Execution, a postmortem (heh)
“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.
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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!
Hi Jesse, I have played all your games and are pretty cool specially Karoshi. I have a request, could you give tips for game designing? Thanks in advance.
I think your ‘little update’ section hit the nail on the head
I remember when i first started it, i sort of hesitated. I didn’t know wether i should shoot the guy or something else. So, as in all games, i disregarded what would of been right and shot the guy. It really sank into me when the You Lose. came up on the screen. I stared at it a good long time, and thought about this game. Then i tried it again, to ‘win’. Well… we all know how it ends.
Definately worth the download.
Hi,
nice game xD
it really makes you think..
But i want to show this to a friend on my computer, is there any way to “reset” it?
Bye,
Wouter from Holland
Hello,
.
First of all I want to say I love your ideas. Keep the games coming!
Now to the point: Sadly this “game” didn´t touch me, like it did for many other people. I think it was because of 2 things, first I knew what was going to happen when I read about consequences and that I should play again. Maybe I should read less
Second reason is that I didn´t want to kill the guy. Actually I felt bad about it. But I knew it was the only thing to move so…I lost. I didn´t really feel that guilty coz of that I think.
I just want to encourage you to make more projects like this (though I know you need to get the idea…).
Good luck with ur games man!
Level 18 …
Hey Jesse, great work, great games. But are you very serious with YWPMI’s level18???
It sounds like impossible, many times I repeated ( and you can believe in my courage ). Many times failed.
I really understand now the title of your game. Guess it’s really impossible to end.
Or give us a tip, plz… I still believe. xD
Cheers !!!!
BuZarD
Hah… I feel kind of smug reading this article.
I can honestly say I never lost before I read this. The first time I played I put it together and exited out. Then when I started it again I decided I didn’t want to see what happened when I lost.
Sorry Jesse. I dodged your game. I didn’t mean to.
Definitely thought provoking, in its own way… Not pleasant to run into such a subversion of a common feature of games.
One question, though: How did you mark the computer as giving a ‘dead’ character?
What actually offended me moe about this game, I think, was the fact that it put something onto my PC without my consent. I think this is probably the basis for most of the negative comments about the game.
But comedy = tragedy + time (second most stupid saying ever, after “if life gives you lemons, make lemonade”), so I thought this was a lot better the third time I played it, if only because it brought back memories.
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When i first played this, i spent 5 minutes shooting the tumbleweeds, the wall, and the stake. i simply refused to shoot the prisoner. Eventually, i got the idea that maybe, just maybe, i could shoot the ropes and free him… In my mind, i knew that this would kill him, but i did it anyways. i realized i had lost, so i reloaded to try again, when i saw the body, i was so ashamed with myself. i had acted in a way that helped me escape from the indecision. Call me crazy, but i almost felt guilty for the man BEFORE i shot him. i still do.
This is a very interesting piece you have created.
I can’t say that I really felt shame or guilt though for a number of reasons.
Right from the start I could see that I really didn’t have any other option then to shoot him, there was nothing else to do. Although the little trick where he remains dead upon entering the game again did surprise me, it only did so from a programming perspective.
Lastly, the little man is only some pixels and a couple animations, showing emotion like guilt for such a thing is emotion misplaced.
However this was very creative and I can see how making the status of objects and characters ‘permanent’ in a game can drastically change how one would go about playing it, especially if it has a deep and involving storyline to give a player reasons to make their choices carefully.
Now I want to be able to show this program to some of my friends, and not all of them have a computer. How can I reset the game so I can show it to them?
I wasn’t able to get the game running, and have now read spoilers…are there supposed to be a bunch of randomly colored horizontal bars? Or a large white box after pressing escape? Also, I can’t seem to delete the .exe, and would very much like to remove any other parts it might have left behind.
Sorry, but honestly this thing annoyed me.
I understood right away what was going on and decided to not shoot him. But I couldn’t figure out how to do that. I tried pressing keys, shooting over and over until I ran out of bullets, shooting the walls to make things drop, the post hoping he’d escape, I even sat there staring at the screen thinking maybe it would time out or something.
Nothing.
So sure…had it been a real life, maybe I would have just sat there and waited. Talked to him. Left. But it wasn’t real life, so annoyed, I shot him just to close the program. And predictably it told me I lost.
What the fuck? Why is this piece of shit dumping it’s save files in places I wasn’t told it would do and then not remove them when uninstalled? This isn’t art, this is a fucking virus.
“I can see how making the status of objects and characters ‘permanent’ in a game can drastically change how one would go about playing it”
Yeah that’s what I like about it too and what I was playing with I guess.
@Asehujiko
Game Maker made games can save high scores to your registry. Many do. I used this same feature as a means to check whether you shot the guy or not. It’s probably less than a kilobyte. If you really care about that open the command prompt, type regedit, and search for a folder called “Game Maker”
Almost every game puts information on your computer. So if you think that a program is a virus because it puts information on your computer, you could remove almost every program on your whole computer.
Cute, but without context I don’t really see any point to it. Its could mean the difference between shooting an enemy combatant (or what you presume to be one) and shooting some guy holding a camera that could almost pass as holding a gun.
The idea of keeping actions permanent is interesting and I gotta congratulate you on that one (even if I’m more of a completionist as a player).