“In Cho Chabudai Gaeshi, a new arcade game from Taito, the player has one very simple task: to flip over a chabudai, a short-legged round table. In Japan, the act of table flipping, or “chabudai gaeshi” is a common expression of anger among old-fashioned, middle-aged men. Cho Chabudai Gaeshi is specifically aimed at balding fathers who are perpetually infuriated with their disobedient and noisy families, but too timid to actually upend their real-world chabudais. What’s so interesting about Cho Chabudai Gaeshi is how mundane the gameplay is: The father sits at the table, pounding on it with his hands as his obnoxious children ignore him until finally, he flips it over and sends everything flying into the air, collecting points for every item destroyed in the wake of his moderately-violent outburst.”
What grabs me is his analysis of what this means for gaming in general:
“While it seems like a novelty, the workaday content of the game is a profound innovation that alters the very nature of gaming. Of course it’s fun and entertaining, but it could also be used as a form of domestic catharsis, a way to express one’s anger in an isolated virtual world before returning home from a tough day at work.”
Connecting with a game is all about immersion. Some games, like World of Warcraft, create immersion through huge, detailed worlds, places where players can roam and interact with a relative approximation of reality. Others, like Mass Effect 2 (to use a current example), focus on character development, foregoing the sense of freedom through exploration in favor of creating a deeper connection between the player and his/her on-screen analog.
In terms of gameplay, and, obviously, scope, these three games are pretty far apart. But to me, Cho Chabudai Gaesh feels more like a “micro-RPG” than a profound innovation. Instead of connecting with the player through a complex system that embeds them in the game world, Cho Chabudai Gaesh addresses players in a more direct and personal manner: it draws upon existing social mores to use the player’s own identity as the moral backdrop.
There’s one more point that Mr. Haddow raises that I want to discuss. He says:
"Right now there’s a surplus of games where you can run around brutally murdering people, but 99% of these are completely fantastic and in no way pertain to the player’s actual experience. I can see a whole new genre blossoming out of Cho Chabudai Gaeshi – games where you get to destroy your office printer, push people in a crowded subway, throw things at your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse and so on. An alternate digital dimension allowing for constant emotional micro-management.”
I agree that there is a surplus of games that typically don’t raise real issues for gamers to explore. But I don’t think that is a fault of genre, so much as it is a fault of game design. For example, let’s look at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This massively successful game was, for me, generally enjoyable to play in a mindless sort of way. Fun, but forgettable. One mission stands out, though. As an undercover operative, your character joins a terrorist organization as they are launching an assault on a crowded airport. To stay in their favor, you are forced to take part in the attack. Essentially, you are faced with the prospect of killing civilians as “collateral damage” in favor of accomplishing larger political goals.
I found this deeply disturbing. The prospect of killing innocents shocked me out of my suspension of disbelief, reminding me quite clearly that I was suddenly playing a game populated by digital people who could come to no real harm as a result of my decisions. Even so, I still couldn’t do it. I fired into walls above shops or into windows overlooking the runway. The context of the act was significant enough to force me to make a moral decisions rather than take the game as simply what it was; a game.
That is, I think, what video games need to grow as an art form: enough emotional weight to make players think seriously about their actions. There are many games that try to build gameplay systems that hinge upon “moral” choices. “Do I steal this treasure or return it to the rightful owner? Do I kill the bandits, or turn them over to the authorities?” These tend to be the sorts of decisions that games give us, a sort of morality-light that doesn’t challenge the player’s assumptions about the world they inhabit.
So what does that have to do with “emotional micro-management?” I don’t think that the best way for games to help us cope with our frustrations is for them to be proxies of the situations we face. Games that pertain to my experience aren’t necessarily better equipped to challenge me; they’re just primal fantasy. I might find entertainment in a game that allows me to shove virtual commuters, but I’m not dealing with my emotions on much more than a superficial level.
In the end, I want games to be fun. That’s why I play them. But using games as a stand-in for the real problems I might be facing isn’t productive, it’s just mindless. What games can offer is a chance to examine the universality of our moral values. Game developers have the power to build worlds that challenge me to assess the reasoning behind my decisions, not just act blindly. I think games that help me understand myself would be a wonderful thing. My point isn’t to say that these “micro-RPGs” are bad, or that there isn’t a place for mindless entertainment; it’s to examine what it is about games that lets us express anger or frustration or any other emotion, and to understand how that can teach me something about myself.
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