By Kieron Gillen on September 24th, 2009 at 12:55 pm.
I’ve been thinking about this game for the last couple of days. Which is, I suppose, the point. Lose/Lose is a basic shooting game… but: “Lose/Lose is a video-game with real life consequences. Each alien in the game is created based on a random file on the players computer. If the player kills the alien, the file it is based on is deleted. If the players ship is destroyed, the application itself is deleted”. Oh, the humanity. More of what I’m sure will be termed art-wank in comments thread on the page. What I’m thinking about isn’t actually the questions it’s posing, but how it could be to have twisted to actually have proper gameplay appeal. You’ll find thought quick thoughts plus footage of the game in action below…
Here’s the baby…
DIE FILES.
The effect of the game deleting your files when you actually succeed in playing it, bar to illustrate some pretty basic points – Killing Just Because You Can Isn’t Necessarily Right – doesn’t really do anything. You’ll notice a list of high scores on the site, and they’re mostly really low. People are not playing it for obvious reasons. But they are a bit – partially for exhibitionist reasons and partially for absolute ludicrous iron-manisms. Yeah, I don’t give a fuck enough to do this.
Iron-man-isms are one of those trends which are interesting. The industry talks about opening games up to more and more people, but there’s a niche who absolutely adores the brutalisation. You’d actually create a particularly nasty Iron-Man game by flipping the mechanism. As in, files are deleted by you losing. So playing isn’t actually about being just masochistically self-destructive – it’s a statement that you believe your skills are enough that you won’t lose any files. With an actually compelling game, I can see some players (i.e. Quinns) actually being attracted to that.
Of course, there’s another, much more populist approach to the game. Just connect it to your Recycle Trash Bin thing, and you run the game whenever you want to empty it. You blast through enemies, each tiny victory permanently deleting the file they represent, and you win the game when the Recycle Bin is clear. Just a way to enliven a normal workaday part of your PC-life. And that I think you’ll find a lot of people playing, for exactly that reason. And, to be honest, I suspect would be a far more interesting work of art than Lose/Lose – of how making things a game can defeat tedium and remix reality.
I’m a fan of this kind of using your PC’s files as part of the game. There’s a 90s shooter which Richard Cobbett told me about – and whose name will, I’m sure, be mentioned in the comments thread in seconds – which uses random picture files from your hard-drive as wall textures in one level. Which is a brilliant concept, if only for the mental image of playing a game in front of friends and suddenly finding themselves fighting through a mass of pornography. Oh noes!
24/09/2009 at 13:00 Ian says:
I don’t see how this could possibly go wrong.
24/09/2009 at 13:07 LewieP says:
Having real world consequences for games is interesting.
Gambling is, I suppose, one such example. I’ve played poker with the same group of people more than once. One time with not money, just counters, then with real money on the line.
It does drastically change the game, how people play, and the emotional experiance of the players. One friend, for example, would be very reckless when it was just counters, and very conservative when they were playing for money.
I’m not a fan of acheivements that much, but I am suprised there isn’t things like negative acheivements (or I guess “failings”), where you have a permanent record on your steam account for, say, dieing X number of times in a bit of Half Life 2.
24/09/2009 at 16:05 PHeMoX says:
“Having real world consequences for games is interesting.”
No, it’s not interesting at all. Not these kind of consequences. It’s like those fools hooking games to electrocution devices so you can ‘feel pain’ when getting hurt in virtuality.
It’s nuts and we all know it.
Virtuality was never meant to have real life (negative) consequences.
24/09/2009 at 16:41 Meat Circus says:
That’s an excellent idea. I’m going to patent it and then sue your ass.
24/09/2009 at 13:15 Bjoern Roepstorff says:
This is by far a new idea. There is a Knights of the Dinner Table strip where Brian introduces B.A. to his new computer game “Virtual Liabilities”. It’s a PVP fighting game where files are assigned to your hit locations and deleted as you take damage.
24/09/2009 at 13:15 mpk says:
Does it perma-delete the files, or send them to teh recycling bin?
24/09/2009 at 13:16 Javier-de-Ass says:
yeah no this isn’t interesting, just stupid.
24/09/2009 at 13:19 Tei says:
This remind me that austing power gag where we follow the life of a minion. Poor “random minion” killed withouth a second think by our hero. A minion with cute childrens and a pretty wife.
On the other part this is a game. Low scores you say? maybe this is my oportunity, I could run this thing inside a clone image of a VMWare windows, maybe with a perl script that restore the deleted files. Does this game start If you remove deletion rights for the current user for the executable?
What If you play this game from a CD-ROM (or any other ROM system..) , will try to delete the CD-ROM files
MAXIMUM WINNER: “TEI-I-PLAY-FROM-MY-CDROM-WITH-A-LOW-RIGHTS-ACCOUNT-AWESOMESAUCE!”.-
24/09/2009 at 13:28 Nick says:
The game Virus used stuff on your computer IIRC, also there was an odd asteroids control style game called Inner Space that was set inside your PC and used file names and things, it was quite fun.
This game sounds a bit.. er.. well, pointless. As art or otherwise.
24/09/2009 at 13:32 CMaster says:
There was an old top-down space shooter, great fun called “Inner Space” which was all about rescuing the icons on your computer from harmful viruses. Not that you actually had virus problems if you lost mind. I really liked the mix of challenges when you entered a level and the RPG-like systems it had going on.
