More on Tibet in Video Games

This has become a really fun little side project. In seeking to get a better idea for how Westerners see Tibet in order to have a point of comparison for how Tibetans see Tibet, I never thought I would get to research video games. It is likely that none of this will show up in my final report (you never know, though...), but if Patrick French looked at video games in Tibet, Tibet, then I can look at them too darnit! Go with what you know, right?

I found a few more games that deal with or use Tibet in some fashion. Here are some screenshots:

Grom: Terror in Tibet. Notice the mandala in the lower left part of the screen.

Crazy Chicken: Heart of Tibet. Yetis and ice - sounds about right.

A Missing Father and a Quest to Find Shangri La!

Jane's father has gone missing in his quest to find the legendary city of Shangri La in Tibet. Guided by clues from her father's secret journal, Jane is determined to find Shangri La and answers!
Help Jane by carving a trail through the treacherous mountains of Tibet in order to find what she needs to build a hot air balloon and get the answers she seeks!

Tintin in Tibet - based on a comic book of the same name. The comic book received an award from the Dalai Lama for introducing many westerners to Tibet for the first time.

Lost Horizon - saving Tibet from the Nazis. Video games like to group Tibet with the Nazis trying to find occult weapons of unimaginable power.

Amazing Monk - fight/trick soldiers on your way to enlightenment

And another list from giantbomb.com, brought up by the search term "Shambhala":

SHAMBHALA

A mythical lost city situated in the Himalayas. Also known as "Shangri-La" to many.

Shambhala is a mythical kingdom described in Tibetan Buddhism. Although usually understood as a physical place, the term is freighted with various mystical or spiritual connotations and is perhaps better understood as a metaphor for spiritual enlightenment and the idea of a "Pure Land" found in some Buddhist traditions.
This notion of a secret Central Asian kingdom combining Utopian and earthly paradise elements was popularized in James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon, which coined the term Shangri-La. In Hilton's book, Shangri-La is a fertile, temperate valley, nearly inaccessible to the outside world, ruled by a benevolent lamasery of nearly immortal monks.

		Name	Platforms	Developer
		Lost Horizon released on Sept. 24, 2010	PC	Animation Arts Creative GmbH
		Uncharted 2: Among Thieves released on Oct. 13, 2009	PS3	Naughty Dog, Inc.
		Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine released on Oct. 31, 1999	GBC, N64, PC	HotGen Ltd., LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC, Factor 5, LLC
		The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time released on Jan. 31, 1998	MAC, PC	Presto Studios, Inc.
		Atlantis: The Lost Tales released on Sept. 30, 1997	SAT, PS1, PC	Cryo Interactive Entertainment

 Without exception, the conception and portrayal of Tibet in video games reflects its status as a forbidden land, a place for personal growth and discovery, for the unlocking of ancient mysteries. Interestingly, it's almost always also a place to be escaped from. Sure, it's the location of Shambhala, but no one actually wants to live there. There are yetis and Chinese soldiers and big freaky snowstorms and... It seems that Everest is a good metaphor - it reaches into the heavens, and to conquer it means to conquer yourself, but except for a few crazy sherpas it doesn't have any permanent residents. Get in, have your adventure, and get out. This contrasts quite heavily with what the general feeling of the Tibetan diaspora seems to be - sure, we'll go into exile, grow spiritually as a people and accept karma for what it is, but we want to get back to the Himalayan homeland as fast as possible. The games deal with escape, whereas Tibetans deal with return. Interesting stuff.


This last bit, however, is just downright fascinating, and it ties in with music, identity, AND video games. It's an interview with the Karmapa, one of the current leaders of Tibetan Buddhism. It comes from the Times of India:




Moving to other issues, I believe you like to listen to hip-hop on your ipod. Who are your favourite artistes?
I can't think of any specific artistes right now, I basically listen to what ever comes my way, whatever sounds appealing. It's important for me to stick to my traditional forms of art because I am a Tibetan Buddhist teacher wearing these robes. It's important for me to maintain my cultural affiliations.
But from time to time I do enjoy listening to hip-hop because it has a very modern sound to it and even though I'm a Tibetan teacher representing these ancient teachings, I'm also a global citizen in the 21st century. Hip-hop perhaps is one way of me being a 21st-century person.
Is that why you play war games on your play station because many might say it's inappropriate for a Buddhist monk dedicated to peace to play war games?
Well, I view video games as something of an emotional therapy, a mundane level of emotional therapy for me. We all have emotions whether we're Buddhist practitioners or not, all of us have emotions, happy emotions, sad emotions, displeased emotions and we need to figure out a way to deal with them when they arise.
So, for me sometimes it can be a relief, a kind of decompression to just play some video games. If I'm having some negative thoughts or negative feelings, video games are one way in which I can release that energy in the context of the illusion of the game. I feel better afterwards.
The aggression that comes out in the video game satiates whatever desire I might have to express that feeling. For me, that's very skilful because when I do that I don't have to go and hit anyone over the head.
But shouldn't meditation take care of that?
No, video games are just a skilful method.


