4:32, my conceptual Game from the Global Game Jam

The 2010 Global Game Jam took place this weekend at over 100 locations around the world.

I made a small conceptual game called 4:32.

The theme of the Global Game Jam 2010 was deception, and the constraint for the time zone of the NYU Game Jam was “Rain, Spain or Plain”. This game furthermore fulfills the achievement “instant gratification” by being playable in the browser.

Without giving too much away, 4:32 is a response to Petri Purho’s game 4:33, which in itself is a response to John Cage’s silent composition 4:33.

4:32 won the vote for “most innovative game” at the NYU game jam.

Play it here.

Update February 21, 2010: I have changed the game a little to prevent some of the more obvious ways of cheating. (Linking to the final page, for example.)

44 thoughts on “4:32, my conceptual Game from the Global Game Jam”

  1. Hey, very interesting idea. Glad to see it as the games made here in Cologne hardly used deception in the interaction, but more for narrative aspects.

    I wanted to see how far it goes but the Flash uninstall was too cumbersome for me.

    Is there a resolution after that which makes the inconvenience worth while? I mean something that goes beyond ‘getting the concept’?

  2. There is a resolution to the game. You are pretty close.

    I was thinking about adding a high score table. Would that be an added incentive?

  3. The game is a nice homage to all those hours I’ve stayed up to make something work with a game or some other aspect of digital living. Being totally self-referential, without any external component of reference or even a clear exit, it becomes a statement of identity of the player, or rather non-identity. It reminds me about of Kimura Kyuho in “On the Mysteries of Swordsmanship” (1768):
    – […] But as long as we are preocupied with symbols, theories and opinions, we will fail to reach the principle.
    – But when we give up symbols and opinions, aren’t we left in the utter nothingness of being?
    – Yes.

  4. Very interesting concept. This is one of those things that look great on paper (because they are great), but the implementation is a pain in the ass for the audience.

  5. Great food for thought. Reminds me of the hours I’ve spent tinkering with addons for Fallout 3 and Oblivion, only to finally get the addons fully functioning and then lose the desire to actually play the game.

  6. Very good concept !
    But players definitively need to read the (short) introduction in order to get the idea behind the game.

    To emphasize the “silent game” idea I think it would be interesting to push it further: for example, you could add some kind of “losing condition” or a score system :)

    BTW, i like how you can “cheat”, adding to the “gameness” of this game. However, I honestly thinks that a game which requires software modification to be played tends to “break the magic circle”, much like Zach Gage’s “Lose/Lose” experiment (http://www.stfj.net/art/2009/loselose/)

    Anyway, thanks for this interesting art game !

  7. OK I went and finished it. Didn’t realize one could disable instead of actually uninstall (thanks for the hint on ‘cheating’!).

    > I was thinking about adding a high score table. Would that be an added incentive?

    What would you be scoring?

    I suspect it wouldn’t make sense in principle because:
    In-game score display would give away the deception right away, and post-game score wouldn’t lead to a replay either because you already know the truth.

    Unless, on the second run, players are to deceive the system back. Maybe I just missed it: Is it actually possible to bluff your way through the entire game?

  8. Pepperoni: Yes, it’s not a “fun” game, it’s really the idea that’s the interesting thing about it.

    DDams: Cheating – is that disabling Flash rather than uninstalling it?

  9. @Jesper: Actually I went a step further into cheating : if you read source html from the page before it loads the next “level”, you can see the url for the next page. It saved me from installing silverlight and removing Flash :)

    As I said earlier, i can understand that you have to install addtional components, but I think that asking players to remove stuff to play is a step too far.

    Tough, It’ll be quite funny to see something like an EA game asking you to remove a previouly installed Activision game in order to play.

  10. Jesper, I have to admit I have not gone all the way through but have very much enjoyed what I’ve seen so far. I used to be really into PC building, overclocking, etc., but eventually gave up on it for precisely these reasons. I am now enjoying getting my friends to play this and promising them it’s awesome.

    DDams: I don’t think asking people to remove stuff is actually that far off. I myself have run into situations where I have downgraded video drivers, uninstalled software, and even swapped GPUs just to get games to run.

  11. This is really cool. I was totally fooled. :p
    It’s true we are always playing this kind of “game” before playing any game/software we just bought.(and we are willing to do so!)
    We feel so happy when all problems solved.

    I tried 4:32 with both windows and mac, but unfortunately the PC I used
    has graphic problem so the game stuck at the resolution adjustment.

    Finally, I found is this game fits your classic game model except the
    “negotiable consequences”…..I’ve to reinstall my flash player.

  12. DDams, Jason and Shao-hui,

    I think you are all touching on the weirdness that we fully expect to have to configure our machines in order to be able to play a game, but that we just don’t considered it part of the game, and we don’t expect a game to ask us to do this frivolously.

