No...this time I did not finish a game. This super sweet image, though, is me getting ready for surgery! I just wanted to write a review of sorts, and use that as a chance to expound upon my love for science.
So, first: TRAUMA CENTER!
It all started this weekend. My bro was DJing at Exile on Main St., a local music, movie, and videogame sale/resale shop. I was hangin out and I spotted:
-a used Nintendo DS.
-Trauma Center (a game I'd been wanting to buy a DS just to play when it came out)
So, when I got home later that day, I started going through my videogames. There's so many I don't even play anymore...it's not worth keeping them at this point. I just graduated - I'm not trying to hoard anything. So, I got together what I thought would be my least-used/missed stuff and took it in Monday. I traded for
this thing.
And...drumroll....
Screenshot:
This was one I just did (not my screenshot, of course, but it looked just like this), a girl's lungs were all tore up, so I had to cut her chest open with the scalpel (tools are along the right and left edges, and you have to make the motions with the little pointer thing on the bottom touch-screen part! So advanced this thing is!), drain blood with some tube thingy, pull the wounds tight with forceps, suture with needle, disinfect w/ some gel shit (all without letting the heart rate in the top left corner reach zero), and I thought I was set. But NO!
Apparently, she had some kind of fish, insects, sharks, or some other parasitic, pointy things that were causing all this damage. Right when I was about to stitch her up, they tore through again, and I had to use ultrasound to find them...then I cut them out, shot them with the laser, fixed up the wounds, and BAM, she's healed. Time to call mom and dad, she'll be ok! The Bio-terrorists won't win today (not happy about this game exploiting the "terrorism" narrative going around these days...).
One of the things I love most about this game is, it makes me feel almost like a real doctor...except for that one question that always pops up when the inevitable (for me, with my video game skills...or lack thereof) failure comes up: "Retry?" If only it were so in real life. "Why yes...I would like to do Tina's surgery one more time...I think I could have done a better job suturing up that wound, if you know what I mean...?" or...you know...maybe it's not Tina's time to die yet...and my rookie doctor skills shouldn't determine that.
I wonder what kind of hospital has only white staff and treats only white patients...perhaps this is set in an alternate universe. The "Angeles Bay" where the game is set could be anywhere...could be nowhere...but it doesn't seem so far away from reality (a certain California bay I'm familiar with seems like a pretty close match)....eeeexceeeeeeeppt the lack of any yellow, black, red, brown people that may (have) inhabit(ed) the land (since before Cortez/Columbus arrived, before the U.S. Mexico war, or since the transatlantic slave trade, the gold rush and transcontinental railroad, and so many other things I haven't learned about yet or am not thinking of now). It's always an intentional choice when it comes to games...everything has to be programmed. A point to consider is: the game was developed in Japan, and then translated and adapted for the U.S. market. And I don't know too much about Japan's racial makeup, but I've heard it's a fairly homogeneous country (aside from the indigenous Ainu people, the people living on U.S. Military bases, and of course...all those lovely people in teach English abroad programs, who may be there for whatever reason...won't go into that).
So, I can see perhaps some reason(s) why most people in the game look the same - also, I'll add that it's in the anime/manga aesthetic, so people have sharp jaw lines, round, large eyes, long and thin noses...the women all have large breasts...and one of my favorites (because of my hair when it's blow-dried), there is the occasional "Dragon Ball Z hair." This isn't exactly DBZ, but...
Hey, he looks a little like me...just gotta get those plastic frames, and curl the hair a bit. I have to admit...I love how every time an operation is about to begin he does this - LET'S BEGIN THE OPERATION!!!!
Anyway, another question is, how do the programmers responsible for creating a product appropriate for U.S. markets make their decisions to leave this (and many other games) so whitewashed? Is it a decision they make? If they had the ability to change the words in the game to English, did they have the ability to reprogram any other aspects? Was the Japanese version of the game set in the U.S. also? Or was it a made up (or existing) part of Japan? Something else? Even if the game is being sold in markets other than the U.S...perhaps Canada, England, and maybe even other countries where English is not the primary language, there are communities of color in all those countries, and there is no excuse for this.... And, people all over the world know that the U.S. is not just white...think of all the music videos that get exported that hold mostly, if not exclusively, black bodies within their frames. But to what degree, I don't know. I've heard some disturbing shit about what people outside the U.S. think of black people in the U.S. before coming here...or without coming here at all, and it's all based on media (mis)representations. hmmm.
