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Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Games Gaming Demonstrates Inevitability of Global Socialism

Posted by The Stranger Testing Department on Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 10:29 AM

It's way too easy to dismiss Kosmosis, which describes itself as "AN ARCADE GAME FROM AN ALTERNATE PRESENT WHERE NON-DEGENERATED SOCIALIST VALUES ARE HEGEMONIC," and means it. There's some good, weird fun to be had, so bite the bullet this time. This Experimental Gameplay Project entry is certainly worth ten minutes or so, especially if you can steal the time from your boss.

Though the coders warn us that "IT'S MEANT TO BE A PROOF OF CONCEPT NOT AN AWESOME GAME," it's interesting enough to play through a few times, and turns the space-shooter concept on its head. Instead of protecting helpless victims from bad guys like a capitalist hero/tool, your job as vanguard is to radicalize the proletariat and get them to strike at the reactionary war machines. As the revolution grows, its (unfortunately named) flocking movement interferes with your control over its actions, which means that you die pretty quickly. But great heroes can only inspire the people, not direct them, so the game then plays itself until the revolution succeeds or fails. This phase usually goes on for much longer than the first phase, but it's also far more compelling and dramatic than it ought to be, as the revolutionary proles strike, drift apart, run into trouble and (sometimes) overthrow the oppressors.

ALL KAPS!

The Stranger Testing Department is Rob Lightner and Paul Hughes.

Comments (2) RSS

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Sounds like my kind of.game

Posted by cardigan weather on January 20, 2010 at 11:31 AM

With capitalist US going from spending 17 pct of GDP on health care and insurance to 30 pct of GDP, looks like socialism in Canada, Japan, and the EU ftw!

Posted by Will in Seattle