{"id":432,"date":"2008-01-30T20:59:45","date_gmt":"2008-01-30T19:59:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/?p=432"},"modified":"2009-04-18T12:26:39","modified_gmt":"2009-04-18T17:26:39","slug":"the-suicide-game-player-perception-of-self-destruction-in-a-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/2008\/01\/30\/the-suicide-game-player-perception-of-self-destruction-in-a-game\/","title":{"rendered":"The Suicide Game: Player Perception of Self-destruction in a Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have put up a conference poster<\/a> made in collaboration with Albert Dang and Kan Yang Li when I visited Design & Technology at Parson’s School of Design<\/a> in the fall 0f 2006.<\/p>\n

The poster documents an experiment in identifying a basic convention of video games, in this case that players always fight for their own survival, and exploring the ramifications of breaking the convention.<\/p>\n

Albert Dang and Kan Yang Li built a two-player game in which the object of the players is to commit suicide by drinking poison and stabbing yourself.<\/p>\n

Yes, it is somewhat uncomfortable and perhaps controversial, but we wanted to explore that space by way of a prototype and user testing. The poster was presented at the DiGRA conference<\/a> in Tokyo September 2007.<\/p>\n

Play the game<\/strong> here:\u00a0 http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/text\/suicidegame\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Read the poster<\/strong> here: http:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/text\/suicidegame.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

From the poster<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Video games do not necessarily present the player with a positive role to play: The player character may be a villain, be morally corrupt. Yet it is almost universally the case that
\nvideo games make players fight for the survival of their character. In a discussion of tragedy in interactive media, Marie-Laure Ryan has noted the seeming impossibility of an
\nAnne Karenina game, a game where the player\u2019s ultimate goal is to commit suicide by throwing herself in front of a train:<\/p>\n

Interactors would have to be out of their mind-literally and metaphorically–to want to submit themselves to the fate of a heroine who commits suicide as the result of a love affair turned bad, like Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina. Any attempt to turn empathy, which relies on mental simulation, into first-person, genuinely felt emotion would in the vast majority of cases trespass the fragile boundary that separates pleasure from pain.
\n(Ryan 2001)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While Ryan identifies a clear game convention of players fighting for the survival of their character, we know little about what would happen were this convention to be broken:
\nHow would players perceive the controversial or uncomfortable game content in a game where the player had to seek self-destruction?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have put up a conference poster made in collaboration with Albert Dang and Kan Yang Li when I visited Design & Technology at Parson’s School of Design in the fall 0f 2006. The poster documents an experiment in identifying a basic convention of video games, in this case that players always fight for their … Continue reading “The Suicide Game: Player Perception of Self-destruction in a Game”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,2,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actual-games","category-games","category-my_publications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jesperjuul.net\/ludologist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}