1 00:00:04,100 --> 00:00:08,240 [Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] So. Hello, everyone. Um, welcome to session ten of the fantasy Summer school. 2 00:00:08,660 --> 00:00:15,290 Uh, my name is Adam Kelly. I'm a doctoral researcher here at Oxford, uh, where I work on melancholy, medieval poetry, cherry stuff. 3 00:00:16,280 --> 00:00:19,490 It's my pleasure to be chatting this session with two excellent speakers. 4 00:00:19,790 --> 00:00:23,719 We'll have time for five minutes of questions after the first talk and 15 after the second. 5 00:00:23,720 --> 00:00:27,530 So please bear them in mind, and we'll try to get to as many of you as possible in that time. 6 00:00:28,610 --> 00:00:31,220 So without further ado, I'd like to welcome Stuart Lee. 7 00:00:31,340 --> 00:00:38,210 He's a professor of English Lit here at Oxford, where he has lectured on Old English war poetry, Tolkien and fantasy literature. 8 00:00:38,660 --> 00:00:42,230 Stuart's talk today is on gaming and immersive world. So welcome Stuart. 9 00:00:43,040 --> 00:00:47,800 Thank you. Uh, and thank you very much. 10 00:00:47,830 --> 00:00:49,310 I know what you say at the beginning. 11 00:00:49,330 --> 00:00:56,830 I am not a games theorist by any stretch of the imagination, but I was a gamer for many years of my my life and misspent youth. 12 00:00:56,840 --> 00:01:01,150 So I just want to talk a bit about a combination of games, history. 13 00:01:01,160 --> 00:01:10,030 Gaming, of course, goes back. Probably one of the earliest things that mankind has, has, has tackled or done a bit like telling fantasy stories. 14 00:01:10,270 --> 00:01:12,819 And I'm going to take you through the history of these various components and then 15 00:01:12,820 --> 00:01:16,930 try and pull out some similarities to a few things that we have talked about, 16 00:01:17,290 --> 00:01:19,569 um, in the past couple of days. 17 00:01:19,570 --> 00:01:29,290 So wargaming, um, has been around for many, many years, but people probably focus in on Prussian war gaming, which started in the late 18th century. 18 00:01:29,710 --> 00:01:37,690 Um, AJ Bell week's game, which allowed people to sort of simulate battle battle tactics, etc. 19 00:01:38,140 --> 00:01:43,270 Um, the picture on the right is actually from H.G. Wells His Little Wars. 20 00:01:43,510 --> 00:01:46,360 He produced a set of rules for war gaming. 21 00:01:46,360 --> 00:01:56,770 This is figures and battles, figure battles, etc. um, ironically, in 1913, when of course, a year later it was all too horrendously real. 22 00:01:57,820 --> 00:02:02,320 Um, commercially produced games. They start to appear very early on. 23 00:02:02,320 --> 00:02:05,530 There are the remotes where you see they're in the 16th century, 24 00:02:05,800 --> 00:02:13,540 but most people talk about after the Second World War in terms of things like Charles Roberts Tactics or Risk, which appeared. 25 00:02:13,540 --> 00:02:22,040 I'm sure we've all played it in 1959. So let's talk about board games and board games. 26 00:02:22,050 --> 00:02:27,900 What I find interesting about them is they are trying to simulate what it's like to be in a particular situation. 27 00:02:28,390 --> 00:02:32,250 Uh, you as the player, make decisions, but you're often delivered by chance. 28 00:02:32,250 --> 00:02:36,899 And again, you could say, well, that's very like some of the, of what happens to characters in roleplaying. 29 00:02:36,900 --> 00:02:40,260 And the challenge generally is, is driven by the role of a dice. 30 00:02:40,800 --> 00:02:45,570 Uh, you can be everything from a property tycoon in monopoly to solving a murder in Cluedo. 31 00:02:46,320 --> 00:02:52,950 But again, I think, as we've said, with fantasy books or fantasy stories, they emerge from their time, games emerge from their time. 32 00:02:52,950 --> 00:03:00,029 So monopoly, which actually was first touted around in 1906, uh, and then came out in 1935, 33 00:03:00,030 --> 00:03:03,899 really is a is a game about capitalism and the Great Depression. 34 00:03:03,900 --> 00:03:10,720 Cluedo comes out in 1943. It's a game which follows on from the golden age of detective fiction. 35 00:03:10,740 --> 00:03:18,030 You're in the locked house trying to solve the murder. And I think also, which I'll come back to in a second. 36 00:03:18,060 --> 00:03:23,910 You do experience a sense of immersion, even with something like monopoly. 