Category Archives: Game

SCP: Containment Breach

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: March 28, 2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

SCP: Containment Breach is a horror computer game that is based on user-generated stories on the wiki/website SCP Foundation. SCP stands for “Secure, Contain, Protect”. The game takes place in a facility that hunts, tracks down, and categorizes supernatural objects, or SCPs, that are either safe, euclid, or keter. You can come into contact with safe SCPs without getting harmed. SCPs that are euclid are unpredictable, and keter SCPs will kill you.

The main types of characters in the game are scientists with code names, the SCPs, and finally the D-class personnel. There is a seemingly infinite amount of D-class personnel, and you play as one of them. They are prisoners sent to the facility for experimentation purposes, and they die off very easily because they’re always dealing with the SCPs.

The first SCP you meet is this giant baby that’s facing the wall. You have a blink meter, and every time you are forced to blink, the baby moves closer to you. When it’s right in front of you, it kills you. [Informant’s] favorite is the butler. It can do anything you want it to do, as long as it is reasonable. He would ask,” What can I do for you?” in a very butler-like manner. You can ask him to kill a D-class personnel in the neighboring room, and he would point at a surveillance camera, saying, “Is that camera on? I can’t do it if it’s on.” And once you turn it off, he would disappear and then come back, having accomplished the goal. If you ask him to get a bar of gold of, say, 99.99% purity, he would say no, but ask if a a lower purity were okay. There are also inanimate SCPs like a train ticket SCP, which would affect the train that the ticket-holder takes.

Anyone who passes the test to be a writer on the website can create an SCP. The SCP Foundation website is a wiki that is open for comment. If people see a bad SCP, they’ll mark it down, and if enough people dislike it, they’ll remove it. There are rules, like no using clichés, and no SCPs that can be described in two words (like “basically Wolverine”). The game developers then take these user-created SCPs and put them into the game.

—

I found it very innovative for a video game to be based on user-generated content. It throws into question the idea of authorship but it is also somewhat reminiscent of the way folklore was spread / the way people told stories before the institutionalization of writing/publishing/etc.

Senior Schlaugen

Nationality: USA
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/18/14
Primary Language: English

This informant is a member of a USC fraternity and I asked him to share some of their traditions or stories he might have.  Among others, here is a year-end senior tradition he shared with me. It’s called Senior Schlaugen and here is our dialogue.

Me: Tell about this Senior Schlaugen, and what does the name mean?

Informant: Haha, I have no idea where the name came from but since the game is all about drinking and –schlaugen sounds German, maybe that’s why?  Anyways it’s a tradition the seniors do every year, where we try to drink as much as possible for the last month of school.  So for this year it goes from April 15th to Graduation on May 15th.  Basically we form teams of three and you get points every night someone on your team goes out, also there are weekly team challenges, like finish a 30 rack in a library.  Its really fucking with me right now, I have been out six nights in a row, I gotta fuckin win.

Me: Is there a prize?

Informant: Uh, ya winning team gets little gimmick trophies, but its more about the pride.

Me: So this competition means a lot to you?

Informant: Well ya, nothing I do in school now is gonna change what I do post grad as long as I don’t fail any classes.  Couldn’t really give less of a shit about my classes right now.

Me: Well, you’re about a week in do you think you’ll burn out before graduation?  Any surprises after just a week?

Informant: Haha, no way ill burn out I fuckin live for this.  But ya even though this game is all about getting fucked up and partying, it really does serve a purpose that I am just now realizing.

Me: What’s that?

Informant: Well its just brought me closer to all the guys that I may or may not ever see again, and really forced us to make the best out of the last month.  You get extra points if your whole team drinks together in one night so we are all always in the same place.

For starters, this tradition at the informant’s fraternity is a blaring example of the drinking culture at USC, and the Greek community more specifically.  However, although it seemed completely centered around partying on the surface, what my informant said at the end really shed light on why the tradition has stayed around for years.  The game brought all the seniors closer, students who may never see each other again and definitely will never all in the same room again.  Some people say fraternities are all about partying, but by looking further into their traditions, you can see the important role brotherhood plays as well.

Pegging

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 29, 2014
Primary Language: English

Context:

I asked one of my classmates about game she played as a child while waiting for class to begin.

 

Interview:

Her: Okay, so, when I was in elementary school, and I must have been in 4th or 5th grade, one if those, I don’t know exactly, but it was when those people were still in school with me. We used to play a game. And I say that loosely, because there was no winning, really, it was just like something we would run around and do, ’cause like we had a big grass field that we could run around in and there was obviously kick balls and soccer balls and that stuff. So we called it “Pegging” and I don’t think, I don’t think we thought it was, ’cause I’ve heard like yucky references to what that is and I don’t think we knew that, and that’s why we called it that.

