
Let me tell you about a game I made with the sole intention of watching it die - janoelze
http://dominikjohann.tumblr.com/post/59611971605
======
jpwright
I find the irony of the end result -- Impetus died because the players
"suffocated" her, not because they neglected her -- fascinating.

~~~
spenczar5
Not to mention that the plug was _literally_ pulled to kill her.

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danso
A little OT, but I find the Ludum Dare challenge to be just...awesome. I first
heard about it when viewing Lucas Pope's homepage (the creator of Papers,
Please), and seeing the astonishing work he made in 48 hours (here:
[http://dukope.com/play.php?g=six](http://dukope.com/play.php?g=six) as well
as this game, which he did for practice but which I think is the best game
ever made about newspapers:
[http://dukope.com/play.php?g=trt](http://dukope.com/play.php?g=trt)). During
some idle time today I started reading the Haxe docs...I got into programming
because I wanted to make video games and haven't done any game code since
college because the games industry didn't seem fun to work in. But seeing the
kind of inspired one-offs at Ludum (as well as Pope's Papers, Please) has
really sparked an interest in me to create something memorable that is not a
web app.

~~~
drhayes9
Be sure to check out "Gods Will Be Watching", another game made in 48 hours
with a seriously compelling story and art style.

As long as you're checking out Haxe, I'd recommend Stencyl (which, in 3.0, is
being rewritten to use Haxe).

"Gods Will Be Watching" was written using ImpactJS, a JavaScript game engine.

~~~
pkorzeniewski
I second that, Gods Will Be Watching is absolutely amazing, in fact it has
been so successful that a "full" game has been crowfunded [1] and will be
released :)

[1] [http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gods-will-be-
watching](http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gods-will-be-watching)

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noonespecial
My mind went immediately to "what if it was real life", recoiled in horror at
the dystopian-ness of it and then returned in fascination:

There are people all over the world dying right now for lack of some small
amount of food or medicine. What if you could click a button and send them a
nickel to keep them alive a few more minutes? Like World Vision, but in a
Philip K. Dick novel.

~~~
granitepail
This is reminiscent of "The Hunger Site" which started in 1999.
[http://thehungersite.greatergood.com/clickToGive/ths/home](http://thehungersite.greatergood.com/clickToGive/ths/home)

~~~
eridius
Also Free Rice, which is quite literally a game that donates rice for every
correct answer: [http://freerice.com/](http://freerice.com/)

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dominikjohann
Hey everyone, I'm Dom, the guy who came up with Impetus and wrote that thing.
Just saw this post blow up and figured I could chime in, so feel free to ask
more specific questions I could answer!

~~~
apunic
Hey Dominik, awesome work congrats—I just asked this on the main thread. Not
sure if you saw this, so I ask again: How was the beep sound made? Javascript
or a sample? I like its warm sound very much, would be happy to know how to
get to this beep. Thanks!

~~~
dominikjohann
Ello, thanks for the kind words! That beep was created in Ableton Live using a
standard square synth, a high-cut EQ and a bit of vinyl distortion (which is
also responsible for the crackle). The heartbeat used to be an 808 kick drum
that went through almost the same process. Finally, both were laid out on a
10-second bar and implemented as a single mp3 loop. Hope this helps!

~~~
JonnieCache
_> The heartbeat used to be an 808 kick drum_

The 808 is the electric guitar of the late-20th/21st century.

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ctdonath
A surprisingly compelling story. And a reminder that despite intense care,
life can end for the most abrupt & stupid reasons.

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Udo
An idea like this seems risky because it relies on the game getting some
considerable attention from the get-go or it's literally all over within
seconds. Also, doing this means basically foregoing the normal voting process
which is taking place over the next 3 weeks.

I don't think most LD devs could've pulled this off, PR-wise.

There are over 2000 entries on LD27, and Spiegel calls the next morning?
Either I'm way too cynical right now or this is the luckiest entry ever. It's
hard getting noticed on Ludum Dare and there are a lot of neat concepts
floating around.

~~~
ovi256
I know it may seem pure luck to get press coverage from Der Spiegel, but I
think this is a good example to consider the value of specialization. A good
PR professional could get this kind of press coverage consistently. He would
probably have to contribute to the project from early, to add the kind of
hooks he knows would make journalists interested.

I know the Impetus creator probably did not benefit from the help of a PR
person, so more power to him :)

~~~
Udo
That's exactly what I meant, I did get the feeling that this story is PR-
powered. Odds are this doesn't just happen. There are literally hundreds of
comparably interesting entries (not to take away from this one, it's a great
idea).

With stories like this often the suggestion is " _we did this very unique
thing, went to bed, and woke up on a morning talk show_ " \- that's simply not
how it works and people are on average well advised to be wary of stories like
this. Stuff like this happens to people who are either well-known, well-
connected, or actively engage in PR. More power to them, though!

~~~
janoelze
We're not "well known" but the combined audience of 3k followers on Twitter
most likely did the trick.

Apart from that we gained experience dealing with press a few months ago,
because another game [0] got featured in a german web magazine.

[0] [http://tastatour.co/](http://tastatour.co/)

~~~
Udo
_> but the combined audience of 3k followers on Twitter most likely did the
trick._

There you go. I'd say that counts, especially if it's an audience receptive to
the topic. Don't underestimate your connections!

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rartichoke
It's unfortunate that it ended so soon due to a hosting company being garbage.

I would have loved to see this really blow up and get billions of visitors and
see it running a year from now because it's an interesting concept for a game.

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daralthus
Reminds me of another game "4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness", which
could be the antipole for this.

