Play This Thing on Brenda’s Train game
(Visited 10444 times) Game talk
May 122009
Play This Thing writes up Train, the controversial game that Brenda Brathwaite made that continues to stir discussion here on the blog.
She has sent me the rules to Train as well, but I don’t think I will write them up; my reaction is much like Greg Costikyan’s — the game is meant to be played, not the rules read with knowledge of the point. So discussing it solely from that point of view seems to undermine the actual work to some degree.
24 Responses to “Play This Thing on Brenda’s Train game”
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I feel like was fatally undermined the moment the big reveal was spoiled. Because I’ve read the articles and taken part in the earlier discussion, I’m never going to get to experience it as it was intended. Reading the rules to Train would be akin to reading the sheet music for a beautiful piece of music*. That’s not how it was meant to be experienced, but if you can’t hear then it’s better than nothing.
*assuming of course that you’ve got the ability to hear music in your head as you read it off the page.
Speaking as someone who has not bought into the cult of Brenda, I don’t see much more here than a bait-and-switch and a controversial subject. What if I invite you to a 20-minute deathmatch game, and after it is over, tell you “oh, by the way, all those guys you just shot were refugees from Darfur.”
According to the article, you would then have the option of preventing further deaths. Am I the only person who read that paragraph?
Sorry, but it still sounds like Mille Bornes with a trick ending at the conclusion of the game to me:
There’s nothing all that unique about this. Presumably if you see the game in an art gallery you’re going to have some idea that it’s not a typical game, but outside of that…. I really fail to see anything new here, or how having this presented as a game makes it any more interesting or important that if it were presented in a movie or a book. Narratives have had the ‘trick ending’ concept down pat for centuries; even many existing games make use of limited information, deception, trick endings, etc.
So why all the press? Unless the mechanics of the game itself are bringing something new to the table (as they can and have in past games, but don’t seem to be doing here), I don’t see what all the fuss is about, especially given that the historical situation being emulated (trains taking Jews to concentration camps) was one in which the people players are ‘role-playing’ indeed did have knowledge of what they were doing.
I was thinking about this more, and I think I come down in the “cheap shot, powerful subject” camp. Does the ‘blind’ mechanic really offer the player any unique insight into Nazism or genocide? I just don’t think so. Compare it to something like the song “If you could see her” from Cabaret.
I just don’t see how the unique construct of gaming is applied to convey novel thoughts or feelings in this case.
I wonder, would you all have the same reaction if it was called a sculpture installation in a gallery first, and then turned out to have gamelike characteristics?
Raph – I think we have different reactions to it if it were presented as a sculpture installation… I know I would (rather, I’d at least have a different initial reaction). Inasmuch as the first context I heard about the game was in an article about how Brenda was making 6 experimental board games, and that they were in some way shedding new light on old subjects (like how her middle-passage game helped her kid to ‘get’ it, so to speak), Train didn’t really seem to accomplish that end.
Even if it were presented as a gamelike or interactive museum/gallery piece, though, I’d still have the same issues with it – I don’t see what the game-like elements add to the experience that couldn’t be gotten in a more traditional form (written stories, films). There’s nothing wrong with putting a twist-ending on a conventional game, don’t get me wrong… I just don’t think that that trick ending makes the game itself particularly innovative or more valuable than others out there.
Brenda presented this game at the Triangle Game Conference during a session called “How I Dumped Electricity and Learned to Love Design” on the Game Design & Production track. The session description follows:
This session clearly had a “back to basics” or “roots” theme, and not a “my game is better than your game” theme.
Be that as it may, I can’t say I see anything that’s all that interesting about the ‘design’ of ‘Train,’ outside of perhaps the window dressing and the trick ending; but the window dressing and the trick ending don’t speak to me as some great, innovative, part of a game design. Nor – more importantly – does their use in a game seem to be part of approaching a subject from an unexplored and enlightening angle that a non-interactive piece of media is incapable of.
But honestly, you don’t make a game (or *any* work of art, for that matter) about the holocaust without the intention of trying to say something about it. And, IMO, there is some responsibility you accept when you try to tackle issues and history like the Holocaust and other genocides; you need to treat those subjects respectully – to use them as more than clever plot twists or window dressing or ‘gotcha’ moments. I look at the descriptions of the game and the presentation, and – based on that imperfect information (but keep in mind – however unfortunate, it is the best I have to go on) – the game’s use of the holocaust is more on the side of exploiting a heavy subject for emotional impact than it is a respectful and thoughtful treatment of the issue.
Of course, other people will likely have differing views, and, of course, that’s fine. I don’t hold any ill will against Brenda or anything like that; I just don’t see what all the fuss is about (well… actually, I do see what is about, I just don’t think it’s deserved).
