Foggy Cornslakes

Do different systems, mechanics, and structures in games relate to different cultures (Western, East Asian, etc.), or to different Ideologies (capitalism, socialism, pacifism…), or can these things only be expressed through the content of a game (themes, plot, settings…)? This topic came up on Idle Weekend, and has since been discussed at length on the forums. Here is a recap of everything relevant so far as far as I can tell: The original Reader Mail - "What games have mechanics entwined with the specific culture, and what games merely use a culture as a dressing for a more universal game system?" https://soundcloud.com/idlethumbs/idle-weekend-destined-for-a-reboot#t=53:00 Alt-games in relation to the topic: https://soundcloud.com/idlethumbs/idle-weekend-1816-keyframing-the-issues#t=33:22 The ensuing discussion took place on the forums: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/10652-idle-weekend-january-8-2016-keyframing-the-issues/ I think you could say in general that so far there is pretty much a consensus that mechanics can reflect ideology, while culture is reflected by content and themes. I then wrote about a game I'm working on, to which this discussion was relevant (I wasn't sure if I should post it on the game development section, and decided against it since there are mainly technical questions and dev logs there): https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/10669-idle-weekend-january-15-2016-zombie-train-beyond-earth/#entry393015 ...and was instructed to form a separate thread, in order not to spam the Idle Weekend discussion. Sorry if this isn't the most elegant way to open a thread, but there you go.

Yes, I don't disagree that all video game systems are somewhat abstracted, and that this abstraction leaves a gap that is often filled by the creators ideas and assumptions. The difference is that some ideas and assumptions are rooted in actually proven concepts, while other are objectively speaking... not. I'm not saying that game mechanics *should* be apolitical, just that there is a value to looking at the political message that they inevitably carry, and consider them, which I feel is something that is very often glossed over in cases of critical writing about games. Best exception to this I can think of is the writing of Carolyn Petit, which I often find very to the point. I don't think that we have a fundamental disagreement about this, but rather that we don't agree on the semantics, which is probably my fault - not being a native English speaker and what not. Maybe I'm missing something - but have the actual mechanics of romance in Bioware games changed? I know it wasn't possible in the past to have non hetro relationships, but I consider this to be a change of content rather of mechanics – the model and the voice of the romanceable have changed, but the mechanics are basically the same as far as I can tell. Furthermore - I think generally when people say something is "culturally western", they actually mean "ideologically western". I can't see a common thread running through the cultures of the western world apart from capitalism. Can you think of a game that has an "American" Mechanic rather than a "Western" one? Again, this is mostly semantics, but I think it's important to find some common terms in order to have a focused conversation.

So, would you say that generally, in the context of city building/management games, the more "unrealistic" the mechanics are the more they convey an ideology? I mean, if Sim City had a real time particle system that actually simulated every molecule in the air, and had temperature calculated based on actual physics, so that the way pollution worked was exactly 1:1 to reality, I wouldn't consider that to be an environmentalist message, but rather just being accurate. So maybe that means that the ideology of a game mechanic can only be seen in how it differs from reality? So, for example, if your game as systems that emulate a capitalistic economy, such as stores, and money/xp you can invest or hoard, but doesn't have systems that showcase how capitalism can make life really hard of some people, then you could call the mechanics capitalistic? I haven't really had much time to think about this, but I wonder what does that mean about the message of having black/white morality, or dialogue trees, which are both pretty far from how reality works. To be clear, I'm not proposing that every mechanic carries a message automatically by being not 100% accurate to reality, but rather that a gap between how a mechanic attempts to represent a real life system and how that system actually works can sometimes intersect with an existing ideology, and the results can be problematic in that they convey a message which the developers maybe haven't considered. Sorry about my English, again...

Yes, you are correct, I've used the wrong term, what I meant wasn't a "win condition", but rather the criteria which is used to measure the success of the city, regardless of whether this criteria actually results in a "you win" screen. Don't most city builders have a particular stat that you can say that the objective of the game is to get as high as possible, like happiness of the residents? Maybe not. I guess I really don't know enough about the subject to have an educated opinion.

I think this actually came up during a discussion on the Idle Thumbs podcast: Also, there are multiple Errant Signal video about the subject: I haven't played many (actually, any) city building/management games, but it seems to me that when people talk about different ideas expressed in different games of the genre, they do that based more by the win conditions than by the moment to moment mechanics. This is interesting by itself because that means that the game frames itself around getting your city to some goal, which in itself is a very narrow way to look at construction that largely matches capitalist ideals, regardless of what this goal actually is.[/size] [/size] Again, I'm not really familiar with most of these games, so I could be totally wrong, but that is the feeling I got from hearing discussion around this subject.[/size]