Me: ‘Cause you were in like 4th grade.

Her: Yeah. But, but like, I didn’t make that name up. Like someone else did. But We would run around and it was usually like the boys vs. girls, and it was me and another one or two girls against like three boys we would usually play with, and we would just try to hit each other as hard as we possibly could with a soccer ball. Like, we would throw it at each other, and that’s like the whole point of the game. And I think somehow we, ’cause I would talk to the girls and I would think some of us liked those boys.

Me: Oh, oh, oh.

Her: So I think there was a whole thing. I mean, We would hit hard. I mean we would have like welts,

Me: Oh, wow, yeah.

Her: And we realized we were doing that, and we wouldn’t do that anymore. And yeah, we used to do that when we were in 4th, 5th grade. It was like a form of courtship or something. Demented courtship. But like, well God, we would hit each other hard. Like, as I said, falling down would be normal after being hit.

 

Analysis:

This game was clearly a kind of courtship game. It was played between pre-pubescent children, who were just beginning the slow process of transitioning from a child into an adult. As it was played as boys vs. girls, it was a way for the girls (and possibly the boys) to “peg,” or “mark,” the boy/girl that they liked or had a crush on. How hard one could throw the ball could be seen as a posturing move, a show of strength, of accuracy, and perhaps even of the level of interest the person had for the target. Though much more painful than various other pre-pubescent “courtship” games, it is a game that lets children explore the new kinds of feelings for members of the opposite sex as they begin the transition into adulthood.

King Elephant

Nationality: Latina
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 27, 2014
Primary Language: English

Context:

I had met with one of my friends for lunch, and we got to talking about games we had played as children and teenagers.

 

Interview:

Informant: Here’s something that came from the theater world. It’s a game called, I’m gonna go with “King Moose,” no it was “King Elephant.” I’ve played this game in other places where it was called King Moose or King Whatever, but the game we played was called King Elephant.

Me: Okay.

Informant: Yeah. And it was a passing game and you had a rhythm. And it was like hit your thighs clap your hands, hit your thighs, clap your hands.

Me: Oh yeah.

Informant: And we would have – there was only two signs that had to be in there, you had King Elephant who would have a trunk with like one arm over the other with the bent one holding their nose.

Me: Okay yeah.

Informant: And then you had dunce. Which was just a really crappy hat. Some people would do chopped liver which was just kind of spazzed out, ’cause you were chopped liver. You know? [Laughter] But most of the time we just played dunce. When we wanted to be mean we would do chopped liver. [Laughter] and so everyone, as many people as you have, sit around in a circle, and the first time around each person picks a sign. And its just like a word or a name and then a gesture. It doesn’t have to be animals, but I have played this game where it was only animals, and played it where it could be anything you could think of. We had a couple of ones that everyone knew, like 7-eleven was like two guns, New Yorker was a “screw-you” sign, we had fish, sometimes it would become Nazi fish, [laughter] because people would get too excited (me mainly) and instead of waving their hand like a fish swimming it would go up so it became Nazi fish. [Laughter] And like sometimes there would be inside jokes. One of my favorite ones was pink, and it was ’cause, I think it was my freshman year, and there was an improv show, and this guy in our theater troupe was supposed to like, paint something pink. And so he got up, moved his body about and was like, “Piiiink.” [She stood up and waved her body from side to side as she waved her arm in exaggerated painting motions] Like he was splashing paint everywhere, so that was one of the signs that we would always use, was pink. I mean people would do like Batman [she demonstrated the gesture], they could do whatever they want, as long as it was an easy sign to remember and do. And that sign became attached to the chair. And the whole point of the game was to get to the king elephant’s spot. And the to that, you had to knock people out. And so the king would set the rhythm and then he would call out his name and do his sign and then would call out someone else’s name and do their sign. And then it would pass to that person who would have to do their sign and then someone else’s sign.

Me: Oh yeah.

Informant: And it gets randomly passed around the circle.

Me: I’ve played something similar before.

Informant: Yeah. And if you messed up the beat, said a sign that didn’t exist, or you messed up on a sign, then you were kicked out and you had to go to the dunce’s seat, and everyone moved up a seat. And of course, you had to learn a new sign because you were in a new seat. Which of course causes more people to get kicked off, since they forget whose sign is whose. And so yeah it’s a fun game, trying to get to the king’s spot.

Me: Yeah, I’ve played something similar where there is no dunce seat, it’s just going round. It’s essentially just an elimination game, there is no king elephant or dunce. Yeah, I’ve played something similar.

Informant: Yeah we had one where it was king moose and it was just animals, but I like king elephant better because you could get really crazy. And then we would do murder round, for the people who were really into it, where the beat would go really fast. We had to come up with a new rule where you couldn’t go back and forth more than three times, ’cause what people would do, especially people who were really competitive, would simply go back and forth on and on, which became really boring for the rest of us. So we had to make a rule that you couldn’t go back and forth more than three times. It’s a fun game.