This game however sounds like it takes things a bit too far.
24/09/2009 at 13:45 Dan Lawrence says:
I was just about to link to that!
http://www.zolyx.co.uk/blog/golden-oldie-inner-space/
Apparently it can still be got hold of today, an ace little game.
24/09/2009 at 14:00 CMaster says:
They still want $25 for it? as much as $40 with addons?
Whoa.
24/09/2009 at 13:36 Rinox says:
As it is, this game sounds a little like playing Russian Roulette on your own. Which isn’t much fun, really.
But if you could transplant the same system to a player vs. player game…now there’s some potential. I’m sure there are tons of players looking for that next thrill. Kinda like Diable hardcore mode, only way more hardcore.
24/09/2009 at 13:38 Richard says:
The old 90s game was simply called Virus.
24/09/2009 at 13:49 jRides says:
Surely I could just go torrent a better, mainstream game, then I’d no doubt pick up my very own virus along with it that does exactly the same thing – but with way better gameplay/graphics/story etc. Win/win.
24/09/2009 at 13:52 Cooper says:
Like the tigsource post, it seems a little lazy not to point out that this is a Mac only program? It couldn’t fuck up your PC, even if you tried.
In any case, I guess the point of the game (like much artwork) was to stir up discussion, rather than the objet d’art in and of itself, and so, well done Mr. art game maker man.
In which case, my favourite comment, given the Real Life Consequences of the game has been from tigsource. LOSE/LOSE: REAL LIFE CONSEQUENCES! A LOSE/LOSE FAN FIC BY ATEAM
24/09/2009 at 17:51 Bhazor says:
Ewww disgusting Apple App.
Be gone!
24/09/2009 at 13:54 James G says:
A good few years ago I had a dream, in which I was playing a game, Zombies (ate my neighbours) if you want the details, and was doing particularly well. Then I got to a sudden crunch point, and came across one of the characters that had been mentioned in the manual, but doesn’t appear until late game. I ended up failing whatever task was set, and, as a result, the character threatened to randomly change all the level passwords on the cartridge, before killing me, thus ensuring a far greater failure than would be possible normally.
Now, in the dream itself I was upset, as it meant that not only would my progress be lost, but also that of others in my family. In reality though, there is something interesting about the idea of failures that can also occur at the level of ‘metagaming.’ Obviously in this case, the outside implications were still confined to affecting the game itself.
24/09/2009 at 18:27 Funky Badger says:
They toyed with things like this in Metal Gear Solid, IIRC…
24/09/2009 at 19:08 Pax says:
“I’m going to torture you Snake, but don’t worry, you can push Select to give up. But if you die, there’s no continues this time, and don’t use auto-fire, or I’ll know…”
24/09/2009 at 13:59 Ben Abraham says:
There was a game called “Operation: Inner Space” for Windows 3.1 that took your application Icons and… did something with them? The fiction was your PC was infected by a virus and you had to take your space-ship into the computer to rescue files and destroy the virus. Kind of a Tron rip off, but it was cool when I was 8 or so. Your ship controlled like an Asteroids clone.
24/09/2009 at 14:03 Nick says:
So no one reads any other comments even when there are about 7, eh?
24/09/2009 at 14:09 Paul S. says:
I loved Inner Space. Every year I check back to see if it’s free yet, but it never is.
24/09/2009 at 14:12 Nick says:
I actually bought it after playing the shareware version, it arrived in a sort of cardboard folder with nice art on it. Sadly I have long since lost the disks =(
24/09/2009 at 14:12 mrrobsa says:
I think this is awesome, if it had the ability to specify a folder it would make file deletion a blast! And as the KG says, a recycle bin version is a must. Anyone gonna take a hit for the team and try it out? I guess if you’d just done a fresh OS install you’d be fine….
24/09/2009 at 14:15 Gutter says:
This game is like a museum that promise to kill one of your kids for every painting you look at.
I’ve seen some argue that you didn’t have to shoot, so really it was your choice and that was the statement of the game, but the problem is that it is a game, it’s meant to be played. I wouldn’t go to that museum to ignore all the painting, so why would I play that game? I wouldn’t even call that place a museum, I’d call it a gas chamber, just like I call that game a virus.
24/09/2009 at 15:03 unique_identifier says:
i pretty much agree with the sentiment here – this software certainly isn’t a game. although “malware” is perhaps a better term than “virus”. design it, construct it, discuss it – sure – but release it? pretty irresponsible.
24/09/2009 at 14:19 Dracko says:
lol going to download this onto the school computer that would “hilarious” XD
24/09/2009 at 14:27 TCM says:
The game is not meant to be played by shooting.
It’s meant to be played by dodging the enemies.
Clearly.
24/09/2009 at 14:50 Gutter says:
@TCM : “The game is not meant to be played”
You should have stopped there.
24/09/2009 at 15:08 TCM says:
And I did, on my first Tigsource post, but nobody seemed to care.
24/09/2009 at 14:59 Okami says:
I think the game is a very clever commentary about our packrat mentality when it comes to hoarding files and programs on our hard disks. These days data storage is so ridiculously cheap, that we can afford to keep absolutely everything saved to our hard drives all the time.