@juv3nal Thanks! I think I actually had this instinct when reading some tales in preperation, but you putting it in words really helped. @Ninja Dodo Hmm, since I'm not making the game *about* the occupation or *about* Israeli-Palestinian relationship, but rather about using the knowledge you've acquired to solve problems (specifically knowledge regarding the use of software, programming and some hardware stuff), I'm not sure I want to actually confront the subject head on. Also, because of production constraints, I can't actually create two different experiences for different audiences. That being said, there is something in common to all of the users - they were all failed by the capitalist system, don't have as many opportunities as many of the people around them, and are often being discriminated against. I don't think I have to make an ultra-realistic copy of the real state here, but I do feel that it would be irresponsible to design mechanics and/or themes that reflect the very same system that is to blame for many of the problems of these children (It is very, very likely that the occupation would have ended long ago if it wasn't for the interests of the military industrial complex in Israel, which again, goes back to capitalism). I am not sure how much of the bad experiences of young Palestinians are consciously attributed by them to the occupation. I realize this sentence can be read as extremely patronizing, but that isn't my intention: what I'm trying to say is that by having a direct allegory to the occupation (as opposed to generally un-fair themes or mechanics), I'm not sure I'm actually making any steps toward the game being perceived as true to the real experiences of the users. Regarding having different difficulty levels - that is actually a really interesting idea, and I'll keep it in mind as an option, if I have enough time to implement it. Thank you very much for the response. @Cordeos I think there is no question that Western and Japanese concepts are really ingrained in how we think about what games are, and thus inform games made by and about other cultures as well. Torren and Never Alone are also based on "standard" mechanics, while thematically being very much tied to the culture of the devs. But I do think that there are exceptions to this rule: 1) Some old games, that came out before many of the basic concepts that are now ingrained in games were considered the normal, like Cosmology of Kyoto, and maybe 2) really small games (aka alt games, queer games) - this was touched upon in previous posts by Foxmom Niamh 3) Games that are very much based around a culture seem to take some of it into the mechanics. The two games that came to mind are From Dust, and WiLD, which, perhaps interestingly, both relate to cultures which aren't the culture of the devs. Both of these games have main mechanics which I think channel beliefs and ideas that regardless of what thematic/narrative they are integrated with. I think that given the fact that most people who have access to the tools necessary to make games also have an access to the internet (maybe I'm wrong, I haven't actually checked this), they are also more exposed and influenced by other cultures, which is why looking for different mechanics in games from different parts of the world seems to be a little bit problematic. Given the context in which games are made today, in order for a game not to be very Western in its mechanics it takes very deliberate planning on part of the developers, regardless of whether they grew up in a different culture or not.

Oh, I'm really sorry about that - I created a new thread to discuss that here: https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/10670-can-game-mechanics-be-ingrained-with-cultureideology/ Again, sorry about sort of stumbling through the forums...

I guess I'll just post this here, though it is more relevant to the previous episodes, but it does have a loose connection to games as escapism as opposed to games as documentation/reflection of experiences. The discussion about mechanics that can be attributed to specific cultures was really interesting to me. I am currently struggling with a not really but kind of related conflict. I live in Israel, and am working for a nonprofit organization working to narrow the technological gap between people of different social and economic status. My work there, specifically, is making educational games. I am currently working on a game that is structured in a very similar way to The Yawhg. I loved The Yawhg - it was one of my favorite things to play last year, which is partly why I chose to make a game similar to it in the first place - but we really wanted to differ from it in some ways. Most importantly, we wanted to look at what the mechanics conveyed, and "marry" that with the message we wanted to deliver. Notably, The Yawhg is I guess what you would call a capitalistic game. All the characters start out with exactly the same stats regardless of gender or race (which I guess stems from Damian and Emily trying to make a point against people who try to justify social constructs that discriminate people based on their innate characteristics), and have to gain wealth and level-up different stats. In this way, the game is very fair, but also appears to me to have a very capitalistic point of view on success. Now, I see where the devs were coming from – if you make a fantasy world, which the world in the game I'm making will also be, you might as well ignore racism or sexism in order to provide escapism for all. The thing is – as I've said, the game will make its way almost exclusively to the hands of children on the lower end of the social-economical spectrum, who are, at least in part, victims of the capitalist system. Furthermore, some of these children are probably going to be Arab Israelis and Palestinians, who don't have nearly as many opportunities in life as Jewish Israelis do. Because of this, I feel like having a game with systems that imply that people have an equal opportunity will be both not representing of the experience these children had in their life so far, and selling them a lie. That first point is crucial because one of our goals in combining the educational material with a narrative context is seeding the idea that there is use for the things that are learned in real life (this might sound a little far-fetched considering that the game takes place in an entirely fantastical world, but the point is to show how what the child learned can assist them in problem solving, and so we need to present our problems in a relatable way). One way we approached this is designing the world around tropes and themes of middle-eastern folk tales instead of the European standard of dragons and castles of The Yawhg (think Arabian Nights instead of Grimms' Fairy Tales). Other ways are making the game a little more "soft but unfair" as Foxmom Niamh put it. We also don't include a Wealth stat, and we randomly choose characters names from a pool of both Arabic and Hebrew names. I was wandering how I could also change the mechanics to reflect values that will be both true to the experiences of the children (which, what with the occupation and everything, are very different for Palestinians compared to Arab or Jewish Israelis) and convey our point, which is that further fluency in technology can improve your life, open up new opportunities, and is very much a utility all around. What do you think - am I thinking too much into this, considering that this is a really just a nice way to make the classes more engaging? Oh, on an unrelated note, if you want a good example of culturally charged mechanics - I guess that the death mechanics in Cosmology of Kyoto are pretty much tied with some Buddhist concepts. Sorry about the long post, and about the probably not perfect English, Have a great day!