Hello X,
I have a free moment to respond in depth to the idea you presented. I think that we SHOULD, at our own leisurely pace, create an RPG game together. Why not? A lot of the critical success in my career came in part to seeing music, art, writing, etc. as just a fun thing to do. With this approach, one without expectations, I think we can, at the very least, have a creative, positive, rewarding activity to pass free time. I know that right now your free time is probably non-existent. Please, reply at your pace. Any reply at all, considering the circumstances, I would be honored to receive.
Ironically, it was when I started thinking of my skills in the context of a career did they cease to be interesting or became problematic as I attempted to model them for target audiences. For example, an early graphic novel I made was purposely "Lynchian", made in a haze of marijuana and instinctual, meditative, impulsive "decisions", regardless of narrative. This was done to mimic the impenetrability of fine art, of which at the time I was attempting to court the patrons of. This is a particularly Marxist analysis, of which is controversial in some circles, but there's some truth to this. To quote the great I.F. Svenonious,
"Popular art always reflects the ideology of the ruling class, and is used by them to corroborate their position of dominance in the culture. (...) Fine art also serves as a moat between the bourgeois and the proletariat; its inherent and purposeful impenetrability serves its patrons like a gated community and simultaneously explains their superiority through implications of depth and difficulty." (Svenonious, "The Psychic Soviet", pg. 247).
Due to the fact my comic was about gentrification and was making a mockery of it, it is beyond obvious why the ruling class didn't want to touch it or promote it. On top of that, my own attempt to imply difficulty and depth was in bad faith. I definitely agree with Mao that there is no such thing as "art for art's sake". I sincerely believe that such a philosophy is a fantasy as the material world is inescapable; the materials an artist uses, for example, is a reflection of their class. Therefore, all art, no matter how pointless the artist tries to make their art, is political.
I am a strong believer in the power of art, more-so than the average bear. It should come as no surprise that Hitler's favorite opera composer was Wagner as it inspired him to campaign towards Stalingrad, fully aware of the task's impossibility (he's reenacting a Wagner heroic Martyr). Similarly, it should come as no surprise that Stalin's favorite movie is Alexander Nevsky, a historical Soviet action flick in which the Knights Templar are attacking a backwater Eastern European kingdom. Their leader, Nevsky, instead of meeting these enemies, allows them into his kingdom in which there is a large lake covered in ice and snow. Once in the kingdom, the knight's templar plunge to their watery deaths, trapped when they thought they were besieging. This shockingly parallels the events that took place in Stalingrad, Hitler's last stand.
In covert ways, art inspires us all, if we like it or not. It determines the events in our lives and shapes our beliefs. It does so even if we don't know it, like when elevator music is playing in a CVS or when a video game numbs us to carnage.
Therefore, let us psychologically interpret your idea of an RPG of "prisons within prisons". Upon first hearing of this idea, my first connection was to current events and the horrid state of Gaza. The idea of an open air prison as an RPG, under the circumstances, could be seen as bad taste to a Palestinian.
One cannot help but make a connection between the sorry state of Gaza and the John Carpenter action movie Escape from New York. In an imagined future, New York City is an open air prison, monitored by a police state that surrounds Manhattan. I sincerely believe that this movie inspired Zionists when planning Gaza. A quick google search of Escape from New York Gaza brings you to this article ...
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/10/escape_from_gaza.html
Keep in mind ... tech giants like Zuckerberg, Benjamin Net-in-dork-ho, Biden, Trump ... they're not that smart. And they all DEFINITELY don't respect the arts (Biden making a lightning eye meme after the super bowl).
So when I think about making an RPG, which is ultimately a story at the end of the day, what are we telling society when we produce a game in which there is never any salvation, it's just cage after cage after cage? I find the premise just reinforcing hopelessness, of which the world does not need. We are at a point where a lot of liberals just associate hopelessness with intelligence as an excuse to embrace hedonism, particularly hedonism in digital form.
