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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Deus City » DC: Deus City
[DC] [SPEC] Possible Story Theme
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imbri
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 		[DC] [SPEC] Possible Story Theme
WARNING this is based on very out of game information
So, y'all know that I've been rather intrigued by this game. Y'all also know that I'm a bit of a PM hunter - a practice I both despise and, yet, can't avoid. I'm curious like that - that's why I like ARGs (or one of the reasons at least). That has brought me to a very preliminary and curious idea on the plot of the game. But to get there, you're going to have to follow my train of thought.

Now, the whole FUNDI part of FundiTechnologies and FundiGames stood out to me but it wasn't until someone pointed out the Churches and Non-Profits section of the website that I had that aha! moment. Ok. cool. They do work for churches. I dig that. My mom works at a church and they're always struggling with such things.

Then I remembered Adam's student website that was linked to in the trailhead thread. It now redirects to the Dues City blog, but you can use this google cache of it. I'd been all over the site before looking to find out more about what he's studying. As a former grad student in an IDT program - I was curious. When the religion link was made, I remembered a striking photo of a church.

Now, what do we know about the game? It's set in Deus City - Deus is Latin for God. We know that it's set 30 years in the future. We know that there are two sides - one of which is led by Foo. It's not difficult to get to from Foo to Foe which is how Chaucer referred to the devil. Are we looking at Good and Evil? I don't know, but I bet that it's going to be a big part of the game. Personally, I'm rooting for evil - it's always just a bit more fun Wink

Now for the very incomplete wild spec - take another look at that picture. It's for the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church and off to the side is a large sign asking if you're pregnant and needing help. In the front is a gravestone "in memory of all unborn children." As far as pro-life/anti-abortion stands it's quite nice.

Remember how the game is set 30 years in the future. Well, 30 years is just about long enough for someone to be conceived, grow up, go to school, become an adult, and do whatever it is that they're supposed to do. But! if that child was aborted, what would happen? I haven't quite figured out how it would work or how it would play out. That's why it's very incomplete wild spec. It is an interesting concept, though.

And, we've been wondering when the religious and social/political ARG would come up. Is this it? I dunno, but I'm thinking so.

PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 2:21 am
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CrypticVision
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 		In an odd sort of way, that makes a lot of sense.

Actually, if everything else you say actually does happen, and this is an anti-abortion ARG then their is a high probability of Mustfa Tang Foojimoto trying to get someone in our time to convince a mother to have the child and not abort it. (or even TO abort, The Omen anyone? Shocked Evil or Very Mad Confused)

Actually, even without the religious ties that would make for an interesting story.

That was a tasty piece of spec. Smile
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 11:25 am
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KGBrAm
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 		Interesting Spec indeed.

I'm not sure if the rabbit hole goes that deep though.


Deus City, City of the Gods (or is that City of God? If that's the case my theory falls apart lol)

Could simply mean a City of Enlightened People? Which is pretty much what the Future Deus Citizens are making it out to be.

/2 cents Smile

PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 11:39 am
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imbri
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KGBrAm wrote:

Deus City, City of the Gods (or is that City of God? If that's the case my theory falls apart lol)


Deus is God. Gods would be deī or dī. (see here)

Deus ex Machina is God from the machine.

PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 11:48 am
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KGBrAm
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 		Fair enough.

Let me bring your attention to:

1. god, deity
2. an imperial epithet (for deified emperors)

The second meaning, to me, is more important. Seems logical that city that claims perfection had a deified leader.

Also Latin has many forms (as the wiki page shows) If I remember correctly from my Latin classes way back when, the form used (and the inclination) can impact the meaning of the word. (genitive, ablative, nominative, or whatnot)

From the page you listed, Deus is at least used in two forms, Vocative and Nominative.

Also listed there is this:
Inflection Second declension (2). (irregular dat. & abl. plural)
Plural forms ?

The Latin word is coupled with an English one. That, to me says the exact meaning of the word isn't crystal clear (because of how Latin is written and structured)

(English is not my first language, so maybe I'm interpreting something wrong in the Grammar-related descriptions)

PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 12:01 pm
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Phaedra
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CrypticVision wrote:
Actually, if everything else you say actually does happen, and this is an anti-abortion ARG then their is a high probability of Mustfa Tang Foojimoto trying to get someone in our time to convince a mother to have the child and not abort it. (or even TO abort, The Omen anyone? Shocked Evil or Very Mad Confused)


Or, the "utopic" future we have been presented with could be a lie, and Fujimoto could be trying to convince someone in our time to abort the child who would grow up to challenge or overthrow the repressive government.

Aside from the plot possibilities here, I'm very disturbed by the idea of an ARG promoting a religious or political agenda.

