Bury Me With My Money

With a tip of their hat they mount their horses and ride off into the sunset. They seek the outlaws of the vast wastelands to capture them and trade them for a hefty sum. Their loyalties are to no one; they have no place to call home. They are merely bounty hunters, putting their life on the line everyday to scrape by an average livelihood. They are the Sunset Riders.

            Sunset Riders was a game released by Konami in 1993 originally for arcade but later ported to both the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis. It is a part of a genre dead since the dawn of 3d gaming, the shoot ‘em ups. Its concept is simple, move from one end of the screen to the other killing outlaws and marauders on your way to the boss of each level. The gameplay though simple in theory, played out quite interestingly. Players would cooperate with one another through the regular parts of the level to take down the multitude of enemies that appeared on screen while preserving lives. Players would often create gentlemen’s agreements with one another which usually following the pattern of “let me get this power up and you can get the next” or “You take the bottom part of the screen and I’ll take the top”.  By helping one another out, regular gameplay can be a breeze as the hail of bullets caused by power up pistols and shotguns quickly fills the screen. However, all formal agreements and bond of friendship are quickly erased as soon as the players come across a boss fight. The reward for killing a boss in each level scales, starting at first at 10k boss and for the final boss of the game 100k. Because of these huge payouts a player in dead last who kills a boss can instantly jump to first.

            In Roger Caillos’ “The Definition of Play: The Classification of Games” he states “Play is an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often money”. (Caillos, 125) He also describes it as “…a separate occupation, carefully isolated from the rest of life…” (Caillos, 125) When I look at this definition and Sunset Riders I couldn’t think of a definition anymore wrong. For in sunset riders, sure no wealth is procured, no goods created, but the person who manages to kill the final boss and secure a first place position or even just move out of last has bragging rights over his friends. Friendships have been destroyed because of this game. I’ve had friends who would refuse to play it or refuse to talk to each other because they felt wronged for having lost a boss fight.

            Caillos is accurate however in his categorizing of games. In particular, Sunset Riders would fall under Agon, “A whole group of games would seem to be competitive, that is to say, like a combat in which equality of chances is artificially created, in order that the adversaries should confront each other under ideal conditions.” (Caillos, 131) Yet Sunset Riders even deviates from this a bit. Sure players will assist each other through the regular gameplay, but as they get closer to a boss, some players might pick up upgrades that they don’t need just to put the others at a disadvantage in the upcoming fight. Even in a boss battle there are times when players will have to work together in order to make the boss vulnerable. During this time, the playing field for both is usually even. Out of this however one player may use the situation to his advantage to get the other player killed in order to allocate some time for free shots on the boss. It’s what makes the game so great though. There is such a fine line between cooperation and betrayal and out of these situations hilarity is sure to ensue. The only games I could possibly equate it to would be something like monopoly where players agree to trade properties in order to progress in the game. And just like a monopoly game typically ends with one player flipping the board and storming off, a Sunset Rider’s cartridge is usually yanked from the console when another player raises his hands in celebration of getting the most hits on a boss.

Works Cited

Huizinga, Johan. "Nature and significance of play as a cultural phenomenon." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. Boston: MIT, 2006. 96-119.

Caillois, Roger. "The definition of play and the classification of games." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. 122-155.

Suits, Bernard. "Construction of a Definition." The Game Design Reader. Ed. Salen and Zimmerman. 173-191.

Comments

[gamegrrrl]

Dan, you make a good point here in that the SOCIAL consequences of gameplay are sometimes quite extreme, so the argument that games are without real-world consequences doesn't fly. I don't, however, see any reference here to either the Huizinga or the Suits reading, which were also part of the assignment.