37 00:03:24,180 --> 00:03:27,390 Oh, what would it be like to own three hotels in Mayfair? 38 00:03:27,870 --> 00:03:33,300 I'm still in that house trying to solve the murder of Colonel Black or whatever it was. 39 00:03:34,380 --> 00:03:41,910 Now, you won't be surprised to know that board games embraced some of the key texts of fancy literature. 40 00:03:42,240 --> 00:03:46,770 There were probably earlier ones than this, but the one that people, most people point to is 1921. 41 00:03:47,040 --> 00:03:52,410 At the oldest books there was a board game, um, for that, which is a very small reproduction there. 42 00:03:52,980 --> 00:03:58,560 Um, you'll also come a lot of what they call risk skinning. So risk the Game of Thrones risk score. 43 00:03:59,040 --> 00:04:03,020 The Lord of the rings monopoly. They really aren't the sort of thing we're interested in. 44 00:04:03,030 --> 00:04:07,530 We're more interested in a game that attempts to try and take you through the narrative. 45 00:04:07,530 --> 00:04:12,390 And because he's my bank, I'm just going to focus or use Tolkien to try and talk about this. 46 00:04:13,410 --> 00:04:20,130 And Tolkien games actually appear quite early on 1970, conquest of the ring world, certainly late 60s. 47 00:04:20,610 --> 00:04:26,990 Um, there are battle rules for for, uh, taking your figures round by the ring bearer. 48 00:04:27,840 --> 00:04:36,270 The game, which probably I remember playing the most was Spies War of the ring, which is on a grand scale, a map that is the size of a table. 49 00:04:36,570 --> 00:04:41,190 Um, and you try to sort of view the characters of The Fellowship of Saruman or Sauron. 50 00:04:42,060 --> 00:04:47,010 Uh, then we get some really quite classic games coming out that Kinsey is Lord of the rings, 51 00:04:47,010 --> 00:04:53,159 and probably the one that most people saw at War of the ring, which 2000 and 2004, which again. 52 00:04:53,160 --> 00:04:58,260 But you can see the similarity between the spies and that one from the War of the ring. 53 00:04:58,470 --> 00:05:02,550 It's dealing with on a grand scale. Middle-Earth trying to get the ring to Mordor. 54 00:05:03,740 --> 00:05:11,000 Okay role playing games. And this is where things start to merge, because chain mail, which we often talk about, was about figure battles. 55 00:05:11,180 --> 00:05:14,620 But it started to introduce not just muskets, cannons. 56 00:05:14,630 --> 00:05:23,570 You start to introduce magic into it. And some of the developers of that in 1973 74 formed Tactical Studies Rules, or TSR, 57 00:05:23,990 --> 00:05:30,260 which of course most famously leads to Dungeons and Dragons by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. 58 00:05:32,160 --> 00:05:39,270 And here we get of similarities. So daddy starts that medieval, that fantasy world. 59 00:05:39,570 --> 00:05:43,680 Uh, tunnels and trolls without the time, room, quest, Warhammer and so on. 60 00:05:43,950 --> 00:05:47,219 But then roleplaying starts to embrace other genres. 61 00:05:47,220 --> 00:05:50,280 Exactly as we've been saying again and again, Bushido was an early one. 62 00:05:50,280 --> 00:05:58,530 I remember playing in Japanese culture. Sci fi comes in, we came in with traveller horror with things like Call of Cthulhu from Kaohsiung Games, etc. 63 00:05:59,570 --> 00:06:06,450 Again, like we talk about fantasy. You can play role playing games at the individual sword and sorcery level. 64 00:06:06,470 --> 00:06:14,120 You go in a dungeon, you kill monsters, you take your treasure out. The end or what became began to form campaign levels, epic levels. 65 00:06:14,630 --> 00:06:19,670 And you can go out to to the shops and buy these big packs to take you through these worlds. 66 00:06:19,670 --> 00:06:25,430 Pre-built worlds and campaign. The Dungeon Master in a role playing game is the author. 67 00:06:25,880 --> 00:06:27,350 They will world build. 68 00:06:27,800 --> 00:06:35,060 They may buy the worlds, but they more often than not will create the world, create their own mythology, um, with pre-designed scenarios. 69 00:06:35,060 --> 00:06:42,830 But they're not necessarily the sole author, as we will come on to, because the narrative can and will diverge because of. 70 00:06:43,940 --> 00:06:49,970 You, the other players in the game or non-player characters or whatever there's still chance involved in efforts on. 71 00:06:51,350 --> 00:06:55,009 Okay. A couple of things. 