The Ultimate Anti-Action Online Game: Waiting In Line 3D 94
Freshly Exhumed writes "Looking a lot like the venerable Wolfenstein 3D or similar Id action games of the DOS days, the new online game Waiting in Line 3D was released Monday by developer Rajeev Basu, and was played 50,000 times in its first 24 hours of activity... er... inactivity. Is the complete lack of any action a brilliant satire of computer gaming? Is it software-based performance art? Is it silly? Judge for yourself, if you can meet the challenge!" Now's a good time to confess if you spent a major portion of your post-Thanksgiving dinner recovery time camped out in line for some of those Black Friday come-ons.
Re:Better than BF4 (NT) (Score:4, Funny)
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He probably wanted to make sure it's really, really, done. Well-balanced gameplay and all that.
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The concept isn't new .. (Score:3, Informative)
Pippin Barr's "The artist is present" was released years ago - it's a game based on a real-life museum exhibit where you get to.. wait in line to look into Marina Abramovic's eyes.. in full 8-bit-esque glory.
http://kotaku.com/5841304/new-video-game-delivers-the-immersive-realism-of-waiting-5-hours-in-line-at-a-museum [kotaku.com]
EA planning a patent lawsuit ... (Score:5, Funny)
EA are ready to sue the creator of "Waiting in Line 3D".
A spokesman said "It copies key gameplay elements of hit EA titles such as Sim City, where much of the excitement can be derived from queuing endlessly to connect to a server so that they can play. We will rigorously defend our patent, so that our customers can look forward to the unique EA queuing experience in all our future titles."
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A spokesman said "It copies key gameplay elements of hit EA titles such as Sim City, where much of the excitement can be derived from queuing endlessly to connect to a server so that they can play.
They must have licensed that tech out to Rockstar for GTA Online. Once I passed level 100 I started getting kicked from about 4 out of 5 jobs I join. It's gotten so bad that some days I spend more time connecting to sessions than actually playing.
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Poe's Law, in full effect here
"Without a blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of extremism or fundamentalism that someone won't mistake for the real thing."
I guarantee you, someone at EA could read this and think "That's a great idea. SUE HIS PANTS OFF."
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Yes. That is why it was labeled as funny. You know, 'humor'.
Like Desert Bus... (Score:5, Informative)
Nice, reminds me of the anti-action driving game, Desert Bus
http://desertbus-game.org/ [desertbus-game.org]
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Re:Unwinnable (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that is kinda the point.
If you want a real objective to this game, try observing the relationship between the hp regen rate and the sleepy meter. My best time so far is around 5 minutes. It appears as if the following (rough) values are in place:
HP regens about about 1/sec
punch consumes ~11hp
Punch provides approx 20% awake bar
awake bar will diminish by about 25% per 11 seconds
It should be possible to derive what the absolute longest possible time is, given there are absolutely no power ups to extend the slow and painful health to wakefulness mechanic of the game, and thus prolong the shopper's suffering.
Trying to get the longest possible time then becomes a metagaming exercise that has a theoretically attainable goal.
Re: Unwinnable (Score:2)
According to your numbers, you can only last for 220 seconds, since you lose 5% hp every 11 seconds. This must be wrong if you managed to last for five minutes (300 seconds)
Re: Unwinnable (Score:2)
Sorry, that's 5% of the awake bar. And 220 seconds is to maintain full hp. You could last longer by gradually losing hp, but the amount of total hp is missing.
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The game is implemented in javascript. You can just read the source code of the game to get exact values. For that matter, you could cheat by altering the javascript, or altering the values with a JS debugger like Chrome's. I know that's even more pointless than playing and not cheating, but at least it's not as silly as sitting there trying to calculate that shit for maximum game time.
Re: Unwinnable (Score:2)
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You may as well punch yourself in the face for real. This just wasted 2 minutes of my life and the line never moved.
Yes, I know. The realism is absolutely cutting edge.
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You may as well punch yourself in the face for real.
Mr. Durden, is that you? I have an idea for a club...
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Kinda like waiting in line to upgrade a 4s for a 5, but not as boring.
No, it's not "computer based performance art" (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just a joke.
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EA called the designer, they want to license it for release under the EA banner for Christmas 2013.
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You're half-right. It's computer-based art. Hey, you might think the message is stupid and shallow, but that doesn't make it not art even if you're right.