    But then, for some games, the installation is the most satisfying part anyway. I can’t believe that nobody ever made a build-your-own-pc-to-run-Crysis game.

  13. I just played this and thought it was brilliant. I would say your analogy to Cage’s work is spot-on, but as an avid video gamer I found your work much more interesting, haha! In a way your statement is much more relatable than Cage’s about length being the basic component of music.

    I think that’s because not many people have composed music, but almost any PC gamer has had to screw around with installation and settings at some point. We’ve listened to music, yes, but we are not often part of the “creative process” the way that computer games demand we participate in the alchemy of getting them to run properly.

  14. I started to suspect the “twist” at the 3rd step cause a game that need both Unity and Silverlight should be a really strange game. Then, languages : “Are you kidding me ?”. And I stopped at the screen resolution cause it was just too much ;)

  15. William,

    I guess it would be a fascinating exercise to make a game that actually used all of those technologies together (though I would prefer to outsource the development to someone else).

  16. Hm. Interesting game. The first 10 screens or so were fairly entertaining to play, although I must admit that I didn’t get the whole way through it; I did eventually stop at the section with the three sets of spikes. After dying about 500 times I decided, “screw this! I’m seeing what the twist is.”

    (My computer had twist number 11, though, so that’s probably why; I had thought it was just fiddly platforming, at first.)

    Anyway. Bravo, sir!

  17. The game jam sight says that this game works for Linux. There is no Unity plugin for Linux though, so you can’t play the game “straight”. You can still progress through the screens to the end by Harvard hacking, but it’s not at all the same experience.

  18. @Alex, You have to set not just to Spanish, but Spanish from Spain. Is that the problem?

    @ZZ9ZZZA, You are right. I unticked Linux on the game jam profile.

  19. I like. This could easily be modified to finish like (and is a similar principle to) those trick games where you go through a maze and a scary image pops up.

  20. Art often makes you reflect upon the medium itself, I’ve never actually felt any art game do that until this one. Thanks for taking games one step further, Jesper. :)

  21. Thanks all. Someone compared the game to rickrolling, and I think it is being used as such now, with people trying to trick their friends into playing it.

  22. um. i sort of guessed I was already “in” the game by the time of Silverlight, and gave up after seeing the removing Flash plugin. had to admit changing resolution was sort of the last straw =D am I right?

    i was also contemplating whether anyone would have been bothered to “play” it at all if the creator was not a big name such as Juul.

    i must say it’s a very well-thought out concept of deception. it really got me frustrated =D

  23. Ben, I think that outside academia, the game has been spreading as a kind of practical joke where people would tell their friends to play this “amazing game”.

  24. ah, yes… the devillish part of it. everyone seems to be very assuring of how worthwhile it is to “get the game started” =D

    may i ask if it would help as well, to make the start page not include a link to this discussion page, where… if stumbled upon, the joke might be spoilt?

  25. Great question. I decided that part of the beauty of this game is its concept rather than it being a practical joke. Hence the link to the discussion page.

  26. Your game’s requirements are insane. Most users aren’t going to be happy with the fact that they can only play this game on certain browser, on a certain language setting, AND on a certain resolution. That’s insane. Most online game developers should already know that one requirement is more than enough to annoy people and most people would go along with it. But to have so many? On top of that, you’re required to download even more plugins and I do understand that Silverlight is becoming more and more common and that Javascript is a standard thing to associate browsers with…But seriously, come on.

    You would think that it stops after the Unity plugin and the two standard plugins afterward, but nooo….No joke, you’re probably missing half of the crowed because they decided that this was too much.

  27. You know what? I give up. Now it’s asking me to uninstall Flash. Is this the whole point of the game? Is this THE concept you’re trying to display?

    No, this isn’t good at all, I’m done here.

  28. I can easily say I was owned. After thinking about it.

    That is the concept of the game. Cheers to you. I hate you so much (not really). Lol.

  29. @Kenneth

    Well, yeah, sorry. The pain is part of the pleasure, but you won’t know until it’s over. Thanks for sticking with it to the end.

  30. are you a fucking idiot?
    a game is supposed to be fun. Fun for the one playing it.
    This is plain sadistic.
    Actually, this is not a game. This is a prank.

  31. @george Well, it’s supposed to play with the boundaries of what a game is. It wasn’t intended as a prank, but I know that some people have used (or perceived it) as such.

  32. I think most people who have actually had to do lots of configuring on their computers will just make it through to the “change” resolution screen and then decide (like me) that they have (and this should be the name of the game in my opinion), “Been there, Done that!” Or I could just say that it didn’t take me very long to “get” the concept :) Next?

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