[http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/4mins33secs](http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/games/4mins33secs)

~~~
saraid216
For anyone who isn't aware of the reference,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3)

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mfkp
While I appreciate him not publicly shaming the hosting company, I'm curious
who it was so they can be avoided.

~~~
janoelze
While I agree that they could've called us before shutting the site down, I
think one should note that impetus ran on a shared server and the hosting-TOS
likely state that they'll get rid of too much load.

We just didn't expect our little project to get that much attention.

~~~
rartichoke
Was it Bluehost? I've heard stories of them just instantly shutting down your
server without notice when you generated any form of decent traffic.

~~~
dominikjohann
I refrained from calling them by name and would like to keep it that way, but
I can say that it's one of the largest / most popular German hosting
companies. (It's probably easy to figure it out via a whois lookup, actually.)

Over the course of a couple of years, their service was good and I didn't run
into any major problems besides this one. The cutoff was a real bummer
(especially with a concept like Impetus), but I have to give them a little
credit: seconds after my angry call, the site went back up.

~~~
rartichoke
Ah good call on the whois.

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oh_teh_meows
I have nothing technical or special insight to offer; I'd just like to say I
teared up a little reading that. I don't know why. I hadn't heard of the game
until I saw this article. Never played the game either. The game character is
just a made up character with no background story and is nothing more than
simple ajax and timers. Any psychologist care to offer some opinion?

~~~
mikegagnon
I find it beautiful that people could come together --- even for a pointless
cause. And I find it tragic that their overzealous response led to the failure
of their objective.

Even though the game was "pointless" (aren't all games) I think it lends a
surprisingly deep allegory for life, community, and collaboration.

I think the game (and our collective response to it) is fascinating. I would
love to study how adding/removing game elements affects players' and
observers' emotional responses.

~~~
oh_teh_meows
An article I read the other day about human consciousness touched upon our
tendency to project consciousness/will/agency onto non-living things, like the
puppet controlled by a ventriloquist. I wonder if game elements promote
similar response.

Said article: [http://www.aeonmagazine.com/being-human/how-consciousness-
wo...](http://www.aeonmagazine.com/being-human/how-consciousness-works/)

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nedwin
I really appreciate that he didn't bend the rules to relaunch the game after
the server issue. He probably could have justified it but it wouldn't have
been true to the essence of the game.

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naiyt
Very cool idea! One comment in defense of the host. Hosting a game that
depends on users hitting the page every 10 seconds at the least on a shared
server was not a great idea. Shared servers are notoriously (and
understandably) unstable -- mainly because of sites that overuse their
resources. If a single site is taking down an entire server worth of clients,
the best course of action is to always disable that client first, and then
work with them on a solution after. It's not fair for all the others on that
same server to have their sites down or slow because of one site.

Which is why I pretty much always recommend against shared hosting, unless
it's some static site that doesn't need constant uptime.

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MWil
I believe your game went "extinct" not "instinct"

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SkyMarshal
It would be interesting to try this again, but instead a simple button to
click to extend the timer, which a script can fake, require a brief reverse
Turing Test, like a captcha or something. Would people continue keeping her
alive at the cost of more effort?

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ozim
Amazing stuff, I think this was more of an art than anything else, for me art
is also always social experiment, you can observe how people react to things.
That is why internet is great you can engage people in ways you did not
thought about before.

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lifeisstillgood
Given the recent hoohah over strong accents, this author clearly has English
as a second language, but writes powerfully and well, structures a story
effectively and did not let me stop till the end.

A great game and a great write up. Let us know about LD28 :-)

~~~
dominikjohann
Hey, thanks! Guy who wrote the article reporting in, I just registered so I
can reply. You're right, my English isn't the best (working on it, mostly
through lots of reading, though I wish I had the chance to speak it more
often). Either way, the story felt like an easy one to write because so many
fascinating things happened in so little time. I'm glad you like it, it really
means a lot. I'll make sure to jam at LD28 as well!

~~~
eru
> [..] working on it, mostly through lots of reading [..]

The Economist has lots of short pieces showing off a nice command of the
English language (if you like word play and puns). Good reading material.

As for speaking: don't worry about that too much, but try to listen to spoken
material or songs. (See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehension_approach](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehension_approach))

~~~
netrus
I highly recommend the audio edition of the Economist, available to
subscribers. It's the whole damn thing, 6h+ of mp3 each week. Made my bike
commute into a politics and business briefing.

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advisedwang
In a way it was lucky the plug got pulled. The inevitable death is a big part
of the game, this way it occurred while there were still many of people
involved!

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apunic
How was the beep sound made (see the youtube video)? Javascript? Happy to get
replies or some actual code of that beep

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swanson
If you find this fascinating and haven't seen the TV show LOST (does such an
intersection existing?) - there is a similar mechanism introduced near the end
of the first season that has a big impact on the plot. I wonder if ABC ever
made an ARG of this, would have been pretty fitting I imagine.

~~~
glitchdout
Yeah, I immediately thought of LOST as well.

Without spoiling too much:

There's already a javascript version of the computer here:
[http://www.enterthehatch.com/](http://www.enterthehatch.com/) . But since
it's a 108 minute countdown (instead of 10 seconds), it's quite easy to keep
it going. Still, the record of keeping it up for more than a thousand days is
quite impressive.

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Kapura
What a beautiful concept. It's sad that it met such an unnatural end. I think
it's more than possible that this game could have lasted much, much longer
(perhaps even years).

Stupid webhosts. Why doesn't everybody use AWS? ;)

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Madrigal
I wonder how different would it be if the main character was male instead of
female. There is a certain frailness that you can't get with male characters

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ctdonath
Minimalist Tamagochi?