It's not performance art, though, it's just art. Playing it is appreciating the art. Coding it was analogue to painting.
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Hmmm, seems like it was as big week for joke browser games with http://vlambeerclonetycoon.com/ [vlambeerclonetycoon.com] also getting a lot of press. Will this be a thing in 2014?
Awesome! (Score:1)
Now I have something to play between marathon sessions of "Desert Bus"!!
http://desertbus-game.org/ [desertbus-game.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_&_Teller's_Smoke_and_Mirrors#Desert_Bus [wikipedia.org]
Healthcare.gov? (Score:4, Funny)
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Postal 2 (Score:1)
There already has been a game about waiting in lines: Postal 2. Though you have a lot more optionshow to deal with the situation.
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Pretty much this.
I don't think it is right to call this a game more than one would call Dear Esther [wikipedia.org] a game.
Games gives the player a choice and an ability to change the outcome of the game, even if the outcome means that you have to start over and play again. If it doesn't it would be better to call it interactive fiction.
There are a lot of interesting things about the human psyche one can explore with games. For example we know that people get enjoyment and are willing to spend a lot of time on non-violent
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I don't think it is right to call this a game more than one would call Dear Esther a game.
Games gives the player a choice and an ability to change the outcome of the game, even if the outcome means that you have to start over and play again.
So, what you're saying is, the only way to win is not to play? //rimshot
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Didn't always work out for me. Sometimes the line in Postal 2 would get horrendously jammed up and wouldn't progress until I reloaded my save file (the church was the worst for this since the hallway is so narrow).
Hopefully the mechanics of a moving line is better in this game since that is the primary focus of it.
Finally (Score:4, Informative)
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Moist cookies (Score:3)
eh (Score:2)
Would work better if it wasn't crashing.
Re:It's not different from other modern games (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed... it's even both to both handhold AND let people explore and still fuck up the game experience by doing so:
Just bought Skyrim because everyone's always on about how great a game it is and I could get it for free by selling some accumulated Steam junk. Should be good enough to play now, given that I bought all the DLC and it's been patched for ages, etc.
My impression of my first gameplay is:
Okay. Let me move around. No seriously. Just let me stand up then. Or do something. Fine. Cutscene. Cutscene. Cutscene. I'll sit here like an idiot as I head towards certain death. (Cue five minutes in the options trying to turn the audio volume up or the subtitles on at least). Ah, great, I can finally move. Oh. All of six feet until then I'm put on the execution block. Fabulous. Cutscene. Cutscene. Miraculous rescue that I played no part in despite sitting behind a guard with three other prisoners who wanted to escape, with the physical ability to strangle him, for the last 10 minutes.
Right, okay, dragon chasing us, let's run. Apart from that guy, apparently. Who just waits while I catch him up. Wonder how long I can wait until he does something. Oh. Forever, apparently. Right fine. Run 100 yards. Wait for him to talk. Run 100 yards. Wait. Run 100 yards. Wait. And now he's behind me and won't move. Fabulous. Fuck it, I'll just wander off. Trip over an arrow. I kid you not. Repeatedly. Can't get off the damn thing. Eventually manage to stand up without falling over. Run to the next bit of the village.
Okay, somehow he's mysteriously caught me up. Right, grabbed a weapon, have a quick fight (which consisted of pressing the mouse button three times), raid the body, chase up a tower. No. Blocked. Wander around for several minutes. Now I have to go back outside, apparently, because so many people were talking I couldn't work it out. Quick fight. Now back into the 100m relay race again.
Into some caves. Two or three fights. Pick up EVERY object known to man while people talk to me like there's nothing wrong with carrying 20 baskets and 15 buckets along with a ton of armour. Finally get weighed down, dump it all on the floor and kit myself up with proper weapons. Lockpick everything in sight and take anything I don't already have. Follow guy who's been waiting patiently and silently for me to catch him up. Kill bear because I'll be fucked if I'm sneaking past something that big (two clicks from a safe distance). Take bear pelt and claws as souvenir. 100m relay for another minute or so, where he gets lost and keeps running backwards and saying things to me while I'm out of earshot (probably important, but nothing I could do about it). Ignore him and carry on regardless. Bang, he teleports in front of me after a while.
