Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: CPU Edition! Press Kit

Play Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: CPU Edition!

The basics

Developer: Pippin Barr
Release: 12th of April, 2017, 12:00 EST
Platform: Browser (mobile- and tablet-friendly)
Code repository: https://www.github.com/pippinbarr/letsplayancientgreekpunishmentcpuedition/
Price: $0.00

Description

Watch the computer struggle against the chains it put itself in! Watch the computer try to drink the water it moves out of reach! Watch the computer push a rock up a hill and knock it down again! In a joyful infinite loop! One must imagine CPU Sisyphus happy!

History

Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: CPU Edition! came about as a natural extension of my continuing series of games based on, well, ancient Greek punishments. To this point, I’d already made a reconfiguration of the game set in an art gallery (the Art Edition Edition) and one in which the human player can ‘win’ against the various punishments (the Limited Edition).

Along with that, I’ve spent a fairly substantial amount of time thinking about the idea of computers the context of videogames as these simultaneously indefatigable and fragile agents. Notably in a game like Best Chess I was interested in the tension between the brute fact that the game contains an algorithm that will solve chess over time (kind of like The Terminator) and the fact that technology itself can’t survive over time (it becomes obsolete, it fails, etc.). With Best Chess in mind, it made sense to take one more step and completely remove the player from the equation, so that we have a game “by the computer, for the computer” in a sense (Abraham Lincoln would be proud).

Thus, Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: CPU Edition! is a game that is not only represented/simulated by the computer, but is also played by the computer as well. There’s plenty of meditation on both the metaphysics and specifics of this available in the posts I’ve written about the game. In the end, though, I really do just find there’s something moving about watching the computer doggedly struggling as Prometheus, Sisyphus, and the rest. Most importantly, it feels like something to watch the computer play, and not just like watching an animated GIF or video file, for example: It’s really happening. Again and again. And again.

And again.

Technology

Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: CPU Edition! is written in JavaScript using Phaser, an excellent JavaScript game library/engine. The sounds and graphics for Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: CPU Edition! were all taken from the assets of my earlier game Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment! (except for the CPU indicators, which are new).

Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: CPU Edition! is an open source game licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. You are looking at the code (and process and press) repository right now.