Art Game: Chris Collins' "The Waiting Game" (2012)
Chris Collins' new game is about time wasting. Aptly titled The Waiting Game, the game can be downloaded fro free from the artist's website. Available for Mac and PC, it requires the player to procrastinate endlessly: "Tap your fingers on your desk. Earn points. If you get enough points, you'll get a better desk. You must balance speed, accuracy and endurance if you want to become the TAPPING MASTER and eventually reach TRANSCENDENCE. Are you up for the task?"
Chris lives in Chicago, Illinois and procrastination is one of his many concerns. As he explains:
"Lately I've been finding myself preoccupied with the idea of boredom. I've been scraping twitter to find the world's most boring instagram photos. Then I created an interactive facemash clone, borescore.org, where you have to choose which photos are more boring. I've been crafting animated gifs about a workday that never ends, and free downloadable stock 3D models who are having existential crises.
I've also been writing daily instructional "performances for everyday life" that I intend to release on one of those little office tear-off calendars. So now, I've just finished my first major video game. I think games are a perfect vessel to examine boredom because, in many ways, the whole purpose of a videogame is to combat boredom. When we play a videogame we get a momentary respite from the crushing dullness of reality. Videogames, for better or worse, are escapism.
Of course, this discussion is nothing new. The playwright Bertolt Brecht also claimed the "emotional catharsis" of traditional theater made its audience complacent. He set out to create plays where you did not get lost in the production, where you always knew you were watching a construction. You were not watching reality, but a representation of reality. He wanted to make the theater a place for self reflection, not escapism. If there's a greater "point" to this silly little video game I made it's that. I wanted to make a video game where when you play it, you actively realize you're actually doing nothing, and you're okay with it." (Chris Collins)
Collins' new opus reminds me of Wes Wilson's "games about nothing".
LINKSubmitted by Matteo Bittanti