“Execution” is a small game I made some time ago. It was made in an afternoon after I got some sudden inspiration.

If you haven’t played it yet, don’t read further (as it’ll spoil the experience) and download it HERE. It takes only 2 minutes to play anyway.

—

Played it? Continue reading please.

The game’s merely a small experiment I thought up. I figured I could perhaps let the player feel a certain way. A way you haven’t felt before in games. The feeling of surprise when, after shooting the guy and restarting the game, he’s still dead. It makes you realize things you usually don’t think of about games, and maybe even about yourself.

Though, I didn’t expect it to work so well. The game got many responses and got featured on Kotaku, Destructoid, the Escapist, MSNBC, TIGsource, etc. It also ended up in a few print magazines. There was a lot of discussion about what the game means, what it did with people, whether it was a game at all, and whether dead penalty should exist or not.

Here are a few responses it got:

this is awesome. you made me be shocked by myself. i am a member of several peace organisations. and i shot a man with only a few seconds to think about it. it’s virtual, but this is one of the greatest… programs i ever discovered in the www. so thanks a lot for that. it opened my eyes.

I will now never lose the feeling I had when I reloaded the second time and found myself sighting a corpse. It hit me with a very real sense of guilt, just for a second, before it was replaced with the indignity of being outsmarted *grin*. That, and reading these comments, makes a strong argument against so-called video-game inspired violence; people -know- there is no consequence in a game, and as soon as consequence is evident, the ‘real’ morality kicks in.

I knew that I would loose if I shot him when I first played, but I did it anyway. Then I played it a second time. I really dont know what to say. It was really good.

Simple, elegant, and effective. What really impresses me though is the comments on the game ranging from high praise to merciless criticism. Strange that we can all play the same little string of code and come to vastly different conclusions about the quality of the lesson imparted.

A message that every person and culture can understand, presented eloquently. Brilliant.

I think a lot of people are also avoiding one of the deeper messages — you can win over and over again, but you only need to lose once for it to be over.

I havent been “touched” by a game like this before. It really made me regret my own actions, and im not saying that has to be all dramatic, just fantastic as a fact.

Also, the Destructoid article on it is quite interesting. An excerpt:

The thematic implications of the game are incredibly interesting not just in terms of personal morality, but also game design. No matter how many games pretend to offer the player “choice” or “consequence,” we as gamers know that our second chance, our extra try, is but a single quickload away.

Someone on TIG made a story about it:

The man stood in darkness, terrified. He had no idea how long it had been. He likely had been there forever. He saw motion in front of him, but it was probably just a tumbleweed. Tumbleweeds often rolled in from the darkness on his right into the darkness on his left. There was a time when he called out to them, thinking they could be someone coming to save him, but now he hardly noticed them. He remembered a time when he struggled against his restraints, the crude rope that dug into his pale skin, if only to catch a glimpse of the only other certainty in his world: the wall that rose up behind him like a god. Sometimes he could close his eyes and forget about everything, the ropes, the wall, the darkness…even the cold wind that blew constantly over his entire body, chilling him to the bone. But there was nothing else to occupy his mind. No memories, no dreams. Even sleep never would grace his tired body. And so he waited. Waited for the bullet that would finally take him away.

Even though I lost, and nothing can ever change that…

He won.

There’s also a really long, interesting, months late reply in the Game Maker Community topic, that you can check here.

Conclusion

So many different responses to such a short / simple game. It still amazes me. Of course, I only showed the positive responses here ( ), but whether you agree it’s an interesting idea or not, the amount speaks for itself.

I’m glad the game moved people and I hope it shows that many things are possible inside the realm of games / game design.

P.s. This isn’t much of a conclusion, but hopefully you’ve made your own by playing the game.

Little update: I realize now the game doesn’t really make you feel guilty for the man that’s tied to the pole. I used to think this but somehow I knew it wasn’t true. What it is, I think, is that the game makes you feel ashamed / shocked about yourself. Knowing restarting a game will always give you another chance, the man’s death comes as a surprise. What’s more, you did it yourself. This is the power of games. Something books or movies can’t do!