Category Archives: Game

Urban Legends and Trading Card Games

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Orange County, California
Performance Date: April 22nd 2016
Primary Language: English

Context

Trading card games are often too associated with child’s play to be taken seriously; by many it is considered to be entirely driven by luck and inherently unfair. Despite this widespread opinion, trading card games – such as Magic: The Gathering have found a competitive audience where skillful players attempt to best others through a combination of strategy and deck building.

In Magic, the most important game mechanic and key consideration in building decks is the resource: Mana. It comes in five different colors that explore different themes: Green for example focuses on playing stronger creatures and generating extra mana to play them earlier, while blue focuses on negating the opponent’s plays and drawing extra cards. The vast majority of mana is accessed through land cards of usually one or two colors that can be played to generate 1 mana of a color per turn (although exceptions exist). This causes situations where one only draws creatures (mana-screwed: unable to cast anything due to lack of mana) or only draws lands (land-screwed: unable to play creatures as the hand is full of lands), causing losses often attributed to statistical variance.

Informant Information

The informant is an avid player of Magic. I first met him in a card shop in Yatap, South Korea, and we kept in touch ever since. One time while he was playing a draft game – a game mode where decks are built from cards chosen from packs opened on the day of the event – he told me an urban legend supposedly pertaining to the very location we were playing in:

Collector: “What did you end up drafting?”

Informant: “I drafted a 4 color control deck.”

Collector: “That sounds like too many colors and card requirements to consistently play anything, that sounds so bad…”

Informant: “Yeah but if you draft your cards at this shop you get all the cards you need for the deck to run well.”

While he did end up losing most of the games, they were close losses, largely because my friend was able to get the right balance of cards to make reasonable plays each turn. Intrigued, I asked around the shop if the urban legend was true, and soon realized that most players in the shop not only knew about it but also agreed – somewhat sarcastically or otherwise.

Analysis

As the context of the location changes, not only including the exchange of goods, but also social gathering, a folk group forms and produces folklore. This urban legend is particularly significant because in a competitive setting, non-skillful (i.e. luck-driven) elements are undesirable; this makes the discussion of luck in an outcome of a game very contentious: A taboo topic. By giving members of the folk group ways to joke about the taboo (such as sarcastically agreeing to the urban legend, as seen above), the taboo topic becomes less serious, and therefore less frustrating to the losers. Another factor to consider is the urban legend becoming a subject of superstition; by believing and hoping that he/she will receive good luck, the passion for the game and the folk group of card game players can remain intact. This in particular shows that a work of folklore can be contextualized to fit into multiple genres.

Pokémon and the Mystery of Mew

Nationality: British
Age: 24
Occupation: Student
Residence: Berlin, Germany
Performance Date: March 17th 2016
Primary Language: English

Context

The year is 1998: Following the release of games Pokémon: Red and Blue, the new games are popular throughout the United States. However, this was not always expected, as it was a game that was released very late into the Game Boy’s life cycle during its Japanese release. Then a question arises: how did the game become so popular? The best answer perhaps comes from the elusive Pokémon that was only available through an in-game glitch – the 151st Pokémon, Mew. The informant shares one of these urban legends on how to capture the elusive Pokémon, and why it was so important in the success of the games as a whole.

Informant Information

The informant is older brother to a friend of mine, and he has played the original Pokémon games when they were released in the United States at the age of 6. While he has stopped playing the newer games, he has a first-hand, nostalgic experience on the first generation of Pokémon – the subject of this entry.

Informant: “Mew was the shit. All the kids were talking about it all the time in class! I heard that you had to use dig* next to this one truck to get it, but when I tried, no dice. That was better than this one kid, though – he was told that he had to beat the Elite Four** exactly 100 times to catch Mew… he did it and absolutely fucking nothing happened. Nothing.”

*A Pokémon move usable outside of battle
**The four trainers encountered before facing against the strongest trainer: the champion

Collector: “[laughs] Did anyone you knew at the time actually have a Mew?”

Informant: “Not anyone I personally knew, but I always heard that somebody knows a person who does – I personally think they were all lying. I don’t think anybody in that elementary school actually knew how to get a Mew. That’s probably what got them talking, you know? It was the mystery of it that was so cool.”

Analysis

The urban legends created and circulated by players on how to obtain Mew added to the mystique of the Pokémon: This added to the desire to obtain it, resulting in more urban legends, and this positive cycle resulted in the extended popularity of the Pokémon franchise. Another key reason for the popularity of these urban legends came from the lack of widespread Internet usage during the time. Since a quick search from Google was unavailable in 1996 – or any other search engine, for that matter – it was much harder to verify or dispute the urban legends since only a handful of players outside of Japan knew how to obtain Mew through an in-game bug and how those steps worked. Overall, the Pokémon franchise was able to create folklore, and therefore create a large folk following through Mew, ensuring the franchise’s success over later generations.