72 00:06:55,010 --> 00:06:59,420 We've come up against influences. So here is Gary Gygax talking about D and D. 73 00:06:59,450 --> 00:07:02,900 How did it Lord of the rings influence the d D game world? 74 00:07:02,910 --> 00:07:07,340 Plenty. Of course, just about all the players were huge JRT fans, and so they insisted. 75 00:07:07,640 --> 00:07:10,940 I put as much Tolkien influence material into the game as possible. 76 00:07:11,210 --> 00:07:18,470 So again, what we tried to do over the past couple of days to show you that everything in a way looks back to what came before. 77 00:07:18,470 --> 00:07:26,660 So D and D emerges from this great desire in the 60s, um, to look at what resurgence in particular in Tolkien and so on. 78 00:07:29,190 --> 00:07:36,510 But the second thing I'd say is that we're talking here. Our role playing game is about this idea of immersing yourself. 79 00:07:37,480 --> 00:07:44,469 You could imagine. When you're in a carrier reading a book, you can imagine yourself in the in that other character, what they're experience, 80 00:07:44,470 --> 00:07:50,500 etc. in a particularly well written but gaming of course before you the opportunity, as Scott Paul says here, 81 00:07:50,830 --> 00:07:54,310 to enter fully into that world, to fully immerse yourself, 82 00:07:54,640 --> 00:08:03,910 but also to play out your and I use it lowercase fantasy to be something which you may not be able to be in real life, 83 00:08:03,910 --> 00:08:10,450 to explore all of those options. Uh, and it takes to take new levels, obviously. 84 00:08:10,450 --> 00:08:15,150 And some of you may do this live action role playing games. Uh, forget the picture on the right. 85 00:08:15,160 --> 00:08:18,700 That's just some people doing it. Picture on the left is probably the more interesting one. 86 00:08:18,700 --> 00:08:20,560 That's Pick Fruit and Castle at Cheshire. 87 00:08:21,100 --> 00:08:29,319 And in the early 1980s, that was probably the site of the first live action role roleplaying in the UK, uh, called Treasure Trap. 88 00:08:29,320 --> 00:08:34,510 And I used to go to it and I can tell you tales about that. Um, okay. 89 00:08:34,510 --> 00:08:41,829 Sorry. Computer games. That seems to have gone slightly wrong. So, uh, just to say again, if we look at token, we have Moria. 90 00:08:41,830 --> 00:08:45,010 So we have early computer games coming out, even in 1975. 91 00:08:45,010 --> 00:08:52,330 It's all text driven, one which I spent an inordinate amount of time when I should have been doing my A-levels, playing The Hobbit on the spectrum. 92 00:08:52,750 --> 00:08:57,549 Incredibly frustrating game, but it worked. Um, and then we get things. 93 00:08:57,550 --> 00:09:03,700 Computer games have worked and moved a lot more, so it changed from that individual playing on, 94 00:09:03,700 --> 00:09:09,429 uh, a spectrum in their bedroom to something which became much more multiplayer and so on. 95 00:09:09,430 --> 00:09:14,770 And there were a lot of games which developed, and I just put DeMeo up there because that came out in 2021. 96 00:09:15,550 --> 00:09:19,000 It's not a Lord of the Rings of Tolkien one, but it's a VR game. 97 00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:24,220 So you wore a VR headset, and the irony is the VR headset what you when you start playing the game, 98 00:09:24,520 --> 00:09:31,930 you are transported to a basement, sitting around a table playing D and D, uh, so you're basically on the set of Stranger Things. 99 00:09:33,670 --> 00:09:37,329 Uh, so just wrap it up. Just a couple of things about theory. 100 00:09:37,330 --> 00:09:43,750 So if we look at narrative theory as, as some of you may know, there's always a narrative at the core of the board games. 101 00:09:43,960 --> 00:09:47,950 And to agree role playing games, the scenario if you buy a scenario pack. 102 00:09:48,580 --> 00:09:53,590 But of course it's just there, but it will be then destabilised by you, the players. 103 00:09:53,590 --> 00:09:58,450 You can challenge it, you can take it. And believe you me, we used to take it in all kinds of directions. 104 00:09:59,600 --> 00:10:04,459 And some people have written about this, that in narrative theory you talk about the fabulous events, 105 00:10:04,460 --> 00:10:10,280 act as time locations, and then the story is overlaid by the author and they as the individual, control it. 106 00:10:10,700 --> 00:10:15,020 But in a game, we perhaps will think about, well, there's a pool of things in there. 