/ Cory Doctorow / 9:42 am Thu Jul 23, 2009

Ginormo Sword: a hack-and-slash commentary on video games

The Play This Thing blog reviews Ginormo Sword, a sarcastic Flash game that's designed to reduce the dopamine drip of your basic video game to its bare minimum:
Ginormo is just as succinct with the gameplay; if you found pressing WASD to move and clicking like a spastic chimp a tad too hard to manage don't fret, as Ginormo Sword further simplifies the controls to just the mouse. Combat is equally as minimalistic and thankfully void of challenge; click to attack and don't be careless enough to walk into your enemies to win. Each enemy you kill drops gold, which of course can be used to buy said loot. Slay mobs, get loot, repeat ad infinitum. You're most likely accustomed to this from your days of Pavlovian conditioning in Azeroth. Once you tire of this, wander around your static environment till you stumble upon another spawning ground of enemies...

Srsly, this game is in the vein of Upgrade Complete or Achievement Unlocked, and is a great meta-commentary on the whole MMO scene and the shallow and one-dimensional gameplay behind it. Strip away the chatroom and all of the other bells and whistles from your MMO and you're left with Ginormo Sword and its lifeless and hollow gameplay

Ginormo Sword

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  1. I think the point about MMO’s is somehow missed in these discussions. After 27 months in Azeroth I don’t know many who are there because of the intricacies of the gameplay. My Dad spent 30 years worth of Wednesdays at the bowling alley – take out the socializing and drinking and your left with throwing a ball across a room at some chunks of wood a few hundred thousand times. The point of an MMO is not difficult gameplay but storytelling, bs’ing, and socializing. The gameplay just provides a decent reason to be there in the first place.
    If you want difficult gameplay load up Lock On Flaming Cliffs and shoot some carrier landings in the -33 with the clouds on the deck, fog on high, and some 20 knot crosswinds. The only problem is that once you slam it on the deck and sit there beaming with accomplishment who are you gonna brag to about it?

  3. Upgrade Complete and Achievement Unlocked are great not only because they’re commentaries on certain styles of games, but because they’re fun games in their own right. They poke fun and embrace it at the same time. I don’t think there’s a good comparison between those games and this.

  4. I know a game with even worse “hollow gameplay” – ten pins at the end of a lane, see how many you can knock down. No items, no gold, no leveling up, no combat – just throw a ball at pins. Boring.

    But “complex gameplay” is not why bowling became so popular. It’s not the game, it’s the social experience. Bowling is an excuse to drink some beers and hang out with my friends. It’s a reason to get out of the house. It’s a third-space where the troubles of work and home can’t find me.

    When I want to connect socially with my friends, I can’t say “Hey Bob and Mary, I’m feeling emotionally disconnected, and I need some positive reassurance and validation of my worth as a person. I was hoping we could engage in some friendly competition so that I could not only feel accepted but also have a chance of feeling like a superior member of our social circle.”

    That would make me a loser. I can’t admit that I need other people. Only losers get lonely. But I’m hungry for social interaction. If only I had an excuse – an activity that is fun, but also satisfies my need for social acceptance.

    In the 1950s through 1980s, I would have said “Hey, want to go bowling?”

    Today, I log on to my MMO and run an instance with the guild, or /duel people outside town, or get on my “cooler-than-you” mount and block the vendor, or drop a cool item in the guild bank, or dance on the mailbox, or go solo my way to a “higher level.” These are very effective ways to satisfy the basic human need to be socially accepted, and I don’t even have to leave the house.

  5. As someone above points out — the moment you turn on PvP the shallowness is gone — Which is the entire point of an MMO; you’re engaging other players, and I don’t know how many AIs are deeper than a single human being.

    Of course, if you’re just hitting Frost Bolt over and over again, you’re in for less fun.

  7. I actually played WoW a bit, for about a year. As a major RPG head, I was pretty impressed with the gameplay. However, that I didn’t get excited about the cooperative play, or the social aspect, ultimately led to its demise.

    Conversely, my wife LOVES raiding with her L80 Druid, and has logged far more hours.

