Category Archives: Game

The Archer Senior Scavenger Hunt

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Brentwood, CA
Performance Date: 4/22/15
Primary Language: English

Informant: The informant in question was a sophomore screenwriting major at USC. White, female, and a Los Angeles native. She attended the Archer School, an upper-class girl’s private school in Brentwood.

 

Transcription: Umm… Oh senior scavenger hunt was all verbal! Okay, so senior scavenger hunt, it was at the beginning of senior year and there was like someone in charge and like, the person who was in the year above who was in charge of it would pass it on to their friend in the grade below and then that person would tell us all the things we had to find and we had to like, go around L.A. and sing on the Promenade and like somebody had to get a tattoo. Umm, you automatic won if you got a tattoo. Oh! and we like had to talk to people who sold drugs. (laughter) do you really love it?

Keep going.

What else? And then we would all meet at In-N-Out.

Was there some sort of award?

No.

What was the endgoal?

You just had to get as many things off the list as you could. And then there was a sleepover. Bonding was the goal.

Okay. Why is this significant to you?

Because I feel like it built teamwork and it was like a really fun activity to pair with team-building and bonding as a grade like even though it was a competition we still bonded.

Who’d you learn it from? I’m guessing the person in the grade above who passed it on?

Yeah.

Cool

Analysis: This ritual serves as a sort of initiation rite into the senior class. Rather than being passed on through the school itself, it only gets passed from senior class to senior class and no underclassman really knows the full details of the event until they’re actively taking part in it. Like many initiation rituals, it focuses on the actions of a group – in this case, the members of an upper-class Los Angeles girls’ school.

Considering how sparse the individual’s description of the event itself was, it’s clear that the true focus of the event was not the scavenger hunt itself at all. Rather, the experience of doing the strange tasks and the camaraderie that stemmed naturally from that experience produced the intended effect of the hunt, giving the girl’s a common goal and set of experiences that tied them all together as they entered their senior year, an important transitional phase in any student’s life.

Football Culture

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Austin, Texas
Performance Date: 4/27/15
Primary Language: English

Informant: The interviewee in question here is a 20 year old girl studying business at USC. She hails from Austin, Texas.

Transcription:

So my family is a football family. I come from two long lines of people who went to UT (University of Texas) which is a big football school. My brother and I were born and my parents were big Houston Oilers fans, which are now the Tennessee Titans, but we don’t talk about that. The Oilers left Houston because their owner is a piece of shit and left. So for ten or twelve years, there was no football in Houston. Some people cheered for the Titans, some couldn’t. Then in 2002, it was the inaugural season of the Houston Texans. Football was back in Houston, we got the expansion team, people were so excited. Saying that in only a few years, we’d be winning the Super Bowl. That’s how well our draft went, etc. Ever since 2002 when I lived in Houston and to this day, my parents have had season tickets to the Houston Texans because my parents knew what it was like to not have football so we’re gonna make sure we go to every game we can. So growing up, we’d always have the same seats and I would get my mini Papa John’s pizza from the stadium and we’d watch the game and it was a family tradition, every single weekend and we’d tailgate with our family friends and I was introduced to this whole football culture. Then I became the bigger football fan as I got older, went to every game, and even when I go home now, we’ll still go. And my family stays connected a lot like that, texting each other about the game or what’s happening with the team. It’s great.
Tell me more about football culture.
Well before every game you tailgate. And tailgating is the best, everyone gets together, super excited. And the people who are “of age” drink and everyone’s in good spirits and it’s not even about the football. It’s about being together with your friends. You’re all on the same side, against or for something. All on the same page. And everyone hangs out, tosses around a football, talks, and walks over. And the game is more of that. It’s a whole day of socializing really, with a sports game in the center. And if it goes well, everyone’s super happy and if things don’t go well, everyone’s sad, but at least you’re sad together and you wait till next week and you talk about it and keep track of it and the injuries and the matchups and the rivalries and it’s great.

Analysis: America as a whole loves the sport of football and no region of the country loves it quite so much as the South. The game itself however is not the reason for it. The reason is for the ritualization that surrounds football, turning it from a simple win-or-lose game to a massive social occasion and cultural event. It can bond people with very little else in common. Meet a fan of the same team and you can instantly connect with them. Meet a fan of the other team and you can trash talk. Either way, a conversation has started where none existed before. And among people who are quite close already (like the family in this account) football can serve as a check-in and connection point, an excuse to talk or to celebrate.

The Fighting Game Scrub

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/20/15
Primary Language: English

The competitive gaming community is the large community of people who play competitive games. This usually means that they either play MOBA (multilayer online battle arena) or fighting games online against other players. While this community has no physical location, they communicate and form their culture through online message boards and forums. Due to these forums, the competitive gaming community is able to foster a culture and communicate with one another without actually being in the same physical place. Some notable competitive gaming websites are Smashboards.com, Nadota.com, Joindota.com and Gosugamers.com. The fighting game community is a subculture of the larger competitive gaming community.

The word “scrub” has a very unique and specific meaning in the fighting game community. The definition is a variation of the word’s meaning of a person of insignificant size or standing. It is commonly used as an insult and as a way of placing someone below the speaker. However in the Fighting Game Community, which includes all people who socially play “fighting games” such as Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and BlazBlue online, the word has much more specific definition. In this community, a “scrub” is who frequently loses matches (in the game of their choice) and instead of practicing to get better they take to the forum and complain about the game. In this community, a scrub is not just someone who is below you, but it is also someone who is unwilling to improve himself. This has lead to many commonly used phrases such as “get good scrub” to try and emphasise that the problem with the scrub isn’t his lack of ability but rather is his lack of improvement.

