Sadie had the fortune or the misfortune of being the seventh student to present a game that semester. She had struggled with what to program. She had wanted to make a statement about the kind of designer she was going to be. She didn’t want to present something that seemed cliché, or too genre, or too simplistic, graphically or in a ludic sense. But after seeing her fellow seminarians be eviscerated by Dov, she knew that it barely mattered what she presented. Dov hated everything. He hated variations on Dungeons & Dragons and turn-based RPGs. He hated platformers, other than Super Mario, though he loathed gaming consoles. He hated sports. He hated cute animals. He hated games based on intellectual property. He hated the fact that so many games were based on the idea that one was either chasing or being chased. But above all, he despised shooters, which meant he hated most of the games that were made by professionals or students, and a significant portion of the games that were successful. “Guys,” Dov said. “You know I’ve served in the army, right? Guns are so fucking romantic to you Americans, because you don’t know what it is to be at war and to be constantly under siege. It’s truly pathetic.”
Florian, the skinny engineering major whose game was currently on the chopping block, said, “Dov, I’m not even from America.” Florian’s game wasn’t a shooter either: it was an archery game that had been inspired by competing as a youth archer in Poland.
“Right, but you’ve absorbed its values.”
“But you’ve got shooting in Dead Sea.”
Dov insisted that there wasn’t any shooting in Dead Sea.
“What are you talking about?” Florian said. “The girl beats a guy with a log.”
“That’s not shooting,” Dov said. “That’s violence. A little girl hitting a violent predator with a log is hand-to-hand combat and that’s honest. A man, who is represented by a hand, shooting a series of unknown henchmen is dishonest. It’s not violence that I hate anyway. It’s lazy games that act as if the only thing you can possibly do in life is shoot at something. It’s lazy, Florian. And the problem with your game is not that it’s a shooter, but that your game isn’t any fun to play. Let me ask you a question: Did you play it?”
“Yes, of course I played it.”
“Did you think it was fun?”
“I don’t think of archery as fun,” Florian said.
“Okay, fuck that, who cares if it’s fun? Did it feel like archery to you?”
Florian shrugged.
“Because it didn’t feel like archery to me.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I’ll tell you. The shooting mechanic has a lag. I can’t tell where the sights are aimed. And it doesn’t at all simulate the feeling of pulling back on a bow, as I’m sure you know. There’s no tension, and the heads-up display obscures more than it helps. It’s just a game with some pictures of a bow and a bullseye. It could be a game about anything, by anyone. And also, you haven’t created any kind of story. The problem with your game is not that it’s a shooter, but that it’s a bad shooter and it has no character.”
“This is bullshit, Dov,” Florian said. He was very pale, and his skin flushed a psychedelic pink.
“Dude, dude.” Dov smacked Florian affectionately on the shoulder, and then he pulled him into an aggressive bear hug. “Next time, we fail better.”
When Sadie went to make her first game, she had no idea what Dov would like. And she started to wonder if this was the point. There was no pleasing Dov, so you might as well make something that amused you, at least. Out of desperation and with almost no time left, Sadie made a game about the poetry of Emily Dickinson. She titled it EmilyBlaster. Poetic fragments fell from the top of the screen and, using a quill that shot ink as it tracked along the bottom of the screen, the player had to shoot the fragments that added up to one of Emily Dickinson’s poems. And then once the player had successfully cleared the level by shooting several of Emily’s verses, you earned points to decorate a room in Emily’s Amherst house.
Because
SHOOT
I could not
SHOOT
stop for
SHOOT
Death
The class hated it. Hannah Levin was the first to offer feedback. “So…I thought some of the graphics were nice, but the thing is, the game kind of sucked. It was weirdly violent, and also weirdly bucolic at the same time. And Dov told us not to make shooters, but a pen that shoots ink, is still a gun, right?” The rest of the feedback would continue along the same line.
Florian had one mildly positive comment: “I like when you shoot the words, it turns into a little black spot of ink, and I like the plosive sound you added, when the ink hits the screen.”
Hannah Levin countered, “I thought it sounded like a—excuse me if this is rude—I thought it sounded like a fart.” Hannah Levin covered her mouth as if she herself had just farted.
Nigel from England added, “But I think it technically sounded more like a queef.”
The class hooted.
“Wait,” Hannah said, “what’s a queef?”
The class laughed even more, and Sadie laughed, too.
“I wanted to work on the sound some more, but I ran out of time,” Sadie apologized, though no one seemed to hear her.
“Guys, calm down. I hate this, too,” Dov said, “but actually, I don’t hate it as much as some of the other ones.” Dov looked at Sadie as if seeing her for the first time. （It was the fourth week of class.） He glanced at his roster and Sadie could tell that he was learning her name, and she felt flattered, even if it was the FOURTH week of class. “It’s a rip-off of Space Invaders, but with a pen instead of a gun. At the very least, I can say I haven’t played this exact rip-off before, Sadie Green.”
Dov played another round of EmilyBlaster, and Sadie knew she was being paid another compliment. “Fun,” he said quietly, but loud enough so that everyone heard.
For her second game, Sadie felt she could and should be more ambitious. This time, she did not struggle with a concept.
Sadie’s game was set in a nondescript black-and-white factory that made unspecified widgets. Points were given for each of the widgets you assembled. Sadie had designed the mechanic of the game to be like Tetris, a game for which Dov had often expressed admiration. （He loved Tetris because it was fundamentally creative—a game about building and figuring out how to make pieces fit.） With each of the game’s levels, you assembled widgets that had more pieces and greater complexity, and you had less and less time to accomplish the assemblies. At various times in the game, a text bubble came up, asking if you wanted to exchange points for information about the factory and the kind of products it produced. The game warned that if you received information about the factory, it would result in a minor reduction of your high score. The player had the option to skip as much or as little of this information as they wanted.
As was the procedure, Sadie distributed the 3.25-inch disks at the class before which she was to present, so that the group could play her game over the next week. By way of description, she said, “Well, um, my game is called Solution. It was inspired by my grandmother. You guys can play it, and I’m sure you’ll tell me what you think.”