Raph's Website » ATOF Tetris variant comes true

ATOF Tetris variant comes true

February 13th, 2009 (Visited 7466 times) Tags: indie games, theory of fun

logo_jogo1 Those of you who have read Theory of Fun for Game Design may recall this passage:

Let’s picture a game wherein there is a gas chamber shaped like a well. You the player are dropping innocent Jews down into the gas chamber, and they come in all shapes and sizes. There are old ones and young ones, fat ones and tall ones. As they fall to the bottom, they grab onto each other and try to form human pyramids to get to the top of the well. Should they manage to get out, the game is over and you lose. But if you pack them in tightly enough, the ones on the bottom succumb to the gas and die.
I do not want to play this game. Do you? Yet it is Tetris. You could have well-proven, stellar game design mechanics applied towards a quite repugnant premise.

We don’t need to wonder anymore. A comment in the last thread by the felicitously named Raphael Aleixo (my brother’s name is Alex!) tells us that the Brazilian game design club Loodo has made it, with a slight tweak to the theme: I give you Calabouço Tétrico. Read on for my thoughts!

calabouco1 First off — wow, the fact that someone went and tried this is just astonishing in its own right. More, the fact that they gave it a serious try. In their blog post, they say (rough translation here):

“Porque transformar um jogo de Tetris nesta versão estranha? Bom, primeiro porquê era uma forma de criar um jogo que obrigaria a quem jogasse tomar um partido, a ter uma opinião.”
Why transform a Tetris game into our strange version? Well, first off, because it was a way to create a game that would force those who played it to take sides, to have an opinion.

That it does. I actually didn’t finish the first game I played, because of the decapitated heads at the bottom, and then cramming an upside-down person into the gap. Curiously, I started out playing it just as Tetris — and in fact, the tug of doing so was remarkably strong. But the “dressing,” the art and especially the sound, was so strong that after a while, I couldn’t ignore it, and it made me uncomfortable. My son wandered over, peeked at it, and was grossed out — a kid who has no problem with Halo.

But then I figured I had better see the end-game — which did actually give me chills. I won’t spoil it, but let’s just say that it does make you think. Edit: to clarify, I am talking about when you lose. I assume that, as in Tetris, there is no way to “win,” just to postpone the inevitable — which fits the theming very nicely.

Could it have worked even better? I do think that switching to a classic Renaissance executioner instead of a Nazi reduces the impact. I also think that if the developers wanted to increase the power of it, they should animate the people falling. Have them struggle mightily when high up, and struggle more weakly as people are piled on them. Have little clouds of gas or whatever as an effect when the rows are taken. Have them trying to escape.

But all of this is gravy. It works as it is. I am curious to hear everyone’s reactions to it.

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Water Cooler Games wrote on February 13th, 2009 at 1:17 pm:

Executioner Tetris…

In his book A Theory of Fun (now finally back in print), Raph Koster proposes a hypothetical modification of Tetris in which the blocks are replaced by human beings, Jews being dropped into a gas chamber by their Nazi imprisoners.

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Raphael Aleixo said on February 13th, 2009 at 7:42 am:

Hey, nice!

It’s great you “liked” it. We’re very happy that you could see this game.
We DID thought about going all litteral and putting Nazis on it, but we were a ilittle afraid of getting too much controversial. After all, was our first game. We are thinking about making a new version of it, and we will try your other suggestions. This game was made in a week, for the blog lauching.

We have recieved some comments about it in game sites, as Kongregate an Newgrounds. One of that makes us most happy was:

“The cool thing about this game was: Losing kinda felt good.”

Thanks again, Raph.

HED said on February 13th, 2009 at 8:18 am:

great ! I’m giving it a try.
But I’m still waiting for the real time strategy shooter with puzzle game combat game which you must play on a dance mat

Michael Chui said on February 13th, 2009 at 8:34 am:

*rubs head*

The screams are disturbing. I was curious about the ending, too, but I didn’t manage to finish the game (I lost, and I blame it on lag) and I’m not terribly inclined towards a second play to try again. Hrm, or maybe there isn’t a victory state and I’m just misinterpreting what you said. It could be. It’s morning and my brain isn’t entirely on yet.

