More genocidal Tetris
One of the most commonly repeated or recited snippets from Theory of Fun for Game Design is the notion of dressing substantially changing a game experience, using the example of a Tetris clone reskinned to mimic a gas chamber.
Letās picture a game wherein there is a gas chamber shaped like a well. You the player are dropping innocent Jews down into the gas chamber, and they come in all shapes and sizes. There are old ones and young ones, fat ones and tall ones. As they fall to the bottom, they grab onto each other and try to form human pyramids to get to the top of the well. Should they manage to get out, the game is over and you lose. But if you pack them in tightly enough, the ones on the bottom succumb to the gas and die.
I do not want to play this game. Do you? Yet it is Tetris. You could have well-proven, stellar game design mechanics applied towards a quite repugnant premise.
Folks who have been reading the blog for a while may also recall that a team in Brazil actually built such a Tetris, called CalabouƧo TƩtrico. I blogged about it here.
Today, I stumbled across this little gem of an article relating a similar story I had never heard. It’s in Italian (Google translation here), but the gist of it is that a Slovenian website called MladinaĀ made an editorial game about Tito partisans and the pro-Nazi Slovene Home Guard, back in 2000.
Apparently this game caught the notice of the Italian parliament and was censored! You can play it here anyway.
And now, EastPak uses the same concept for an ad. š
9 Responses to “More genocidal Tetris”
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I always had a question about that piece.
It keeps puzzling me and I really can’t find a satisfying answer. We often say that the real power of games lies in their mechanichs. That the strongest messages can be conveyed by mechanichs (and games like Train and 12th September seem to be pretty clear about that).
Even in your book you state that players correctly decode mechanics making them separate from the aesthetic layer (I’m obviously talking about the GTA blow job example, which for players is just a power up, with a different meaning compared to the “narrative” layer).
That sounds mostly right to me, but still I can’t understand how you can conciliate this with the genocidal Tetris example, which look just as right, but is in open contradiction with the whole “mechanic is the message” concept.
Can you help me here? Thanks!
I would say that the real power of games lies in their use as learning mechanisms, and that their power as learning mechanisms lies in their mechanics. But the dressing of those mechanics absolutely impacts the learning.
Furthermore, just because the unique power of games comes from their mechanics doesn’t mean that the strengths of other media aren’t applicable as well. They each have their own unique strengths, after all, which assist with empathy, emotional response, and so on.
The greatest power will then come when mechanic and dressing are in synch on the message they are presenting.
I wrote a little bit about this here: https://www.raphkoster.com/2006/03/05/a-bit-on-how-i-think-games-work/
Personally, I like to look at video games as both playing an abstract game (‘mechanics’) and reading/writing a story (part of the ‘dressing’). The genocidal Tetris is the exact same game as normal Tetris, but with another (much more explicit and horrifying) story implied by the aesthetics.
When you’re playing a very good singleplayer RPG, it’s easy to see how you’re both learning/mastering the mechanics and reading/writing a very good book. The two influence each other, both in the player’s perception and in the development process, but they can also be judged separately. The non-mechanics part of genocidal Tetris could be judged like any other story, and I don’t think it’d get many awards.
I agree completely with Raph that the power of games lies in their use as learning mechanisms. They can teach us things which a book or a movie never could. That is arguably reason enough to want to be a game developer. However, that doesn’t mean the ‘dressing’ cannot at the same time be just as immensely satisfying and/or insightful as a book or a movie. Just look at Ultima 7, Planescape: Torment, Deus Ex, or Dragon Age: Origins (a few examples out of many and the same can be just as true of non-RPGs). I don’t think Raph ever meant otherwise (correct me if I’m wrong) but the vocabulary does tend to cause some confusion.
I read the comment as more asking: is Tetris a good fit to Genocide? One could (can) make a more compelling experience for that discussion with a different mechanic, and/or one could choose a different dressing that better synergizes with Tetris.
Which is to say, it is a matter of choosing a good pairing to create the dialogue/experience/communication that is your ultimate goal. (Or, as in the above case, choosing a pairing specifically for their contrast or because they mismatch or to present something in an odd or novel way. Sometimes art is supposed to be jarring or ugly, if that even needs to be stated.)
I’ve always questioned the social value of the ball courts in Palenque and the subterannean mazes in Crete. The games played at Chaco Canyon likely sustained a culture of power we would not want to live among. There is a long history where game and ritual are mixed to train people to accept the unacceptable. Caveat emptor.
BTW: saw your tweet about the tornados. Power is finally back on as of yesterday. Damage is significant. Failures of regional systems (TVA) significant. In game terms, multiple strikes with sufficient force at the same time are more effective at taking out regional systems than one big one. It also depends on where. Tuscaloosa is better footage for the news because it was in the most urban area. The intensity in the north was as bad but took a track across farmland and subdivisions. Missed my house by a few hundred yards. We’ve had a helluva a week but we’re ok.
There is usually a revealing moment in the middle of the worst stuff. Do you know when you are in the middle of hundreds of square miles of darkness, there are millions more stars in the sky? Awe!
Things I’ve learned from MMO mechanics:
1. The problems of the average person on the street matter only so long as you can obtain money, equipment and experience by helping them. When you outlevel their issues, it’s time to leave and never look back.
2. Crime, evil and war can’t be beaten. They can only be temporarily reduced until they respawn.
3. The best solution to most any problem is the application of massive amounts of physical violence. Attempting to negotiate with mobs or offering terms for surrender just makes you look silly. Kill them all.
4. When faced by complex problems that require thought and patience to solve, it’s easier to just look up spoilers on the Internet.
5. Life is a series of tasks that you complete in set order towards a preordained reward. If you deviate from the checklist, it just costs time and nets you nothing (except maybe an exploration badge).
6. Success is the acquistion of wealth, power and possessions as quickly and efficiently as possible.
7. Fighting other people is fun, easy, and has no lasting consequences.
8. Natural resources are infinite, extracting them has no impact of note, and their sole purpose is to enrich the industrious.
9. Slaughtering all the trash mobs (birds, animals, gypsies) in a region increases the chance that more lucrative targets will spawn.
10. Money doesn’t grow on trees. It grows in chests at the bottom of abandoned mines.
It would be fun to compare that list of goals and tips, Yukon, to games where the ability to organize and operate networks quickly in the face of overwhelming events is vital to survival. Digital games seem to suffer from FPS mental models: monolithic, non-integrative, last man standing wins. I’m not being warm and fuzzy here; there are games that we play seriously that depend entirely on the ability to assess what is in the knapsack fast, then use it to get replacements for what is in the knapsack of yourself and the near players without raiding each other’s knapsacks even as trading is encouraged. Turn the power grid or water off and watch. For the most part, people are amazingly resillient, cooperative and adaptible. There are predatory types and they are easy to recognize and remember.
The fight to overcome entropy is almost entirely reliant on memory and a little energy. I am fascinated by the games of using very low-end energy sources to acquire or reacquire larger ones particularly as the low-end systems can be applied to just-in-time communications dedicated to establishing local and scalable networks.
Thanks Ralph!
I’m glad you enjoyed my article. š
Yes, the game caught the notice of the Paliament. As far as I know it happened also with Rule of Rose, Rapelay and with the italian satirical game Operation: Pedopriest.
The right wing minister Lucio Stanca asked the game to be censored as insulting, even if there were no italians in it (all the “blocks” are supposed to be slovenian). Mladina, that in fact is a satirical newspaper, refused to delete it.
The italian website Molleindustria was forced to a partial censorship of his game Pedopriest,instead.
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