Think about all the useless data lying around on your hard disk. About all the countless little programs and games you downolad without thinking. Would you really miss them, if you started randomly deleting stuff? For how long could you play the game, how many enemies could you kill, before you actually deleted anything of worth?
24/09/2009 at 17:36 1stGear says:
I think that would be true if the game focused on junk files. If the first ship I blow up is Windows.exe, that’s another matter.
24/09/2009 at 15:20 Tunips says:
I am reminded – ever so faintly – of a book produced by a 19th century French absurdist. Its covers were made of coarse sandpaper. The book destroyed those next to it on the shelf. This game seems to have a kinship, in the sense of that “Don’t you dare appreciate me” school of art. It’s engagingly and provocatively reprehensible.
That French chap also made a boardgame which played with battlefield lines of communication in a rather abstract manner. I don’t suppose anyone knows who he was?
24/09/2009 at 16:45 Gutter says:
Guy Debord
24/09/2009 at 16:50 Kieron Gillen says:
And he was 20th Century. Go Situationalisticism(tasm)!
KG
24/09/2009 at 19:26 Cooper says:
This is why I love RPS. It’s not often you find comments threads on games with references to Situationist International.
The game, by the way, is called Kreigspiel. You can find it to play here.
The book is called Mémoires and I think it was Debord and another artist, not sure I remember the name. It’s a work of ‘psychogeography’ (Human Geographer by trade, in case you hadn’t guessed) and is mainly about the relation of urban space to the behaviour, feelings and emotions (realised consciously or not) of those in that space. Despite some problems with it (including an uncritical repetition of a masculinist conception of space as feminine in some bits of his work) it’s been fairly influential in left-field architectural, art and some geographic work.
24/09/2009 at 15:26 Caring Beet says:
“Killing Just Because You Can Isn’t Necessarily Right” doesn’t really have much to do with actively deleting your own files. It seems more a commentary on escapism, and the interplay between the isolated mental space that many games depend on, and the context they exist in. It’s still not terribly articulate though.
The idiotic whimsy of the concept is kind of arresting, but still the self importance of the game means that it is probably less enjoyable than any kindly photo-mashup-flythrough-porno-ohnoes.
24/09/2009 at 15:29 abecedarian says:
Can I link it to all the SecuROM files?
24/09/2009 at 15:42 Dinger says:
This discussion of player-supplied incidental content reminds me of a DigiPen student project FP-FS, which can be downloaded from DigiPen. Of course, the thing is buggy and never worked for me, but I believe they combined mp3 player and multimedia effects with a FPS where it designs the level based on your file system structure.ultimately, they make clever concept pieces, but can you really take it that far?
24/09/2009 at 15:48 Clovis says:
I could see having fun with this on a fresh install of windows or something. You deal with the double challenge of the game itself, and then the possibility of randomly losing when the wrong file gets deleted. If you did that though, it would be helpful to see the filename so you could actively skip killing things that seem important. It’d be interesting to play a game and then see if some of the other installed programs still work.
Hmm.. I actually have an otherwise useless computer laying around…
24/09/2009 at 15:59 Clovis says:
Oh, the other time would be if you are going to be doing a fresh install of Windows or something. After you backup all your data you could merrily go about destroying all your software. Some people actually do fresh installs every year.
24/09/2009 at 15:53 Axess Denyd says:
Yes, Inner Space, fun. This game? Doesn’t look fun and seems a bad idea.
24/09/2009 at 15:58 AtkinsSJ says:
Someone needs to make something like this as an anti-virus program. Usually, anti-virus stuff hogs your PC when you want to be gaming, so why not combine the two?
24/09/2009 at 16:12 Christian says:
Now *that* is a nice little idea. I like it.
24/09/2009 at 16:13 Chris says:
It’s sort of like the old TV show Reboot, in which games are represented as destructive purple cubes, and the user winning means many files and programs are destroyed.
Actually I guess it’s almost exactly like that, with a different visual representation.
24/09/2009 at 16:30 phil says:
I agree with AtkinsSJ, adapting this as a mod for something like ad-aware would be awesome.
In the same vein of real life consequence for game failure, I vaguely remember a game manual (90′s RPG I believe) that recomended hitting yourself in the head with a hammer everytime you die in game, should you find the gam’s hard mode too easy.
Then of course there was this; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8175612.stm
24/09/2009 at 16:42 Nalano says:
This is the sort of art-house game that should never have gone beyond the drawing table of whatever CS majors thought it up.
“Let’s make a game where the enemies you’re shooting are actually random files on your computer! And let’s make it so that by shooting them you’re permanently deleting them!”
“Yeah, let’s not.”
24/09/2009 at 16:57 Gutter says:
Thats the thing : I’m sure that this did happen, numerous time.
I’ve seen people hail this has a genius idea, but the idea isn’t genius or unique, it’s just happen to be so ridiculous that everyone who though about doing it just dismissed it as crazy.
24/09/2009 at 20:28 Clovis says:
I once heard about this art critic being complained to about some piece of “found art”, with the old, “Pfff, that’s not art, I could do that!”
The critic replied, “Yes, but you didn’t.”
24/09/2009 at 16:45 jankenbattle says:
not so sure i think this is pointless art-wank or even that terrible an idea, at least it’s original?
even my anti-game girlfriend loves the idea of the recycle-bin version.