There's been a lot of discussion about whether ARGs are "too real" and might confuse players into being unable to tell the difference between the game and reality due to the TINAG aesthetic; Jane McGonigal's paper A Real Little Game is an excellent response to this, arguing that players can tell quite well where the boundaries are, because they are feigning belief in the game, not actually believing it's real.

Similarly, most ARGs that are promoting a product have been fairly upfront about it. The Beast's rabbithole was in the AI trailer, ILB's was in the Halo 2 trailer, and LCP gave you extra poker chips for pre-ordering GUN, and put the GUN logo in their trailer, for example. Plus, these games were pushing products, which you can really only buy once.

If you morally oppose violent video games, for example, you had enough information early in ILB, and fairly early in LCP, to choose to avoid those games.

Furthermore, the plot never overtly or covertly pushed the product the game was promoting. ARGs are, as SpaceBass has written about, a dance between PMs and players, and that dance requires trust between both sides.

The 42 PMs have explained how they reconcile that trust with the marketing factor of their games (excerpted from here -- emphases mine):

Quote:
Elan: When we approach a project the intent is to always…we need our audience…there's no doubt in anyone's mind when they look at this…this is a promotion for Halo 2. "I saw the clue in the trailer, this is a promotion for Halo 2." At some point, every audience member for our games needs to make a decision to momentarily dismiss it… momentarily take a leap of faith or suspension of disbelief and say, "I'm going to forget about that part for just a second and see what this thing is." And our goal, our job, if we do it right, is to make that comfortable and inviting so that they are very anxious to get to that point and when they get to that point they have no problem when they get to that point, "I saw in the Halo trailer but whatever… what's going on in this world?" And the delicate nature of these projects is that once that trust is established, so step one is establish that trust so that they are willing to do it, and step two is to maintain that trust: don't do anything that will make them feel dirty for playing, is going to make them feel marketed to, is going make them feel like we're forcing anything on them…

Sean: You never have to buy a product, you were never encouraged to buy a product, there was never a sell, all of it in fact…and we tell this up front to the client, what we will do if you have an interesting world we'll tell an interesting story and we'll let people engage in that and that's cool but we are never going to put up an ad that says, "buy an Xbox!" you know?


Political and religious positions are different from products because, as I mentioned, you're probably only going to buy Halo 2 once, and it's a decision you're making with your eyes open. You knew from the beginning that the ARG was connected to Halo 2, but the PMs never pushed it or tried to convince you to buy it; they just told you a story in its universe in the hopes that you'd like that universe. At the end of the day, it's a game. It's not about your lifestyle, it's not about belief; it's very limited in scope. It's an object you may or may not buy.

A political or religious agenda is using a form of game that, in order for you to play, requires you to pretend to believe something. And they're doing it to sell belief. That seems to me to be dangerous line blurring.

It also seems to me, if it's not disclosed upfront, to be a pretty egregious violation of the trust between players and PMs that's so important to the functioning of ARGs. It seems to me somewhat analogous to a psychotherapist or someone else placed in a position of trust that deals with the way people think using their position to push their religious or political beliefs.

I'm pro-choice. If I played a game and found out halfway through, instead of at the beginning, that it had been designed to promote a pro-life agenda, I'd feel furious and used. On the other hand, if it were designed to promote a pro-choice agenda, I'd feel dirty for having been associated with something dishonest like that.

All of this, obviously, is based on the speculation above which, admittedly, is purely, purely speculative at this point.

I sincerely hope it's wrong. Because it seems to me that besides being an abuse of the trust players fairly automatically give PMs of an ARG, it's also an abuse of the power of the form itself, which is something that requires players to pretend to believe in something in order to play.

And that's bad for the players, bad for other people who make games, and bad for the genre.

/me steps off her soapbox
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 12:27 pm
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imbri
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 		KGBrAm: Yeah, the deified leader makes sense. But, then, wouldn't they call the city after the leader's name?

It could be that the story is about false gods - idolization and such. But, then, I still think they'd name the city "(exhalted ruler name) City".

I'm still sticking to the God hunch and, yeah, to the abortion angle. The 30 years out thing just seems too perfect for it. So, then, does the question become... who's pregnant? Was Foo gettin' himself a little lovin' while he was nowhere to be found? Men have disappeared for days at a time in pursuit of far less worthy goals Wink


edited to add...
Phae: I completely agree with you. I was actually hesitant to register not knowing what I was getting into and, then, considered using false information. If my spec is correct, I do wish that the PMs made the plot a bit more clear before registration.

