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from the Don't-leave-yet-There's-a-demon-around-that-corner! dept.
This week, Doom joined the first-ever class of the World Video Game Hall of Fame, and its reasons for being inducted now seem obvious in hindsight—particularly how the game table-flipped our expectations of things like 3D design and gun-wielding action. A few weeks before the game received that honor, game developer and educator Elizabeth LaPensée offered a less typical claim about what might have made the game so special at the time: its connection to Native American culture.
LaPensée counts Doom co-designer John Romero as a friend—along with his legendary game-designing wife, Brenda Romero—and she is intimately familiar with John's Cherokee and Yaqui heritage. As such, she brings up a topic game historians typically don't: "Something funny happened when John Romero became famous," she said. "He became white."
Doom's potential connections to Native culture go farther than that, though. "I have a theory," LaPensée said from her home in Oregon. "John Romero broke ground with Doom, but what was it that he was doing? He was expanding dimensional space in that game." The PhD graduate from Simon Fraser University, and her family, were familiar with concepts like dimensional space well before they could be related to the alternate realities of games like Doom. She talked about the teachings she drew upon as a member of the Anishinaabe and Métis communities—along with those of other communities like the Cree—and their commonalities.
"[Our communities] have always related in multiple dimensions," she said. "I believe that influenced John's work and influenced games as a whole."
If indigenous cultures lend themselves well to software, perhaps Lamaist monasteries could be the world's next great programming centers?
Original Submission
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Tuesday June 09 2015, @03:46AM
I would have thought that the Native American aspect would have gone to Oregon Trail.
Anyhow, no... No monastery is likely to be of any help. I have been to Nepal and sought refuge (tranquility and education were my goals - my mind is not easily stilled, as if my rambling posts were not indicative of this) and there may be an office with electricity, it may have a computer, and it may well have internet access. Most monks are not going to use this and, even if they could, they are unlikely to create a game that anybody will want to play.
I shall make for you a story, a koan perhaps, with which you may do as you please.
Gamer: "So, I downloaded this game that you monks wrote, it has a blank screen except where I am told to press Enter over and over again."
Monk Tech Support: "Pressing Enter is the game."
The gamer thought for a bit, hung up the phone without a word, returned to the game, pressed enter, and was enlightened.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dyingtolive on Tuesday June 09 2015, @08:34AM
Still sounds more entertaining than what comes out of EA anymore.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @01:17PM
Hmm, die of dysentery or buy an EA game... decisions, decisions...
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Tuesday June 09 2015, @08:07PM
Enlightenment - It's in the game!
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2015, @05:05PM
So all those times tech support told me "it's working as designed" they were actually trying to lead me to enlightenment?
I suddenly feel quite enlightened. Very good koan...