Dragons, Gameplaying and Altruism

I recently went to a movie about dragons...

In fact the title was 'How To Train Your Dragon' and it was a Pixar release which meant pretty great graphics... 

The story was really good as well, as it was the typical heroes journey, where the main protagonist starts out as a small character that finds himself through his adventures as the story advances.

Going to the movie made me think more about Dragons in particular and how this related back to my previous post on Dungeons and Dragons...  Which was interesting in itself as I am still thinking over how fantasies, sword and sorcery, and role-playing fit within the culture of gaming.  In real life, we live a drab existence, no dragons, no clear cut lines between good and evil, and no real heroes journey...  It's much harder to maintain a value system without the hands on practice that is evident in games.

I believe that games generally do society a favour, by instilling the principles of teamwork using quests with clear cut lines between good and evil for the people that play them.  It's a training ground, essentially, and I am convinced that the explosion of the popularity of gaming is directly related to the fact that they give us a chance to exercise our nobler instincts.  As well as giving us a community of gamers that we can relate to on a more personal level.

Even the sports and racing games can have the same effect, in my opinion, as the same principles apply.  Teamwork, shared hardship, challenging the player's reflexes to train the hand to eye coordination which is hardship and and way to learn.

If you look at the statistics on the popularity of specific games, you can see that the most popular games are where the player is the 'good' guy with a clearcut enemy to deal with throughout the gameplay.

Games that flop actually don't make this type of distinction, which supports my argument that people generally want to be 'good'.  Games allow people to exercise their altruistic instincts.  And I believe that the more that these instincts are used, the more they expand and strengthen.  So, games help society as they give us a learning experience to exercise our better instincts!  I realize that this runs counter to some of the horror stories about how games are destroying society, but I don't agree with those theories.  Based on my own experiences and what I've seen around me, I think they do the opposite.

In my opinion, we all get a chance to be the white knight and have the gratification of doing good and being appreciated for it by using games as a entertainment method.  Movies don't instill positive values and are soon over, a game can be replayed many times, strengthening the underlying message it gives. Which makes it a much more powerful medium when you think about it...

Images:

1.  Dragon Abstract by Teresa Young - Mar. 2010,  2.  Gaia Unmasked by Teresa Young - Jun. 2007,  3.  The Dragon by Teresa Young as Toulouse LeTrek - Mar. 2010,  4.  Speckled by Teresa Young - Dec. 2009.

Reminiscing About Dungeons and Dragons

 

The Gesture
by Teresa Young



Tiger Tracks
by Teresa Young

I am always mulling over how the world works in general terms as it's quite an interesting subject... 

Lately, I've been thinking about my world and how it has changed since I was a kid, and one major way that it has changed is in how I play games...

When I was small, we read books, watched a bit of TV, socialized by playing cops and robbers, or other such simplistic role playing games. 

 

Those games were pretty good, but you needed an excellent imagination to fill in the blanks, or you quickly ran out of ideas.

Blue Mushrooms
by Teresa Young

When I was older, something called Dungeons and Dragons was invented and I was one of those geeky teenagers that went with others of my kind to play in garages and basements.  (Still with the imaginary role playing; we filled in the blanks in our heads!) 

It was great fun, and it's interesting to see what subsequently developed out of it with computers and the gaming industry.

It was very different then, with the speed of the computers and gaming units, we moved at a snails pace of progress on our quests as we had to meet with the other nerds to play, so it took time.  I remember that I had one character that lasted about nine months, and it was slow going because we used hexagonal dice with drawn out dungeons and a physical dungeon master (one of your buddies) overseeing  your progress on quest(s). 

We moved our little metal markers on a graph physically using the dice rolls to determine characteristics and movement, and your character was restricted to progressing when you could get together to play.  Not to mention battles and outcomes!



Queen of Thorns
by Teresa Young

The person that had the most work was the dungeon master, he actually drew out the dungeons in coloured pencil and felt pens on large graph paper sheets and put it up in front of himself so that the players couldn't see it.  As we all rolled our progress with dice he'd have to physically chart it on his graphs in order for us to move along. He had books to refer to for characteristics of monsters and characters and with status ranges that could be represented by the dice rolls.  There were also ranges and guidelines for battling, leveling and rewards, it was pretty involved.

These funny little books with no colour illustrations were ordered by snail mail and were obviously mimeographed in somebodies basement as well!  It was like a cottage industry in the seventies, and our parents were scandalized and debated how healthy D and D was for their kids.  Citing lack of exercise and how it could lead into going into cults or believing in the occult, it was the big ogre of many PTA groups!

It's pretty funny as I've heard the same hoopla come out multiple times over the years as each new generation of gaming formats developed.  And as far as I've seen, everyone has survived, especially the youth, and we don't seem to be any the worst for it.

Now I guess I'll go see what I have in my library of games I can play... HehHeh!


Art Images by Teresa Young:
1. Tiger Tracks - March 2004,   2. The Gesture - June 2007,  3. Blue Mushrooms - January 2002,  4. Queen of Thorns - August 2008.