I don’t see anything, either, but it’s already been established that it would be difficult to impossible to do so without actually experiencing the presentation. So instead of continuing to frustrate yourself trying to see something that’s mostly invisible to you, why don’t you look into trying it yourself? She’ll be presenting it here: http://www.gameeducationsummit.com/
The lesson in this simple game is powerful. It’s a reminder.
Right now, I’m wishing people would have learned the lesson better. We went with the flow once again, without looking where we are going. And now face economic collapse through a failure to respond properly or a self inflicted castration through overreaction, once again fostered by hate and zealousness. And there are some who are drooling over the prospect.
But hey! Lets argue the finer points of proper game design etiquette.
Have to note this tweet of Brenda’s: “Train does not have a trick ending.”
I really do think that judging this game without having seen it, played it, or read the rules, is simply jumping to conclusions.
Which would you prefer received more attention: a game designer who, at least, tries to approach the subject of moral choice with her medium or which recently made, no-talent celebrity is getting implants?
There is an outlet for everything. If you don’t like what you’ve been reading, perhaps you should consider reading different sources.
I think it’s a fair comparison, but I also think you’re underrating the artistic merit of Cabaret and that number in particular. Hearing “If You Could See Her” for the first time is like ending a comic waltz with a switchblade to the kidney. It’s a painful cheap shot that may leave a viewer angry for being manipulated.
That’s good. Maybe people will remember that anger the next time somebody is presenting corrosive hate as “just a joke” or “just a job” or “patriotism” or “godliness”. Because as I see it, the point of the exercise isn’t “the Holocaust was a bad thing”. The point is, “see how easy it is to use normal people to accomplish extraordinary evil”.
In my view, that “trick ending”, the jarring, horrifying shift in perspective, parallels the context shifts that people in the real world utilize to justify all manner of harm. You can deny insurance coverage for life-saving treatments, withhold food from people who are starving, blow up children, turn a blind eye to an unholy campaign of genocide because really, from an economic/geopolitical context, it’s all about the bottom line, right?
Nothing personal. It’s just business. It’s just politics. It’s just a game.
Because it has clues in it, I assume is what she means.
I hope this isn’t true. This game, if it can be played by small groups acting as each player, perhaps with a timer, could be a very special learning tool in schools everywhere. Imagine a classroom playing this game before or after the history lesson covers this topic. I could see donors paying the costs, easily.
Your first bit is pretty much a textbook definition of a false dichotomy, and as that’s the case, I’m not sure it’s really worth a response.
As far as there being an ‘outlet for everything,’ of course there is! I recognized that fact in my own post (“Of course, other people will likely have differing views”). I don’t think that means, however, that I shouldn’t read about or discuss things with which I don’t agree or of which I’m critical…. that approach, IMO, only leads to increasingly isolated groups of incredibly-like-minded individuals who aren’t exposed to other points of view. And that, I think, is a bad thing – one of those things that taken to the extreme can result in many of the inhumanities that Brenda’s games attempt to explore in the first place.
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Michael Chui: I’d love to attend a talk on this game or see it in person; I don’t think my views would change, but I recognize that it’s entirely possible that they would. That said, Pittsburgh is a long way from Southern California, games and game-design are but a hobby I enjoy, so going to a multiple-day game-design conference may be a bit much, and, besides all that, I’ve already got a vacation scheduled for the dates of that conference anyways! C’est la vie.
I agree, but the key is in how the artwork gets you to that place. In If You Could See Her (which I think is brilliant; I hope I didn’t come across as trying to criticize it), you can’t help but be drawn in by the simple sight gag, in what by that point has been an hour-long show filled with bawdy simple humor. When you get to that ending, you really get some insight into how it feels to be glib about persecution (because you’ve been feeling that way for about three minutes) and you learn how to spot things within yourself that you might otherwise not have.
How does Train achieve something similarly valuable via a similar mechanic, is my question. Is it that we’re learning how competitiveness drives us to horrible acts?
Bret, competitiveness is a normal part of our nature. That’s not the point. The point is that when people don’t ask “what are we doing here?” and just follow along with their own personal goals, maybe for money or for status, their efforts can be used by others for things they wouldn’t otherwise support.
Raising money for charity sounds like a good thing. A person might easily be recruited to participate in the effort. But then, if that charity is found to be supplying money to terrorists, how does that person feel?
Adding a competitive nature to such doesn’t really have anything to do with this point.
