Kianis, maker of You Have To Burn The Rope, brings us a interesting social-metaphor-based game about riding the subway. It´s pretty simple; you pass the time by looking at stuff people are wearing, the longer you look the more points you score, but if they see you staring then you lose all points due to the flash of awkwardness. You can´t win or lose, you can just stare are more stuff for longer. It´s very Seinfeld, an interactive joke about nothing in particular. It´s really funny because the fear of making a connection with another human being is implied by its fundamental mechanic.
So let´s take this analysis to the metaprogramming level. I live in Buenos Aires, and I had an idea for a similar game while riding the subway one morning. Except in my game, in my corner of the planet, there aren´t nearly enough seats for the subway, and it´s really hot. So you´ve got over a hundred people per car, packed together like sardines, gasping and stinking; morochas wearing tank tops, Argentuppies plugged into tightly dangled MP3s, pit-stained suits, tiny beads of sweat. During rush hour a person of dainty build might be literally suspended off the floor. So in my game, staring is already obviated by the complete lack of free space; instead the goal is for everyone to avoid touching genitals or anuses (ani? anui?). I´d imagine the two-rile automata entities shuffling systematically toward a new array of tilts as the next infusion of passengers broke the former equilibrium. In Stockholm it´s cool and the government is fairly competent, the infrastructure anyway, so you get this game. In Japan, you´d probably get a game where the goal is to grope people rather than avoid physical contact. In Portland, maybe you´d make a game where staring is key, getting over the awkwardness if the goal.
Comparing cultures is troubling for many, riding the subway is awkward and disgusting, so I think I just squared that variable.
Cultural mismatch?
Maybe it's because I'm not from Stockholm (but Paris), but I found this game boring. When I'm on the subway I do look at people and I avoid eye contact as well, so I liked the basic idea of that game. But I don't look at their MP3 players, mobile phones and scarves. I look at their faces, I look at pretty girls more. This disturbed me in the game: first women I saw I tried to look her boobs, which were distinctively drawn; only thing I could do was watch her mobile!
Another slight disturbance about the gameplay is that in real life, if you look at a mobile, you can't look so much at somebody's face. In the game, you put the game's eye on the mobile and you actually look at the head of the corresponding character.
Maybe a better game would put some really attractive content to watch, so the player actually watches it.
Living relatively close to
Living relatively close to New York City, I'm afraid of being beaten up if I stare at people. Thus, the "flash of red awkwardness" seems a laughably light punishment.
Where I come from..
Indeed on my subway the game is trying to discreetly checkout the attractive members of the opposite sex while pretending to be intensely interested in something just past their shoulder. For added an added challenge, with a greater punishment for failure, try playing while your significant other is right beside you.
I Hear That
I also play that when we´re walking in the street together. I think she doesn´t read this blog...