Me: Yeah it is. I haven’t played it in years.

Informant: Me neither. But it was really fun.

 

Analysis:

This is a children’s game that to me would encourage creativity, quick thinking, an understanding of rhythm, and memory. My informant went to school in Northern California, where she played the game, and I went to school in Washington, DC – o the opposite side of the country – where I also played this game, albeit slightly differently. This game is something that I played with my sports teammates before practice, and sometimes before games, as a warm-up to get the blood going, or even as an icebreaker-type game to get everyone to know each other a little bit better. The fact that it is children and young teenagers – middle and high school students – that play this game could possibly mean that it is a game that is used more often than not to bring a group of people together, such as a sports team made up of people that you might not know very well. I have fond memories of playing such games with my volleyball team back in high school, and it helped us get out some of the competitiveness and animosity that some of us may have had with and towards each other. After all, better to work that out off the court than to have it interfere with the game on the court.

 

The Legend of Slenderman

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 26, 2014
Primary Language: English

Context:

I was hanging out with my friend, watching Invader Zim and playing horror games, when my friend asked me if I knew what Slenderman was. I had heard of Slenderman, of course, but I did not know what exactly he was. So I asked her about it/him.

 

Interview:

Informant: What do you want to know about Slenderman?

Me: Just like; I don’t really know much about it, so first off I guess would be what is it? That kind of thing.

Informant: Well, um, Slenderman is a creature that looks very humanoid in that he has, like, the human body structure, like a head, a torso, two arms, two legs, but is distinctly different in that he has no face, and in every representation he is depicted as faceless. In some representations he is depicted as having like additional tentacles or additional arms, though that isn’t a consistent feature that everybody agrees on.

Me: Okay.

Informant: He’s also said to be very tall.

Me: Okay, like eight-nine feet? Something like that?

Informant: Um. I’m not exactly sure, just like significantly taller than a normal person would be, though some people say that he can change his shape, his size, at will. Um, Slenderman is very fast. He can chase you with unlimited stamina no matter how fast you try to run from him or, um, how persistently you try to get away from him. Like, you can, like, no matter how hard you try to get away from him, if you turn around he’ll probably still be there. Kind of like taunting you in a way. Yeah, like Slenderman is a stalker, and his favorite prey is children, though there have been cases in which people say he has gone after adults. No one is exactly sure what he does with his victims or why he chases them. And Slenderman, as far as his dress, um, is usually thought to wear a black suit with a black tie.

Me: Okay. And how did this phenomenon start?

Informant: It started because there are pictures in which, like pictures that were taken unaware of the fact that Slenderman was in them, but when they were examined later, like a tall, stalkerish, like, faceless figure is seen in the background and these pictures are often of children. One of the better known pictures is of children on a playground and then there is this ominous figure all the way in the background that is just kind of watching them. Like it’s not something that you would notice just looking at the picture, looking at the children, but when looking at the background it’s just like, “when, when did that get there!?”

Me: And then it became a game, online?

Informant: Like the mythos started first, and then people began developing games around it, so the games are inspired by the legends about Slenderman. And there are multiple games, not just the 8 Pages and Arrival which are made by the same person, there are other incarnations of Slenderman.

Me: And Slenderman isn’t noticed in real life, only in the pictures? Like, at first, he wasn’t seen in actuality but just in the pictures?

Informant: Yeah, uh huh.

Me: In pictures taken?

Informant: Yeah.

Me: Interesting. So an invisible stalker guy, who kidnaps children to do who knows what, and no one sees him? Wow. That is freaky.

[Laughter]

Informant: Yeah it’s freaky. That’s why it’s such a successful horror thing now.

Me: Exactly. Exactly. Wow.

 

Analysis:

Slenderman is truly an intriguing urban legend, as it is mainly a digital folklore phenomenon. People do not see Slenderman in real life, it is only in pictures taken that he appears. Furthermore, with the internet boom in the 2000’s, something like Slenderman, which before could not have spread nearly as quickly or as virulently around the, at the very least, American population, as from what I gather Slenderman is a largely American urban legend, as it did with the internet. Also, since Slenderman is largely an internet-based urban legend, it can spread far beyond the borders of America (or wherever it originated from) to nations, to countries worldwide. The legend of Slenderman even, at least to the fanbase, influenced the writers and producers of the British show Doctor Who with the introduction of the race called the Silence in Series 6. The viral spread of this legend via the internet is truly telling of the new media – the worldwide web – that has burst onto the scene and shows how deeply it has changed how we communicate, who we communicate with/to, and what we communicate.