Category Archives: Game

Red Rover

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Preschool Teacher
Residence: Bronx, NY
Performance Date: 3/20/14
Primary Language: English

Red Rover is a children’s game that I played as a kid and my friend, who works as a preschool teacher, told me about her students playing.

The game works like this:

Two groups of children stand opposite each other in an open space.  Each of the two groups form a line and grasp hands forming a chain.  The group that has been selected to go first will decide on a player from the opposite team and call out “Red Rover, Red Rover send (players name) right over.”  The player who has been called then runs from their side to the side that called them in an attempt to break the chain with the force of their body.  If they succeed in breaking the chain they return to the side they began on, but if they fail they join the other team.  The game ends when all players are on one side.

This folklore was significant to my friend because she played it as a child and she is witnessing other children playing the same game, which connects her with the children she teaches.

The game is interesting because although it is a game played on teams the teams change throughout the game, so there is no set opposing forces.  This most likely fosters unity between the group who take part in the game

Mafia

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Preschool Teacher
Residence: Bronx, NY
Performance Date: 3/20/14
Primary Language: English

A group of people sit in a circle and close their eyes.  Someone is selected to play God.  God is the narrator of the game, and always someone who has played the game before.  God walks around the circle two times.  The first time he walks around he selects who will be the mafia by tapping a player once on the shoulder.  The second time around he selects the angel by tapping that person twice on the shoulder.

God then says “Mafia wake up?”  The mafia then chooses who they would like to kill by pointing at them. God then says “mafia go back to sleep”.  Then God tells the angel to wake up and asks “Angel who they would like to save”.  The angel can save anyone in the circle including themselves by pointing at them.  God then tells the angel to go back to sleep and the townspeople, which consists of everyone, including the mafia and the angel, to wake up.  God then tells a fictionalized version of the nights “events” where someone was murdered.  The person who was murdered is now out and no longer has to go to sleep when God tells the rest of the townsfolk to, so they learn who the mafia is, but must keep this information a secret.

If the angel chose to save the same person the mafia chose to kill, God will add on a twist ending where the person does not die.  God then narrates a town summit where the townspeople meet to arrest who they believe to be the mafia.  Everyone accuses who they believe to be the culprit and the town takes a vote.  After the vote the person who the town believes to be the mafia “put to death” in a narrative told by God and the townspeople are told to go back to sleep.

The game then repeats from the beginning with God telling the mafia to wake up, then the angel, then the townsfolk.  If the townspeople chose the actual mafia, no one is dead in the morning and the game is over, but if they chose the wrong mafia, another person dies and they rehold the town summit.  The game repeats until the true mafia has been put to death.

My friend used to play the game when she was in high school and they had substitute teachers but it was also a staple game at camps and in any large groups.  The target age are generally adolescents as the subject matter is much darker than other children’s games.

The game is very different from most other folklore that deals with mystery and death in that it turns the sinister topic into a game and makes it fun.  A town plagued by the mafia is not a light subject matter but in the contact of this game if becomes something fun.

007

Nationality: Switzerland
Age: 20
Occupation: Student/Filmmaker
Residence: Los Angeles/Switzerland
Performance Date: 4/28/14
Primary Language: French
Language: English, German

In this childrens hand game the goal is to “kill the other player”  Similar to rock paper scissors the game begins with a lead in, (the two players clapping their hands with each other three times) after the third clap the players than make one of three moves.

  1. Sheild – denotated by crossing your arms over your chest
  2. Gun – denotated with both hands in a hand gun gesture with thumbs up and pointers extended with the other fingers not extended
  3. Power up – denotated by making a thumbs up sign with both hands and bringing them above your shoulders.

Rules

  1. Sheild protects against gun
  2. Gun can only be used after it has been powered up once per use
  3. In order to win you must shoot on a turn where your opponent is not protecting themselves.

My friend called this game Zero – Zero – Seven (007) which seems to be a direct reference to James Bond.  I played it too as a kid but not with any specific name.   She said she played this game as a kid and when she was in india she taught it to a girl there.

The game is interesting cause it seems to be a more violent variant of rock paper scissors.  The James Bond reference is interesting as well because it is unclear if that name came later or the popularization of James bond is a terminus post quem.

“Camping”

Nationality: “Half Japanese, half Korean, so I am Asian.”
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, but born in Fresno and lived there until starting college
Performance Date: April 30, 2014
Primary Language: English

Informant’s self-description: “I am a large melting pot of everyone that I have ever met. Even if I did not really know who they were. And that makes me me! And different from everyone, ‘cause we all have different experiences. I am a video game person that loves a video game, and I love things that aren’t actually real life. But I also like real life! But sometimes fiction more so because the boundaries of what can be done are expanded. And that’s really cool to me. I like food – a lot. And I am a person that just wants to do a lot of things all the time. Forever.”

