lose/lose

LOL at Ateam!! You are a genius, sir.

@Gutter: Your museum analogy doesn’t work. There’s no fun in not looking at the paintings. There’s potential fun in dodging aliens.

Come up with a working analogy. Until then, shut up.

Actually you’re wrong Dusty Spur, you freaking boring lifeless lamer. Why don’t you actually try it before you knock it? I love seeing how many things I can avoid looking at, it’s a really good activity to try. You’ll be surprised just how challenging and, yes, even how fun it is. Especially in places with a lot of things that catch your attention like large cities at night with neon signs, etc. You know what. Forget it, I guess you’re too closed minded to understand and would rather act like you’re right when you clearly are not.

A good practical example of how you can take a throwaway joke too far. “Let’s make a game where for every enemy you kill, it deletes a file!” is a funny comment. Actually doing it, and putting up a link to it, even if it doesn’t actually do it, is idiocy.

Do we really need this garbage on the front page?

Now I’m off to leave a handgun in a kindergarten for the sense of importance this “artistic expression” gives me.

Kid got hit by a rally car here the other day. She died. Fun and games; real life consequences … art.

Why do we assume that because we are awarded for driving like way fast, that doing so is right?

(Don’t answer that! It only sounds profound if no one answers!)

Obviously the artist succeeded in that he’s gotten all this attention – 160 comments, entire threads in other places.

so, who as actually played this game? anyone? no? do we have any masochists, any obsessors? any people willing to go out and buy a computer/hardrive/whatever you need to play this game without consequences? apparently you’d need a mac.

Is is entertaining to watch people shout with glee that the one who concieved of this entire thing is the new art god. yes, he does have the balls to suggest a game with actual consequences in real life, a notion that has taken the communtity that cares about this by storm. but is that a reflection on him, the audience, or neither? we go into in depth discussion on what the implications of a game like this are, yet when we recieve an email telling us to send it to other people or else face the consequences (YOU WILL HAVE BAD LUCK FOR 1425462346 SECONDS UNLESS YOU FORWARD THIS TO TEN PEOPLE IN TEN MINUTES) we quickly right it off as spam and superstition. we are seeing a continuation of that, the manipulation of your fear and paranoia to gain widespread acceptance. I personally believe that the one who made this up released it to the masses without the idea of metaphor and sophisticated art in mind, contrary to even what he/she will inevitably say after observing the effect it has had.

the gaming community has been duped.

this isn’t even the first example of this. haven’t you got the chain letter about the hallmark virus? I have. twice.

This shouldn’t have to be said really, but just because something generates a long thread on the internet, that does not mean the thing is important, and it is not proof that something succeeds as an artwork.

This game is made of FAIL and AIDS

I don’t care what you guys think, I like the idea and applaud Zach for making this.

This is an amazing concept for th’ theme of failure though from reading discussion here an’ elsewhere about it one can’t but help get th’ impression that alot of th’ posters are a very conservative lot with a heap of prejudices against anything that may attempt to challenge or open up thinking about games / or life.

Shame on you, especially th’ guy who reported it to th’ virus site. Might go an’ datascrape all these hilariously paranoid warblings, an’ use them as dialogue in a game about witch-hunts.!

Just as with most of you I don’t like getting virii or having my computer crash, but just recently it did an’ corrupted my Windoes install. I do actually feel better for it now, as I got rid of a heap of clutter an’ fortunately do not miss alot of th’ stuff I had on C: drive. Anyway most things are now ubiquitous enough to be in th’ cloud which makes th’ loss more of a time sink than anything else.

–

Again props to Zach for puttin’ his balls out, an’ no props to sundry for being such dick hammers. Get a life, be resilient, look out th’ window, your economy an’ way of life is collapsing all around you, an’ perhaps you haven’t even noticed it yet.!

So much more interesting than another trite pixel art, match 3, achievement over-rewarding, bach playing, quirky piece of 2D fluff methinks. Forza + well done Zach!