Run along road with him. Kill wolf. Ignore everything he says because it's too much chatter to wait for and nothing much else is happening. Accompany him even though he wanted me to split up. A minute later, he's "so glad" we didn't split up. Fabulous. Several miles of the 100m relay again. Get to a town. Sodding tons of people, everyone wants to talk to me. Spend 20 minutes working for a blacksmith while his daughter bugs the crap out of me. End up being rewarded with a worse weapon than I'd just sold him ten minutes before. Cheap bastard. Find the bloke in a house, steal all his food and kill his friend (who got angry when I stole his food). He does nothing, neither does his wife who I slaughtered him in front of (and stole his boots), who just says how terrible it is that he's dead.
Wander into everyone's homes late at night and they don't say a word. Resist temptation to steal all their furniture (which is apparently quite possible). Try to chat one of the women up but apparently her vocabulary descends into a single line over time. Break into random houses and steal all their food, then sell it to the blacksmith. Find the map, find the big town people keep hinting towards, run in straight line to it (through rivers and over mountains because it's quicke
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Not really. I can pump 200+ hours into a game, easy, and I don't need much in the way of "reward".
Basically, the problem was that I was TRYING to get into the game. But I was so distracted by so many side-missions, skippable crap that wouldn't let me replay it when I skipped it by accident (the guards speaking, etc.), so much "open-world" without actually having any idea what I should be focusing on, and so many things to be careful of in the meantime (stray click when throwing your crap out of your inven
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It's called suspension of disbelief. If you're utterly unable to suspend disbelief, you might want to check that with a therapist, as it is the basis of all fiction humanity has ever enjoyed from the dawn of time :)
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PIKUL: "Free will" is obviously not a big factor in this little world of ours.
GELLER: It's like real life - there's just enough to make it interesting.
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You are playing it wrong
But really, I enjoy skyrim. And as far as the intro and first few hours of gameplay go I have seen worse in other RPGs. Although I find odd how the intro in skyrim is actually worse than oblivion, fallout 3 and new vegas. I guess the hardcores just complained too much about the lengthy intros/tutorials and the developers just throw a short intro followed by players getting lost a lot. At least new vegas had an intro town you could skip but if you were a new player you would stick aro
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The "keep" is actualy the house the Jarl lives in, including the smaller holds which place the Jarl in a longhouse. However, the steward is sometimes hard to find, being all-over the keep and in places you can't think of (thus you have to find a map, cross off places you can think of, and visit the ones that aren't crossed off.)
But the first impression about gameplay wil
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1. Make your way through a lengthy intro.
2. Wander around aimlessly.
3. At some point, stumble across the main quest.
4. Kill a dragon.
5. Have a chat with the Old Mountain Guys.
6. Wander around aimlessly, looking for dragons you can have pretty damn epic fights with while your over-the-top personal theme plays.
6a. DOVAHKIIN, DOVAHKIIN, NAAL OK ZIN LOS VAHRIIN
7. Realize that you just witnessed a dragon breaking a chunk off a cliff (because you hurt it enough that it flew straight
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It's like a Bennet Haselton article.
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What a sad experience. Your userid says you are not a hyperactive kid so I am unsure why you could not immerse yourself into the game. Perhaps you should smoke a bit of weed to slow you down? If it were as bad as you seem to have experienced, then there would not be so many millions of people who deeply enjoyed it.
Better luck next time. Perhaps you should play Team Fortress 2? It seems more suited to your attention span.
Wolf3D shader (Score:2)
Want to see something cool? Here's something quite close to the Wolfenstein 3D engine implemented in a GPU shader [shadertoy.com]. Obviously you cannot control the game as the GPU has no access to input devices. But the whole thing is calculated on the GPU, running silky smooth.
Browse the whole site of Shadertoy, it's fun stuff. Although in my experience WebGL likes still to explode a lot so it's a matter of luck if you can get the site to work.
Progress Quest (Score:2)
Reminds me of progress quest which frankly was much more clever.
http://progressquest.com/ [progressquest.com]
Anyone know how to rebind the keys? (Score:2)
Online Guide? (Score:5, Funny)
Is there a standthrough for this available?
I quite already (Score:1)
Ripoff of a classic (Score:1)
This is just a new form of the "How bored are you?" game [kfu.com] which is itself as old as many readers here.
Time to read Keith Laumer's "In the Queue" again.. (Score:2)
...and again and again, while I wait in the queue.
http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/0743435370/0743435370.htm [baenebooks.com]