The letter of the law.

Jesus once accused a group of 1st century Jewish religious leaders of obeying the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law.  According to their own law, they were fairly sinless.  They took special care not to walk over an 1/8th of a mile on the Sabbath, they cleaned out their house of yeast before Passover, they gave a tenth of their income to the temple. 

But Jesus absolutely blasts them on one point: according to their law, it was permissible for them to find a loophole in the system whereby they could avoid their filial responsibilities to take care of their parents.  Sure, it was legal.  But it completely denied the elderly of financial support.  And there was no social security to fall back on.  So, though they were righteous according to the letter of the law, they were guilty of violating the spirit in which it was written.

I was thinking about this concept as it relates to games the other day. 

When we play games, we essentially enter into a behavioral contract.  We agree that we will limit our behavior to a certain accepted norm.  By doing so, we hope to win the game (thereby achieving other goals – having fun, proving we’re better, alleviating boredom, etc…).  The whole process should be relatively simple, right?  Observe a group of children playing at recess and it’s incredibly apparent that it’s not.

I think the concept of “letter of the law” and “spirit of the law” has a place in a game environment and players’ behavior tends to fall toward one or the other. 

One group of players believes that the rules give us the bounds of acceptable game behavior.  They spell out for us, in Mafia/Werewolf/Witch Hunt, for example, that, when the narrator tells the townspeople to go to sleep, everyone closes their eyes.  In freeze tag, if we’re tagged, we stay still.  But these players believe that the rules only spell out the explicitly acceptable (or unacceptable) game behavior.  Anything else, as long as it is not outlawed by a particular rule, is fair game.  So, in Mafia, even though your eyes are closed, there’s nothing in the rules that says anything about moving around.  Or talking.  Or giving back rubs to other players in the middle of the night cycle.  In poker, if another player is being sloppy and somehow reveals their hand, they’ll do their best to leverage that information.  None of these actions is explicitly forbidden according to the game rules, so they are absolutely acceptable in-game actions.

The other group of players believes that rules are there to give them a starting point to extrapolate proper in-game behavior.  When they played freeze tag, they would scream for help.  Surely, the point of freezing was to remove them as an active helper of the team, right?  Moving their mouth doesn’t do anything to unfreeze anyone else, so it seems like appropriate behavior.  In Mafia, during the night cycle, these players actually close their eyes and sit still.  In poker, they purposely don’t look at other peoples’ hands, believing that most of the fun of the game comes from the speculation, playing of odds, and understanding bets and bluffing, not from taking advantage of another players’ stupidity.

Each of these, taken to their extremes, can ruin the fun of a game.  Spirit of the law gamers essentially end up adding tons of extra rules.  They might try to enforce the laws of physics into a D&D game, for example.  Letter of the law gamers tend towards exploiting a system.  I think the true extreme of this type is online griefers.  Repeatedly crouching over a corpse is not outlawed by the rules of Halo.  Neither are ten minute long, four letter word filled diatribes against teammates.  But both of these clearly violate the social rules of the game and the spirit of the law of multiplayer gaming. 

So what do you think?  Do gamers fall into these categories at all?  What are the circumstances under which you might be more of a letter gamer or spirit gamer?  Which is the more acceptable behavior? 

Pokemon: White.

One of my best friends got married back in June and I was honored to be his best man.  I'd never done that before.  It was neat.  Anyway, I guess it's traditional to buy your party gifts.  So my friend decided to buy me Pokemon: White. 

Kind of an unusual choice for a 24 year old man, huh? 

You know what makes it worse?  It was my idea.

It's been a very long time since I've played a Pokemon game.  I think I bought Gold, but by that time, I was sort of over the whole system.  Let's be honest: the mechanics of a Pokemon game have never really changed.  After playing the heck out of the Blue version, I guess I just didn't see the point of playing the same game, but with unfamiliar creatures.

That's completely opposite from why I wanted the latest installment in the series.  In fact, I actually wanted to play this because it was the same, but different.  (I hate being such a typical consumer...)  I wanted to re-experience what I felt as an 11 year old first introducing Pokemon to my friends. 

