In a short break in the midst of a lot of programming I have to do right now, I visited Slate, which I don’t do that often, but I came across a post about killing your avatar in various video games, especially a new one called “Pain”, a silly looking, cartoonish game which involves nothing more than flinging your character out of a slingshot to kill him. They put together a fascinating slideshow about video game death which is well worth watching–the Roller Coaster Tycoon video in particular is highly captivating.

Slate’s larger point, which is well taken, is that “Pain” is based on a correct premise–that it’s fun to kill your character, other characters, and bystanders–but fails to take the further step to consider that it isn’t *death* that’s so important, it’s subverting the gameplay. I can attest to that–I became very engrossed in Grand Theft Auto, Vice City, a couple years ago, and took painstaking efforts to find the most innovative and interesting ways to die.

Slate’s slideshow took me to YouTube, where I watched several videos of Sims 2 deaths, including one called “The Death Lab” which was entertaining–and the Sims are starting to look so lifelike I was nearly disturbed. Then a couple of clicks later, I found myself watching a startlingly accurate rendition of a music video by Fergie set in the Sims and realized that Slate was very right–subverting the game is far more important than simply dying–after all, the Sims wasn’t meant to do that, it’s just a fun side effect of the open endedness of their gameplay.

Also, I realized that some people have way too much time on their hands.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 at 5:22 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.