The Binding of Issac: The Video Game and its Community, Study notes of Game Theory

Download The Binding of Issac: The Video Game and its Community and more Study notes Game Theory in PDF only on Docsity!

The Binding of Isaac:

The Video Game and its Community

By

Samuel A. Loriot

Table of Contents:

• 1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………....
• 2. A Brief History of Video Games…………………………………………………….….
• 3. Public Reception and Critique of Video Games…………………………………....
• 4. The Binding of Isaac Video Game Analysis………………………………………...
• 5. The Binding of Isaac and the Community……………………………………….….
• 6. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..
• Glossary………………………………………………………………………………....….
• Notes…………………………………………………………………………...…………...
• Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………...……

Chapter 1

Introduction:

For me, one of the most potent aspects of Christianity is its community, a group of people with shared values and beliefs surrounding a text, and how it welcomes people from all walks of life by giving them support. But what does one do if they have been hurt by Christianity in the past? Where do they turn to? While Edmund McMillen was figuring out how Christianity has affected him, he may have created a possible solution in The Binding of Isaac video game. The Binding of Isaac is a game based on Genesis 22 and has several other references to the Bible. It is available on Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, iOS, Wii U, New Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch gaming platforms. The game is dark and disturbing, but it has hooked a large group of people who can identify with Isaac and his struggle. Through The Binding of Isaac , Edmund has created a community that engages Biblical themes and characters in an alternative form. The first section of this paper will be a brief history of video games. This will include the fall and rise of video games as well as their effect on the human population. After that, we will explore the main game that this paper will present analysis, The Binding of Isaac , by Edmund. This section will look at how this game is played and how Edmund has translated aspects of the Bible into interactive media. The final part before the conclusion will be exploring the community that has formed around The Binding of Isaac video game with the ways Edmund and this community have built up each other.

play Computer Space by inserting a quarter into the cabinet. This was the first commercially available video game where people could play a video game without going to a college’s technology demonstration. In 1972, the Magnavox Odyssey was released, the very first home video game system purchased and played by the consumer in the comforts of their home and without the need to keep feeding the machine money to continue to play. The Odyssey would connect and display on a TV screen, and two players would be able to play with each player using a box with two dials on it. The dials controlled the movement of your bar on the screen with one dial controlling the horizontal movement and the other controlling vertical movement. Having two people move their small bar of light on a TV screen was mainly all that was displayed, except for the Tennis or Hockey game where a third bar could be bounced back and forth between the players. The "graphics" came in the form of a semi-transparent overlay that was put on a TV screen to show a tennis court, a football field, a haunted house, or other displays to play games on. Other calculations besides where the players are on the screen, and the trajectory of the "ball" was not done 2 through the Odyssey, would be done separately. The Odyssey came with boards, markers, and dice to help the player keep score or to determine where they should be on the football field. The Odyssey also couldn't produce sound.

After Bushnell and Dabney saw the tech demo for the Magnavox Odyssey, they wanted to create their version of Tennis. The two creators founded Atari, Inc. in 1971, and their company had Allan Alcorn, a new hire, make their version of Tennis as an arcade cabinet for a training exercise. Alcorn's version went so well that they distributed the arcade cabinets, and in 1972, the world received the game simply 3 called " Pong ." This version of video game tennis is the version most people will recognize with each player moving a bar up and down on their side of the screen to prevent the ball from reaching the end of their side of the screen. Pong received universal acclaim and was the first commercially successful video game after fourteen years since Higinbotham created Tennis for Two. As the years went on, entertainment companies kept making advancements to video games as computer parts became cheaper to manufacture and more powerful. Other companies, like Fairchild Camera and Instrument and Coleco made their home gaming systems that included their version of Pong. In 1977, Atari would release their first home video game console, the Atari 2600, with great success after third-party software companies started making games for the system. The Atari 2600 was the second console to use ROM (Read-only memory) cartridges that could be used to play different games besides Pong. Interchangeable game cartridges helped open up the door for other game genres to grow, such as Space Invaders , a game where you shoot at aliens to prevent their invasion, or Pitfall! , a game where you jump and swing over

character dies, and the game is over. The player can try to play Rogue again, but they will be sent back to square one as they start on the first level of the dungeon regardless of how many levels deep they have traveled down. The character is also stripped of all items that they had collected during their previous run. With permanent death and randomly generated levels, the player is given a fresh experience every time they play. The game also creates tense battles as one mistake could end the run and send you right back where you started. Roguelikes have picked up in recent years with their spin on them. For example, 2008's Spelunky combined platforming jumps with roguelike elements and 2016's Crypt of the Necrodancer has the player move in time with the beat of the song as they proceed through its roguelike dungeons. While video games seemed to be on the rise, its downfall was looming over the horizon in 1983. Third-party games helped establish the Atari 2600, but Atari soon lost control as any company could make a game for their console and sell it. This lead to a saturation of games that confused consumers that were trying to find enjoyable games. Other companies' home consoles were released, such as Magnavox Odyssey², Intellivision, and ColecoVision to name a few. The market was being spread too thin and the number of choices for consumers was overwhelming at the time. At this, home computers were becoming more affordable and had more features than the home video game consoles at the time. Why buy a video game console when computers could also play games too. The final nail in the coffin was caused by Atari's overestimation on Pac-Man and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial games that were released in 1982. The original Pac-Man arcade game came out in 1980 and was a smash hit, and Atri wanted to profit