24/09/2009 at 16:58 Gutter says:
It’s original because no one bothered doing something that useless before.
Just like art made of dead babies would be original.
24/09/2009 at 18:25 RobF says:
Wot Gutter said. As long as I’ve been lurking around coding boards this comes up at least 30 times a year as a concept. No-one makes it because it’s actually shit.
24/09/2009 at 16:53 KilgoreTrout XL says:
A post about this game on metafilter mentioned that it just rips off a feature that Windows 95 had perfected over a decade ago.
24/09/2009 at 16:55 FhnuZoag says:
Can I make my ‘bah, been done’ statement yet?
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/chi/chi.html
Well, okay, it’s not exactly the same, but…
For this game…. it’d be super evil to have a multiplayer RTS version, where your units are your files, and their units are their files. (And I guess unit type is determined by file type.) So, be sure to protect your precious EXE and DLLs from their horde of porn and cache files…
24/09/2009 at 17:03 Gutter says:
That would actually be fun… A RTS that delete files, and give more importance to some files than other. So your barracks are made of system files, your HQ is Explorer.exe, etc.
The winner is the first to render the other system useless.
No faux-art statement, just controlled destruction.
24/09/2009 at 19:36 solipsistnation says:
Oops, that’ll teach me to not read comments before posting. 8)
24/09/2009 at 17:03 Okami says:
Well, I guess my comment was a bit revealing about my own approach to data storage. It was, of course, also not meant to be taken very seriously. Also, not deleting stuff on your hard drive is hardly something I’d consider a failing.
24/09/2009 at 17:05 caesarbear says:
Yeah the recycle-bin version is for girls. Real men demand this game be internet multiplayer!
24/09/2009 at 17:31 Xugu Madison says:
If I wanted real life consequences, why would I be playing a game?
24/09/2009 at 17:56 Railick says:
I could never bring myself to play virus when it came out because I knew I'd be playing it when it loaded up special folder opens while people are standing around. (you know what special folder I mean)
On a related note one time my dad was running a file scan on our old computer right? Well it shows the file it is currently scanning and it was VERY Slow. I mean this thing took like 12 hours to run. So I walk in there after it has been running for a while and notice it is scanning my (special folder) of the day. It had hundreds of and hundreds of huge files in it (for that time any how) It scanned that folder for about 2 hours. 2 hours I had to do ANYTHING I could to distract my dad from going in to check on it :P In the future I choose to rename all my files diffrent things so if it happened again he wouldn't know files from older /temp named 1,2,3,4,5 ect where anything but general temp files ehehe
24/09/2009 at 18:29 LionsPhil says:
So, it looks like a harmless game, but randomly deletes files.
There’s a name for that kind of thing, and it ends in “ware” and starts with “mal”.
24/09/2009 at 18:38 Heliocentric says:
Malible swimware?
24/09/2009 at 20:30 Clovis says:
Except that it doesn’t look like a harmless game at all. It makes it clear at the beginning that it will be deleting your files.
24/09/2009 at 18:36 Bret says:
You know, although I’d never play it, the RTS version appeals to me. It’s got a bit of the feel of X-Com or such in Ironman mode somehow.
24/09/2009 at 18:48 Starky says:
This has to be the dumbest excuse for an idea I’ve ever heard, one that is utterly irresponsible at best and at worst purposefully malicious.
Malware in the guide of a game and art as an excuse is still malware.
It’s not original, it’s not clever, and it’s not art, it’s just moronic.
I really do hope that all the Anti-virus vendors flag this game as harmful ASAP, or I can see it getting used as a practical joke against unsuspecting users… one that brings no end of headaches to people who work in tech support (a field I happily got out of to go to electrical engineering).
It’s the game equivalent of releasing a movie that “every second you watch it, it permanently destroys a random pixel on your LCD TV”.
As has been said many times if it was the recycle bin, that would be acceptable, or a designated folder at least, but any random file? That can potentially cause serious problems.
I don’t care what kind of disclaimer the idiot designer put on it, I hope he gets sued – and thankfully any disclaimers that breech the law are void, as I suspect the disclaimer in this game will.
The art argument is no excuse either, god how I hate the sheer idiocy of some corners of the art scene, the whole “if it evokes a resonance it’s art” opinion – To which my usual counter is something like “Well if I punch you in the face that would evoke a response, is my fist and your nose art?”.
Though only once have I gone as far as actually hitting someone in the face to prove a point (he gave me permission the silly sod, with witnesses – broke his nose too), ah the fond year doing a 3D Design course when I thought it would be nice to be a digital animator.
Few things in life annoy me as much as arty types, I’ve always been of the opinion that art should speak for itself, it shouldn’t need explanation – that the very act of an artistic work needing to be defined, or justified externally voids any artistic merit the work may hold.
The kind of work that people just look at puzzled and confused until some arty type (worst of all when it’s the creator) explains the meaning of it, and then all those confused looks turn to nodding appreciation, like they got it right away, so afraid are they of not getting it, they fake it.
Real art (and when some people say that they mean modern art, I don’t – modern art can be real also, but so incredibly fake also) should not need that kind of over the shoulder commentary “this piece represents…” rubbish.
