As I was browsing the web for topics for my upcoming blogs, I happened to cross a blog post with the title, "Anti Spore: Resisting EA's War on Creationism." As soon as I pulled up the page, I had two immediate experiences. The first was one of bizarre amazement and the other was an epiphany (more like a smack-myself-on-the-head realization). I'll get to explaining both of them in a minute, but first let me tell you a little about the blog.
A couple of months ago an unnamed blogger, who I shall refer to as Jim for continuity's sake, posted a blog about Spore because his son saw it in the store and wanted to get it. Thinking it was a simple E-rated game, Jim didn't see any harm in Spore until, that is, he realized what the game was teaching. As a christian (fundamentalist maybe?), Jim turned out to have quite a few problems with the fact that his son had such a close brush with evolution (Good save there, Jim. You may have just saved his young mind from all kinds of bad experiences). In his blog, Jim talks about a variety of subjects including "Sporno," Will Wright's evil character, "Evolutioniaryists," and christian values/creationism. Please feel free to read the details on the actual blog.
Now I'll come back to the main experiences I had with this blog. When I first started looking at this site, I was definitely surprised. I find it extremely interesting to listen to what the christian fundamentalist sect has to say on issues involving creationism versus evolution or other topics surrounding science and technology. It was especially significant in my case because we had just watched the documentary "Jesus Camp" in one of my other Honors classes. This film spent a great deal of time talking about the christian fundamentalist view on science and evolution. Since this subject was fresh on my mind, I couldn't pass by the opportunity to relate it to Spore. In any case, I reacted to this site as I had reacted to the film: I thought it was rather bizarre. But after a couple of minutes, I came to my second notable experience. I sat back for a moment and then realized that I actually had no reason to be surprised at all. In fact, I began to wonder why I hadn't seen a creationist reaction to Spore before this. Naturally, because Spore is based on the overall idea of evolution, any person with creationist ideals would be furious that children would have access to these scientific teachings. After thinking about this, I took a brief look around the web and saw quite a few anti-Spore websites, many of which talked about the particular blog post I'm mentioning here. We don't tend to hear about these arguments as much in the mainstream media, though, which is what makes a blog post like this cause a double-take once you come across it.
Sure, after reading the anti-Spore blog it's easy to laugh, raise an eyebrow, or mouth a few confused explitives at the monitor, but it's important to realize what a serious issue this is. I've read some of the comments Jim's been getting on his blog and some of them range from insults to death threats. You would think that Jim had killed somebody's child if you read the comments first before knowing what the blog was about. This really makes me want to reconsider what a serious game is. I mean, if people are willing to come to blows over the content conflicts, doesn't that make this game a little more serious than we originally thought? It's pretty disturbing to think about. It's funny, when I first played Spore the thought of creationism versus evolution never even crossed my mind. In fact, I was just excited to be playing a highly-anticipated new game. It seems a pity that we can't even set aside politics and religion for an hour to just play a game for the sake of play. One example I thought of (and this is a stretch from video games, but a good "play" example), is the Christmas truce of 1914. On that day, No-Man's Land practically turned into a playground where Brits and Germans got together, told jokes, juggled and had snowball fights. So, I mean come on, if two countries can take a break in the middle of WWI and have some fun together, why can't we play Spore and leave religion out of it? After we turn off the controller, then we can get back to hating everyone.
It just goes to show you that a game is never just a game; there's always politics and crisis spinning away every time you put the disc in the drive. It's a little sad that we've gotten to that point.
PS: There's been a whole other game in play with this post and the anti-Spore post. Click here to find out what. Also, click here and read the last "Bible" verse on the post. Classic baby.
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2 comments:
I remember reading about this blog and it's eventual discovery. I think the reason everybody was taken-in is because it does seem like the kind of reaction one has come to expect. Joystiq reported it as real at first, and then later reported that they weren't so upset about being had because of the subtle way the author revealed the hoax, as you mention in your last paragraph. And Poe's Law is what describes the comments, which were of course the reason for writing the piece anyways.
For me, the literal message out of Spore almost sides more with Creationist ideas, at least certain variants on them. The mainstream scientific view is that life began on Earth from non-life, whereas Spore has life begin with a meteor crash. This sounds mechanistic but still leaves open the question of how that Meteor got on its course. Also, the way you progress through the game is "towards God". While against literalist interpretations, this still would seem to reinforce the Aristotelian concept of entelechy later taken up by Christian philosophers and scientists (although discarded in present-day evolutionary thought). Mutations and variations are developed through specific purpose (i.e. intelligent design). The list would seem to go on. Of course maybe this is an argument not for "Spore as Creationism" but to stress the need to interpret texts in more than just a literal manner. Wright's talks about the game, blogs that people write, how people play the game, and even the artwork contribute to the game's overall meaning.
There definitely can be arguments made for the two. When you first look at the game though, it's hard to get past seeing it as anything other than a game discussing evolution. This is especially true because Wright spends a lot of time publicizing the presence of various sciences within the game. However, once you really start analyzing the game, it makes it a little easier to see how it contains themes of creationism as well. I like that you brought up the idea of entelechy, because I hadn't thought about this concept in relation to Spore until you mentioned it. The emphasis on sentience in the game pairs up nicely with this. There's also no doubt that you're progressing towards God during the game, but, again, you have to look past the literal presentation of the game play to see this as creationism. Overall, I think it would take a lot of work to convince a Christian fundamentalist that this game is about creationism since the game play is focused so heavily on the concept of evolution.
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