Icky Shuffle 2006 Live!
A few weeks ago, I attended a BC football game on a breezy Saturday afternoon. Watching the players, I thought about the evolution of video game football. In the early 90’s, video game football playability peaked out. Aside from a few nuances, the control layout and sequencing of most games were identical. As a result, game designers had to work around the perimeters of the games to differentiate their titles. Thus bubbled up voice-overs, cartoonish violence, futuristic settings, and other strange acoutremont.
Ultimately, the games that found the greatest success were those that most closely mimicked the experience of watching football on TV. They included swooping camera angles with heads-up data snapshots, pre-/half-/post-game shows, and - most notable in this blog post - player celebration rituals.
As I watched the 19-22 year old BC football players on the field, I imagined them as 12 year olds sitting in front of Playstation football games. After a successful down, they’d cheer as their video game characters danced on-screen. How strongly did those dances influence their own celebration rites? Do players of today create new dances or emulate the emulated dances of Playstation players?
The drive for originality is intensified by MySpace/ Youtube exposure-culture. No successful subculture may go unnoticed for more than a few weeks before its slang, fashion, movement, and music is spread across teenaged America. For some of my students, this creates an endless race against newness. They are explorers, seeking the latest latest. Other students, feel challenged to create ever more unusual slang and style to react against this abbreviating of cultural shelf-life.
Both of these groups of students value originality. The first feels original in a localized domain, for they are consistently the premier style appropriators (”swagger-jackers”, perjoratively) of our school. The second group seeks originality within the wider conversation of the greater teenaged MySpace/Youtube community. Which category do you think the starting corner for Boston College prefers?
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