I also find the premise too much of a "trauma-industrial complex" as well. I write about this here ----> https://jackturnbullstudios.blogspot.com/2024/01/punk-rock-is-trauma-industrial-complex.html -----> Essentially, each level is just a deeper nightmare, we have to constantly up the ante of hopelessness as the player of the game becomes numb to the hopelessness before. I don't like the idea of "endless scroll" video games. Once upon a time on the internet, web sites would end, and you would have to click a link to make a conscious effort to keep on surfing the web. Now on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, there is "endless scroll", a manipulative design tactic to keep you glued to the glowing box (for more information on the subject, read Johann Hari's Stolen Focus. It is a brilliant book). Endless cages feel too much like an endless scroll.
The reason there is more dystopian science fiction than utopian is because it's easier to imagine blowing something up than it is to build something. It's really easy to imagine a dystopia ... all we have to do is continue doing what we're doing right now. I am far more interested in starting in a shit position and making a game that gradually gets BETTER.
What about a grass-roots prison uprising?
There is also a practical reason for this change of narrative. A prison within a prison within a prison goes on infinitely. But with a freed prison, the game has an end, and therefore the project becomes manageable. Call me old school, but I like games in which you save the princess at the end and you get a "game over" screen with your final score. It just feels a lot less dirty and we're not contributing to the epidemic of the attention crisis in which half the world is glued to a glowing screen for one reason or another. Congrats, you played this game, you leveled up, here's your reward, and us as writers are not masterbatively imagining more and more sadistic situations that must escalate nightmarishly.
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But let's forget the narrative for a second. Let's focus on the details of this prison world. As I learned from Alan Moore, his process of worldbuilding begins with the environment. This is because environments have effects on individuals. For example, imagine that, all of a sudden, the floor is lava. You would start screaming, your heart would start pounding as you jump on furniture attempting to get to the window. The environment has drastically changed your character. This is an extreme example. Another example would be maybe living in a desert in which food is scarce. You'd all of a sudden be hungry, which would then potentially make you "hangry". Again, the environment and its lack of food is changing the individual's personality.
So in the name of fun, let me ask you questions about this open air prison. The more questions we answer, the richer the environment and the easier it will be to construct a narrative. I've done this process before in my D&D games and in my graphic novels. The process feels like ALCHEMY, the stories write themselves! So let's try it ...
1. What is the year?
2. Is this prison on our Earth, or another planet?
3. What do people eat in this prison?
4. What is the scale of the prison?
5. What do people do for fun in this prison?
6. What do people wear in this prison?
7. Is the prison a men's prison, a women's prison, or is it unisex?
8. Are there families in this prison?
9. What is the prison's economy (if any)? Is there a marketplace? Is it an official or black market?
10. Does this prison have any Fascist or Racist overtones? Is there a specific type of person in this prison or is it for criminals in all shapes and sizes?
11. What is the weather like? Are there seasons? Is it tropical? Arctic?
12. Is this prison neglected or is it highly survillenced?
13. What is the crime rate? Do prisoners see one another as comrades or is it every man for himself?
14. Is there wildlife in this prison, or is it a complete concrete jungle?
Answering these questions will lead to more questions. We could do this process forever until every street has a name and every building an address. Narratives will just start happening organically, especially once we introduce characters to the environment.
I am at the point where everything I create I want to be in service to imagining a better world and to solving our most pressing problems. My goal in Deerskin Dan, for example, is to truly imagine how we deal with the climate crisis so that it becomes a bit of history in the rear view mirror. Like, imagine in 30 years our kids being like "Dad, tell us about the climate crisis, it sounds really crazy." and we'll be like "Well, every summer there were just more and more wildfires to the point the entire species went extinct. Sadly, for a long time nobody did anything because our focus was destroyed by glowing boxes. But then one day it got so hot the electricity grids blew out because everyone was pumping air conditioning. It got so hot people's insides started boiling. So ... a lot of domestic terrorism started in response, primarily because electricity went out and nobody could be pacified by glowing screens anymore. On mass, people started slashing tires and blowing up private jets of celebrities. With this mass pressure, policy changed. We just stopped using electricity all together. The horse population exploded as people stopped driving cars. It was a scary time. A lot of people died. But what needed to be done happened. Sure, we no longer have avocados to eat due to supply chains breaking down, but you have a future. Now, let's eat our dinner of acorns, hunted venison and cider."
So in conclusion, I like the idea of an open air prison. I just want to make a game with a happy ending. I psychologically cannot take another dystopian RPG.
Hasta La Victoria Siempre,
Your Friend,
Jack Turnbull
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