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b2@dpu's STACK’EM (POGO.COM) (Other)
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| [June 9, 2008 10:16:20 AM]
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Imagine this, it’s a Wednesday night and your stuck in one of your classes listening to Professor (insert your most boring professor’s name here) explain to (insert that student who doesn’t really get it and is always asking stupid questions name here) the same topic that he has been explaining for the whole quarter. Sounds pretty boring right? Luckily, for you, you brought your laptop; however, you have already perused all your usual websites and are starting to get even more bored. So in your infinite boredom you decide to checkout pogo.com, a casual game site that one of your friends recommended. As you are looking through the possible games to play you find a game that looks entertaining, Stack’em. Stack’em is a puzzle game were the player tries to lift box shaped stacks of animals in order to match five and make them disappear. The goal of the game is to help Farmer Fred match the cloned animals in order to make them disappear and keep them from escaping over the fence. If too many of the animals make it over the fence you loose the game and you have to start again. Although at first the game may seem to be casual entertainment to pass the time when one is bored, the game uses the aspects of meaningful play to make the political statement that while cloning has potential benefits it can also be dangerous if it gets out of hand.
The first aspect of meaningful play that Stack’em uses to make its political statement, that while cloning has potential benefits it can also be dangerous if it gets out of hand, is descriptive play. This is accomplished by having the barnyard that the cloned animals are in shown on the screen and the animals stacked in columns. In order to keep the animals under control and in the barnyard the player must make matches of five by moving columns or parts of columns. When the action of rearranging the animals is taken there is a discernable outcome, there is either a match of five (or more) made and the animals disappear and the player is awarded points or there is not and the animals are merely stacked differently. For every move that the player makes there is also a discernable outcome in that the pressure on the cloning meter builds. When the pressure on the cloning meter maxes out (after four turns) more animals are cloned and rows are added to the columns. The descriptive play thus mimics for the player one of the problems of cloning, which is once we start when, where, and how do we stop.
Stack’em also uses the evaluative method of play in order to simulate other issues involved with the political issue of cloning. This evaluative method of play includes strategic play and integrated play. The strategic play involves bombs which when matched with the corresponding color match animals makes all the animals in surrounding columns disappear. The use of this strategic method in Stack’em introduces the idea of how cloning in the future will have to be carefully and strategically planned in order to make sure that it is used for good and not abused. The game also involves integrated play in that the moves that you make matter effect your options latter in the game because you will not have the opportunities to make the same matches that you would have if you had not moved certain pieces throughout the earlier parts of the game. This is representative of the political issue in that the choice we make today and in the future about cloning will effect are options of how to go about cloning in the future.
In conclusion, Stack’em makes a political commentary about cloning through the use of meaningful play to represent issues that are related to cloning. In this game it is very challenging to get a score any where near the high scores that are posted on pogo.com, and this just goes to show that the game is even more complex than I have been able to reach through playing it. This complexity also parallels cloning in that the issue of cloning is very complex because, while on one hand it could possibly be use to cure various diseases and human ailments, it could also be misused. There are also the complexities that are related to people’s beliefs on the sanctity of human life and the whole idea of playing God. So the next time you are thinking about cloning, think about all the complexities that are show in Stack’em.
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b2@dpu's STACK’EM (POGO.COM) (Other)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Tuesday 29 April, 2008
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This is the only GameLog for STACK’EM (POGO.COM). |
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