Category Archives: Game

Drunkey Ball

Nationality: Canadian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/21/2019
Primary Language: English

1:

This is a drinking game that is played at parties around USC utilizing a gamecube game, Super Monkeyball 2. All players take an individual turn trying to complete a level (Super Monkeyball 2 is a game about a monkey inside of a perfectly spherical ball rolling across perilous surfaces with the constant risk of falling off. It is up to the player to rotate the stage, causing the Monkey to move). If a player falls off the stage, they are required to take a “small drink”. If someone completes a stage with more than half of the time remaining (this normally means 30 seconds remaining of an original 60 seconds) then all other players have to take a “large drink”. The game can theoretically continue on until all players complete the final stage, but more frequently the players sooner run out of alcohol or become too drunk to continue.

2:

The game is played and taught by the informant, though it is unclear who originally started it. The informant played Super Monkeyball 2, along with other multiplayer gamecube games, with his sisters while growing up, and as such is quite skilled at the game even while drunk. He brought the game to at least two parties in order to play Drunkey Ball with friends who are as equally enthusiastic about it as he is.

3:

It makes a lot of sense to me for this fast-paced multiplayer game, especially with its emphasis on turn-based play and reaction-based challenges, for Super Monkeyball 2 to be adapted into a drinking game. It also makes particular sense in the context of the parties that they are played at, often hosted by IMGD (Interactive Media Game Development) students in USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. This group of people tends to promote weird, old games like these, and supports their being played at parties.

Gotcha

Nationality: Canadian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/11/2019
Primary Language: English

1:

For over a decade at the Informant’s Vancouver Island high-school, a folk game would be organized known as “Gotcha”. It is highly similar to the widely-played game “Assassin” where all players are given a “target” which they must discreetly tag with a clothes pin. In order to sign up for Gotcha, a player must pay $20 into a communal pot. The winner at the end of the game gets to keep the money from the pot, resulting in a not-small chunk of change.

The Informant stated that the rules of the game would be updated every year, as someone new was typically organizing it. After he graduated, he said that the rules were updated to include “If you are tagged, you can strip naked in order to save yourself”. After successfully tagging your target, they are removed from the game and you inherit their target.

2:

The Informant played Gotcha as a Grade 12 and the experience was generally not unusual compared to previous years. He was, however, informed about the stripping-based rules that were added after his graduation, and was able to speak to some of the issues surrounding it. The parents and school systems, he said, had been highly concerned over the possibility of students taking pictures of the stripped-nude students and sharing the pictures on social media. The Informant also implied that students get very serious about this game, to the point that “some people don’t even leave their house for like a week”.

3:

The monetary incentive of the game is huge, especially for children who are still in high school, and the original game of Assassin is often played without any incentive besides the game’s inherent fun. Upon combining these two things, I think that the students who participate in Gotcha are willfully entering into a hyper-immersive game with the potential to turn $20 into substantially more (a feeling akin to gambling, but where the outcome has a positive correlation to your own skill and strategic proficiency). The addition of stripping as a sort of “do-over” could be taken to mean that the game designers wanted the players to have more chances to claim the pot if they were serious enough to do it, or it could also be viewed as an excuse to get classmates to willingly strip.

Annotation:

This article states that the pot for a game of Gotcha can get up to $2,000. In addition, it appears that students may also pay $20 instead of stripping nude, and can only re-enter the game twice.

https://www.nsnews.com/news/north-vancouver-students-schools-clash-over-gotcha-game-1.19654016

Long Island High School Band Customs

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Washington, District of Colombia
Performance Date: 4/21/19
Primary Language: English
Language: none

A – “There are a couple things we always did, every day we had class, once we got to class back in high school.  There’s this thing at Schreiber [our High School] where, every musician with their instrument ready would blow out some really poor-sounding tone, and then there would be a response from the other side of the room.  It didn’t really matter who responded, so sometimes there was more than one, but, you know, as long as there was a response.  And yeah, just a really poor tone coming from any instrument.  So this would happen every class, so twice a week, before our teacher/conductor got there, we were all getting ready.  This is kinda just our way of maintaining our individuality from the other students at school, I think we were all rather proud of being in the band.”

How were you Introduced to this tradition?

A – “So the first time I got into the band my sophomore year, I noticed people doing it, but no one actually said anything about it.  It took me a couple weeks before I realized that it was, like, an actual thing that we always did.  Taking part in that was kinda like a rite of passage, once you did it, you were a real member of the band.”

A – “I definitely won’t forget that we did that, I think just because it brings me back to my time in the band, where I had a lot of fun and spent time with people I liked.”

 

I was actually in the band with A, and I got there a year before he did.  So it was fun for me, who had gone through the same sort of vetting process with this one tone call and response, to watch him as he learned of it’s existence, and soon became proficient in it.  I definitely agree with his idea that this was a sort of rite-of-passage situation; I’d also add that it was almost a weird way of hazing new members, getting them to think that we sound awful, getting them to wonder why they’re even there if that’s the case.  Then we start playing.

Easter Egg Cracking Ceremony

Nationality: American
Age: 63
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Austin
Performance Date: 03/12/19
Primary Language: English

Content:
Informant – “I went to an egg cracking contest for Easter. Well, it wasn’t really a contest. More like a tournament. Like, it was a jousting match. People would go up, two at a time, and each person would grab an egg, and then they’d like stab at each others’ eggs with their own eggs, and whoever’s egg cracked first lost. And there was a whole roster. So if you lost you were out, but if you won you progressed to the next round.”

Context:
Informant -“I have no idea what it was about. First time I ever went. It’s organized by OG, and he’s been doing it since the 90’s, and it grows every year, so it has like cultural significance now, but he didn’t explain the underlying meaning.”
The celebration took place in Austin, Texas.

Analysis:
It’s reminiscent of the Freudian release. Eggs are supposed to be somewhat sacred on Easter. They are mentioned and depicted everywhere. And this celebration completely reverses that reverence by destroying dozens of eggs.

Balero, Mexican toy

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 54
Residence: California
Performance Date: 2019
Primary Language: Spanish

 

 

Main Piece:

A balero is an authentic Mexican toy made of wood. One part is made in the shape of a barrel with a hole in the middle, which is then tied to a small wooden shaft. The point of the toy is to make the barrel turn so that the shaft is inserted into the barrel’s hole.

Context:

The informant is a 54-year-old man from Guadalajara, Mexico. Growing up he had very little money to spend on toys so he would make his own variation of the classic toy.

20190410_104024 The picture shows his own variation on the classic toy.