[UA] Greetings

[Liam Routt]

I'd like to offer my somewhat unique perspective on the US/Australia
perceptions question...

[I'm an American, born in Chicago, lived in the US until I was 10, moved
to Australia, returned to Chicago for college, and then to Australia to
live and work, but now part of that work is in the gaming field, and
necessarily focused on the US; I and my family stay in touch with US
issues and in contact with US relations and through them to US affairs; my
father is an academic in the field of popular culture.]

What the media in Australia, at least, shows us is not a true picture of
the US.

But, what the media shows us, even in Australia, is not a true picture of
Australia, either.

We bring to any representation of culture through media a lens of our own
experiences and other sources of information (other media, including
personal experiences and those related to us).

So, while NYPD Blue, and Homicide, and CSI, and Friends may not *show* us
the US. They all do offer something of the tone and setting of the
country. And we can discern more than the explicit images we are shown,
when we digest such input in the context of the other images and
information we have. We don't think that any of these alone are acurate
representations of the country.

But they do tell us something about what underlies some parts of the
culture of the country, and something about how parts of the culture view
themselves and other parts of the culture.

And because of this, the sheer volume of information *does* make a
difference to our understanding of the true America, even if each piece is
tragically and totally flawed.

Similarly, every crap Australian TV drama, or movie, or book, or what have
you, does inform the world a bit more about this country. But there is a
lot less of this stuff around, and people, by and large, pay less
attention to it.

Americans (may or) may not be comfortable with it, but they are the big
culture which is viewed by all the world. They are on display. And while
those outside can't see *all* of it, they can get a lot more acurate a
picture than you might expect from all of these various sources in such
large volumes.


But, let's put that aside for a moment. Let's think about game settings.

Most (and I do not mean all, I really mean most) modern-day games are set
in the United States. At least most of the ones that get any significant
amount of distribution. That broad setting, which can be gleaned from all
those *games* is not an acurate representation of the US either, but it is
somewhat consistent, and somewhat supported by other media. And, most
importantly, its a *setting for games*.

The pure fact is that for modern-day games, we have more information about
the US than any other setting. That may not tell us all we need to know
about the US, but it tells us a lot of what we need to know to play games
set in the "US".

You don't have enough information to play games set in Australia very
comfortably, I imagine, with what is available in the gaming industry in
any volume. Unless you live here, therefor, it is harder to use this as a
setting. And for some of us who live here, it is still harder to use this
as a setting for *games*, than it is to use the US, because of the sort of
information we have.

When you read UA you *can* see how the schools of magic and the various
powerful forces arrayed can exist in the fictional US culture that is
roughly consistent with other modern-day US games and the media in
general. It is harder to see how all of those things tie into Australian
culture, or into what seems to be important to Australian culture, since
that is more the issue, I think.


Finally, I'd like to end this ranbling and unfocused diatribe by
relating my personal experience of the coverage of the media in
Australia and the US from the other country.

For starters, my college experience. I went to a nonstandard college
(University of Chicago) in a nonstandard setting (Chicago, in a largely
racially integrated enclave in the middle of one of the worst ghettos in
the States). I came from Australia. I had been paying attention to the
media (both fictional and non). While it was more extreme than I had
expected, and the college experience was a powerful one itself, America
itself didn't take me by suprise all that much (oh, I should point out
that I left Chicago when I was 3, for those who feel my being born there
helped me to know what to expect, and lived in New Enagland, more or less 
for the rest of my time in the US). I found the social issues to be more
or less as I expected them, and the balance and focus of the culture to be
more or less as I had expected it to be. Politically I was decently
informed about the overall picture, and even had heard of the important
Chicago figures and issues. When I went back to Australia I found my
family able to discuss issues to do with politics (at least on a national
level, including the election) easily with me.

Did anyone in the US have any idea about Australia? No. Dorm-mates
believed that I had the signed Mel Gibson photo because he was my Uncle.
Some believed (as I had) that many of us were able to ride to school on
horses, or that the country was politically separate from the UK, or ruled
directly by the Queen. They believed all the stereotypes that
entertainment media had shown them (Crocodile Dundee, etc.). They didn't
have much that was not full-on cariacture to go on. And I had no access to
news about the local goings on in Australia as a country, much less
Melbourne, where I had been living. When I went back (each year for the
summer holidays) I had to find out what had been going entirely from
scratch.

That was in the mid-eighties, and things are better now. But my sister
lives over there, and I have been back to visit in the last four years. I
still maintain that the media (especially if you are informed in your
choice of news outlet) can't help but focus on the issues and important
people in the US, and as a consequence anyone who cares to, over here, has
a lot more information about the US representative democracy than they
will ever need. But I had no sense that even major issues of
Austrlaian-only import (sale of public assets, logging issues, mining and
native land rights, changes of goverments and public policy) are at all
available over there without a lot of hard work. And they certainly don't
make it out to the average man on the street.

On the other hand, I'm sure that having the olympics over here did a *lot*
to raise the level of information about the country. But I'd be suprised
if that sense translated into anything more than a brief, badly-focused
picture of the country.


Man is this all off-topic!


How about this.

I think James was a bit off-the-mark with his assessment that the UA
setting wouldn't work that well in Australia (sorry James! and sorry for 
reading more into your statement than I'm sure you really meant it to
convey, just so I can write a relevant paragraph at the end of all this!).
I'd agree it is not as clear, but I think that the strongly conservative
landscape of Australia does lead to may of the same problems for potential
OU members in this society. The main difference is that there is a much
smaller polulation here. That probably leads to slightly more acceptance
of fringe groups, in one way, but a lots less density of those groups, at
the same time. Could an Occult Underground sustain itself in a major
Australian city? I think so, but it would be scaled down. It would be at
once a lot less populous (so there would be fewer dukes competing, and
fewer people to help one out of a jam) and in less immediate danger from
the common people around it (a greater tolerance of fringe groups, if they
do not rock the boat). But if you crossed the barriers and caused a fuss
in common society, I think you'd be in at least as much trouble here as in
a large US city, perhaps more. You can lose yourself in a metropolis like
Dallas or Chicago or Boston. There are so many other people and other
issues always on the boil. But in Melbourne? In Sydney? I think it would
be a lot harder. And there'd be people in authority who could afford to
take the time to pursue the issue.

That's my take. And I've overstayed my welcome... :)

Take care,

Liam
--
Liam Routt                                               liam at routt.net
Darcsyde Productions                           http://www.darcsyde.org/

        -- still waiting for the Absolute Destiny Apocalypse --

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