Love at First Throne?

While scrolling through my Facebook timeline, I stumbled across a buzzfeed.com page with "Game of Thrones" Valentines (I apologize for some of the inappropriate ones).  When I saw this, I immediately thought about this class and all we have talked about thus far.  For those of you that do not know, "Game of Thrones" is a decently new television series about medieval noble families that fight for the control of a mythical land.  While I have never seen an episode of this show, my brother watches it on a regular basis, and he has told me quite a bit about its storyline.  Here is a preview of the show for those more interested in its plot:

Anyways, back to the Valentines.  There were a few that definitely took my attention.  For example, the one about loving honor and duty truly stands out.  While this Valentine is mocking the television show, it is interesting to me because it puts a strong emphasis on the importance of fighting and retaining a sense of "honor".

During this show, people are playing a lifelong game to survive and conquer the land they want to control.  Therefore, in a way, this Valentine is mocking the idea that to a player in this "game", there is nothing more important that winning and in doing so, preserving the honor of one's family. This truly made me think about the idea of gaming and how we have defined gaming in our class.

During the first lecture, we defined games as having six characteristics: (1) they are free, (2) they contain spatial removal,  (3) the outcomes are uncertain,  (4) they are unproductive, (5) they are governed by rules, and (6) they are make-believe.  To a player in the "Game of Thrones", most of these characteristics hold true.  For example, they are not paying to enter these games (at least not with money), they do not know what will happen, and there are some sort of societal rules that govern what happens.  However, I would not say, that to the players (who are really members of this society) are playing something that is make-believe.  And, they are definitely not competing in something that is unproductive.  Rather, they are fighting for thier life, and their liberty to own the land that they believe they deserve.

To me, this bring up an interesting topic.  Just because this "game" doesn't meet the characteristics we discussed in class, does that mean its not really a "game"?  From what the Valentine suggests, the players take it pretty seriously.  I think overall it is up to the player to decide.  In general,  I thought this was a very interesting website that I stumbled across as it definitely relates to what we have talked about in this class thus far.