ID:151995
 Jun 20 2008, 10:57 pm
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How could one represent cultural diversity in a game without specifying strict rigid cultures? I'm fiddling around with a game that involves building a society, and I want to incorporate cultural aspects into the game, but let the players customize them to their societies. Given the vast subject at hand, it's sort of hard to pin down the core aspects of culture, besides ritual, custom, and other generalities. What thoughts have ye?
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Jun 21 2008, 3:44 am
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Kaiochao
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Cultures can be based on location on the map. You could make realistic climates for people to adapt differently, making it seem like a different culture.
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You could also make the NPCs/player character different. Or have each culture use a different currency. Maybe an overall attitude to present to other cultures.
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Kaiochao wrote:
Cultures can be based on location on the map. You could make realistic climates for people to adapt differently, making it seem like a different culture. Yeah, I was thinking location and environment would play a crucial role, but I don't think it's enough to just say Player A has a desert culture and Player B has a tropical culture. Even among similar regions, culture isn't the same. I guess I'm looking for, what makes up a culture's identity? All cultures share a certain fundamental foundation. Most are agricultural foundations, but some are based on older beliefs that coincide with a hunter-gatherer tribe's activities. Pagan rituals and gods were depicted as animalistic, while modern cultures portray their gods as eternal, renewable beings that die and are reborn, just as crops are planted, harvest and reborn the following spring. Culture plays a vital role in everyday life, from simple personal rituals and beliefs to large societal gatherings, celebrations, traditions and ceremonies that bind the society together through shared cultural experiences. Many of the rituals serve as a means of education, indoctrination into the larger society, and provide participant with an overwhelming sense of purpose, duty and loyalty to the group. Culture is such a wide topic, though. There's more to it than simple ritual and ceremony. How the society is partitioned is an extension of cultural traditions and beliefs. When to plant, to harvest, to build and tear down are often dictated by cultural cues. Indeed, many of today's cultures are large and complex systems of agricultural management. Giving the society stories and myths that explain esoterically, what's happening in the fields. What's more, culture is more spectacular when basic needs are already well met. Bali is a great example of this. Their culture is so rich and encompassing of everything the people do, simply for the fact that they have the time to contemplate other things besides food and shelter. Other societies who are more concerned with the day to day survival have simpler rituals and customs, which usually have a direct correlation to the survival of the society. Less advanced tribes are much like this, relying on the spirits of nature and/or ancestors to help fulfill daily needs, or to provide guidance through life's trials. But if you break it all down into it's most basic formula, culture seems to be nothing more than a complex system of superstitious beliefs and practices that help unify the society and connect the people with their past and future, and also to connect them to the land and source of their sustenance. I'm just not sure how to go about putting that idea into a game. | |
Well, it's more than just appearance. The players in the game don't have icons. They act as a sort of demigod overseeing a society of many people, who probably won't actually have any graphical representation on the map, other than some units that depict workers or soldiers and the like.
I do like the idea of basing player interaction on the behavior of their societies and their cultural beliefs. The type of money they each use isn't really important, but I suppose I could let the players name their own currency and such. The main purpose of culture in my game is going to be keeping the people loyal to the society, ensuring that the society runs smoothly, and to offer new avenues of exploration for the players to pursue. One culture may base their whole society around the sea, while another may be completely occupied with the heavens and tracking the stars. How these societies view the world, interact with it and such is an extension of their beliefs. The sea-going society would see everything in life as a flow, a tidal event or some other fluid dynamic, while the star society would wrap all their beliefs and rituals around patterns in the sky, the seasons and such. What they focus on when growing as a society will dictate how they develop. | |
At its deepest level, I consider culture to be a collective consciousness of a society built as a method of organisation and control. If you do not like the specific culture which you are a part of, you are either ostracised or expatriated. If you are any other degree of acceptance, ranging from tolerance to jubilance, the culture of an organisation defines your role in that society and allows you to provoke thought regarding status quo.
At its stem, culture is about changing people's minds and encouraging adaptation. On the leaves, culture is defined by: 1) Social cliques and gender roles 2) Preferred media for artwork 3) Legal and moral definitions of obscenity and perversion 4) Religious laws 5) Ethical laws 6) Biological instincts regarding humour (a stress-release mechanism), passion (a competition mechanism intended to allow successful mating), romance (a survival mechanism intended to bring a pair together outside of an oestrus cycle), beauty (a mechanism intended to attract you towards the safest dwellings and/or the most genetically compatible mates), etc. The basic qualities of #6 are difficult if not impossible to simulate in a computer game. However, if it is player-centric the players will bring along their own instincts and provide emergent behaviour. If you allow people to create organisations and allow leaders of those organisations to assign people to specific ranks and/or classes in those organisations, #1 is fulfilled. People will want to join specific organisations, willingly seeking out a specific label for the prestige; other people could automatically join certain organisations (e.g., being born in a country = citizenship in that country's organisation). If the organisation can define law, #5 and #3 are fulfilled. #4 rarely fits into a computer game unless the deities are actually tangible (even if not visible), but if they are tangible, each deity tends to have strict codes of conduct in exchange for their magical services, covering #4. (In exchange for God's protection against Satan, for instance, Catholics are required to attend Mass on Sundays, required to obey ten Commandments, and encouraged to respect guidelines based on their interpretation of the books of the Bible.) The only one that isn't fulfilled is #2, the media, which is dependent on the game developer. People will prefer to use the media which they find the most entertaining, with people using the other forms of media only out of a desire to be different. Without diversity in media, culture will stagnate. However, if all forms of media are somehow made equally entertaining, then the determining factor of a preference has more to do with the players' motives (based on #1 and #3-#6) than it does on anything else, making the choice of media itself a conscious decision that itself can enhance the aesthetics of the piece. | |
Culture studies and human behavior is a complex area and there are many studies that look at culture from different perspective (anthropology, sociology, economics, etc.) In my experience, culture generally refers to a system of shared values and beliefs and the associated activities. So it's pretty broad. Thus, it is often useful to break culture down into smaller components such as linguistics, mythology, symbolism, music, visual arts, martial values, etc. Generally, cultures place different relative values on different aspects of that culture. For example,a warlike culture tend to value militarism over other beliefs and this colors other aspects of the culture. Other cultures might value trade, education, and the fine arts more highly. A good example of this is classical Sparta and Athens. Religion is also a hugely important indicator of cultural values and often social roles.
How all of this would affect a game would largely depend on the nature of the game. In a Civilization type game, it would likely affect potential alliances and catalysts to war. In the design you mentioned, perhaps players have different paths to power based on cultural strategies. So a player who emphasized development and education would develop technological advances quicker. One who emphasized trading and commerce would have a wealthier society. A militant society would have more capable soldiery. A religious society might be able to inspire temporary fanaticism and be able to subvert elements of the same religion in other societies. A society that emphasized arts and entertainment might have much happier, productive people. | |
Good stuff. I think of lot of what you described would be related more to how the players interact.
You did illuminate something I totally screwed up, though, which is my approach. I've been going at it all wrong. Instead of thinking about how to make culture fit into the game, I should decide what sort of fun gameplay culture can fulfill. Like you said, a militant society would be one way, other types would be another. No matter what sort of system I make, the players will naturally gravitate to these certain archetypes anyways, why not design around the game instead of around some concept that may not be any fun in the end? :P Thanks! | |