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Cultural Structures: A List
From a game design perspective, it is crucial to understand the kinds of cultural structures your games engage. Does your game enact a set of past attitudes and beliefs, as with historical or quasi-historical sims such as Civilization, Age of Empires, or Settlers of Catan? Does your game engage the style and behavior of a subculture, as with the youth-oriented snowboarding content of SSX Tricky and Cool Boarders? Does your game challenge cultural stereotypes in the fashion of Parappa the Rapper by offering alternative or hybrid forms of character representation? Since all games can be considered culture, any game you create will have cultural qualities. Yet it is not enough to merely point out that games and culture can affect one another. Instead, we need to look closely at the specific kinds of relationships that occur between them. How do games and culture relate? Let's begin by interrogating the key term of this primary schema. The word "culture" commonly refers to all of the knowledge and values shared by a society or group, and often is used to refer collectively to a society and its way of life. It was Edward Tylor, the nineteenth-century British anthropologist, who originally proposed the contemporary definition of culture as "socially patterned human thought and behavior."[1] But because culture is such a complex and open-ended concept, there are plenty of other definitions from which we can choose. For example, consider this open-ended list of "culture" definitions compiled by anthropologist John H. Bodley, based on the work of Tylor: Topical: Culture consists of everything on a list of topics, or categories, such as social organization, religion, or economy. Historical: Culture is social heritage, or tradition, that is passed on to future generations. Behavioral: Culture is shared, learned human behavior, a way of life. Normative: Culture is ideals, values, or rules for living. Functional: Culture is the way humans solve problems of adapting to the environment or living together. Mental: Culture is a complex of ideas, or learned habits, that inhibit impulses and distinguish people from animals. Structural: Culture consists of patterned and interrelated ideas, symbols, or behaviors. Symbolic: Culture is based on arbitrarily assigned meanings that are shared by a society.[2] Each element in this list offers a possible definition for "culture." Although the listings seem diverse in perspective, every one directly or indirectly involves the same three basic components: what people think, what they do, and the material products they produce. None of these definitions of culture is correct or incorrect. In fact, unlike many of our other key terms, we will not propose a single definition for the concept of culture. There are so many ways to study and understand "culture" that a solitary definition would too sharply limit the concept. For the purposes of game design, we understand "culture" to refer to what exists outside the magic circle of a game, the environment or context within which a game takes place. This broad formulation of culture, as a context for game rules and player experience, can itself be framed in many ways, such as the list of definitions above. The cultural context of a game might be its historical context; or the set of ideological values that it reflects and transforms; or the way the game fits into the lifestyle of its players. Culture is a diverse and flexible concept.
Grappling with questions of culture and game design is therefore quite difficult. Whenever you consider the cultural aspects of a game, you need to define exactly what you consider culture to be. This does not mean, however, that all cultural readings of games are equally useful. For a game designer, the goal of a cultural game analysis stays true to the core pursuit of this book: the design of meaningful play. Investigating the cultural identity of a game is simply another way for game designers to generate successful play experiences. Conceived as a system of shared ideas, values, and behaviors negotiated and transformed over time, culture can play a powerful role in shaping the meaning of a game. Understanding which systems of meaning make up the context in which your game is to be played is critical to the design of meaningful play. It is through play itself that layers of meaning emerge and accumulate to shape the play experience, inside as well as outside the magic circle. [1]John H. Bodley, Cultural Anthropology: Tribes, States, and the Global System (New York: McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 1994), p. 171–72
[2]Ibid., p. 172.
