Class discussion for "Gaming Homer" online course

[Roger Travis]

Now let's see if I can get this thing linked up on HuskyCT. . .

[Warren Nesteruk]

I was able to reach this from Husky CT on the actual module, but there is some confusion because the syllabus link leads to the other thread from the intersession discussions. Otherwise, good to go.

[Roger Travis]

Thanks, Warren. I'll fix that.

[Alex Meeske]

Ok, I'm on board.

[Dan Emmons]

So do we write our 250 words here?

[Warren Nesteruk]

Yes sir, this is our discussion hub.

[Roger Travis]

That is correct, sir!

[Warren Nesteruk]

Lets get this started! I have to admit that my first instinct was to discuss the topic of "in medias res", because it seems like a great starting point in this course.

My personal feeling is that the better (and I will also define "better") the "in medias res" is executed by either the game or the bard, the more closely one can relate the bardic tradition with video games. In my personal opinion, as a reader of epic, and a player of countless video games, to me the "better" in medias res is the one which forces the reader/player into a position where they want to know more about their history. There needs to be 1. A presentation that there is a large amount of information 2. A motivation for wanting to learn the information and 3. Something must be done to obtain it.

For example, within the Iliad, the opening invocation provides plenty of proof that there is sufficient information for this text to be a worthwhile venture. There is the immediate introduction of this character Achilles (kleos right off the start), and then a vague description of various themes which demonstrates in my opinion an abundance of upcoming content, as opposed to merely saying "Here is Achilles, a man who will kill people". Next there is an enticing set of details with provocative vocabulary (Rage, Death, Souls, Bodies), tightly tucked into the invocation itself. Playing on human nature, and the unfortunate lust humans have for death and combat, there is plenty of motivation (along with the mysterious invocation itself) to pursue the bards story. And finally for the information to be obtained, the reader must read, or traditionally the bard must sing his tale.

Likewise in video games, an almost identical presentation of information and motivation must be present, and then we as the bard can move forward to paint the picture in order to obtain the information. I guess my overall observation and realization is that the better a video game follows the bardic tradition of invocation of some sort, the more I feel as if I am telling a story (in search of the truth) as opposed to playing out a set of objectives that are predetermined and empty. Ironically, in a society where we are told video games are distracting us from our studies, in a well versed video game, playing the game as if we were a bard singing a song, is the opposite of counter productive. Painting our own picture while we are in search for whatever inevitable truths or information that rest around the corner is a valuable and applicable skill in real life. I am not saying driving your car over old women in grand theft auto IV is educational, but that is your choice and your choices as the bard will arrive at certain truths fundamental to the themes of the bardic tradition.

I know I wrote too much. My apologies. I am going to make another post now where I dive a bit farther into the video game world.

[Warren Nesteruk]

As a great example of in medias res, I would like to take a look at the game The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. A link to the introduction can be found here.

(Forgive his recording quality when he is in game, I do not know what is wrong. Morrowind obviously doesn't strobe like a club rave)

http://www.xfire.com/video/5d3bd

The introduction opens with the quotation "Each event is preceded by prophecy, but without the hero, there is no event" Zurin Aretus - The Undertaking. While in a literal sense this is obviously telling the player he will become a hero, I feel it ties in perfectly to our topic of telling the story as a bard. Without the player playing the game, no events will occur. Without the bard singing the story, there will be no story. I fully believe the creators understood this concept.

On the next page, it states "In the waning years of the third era of Tamriel, a prisoner born on a certain day to uncertain parents was sent under guard, without explanation, to Morrowind, ignorant of the role he was to play in that nation's history..."

Now the audience has been provided with some details, where you are from, where you are going, and what you may eventually believe. I feel it provides enough information to show the amount of content, but at the same time conceals your history, so you can search for it and figure it out.

To really seal the deal, on the next screen there is a sand storm blasted terrain with a scrolling language that you will not understand, and there is the invocation by a goddess that you will later learn to be Azura, essentially a wisdom parallel to Athena.

She states "They have taken you from the imperial cities prison, first by carriage and now by boat. To the east, to Morrowind. Fear not, for I am watchful, you have been chosen."

And then as she finishes speaking, the mysterious language turns to English, with the last sentence of the long scrolling text saying "Many fall, but one remains".

I feel this example perfectly fits the mold I described in my previous posts, and I just really want to share it. Hope you enjoyed.

[Kevin Ballestrini]

Warren,

Great opening post on the concept of in medias res. After reading your post last night and then thinking about it on the drive into work today, I couldn't for the life of me come up with a single action/adventure or RPG game that doesn't begin in the middle of the action. The only possible exception that I could come up with was one of the Legend of Zelda games, The Wind Waker, but really that series falls under (in my opinion) the category of recomposition.

I don't necessarily think that a "better" execution of in medias res determines how well we can evaluate a game in terms of its connection to a bardic occasion. At any point that you pick up a game, whether it be the very first time or you are picking up at a save point, you are starting a bardic occasion. Even then, like a bard, you have two directions that you can go in. The first direction is that you have a set story that you want to tell - for the bard, maybe he had in mind to tell tonight the story of the nighttime spying mission of Diomedes and Odysseus; for the gamer, maybe he had in mind to complete a certain quest line (in a MMORPG for example) or to engage and defeat a dungeon boss (Legend of Zelda). Regardless of how well the developers executed the initial act of drawing you into the action, any time you pick up the controller and dive into the game, you are starting a bardic occasion; its up to you how it unfolds.