off that by making a Pac-Man port for their Atari 2600. While millions of copies of Atari’s Pac-Man was sold, it was heavily criticized for being a bad port and hardly resembled the arcade version. Port of a video game means transferring the game over to a different system than the one it was originally built for. Angry customers were refunding atari games and trust in the home console gaming industry was deteriorating. E.T The Extra-Terrestrial did far worse as the game was rushed to be launched with Speilburg’s film of the same title. Critics and consumers panned the game for being tedious and not fun. 1.5 million copies were sold, but 2.5 - 3.5 million cartridges were left unsold. Rumors had it that these unsold games were buried in a New Mexico landfill. This rumor was found to be partially true in 2014 when some buried Arti 2600 games were found in a landfill at Alamogordo, New Mexico. These factors caused the Video Game Crash of 83. Video game sales started plummeting and Atari, the largest video game company at the time, was defunct by 1984. It seemed like the end of video games. In 1985, Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in North America to end the Video Game Crash of 83. Nintendo started as a toy company but saw promise in video games. They had success with the Donkey Kong arcade game in 1981 and with the handheld video game series called Game & Watch that went from 1980-1986. With Nintendo's NES, they were looking to revitalize the video game industry after the crash, and they succeeded. A significant factor was the vast selections of games available for the NES, such as Super Mario Bros. , Duck Hunt , Metroid , Excitebike , Punch-Out!! and many more classics. Learning from Atari's mistake, Nintendo created a lock-out chip into the NES. This lock-out chip would check

the Triforce of Power and has kidnapped Princess Zelda to get the Triforce of Wisdom. Zelda broke the Triforce of Wisdom into eight pieces to prevent Ganon from obtaining them. Now the player must go on an epic quest to explore Hyrule to gather the remnants of the Triforce to defeat Ganon and save Zelda. In the game, the player must collect weapons and items to get stronger to defeat enemies and clear puzzles. While the player is told what their mission is, the game does not tell them where the Triforce pieces are located; the player will have to explore Hyrule to find dungeons that will have to be cleared to obtain a remnant of the Triforce. The world of Hyrule is broken up into tiles that take up the whole screen. When the player reaches the edge of the screen, they will progress to the next map tile in the direction they were heading. If the player goes up and reaches the edge, they will then go North on the map of Hyrule. Throughout Hyrule, there are caves and dungeons to explore. On the first screen where the player starts, there is a cave entrance that leads to an old man who will give the player a sword, the primary and most used weapon of the game. The player could attack with the sword by pressing the "A" button on their controller and use the "B" button to use different equipment. This equipment includes a boomerang that can retrieve items from afar, a bow for ranged attacks, a step ladder for crossing large gaps, bombs to destroy enemies, and a candle to light dark rooms to name a few. The bomb is also able to find hidden room entrances if used on particular walls and the candle can burn specific trees to find a secret passage. The Legend of Zelda was a huge success and became the first step of the franchise that is still strong and running to this day with a new installment currently in development.

Nintendo to this day continues to make video games alongside Sony and Microsoft on the home console front while video games are also being made for computers and cell phones. The future for gaming seems to head towards Virtual Reality (VR) gaming that allows the player to wear a headset that makes them feel like they are in the game. The VR headset has screens that take up your whole field of vision and creates a 3D effect. The VR headset also tracks your head movement. This means that physically looking down in the real world will cause the game camera to look down too to further immerses the player. Video games have had a long journey over sixty years since its start in 1958 with Tennis for Two. We’ve seen them go from tech demonstrations, to arcade cabinets, to home consoles. While video games lost their footing with the Crash of 83, they regained their composer with Nintendo and their quality assurance. But video games have had their fair share of controversies along the way and we’ll take a look at them in the next section as we examine the public’s reception of video games.

