Evidence of Everything Exploding — If Baudrillard “Made” a “Game”

If Baudrillard made a game, he’d make it then deny its existence. What Jason Nelson does is make a game that explodes all around you as you play it — metaphorically, to be sure, but just in case you missed the point, literally as well.

The game is Evidence of Everything Exploding and its author — website here, but be warned, may cause seizures — is a professor of New Media and experimental game artist. I’m using that awkward phrase because I think it best conveys what his games are like: what ALL video games would have been like if the technology had been widely available during the 60s. Nelson’s games look like they were made either before, after, or perhaps during an LSD-freakout, and, like many artists of the time, seem to have as their main mission conveying to its audience what those freakouts are like: surreal, disorienting, perhaps epiphantic, but mostly slightly nauseating.

I mean “nauseating” in the nicest way possible, of course. Now, I just blogged not even two days ago about how we should have a more sophisticated idea of what we mean by the word “fun,” and I promise you, Evidence of Everything Exploding will definitely  challenge your ideas about games and the enjoyment they should provide — at first, at least. But if your experience is like mine, you’ll find yourself adjusting to the game the way the bereaved adjust to the death of a loved one: shock, confusion, denial, bargaining (or, to rephrase, actually playing through the levels), and, finally, acceptance. You figure out that, in truth, there’s not much skill to the game, that you can repeat levels as often as you’d like, that you can hole up in relatively safe spots on the board and read all of the wriggling text on the screen and pick up a few interesting factoids between explosions. The game really isn’t about the game, but the experience of moving through the field of play — much like the eye might move around a Kandinsky, or the mind backwards and forwards through a Kathy Acker novel.

Perhaps, just in terms of its ambition and scope, Evidence of Everything Exploding is more like a short story than a novel; that said, it shares many of the aesthetics of experimental art. Burroughs would’ve dug this game — before he cut it up and randomly reassembled it. Me? Like much experimental art, I like it in concept, and I liked some parts of it. It’s worth playing, at least. But replaying? Like much experimental art, replay value is limited.

P.S. Also worthwhile is the JayIsGames review of EoEE, as well as the reader comments, some who rather mercilessly rip the game a new one for being artsy.

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