107 00:10:15,350 --> 00:10:22,910 There are the players that run the Dungeon Master says the game system, the rules, and they combine to create the narrative itself. 108 00:10:23,240 --> 00:10:31,190 So it's not we got bits and pieces, but are sitting around a table or online or whatever are the ones that will change the narrative. 109 00:10:32,510 --> 00:10:36,440 A thing. That is, though there is constant tension, is trying to keep remaining. 110 00:10:36,440 --> 00:10:40,130 Um. Uh, faithful to the original text. 111 00:10:40,520 --> 00:10:45,440 Uh, now that happens, of course, we talked about fanfiction earlier where people are trying to sort of take the text 112 00:10:45,440 --> 00:10:50,960 in new directions or look at some of the opportunities to explore new areas in that. 113 00:10:51,290 --> 00:11:00,470 Um, but what we find tend to find in the, the game, certainly in the game rules, is they are trying to keep faithful to that original narrative. 114 00:11:00,710 --> 00:11:05,120 Once we as players get hold of it, uh oh, all bets are off. 115 00:11:06,500 --> 00:11:09,739 And then finally, I just want to talk a bit about immersion losing yourself. 116 00:11:09,740 --> 00:11:17,060 And I don't mean in the Jumanji sense where you get sucked into the game physically, but you do get sucked into games even with a board game. 117 00:11:17,360 --> 00:11:22,210 You will take a side. Um, you may not like it, but you do take a side. 118 00:11:22,220 --> 00:11:26,390 If you're playing it, you start. You want to win. That's the objective of it. 119 00:11:27,080 --> 00:11:30,229 Um, and I think the other thing which we've we've touched on again, is that, 120 00:11:30,230 --> 00:11:35,180 you know, people will receive a text, a fantasy text in very different ways. 121 00:11:35,210 --> 00:11:39,290 I may read it and get something out of it. Someone else may read it and get something completely different out of it. 122 00:11:39,500 --> 00:11:43,490 So there's no one type of gamer either. Some people just go in because they love the rules. 123 00:11:43,820 --> 00:11:48,290 They love challenging the rules. Other peoples go in because they just want to have a muck about or whatever. 124 00:11:48,620 --> 00:11:52,490 Very different people who will play games. So their experience of a game is very different. 125 00:11:53,360 --> 00:12:00,560 But what you will read if you go into this game theory is things emerge from a bit of psychology about, um, 126 00:12:01,280 --> 00:12:08,299 how we immerse ourselves that there is this intense focus when you are playing a game and there's discussion of the magic circle, 127 00:12:08,300 --> 00:12:14,960 the games reality starts to dominate you when you are sitting, playing either a board game or a role playing game. 128 00:12:15,500 --> 00:12:21,440 And I guess this is I'm just trying to tie this back to what we talked about already, a bit like Tolkien secondary belief, 129 00:12:21,650 --> 00:12:24,680 because there are times if you're playing really intensely, 130 00:12:24,680 --> 00:12:29,960 particularly at 2:00 in the morning, an RPG, you are in that game and you're surrounded by it. 131 00:12:30,500 --> 00:12:38,480 Um, and then the other extract here, or maybe Sarah Bowman, six facets of immersion where she takes a part. 132 00:12:38,660 --> 00:12:40,489 There are all kinds of levels that you can play. 133 00:12:40,490 --> 00:12:46,040 And again, it goes back to the idea that there are gamers who, uh, will experience very different things. 134 00:12:46,040 --> 00:12:51,320 It might be the character, the setting, the rules itself, which they really get interested in. 135 00:12:52,160 --> 00:12:59,350 But then finally. I think when you've played a game, particularly if you've invested a lot of time, there is that bleed. 136 00:12:59,560 --> 00:13:08,500 There is that sense. You come out of the game, you go into real life, you go back to the mundane, but somehow it can make you see things differently, 137 00:13:08,500 --> 00:13:11,580 and it may just be the person you were playing when you go there, a backstabber. 138 00:13:11,590 --> 00:13:16,030 I'll never trust them again in real life, but it could be at another level. 139 00:13:16,030 --> 00:13:19,600 And I suppose that's beginning to touch on token's recovery. 