****Correction: I started this post when I was only in the 2nd chapter of the game. I'm now in the third, and I've since joined an international disease eradication organization/hospital group called Caduceus. I traveled to southern Africa (to no specific country, of course, just the region), where a village was wiped out because a bioterrorist group decided to perfect their weapons (a strain of viruses, the likes of which doctors have never seen, called G.U.I.L.T.) through trial and error on the townspeople. Of course, there's one boy who survived:
"The boy responds to Reuben" <-direct quote Not sure if his name is really Reuben, but he responds to it. Shit...if everyone in my community died, I'd probably respond to anything if someone came up to me. But anyway, I successfully operated on "Reuben" and he is now free of G.U.I.L.T. and healthy. Alright! But yeah...that was pretty weird. Of course the only brown body in the game is in the country of Africa, not the U.S., where the rest of the game takes place (cuz immediately after taking care of "Reuben" the protagonist flies back to the U.S. to help his old boss). It's just a quick plot device to further the story about the G.U.I.L.T. bioterrorism.**** OK, yeah, so that was point 1...and 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc. Second: my love of science! This game makes me feel like being a doctor is fun! Well...a surgeon I guess. I mean...there are chapters that are just the plot "thickening," which pretty much means a lot of reading, and no cutting. But most of the time, it's a pretty good balance of that and performing surgery. My average rating, btw, is a C. It goes S, A, B, C, D(?...haven't got that low). So, I could improve. But yeah, all the time I'm playing, I'm thinking "damn...I could do this! Maybe I'll go to med school..." haha. I kid. That would be if there were, like a said, a "Retry" function in real life, if I had the "healing touch" (an innate ability that lets me slow down time to do amazingly fast procedures - in the game, people! I wish I really had it tho), if there were no mundane procedures or paperwork or pharmaceutical companies, if capitalism wasn't part of the picture, if all I did as a doctor was talk a little bit and do surgery, if there were no recovery time after procedures and you didn't have to check back up on people (though I think I would actually enjoy that a lot, it's just not part of the game), if I already knew how to do everything and didn't have to go to school.... So, not really plausible. But at least I lived out that fantasy through this videogame, I guess. It all just reminds me a little bit too much of the Macalester Step Forward campaign video tho...
^For those who haven't seen or need a refresher...
But I want to get past that. It just did remind me a little bit of that recurring theme I've noticed.
Oh...science without capitalism...
I have to say, ever since taking Origins, a class on evolutionary biology, with one of the best prof.'s I had in my college career, Kristi Curry Rogers, I am giving science more thought. There was a time during high school where I was actually learning legit stuff about science. But it was required, and most of it was boring, not made relevant. During my time at Macalester, though, I noticed that I'd have conversations about scientific events, advances, phenomena - the kind that come up in everyday life, like "I wonder how yeast works..." or "why is there a dark side of the moon?" - as if I knew anything about the actual science they were grounded in. Having a critical and analytical mind does not mean science!
It was, more than anything, like making conjectures about what could possibly be going on, without actually knowing anything. The thing is, I can't really think of a specific case, but they usually come up around food and cooking, or nature things.
I feel it's one of my favorite things to do...especially with other people. That's when it gets really fun. And if you have a group of people who are all not-scientists, then it's the best. American Studies majors have said some of the most compelling science I've ever heard. Not sure if it's accurate. I know Suma and I have frequently had non-scientific scientific conversations, and I feel like we've made some good progress.
Taking Origins, though, showed me it could be all those fun things, and also be accurate at the same time. My life is complete, for the moment - and I can do imaginary surgery where no one actually dies.
Also, I defused a time-bomb with my surgery kit. It was raw. I saved a conference full of medical specialists. Boo-yah!
Fin.
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