It made me think of contemporary art and how vapid and capitalist-centred the art world had really become.

Granted, this so-called game is free compared to the "mindful" art piece sitting in a gallery designed for husks of a human being with too much money, that consists of a massive white canvas that some braindead rich bozo put his two braincells together in order to pick up a roller and taint it.
All this before proceeding to sell it for a million dollars and trying to convince you haplessly how the "piece" represents the divide of humanity or loneliness or some other nonsense they made up on the spot.

Instead, this game gave me some time to reflect upon Akira Yamaoka's fantastic work on the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack.
It's almost as if I'm in another world separate to this one when I listen to it. So much emotion and soul in that album.

I've read from a few places that this game was inspired by the John Cage composition 4'33, but honestly it sort of feels like a kind of sarcastic response to John Cage. The idea that I've always taken from 4'33 is that even though the musicians are silent, the audience will make some small ambient noises just from slightly shifting around in their seats or whatever else, which combined with the ambiance of the room the piece is being performed in creates a series of sounds that will be unique at each performance. This game is different though, the "game-play" of the game will be the exact same loading bar for everyone. The unique aspect comes from the fact that in order to beat the game, the player must be the only one playing for the whole 4 minutes and 33 seconds (Which is pretty easy nowadays, I wasn't interrupted a single time.) To me, this comes across as questioning why we value uniqueness in the first place. As I was waiting to win the game, I found myself wondering why it's important to be the only one who happens to be playing at this very moment when people have had this exact same experience before me and will after me. It sort of reminds of The Stanley Parable, where in that game the idea of choice and freewill is questioned by having a pre determined path and story even when the player believes they've gone off the beaten path (The ending where you jump out of bounds from the office window is a great example of what I'm talking about here). Here, there's a similar thing where even if the player may feel unique, every moment of the game is pre-determined, meaning every successful play-through will always be the same unless someone else decides to play the game during your play-through. It's never truly unique. And you can apply this to all sorts of other things as well, especially art. What does it mean to be unique if you can easily just make an exact copy of any given painting. Why is the painting being the one originally painted by the artist even matter if you can just make an exact copy of the painting? These same questions can also be asked of movies, shows, books, John Cage compositions, and as this game shows, video games.

Also I quickly want to write about how this game pushes the idea of what is a video game. The only way you can interact with it at all is by launching the game. Does that make this a movie or a video? I would argue no, because other people launching the game will reset your play-through. But that's not a change in the game itself, that's just rewinding the game to the beginning and starting it over. If you were watching a movie in hotel lobby and the staff reset the movie every time someone else glanced at the screen, would that be a video game? or even just a game? I'm not sure, but I think it's really cool that this game makes me ask. Really, that's why I like this game and other games like this. Sure, some may say they're pretentious and not worth playing, but I just love that something as simple as this can ask so many questions about the way that we think about art, uniqueness, and what it means to be a videogame.

Anytime I boot up an old game with its servers still up and I see just one lonely person online, it fills me with some sort of happiness. Realizing that there's someone else out there who wanted to play some weird obscure multiplayer game besides me brings me comfort. While playing through this game, I almost felt myself wanting to become interrupted. While I started to feel a bit anxious by the 2 minute mark due to anxiety of what this game had waiting for me and even if there was in fact someone out there digging around and discovering this weird old game. My anxiety faded, and I almost wanted to become interrupted.

I like to imagine playing this when it first came out as if there would be some competitive aspect to it. Almost like taking a multiplayer game and stripping it down into bare bones nothingness. Remove all the guns, and turn it into an endurance battle. A battle to see who would make it to the end of the 5 minutes which is similar to the length of the average multiplayer game.

While there isn't any sort of competition playing this game now, there is comfort. As mentioned before, I imagine myself being filled with joy realizing there is someone else out there like me discovering this game. Such a coincidence occurring would just feel too good to actually happen, which is why I almost want to boot up the game again to see if I can get it to happen.

Anyways, for a game so empty, it's so full of ideas. Even if the game is as snarky as it is, I'm content with what I played. I don't imagine this game was meant to be played this far down the line to the point of having people reflect on how its contents relate to the gaming industry and the feeling of being unique in the world, but it sure does a pretty good job at relaying those ideas.