Becoming Macbeth- Leo Cassel-Siskind, Raymond Rochester, and Brendan Hall

Macbeth Game

Our group made a game about Macbeth’s life. In the game you become Macbeth and make the decisions we saw he had to make in the story for him. You begin the game by reading the first scenario and question and then choosing one of the answers. Each answer will be a link to a new slide where you will read another scenario and answer another question. Eventually you will reach a point where you win and stay king forever or die and someone else becomes king.

The reason we made a game like this was so everyone could have a fun interesting experience where you get to become Macbeth. It’s a unique experience to try to make the decisions that Macbeth had to make. While many people in the class were saying that the decisions Macbeth was making were stupid now they have the chance to be put into the same scenario with one major goal and the odds strongly against them like they were for Macbeth.

While we made a way that you could make the decisions Macbeth did there are also many ways to select a new approach in an effort to become king. One of the major things you could do began from the first question you see; do you take the witches seriously? Should you select no you have taken a whole different course than Macbeth and the questions you are asked are different. Instead of following a Macbeth approach where you can decide to kill the king and you focus much more on Malcolm, because he becomes king (as his father of course made him heir). You focus on becoming his prince so that you eventually take over and you also get the option at a point of killing him as to become king. All the things that took place here are what we expect would happen had Macbeth made this decision.

If you take the witches seriously it becomes a lot more straightforward. You can decide if you should kill the king or wait for fate (just like Macbeth did in the story). If you decide to kill the king you can second guess yourself like Macbeth did for a little bit or just be tough and kill the king. Then should you kill the king you move on to Banquo and you must decide if it is necessary that he be killed. He could be your best friend, but he could also be a threat. The next thing that will come up is Macduff. He doesn’t attend your celebration as well and you have to decide if he should be killed. If you don’t he goes off to England to find Malcolm and comes back to fight you. Finally you have the choice of whether or not to help your people. If you don’t, everyone hates you even more than they already do and turn on you. If you do help them they rise up and beat England. This entire part is similar to the book and should you stray from what Macbeth does the results are very predictable.

The entire game can take between three and ten questions depending on your choices. Normally it will be somewhere in the middle. The odds of winning are very low, because Macbeth’s odds at becoming king and remaining king are very low. We also wanted to include a reward. Should the class win the game when we present, our group will bring in some prize (dessert) to be handed out the next day or two days later at lunch. The final thing we wanted to do was make a video around each scenario for the classes entertainment and to enhance our overall project.

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Raymond