Vargen said on February 13th, 2009 at 9:16 am:

Is there a “win” ending or does it just keep going? I couldn’t figure out how to rotate the pieces, so it’s kind of hard to see for myself. I do like the “lose” ending though.

Raph said on February 13th, 2009 at 9:27 am:

Up arrow rotates the pieces. There is no “win” ending that I know of.

Szonja said on February 13th, 2009 at 10:12 am:

I tried it after reading you article, and I couldn’t play it like a normal Tetris: not because I felt being shocked or something, but my performance was much worse than usually. I don’t know if it was the effect of those screams or that of I was too many concentrated on waiting for the effect you wrote about. Or just that evil lag again?:))

Wiqd said on February 13th, 2009 at 11:09 am:

I think it’s an interesting design on an established game. I’m not the kind of person to be disturbed by violence, so the fact that it’s an execution style game didn’t bug me. To be honest I focused more on the block outline that made up the actual pieces more than what was inside them.

However, reading your initial post made me think of how exactly the Nazi gas chamber design would work and made me wish I knew enough coding to actually do it. I like controversy

Jeffrey Kessler said on February 13th, 2009 at 11:09 am:

A less intense version was in the 1996 7th level game Monty Python & the Quest for the Holy Grail. They had a tetris version where you stacked dead bodies with one wiggling now and again (not quite dead yet).

Ferum said on February 13th, 2009 at 11:26 am:

That scream is disturbing. I flinched every time.

Bret said on February 13th, 2009 at 1:02 pm:

I’ve definitely been a teetotaler about this type of stuff before, and I’ll do it again: this isn’t fun. I don’t enjoy the music, or hearing screams when I manipulate the mechanic properly.

The creators say they made this game to ‘force people to take a side’, but I find that pretty weak, unless there is some context to the question that I’m not privy to. Cruelty is not a moral quandary; it’s wrong. I view this game as all heat and no light.

Ian Bogost said on February 13th, 2009 at 1:35 pm:

Very interesting. I agree with you Raph about the relative safety of the medieval executioner. Besides the idea of animating the characters, other things I suspect would make the game more powerfully disturbing in the productive sense include removing the vestigial tetromino outlines, which act as a crutch, an apology.

Trippenbach said on February 13th, 2009 at 1:51 pm:

What I find interesting about this game is that it demonstrates just how important the dressing is to the aesthetic experience of playing a video game. Sure, the mechanics of the game set the rhythm and define the nature of the interactivity. But the effect on the player – exhilaration, frustration, or in this case unease and distaste – come as much from seeing the art and hearing the sound as from the actual act of playing.

You can see the same thing in first-person shooters: Halo 3is essentially the same game as Call of Duty 4, but playing CoD 4 is a gritty and ‘serious’ experience while playing Halo is more to the bouncy action fun end of things.

Stevo said on February 13th, 2009 at 2:23 pm:

I always felt Rumble Box was a less literal translation of that concept.

PuppyBlade said on February 13th, 2009 at 5:20 pm:

Kind of disturbing. The game over screen (the losing one – when you let the bodies pile too high) made me laugh.

Squirming bodies would have made it more disturbing. So would adding women and children (Especially if they had different screams). Nazi imagery would have have made it worse – probably pushed it over the top.

As it is now, I think they went far enough to make their point. Games get enough bad press as it is.

Geoff Hollis said on February 13th, 2009 at 5:41 pm:

I disliked the game, but I think perhaps for underwhelming reasons. I disliked it for the same reasons I disliked playing Mortal Kombat when I was young — gross stuff makes me squeamish. There was no questioning my morals. It was just gross. I don’t really see how it’s anything special over, say, people having a preference for fantasy settings over scifi settings in MMOs. You’re just further out on the continuum of “things that are (not) appealing”. Of course, it’s probably far enough out that enjoying it (maybe even just being indifferent to it) would probably be a good test of psychopathy! Maybe I’m missing the big picture.

