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Culture: what is it, exactly?
I wrote a section about culture to the Design Doc, but having thought the issue over I see that culture may not be the best possible thing to explicitly include in the game design after all. I believe that a correction is needed, as well as a clarification as to what the word "culture" really means both in terms of real world as well as GGS.
Leafing through old threads I had the impression that there are a handful of different definitons for culture, though few have actually tried to be explicit about them. While reading I tried to formalize them a bit, and here are my results:
Culture:
1. Characteristics of population which have nothing to do with important matters (like eating fish on friday, or arts and recreation).
2. Distinguishing feature of population (Spartan or Athenesian cultures, for example).
3. The measure of the difference between citizens of different populations.
4. General tendencies of population (e.g. militaristic, philosophical) which are shaped by their history rather than social or political pressures.
5. Forms ethnicity alongside with language and nationality.
6. A label to denote that a region/province is sufficiently unique.
7. Civilization, excluding the government.
8. Values and traditions of a group, excluding religious ones.
I find these definitions somewhat limiting. My personal opinion of culture is that it encompasses all the ideas and thoughts transmitted between people apart from genes. Culture is the result of cultural evolution. So, language, religion, large part of nationality, education, tech level, government type, ideologies, reputation, arts, agendas and whether to eat fish or friday are all part of the culture. Obviously, this definition is meaningless in terms of gameplay.
My motivation for writing that short passage about culture to the design doc was that the spreading of culture (science, religions, ideologies, etc.) follows similar patterns regardless of what is being spread. I summed up science and religion as examples of cultural elements, but now I see that the choice to stop there was rather arbitrary. In fact, I now view that even though there are similarities, there are also differences: scientific knowledge can be bought but religion cannot, for example. If other cultural elements such as nationality or government type are included, the differences become even more emphasized, but already the similarities between science and religion are not enough to justify a separate "culture" category.
However, my definition of culture is really irrelevant if we can come up with a good gameplay definition for GGS. The point is, is there a point? Is the word "culture" needed at all? My suggestion is that we do not need it in the game, but to facilitate discussion it could be convenient to adopt the following definition:
Culture: combination of population properties apart from wealth and health level.
That's just something I whipped up to start a conversation; if you have better definitions or if you find problems with mine, all suggestions are welcome. Furthermore, is there a need for cultural model, or any formal design documentation abotu culture? In the meeting last thursday an idea of making "trade and migration model" to contain all the information spreading aspects of culture, but I'm starting to feel that such model would be too incohesive to be of any use: trade belongs naturally with economy and migration with population. Any comments?
About the design doc: the culture section just makes no sense, it feels very much out of context in the current model. This is why I think it should be removed without further discussion. But anyway, the design doc hasn't been "officially" approved by a consensus, so I suggest a version 0.2 is posted here in its entirety (without cultures!
) and we could have a semi-formal vote, do minor improvements if needed and proudly stamp it as 1.0.
Leland
[This message has been edited by TempLeland (edited February 12, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by TempLeland (edited February 12, 2001).]
Leafing through old threads I had the impression that there are a handful of different definitons for culture, though few have actually tried to be explicit about them. While reading I tried to formalize them a bit, and here are my results:
Culture:
1. Characteristics of population which have nothing to do with important matters (like eating fish on friday, or arts and recreation).
2. Distinguishing feature of population (Spartan or Athenesian cultures, for example).
3. The measure of the difference between citizens of different populations.
4. General tendencies of population (e.g. militaristic, philosophical) which are shaped by their history rather than social or political pressures.
5. Forms ethnicity alongside with language and nationality.
6. A label to denote that a region/province is sufficiently unique.
7. Civilization, excluding the government.
8. Values and traditions of a group, excluding religious ones.
I find these definitions somewhat limiting. My personal opinion of culture is that it encompasses all the ideas and thoughts transmitted between people apart from genes. Culture is the result of cultural evolution. So, language, religion, large part of nationality, education, tech level, government type, ideologies, reputation, arts, agendas and whether to eat fish or friday are all part of the culture. Obviously, this definition is meaningless in terms of gameplay.
My motivation for writing that short passage about culture to the design doc was that the spreading of culture (science, religions, ideologies, etc.) follows similar patterns regardless of what is being spread. I summed up science and religion as examples of cultural elements, but now I see that the choice to stop there was rather arbitrary. In fact, I now view that even though there are similarities, there are also differences: scientific knowledge can be bought but religion cannot, for example. If other cultural elements such as nationality or government type are included, the differences become even more emphasized, but already the similarities between science and religion are not enough to justify a separate "culture" category.
However, my definition of culture is really irrelevant if we can come up with a good gameplay definition for GGS. The point is, is there a point? Is the word "culture" needed at all? My suggestion is that we do not need it in the game, but to facilitate discussion it could be convenient to adopt the following definition:
Culture: combination of population properties apart from wealth and health level.
That's just something I whipped up to start a conversation; if you have better definitions or if you find problems with mine, all suggestions are welcome. Furthermore, is there a need for cultural model, or any formal design documentation abotu culture? In the meeting last thursday an idea of making "trade and migration model" to contain all the information spreading aspects of culture, but I'm starting to feel that such model would be too incohesive to be of any use: trade belongs naturally with economy and migration with population. Any comments?
About the design doc: the culture section just makes no sense, it feels very much out of context in the current model. This is why I think it should be removed without further discussion. But anyway, the design doc hasn't been "officially" approved by a consensus, so I suggest a version 0.2 is posted here in its entirety (without cultures!
) and we could have a semi-formal vote, do minor improvements if needed and proudly stamp it as 1.0.Leland
[This message has been edited by TempLeland (edited February 12, 2001).]
[This message has been edited by TempLeland (edited February 12, 2001).]
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