Viewing it through the MMORPG lens again, when I log into Lord of the Rings Online, most of the time I don't know what story is going to be told for that session. Often I'll wait to see what my kin members are working on that evening, I'll see what other friends are doing, maybe I'll just tinker with crafting or something along those lines. However, on the glorious (and well timed) snow day Wednesday, I had in mind that I was going to "sing the tale of How Pericles went to the Dark Delvings of Moria with five companions to retrieve his end-game helmet". Just like a bard who decided in advance what story he was going to tell, my bardic occasion was going to be about that tale. In the end, after many difficult battles, my story ended with Pericles receiving that helmet after walking away from the Dark Delvings victorious. However, even that session began in medias res because the helmet is only one part of the end-game objectives to assemble a complete set of "radiance" gear so that you can then go into the most dreadful area in the game, the Vile Maw, and defeat the Watcher (the large tentacle-monster that the Fellowship drives off at the entrance to Moria in Fellowship..) And even then, that story arc is only a small part of the much larger story unfolding through the rest of the game.

Now I completely realize that I'm writing far too much, so I'll truncate the post here. :)

[Karen Zook]

Warren,

I agree with your premise here--there is definitely an element of in media res to gaming, particularly real-time RPGs, although I think it exists not only within the game itself but applies equally well to the players (albeit it in a rather "meta" way).

I'm relatively new to this type of gaming; honestly, the low-continuity sports games on the Wii are where I feel most at home, although I have some experience with the Final Fantasy-type RPGs on PS2 as well. Over the last week or so I've been playing quite a bit on RuneScape. After reading the Nagy, the thing that struck me about this gaming format was how much effort it took to become initiated into the format itself. As a total newbie, I was finding myself sympathizing with both the novice bard and, possibly, the spectator who just happened to wander through a song in progress that dealt with characters and mythology with which s/he was completely unfamiliar.

Nagy goes on at some length about the process by which the young singer becomes immersed in the constructions of epic song, treating it as a new language or way of thinking in which the singer must become fluent. Because most of these singers are illiterate, I was interested in the way they were portrayed as being unable to express this way of thinking in other contexts; the example of the poet who could not identify a line, for example, stuck with me particularly. Someone who is fully capable of communicating orally in daily life would be unable to communicate orally in the mode of epic song, and someone capable of communicating in epic song is unable to communicate that same information or process in the language of daily life. They had to absorb the tropes subconsciously before they could even begin to utilize them.

I had a similar experience with RS. Once I made a character and got through the tutorial, I was struck with a rather intense sense of "Now what?". I wandered around a bit, just kind of haphazardly taking on various game elements, not entirely sure what was going on around me. Even the things that had been explained in the tutorial didn't really make sense until I encountered them in context. The fact that there were other players around me who were clearly playing with intent really made me feel lost. I grew up with Mario--those games were 2D, your character existed on a ledge and could really only go forward, so what to do next was always fairly obvious. The multi-dimensional RPG format is a different beast entirely.

The possibilities are perhaps what was most baffling to me at first, at least until I started to get a sense of the in-game tropes. (Sound familiar?) For example, I went from "What's the point of all these goblins wandering around, especially if they don't attack and so aren't dangerous?" to "I need a higher level for all these quests" to "Oh, THAT'S what the goblins are for." That probably sounds really inexperienced, but... yeah. There are still elements of the game that make me think, "Why would I ever want to do that?", which I've come to realize means I just haven't understood all the game pieces yet.

This has turned into a rather long comment, especially since it's essentially just an extended agreement with the premise of the course, so I'll draw to a close now. I do wonder, though, how many others are coming into this course without much prior gaming experience, and I'm curious as to whether those who are already fluent in gaming language have this same experience each time they take on a new game, or whether enough conventions exist throughout the genre that it's fairly easy to make the jump from one to the next?

[Kevin Ballestrini]

Karen Zook said:

I do wonder, though, how many others are coming into this course without much prior gaming experience, and I'm curious as to whether those who are already fluent in gaming language have this same experience each time they take on a new game, or whether enough conventions exist throughout the genre that it's fairly easy to make the jump from one to the next?

Karen, just a real quick response here. For avid gamers, there are certain expectations that come with experience. A lot of the questions that you are asking yourself don't tend to show up after you've been involved in the medium for a little bit of time. It is kind of funny because my wife is relatively new to the gaming world (at least to games beyond Rock Band, Mario Kart, etc). I noticed that there are a lot of those conventions that I take for granted that she couldn't figure out on her own while she was playing through Lego Star Wars. Often she would ask, after my assistance, "How would I have known to do that?" I didn't have a real solid explanation other than, "I'm not sure, that's just how it is done in video games." I never really thought too much about that idea until your post here.

I suppose that a novice bard would be faced with the same difficulties when experimenting with new songs, new stories, new characters. A more experienced bard would just "know" to apply certain formulas, epithets and other devices when talking about hero X or hero Y. A novice bard would have to figure those out on his own through trial and error, much like a novice video gamer does.

[Roger Travis]

Nice posts, guys! So nice, in fact, that I'm going to have to think for a while before I can figure out whether I have anything to add.

One thing I want to note, and will announce on HuskyCT, is that after meeting with Continuing Studies this morning about "Living Epic," I'm going to reduce the 250-word requirement for forum posts, and make it 100 words instead.