About as good of a portrait of my disillusionment with the .io craze as can be was the first time I heard that Agar.io, the cute and simplistic game that teaches you basic biology with its game mechanics, had fucking GAMER CLANS with EPIC INTROS and COOL ASS NAMES/LOGOS, and predictably went, "What the fuck? WHY?" Let me tell you: if you wanted to satirize Gaming culture as a whole, you'd start with that as your logline. It's like if FAZE switched from Call of Duty to LittleBigPlanet.
I always viewed the idea of Agar.io as more artistic in nature. It's kind of like watching a giant white canvas try to give birth to something miraculous; kind of like the opening stage of Spore, but without a definitive win/lose state. The potential for .io games isn't just in simplistic games that you can riff on with friends during lunchtime, it's experimental games that break down the defined rules of what a game is and can be. In a way, I respect Agar.io for trying to be this. But I guess you can only be so experimental before the cute game you play with friends turns into an honest-to-god grudge match of tug-of-war where there are a million strands of rope to pick up on from any angle and vendettas abound. That description seems more befitting for something like a game show than a game about green circles eating magenta ones, but what do I know?
After this, there was snake.io, and wings.io, and a million other games before this until we landed on Zombs Royale using fortnite.io as a legitimate redirect without a hint of irony. Maybe I'm wrong about what art can be, and that's... disappointing.
I always viewed the idea of Agar.io as more artistic in nature. It's kind of like watching a giant white canvas try to give birth to something miraculous; kind of like the opening stage of Spore, but without a definitive win/lose state. The potential for .io games isn't just in simplistic games that you can riff on with friends during lunchtime, it's experimental games that break down the defined rules of what a game is and can be. In a way, I respect Agar.io for trying to be this. But I guess you can only be so experimental before the cute game you play with friends turns into an honest-to-god grudge match of tug-of-war where there are a million strands of rope to pick up on from any angle and vendettas abound. That description seems more befitting for something like a game show than a game about green circles eating magenta ones, but what do I know?
After this, there was snake.io, and wings.io, and a million other games before this until we landed on Zombs Royale using fortnite.io as a legitimate redirect without a hint of irony. Maybe I'm wrong about what art can be, and that's... disappointing.
ArabiWasabi
1 year ago