— Chuan

This is either extraordinarily dumb, or extraordinarily brilliant (He’s a hacker who wrote a virus that deletes your files.. but you CAUSE the deletion. It’s a virus-maker’s dream!)

When the Mayan 2012 Aliens invade, someone should make Enders Game and then we could debate about it.

From reading all the posts on RPS & here, it seems you are a very conservative lot! If anything Zach should be applauded for putting something unique and thoughtful out there; which has obviously stirred the pot and stimulated alot of thinking about games & consequence.

Shame on you, the person who reported it to the anti-virus authorities. Are they not a parasitic industry itself? Fact is much like the pharmaceutical industry we don’t need constant updates of virus scanners, just one which has decent updates.

To get back on topic, art is not agreeable to everyone. What truly good art does though is at least encapsulate some of the concerns of the time. This happened with Cubism, and then Dada-ism [ see: Duchamp’s urinal ] as a response to where art & meaning was for them in their milieu. While that was shocking then and would have provoked much the same outrage, it seems we can accept his urinal now in light of pop culture and our developed sense of irony.!

At least Lose / Lose attempts to speak about something important beyond re-hashing the same ideas and hoping to be liked as a safe, cute representation of ‘retro’. It brings to focus all this preciousness at a time in history when all that is about to change. Well done.

Else, post 170, has a good point. Why do people automatically consider something controversial to be something of value?

For a fun meta-game with more than one invention, players should try Jesse Venbrux’ Karoshi 2.0.

SPOILER: put an audio CD in your disc drive to pass one level.

Jamal: the value is not in just being controversial, but that it offers up a different sensation of risk vs. reward that’s exhilarating for some. You can be all smug about it an’ retreat to your Huizinga beside your leather sofa, but that too has become a tired cliche.

Why do people seek to be instantly critical & attempt to shut down things which actually open up thoughts? Yes, we can be smarter than th’ next guy but so what — what’s th’ takeaway apart from temporarily sating some superiority complex?

Russian roulette also fits the description “a different sensation of risk vs. reward that’s exhilarating for some”. That doesn’t make it good.

Martial arts master Bruce Lee once said, paraphrased here: “Rejection of the classical method as a reaction, also leads one into a trap.”

Consider the classic Hitchcock film Psycho. It is an engaging film due to its brilliant direction, inventions in sound and film techniques, and inspired performances by Perkins and Leigh. It is NOT (spoilers) because the star was killed midway through the film. Were it not for such an engaging story, this event could be considered a gimmick.

In lose/lose, the gimmick — of destoying real files — is (more or less) the game.

Yeah man, perhaps comparing lose/lose to Karoshi or classical films is a bit of apples and oranges, but do you see the point I’m trying to get at here? Thwarting game conventions in itself does not make a game good. Give me a good Cactus shooter anyday, such as Minubeat, where fun and detailed gameplay transcends the “high concept”.

CT, I am tempted to ask what a Huizinga actually is. Until then, I’ll be content to simply rest smugly on the leather sofa next to it. :P

I think the most interesting thing out of this is the reaction. It’s shows that people who engage in destructive tendencies and hypocritically preach against destruction are disliked by society.

It also shows that none of us would touch it and all of us strongly discourage such ‘games’ and ‘works of art’ in the future.

Perhaps I would have been tempted to make a game such as this; an epic trolling attempt. But thank you, Zach Gage, for taking that urge out from me.

cheers to mr nobody for finding the silver lining!

i think most people would have no qualms with the game were it not for the self-important commentary by the author: “By way of exploring what it means to kill in a video-game, Lose/Lose broaches bigger questions.”

but is he not well-meaning? the whole “it’s a virus/malware” escapade was a bit extreme reaction; the author plainly states the game’s function.

on the contrary, i’m glad that lots of people found some use for lose/lose, even if that use is getting revenge on old computers!