Card Shark instantly charmed me once I performed its demo at LudoNarraCon, and ending it revealed what is going to possible be one in all my favourite video games of the 12 months. Asking gamers to carry out real-world card tips with a controller, it’s a whirlwind tour of fictionalized card tables in 18th century France. It’s humorous and tragic, difficult to study and rewarding to grasp, and exhibits off a lightweight, deft hand in the direction of its extra literary aspirations.
That feeling solely deepened as I interviewed Professor Michael Name, a specialist in Early Trendy French Humanities. Dr. Name has primarily written about French playwright Molière, but additionally has taught courses about videogames and studied the cultural position of card video games in historic France. I believed he could be an ideal particular person to ask about Card Shark’s depiction of playing and social drama. We had an interesting dialog, which I’ve summarized, quoted, and put into context beneath.
Full disclosure: Dr. Name and I are mates. I took a number of courses from him and in addition TAed for him in undergrad. I’ve additionally edited Dr. Name’s quotes for brevity and readability.
Spoilers for the whole lot of Card Shark comply with.
One of many first issues that struck me about Card Shark was the way it depicted card enjoying as one thing nearly everybody in each class of society does. Protagonist Eugene (although his chosen title will be completely different) and the real-life determine Comte de Saint Germain take a tour all through France and play playing cards with kings, sea captains, pirates, peasants and thieves. The construction of the sport is a sort of social maneuvering. As Comte makes an attempt to resolve a scandal often known as 12 Bottles of Milk, he chains his social connections collectively to finally attain King Louis XV.
It’s undeniably exaggerated, however the whirlwind story relies on some social reality. Playing actually did act as a bridge between courses. “It exhibits a superb grasp of the interval, as a result of that’s what people on the time had been saying,” Dr. Name mentioned. Playing, then, acted as one of many few actual technique of upward mobility, with each actual penalties and onerous limits. With class divisions stratified by beginning, it was tough to search out some other methods to mingle with these of upper or decrease station. This was true all through the 18th century, the sport’s setting, however playing’s social position confirmed up within the literature of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as properly. Dr. Name introduced up the landmark play The Gamester by Edward Moore, first carried out in 1757, which explicitly calls consideration to playing’s class-bridging dynamic.
Nevertheless, social mobility and sophistication encounters occurred on extra than simply the stage and web page. “Card play allowed for unusual careers,” Dr. Name remarked, “Individuals, usually coming from the decrease the Aristocracy, catapulted themselves into social conditions they by no means may have discovered themselves in in any other case.” The biggest examples of this had been within the king’s courtroom. Louis XIV solidified playing as an official pastime at Versailles and it had each apparent and unusual political dimensions. Dr. Name shared one occasion the place “one in all Louis XIV’s ministers obtained his place as a result of he was a superb card participant” and one other the place a minor scandal occurred due to one nobleman’s fixed enjoying along with his valets.
Dishonest itself was not unusual, and even quietly inspired. Dr. Name mentioned, “It was seen as a means of getting your edge. In the event you may get away with it, it justified you doing it.” This isn’t to say that there was no ethical dimension to dishonest or that no penalties would happen for those who had been caught. Card enjoying itself was nonetheless stigmatized by church and clergy, and with cash on the road, it’s onerous for stakes to not rise. Nevertheless, there could have been a superb likelihood that you just had been enjoying towards a cheat, even within the highest echelons of society.
Card Shark nods to, however explicitly leaves out, the period’s best inform. As Dr. Name suggested, “Watch your opponent and see in the event that they rotated any of the playing cards they had been dealt. As a result of face playing cards within the 18th century decks weren’t printed double-sided.” In the event you take a look at most decks of playing cards now, there isn’t any proper path to show the playing cards, and the face card figures are printed on each ends. As in truth depicted in Card Shark, there was an accurate solution to flip face playing cards, resulting in potential catastrophe if a participant was inconsiderate. In Card Shark, the playing cards all the time seem in the precise path, begging the query of whether or not Eugene is flipping them… or if it’s only a contrivance to make the sport extra readable.
Card Shark additionally takes place throughout a interval now understood as “the Enlightenment,” when Western philosophy started to foreground scientific information and human purpose, usually to the exclusion of extra mystic concepts. Sociologist Max Weber referred to as this course of “the disenchanting of the world.” Dr. Name described it thusly: “Issues that had been beforehand considered as within the realm of destiny or likelihood or windfall, these items turn into disenchanted.” This will get proven off by the mathematicians who had been inventing likelihood math, rendering a beforehand legendary course of mundane. As Dr. Name put it, “God doesn’t must intrude with the cube to disclose the result. It’s simply physics… This can be a historic second the place we are saying accidents can simply occur.”
This exploration of the bodily truths of the world nonetheless introduces ideological friction, even from these people who find themselves main it. For instance, Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert, a well-known French mathematician who seems in Card Shark, resisted the brand new knowledge of likelihood. In Dr. Name’s abbreviation: “In the event you flipped a coin 50 occasions and it was tails each time, these likelihood mathematicians will let you know that there’s nonetheless a 50% likelihood it’ll be tails the following time. Each you and I do know that’s not true.” In a cheeky nod to this passage, Card Shark teaches you a coin flipping trick throughout a dialog with d’Alembert. It’s a illustration of “the basic gambler’s fallacy on the a part of a really sensible mathematician,” in line with Dr. Name.
Some components of the Enlightenment get personified by the Comte de Saint Germain, who brings training and purpose to the beforehand uneducated Eugene. The truth is, of their first encounter, Comte brings up that these unable to talk, like Eugene, have been thought to have prophetic powers… earlier than dismissing that as hogwash. The sport builds a few of its richest and most advanced materials out of their tense friendship. The true world determine had no such protégée, however is simply as mysterious as his depiction within the recreation. His actual id remains to be unknown, however the Comte stays a determine in fiction and occult literature.
