Comments on: Do I control your body or your mind?

By: Aonshix

Aonshix — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:50:26 +0000

I really like this reading. Good work!

By: theprettiestboyontheplanet

theprettiestboyontheplanet — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:52:31 +0000

Swell, glad you enjoyed it! I guess I don’t feel that a game necessarily needs to break your trust for it to be an interesting comment on the game-player relationship.

To me, Loved came across as a game with little connection between its interactive elements and its themes. I feel that a game should be able to convey a message without resorting to throwing up cutaway screens of text. Also, years of dumb morality and dialog systems have probably soured me on the sort of binary choices Loved presents. Outside of the graphical flourishes, the game doesn’t really change to reflect your decisions, and I had a hard time believing that my choices had any weight.

I’m also pretty particular about jump physics, so maybe it was just the wonky controls that inspired all this ire. Not sure.

By: theprettiestboyontheplanet

theprettiestboyontheplanet — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:16:38 +0000

Agreed, Tower of Heaven is neat. More games need to switch to monochromatic graphics.

I can see how Mighty Jill Off could be difficult to finish. It’s kind of a shame that the second half of the game, “Jill Off Harder”, is only available to people who are dedicated/insane enough to beat the first tower in less than 12 minutes. It has a lot of interesting ideas that very few people will ever see.

By: theprettiestboyontheplanet

theprettiestboyontheplanet — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 06:59:56 +0000

I like this interpretation as well, though I’m not convinced the author intended it.

The interplay between a game’s rules and its fiction is always fun to examine. I don’t think that they’re always mutually exclusive though. There are plenty of games out there where investing yourself in the mechanics can help you buy into the illusion.

By: lauramichet

lauramichet — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:44:00 +0000

I played tower of heaven shortly after it came out. It’s my favorite of all the ‘abusive’ games you’ve mentioned here.

Never finished mighty jill off, unfortunately.

By: Harbour Master

Harbour Master — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:16:38 +0000

I’ll be honest: I really do like Switchbreak’s interpretation here. The illusion is stronger if you follow the commands laid down to you by the developer.

By: kentsutherland

kentsutherland — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:52:39 +0000

This is an interesting reading, Switchbreak.

What about how obeying clarifies the world–makes it sharper and more detailed? Does trusting the developer-god equal buying into the illusion?

By: kentsutherland

kentsutherland — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:47:03 +0000

You know, recently I’ve been listening to Idle Thumbs, and they’ve inspired me to revel in the strange idiosyncratic quirks of game worlds. It’s fun to find the bizarre things that the developer didn’t really intend for you to see. Like, I was delighted to discover that if you stab cardboard boxes in Singularity, they explode, and quite sad when the game took away my knife. Or one of my favorite memories from World of Warcraft was when my friend discovered that you could use a weird little trick to get to the other side of an otherwise impenetrable barrier, and we discovered this huge empty place, which looks like it was going to be a raid dungeon, but they never put anything in it.

By: kentsutherland

kentsutherland — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 10:35:21 +0000

I played through Mighty Jill Off yesterday. It was quite fun! It was certainly abusive in the sense that it was difficult and punishing, but it didn’t really break the game-player pact that I talked about. Like, I trusted that there would always be a way to make each jump, and there always was. I do like the coy wink at the end though, hah.

I’ll have to play through Tower of Heaven today. It looks cool from the screens.

I’m curious–why didn’t you like Loved?

By: Gamer’s Epicerie | I always loved you

Gamer’s Epicerie | I always loved you — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 08:39:34 +0000

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