{"id":3675,"date":"2013-04-24T11:00:21","date_gmt":"2013-04-24T15:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=3675"},"modified":"2020-06-26T15:02:19","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T19:02:19","slug":"colonialism-privilege-and-meaningful-play-in-dog-eat-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.playthepast.org\/?p=3675","title":{"rendered":"Colonialism, Privilege, and Meaningful Play in Dog Eat Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"

Game designer Liam Liwanag Burke describes Dog Eat Dog <\/em>as a “fun, compelling game about colonialism and assimilation in the Pacific Islands.” That’s right – Burke created a fun <\/em>roleplaying game about the inequality inherent to colonialism and its consequences. One player acts as the Occupation (all<\/em> of it – leaders, military, and tourists alike) while the others play as individual Natives, all trying to negotiate the new boundaries and power structure on the island. Burke published Dog Eat Dog<\/em> and its supplement Asocena after successfully running a Kickstarter<\/a> in April 2012. He was kind enough to answer the following questions about the development of Dog Eat Dog. <\/em><\/p>\n

RM: The only standard Rule in the game\u2019s Record (the history of the island during a particular game) in Dog Eat Dog<\/em> is: \u201cThe (Native People) are inferior to the (Occupation people).\u201d At what point during development did you decide to base every game\u2019s internal history on this one underlying Rule? How have players reacted to this rule?<\/strong> <\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

LB: You know, Dog Eat Dog only really had two stages of development — before and after. I was working at a logistics firm, which is both constantly stressful and constantly boring, and playing indie roleplaying games with Chris Chinn and talking about race, and the whole thing just kind of developed in my head, and I basically wrote it down as one piece, much of it while I was at work. This was actually before Google Docs, and I had to look busy the whole time, so I actually wrote it all in a draft email to myself in my Gmail account, and then went home and took it out and put it in a word processor. So the very first draft of Dog Eat Dog<\/em> had the First Rule in it. Of course, once I\u2019d written and playtested it I ended up changing some things, and I rewrote most of it when it came time to actually publish. But the First Rule never changed. I think it\u2019s really the core of the game — colonialism implies contempt. If you go to somebody else\u2019s country and try to change things, even if you do it politely and nonviolently, it necessarily means you think you know better than they do how to run that country. Interestingly, very few people have ever commented on it. Maybe it\u2019s too obviously the mission statement! The most common question I\u2019ve gotten about it is that people want to be sure it\u2019s opinion, not fact.<\/p>\n

In the \u201cFull Disclosure\u201d section of Dog Eat Dog you mention that the game is mostly about the Occupation, despite the fact that more players are Natives and that each individual has his\/her own traits. How does the tension between the power of the Occupation and number of the Natives typically play out, considering the rule of Native inferiority? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I like to think of it as demonstrating privilege in action. Each Native, of course, will pursue their own agenda, whether it\u2019s opposing the Occupation or working with them. But when they come into contact with the Occupation, the scene tends to end up being about what the Occupation is doing and thinking in response to the Natives, rather than what the Natives are actually doing. This exemplifies the institutional nature of privilege — everywhere you go, the story\u2019s about you being there.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason why you started creating this game was because you were unable to have a deep conversation with a relative about racism. Have you been able to play Dog Eat Dog<\/em> with that relative? Has the game facilitated better conversations?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Actually, I haven\u2019t! I wrote Dog Eat Dog<\/em> because of my experiences growing up with an Irish-American father and a first-generation Filipino-American mother. As I started to come to terms with my racial identity it became clear to me that I didn\u2019t really understand what my mother had gone through in order to come to America and raise a family — I got all the benefits of her decision but didn\u2019t see the sacrifices. So Dog Eat Dog<\/em> was part of my attempts to understand the issue. The trouble is, I only see my family maybe once a year at Christmas, so it\u2019s tough for us to actually sit down and play it. But she\u2019s read the book, and writing it helped me understand her strength and gave me the courage to ask her about her experiences, so in that way it\u2019s definitely helped.<\/p>\n

Since you met most of your Kickstarter stretch goals, there was a supplement shipped with the game, Asocena [named after a Filipino dish made from dog meat], filled with alternative scenarios. How did you collect and edit these? Have you heard from other players that have created their own scenarios since the game\u2019s release? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I actually collected most of the Asocena submissions from my own Kickstarter backers! Which seems like cheating now that I think about it. I directly contacted a few people who I knew would be interested, and of course dragged all my friends into writing scenarios, but some of the best entries in the book turned up from people I didn\u2019t know at all before starting the Kickstarter. I just wrote an update asking if anybody would be interested in submitting something, and a lot of very talented people came out of the woodwork and sent amazing stuff in. There have been a few people since then who have written scenarios of their own – Hans Chung-Otterson of wearelostinplay.com<\/a> wrote a very nice piece on G+ using it to explore debtorship, for example.<\/p>\n

Do you have any reflections on the process of creating a Kickstarter now that almost a year has passed? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m actually just writing up a whole postmortem for my blog on what I learned about running a Kickstarter and what I might do differently. I would probably say the key elements are:<\/p>\n