However, there was a much more insidious nature to the Germany situation in this game. Hate. After WWI, Germany was forced to accept reparations and economic restrictions. The other nations felt they had the right to this, to force Germany to pay for their crimes against the other nations and to make another war almost impossible to wage by Germany due to stunted growth. But ask yourself why the Jews? Because they controlled the banks and the money in Germany. Ironically, the Jews were breaking down those barriers forced on Germany, slowly but successfully. But their success was turned to hate by the Nazi rising. They were the scapegoat that the Nazi party needed to solidify their position in taking over Germany. The German people were unhappy with their economic problems, and blaming the rest of Europe didn’t do anything for a party seeking control. They needed to divide the German people themselves, take away the economic strength of their rivals within Germany. And what better group to accomplish this than one that already had a hate for the Jews? The rest of Germany didn’t want to see where they were going. They wanted success themselves. It was easy to cast all the blame on those who had found success.
And this should raise the hairs on the back of your neck. The parallels to today’s blame game in America are all to familiar. Change. Yes, Germany wanted change. They got change. They just didn’t see where that change was leading them.
Raph points out: Have to note this tweet of Brenda’s: “Train does not have a trick ending.”
To put this in context, she tweeted shortly thereafter: “History does not have a trick ending.”
The point, I think, is that there is a parallel between the realization of what is happening in Train as you play, and the realization of what was happening in Germany in the 1940s.
I agree with the parallel, disagree with the bit about the endings. You could definitely say that history has “trick endings”… in 1941, did anyone see the events of the next four years? Probably not, else history would have gone quite differently.
Going to chime in my two cents here, so this is my interpretation, your mileage may vary. First the new article is worlds better in giving me an idea of what the experience is like.
The first article made me think it was, hmm, well picture a first person shooter. At the end of each chapter you get a cut scene, and you start to suspect that the guy you work for isn’t a good man. But you don’t have any real choices, your either do the next mission or stop playing. At the end of the last mission, you get a cut scene and find out the whole time you were working for the Nazis. Then the game ends.
The article gives me a much different feel. Picture an RPG game. As you move around the game world you start to get hints that somethings not right. Then you find out your partner is really trying to take over the world! And then you get the airship and the game shift out of linear story and into sandbox mode. You can either fight them, or team up with them, or do something else. You can go Dark Side and get Dark Side powers, or side with the angels, or try and mix and match.
So the game doesn’t have a trick ending because the reveal is not the end. Unless that’s what the players decide to do after the reveal, but I suspect that has yet to happen. (What if they threw a war and nobody came?) So I do like what she has done here, I think it has value in that it can make you think, critical thinking, outside of the box thinking.
That said, I don’t think it’s a game. I don’t see it fitting the definition that Bartle had set as I understand it. I think this is performance art with a major audience participation aspect. It’s a experiment, like the Milgram experiment.
@Ian
Do you see the events for the next four years? Very few people claim they can predict the future, and even less of them are right. I wouldn’t call unexpected life events a “trick ending” because honestly most of our life experiences are unexpected and unpredictable.
Adrian Veldt: “Jon, wait, before you leave… I did the right thing, didn’t I? It all worked out in the end.”
Dr. Manhattan: “‘In the end?’ Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”
Some did see it coming. They made their warnings, but few listened. The biggest problem was that the masses in Germany weren’t listening, the second biggest was that the rest of the world as a whole didn’t.
in part, from linked article
Early in the next month, Hitler gave an interview with The Times in which he explained that the Nazi Party was “not out for a bloody revolution.” He went on to proclaim that his party had made itself “the second strongest party, and at the next election we shall become the strongest party in the Reich.” Hitler assured the interviewer that, “We will conquer political power by strictly legal means.”5
A few days later, Hitler gave a speech to approximately 30,000 Nazis celebrating the recent elections. Hitler described the electoral process as the battle for a new German soul and national spirit. He went on to state that the recent election was merely a milestone on the road towards their final goal, which was the radical reformation of Germany by legal means.6
Churchill Not Convinced
Churchill had been following the news from Germany in detail and wasn’t convinced. On October 19, 1930, he met with Prince Bismarck at the German Embassy to discuss current events. When the topic of Hitler and the Nazi Party arose, Churchill acknowledged Hitler’s declarations that he had no intention of waging a war of aggression, however, as the Prince noted, Churchill “was convinced that Hitler or his followers would seize the first available opportunity to resort to armed force.”7
The Prince documented the conversation and sent it to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin. The Senior Counselor at the German Embassy in London attached a note stating, “Although one should always bear in mind Winston Churchill’s very temperamental personality when considering his remarks, they nevertheless deserve particular attention.”
He concluded about Churchill, “as far as can be humanly foreseen he will play an influential role in any Conservative government in years to come.
Truth.