are introduced with new images. New images that may not match what we pictured while reading the book. Images, sounds and other added effects of the movie/film  medium, can change our opinions of the characters and plot of a story. The underlying story in terms of abstraction can stay the same, however in lower levels of abstraction change is in fact made. It is that change that allows us to discuss the differences in a story when told through different mediums.

Limbo – The Story

The Story/ Lack of Story

I have been a strong believer in that a great story is what makes a great game.  Yet a game such as limbo has no defined story, and was quite a success from its beginning in Xbox Arcade. So is having an open ended game, where the story is left up to the interpretation of the gamer, just as successful as having a very well defined and interesting story? Perhaps it can be, if the game itself allows the user to make an interesting or intriguing story to go along with it. In other words, a great story does not necessarily have to be a pre-defined story.

What is the benefit of having an open ended story in a game? The story in any game is judged or criticized differently by each gamer. It may appeal to one audience, but seem uninteresting to many others. Yet an open ended story can be seen as multiple stories, due to the interpretation of each gamer, therefore it can appeal to a wider range of audiences.

My interpretation

The word limbo can be defined in multiple ways: a place between heaven and hell, a place of uncertainty, a state of uncertainty, a place of cleansing, etc. Each definition has its own positive or negative connotations that may make limbo seem closer to a hell than a heaven or vice versa. Due to the ‘dullness’ of the environment in the game, the spiders, the dead people and so on, it appears that Limbo is portrayed as a state that is closer to a hell than a heaven.  Aside from the limbo environment, all the game tells us is that a boy goes in search of his sister.  From this point on forward, the game is left up to the interpretation of the gamer. I interpreted the game in this way:

A boy dies but is unaware of his death. Prior to his death he was looking for his sister. Once he dies, he enters limbo and is uncertain of everything except for his ‘purpose’ of finding his sister. He goes through the entire Limbo environment/place doing anything he has to do to keep going and find his sister. Once he reaches the end of Limbo, he sees his sister but she doesn’t see him. It appeared to me that it was the moment of realization that he was dead. Yet the state of Limbo continues since the boy is right back where he started. So no matter how many times he goes through the Limbo environment, he will be unable to reach his sister since she is not in Limbo.

 

V for Vendetta – Behind the Painted Smile

When reading V for Vendetta, I had several questions in mind. I then realized those questions all came down to just …Why? For the sake of clarity, I found it useful to first discuss the questions that I had in relation to the creation of V for Vendetta. In a later blog, I will discuss further questions that relate to the actual plot and mechanics of the strip.

I found a useful article at the back of the book, but I am unaware of its inclusion in all printed versions of the book. The article is titled “Behind the Painted Smile” and was written by Alan Moore in 1983. Since “Behind the Painted Smile” provided an answer to all of my initial questions on the creation of V for Vendetta, I thought I’d share those answers and perhaps spur up some discussion.

Questions & Answers:

• Why is the story set in the near future? Why not the past or the present?

Creating a story that is interesting and exotic, begins with setting the time period of the story. Moore reasoned that what made many popular stories work, was what he called “the magic of a vanished age”. However, setting stories in the past requires some research which David Lloyd was not at all eager to do. Moore then realized that the “magic” that makes stories popular does not require a story to be set in the past. He writes, “It struck me that it might be possible to get the same effect by placing the story in the near future as opposed to the near past…we could create the same sense of mingled exoticism and familiarity without…the reference library.”

• Why is the story set in England? Why not a different country?

Creating a story that stands out and that is truly interesting often requires a change in what is currently already available. More writes that David and him “wanted to do something that would be uniquely British rather than emulate the vast amount of American material on the market”

• Why choose a totalitarian government as the antagonist of the story?

Making the antagonist of your story something you see as an antagonist in real life, can make it easier to write.  Moore somewhat confirms this when he writes, “since both Dave and myself share a similar brand of political pessimist, the future would be pretty grim, bleak and totalitarian, thus giving us a convenient antagonist to play our hero off against.”

• Why is the main character being portrayed as Guy Fawkes?

The main character, or hero of a story, should hold a clear opposition against the antagonist. If the antagonist is a totalitarian government, what better hero than one than one who revolts against the government. Lloyd wrote to Moore saying, “  why don’t we portray him as a resurrected Guy Fawkes, complete with one of those papier mache masks, in a cape and conical hat? He’d look really bizarre and it would give Guy Fawkes the image he’s deserved all these years. We shouldn’t burn the chap every Nov. 5^th but celebrate his attempt to blow up Parliament!”

 

 

Happiness: The Truth & The Lie

Jhally describes how advertisement is often designed to lure us into believing that a certain product will make us happy. While we might have been very happy before we saw a certain product advertisement, we are virtually stripped from our happiness and made to believe that obtaining the product will makes us happy again. This section of “Image-Based Culture” reminded me of a documentary that I saw a few months ago. The documentary is titled I AM, and was produced by former multimillionaire Tom Shadyac. In the documentary, Tom Shadyac himself tells the story of how he came to realize that becoming a multimillionaire made him no happier. In a later interview with Oprah, Tom said “I was standing in the house that my culture had taught me was a measure of the good life….I was struck with one very clear, very strange feeling: I was no happier.” It is in fact our culture that teaches us what the “good life” is, and that having the “good life” is what will make us happier.

However, there is a truth and a lie about happiness.  In the Tom’s documentary, one of the men that he interviews tells him that the truth is that if we are cold, hungry and without shelter, and someone takes us into a warm cottage we will be happier. The lie is that the more that we have the happier that we will be. 

The following is  the trailer to Tom’s documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qifJs_5Qy6k

The following article , describes Tom’s interview with Oprah after the documentary:

 http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Tom-Shadyac-From-Millionaire-to-Mobile-Home#ixzz2fUuJjtMR

Avatars

 

EASY

MEDIUM

HARD