    OK, I guess I don’t have a profound point. I just wanted to say that Ginormo Sword is awesome! But you’d better download an auto-clicker if you want to reach the end. And be prepared to just set the little bugger down in the corner swinging and walk away from your PC for about 40 minutes in order to beat some bosses.

  8. As a few have pointed out above me already, the social interaction is really the point of any MMO. The comparison to bowling is spot on, and in fact one that I’ve used when trying to describe the hours spent raiding with friends. It irks me when people say I’m wasting my life or I should “go outside” when I’m spending an evening with 40 friends. How is that not social?

    I’ve boiled down those who hate on WoW and other MMO’s as people who deep down regret the time they spent. If you want to leave or stop playing, then do it. Don’t take out your secret frustrations or ire on those of us who enjoy it.

  9. It’s parody, not a “meta-commentary,” jeez…
    I cannot wait for the death of ‘meta-‘.

  10. As well as social challenges and PvP, which I feel the previous commenters have covered, there’re also PvE challenges as well. They’re nuggets amongst the dross while you’re levelling – the occasional harder-than-normal, miniboss fight; the area packed with hundreds of enemies so that it’s hard fighting your way through – but in the end-game, they’re common.
    There’s nothing better than teaming up with 24 friends and killing a boss you’ve never killed before. There’s a real sense of achievement that you can organise, work together, and each do exactly what you need to do to get the job done. And MMOs are a great gateway into this – where else are you going to get the herding-cats experience that is trying to get 25 people do all do the right thing at the right time?

  11. This game was so great. We played it at work for a few weeks. We beat the whole thing after figuring out how to modify the save file. Up until that point, we were able to beat almost the whole world, but not (SPOILER) the moon without cheating.

    At some point, the ginormo sword fills the entire screen. If you have multiple monitors you can drag the flash window size out to very very wide proportions to view a sword that’s many times the size of the standard playing screen, as the game doesn’t bother applying any clipping to the sword.

  12. I’ve never understood MMOs. The interaction of their economies with the real-world(?) economy fascinates me – especially ones like EVE; but to play, to me at least, they are dull as fuck.
    I have happy memories of many hours spent with AD&D and a good GM – or even more fun, Paranoia, a good GM and some weed & beer, but the computer experience isn’t as good for me.

  13. @Gilbert Wham
    I’m with you. Give me a real live RPG or a single-player CRPG any day. MMOs have too many jerks/idiots and you can’t just kick them out of the game like you can in a real game.

  14. #13: however, depending on the MMO, you CAN set them on fire and then spit on their corpse, which can be quite therapeutic.

    That said, a quick tally of the hours a week I spend playing tabletop RPGs (roughly 24) vs the hours a week I spend raiding in Warcraft (roughly 10) shows which side of the fence I come down on.

  15. why is it that whenever someone makes a game to mock the basic principles of RPGs they instead make a fun and addictive game?

  16. There is a social element to MMOs, but I would estimate that fifteen minutes face-to-face contact at a bowling alley is probably worth five hours of MMOs.

  17. I would add that other essential components to MMOs’ popularity are ecology, persistence and being-in-world. This applies with particular force to World of Warcraft, where exploring the environment is one of the significant modalities of play there.

  18. Srsly, this game is in the vein of Generic Racer or Average Car Game, and is a great meta-commentary on the whole Mario Kart scene and the shallow and one-dimensional gameplay behind it. Strip away the weapons and multiplayer modes and array of crazy levels from your racing game and you’re left with Boring Kart and its lifeless and hollow gameplay.

    —

    Srsly, this game is in the vein of Shoot Shoot or Kill the Other Guys, and is a great meta-commentary on the whole FPS scene and the shallow and one-dimensional gameplay behind it. Strip away the strategic team fighting and fast action from your FPS and you’re left with KILL SHOOT and its lifeless and hollow gameplay.

    —

    What an absurd argument! If you strip away all the things about this game that make it fun/good/sociable/etc then all you’re left with is boring generic crap.

    Well no fucking shit Sherlock, that’s why they put the bells and whistles and chat features in. That is what makes the game work.

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