This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
From YKTTW Working Title: The Game Plays You
reply: Specifically about characters who are somehow 'tricked' into a game, not a game which laters develops in a more real experience, right?
reply: Gonna be a whole lot of confusion between "Do you want to play a game?" and 'Would you like to play a game?'
reply: Saw
reply: War Games
reply: @Nitz: Yes, exactly. The character agrees to the game, but would not if he knew about the consequences.
Ender's Game is probably a borderline case, as Ender is forced to play it, but the authorities couldn't really punish him, for then they'd damage the best strategist they had.
I think Saw doesn't belong here - his victims basically had no chance. If I had to choose between adding either both Ender's Game and Saw or neither, I'd say neither.
On the other hand, War Games is a good example.
reply: In Jumanji the kids aren't asked to start, they just do it on their own when they find the board. However, it otherwise fits because they are unaware of the real life consequences until the game is in play and they can't stop.
reply: In The World Ends With You Neku agrees to the game but does not fully understand it. Then he learns That the whole game is a way to get Back from the Dead.
reply: Liar Game.
reply: Liar Game is not this trope, as the stakes are made perfectly clear from the very beginning. Unless, of course, you count opening the package.
reply:
The Star Trek Deep Space Nine episode "Move Along Home". Quark gets into a game, then discovers that his "pieces" are the senior officers and anything bad that happens to his game pieces happens to them. What will happen if he loses? Nothing. "It's just a game."
reply: Call it Dangerous Games; what else?
reply: I could swear Zathura had the "Would you like to play" line in some form.
reply: Not sure if this qualifies: - in one Vampire The Masquerade scenarion, a pair of vampire elders is playing a game of chess in the Elysium. This coincides with a series of strange deaths across the city. as it turns out the victims are the elders' mooks, mind controlled into recreating the effects of the game. (for example one 'rook' is a track driver who would run over the pawns she 'beats' )
reply: Move Along Home might count as inversion, as Quark agreed to the game before realizing the officers were the game pieces.
The vampire chess game isn't this trope, but Human Chess.
reply: Thinking about Nitz' comment again:
I remembered the Truth or Dare game from a Doug episode, where Roger and his henchmen make the tasks increasingly embarassing. It could count as Roger proposed the game in the first place for this purpose.
On the other hand, if a game started harmlessly, but the players themselves raise the stakes by making tasks harder and punishments greater it would be another trope (not sure if it already exists).
reply: @Ambi Valent: How is Move Along Home an inversion? That's exactly how this trope works: people agreeing to games before realizing what the "game" really is. The Bokurano kids didn't know they were getting into a suicidal interuniverse war; the Jumanji kids didn't know the board game was magic; the hacker in War Games didn't know actual nukes were involved; and so on.
reply: Well, I'll take that out - if there is consensus that it's an inversion, it will be corrected after launch.
reply: By the way, is the current title OK, or should it be changed to Dangerous Games?
reply: How about The Game Plays You?
reply: If War Games is the trope namer, then to avoid a Beam Me Up, Scotty!, it must be Shall We Play A Game. Preferably spoken through an antiquated monotonic text-to-speech synthesizer, of course. ;-)
And to nitpick, in War Games, the kids really were playing a simulation at first (with the only consequence being illegally hacking into NORAD and starting an unauthorized simulation in the command center). Things became Serious Business only when they started a second sim which got interrupted, which caused the WOPR computer to freak out and switch from "simulation" to "live"...
reply: I think The Game Plays You makes the content clearer than the other proposed titles.
reply: The War Games and Bokurano should have descriptions of how they fit the trope. As How To Write An Example teaches us, "If you don't explain how a show used a given trope, what have you really said?"
reply: See also New Media Is Evil.
reply: The Game Plays You sounds like a Soviet Russia joke.
reply: Yu Gi Oh, the only card game that could cost you your soul.
