Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Death Mechanics in Games
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Death Mechanics in Games
#327: A cancelled TAGGS presentation has risen from the grave into a podcast! Marc, Lara, and Link are joined by special guest Mary Devorak to talk about how games utilize death mechanics and how we can use them to delve deeper into our understanding of death, dying, and grief.
Transcript
Link Keller 0:11
Welcome to GT radio on the Geek Therapy network, where we believe that the best way to understand yourself and others is through the media you care about. I am link, and I am joined by my co host, Lara and Marc, and our very special guest, Mary. This week, we are going to be doing an extra special episode. We recently had the second annual TAGGS summit TAGGsummit, the summit
Lara Taylor 0:46
TAGGS
Marc Cuiriz 0:47
the summit that was TAGGS
Link Keller 0:53
therapeutic applied geek and gaming summit online conference which you can buy media passes to catch the first one from 2021. And soon the recordings from the second taggs will be up and you can even buy your passes for tags 2023 If you’re feeling very proactive. But yeah, Mary and I were going to present at taggs and through a series of unfortunate events did not. And so we were like you know what it’s time to be pirates and take over GT radio, and do what we want to do, which is talk about Death mechanics in games. And that’s video games and board games and TTRPGs, because all the games are delicious. And death is everywhere. All the time.
Lara Taylor 1:51
Marc and I are here just to look pretty, even though you can’t see us.
Link Keller 1:57
I hope that you will join in.
Lara Taylor 1:59
Of course, of course,
Link Keller 2:00
you have insightful things to say. But yeah, that’s that’s basically what we’re gonna do tonight. I guess to start us off. I love talking about death. I’ve talked about death on this podcast several times, and in real life incessantly. And I think it’s really important that we talk about I come from the death positive backgrounds. For those of you who don’t know, that was started by Caitlin Doughty, who is a mortician and YouTube person. YouTuber now.
Link Keller 2:45
phenomena.
Link Keller 2:46
Yes. Her her YouTube channel is Ask A Mortician, highly recommend there’s lots of very cool videos, informative stuff, funny jokes. But yes, basically, the idea being in death positivity is that like sex positivity, this is a part of life that has a lot of stigma attached to it. And we tend to avoid talking about it, when we really should be talking about it. Because it’s natural. It’s normal. It’s going to happen to you to you, to you. So I love getting the opportunity to talk about stuff like this. Mary, would you like to give a little bit of your death background?
Mary Devorak 3:35
Yes, well, first of all, every time I’ve tried to do this presentation, talk thing. Life has tried to take me out. But not this time. We’re here now. It’s Third time’s the charm apparently
Lara Taylor 3:50
fighting against death right there.
Mary Devorak 3:52
That’s right. Yes. Yeah. Now it’s just trying to take my wife out. So okay, who am I? I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. And so I worked a lot with grief and queer community, and all sorts of everything. I am also a death doula. Well, I’m trained as a death doula. And a lot of people aren’t quite familiar with that term yet. It’s very much a part of the death positivity movement, and it’s getting more popular. But basically, death doulas just as birth doulas help life come into the world. We help guide life into their next world. It’s basically like, like I help people with their last wishes and arranging everything and all sorts of things that we never even think about when we’re dying, or having a loved one who is dying. And I often talk about like myself as a dying person, because I was born with a terminal illness. And it’s not terminal anymore. It’s chronic, and I’m alive. And I will not be someday just this all of us will not be. And the cool part in both of the jobs that I do, I also get to use games. And when I’m more on a death role I do some like, what I call grief gaming. And yeah, so we get to talk more about that today.
Link Keller 5:52
Yes, I am very excited. I am coming more from the video games side of things. That’s what I have more familiarity with. But we did also do some research on some TT RPGs, and stuff like that, that will we will touch on. Where do you want to? Where do you where do you guys want to start?
