Tuesday 18 February 2014

Share games defined by an idea or philosophy.

Digital Game
In my opinion, the game Alice: Madness Returns by Spicy Horse talks strongly on corruption and some on personal imagination (In which for this game, both are strongly connected). In the game, players will play the role of Alice and go through her wonderland which is in fact, a more colourful and abstract version of London in her mind. Alice’s wonderland actually comes from things she has seen before and is amplified and mutated through her uniquely insane and colourful understanding. As the game goes on, players will be made aware that the Infernal Train, caused by an outside influence, is rampaging through her mind, threatening to destroy her from the inside. This is her metaphor of corruption. In the end, players will find out the truth of Alice’s past and the reason as to why the doctor that was taking care of her was trying to corrupt her. Reason being he was corrupt himself, and was planning to sell her into sex slavery to earn money though he was a high member of the society. Even as players switch from wonderland to reality, the game portrayed Victorian London as a corrupted city during the Industrial Revolution by showing children working in factories, child molesters running free and high members of the society doing whatever that benefits them the most.


Analog Game
The ideology behind the present board game Monopoly, earlier known as The Landlord’s Game, in my opinion, is on the evils of greed. Elizabeth J. Magie Phillips created the game as an educational tool to explain the single tax theory of Henry George and to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies. Now, in the present moment, the board game has evolved into a family game and really brings out the greedy beast in all players as they fight to buy the most property, “tax” their opponents and become the richest landlord. There is therefore a great deal of truth to the expression that Monopoly can destroy a family, as a metaphor for what a powerful monopoly can do to the economics of a country.

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