I think the more interesting issue is one you brought up in are games about torture evil. The big thing I took away from that post was, if your game mechanics accurately reflect how torture works in the real world, there’s no gradient to follow for making decisions, because you get positive feedback regardless of what you do. This blurs the distinction between “right” and “wrong”. For games like this, or MMOs where genocide is a daily routine, the line is sharply drawn by how rewards are given, and that makes it obvious when you are standing on the wrong side of it — even if it is fun.

The classic “evil” experiments in Psychology are situations where the distinction between right and wrong is blurred (Stanford Prison Experiment; The Milgram Experiment). The internal conflict of “did I make a moral decision” in these situations can be overwhelming. Comparatively, when equally unethical experiments are set up, but a clear line is drawn between right and wrong, people come away with a deeper appreciation and respect for the problem instead of internal, moral conflict (e.g., Jane Elliot’s blue-eyes/brown-eyes racism experiment).

Scarybug said on February 13th, 2009 at 7:43 pm:

Interesting. I had the opposite experience. I just played it as tetris. I’m so used to playing games with just “programmer art” that I tend to only notice the game mechanics when I play games, and ignore the window dressing. The game doesn’t bother me in the least because I know I’m playing tetris, not actually killing people.

I kind of assumed that people who played a lot of games would have a similar experience. For instance I notice people who play WoW a lot ignore the fantasy trappings and just speak in terms of tactics.

I liked the ending.

Morgan Ramsay said on February 13th, 2009 at 8:33 pm:

After reading all of the “made me queasy”, “disturbing”, “eww, disgusting”, and “I find it morally reprehensible” whimpering, I decided to play this one for myself.

At every scream, I couldn’t help but laugh. I felt sinister. I felt in control. And that felt good. I wanted to hear more screams, louder screams—bloodcurdling screams. I wanted to know that my work as an executioner was… effective.

But then lag set in and screwed up my game! Only 20,000 points.

I guess if you’ve been wearing tie-dye t-shirts, painting flowers, and listening to hippie music all of your life, I can see how this game might be offensive to you.

I know a few metal and hard-rock fans who would love this game. I’ll send the link around. And I’ll go ahead and second the need for squirming, weeping animated victims trying to scratch their way out of the pit. Might as well add some squishy sound effects. Perhaps model the next version after The Last Judgment?

My final evaluation is that this game isn’t dark enough. Go deeper, I say.

Michael Chui said on February 14th, 2009 at 12:39 am:

Actually, what it reminded me of was the only horror movie I’ve watched that’s actually managed to get to me. There was an incredibly rickety creature and the sounds it made when it moved pulled me out of my usual disinterest in such films. IIRC, the story was some couple kidnaps people and feeds them to their ev1l son, but they grab a pretty girl and he falls in love instead of eating her and there’s a happy ending.

One point: I feel that I’d be equally disinclined to replay a game about tossing blocks into a garbage compactor. So while the visceral effect is definitely there, a dressing so blatant really kills the game itself as a game, when there’s a more stripped-down version available (with a more enjoyable soundtrack). Playing tower defense games, for instance, is something I do. I screw around with variants, but I never stick to any but a couple solid ones.

I wanted to know that my work as an executioner was… effective.

You would be such a crappy executioner. Go sign up for a torturer position instead. I mean, honestly. You have a big axe and they’re in a cage. Just chop. None of this fancy Legos nonsense.

Rick said on February 14th, 2009 at 11:43 am:

The game “Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail” had a tetris subgame where you threw people into a pit. Every so often someone would say, “I’m not dead yet!”

Warm regards, Rick.

Hirvox said on February 14th, 2009 at 12:32 pm:

Somehow this reminds me of the Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing or the Happy Tree Friends, where the innocent premise is twisted hilariously..

In any case, I Wanna Be The Guy, an affectionate parody of Nintendo Hard platformer games, contains an interesting variation: a part where the protagonist is dropped into a Tetris pit. He has to avoid being crushed until the stack of blocks is high enough to reach the exit.

Hyphz said on February 15th, 2009 at 4:06 pm:

Hirvox, there’s actually a couple previous games based on that premise – Tetris Plus and Risky Challenge spring to mind.

ATOF Tetris variant comes true

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