Monday, October 17, 2011

News Flash - Priviledged Person Defends Said Priviledge in face of measured POC rebuttle ...

In other news, water still wet.

Picked up from Deeper in the Game originally. I had thought it would lead me to an rpg.net thread or something similar but I wasn't too surprised that I ended up a Story Games.

Basically, to sum up the [rage inducing thread over at Story Games](http://story-games.com/forums/comments.php?DiscussionID=15217&page=1#Item_0) it breaks down like this.

{Enter}

"Hey folks, can someone please let me know what went wrong between the white European colonists and the First Nations that lived on the land? Why were all the treaties broken, and stuff."

"Um, here is my sadly funny anecdote that explains colonialism and the push of the Europeans to remove the 'Savages' from the neighbourhood. Get it?"

"Hey, you should check out Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee!"

"Oh! Did I mention I wanted this information because in my fantasy world the Native people are Orcs. That's cool, right?"

"What?"
"What?"
"No..."
"You know that's been done before, and what you're setting up is the same tired stereotype that perpetuated again. You can't give people human rights if ... you know ... they aren't human."

"I get what you're saying. But I totally think what I'm doing is awesome. I know it could be problematic, for the reasons you listed but I'm totally different because I'm different. I'm awesome."
"I used it before. It's totes awesome!"

{Exunt}

I'm really, really tired of gamers trying to completely and utterly erase or rewrite First Nation's experience and using it as a cute cultural metaphore. I know that was my huge complaint two years ago when it came time to review the Game Chef 2010 games. I'll just leave you with a quote from Deeper in the Game.

But also: why would you ask this question on a gaming forum instead of a history site? Why would you lead off without mentioning the point until halfway through, if you didn’t actually think there was something problematic about it? What part of “Gotcha! You’re genocidal war criminals!” part of game playing is fun?

3 comments:

anarchist said...

Hi,

Apologies for the off-topic comment, but I couldn't find a contact email for you.

I've recently put out an ebook of my writing, called 'The New Death and others'. It's mostly short stories, with some obvious gamer-interest material. For example I have a story inspired by OD&D elves, as well as poems which retell Robert E Howard's King Kull story 'The Mirrors of Tuzun Thune' and HP Lovecraft's 'Under the Pyramids'.

I was wondering if you'd be interested in doing a review on your blog.

If so, please let me know your email, and what file format is easiest for you, and I'll send you a free copy. You can email me (news@apolitical.info) or reply to this thread.

You can download a sample from Smashwords:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/92126

I'll also link to your review from my blog.

Yours,
James.

Unknown said...

Hey James,

Um. Sure. I don't really review books and the like, but I figure why not. Gotta get those chops back up and running.

I've made my email visible on my profile. If you've got the book in a general .epub file then that's probably best.

anarchist said...

Thanks! I've sent it.

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