That said, I am very intrigued with the power of ARGs to encourage discussion on social issues. And, discussion can come about without an agenda being pushed. I look back to the Beast and still think that it's insanely cool that the audience was just about 50/50 on whether robots should be given rights. It was presented in a very complex and equal fashion and spawned some great discussions on technology and slavery. It was at that moment that I forever fell in love with Sean Stewart's writing. Now, equal rights for robots doesn't come with as much baggage and emotion as does, say, abortion.

PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 12:33 pm
Last edited by imbri on Sun Nov 19, 2006 12:48 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Phaedra
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KGBrAm wrote:
Fair enough.

Let me bring your attention to:

1. god, deity
2. an imperial epithet (for deified emperors)

The second meaning, to me, is more important. Seems logical that city that claims perfection had a deified leader.

Also Latin has many forms (as the wiki page shows) If I remember correctly from my Latin classes way back when, the form used (and the inclination) can impact the meaning of the word. (genitive, ablative, nominative, or whatnot)

From the page you listed, Deus is at least used in two forms, Vocative and Nominative.

Also listed there is this:
Inflection Second declension (2). (irregular dat. & abl. plural)
Plural forms ?

The Latin word is coupled with an English one. That, to me says the exact meaning of the word isn't crystal clear (because of how Latin is written and structured)

(English is not my first language, so maybe I'm interpreting something wrong in the Grammar-related descriptions)


Well, the ablative case usually modifies verbs (like an adverb). When it's applied to a noun, I'm fairly certain it always requires a preposition.

So basically, it'd be nonsensical for it to be ablative, and therefore nonsensical for it to be plural. I don't think you can make "Deus City" out to be "City of the Gods." It's "God City."
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 12:34 pm
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KGBrAm
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Phaedra wrote:
Aside from the plot possibilities here, I'm very disturbed by the idea of an ARG promoting a religious or political agenda.''



Yay Phaedra!
We agree Razz


I jest!

I would be really ticked off to see a game as a way to push a religious, political or ethical set of beliefs on players.

Now, if the aim of a game like that was to get a discussion and some controversy started, it would probably succeed extremely well.

Unfortunately, it would be at the expense of the unsuspecting player base.


Edit: Fixed the quote. Those little brackets are annoying to do on a French keyboard and I didn't have enough coffee in me yet to pick the post apart with the Quote button.Thanks Phaedra.

PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 12:36 pm
Last edited by KGBrAm on Sun Nov 19, 2006 12:51 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Phaedra
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KGBrAm wrote:
Unfortunately, it would be at the expense of the unsuspecting player base.


And that's my issue.

But it's all spec at this point, and probably (hopefully) wrong. Smile

By the way, not sure if you know this, but if you want to quote something all you need to do is surround it with bracketed "quotes," like this:

Code:
[quote]Blah blah blah[/quote]


If you want to indicate who said it, you include their name:

Code:
[quote="Name"]Blah BLAH blah blah[/quote]


Also, when you want to reply to part of a post and quote it, there's a quote button at the bottom of each post. You can then just take out the parts you don't want to quote.

Hope that helps! Smile
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 12:41 pm
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Arkaham
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 		Brackin had a discussion about the translation of 'deus' on his blog, refering to Nostradamus prophesy. On a book he found, certain passage was translated as 'city of deus'. But then someone corrected him, saying it was 'City of God', yet he insisted his book was real, and it was translated (or not translated) as 'City of Deus'.

And I hope they're not trying to push any agenda here. That would most surely be like having a self imploding button.
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:43 pm
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KGBrAm
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 		The passage and the book.

http://deus-city.blogspot.com/2006/09/great-prophets-of-second-millennium-by.html

PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 1:50 pm
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imbri
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 		And yet in Deux-Ex-What? he says:

Brackin's Blog wrote:
If I give myself instructions, or even advice (or as some of you have suggested: the lotto numbers) then I will be imparting impossible knowledge. Omniscient knowledge if you will... Divine even? So if you will pardon my hubris, It will in effect be GOD from the machine. Nostradamus eat my shorts. I'm not going to waste MY time with quatrains.


Which is relating himself to God. Which, in my mind, just helps to solidify my spec of good vs evil. Now, are we to take it that he is representing God and "good" or are we to take it that he is setting himself up to be a false prophet?

PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 2:56 pm
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Arkaham
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 		If we assume Deus City to be Foo's idea of the future, and then if we assume 'deus' there does not mean god as suggested by the blog. Then we have that Foo is not god, while Brackin wants to be.

That could mean Brackin is god, and Foo is the devil (mataphorically speaking) or that Brackin wants absolute power while Foo doesn't.
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 19, 2006 3:13 pm
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WolfHawk
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 		Anyone else find it interesting that Fundi Technologies produces software for churches? Not to mention the distinct reference to Fund(i)mentalism. I wonder...

PostPosted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 3:46 pm
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