I love how candid Tibetan Buddhist leaders are.

This is likely the last post on Tibet and video games, but if anybody out there finds anything worth talking about relative to cyber-Tibet, shoot me a line.

Virtual Shambala: Tibet in Video Games

People ask me, with some frequency, "Why Tibet?" There are a million and one incredible places and cultures on the planet, and the plane tickets cost about the same as long as you cross one of the oceans. Folks who want to go somewhere and live there to experience something a little out of the ordinary have options. Initially, and it's still the case to a degree, I don't know how to answer the question. It's not just that I don't know how to articulate the mass of feelings floating around inside me, it's that I really don't know. It's been a mysterious, kinda crazy really, experience. Like getting tractor-beamed.

There are two big reasons that I have been able to tease out for picking a Tibetan community. The first is a person, the most visible and known Tibetan of all time - the Dalai Lama. For a few years now I have been enamored with the most famous of Lamas, and not because Richard Gere told me I should be. I received as a gift "The Dalai Lama's Little Book of Wisdom," pictured below, and it has taken a permanent place on the back of the toilet of whichever bathroom I call mine. For those of you who know me, that is a place of highest honor.

iTunes has several of his addresses to various audiences available for free download, and those became the soundtracks to my walking adventures to and from school. He is brilliant, honest, candid, funny, and compassionate in an incredible way. If I were to list, as have several of the prophets of our church, the inspired and God-sent individuals of history, His Holiness would take a prominent place.

The second thing that got me interested in Tibet was nothing so spiritually fulfilling as the first, but actually launched part of my project in a direct way. I love video games, and I am prepared to defend the video game as a legitimate artistic medium (Smithsonian, suckas - http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/ - not that the Smithsonian has always been right about everything, but this exhibit makes my geeky heart happy) and a powerful vehicle for storytelling. One of the best games I have played in my short life was Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The Uncharted series creates stories based around ambiguities in history, using a modern day, edgy version of the Indiana Jones archetype to explore exotic locales and solve ancient puzzles. Uncharted 2 explores the mystery of Marco Polo's lost year - you know, the one when he left port with a huge entourage and arrived home with only a few survivors, never telling what actually happened. It also plays with the Shambala/Shangri-La legend, tying in the mythical Cintamani stone and a megalomaniac bent on world domination. The story ends up in Tibet, searching ruins and villages for the entrance into Shambala before the megalomaniac can get there and find who-knows-what. The music for the game pulls a Williams/Glass technique, combining Tibetan music and instrumentation with blood-pumping Western orchestral arrangements. I loved it.

Similar to Patrick French, I was first taken in by the incredible "other-ness" of it all. There has been an exhaustive amount of research done on romanticization of Tibet in Western literature, and, actually, in non-western literature as well. Patrick French mentions Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider games for their inclusion of large sections that play out in Tibet. I wondered what other conceptions of Tibet were formed in video games. I found nine other games that use Tibet as a location, thanks to giantbomb.com.

	4x4 Evo 2 The sequel to 4x4 Evolution, 4x4 Evo 2 is an offroad racing game developed by Terminal Reality
	Barbie Explorer
	Battletoads in Battlemaniacs Battlemaniacs is the first SNES version of the popular Battletoads series, infamous both for its unique humour and brutal difficulty.
	Comix Zone All was swell for the comic book artist and part-time rock musician Sketch Turner until his apartment got struck by lightning and he gets sucked into his own comic, where he has to fight off mutants and other monstrosities to save himself, as well as "the girl".
	Cosmic Relief: Prof. Renegade to the Rescue A asteroid is hurtling towards earth, you must travel to Tibet and find Professor K.K. Renegade. Once you have found him you must convince him to help build a anti-asteroid deflector to save Earth from being utterly destroyed.
	James Bond 007 This is the first James Bond Game for the Gameboy and in the game James Bond travels all over the world in the effort to defeat a weapons ring.
	Lost Horizon Fenton Paddock, a disgraced former British solider turned smuggler, must stop the Nazis from finding the mystical Shambhala.
	Terranigma Terranigma is an action-RPG from Quintet and Enix telling the tale of the resurrection of the world from the eyes of the protagonist. The game is believed to successfully combine the best of A Link to the Past and Seiken Densetsu series.
	TrackMania United Forever TrackMania United compiles much of the content and concepts found in the previous TrackMania games while maintaining the same crazy driving and huge online feel. I'm sure there are more, and by golly I will find them, but for now this will suffice as indicative of the Western draw toward Tibet. It will be interesting to look into this subject more, as video games by their very nature say quite a bit about how a person imagines other places. Instead of just reading books about or listening to music from a place, video games purport to transport the gamer to that locale and allow them to live the experience vicariously in a unique way. For me, Uncharted was a visceral, exciting experience, encompassing all of the senses except smell and taste - but I will make no claims to its accuracy. This makes it (video gaming) a interesting and wholly singular topic of inquiry, and, I think, very telling in determining the ways Westerners imagine the Roof of the World.

