Literary criticism of Showdown
2009.10.01
Offered without comment.
A fortiori, then, Seth Ben-Ezra’s forthcoming game Showdown must be understood as a very postmodern deconstruction of sociopathic violence tropes in traditional games. “Rendering problematic the relationship between the act of playing and the fiction” is what it does best. Not only does it undermine the “heroic” traits of the protagonists in the fiction as we experience it, it undermines those same traits in the characters’ self-images. In the best games, we’re left with the hollow husks of the characters we thought we created, losers who resort to deadly violence because they have nothing left. It’s like playing D&D and Power Kill at the exact same time.
Oh, lest it be unclear, Colin likes the game.
Wow. Is this going on the back cover?
Christoph,
Probably not. Though “It’s like playing D&D and Power Kill at the exact same time” could be a nifty quote for somewhere.
I feel a little weird commenting here, but… wouldn’t putting something like this on the back cover be a little soundtracking your ad to sell cruises with a song about heroin addiction?
Which is to say it would be an intensely funny tonal collision, but not necessarily helpful in marketing terms.
But yeah, I think Showdown is a showstopper, a game that excels at a lot of hard things, in both mechanics and fiction.