By Sasha Glim
UC Santa Barbara’s Classics department began the year with an event that brought ancient myth to life, as members of the Classics club and other interested students socialized and played the video game “Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical.”
UCSB Classics Ph.D. student Rick Castle researches how ancient myths are portrayed in modern times.
The event was organized by Classics Ph.D. student Rick Castle whose research area ‘reception studies’ examines the portrayal of ancient stories in a modern setting. He focuses particularly on how marginalized communities, such people of color and queer people, are represented in contemporary adaptations of ancient myth.
Created by the game development studio Summerfall Studios and released in August, the game takes players through “an epic tale of gods, magic, and a millennium-long journey.”
The choose-your-own-adventure game provided UCSB students with a unique murder mystery set in present-day America, with melodic and moving musical numbers that players could alter as the song was playing.
In “Stray Gods,” the main character Grace is wrongfully accused of the murder of the ancient Muse Calliope, inheriting her abilities. The player must use Grace’s newfound musical talents to reveal the personal stories of the characters in Olympus and find the real criminal.
Event organizer Castle opened by giving some background on the event and his research. “Playing With The Past is an attempt to demonstrate the intersection between critical classical reception and historical video games studies,” he said. The goal of the event was to “explore a possible kind of a pedagogical model: How can we use games to teach classes or to teach communities?”
UCSB Classics researcher Rick Castle introduces the video game “Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical.”
Castle explained that marginalized communities can teach others about their struggles through the reimagining of Greek and Roman historic texts in media such as video games.
“The use of personal voice allows for marginalized communities especially to voice their experience,” Castle said. “And in doing so, reception studies acknowledge that Greek and Roman antiquity have played a major role in constructing and authorizing racism, colonialism, nationalism, body normativity, and ever entrenched vital societal structures.”
The video game reimagines ancient myths in modern settings, reframing the trauma of the modern world with familiar characters and contextualizing their suffering.
In the game, for example, Persephone revealed that after being kidnapped by Hades and forced to marry him, she killed him and became queen of the underworld. The character explained that instead of receiving support from the other gods, she was forced to face the consequences of the murder and her control of the underworld was taken away. The reimagining of Persephone’s story gives back her agency, exposing trauma and misogyny that she and many other women deal with in the modern day.
Throughout the event, as the game controller was passed around the room, Castle emphasized that each student should make their own choice as to where the story should go next. Decisions as simple as picking which musical instrument to look at first —or more important choices such as what trait the main character exhibits— unlocked unique dialogue options. Each decision furthered each player’s involvment in the game and enhanced the story’s messages of social justice.
UCSB students gathered at a Classics department event to play the video game “Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical.”
Emerson Domingo, a math student at UCSB, said the game succeeded in bringing ancient characters to life into the modern world. “Athena almost looks like a corporate woman. She almost looks like she is on the board of directors and in the world of competitive corporations and capitalism. That wisdom and battle strategy is getting reinterpreted.”
Domingo noticed that the ancient characters’ tools and behaviors were also updated to our times. “The modern oracle uses Google,” he quipped after the Oracle of Delphi appeared on the screen.
Castle plans to continue examining the reception of modern reinterpretations of Greek and Roman mythology with interactive events like Playing With The Past, and says he is especially interested in the reactions of students who are unfamiliar with the source material.
Sasha Glim is a fourth year English major at UC Santa Barbara. She is a Web and Social Media intern with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.