 

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Is there gamer culture that you take part in, or is it more of a solitary thing?

I’d like to be part of some sort of gaming culture – I’d really enjoy going to some video game convention and get to see what’s up-and-coming, and be able to talk to people who are within that community and get to make friends. I’ve only recently begun trying to engage with that side of my life – before it was very solitary. It was just me at home, planting my butt in the chair and playing Mario Kart or the Sims for ages on end. And then I got an X-Box, which was like communication with other people that were playing, and that sorta kinda kicked me in the right direction, which is fun, also scary but fun.

Do you talk to people online?

The game I mostly play is Mass Effect, and there’s a Mass Effect multiplayer. You just do missions with other people. You can talk to them if you like, I usually only play with friends that I know in real life, because there’s a tendency for – especially if you’re like a gal and you’re playing online and if they know, they don’t treat you with respect or it’s kind of really weird and they don’t treat you like a fellow gamer? It’s like “Oh, it’s a girl.” I’ve experienced before where they just kind of leave me be to the really small side missions. And I’m not down with that. So I usually just play with friends that I know in real life. And we destroy things together.

Is there any particular lingo that you guys use in the game and not outside of it?

I guess the terms for the things that we’re trying to do. With the monsters or the enemies that we’re trying to go up against, or I think – like a certain term would be “camping.” Which is when a certain player is lying in wait. And hidden from the rest of the players just so they can score, or kill someone, so they can destroy something, they can achieve the objective without really having to go through the process of avoiding other people on the go. They just kinda lie in wait. That’s generally frowned upon.

How often does it happen?

Depends on the game and whether or not you’re able to. I know in Call of Duty, if you camp a lot of people will gang up on you.  After they’ll be like “CAMPER! HE’S A CAMPER!” And then you wind up dying a lot because if you get found out, you’re the camper, and no one likes you. In other games, maybe not so much because you can’t really camp? And if you do you’re kind of just like a coward and people will ignore you.

Have you ever camped?

Yes in Call of Duty, because I am not very good at Call of Duty. And the only time I played it, I played Black Ops, and I was about to die and I was like “NO!” So I just hid for the rest of the game. I let other people just kind of kill each other, and once in a while I would shoot someone if they were passing by.

It was more of a defensive camping than an offensive camping.

Yeah, yes, much yes. Lots of defense, no offense whatsoever. I mean, occasionally try to shoot someone, and then maybe get them, and they’d come back and find me, and I’d just lie in wait again.

Have you ever ganged up on a camper when they were found out?

Only on my friends, really. I mean I kind of feel bad when it’s someone that I don’t know, unless – it’s been very rarely that I talk to other people via the voice chat, in a party – it’s just so quick sometimes, especially with Mass Effect, but um… Yeah sometimes, my friends and I – friends I know in real life – if we see someone that’s camping, then we go and gang up on them and destroy all of their kills – if they’re about to kill something and we see that the enemy’s health is low, we kill them before they do, so when they kill them it doesn’t count for them, and it’s ours. And that makes them angry, and it’s funny.

 

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By playing this multiplayer game, informant engages in the gamer culture maybe more than they realize, to the point where they can explain a specific communally-recognized term and the behaviors surrounding that action the term refers to in the game.

Kitty Wants a Corner

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles/Michigan
Performance Date: April 15, 2014
Primary Language: English

My roommate, who grew up in Michigan, told me about a theater game that she learned at a theater camp.

The game is called Kitty Wants A Corner. To play it, you stand in a circle with one person in the middle and the goal is to not be in the middle (it’s kind of like being “it”). The person in the middle goes to each person in the circle and stands in front of them, looks them in the eye, and says “Kitty Wants a Corner” as though they’re the kitten and want a spot to sit. You don’t want to give up your space in the circle, so you’ll say “No, go ask my neighbor” so the person moves to the next person in the circle and says the same thing. In the meantime, other people in the circle, mostly people behind the person who is it, will make eye contact with each other, and silently agree to switch places while the person in the middle is distracted. The person in the middle can intercept the switch and try to get a spot in the circle, and the person who didn’t make it all the way has to be in the center.

My roommate learned it at camp in Michigan, so she was surprised when they played it at her improv class at Second City in Hollywood. She thought it was strange because the person teaching the game in Los Angeles had no connection to Michigan. The informant had also only ever played the game at the camp before, it wasn’t part of her high school theater program at all. It’s likely that this game spread through actors moving around (which is common) since I have also heard of/played variations of this game, but it wasn’t exactly the same thing. If the game was an official “theater game” it would be the same everywhere, but there’s variation in how it’s played in different places.