Link Keller 6:21
I guess I guess we can start with defining what I mean by death mechanics in games. Basically, mechanics are the ways that players interact with the game. That is like the rules, obviously, the most base level there is it is the rules. It is also the way that players understand the rules. So it’s a little bit more gray area around there. It can also include like when we’re talking about TTRPG is you can have homebrew where you’re making up your own set of constraints and goals and stuff. And so basically, it’s the ways that we engage with the game and more specifically, the way that death is a part of that engagement with the game. In most games, death is just a fail state, it just means you have lost. Sometimes in video games, it’s often like you reload so you get another chance. Older video games used lives as a way to have a failure states in early videogame history. It was used death was used both as a shorthand for like to get people to understand is like this is a you lost like you died. But also, arcade games are about making money. So the more that you die, the more that you put more coins in to keep playing. And that very much popularized the the verbiage of using death and dying in games even though they weren’t realistic examples of death and dying. in TTRPGs that’s also still very common board games like death is just it’s a fail state. But there are lots of examples. And there are more every year which I love of games that are engaging with the idea of death and dying in more interesting ways more realistic ways. Think I will start with a very on the nose example. And that is a morticians tale which is a video game that came out in I want to say 2017 by laundry bear games. It is a game that is loosely based off of Caitlin Doughty’s first book, and which is autobiographical. So it’s really about her life. It’s you play as Charlie, who is a young mortician starting at a mortuary. And in the game, what you are doing it like the mechanics of the game is you move around in a room and you engage with a computer where you get to read some emails. And then you engage with the body where you prepare it for a funeral, either through embalming or cremation. And then after finishing that part, you go into the funeral home, presentation room, the funeral room, and you get to listen to the family talk and it shows a bunch of different ways that people engage with grief. It shows people you know crying it shows people who are like worried about what’s gonna happen next because you know, you don’t have a will from that person. And so whoever the next of kin is has to just sort of guess what what that person the decedent would have wanted. It shows people who are laughing and joking, it shows people who are like, Man, I’m just like really hungry, can we can we get some fast food after this. And I think that that’s like such a cool game because obviously, it shows all these different types of grief experiences, which I think is really important. It talks about more of the industry side, wherein a lot of private family owned funeral homes, get bought out by big industry corporations, who keep the name and everythi...
View all episodes
By Geek Therapy Network#327: A cancelled TAGGS presentation has risen from the grave into a podcast! Marc, Lara, and Link are joined by special guest Mary Devorak to talk about how games utilize death mechanics and how we can use them to delve deeper into our understanding of death, dying, and grief.
Transcript
Link Keller 0:11
Welcome to GT radio on the Geek Therapy network, where we believe that the best way to understand yourself and others is through the media you care about. I am link, and I am joined by my co host, Lara and Marc, and our very special guest, Mary. This week, we are going to be doing an extra special episode. We recently had the second annual TAGGS summit TAGGsummit, the summit
Lara Taylor 0:46
TAGGS
Marc Cuiriz 0:47
the summit that was TAGGS
Link Keller 0:53
therapeutic applied geek and gaming summit online conference which you can buy media passes to catch the first one from 2021. And soon the recordings from the second taggs will be up and you can even buy your passes for tags 2023 If you’re feeling very proactive. But yeah, Mary and I were going to present at taggs and through a series of unfortunate events did not. And so we were like you know what it’s time to be pirates and take over GT radio, and do what we want to do, which is talk about Death mechanics in games. And that’s video games and board games and TTRPGs, because all the games are delicious. And death is everywhere. All the time.
Lara Taylor 1:51
Marc and I are here just to look pretty, even though you can’t see us.
Link Keller 1:57
I hope that you will join in.
Lara Taylor 1:59
Of course, of course,
Link Keller 2:00
you have insightful things to say. But yeah, that’s that’s basically what we’re gonna do tonight. I guess to start us off. I love talking about death. I’ve talked about death on this podcast several times, and in real life incessantly. And I think it’s really important that we talk about I come from the death positive backgrounds. For those of you who don’t know, that was started by Caitlin Doughty, who is a mortician and YouTube person. YouTuber now.
Link Keller 2:45
phenomena.