25/09/2009 at 13:12 Lilliput King says:
“Real art (and when some people say that they mean modern art, I don’t – modern art can be real also, but so incredibly fake also) should not need that kind of over the shoulder commentary “this piece represents…” rubbish.”
Well, no, and in a sense, this doesn’t either.
In some cases it’s up to the viewer to interpret the painting/game, and what it means to them (i.e., Rothko), and in others the creator clearly intended a particular message to be prevalent (Picasso’s Guernica).
They’re both perfectly valid. Art can’t be defined as simply as you are attempting to.
25/09/2009 at 13:16 Lilliput King says:
“To which my usual counter is something like “Well if I punch you in the face that would evoke a response, is my fist and your nose art?”.
Though only once have I gone as far as actually hitting someone in the face to prove a point (he gave me permission the silly sod, with witnesses – broke his nose too)”
Sorry for the double post, but yes, it would make a point.
It would suggest that you’re an idiotic thug, and would explore how idiotic thugs such as yourself make up for their lack of eloquence with violence.
25/09/2009 at 13:21 Okami says:
Aaaawww… Someone needs a hug!
HUUUUG
24/09/2009 at 18:49 Frenz0rz says:
This reminds me of Inner S[ace. Ah, fun times a kid, one of my first PC games.
http://www.sdispace.com/inspace.htm
24/09/2009 at 18:50 Vinraith says:
So it’s basically a video game virus. How odd.
Kieron’s two variants are both significantly more interesting, of course. The iron man game would be absurdly risky, of course, but there’s certainly a contingent that would play it and brag about it.
The recycling bin idea is silly, but marketable. You should patent that and sell it to Popcap, Kieron.
24/09/2009 at 18:58 FuxDat says:
Why is this getting so much attention?
Look, you’re a) either going to backup beforehand, b) run it on your break machine/test rig, c) read about others’ experience with it.
Just like that mysterious “Natalie Portman Hot Nude pixxx!!!” attachment with the subject “I love you” you got in your email several years back.
Like others mentioned, it’s just viral (the irony) malware dressed up as high brow philosophical new games journalist wank crap.
24/09/2009 at 19:05 A-Scale says:
The only way this would be fun is if you could quickly install/run from disk on a store computer, and play the game until it deleted a core system file, resulting in a blue screen. Other than that, it’s an awful idea. It’s like playing a game that requires you to shit all over your own home.
24/09/2009 at 19:06 Empyreal says:
I think the real problem here is that the game does not generate real life consequences at all. The game IS the real life consequence. In real life, you tend to get a feedback system, where positive actions are rewarded and negative actions are punished. Here, the positive action is not playing, simply because the negative action MUST be negative since you are punished for it. The point of a negative feedback system is to make you better at whatever the system is geared towards. For example, in a game where you’re hooked up to electrodes, you’d get better simply because you don’t want to get shocked, rather than personally wanting to get better. Here, the game uses a negative feedback system to teach you not to play the game. In fact, it’s so effective that the game is almost universally reviled, from what I’ve seen in the comments, by people who have not even experienced the system, simply because of the concept of feedback system that has been presented. So, in a way, it is accomplishing exactly what it set out to do: Teach you not to ever want to play the game.
If it were to want you to ACTUALLY play the game, it would reward you for doing something in it, but it has no actual positive feedback for doing anything in the game.
24/09/2009 at 19:19 Hulk Hogan says:
Why do indie games like this try so hard to be art? Do their programmers think the only way yo validate their hobby is to make stuff like this?
YOU’RE TRYING TO HARD! QUIT IT!
You only end up coming off as one of those pretentous art students who smears a Barbie Doll in feces and calls it art because it “garners a reaction*” (under that criteria trolling is art because it gets a reaction and makes people think)
*from the ignorant masses who watch their tvs read their newpapers and play their halos
24/09/2009 at 19:27 Empyreal says:
“Why do indie games like this try so hard to be art? Do their programmers think the only way yo validate their hobby is to make stuff like this?
YOU’RE TRYING TO HARD! QUIT IT!”
Yeah, the way he phrases is on his site is somewhat pretentious. If it were to be a “psychological experiment” or somesuch to see how people respond to it, then I wouldn’t complain, but having it be art on how “digital files are as important as physical possessions” and “the concept of winning” is crap, it’s a game that deletes files in such a way that it’s not really much of a game. The EFFECTS of that are what you can study, it’s not an art piece persay.
24/09/2009 at 21:19 RobF says:
Sadly, they do genuinely think they’re revolutionary art terrorists pushing the boundaries of how we see games.
I prescribe a course of The Manual, twice a day, every day to help cure them.
24/09/2009 at 19:20 Hulk Hogan says:
to validate their hobby*
24/09/2009 at 19:24 JonFitt says:
I was doing really well, about to beat the hi-score, but then my computer bluescreened and now it won’t boot. :(
I’m now having to read RPS on my iPhone.
24/09/2009 at 19:33 cyrenic says:
There’s an obvious lesson here kids. Don’t use iPhones.
24/09/2009 at 19:32 solipsistnation says:
I am reminded of psdoom for unix systems, where enemies are tagged with process IDs, and shooting them kills that process on your system. Watch out for monster ID 1! init is important!
24/09/2009 at 19:36 WarSarge says:
VM your workstation, snapshot it, and get that high score (you can just revert your to your snapshot if you loose) !