140 00:13:20,560 --> 00:13:25,570 And there's a set of reading if you wish to sort of look on that and explore it a bit further. 141 00:13:26,470 --> 00:13:34,760 Thank you. Thank you for this is really fascinating. 142 00:13:34,820 --> 00:13:40,910 When I heard game is my first, uh. But the first thing that my mind went to is video games, actually, because of course, it's where we are. 143 00:13:41,210 --> 00:13:47,390 And I just have in mind things that are emerging now. I wonder if it it would be a new sort of era to some of what you're saying here with, 144 00:13:47,780 --> 00:13:52,579 with console games like, um, Whole New World being built through Elder Scrolls and that sort of thing. 145 00:13:52,580 --> 00:13:57,229 And then we're also seeing adaptations like God of War and of course, part of what's going on there. 146 00:13:57,230 --> 00:13:59,809 And this maybe gets a little bit just the experience of the game. 147 00:13:59,810 --> 00:14:04,190 And what it means for the story world is the, the sort of response and engagement with, 148 00:14:04,190 --> 00:14:08,089 with console feedback, with, you know, vibrations to get much more immersive. 149 00:14:08,090 --> 00:14:11,360 You mentioned, of course, like headsets and stuff. I just wondered if you had any thoughts. 150 00:14:11,450 --> 00:14:15,409 Yeah. So on the second one we are we're moving more into that that sensory gaming as well. 151 00:14:15,410 --> 00:14:21,770 Yeah, with the VR headsets. But also the handheld controllers will vibrate will channel and Cetera and you can see where that might head. 152 00:14:22,040 --> 00:14:22,459 Um, yeah. 153 00:14:22,460 --> 00:14:32,000 And I didn't talk about world building as part of the game, which goes way back to those early games, um, like Kingdom and Civilisation and so on. 154 00:14:32,300 --> 00:14:38,870 But now you would certainly see a lot of young people playing robot Roblox and so on. 155 00:14:38,870 --> 00:14:44,299 You know, they're they're constantly building new places or it's pre-built and you go in and you can you can alter it as well. 156 00:14:44,300 --> 00:14:51,890 So yeah, that is something which we see if you're tying it back to a fantasy world that still tends to be like Lord of the Rings Online. 157 00:14:51,890 --> 00:14:58,820 It's built. But then there are scenarios in there, but there's scenarios which are off the side from the main narrative. 158 00:14:59,090 --> 00:15:02,930 They don't let you go in and disrupt what's happening, say in the Third Age. 159 00:15:03,140 --> 00:15:03,830 Thank you sir. 160 00:15:04,130 --> 00:15:14,600 Um, I'm wondering if, you know, um, gamers are famous just like fans who write fanfiction, uh, the famous for their communities and like, 161 00:15:14,600 --> 00:15:22,490 community spirit, particularly those who do, you know, dungeon Dungeons and dungeons, the more kind of analogue, um, activities. 162 00:15:22,910 --> 00:15:30,139 And I'm wondering, we know of, um, quite a few people who became, uh, recognised, 163 00:15:30,140 --> 00:15:35,510 either self-published or traditionally published authors coming from, um, fan fiction. 164 00:15:35,780 --> 00:15:40,980 I'm wondering, do we know of any similar examples of people coming from, uh, 165 00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:45,230 this sort of gaming communities who then become, uh, recognised, I don't know, screenplay, 166 00:15:45,470 --> 00:15:50,299 uh, writers or, uh, um, but I don't know about screenplay, but writers, yes, 167 00:15:50,300 --> 00:15:54,710 we do, because we met her yesterday, Samantha Shannon, as she said, I'm a gamer. 168 00:15:54,890 --> 00:16:02,870 But, um, going way back, people like Steve Jackson, they, you know, they were inventing games and game rules and then became authors as well. 169 00:16:03,110 --> 00:16:07,489 Sometimes it's like self-play roleplaying Game, folks, and the Fighting Fantasy books, 170 00:16:07,490 --> 00:16:14,750 etc. I don't know, to be honest, but I suspect there were quite a few, um, that at least grew up. 171 00:16:15,770 --> 00:16:20,239 Playing either a board game or a war game, or a role playing game or video game, 172 00:16:20,240 --> 00:16:23,470 and that's and sparked them to sort of think that they can create something that. 173 00:16:24,290 --> 00:16:27,350 So I think that's that's probably the time. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Thanks so much. 174 00:16:27,620 --> 00:16:28,310 So I actually.