The more I think about it - because the more I play it, the more I think about it - I realize that it really is just the nostalgia.  I mean, don't get me wrong, the central mechanic of the Pokemon games is fun.  It's like distilling RPGs down to an abundance of options when building out a party.

But that's it.  They're terribly grind-heavy.  The story is awful.  (Especially in White.  It's truly, terribly awful.)  The music is repetitive and, outside of maybe the classic battle theme and gym theme, is utterly uninspiring.  The characters are... non existent.  So what brings me back?

Ultimately, at my core, I'm an explorer.  In the original games, the thing that kept me playing was, "I wonder what pokemon are in the next area?  I wonder when my party will evolve?  I wonder what the next gym leader will be like?"  It's the desire to figure out what's next that kept me playing.  As a matter of fact, when I beat the Elite Four (or whatever they were called), I pretty much stopped playing.  I had discovered everything I was going to discover and had no desire to "catch em all," despite the log line.

And now, as I'm playing a new Pokemon game, I find that the same thing pulls me forward.  A childlike desire to see what's next.  To be a part of discovering how things work.  I've anxiously trained up my Roggenrola into a Boldore (suspiciously like my Blue-version rocky friends, Geodude and Graveller...) just to see what comes next.  It was a delight when, all of a sudden, my Tepig evolved into a Pignite.  I have no idea what the next city on my journey is called, but I'm sure it will be filled with cheesy character lessons and, most importantly, new pokemon to discover and figure out.

Pokemon: White really is the same, just different.  Same formula.  Same battles (mostly).  Same gameplay.  And that's what I love about it. 

Future Nostalgia.

I moved around a lot growing up.  My dad wasn’t in the army or anything, but, from birth to eighteen, I think I lived in eight different communities.  Every time we moved, I genuinely thought about just not investing in our new home.  I wouldn’t make friends.  I wouldn’t get involved in the community.  In short, I wouldn’t care.

It never worked.  It turns out that’s just not in my nature.  So I made friends.  Good friends.  Great friends, even.  And then we’d move again.

Over time, the wounds of losing friends to distance have closed up.  Every time I move, I find new friends and a new community to invest in.  But every once in a while, a song will pop up on my iTunes or I’ll catch a whiff of some unique scent.  Maybe I’ll just randomly get in the right mood.  Either way, I start missing the life and friends I’d had before.  I remember all the good times and think about the memories we never got the chance to make. 

Future nostalgia is kind of like that, except I know I haven’t felt it yet.  Many of my friends know exactly what I mean when I say that, but let me explain a bit.

It’s the feeling I get when I walk through Heritage Hill in the fall.  I see myself there, in the future, raking leaves with my children as my wife heads inside to warm up some cider.  I love her.  I love my kids.  We have a good life that we’ve worked hard to make and we thank God that he’s provided it for us.

It happens in late spring and early summer.  My wife and I and some friends stay up late, telling stories and laughing on the back patio.  Icicle lights, or maybe Japanese lanterns, provide just enough light for us to see each other as we listen to the commotion of our teenagers fighting for the remote inside.  Our friend’s ten year old boy comes out.  He’s tired and doesn’t fit in with the rest, so he sits next to his mom and listens to us adults tell stories and discuss issues until he falls asleep in the warm air.

It’s the feeling I get around Christmas when I spend time with friends and family.  Inevitably, with all the moving I’ve done in my life, not everyone I want to be there is there.  But I look toward the future.  Toward a day, probably not even in this life, when all my friends are gathered around together.  A record of classic Christmas songs plays in another room while most of us are squeezed onto couches and spare chairs around a fire.  Maybe we’re playing some kind of board game.  Maybe future-Kemp is so boring that we’re playing charades or something.  Either way, there is a palpable feeling of comfort, of community, of love and peace and rest.

Though I know it will be a long time before I have these “dolly out” moments, I experience this feeling of future nostalgia with some regularity.  I suspect you do, too.  It’s part of our nature to long for healing, completion, and comfort.  I think that this feeling is even a gift from God.  It gives us something to shoot for.  An instinctive goal or state of being that we want to achieve some day.