rated "M" can only be sold to minors if they are with their parents or guardian. So children should not be able to acquire violent games like Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty without their parent or guardian knowing about it. Games rated "AO" can't be sold to minors under any circumstances. Getting an "AO" rating is generally avoided by game companies as "AO" rated games can not be on store shelves in public and a consumer must ask for it, which means lower sales since the game is not publicly advertised. The ESRB rating for The Binding of Isaac is "M" for "Blood and Gore, Crude Humor, Violence."^1 While the ESRB was and still is a great tool to help guide parents on what game is appropriate to get for their child, there still have been negative outcries toward gaming. Some notable public outcries over video games came after investigations into some horrible incidences in modern America. On April 20, 1999, two gunmen caused a massacre at Columbine High School in Ohio. After the killings, investigations found that the gunmen were fans of shooter video games, which are games where the player has a gun or ranged weapon and shoots at enemies. The gunmen especially liked 1993's Doom , a game where you play as a Space Marine on Mars and shoot at demons and "hellspawns." One of the gunmen is quoted saying, "It's (the massacre) going to be like f@#%ing Doom ."^2 The backlash towards video games was stirred again on December 14, 2012, after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The shooter of Sandy Hook was also found to be a fan of video games and the news media circulated this fact. What most failed to mention was the most frequently played game of the shooter was Dance Dance Revolution , a rhythm dancing game where the player steps on

matching arrows on a floor mat to dance along with a song. While video games may have played as a factor in the shootings listed above, no connection between videogames and violence/aggression has been scientifically found. Dr. Christopher J. Ferguson has surveyed 25 studies that tested to see if there was a connection between violent video games, violence and real life, but they all turned up negative or inconclusive. Dr. Ferguson writes that there were some “studies employing less standardized and reliable measure of aggression” to find a link between video games and violence, so they can not be trusted.^3 A different study has shown that video game sales continue to rise while the rate of violent crime continues to decline.^4 If video games did cause violence, surely more violent crimes would occur as more and more games are consumed. Japan has a higher percentage of video game usage compared to the United States, yet Japan has a significantly lower crime rate than the United States. There may be no direct proof that video games have caused violence in the world, there is proof of some of them spreading positivity and making the world better, I will bring these up shortly. While shootings are dark and confusing times, and, understandably, people want to find the cause and reason behind them to stop future tragedies, but the world is not black and white. The cause of these shootings can not be pinned down simply to one's hobby as each person is a complex being with many factors that affect their lives. While video games have been put in a negative light, there have been some positive aspects to playing them, for example, improving math skills. There's a good amount of games that require the player to make calculations to plan out their next

level up. Currently, politicians are looking into the effects of Loot Boxes. Loot Boxes in video games offer the player randomized pieces of equipment, gears, or parts once the Loot Box is opened. Depending on the game, it could include a cosmetic item to change the look of your character, a piece of equipment, like a gun or part of a gun, or it could be a new character to play as in a sports game. Loot Boxes have items that the player wants for that game, but with randomization, there is no guarantee that the player will get what they want on the first or 100th Loot Box. Items that are more sought after, like a stronger weapon or a more detailed cosmetic piece, will be rarer than generic items, so the player will usually have to get more Loot Boxes for those sought after items. Usually, Loot Boxes can be obtained through playing the game regularly, but the fastest method of getting Loot Boxes is to buy them with real money. This has raised concern as this Loot Box system could be seen as gambling with real money. The ESRB has not ruled Loot Boxes as gambling since there is no way to "cash-out," so games, like the NBA 2K20 basketball video game, can be rated “E” for everyone while still having Loot Boxes. Concerns over video games have even come from some churches with their crusade against the game series Pokémon. In Pokémon , you live in a world inhabited by creatures referred to as Pokémon. The name is short for Pocket-Monster since you can store Pokémon in a Pokéball capture device that can be placed in pockets. The goal of Pokémon is to capture and train Pokémon to become stronger and form a bond with your companions as the player tries to be the best Pokémon Trainer in the region. In battle, you can give commands to your Pokémon in torments to see who has the

strongest Pokémon. Some churches have made a connection between catching Pokémon and catching demons as one uses their power to obtain their goal. One preacher even told his congregation that “Pokémon world is the world of the demonic, of the satanic.”^7 While playing this game, a Pokémon can "Evolve" into a stronger form as they have grown stronger through training. This could be seen as a way to steer people away from a Christian view of Creationism and towards Evolutionism. However, the Pokémon Evolutions are more like metamorphism, like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, and Evolution seems to be a miss translation. These arguments are paper-thin if one were to pick up and play the game and see there are no demonic references. Ironically, there is a reference to the Bible with the legendary Pokémon Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza being inspired by Leviathan, Behemoth, and Ziz, respectively. Leviathan, Behemoth, and Ziz are powerful creatures that are referenced in Psalm and other books in the Bible. While there are pros and cons to video games, it's important to take an interest in what your children are doing in your role as a parent or guardian. Be sure to be available to talk about fiscal spending if they do want to buy Loot Boxes or about the difficult topics that are presented in games, like GTA: IV 's message on the struggles immigrants go through here in the United States. I love video games for allowing me to experience places and events I usually would not be able to. I can play as a knight in a nordic fantasy world as I slay dragons in The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim , or experience the psychological hardship and trauma of war through Spec Ops: The Line. This game provided me a better grasp of the struggle that some real-life soldiers have gone