Battlestar Galactica and Spimatic Meaning in Games - Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games - page 89

the motivations of the players/characters are unknown. Like the collaborative
disease-prevention game Pandemic, BSG08 “encourages important collaboration
and active listening skills,” as players must focus on each other's playing styles
and dialogue to try to igure out which of their teammates could be a Cylon. 35
his directly mirrors one of the main themes of the show, that Cylons might be
hidden among the crew because they are indistinguishable from the humans,
and emphasizes the digital hybridity of human identity in the twenty-irst
century. Indeed, the notion of what it means to be human or robotic in Battlestar
Galactica (2003) takes on additional meaning in the age of digital technology,
as our everyday interaction with machines is making a more complex ethical
intrusion in our understanding of humanity. Techno-philosopher David Gunkel
argues that we need a new ethical stance on machines:
What is happening right now in this new century, the 21st century, is that
machines more and more are moving away from being intermediaries between
human beings and taking up a position as an interactive subject. So the computer
and other kinds of machines like the computer—robots, machines with Artiicial
Intelligence (AI) and algorithms—are no longer just instruments through which
we act, but are becoming “the other” with whom we interact. 36
In other words, as machines become more autonomous, it will become necessary
to stop viewing them as free of ethical concerns. For the Cylons in Battlestar
Galactica , the ambiguity around the nature of their humanity takes the central
focus. he additional element that the hidden Cylon in BSG08 is also a fellow
game player adds an unexpected level of emotional attachment and immersion
in the game. 37
his theme of attachment, like many of the underlying ideas of the 2003
Battlestar Galactica television show, is continually present within other games
as well. Like the transmedia pathos that is developed in he Walking Dead: he
Board Game, or the material attachment to Star Trek: Fleet Captains that I describe
in the next chapter, the attachment in BSG08 highlights what game developer
and artist Mary Flanagan calls games' abilities to open “a window on the values,
hopes, and beliefs” of a particular culture at a particular time. One particular
theme is that of hybridity. As we have seen in the previous chapter, games do
not just emerge from a culture but rather help to illustrate what is happening
in a culture at a particular moment; in her book Critical Play, Flanagan uses the
example of board games of the nineteenth century, which illustrate a “country
facing immigration, urbanization, and the rise of industry. he middle class, with