The good thing about following the God I serve is that I believe that, someday, these moments will happen.  After sin has been destroyed and a new earth is created where we will live as we were meant to live, we’ll be able to purely enjoy these moments without fear of interruption.  There will be no goodbyes or I’ll-probably-never-see-you-agains.  When I get there, the first thing I’m going to do is gather my friends – all of them – and introduce them to each other.

The last death-knell of childhood.

Kind of a dramatic title, eh?

I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 tonight.  (In the cheap seats, on film, and not in 3D, I might add.)  Toward the magnificently climactic ending, it struck me just how much of my adolescence was spent with that series.

I remember the first time I saw a Harry Potter book.  I had just turned twelve.  We had just moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan from Hackettstown, New Jersey.  We were in the Borders downtown (the one that just closed...) and I saw "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

Now, I'm a big nerd.  It was worse when I was a kid.  Anything with wizards or sorcerers or spells or anything had to be awesome, so I asked for it for Christmas.  From the opening page, I was hooked.  I identified with the feeling of being an outsider.  I, like Harry, longed to be special, to be different.  Like so many young nerds, I was just waiting for the day that my X-gene became active or some blue aliens from a distant planet made me an intergalactic cop.  A half-giant riding a motorcycle telling me I was a wizard sounded just as good. 

I quickly read all three of the books of the time, struggling with how to pronounce Hermione, hating Draco Malfoy, and getting inspired by the themes of courage, self-sacrifice, and dependence on a close circle of friends.  As I grew up, so too, did Harry Potter.  The decidedly darker turn of Order of the Phoenix resonated with my deeper adolescent desire to struggle against something oppressive and evil.  The higher stakes only increased the emotional engagement that I had with the characters.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I spent most of the last third of Deathly Hallows with a lump in my throat.  I had spent almost ten years with these characters.  And now, as the last Harry Potter movie has been released, it's been twelve years.  So, in many ways, watching those last credits roll to the top of the screen was like watching the last bit of my adolescence and childhood go away.  Sure, there will always be a new Zelda release to bring me back.  I'll stay involved in youth ministry and always have ridiculous fun with middle school boys.  But Harry Potter will remain a mainstay of my memories of growing up.

Digital Citizenship.

I watched V for Vendetta again this evening (a belated 5th of November viewing with friends) and it got me thinking about a few different things.  Most prominently, what is the role of the citizen in the modern society?  Surely voting, paying taxes, and staying informed of politics belong on that list, but these could also be in the same list as the role of the citizen in the modern government.  (I would argue, possibly, that those are different things.)

Now, I’m not going to go off ranting about something I know nothing about – namely, political philosophy – but regardless of who you talk to, being a good citizen requires activity.  It requires action and engagement and choice.  To some degree, it requires risk.  It requires intellectual fortitude and the willingness to create your own opinion, independently from what others say.  In many cases, it requires overcoming great obstacles.

Sort of sounds like what we require of a player.

I am consistently impressed by the players of video games.  The endurance, the mental acuity, the curiosity and insatiable desire to create.  People have spent hours upon hours crafting Minecraft worlds as complicated as a scale model of the Enterprise.  Players have cracked every code, found every secret, discovered every bug imaginable in any game ever released.  We have been amazing citizens of the virtual world.  But what about our own? 

Essentially, what I’m getting at is this: does our playing video games enhance our ability to engage or does it give us a false sense that we have, in fact, contributed to something.  I suppose it’s an age-old question.  This fantasy that we experiment with, does it inspire us or delude us? 

I once watched a documentary called Monster Camp about live action role playing.  Some of these people were legitimately inspired by their time spent as Gregor Elfkin, Slayer of Demonath.  Their ability to act brave or self-sacrificing or clever as Gregor empowered them to be more brave, self-sacrificing, and clever as themselves.  Others, though, were clearly living in a fantasy, spending more time developing and being another human being rather than developing themselves.

So which is it?  What is an increasingly player-made culture doing to us?  Are we practicing the skills of engagement we need to handle this world?  Did World of Warcraft help inspire the Arab Spring?  Is Angry Birds, in some small way, an antecedent to Occupy Wall Street? 

Or are we having our inner need to be a citizen satisfied by something that does not, in fact, contribute to anything?