The Informant that I interviewed is a somewhat successful member of the Fighting Game Community and is well known on the forums for the games BlazBlue and Mortal Kombat. He in the past has been on the leader-boards of many of these games and is familiar with this community both through the online forums and the in-person events often hosted for these games. Throughout his years in this community, he has both been a “scrub” and an experienced player who tells “scrubs” to get better at the game. He admitted that the use of the word if “often derogatory and the more bad mannered things you can say to a competitor,” however he also revealed that “almost everyone uses the word frequently, both while playing and on the online forums.” When asked about the origin of this use of the term the admitted that he did not know where it originated, but that “it is very universal across all fighting game communities” and that “[he] [has] never been a part of an online fighting game community that did not use the expression.” Because this use of the term is so widespread and accepted, it is safe to assume that it has been accepted by the larger fighting game culture for quite some time now.

However, despite the origin, what is truly interesting about this term is what it specifically means. Unlike the original use of the word scrub, the fighting game’s variant of this work places heavy emphasis on the scrub’s unwillingness to practice and get better. This illustrates that in this community hard work and dedication are very desirable traits. The informant made it very clear that the worst part about “scrubs is their willingness to complain about how the game is broken before actually trying to get better at the game.” It would seem that in this community, which is highly competitive, the worst thing you can be is non-competitive. As such, the word “scrub” isn’t an insult because it implies that someone is bad, but rather it is an insult because it implies that someone is non-competitive.

Captain Falcon Mains in the Super Smash Bros Comunity

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Peachtree City, GA
Performance Date: 4/26/2015
Primary Language: English

My informant is an avid player of the Super Smash Brothers game series. This game has fostered a very unique community due to its wide appeal and unique gameplay mechanics. This community encompass all players who play the game, but in this interview when my informant talks about the “Smash Brothers community” he is referring to the community of thirty or so individuals who meet up weekly (or biweekly) at his local game store to play the game together. When they meet up and compete with each other it is called a “local” which simply is shorthand for local gathering or local tournament.

Transcription:

Me: Are you a part of any digital or otherwise non-traditional communities.

Him: I actually play a lot of this game called Super Smash Bros and really dig the community built around it.

Me: Could you please describe the Smash Bros community briefly.

Him: Well super smash bros is a game made by Nintendo. There are I believe 5 installments not including fan games. The series is interesting because the series takes characters from many franchises and has them fight against each other. The community is everyone who plays this game, but to me thee community is the people who meet up to play any of these games together in downtown Los Angeles. We communicate through a facebook group and organize locals every week or so depending on how busy everyone is.

Me: And are there any customs or unspoken rules unique to this community?

Him: Oh my god there is a near infinite amount. I guess that the one that is most important to me is the hidden meaning behind Captain Falcon.

Me: What is Captain Falcon?

Him: Captain Falcon is a character in the game. He is my main which means I almost exclusively play this character when playing the game.

Me: And what is the hidden meaning you refer to behind this character?

Him: Well Captain Falcon players have a unique reputation in this community. You see, in the game there is a feature called taunting. A taunt is a easily punishable move that does nothing other than poke fun at the player. Captain Falcon players tend to be known to strongly utilize these taunts. As a captain falcon player, anytime you have the capability of taunting you should.

Me: Why is this?

Him: Because he has the best taunts of course.

Me: How does this affect the reputation of Captain Falcon mains?

Him: Well when you decide to main Captain Falcon you usually do it because you want to be as flashy as possible. So, being a captain falcon main means that you are going to be viewed as someone who prefers to style rather than play the game as well as technically possible. Being a Captain Falcon main means that if you are given two options, a good choice and a cool looking choice you will always pick the good looking choice. That is what it means to play Captain Falcon.

 

Analysis:

It is really interesting that the character you use in a videogame can completely define how you are viewed in the surrounding community. Moreso, it is interesting how willing to and excited to accept that identity my informant was. I believe that this shows that in this community there is a sense of pride that players have about the character that they play. This is likely because when in the game, the character you play functions as your avatar. That is to say that while playing the game, my informant identifies as Captain Falcon because Captain Falcon is the bridge between the game world and him. Going off this theory, I believe that if I were to interview other members of the Smash community they would have similarly positive feelings about their “main.”

Children’s Warring Kingdoms

Nationality: Columbian, American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 10, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant S is 21 years old from Boise Idaho. He is a Philosophy major who also plans on attending Medical School. He is half Columbian and half American.

So when I was like in 2nd grade, we would have a group of students, we had like 2 playgrounds, and they would congregate on opposite sides of the playground which would be separated by a big field. So we had a king of each playground, which was usually the most popular kid, and they would be like warring kingdoms. So one of the most important roles of these kingdoms was the messenger. Since I liked running a lot when I was little, I’d always volunteer to be messenger for the kingdom. So I’d run from 1 kingdom all the way to the other and I would transmit a message. They were usually about the king having a crush on a girl in another kingdom or a guy having a crush on a girl in another kingdom and stuff like that. And they were never really wars, but the kings and the knights would meet in the middle of the field, and they would like trade princesses depending on if the princess liked the king in the other kingdom or one of the knights or something like that. So my running back in forth usually resulted in a meeting in the middle, which would result in them trading a princess. So I was sort of like the matchmaker in elementary school.

 

Analysis:

Informant S remembers fondly in elementary school when he played the “matchmaker” and brought the 2 different groups on the playground together. Like a lot of children’s folklore, we can see them imitating things that they may have seen in movies or read in books such as kings, wars, trading princesses etc. We also see that a lot of the messages revolve around people having crushes on each other, which can also been seen as imitating grown up relationships.  We can also see the hierarchy on the playground as the most popular kids usually got to be king.