Tag Archives: video games

“I’m just sayin’… *HACK*”

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/27/18
Primary Language: English

BACKGROUND:

Among the Interactive Media and Games Division at the University of Southern California, a strange joke occurs in which if one person utters the words (on purpose or to trigger this joke) “I’m just sayin’,” the rest of the IMGD students will all do a hacking, coughing, or vomiting impression.

INTERVIEW:

My source J explained it as such:

J: When ever like a group of us are together one of us will go, “I’m just sayin’,” and then the rest of us will all go “HOUGH”.

Me: Do you know why?

J: I don’t know… I’ve heard its a combination of two YouTube videos but the actual source of where this joke started is completely unknown, but we all know that the joke is funny.

MY THOUGHTS:

Its very interesting to me how each major at USC has its own culture. This is but one example of the types of jokes, proverbs, and legends that I’ve heard out of the IMGD major at USC. Despite being such a small group (30 students per class), the program is still able to develop its own forms of folklore specific to their major.

Staying Close Through Minecraft

Nationality: Italian American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Woodside, CA
Performance Date: 4/8/2017
Primary Language: English

Informant:

Dina is a college freshman from Northern California, she comes from a large yet close knit Italian family.

Piece:

My brothers and I love to play all types of games. Like board games and video games and just all types of games. I mostly like board games, but those are way too hard for us to play since we are all at college and away from each other for so long each year. So to make up for that we play video games with each other online. They like to play league of legends, but I don’t like that game at all. But we all play Minecraft together and built this house together on Minecraft and it’s super cute. And we built it to be the same layout as our house so that even when we are in all different places we can be at home together.

Collector’s thoughts:

This is a great example of how the internet has allowed people to stay close to each other despite long distances. The informant’s ability to stay close with her family is completely dependent on the internet which links them up via a game.

 

 

Dixie Cup Ness

Informant is a facebook page that regularly posts memes. As the page’s primary following is teens and young adults, most of their content is humor based on 1990’s & 2000’s American youth culture.

Dixie Cup Ness

This particular post shows Ness, a character known from successful Nintendo game ‘Super Smash Bros Melee,’ with a retro Dixie cup print on his clothes. By combining the popular 2001 video game character with the distinct folk pattern of 2000’s school cafeteria cups, this satirical image is aimed to evoke nostalgia.

The “Meta” of Gamer Culture: League of Legends

Nationality: Ecuadorian, American
Age: 39
Occupation: Concept Artist
Residence: Glendora, California
Performance Date: 4/18/16
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

The folklore: In gamer culture (in League of Legends), there is always something called a “meta.” The meta is referred to by gamers as something that is the most popular or trending style of play at the time.

Informant is a 39 year old Ecuadorian male, who plays the video game, League of Legends. League of Legends is a multi-player real time game where teams battle each other.

Informant’s Folklore: The “meta” means the style of the game that people are playing at that time. For example, the trend at the time. So the meta this week, everyone is playing this one particular character because they saw one of the best players in the world playing this character and kicked ass. So now everyone wants to play that character, so that character becomes the new meta. It also can apply to how you play the game, and the strategies you use.

Informant: Where did you learn this from?

Collector: I just learned it from people talking. I remember someone I met online said “meta” in a group chat on League of Legends, and I was like what does that mean? And they explained it to me.

Informant: What does this mean?

Collector: Well, the players of League will always try to find the most powerful player in the game, and they will try to exploit that character. And League of Legends notices it and nerfs the character by taking away some of his power. So by nerfing him, it makes another character more powerful. And the whole process changes it.

Informant: Why do you think they do it?

Collector: It’s like chasing the white rabbit, because they’re trying to make the game as fair as possible.

I think that the gamer culture, just like any other entertainment culture, developed the idea of the “meta” to reflect what’s popular or trending. It’s a saying that’s known to the League of Legends’ gamer community: you only know what it means if you’re part of that community and if you stay up with the trends.

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.

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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.