HUM 201 Journal Entry 8

Divine Comedy

In the Celestial realm, in the presence of the Three Rings of Great Light,

I enjoyed my conference with the Divine.

The Love that held me there knew no time; no end was in sight.

Suddenly my vision darkened and the heavens ripped at the spine

            I whirled down, down, down into blackness

            The skin of my face, once bathed in warmth, was bathed in thick, icy grime.

My fine raiment was torn; the bright silk lost its gladness.

            I swam in a river of corporeal pain.

            “From whence,” screamed I, “comes this madness!”

The hourglass slowed as it ran out of grain.

            I could stand, I could see in the dim.

            A man stood in front of me, holding an axe – said he, “I’m Kurt Cobain.”

He had shaggy hair, a lazy beard, and sad eyes brimming with grim.

            Lost to eloquence, I said, “Hallo, Kurt.”

            My briefness was not lost on him.

“I suppose you wonder why the Hell you’re here, and that fall must have hurt.

            Well, I will tell you, dear old friend.

            We have invented new sins with which to flirt

 And you have been brought, the poet eternal, to write them.

            I was told you don’t notice time, not while you’re Up There

            Well, I have to tell you, the world’s become quite a gem.

We can fly. Music plays itself. Even our servants eat with flair.

            Our chariots haven’t needed horses for years.

            We call to our friends twenty leagues away, and in moments they’re here.

Utopia? No. In fact, the truth is the worst of your fears.

            We have ten thousand things that waste time, precious time.

            We have Call of Duty, Socom, not least of all Gears

Of War and computer solitaire. Yes, time wasting is prime.

            And you are here to write these damned souls’ woes

            So the people above might stop pointlessly losing their hard-earned dime.”

A rugged stench then filled my nose,

            Something like a Parisian street at the height of the summer.

            As it is said, “a rose is a rose,”

This rose smelled like a blasphemer,

            The stale smell of denizens too busy to bathe.

            Running live versions, the never-ending gamer

Was forced to live out the fantasy. My heart wrenched, turned as if on a lathe.

            They ran back and forth, ever dying, ever living

            Wounds ever growing, no bandage or swathe

Could stop the blood from flowing.

            While some were men of war, missiles flying overhead

            Others played solitaire with cards with razor sharp edges, gashes ever growing.

When the game was over, king down to ace, the player wished he were dead,

            But the stack just reloaded and a new game began.

            Some farmed in the villa, with their own homegrown food they were fed,

And fed, and fed, and fed. And just when they thought there was no room to cram

            More food down their gullets, a giant finger Poked down their meal

            And compacted the stuff into something the size of their attention span

What horrors! What terrible fates! What did they do to seal

            This end upon themselves? I turned to my guide,

            “Why, Brother Cobain, why? I begin to feel

My constitution weakening, watching these poor souls writhe in such pain,” I cried.

            “They are simply doing in death what they wished to do in life

Thousands of hours they spent hunched over silver boxes while the world passed them by.

While the world passed them by they pretended, their lives rife

            With discontent, ennui, boredom – what a world they missed!

            ‘Here we are now, entertain us’ cuts me, my own lyric is sharper than a knife.

How right I was – a whole generation, only ever virtually kissed!

            1’s and 0’s are no substitution for flesh and blood!

            Oh, what a pitiable, digital, cold cyber-tryst!

And now! Living the games they used to avoid living! I could wish for a flood

            Like the one that came to Noah of old

            To come and wash away all this silicone mud!”

“They chose this?” said I. “It must be true, I suppose.

            Every one in hell is justly put behind bars

            Of their own making. They must wear their own clothes.

Oh, my lament! Oh, fair ones so young! Oh, what new, miserable scars!

            I will write all I have seen, I promise – I won’t give it second thought, if

            God! please, I beg it, You bring me out of this place and back to You in the stars.”