Convention Centers and the Festival

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 16th 2016
Primary Language: English

Informant Information

The informant is currently a student at USC, who is interested in American comic books and 90s memorabilia. When I heard that he goes to the Frank and Sons Collectible Show (“Frank and Sons”) with his friends every Saturday to indulge in his hobbies, I asked him for the location’s significance:

Collector: “Why do you choose to spend over half an hour traveling to a convention center when you can go to nearby convention centers in the LA area instead? Is there something special about Frank and Sons?”

Informant: “Well, I used to go there a lot as a kid… and a big reason why I still go is because I like their selection of goods. There are other convention centers, but you can get comic books from the ‘50s from Frank and Sons, and then play some games all in the same venue. Then you get to see people with really well made costumes and cool fan art – it does take a while [to drive], but in the end it’s all worth it.”

Analysis

The convention at Frank and Sons can be seen as a contemporary folk festival; it is for an audience sharing common interests (nostalgia, collectibles), and creating a new ecosystem of human interaction based on that common interest. The significance of Frank and Sons as a folk festival has to be in its wide range of goods for sale: In its availability of ‘random old stuff’, Frank and Sons consolidates existing folklore while opening avenues for more folklore by creating a strongly social environment within the convention center.

Yorick walks into a bar…

Nationality: South Korean
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: March 20th 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

Joke: “Yorick walks into a bar. There is no counter”

Context

In the online video game League of Legends, five players play against another team of five players. Players choose a specific character to take into battle before the game starts, Yorick being one of them. The original meaning of this wordplay is that it is impossible to counter Yorick – at least at the time.

The Informant

The informant is my younger brother. He is an avid player of the game, playing on a daily basis. He said the joke in self-deprecation after a losing a game against a player who used Yorick. When I asked him where the joke was from, he said that he first heard the joke in game back in 2012, when Yorick was a strong character to use. He added that because the joke got very popular around the game’s community, it is still used when complaining about characters that are too strong.

Analysis

The example presented is pertinent as the joke was powerful enough to create other variants, such as:

“Jax walks into a bar. There is no counter.” (another character that was very strong at one point)

The meaning of the message is quite clear: The performer of this joke acknowledges that a certain character is too powerful through the use of witty language. Unsurprisingly, the joke is now commonly referenced throughout the community whenever something seems too strong. As a joke that has reached idiomatic levels of acceptance in its folk community, its influence is well demonstrated.

Schnickles the Elf (Formerly Elf on the Shelf)

Nationality: American/Australian
Age: 35
Occupation: Builder
Residence: San Diego/
Performance Date: 4/12/16
Primary Language: English

 

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Description (What is being performed):

The informant and his wife will hide an elf doll or statue somewhere in their house for their child to find. Once found, the parents relocate it. This game goes on for the entire month leading up to Christmas Day. Within the informants family and amongst their family friends, the elf is named Schnickles. He/she is considered to be one of Santa’s informants who comes by the house each day to listen to the child’s wishes and also to see if the child has been naughty or nice. Schnickles then reports back to Santa each night then relocates somewhere in the house the next morning. With each new placement, the informant and his wife position the elf different poses and often gives him something to do. They will then share photos of the elf with other family friends who too have taken photos of their elves.

The Informant (Background info about performance from informant):

This game that is described is often known as Elf on the Shelf, which is a large scale phenomenon that started out in 2004. A woman and her daughters wrote a children’s book around the elf statue and assigned a game to it that they used to play which is nearly identical to the game described above. At first the concept was shared with people in a grass roots manor before becoming a commodified object. The informant first heard about the idea through a colleague at work at the start of the grass roots publicity and decided to adopt it with his own doll, which his son named Schnickles. Throughout the the first few years the informant spread the concept to his friends before the official concept reached them. The creative positioning of the elf took shape about a year in, which is something people who used the official game also did.

The informant shared many of his pains about the process of having to replace Schnickles each night. He and his wife took turns but would often get in fights about whose turn it was, especially when it wasn’t until the middle of the night that they’d remember to switch it. It wasn’t until they over heard their son talking to it as though it was his friend that they saw how much it meant to him, thus it became important for them. Also the factor that the elf would report the sons behavior meant that for the straight 30 days the child would behave extra well. This was emphasized greatly by the informant as being a god send during a very hectic time of year. He only wished the elf could be around all the time. He’s considered using the birthday addition that the makers of Elf on the Shelf created, but doesn’t like knowingly giving into the commercial nature of it.

About the Informant

The informant is a freelance construction worker who grew up in both American and Australia. While in Australia he played in a punk rock band for 6 years. He also became a father 12 years ago. Since then he’s been constantly leaning about the pervading sub cultures and rituals for children that were non existent or drastically different from his formative years.

The Analysis (My Thoughts):

The nature of this game is not cut and dry in terms of its classification as lore. The roots of this tradition came from a single family who then spread their tradition as first a non commodified entity to then a huge corporate child’s toy. As for the informant and his family and family friends traditions, they all stemmed from vaguely hearing about the Elf on the Shelf during its roots years and making it their own their renaming it and adding in the poses aspect. Although as they carried on this tradition, the original continued to grow into official culture. Does this then render the informants tradition as fake lore? I’d venture to say no simply because they not only altered the contents but when the openly borrow elf on the shelf it wasn’t official culture.