The Game Lost

Quoting from B/X Blackrazor's recent blog post, Kids on Bikes, in which JB says,

"The designers' choice was to deliberately shy away from anything sticky or messy or painful.  The first page is devoted to 'setting boundaries;' it is, in fact the first true part of play ... and while I'm a fan of Ron Edwards ... for a game of this type I find it all ... well, inappropriate.  A game of this type should be pushing boundaries, not setting them."

 A part of me reads this and wants to go on a tear about the infantilisation of human interaction and why none of us are ever supposed to let the big bad world invade our comfort zones when we get together with our friends to play a game.  Supportive of that, I could probably pull together some films or books, aimed at either children or adults, where those subjects are brought up and dealt with, whereas in games we're still looking an interpretation of reality as close to the bone as Carcasonne's management of land in 14th century France.  Say it with me now: not at all.

But I have to grant that games in our culture are definitely not treated as art, or made to constructively address issues.  Artworks can afford to be unpopular.  A film can be seen by a few hundred or a few thousand people and still be a meaningful work.  Artworks only need attention.  Games need a culture ... without that, they are unsuited for anything but the trashbin.  Is it any wonder that a game company will do anything to avoid risking that culture by drumming up a subject that will make players uncomfortable?

That was not a problem in pre-PC culture D&D, which despite the efforts to flag game situations and discourage squicky subjects like sex (which is only a participation sport for everyone on the planet) possesses a legacy that won't be entirely quashed.  Naturally, we expect to see things like this turn up, where the game play culture being created contains expectations that as a DM you will "lead by example" and "model the behavior" of your game players:

“I’d like your help. Your help to make this game fun for everyone. If anything makes anyone uncomfortable in any way… [ draw X on an index card ] …just lift this card up, or simply tap it [ place card at the center of the table ]. You don’t have to explain why. It doesn't matter why. When we lift or tap this card, we simply edit out anything X-Carded. And if there is ever an issue, anyone can call for a break and we can talk privately. I know it sounds funny but it will help us play amazing games together and usually I’m the one who uses the X card to protect myself from all of you! Please help make this game fun for everyone. Thank you!"

It's easy to laugh at this because the roots of D&D were firmly established long before "the organizers" arrived.  The original game ideal and context was established in thousands of articles and hundreds of games ~ any kid, anywhere, raised in an environment with x-cards, can one day stumble across a Dragon magazine or a copy of Tomb of Horrors and realize suddenly that randomly killing everything and anything, including murdering prostitutes, was a socially functional experience for tens of thousands of players.  It didn't bother us.  It wasn't any more real than the massacre of whole armies in RISK or Axis and Allies.

For a modern game manufacturer, however, faced with a strike force of helicopter parents descending on game stores to help little Billy and Jody play D&D ~ or any other game ~ not having some standard in place is a terrifying prospect.  When we played in the 70s and early 80s, we were ignored by our parents; they didn't give a shit what we did in the kitchen Friday night as long as we were quiet enough we didn't spoil their Friday night TV line-up.  Hell, they'd go out to see a movie and leave a bunch of us 15-year-old prostitute slayers the run of the house.  Gamestore owners were trolls who rented storefronts that no one else would rent, badly lit and heated buildings with brick facing in rundown neighborhoods.  No parent ever entered a place like that.  If a gamestore ran a game night, no parent ever knew about it.  My friends Asif and Scott and John sure as hell weren't going to tell them.  Come 13, our goal in life was to find places to escape our parents ... we did not invite them to come along.

What here needs an x-card?

We appreciate that we're no longer in the grips of the Satanic Panic (and here's a great video talking about how it affected way more than role-playing games), but nowadays the game culture faces something much, much worse: parents.  Bereft of any guideline to properly prepare their children to face the real world, parents are desperately looking for any bubble-wrap that will protect their darling dearies against the terrible, awful real world.  My gawd, we can't have our precious dearest upset by things like bodily fluids, injuries and poverty in a role-playing setting!  Oh... My... Gawd.  We can't have ... yelling ... at a game.  We can't discuss disease, or dogs put in danger, or sharp objects or ~ heaven bless me ~ going to the bathroom [shudder] infecting a game my child is going to play!  I want my treasured Billy-boy to know he only has to reach out his tiny finger and touch a little safe card on the table to make sure all that ickyness goes away.  At once!  Only then can I breathe, knowing my Billy is safe.

Inventors of this nonsense are seizing opportunities to impose themselves in the place that religious nutjobs held in the 80s; the chance to spread fear that the game will damage the fragile little brains of children and that the children ~ and adults who are just as fragile ~ from these ideas that need not to exist in what some imagine game culture should be.  Games, if you'll excuse the expression, are meant to be fun.  Fun, clearly, as defined by teletubbies, rainbow brite, elmo and the care bears.  Oops, sorry, the satanic panic vid I posted clearly defined rainbow brite as Satanic.  You just never know.

This sensitivity of games, and game culture, is a serious reflection on my own arguments of games as artworks.  Artworks don't have to deal with any of this shit.  Of course, the fuckwits always try to get in the way, but they endlessly lose ground.  And history judges them harshly.

Games, on the other hand, continuously lose ground.  Where the Satanic Panic failed to restrain the course of rock music and literature, D&D did not recover.  It's still losing ground.  The game space is a political battleground where fun is imposed, not inspired.