24/09/2009 at 19:46 Starky says:
Yeah I was just thinking I may fire this up in virtualbox, fill it with a few thousand 1kb files and have at it.
Then I realized it’s not worth the effort, just to play a poorly made, rubbish game that literlly has nothing going for it except that dodgy gimmick.
24/09/2009 at 20:08 Empyreal says:
But that’s the entire point. You’re not SUPPOSED to play the game at all. It’s interesting and divisive solely BECAUSE of this point. The game is geared so that you’re not supposed to play it. There is technically a game there, but the point is not to make a good game. See, the problem with everyone’s assessments so far is that this is classed as a “game” and thus should be considered “bad” or “good”, since games should be made to entertain gamers. But that’s one KIND of game. The goal of this game is not to entertain, but to experiment with other types of games. This one is a game whose point is to make you not want to play it. It is technically a game, since a game exists, but you’re not supposed to actually interact with it or use it. It’s more of an interesting experiment than an interactive game, but it is nonetheless a TYPE of game. It’s not persay a “poorly made, rubbish game” with a “dodgy gimmick”, it’s a game that is bare-bones because you’re never supposed to play it for more than three seconds, and its gimmick is the entire point of the game.
In other words, what it is is an experiment with the gimmick of being a “game”, not a game with the gimmick of being an experiment. It should be judged as such.
24/09/2009 at 20:28 Bret says:
So, wait. There is absolutely no criteria to judge it by, and anyone who says it’s rubbish just doesn’t understand it?
I am so going into avant garde game design. Twisp and Catsby, here we come!
24/09/2009 at 20:44 Empyreal says:
No, no, you are missing my point. The point is that this isn’t game design at all. This isn’t an art game. This is an experiment which is COINCIDENTALLY a game. If this game was designed to entertain in any way, it would be a rubbish game. However, it’s not meant to entertain, and is only ALSO a game. Judge it on how successful it was at provoking conversation and strong responses, not as art, but as a social experiment.
25/09/2009 at 03:45 Eldoop says:
How is it an experiment? The outcome is obvious: it will go mostly unplayed, because people like their files.
25/09/2009 at 19:06 Tyshalle says:
More importantly, what is the point of making this non-game? Generally when making an “experiment,” you’re trying to, y’know, experiment with something. If your assertion is that we can’t judge this as a game, then let’s judge it as an experiment and ask the important question of how does it fair at that? I don’t think it does much on either front, personally.
24/09/2009 at 20:49 Win-Win says:
Hey guys I’m announcing my new game, Win-Win.
You put your penis in this hole right here and if you lose the game, it gets chopped off.
Women need not apply (girls don’t play games lol).
Viva la art!
24/09/2009 at 21:02 Empyreal says:
For the last time, I’m not saying it’s an art game. It’s an experiment. It’s not even a game. If your game had actual gameplay and a point, then it would be a game that is just very punishing. This is an experiment with a game sort of tacked on that has no depth or point to the game at all, the “game” is just a way to inflict direct negative feedback on you. So if your game were where you press a button to chop off tiny slices of penis at a time and try to go for a high score before you pass out from blood loss, then it would be an experiment in how far people will go to get game for having the highest score and the most mutilated genitalia. And an exercise in how stupid people are. This is an experiment in negative feedback, a game that is not meant to be played and thus by most standards is not a game at all and just a psychological or social experiment.
Are we clear, because after explaining all that again I am not defending what I’m saying several times over, either you’re not listening or not understanding if you post another random comment on how horrible this game is without some context of what you mean. The same goes for snarky comments. Now, if you disagree with what I’m saying, than debate with me on the points because I could be very much wrong, but don’t just make a side comment that goes against a perfectly logical deduction without trying at all to explain why you think so. Then that’s just meant to be inflammatory. Which I guess if you want to do that go ahead, I’m just saying I won’t respond to it.
However, I do look forward to opposing viewpoints. The internet is a wonderful medium for a debate if everyone is at least mildly civil.
And in case any of the previous text seemed aggressive, I love you all. <3
24/09/2009 at 21:06 undead dolphin hacker says:
Yet another stupid mastubatory indie game trying to be different for difference’s sake.
24/09/2009 at 21:39 Empyreal says:
And why would you say it is a game, based on the standard accepted criteria for a game and the fact that this game does not fulfill them?
24/09/2009 at 23:41 Gutter says:
Because the author calls it a game.
We won’t try to excuse that shit piece of code by calling it something that even the guy that made it doesn’t.
24/09/2009 at 22:15 Martin K says:
If this were just a thought experiment, and had never been put together, it might have been a good deal more compelling, because it would have invited theoretical de/reconstruction and debate ala what Kieron took a swing at in his post. As it now actually, physically exists (and is not very good)…eh. It’ll fade away and be lost forever, and good riddance.
Also, Innerspace.
24/09/2009 at 22:17 seras says:
everyone seems to miss the point: you can play it successfully without losing any files at all (other than the game itself).
ppl just assume that the goals are to ‘shoot the aliens’ and/or ‘get a high score’. the statement the game makers are trying to make is that games(and gamers) should look beyond those assumptions.
nothing stops you from peacefully flying through the level, avoiding contact with the aliens and reach the end.