In Card Shark, the Comte is portrayed as a cheat and a criminal, in distinction with a lot of the literary custom. Dr. Name mentioned that, “due to his social polish and the plain abilities he had, he will need to have been a member of the minor the Aristocracy. He fabricated a complete different persona for himself as an alchemist and grasp of the occult.” His relationship with the supernatural is most frequently foregrounded in literary depictions written after his life. For instance, within the novel The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin, Comte seems earlier than one of many minor characters, telling her three magic playing cards to wager on after she loses all her cash. She bets on the three playing cards, wins all her a reimbursement, solely to search out that the Comte has disappeared. “He’s handled fully as a supernatural determine,” Dr. Name mentioned. Card Shark turns that depiction intentionally on its head, making the Comte right into a determine who can appear magical due to how proficient he’s at dishonest the principles.
Most of the figures you’ll encounter in Card Shark are well-known crooks and cheats from world historical past, although key figures like Louis XV and Casanova are clearly from the interval. Dr. Name particularly identified Soapy Smith, an outdated west card cheat who “ran faro tables in Denver and finally went as much as Alaska through the gold rush there.” Essentially the most important although is S.W. Erdnase. The title is a pseudonym used for the e book The Skilled on the Card Desk, which has been in publication since 1902… properly after the occasions of the sport.
The precise writer of The Skilled on the Card Desk can be unknown. Who truly wrote the e book continues to immediate hypothesis. However, Erdnase is a serious character, possible partially as a result of his historic likeness is such an enigma. His presence may be a holdover from the sport’s preliminary pitch, which might have set it in Vegas. “You have got the rigorous exploration of 18th century France after which this looser one in all inviting you to consider this lengthy, however hidden, historical past of individuals bilking different folks out of their cash,” Dr. Name summarized.
There’s additionally a need to foreground figures who’ve been forgotten or marginalized in Card Shark. An instance of that is the French-African nobleman Joseph Bologne, often known as Chevalier de Saint-Georges. He was an accomplished composer and had a fame for being “the best swordsman in all of Europe.” In Card Shark, he briefly assists Comte and teaches Eugene methods to fence. As well as, the Romani are also explicitly oppressed and sympathetically portrayed, one thing you might be unlikely to search out within the literature of the nineteenth century. Eugene himself can not communicate and opens the sport destitute. Although many individuals round him, together with Comte, condescend to him, the sport by no means does, giving him ample room for expression and humanity.
The 12 Bottles of Milk, the hidden scandal that drives Card Shark’s plot, is “not primarily based on anybody exact historic second,” in line with Name. Nevertheless, lots of the basic particulars are kind of believable. As a reminder, Eugene is revealed to be the potential illegitimate youngster of Louis XV, the product of a hidden marriage. When his mom died in childbirth, Eugene was snuck away and planted with the proprietor of a tavern. As the sport continues, doubt is solid throughout this account and Eugene’s precise standing as a bastard youngster of royalty. In actuality, Louis XV had many illegitimate youngsters. He was not identified to have had a secret marriage and, as Dr. Name put it, “that wasn’t his type.” Nevertheless, Louis XIV did even have a secret marriage to his long run mistress, Madame de Maintenon. Neatly, Card Shark attracts some components of historic truth, whereas lending them its personal unusual twists. Dr. Name added, “A lot of the remainder of it appears impressed by Dumas, the writer of The Three Musketeers.”
The French Revolution hangs over the sport. One of many Comte’s ultimate guarantees to Eugene is that Louis XV can be taken down by folks like him. Nevertheless, as Dr. Name put it, “it’s fascinating that the main focus is on Louis XV moderately than Louis XVI, who’s the one who finally ends up getting his head chopped off!” However the setting remains to be a long time earlier than the French Revolution, and whereas its undercurrents are starting to rise, that is possible a deliberate transfer. As Dr. Name mentioned, “There’s a typical means of speaking concerning the French Revolution, that it’s truly the excesses of Louis XV that result in it. There’s an apocryphal phrase attributed to Louis XV: ‘After us, the flood.’” There’s no verifiable supply that Louis XV truly mentioned this, however the intent is obvious: This stratified world was not constructed to final.
The sport additionally foregrounds a extra trendy splendid of revolution, skipping over among the French Revolution’s historic complexities. The sport casts the Romani and different suppressed courses as leaders of the revolution. “That’s the way it’s portrayed within the in style creativeness, nearly as a peasant revolution,” mentioned Dr Name. Nevertheless, the truth was completely different. “Type of just like the American revolution, it was a center class, a bourgeois revolution.” It was led by the well-educated, comparatively properly off who had been pissed off on the lack of entry to energy. The truth is, Dr. Name mentioned, “lots of the individuals who had been guillotined had been counter-revolutionary peasants loyal to the king.” The sport even highlights some extra trendy concepts of revolutionary motion, as Eugene and Comte contribute to a mutual support fund, primarily, led and distributed by the Romani.
This overview is finally solely the start of a potential tour of Card Shark’s relationship to historical past. One may, for instance, survey all of its historic figures, its elegant depiction of crossdressing and queerness, or make direct comparisons to its varied literary influences. That may all be fascinating work and it could possible immediate much more fascinating work. Card Shark is the uncommon recreation that makes me curious, that has me digging round in a historic, cultural context in ways in which really feel greater than superficial. Now to see if I can truly study some card tips.
Grace Benfell is a queer girl, critic, and aspiring fan fiction writer. She writes on her weblog Grace in the Machine and will be discovered @grace_machine on Twitter.
