My conceptual game 4:32 from the 2010 Global Game Jam has taken on a pretty fascinating life of its own. (Blog announcement here.)
Here is Alec Meer’s post at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, where the game was presented under the heading of “PC Gaming In 2010”. A long flame war ensued on the site, showing that some people clearly felt cheated by the game. Which they were, of course, but that sort of is the game. One commenter compares 4:32 to rickrolling and is taking the whole thing personally:
… I bet there will be many other people disappointed or outright enraged by this. This has got nothing to do with “playground attitude” as it deserves to be called out for what it is. There are good and there a bad jokes, but this one is completely off the mark.
Part of the strong reactions at Rock, Paper, Shotgun seemed to come from people who felt that the game had crossed some line by forcing them to install and uninstall plugins.
Over at Play This Thing, Greg Costikyan’s post about the game immediately led to a flame war about PC vs. console gaming.
Petri Purho also blogged about it here.
I am pretty happy with the response, but it’s also interesting to see how players interpret the game in their own way. I didn’t think it was about PC vs. console gaming, and I didn’t think that a conceptual piece like this could get people that agitated. But then again, it’s a long-standing observation that some audiences will get angry if they feel a specific “work of art” breaks the conventions they expect – and the audience may even take it as a personal insult. That wasn’t intended, but it seems I did succeed in making something that played with player expectations!
Statistics: 13.000 games played. 513 games completed. (Cheating may have been involved, but I think that’s part of the game.)
I have to say, this one would make an interactive fiction entry in the Game Jam look downright conventional by comparison.
Also, I wish I got 4:32 of silence as my reward for winning.
I didn’t complete the game (actually I CAN’T complete it on my ageing PPC Mac which doesn’t support all the required tech) but I absolutely intend to cheat my way to the finish when I can find the time, even if I have to use my XP machine.
And there’s another aspect to all this – the ancient and noble art of the trickster, which is never just mischief for its own sake, but always with some greater purpose unperceived (or unperceivable) at the level where the ‘trick’ occurs. (i.e. it is an illustration of Bateson’s ‘double bind’).
Strictly speaking, Jesper should have adopted an animal (or female) pseudonym (e.g. Coyote or Rrose Selavy) when submitting the game, to comply with the conventions of trickster behaviour.
Perhaps my pseudonym should make me sound like a famous game designer rather than an animal? Will Molyneux?
I’m surprised no warez groups has leaked a cracked version that installs just fine… ;-)
Kind of reminds of this:
http://i.imgur.com/GxzeV.jpg
What people forget is the theme of the game is supposed to be deception.. and well you certainly deceived people! People felt deceived, not everyone takes that well. At least you caused a bit of a stir. I personally found the entire thing at first frustrating, but once I realised where it was all going.. I found it hilarious (gave up of course) but to be tricked made me laugh rather than feel anger.
It does open up some interesting moral questions. Do game designers have an ethical obligation to use the minimum number of dependencies possible? When they’ve asked the player to install something, must they then make sure to use it? Must the use be ‘worthwhile’? Should you list them all up front?
There was a game recently that apparently deleted a file on your computer for every enemy that you killed. Would it have been ok to tell people that files were deleted AFTER they finished playing, instead of before? How about if you only said you did? How about if instead of deleting the file, it encrypted them, and would only decrypt them if you solved a skill testing puzzle?
On the other side, do games have a responsibility to not pollute a person’s file system with a bunch of registry settings and files spread across many places? Would it be ok to make a game that created a bunch of hard drive filling files, and brought the system to a crawl when run, as a statement about how bloated and all consuming modern games have become?
Some of those questions seem easier to answer then others. A simple test might be for reversibility. But then again that’s not so binary is it? Many things are reversible if given enough effort. What is the difference between virtual reality and virtual fantasy?
pedantic, but I it sounds better and the intention is clearer if I ask it this way:
What is the difference between virtual fantasy and virtual reality?
@oij, I think you are onto something. 4:32 probably breaks the social contract that games shouldn’t needlessly force people to install/uninstall tings (“pollute their filesystem”).