24/09/2009 at 23:34 Gutter says:
Silly us, expecting to shoot in a shooter…
If they wanted us to look beyond assumptions, they should have offered an alternative way to use the “shooting” part of the shooter.
24/09/2009 at 22:35 Ms. Axel Gear says:
I think it’s more than a bit dumb, as a game or piece of art. It’d have the same effect whether someone left it as an idea or turned it into an actual game. As it is, it feels kind of useless because the people who will appreciate it will probably never play it; all you really need is to read its little blurb to get its thrust. I recognize its right to exist, but really, couldn’t Mr. Gage send a message that was a bit less pat, or communicate it more elegantly?
Many art games are dismissed by the gaming community, and for good reason: they’re generally not well-constructed games. What separates lose/lose from any other Klik & Play shooter? (I’m honestly a bit curious, as I don’t have access to a mac.) When an art game can bring itself to fulfill the necessities of a game, or leave them unfulfilled in an interesting way, that’s when I’ll actually play it, instead of downloading it, never unzipping it, and two months later deleting it.
24/09/2009 at 23:01 kalgor says:
I think I am going to give the game to a few “friends” that don’t speak english.
24/09/2009 at 23:51 Dagda says:
As an experiment, it’s interesting.
Maybe use it as a motivational tool. Miss a personal deadline and you have to go a round with the game, and it’s linked up to one of your entertainment collections- music, TV episodes, whatever.
25/09/2009 at 00:08 coupsan says:
I couldn’t even start up the fucking thing.
25/09/2009 at 00:18 D says:
Hmm. Pretty ingenious way of getting rid of random porn to clear diskspace. If a bit over the top.
25/09/2009 at 00:18 Mechtroid says:
I really, really, really, REALLY hope you were being ironic/sarcastic, OP. This game is basically digital Russian roulette.
25/09/2009 at 00:19 Mechtroid says:
Also, the end boss should be boot.ini
25/09/2009 at 00:50 TCM says:
But that’s the entire point being made.
You’re given a gun, you’re given a scoreboard, you’re told it’s a shooter, and you cannot find fun outside of that box.
25/09/2009 at 00:51 TCM says:
For some reason, this didn’t reply to Gutter.
25/09/2009 at 01:44 Andy says:
This sounds like a very cleverily made virus
25/09/2009 at 03:15 JimmyJ says:
Despite the bit at the end, nobody has mention Operation: Inner Space?
25/09/2009 at 04:30 Anymoose says:
Am I the only one who immediately thought of ReBoot when reading this article? Winning a game destroys one’s computer? Ah, the memories.
25/09/2009 at 05:33 jankenbattle says:
pretty sure about ten people have mentioned innerspace!
25/09/2009 at 06:47 Evil_Toaster says:
Incidentally, the game which used image files off your drive as game content was in fact, called Virus. Hooray for irony! :)
05/11/2009 at 10:56 raynar says:
Virus also used your directory file tree to construct the levels, i always thought thats cool.
25/09/2009 at 06:49 Evil_Toaster says:
Unt then I notice page -1- of the comments. More irony!
25/09/2009 at 07:45 Cedge says:
Malware, masquerading as a game, masquerading as art, masquerading as intelligent.
25/09/2009 at 19:21 ruin says:
It’s not malware. Malware is not when you delete your own files for amusement, and I don’t recall it ever warning you that it will either.
25/09/2009 at 09:18 Hulk Hogan says:
I came up with this exact same idea when I was ten I demand th author put me in the credits or I will sue him for one (1) BJ.
25/09/2009 at 11:25 EtsSpets says:
Ahh, the intelligence that presides in this comments section is just overwhelming. :)
25/09/2009 at 12:55 Lilliput King says:
I actually quite like this, because I’m one of those wanky arty types.
The High Score board demonstrates how willing people are to destroy themselves for petty notoriety, and the fact that you can clear the game without killing cleverly turns our expectations on their head.
And like all decent art, it provokes discussion and divides opinion.
25/09/2009 at 13:05 Lilliput King says:
Dracko in ‘taking-things-too-seriously-again’ shocker.
25/09/2009 at 14:07 Joras says:
If the creator had some balls every alien you destroy would destroy a file on the creator’s computer.
25/09/2009 at 16:25 Biscuitry says:
I was going to, but you beat me to it.
25/09/2009 at 16:25 Biscuitry says:
Okay, wow. Apparently replies are broken.
25/09/2009 at 17:44 Okami says:
On a side note: Games that have real life consequences aren’t, strictly speaking, games. One of the defining aspects of games (at least according to Huizinga) is that they’re consequence free outside of the games space.
Which of course would mean that any kind of gambling or professional sports doesn’t fall under the category of “game”.
Actually the only reason I wrote this was to show that I know about Huizinga and that I’ve read Homo Ludens, so that I might appear clever in the RPS comments section.
25/09/2009 at 19:07 Mulayim Sert says:
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
25/09/2009 at 19:18 ruin says:
Did anyone actually go to the website before posting on here?
The creator actually talks a bit about the point of the game. He said something to the effect of, Just because we have guns and are awarded for using them, does it make it right to do so. He mentions that the only reason you would kill the aliens is because its implied that you should through the weapon you have and the score you get for doing so. So really, the point of the game I think is to see if people were willing to delete files on their computer just so they could obtain an arbitrary number and feel better about themselves if they could get a higher one than someone else.