Link Keller 2:46
Yes. Her her YouTube channel is Ask A Mortician, highly recommend there’s lots of very cool videos, informative stuff, funny jokes. But yes, basically, the idea being in death positivity is that like sex positivity, this is a part of life that has a lot of stigma attached to it. And we tend to avoid talking about it, when we really should be talking about it. Because it’s natural. It’s normal. It’s going to happen to you to you, to you. So I love getting the opportunity to talk about stuff like this. Mary, would you like to give a little bit of your death background?
Mary Devorak 3:35
Yes, well, first of all, every time I’ve tried to do this presentation, talk thing. Life has tried to take me out. But not this time. We’re here now. It’s Third time’s the charm apparently
Lara Taylor 3:50
fighting against death right there.
Mary Devorak 3:52
That’s right. Yes. Yeah. Now it’s just trying to take my wife out. So okay, who am I? I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. And so I worked a lot with grief and queer community, and all sorts of everything. I am also a death doula. Well, I’m trained as a death doula. And a lot of people aren’t quite familiar with that term yet. It’s very much a part of the death positivity movement, and it’s getting more popular. But basically, death doulas just as birth doulas help life come into the world. We help guide life into their next world. It’s basically like, like I help people with their last wishes and arranging everything and all sorts of things that we never even think about when we’re dying, or having a loved one who is dying. And I often talk about like myself as a dying person, because I was born with a terminal illness. And it’s not terminal anymore. It’s chronic, and I’m alive. And I will not be someday just this all of us will not be. And the cool part in both of the jobs that I do, I also get to use games. And when I’m more on a death role I do some like, what I call grief gaming. And yeah, so we get to talk more about that today.
Link Keller 5:52
Yes, I am very excited. I am coming more from the video games side of things. That’s what I have more familiarity with. But we did also do some research on some TT RPGs, and stuff like that, that will we will touch on. Where do you want to? Where do you where do you guys want to start?
Link Keller 6:21
I guess I guess we can start with defining what I mean by death mechanics in games. Basically, mechanics are the ways that players interact with the game. That is like the rules, obviously, the most base level there is it is the rules. It is also the way that players understand the rules. So it’s a little bit more gray area around there. It can also include like when we’re talking about TTRPG is you can have homebrew where you’re making up your own set of constraints and goals and stuff. And so basically, it’s the ways that we engage with the game and more specifically, the way that death is a part of that engagement with the game. In most games, death is just a fail state, it just means you have lost. Sometimes in video games, it’s often like you reload so you get another chance. Older video games used lives as a way to have a failure states in early videogame history. It was used death was used both as a shorthand for like to get people to understand is like this is a you lost like you died. But also, arcade games are about making money. So the more that you die, the more that you put more coins in to keep playing. And that very much popularized the the verbiage of using death and dying in games even though they weren’t realistic examples of death and dying. in TTRPGs that’s also still very common board games like death is just it’s a fail state. But there are lots of examples. And there are more every year which I love of games that are engaging with the idea of death and dying in more interesting ways more realistic ways. Think I will start with a very on the nose example. And that is a morticians tale which is a video game that came out in I want to say 2017 by laundry bear games. It is a game that is loosely based off of Caitlin Doughty’s first book, and which is autobiographical. So it’s really about her life. It’s you play as Charlie, who is a young mortician starting at a mortuary. And in the game, what you are doing it like the mechanics of the game is you move around in a room and you engage with a computer where you get to read some emails. And then you engage with the body where you prepare it for a funeral, either through embalming or cremation. And then after finishing that part, you go into the funeral home, presentation room, the funeral room, and you get to listen to the family talk and it shows a bunch of different ways that people engage with grief. It shows people you know crying it shows people who are like worried about what’s gonna happen next because you know, you don’t have a will from that person. And so whoever the next of kin is has to just sort of guess what what that person the decedent would have wanted. It shows people who are laughing and joking, it shows people who are like, Man, I’m just like really hungry, can we can we get some fast food after this. And I think that that’s like such a cool game because obviously, it shows all these different types of grief experiences, which I think is really important. It talks about more of the industry side, wherein a lot of private family owned funeral homes, get bought out by big industry corporations, who keep the name and everythi...