25/09/2009 at 19:57 TCM says:
Which is what I’ve been saying all along.
Calling it an “art” game is stupid.
Calling it malware is stupid.
Everything peopel do is stupid.
(And Mulayim Sert, I already posted that on Tigsource, jerk! >_>)
25/09/2009 at 21:35 SquareWheel says:
If that were any boss, it’d be the final boss.
26/09/2009 at 01:49 Melf_Himself says:
I really like KG’s Iron Man adaptation to poke fun at all those “hardcore” Darkfall types. The thing is the poor bastards would probably play it.
26/09/2009 at 03:01 Cedge says:
You’re off it if you think that any of those folks with the really high scores weren’ t playing the game in VMWare or something like that.
27/09/2009 at 04:43 anon says:
trolling is a art*
27/09/2009 at 04:57 fermier says:
I’m pretty sure this hasn’t been addressed. A lot of outrage here comes from “if this crap is art, then why isn’t x art?” I think the problem here is that most folks seem to think that only good art is art! For what it’s worth, I think most important is the artist’s intent to make art — to creatively express. Love or hate from an audience probably has very little effect on a work being art or not and a lot more to do with an artist’s self-esteem. In that vein, substituting “This is bad art,” with “This isn’t art!” satisfies a critic’s intent to be mean more than be honest.
27/09/2009 at 20:16 Tamsin says:
I’m confused, probably because I haven’t read Huizinga. How can anything not have consequences ‘outside of the games space’? What about emotional response: is it not a game if it puts you in a lasting good mood? What games that teach you things, or sports games that give you exercise (with presumably lasting effect on your body)?
27/09/2009 at 20:19 Tamsin says:
Er, my last comment was meant to be in reply to Okami’s comment
28/09/2009 at 08:46 Anonymous Coward says:
Funny thing: quite a few viruses acquire permission for their installation by promising the user porn. Many who bring their computers in for repair after accepting these bargains are more concerned about where the porn they were promised went than about the condition of their machines. This isn’t a new critique of idiot end-users; it’s just leveraging a different stereotype. Then again, given the moderate success of Evony (where’s the queen? I was promised a queen…), perhaps this necrotic horse could stand a bit more flogging. Listen to Joshua: sometimes the only winning move is not to play.
30/09/2009 at 09:51 Preacher says:
Lose/Lose’s central point is essentially a straw man argument. Its statement about violence in video games drains the context out of video games in order to make its point. The ambiguity it tries to establish by linking real data loss with the loss of a virtual (fake/imaginary) life is a poor analogy for the ethical or moral argument it attempts to make. The heavy-handed message that killing things results in them being lost forever is a simplified morality taking nothing complex into account. There is also the implied argument about violence in video games that was almost certainly considered when making this. The long-stated, long-deflated argument that virtual violence desensitizes us to the violence of the real world.
The fact of the matter is that the video game audiences of today require more context than the video game audiences of the past. They want to know why things are happening. They want to know what the points are of the decisions they make are. They want their games to make them feel something.
Ironically, every question that the artist raises has been addressed and handled with far more panache and skill by video games themselves. Without any simplified “real-life consequence,” game audiences have felt the pressure of complex ethical decisions (torture or stay ethical and lose many of your powers in Fable 2), the surreal satire of the action genre’s sociopathic tendencies (the GTA series) and even the remorse of lives ended forever (the thousands that still mourn for Aeris in Final Fantasy 7).
Someone has already brought up the fact that the major question of the role of data as a cherished possession has already been answered; and once again, it was answered by video games themselves.
So finally I put my opinion in: this piece is not a quality artwork especially when compared to works that have covered the exact same ground as it has, some with bigger budgets, some with the same small budgets. The methods it employs to try and make its ethical arguments are heavy-handed and simplistic. In an attempt to “pare down” the concept of video game violence and distill it to an essential core, the artist has missed the point of video games entirely.
And at the very last, I offer this speculation: How will the artist feel when the Internet corrupts his work like so many others in the past? He has essentially written a terribly effective trojan horse malware program. A ridiculously simple hack is all that is required to strip or change the warning documentation at the beginning of the game. In an attempt to draw a simplistic analogy for the nature of murder, he may very well have empowered scores of real-world people who are real-life malicious to prey upon the unwilling.
01/10/2009 at 00:50 Alan Monroe says:
The concept itself is pretty ancient. There was a classic comic about it in an issue of Knights of the Dinner Table magazine back in 1997:
http://javajack.dynalias.net/kodt/virtual-liabilities.jpg
Can’t name any, but I would be surprised if there weren’t real, or at least thought experiments describing it, equivalents going back to the 70s or 80s, on unix, etc.
04/10/2009 at 17:58 MacK says:
i’ve setup a vm just for play this fucking game, then i find out that is a shitty mac app.
the creator should die in a fire.
twice.
05/10/2009 at 22:39 TimRandall says:
As a game, it fails, obviouisly. It just isn’t very good.
As a work of art, it provokes dicussion and divides opinion, but if that’s all one looks for in art, then art is dead and has nowhere to go, having evolved into its ultimate form: trolling internet forums.
As an object lession in RTFM before playing, it’s a great success.
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10/02/2011 at 08:50 Cross says:
I’m going to play this last thing before i reformat my PC.