RRRRThats5Rs.com was created in early 2006 with the goal of satirizing and mocking online gaming, but has grown into a social experiment. The site's games are designed to be simple, frustrating and pointless to see how players will react to slight changes of expected gaming behavior.
Although online games seem like a chaotic and fluid genre, the types of gameplay intensely clusters around the latest trends. One game becomes tremendously popular and a long slew of copycat games follow... whether defending a castle, escaping a room, or anything involving stick figures and death. These waves of games condition the average player to behave in a precise manner and expect a nearly identical gameplay.
At RRRR, we see this as the perfect opportunity for experimentation, so we create behavioral traps in our games by installing non sequiturs - changing some aspect that is always constant in most typical games, and not warning the player.
Below is a summary of design experiments we created on RRRR - the rationale behind each game, some playing statistics, and our favorite comments.
Why talk to computers when you can talk to real people instead?
The Best of 9907 Comments:
"HOW THE HELL CAN U MAKE HIM/HER SMILE!?" - hopeless
"my friend kevin made this website!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" -
"Um my friend and I were on the phone while playing this and we were telling eachother what was going on in the conversation, and it turned out we were talking to eachother through the game. WHAT THE HELL? " - Nelly
"I give up. What's the catch?! I'm sure there's more to it than just a completely randomized answering system, because that would just be too obvious. Also, he tells me that he's trying to cheer me up and that he's not sad." - Lorenzo
Viewed over 40,000,000 times, this game asked the question "how hard is it to do nothing?". When so many other Flash games needed lightning-quick reflexes and complex problem solving, Don't Shoot the Puppy looked like it needed those things too, but if you did anything you lost.
Thousands of comments proved how hard it was for people to think of inaction as a strategy, and still more fell for the later levels (which somehow tricked people when all the ones before were solved without touching anything). From fake popup ads to fake blank screens to fake obstacles, players convinced themselves that this time the puppy needed help, but what we didn't realize was how many people could not just sit and watch for 10 minutes. Even though we sit through movies or TV for hours on end, Flash games are so ADD-friendly that many people lost patience and knowingly killed the dog.
The Best of 10038 Comments:
"this game is really easy, just dont click or roll the mouse after you hit start, jeez" - Joseph
"OMG I WANT TO SHOOT HIM SO BAD!!!!" - DAN
"i hate all the distractions" - qaz
"Скачать бесплатное порно, порно за смс, все виды порно" - Lawagichfah
"awesome game I f@#$ing hate dogs" - bill
"This game was hard man. I took me three hours to beat it!" - Isabella
"Unless you have ADHD this game shouldn't be hard at all." - Lauren.
"do i let him suffer or kill him?" - bob
"i think this game is stupid and pointless! (no offense) " - taylor
"it froze on level 11" - cody
"how do you move the gun?" - ij
Statistics:
Each word is from the comments; its size determined by number of occurrences.
Another word map, but this one was made using Wordle.net
The inspiration for this game came from watching people play Kitten Cannon. Pick an angle, power and watch as your kitten bounces off, hitting randomly placed boosters. People got so excited watching it, even though the success of the game was completely random.
To toy with people, we made a similar game, except that it is impossible to lose. On the third kick, the random booster placer stops being random and perfectly places each booster based on the projectile's trajectory. It requires no skill, but neither does Kitten Cannon.
Oh, and the high score list is fake: it only exists on your computer.
The Best of 2530 Comments:
"I'm at 291K, and I've not stopped yet... I think I win. =3" - Kissa
"I'm up to 600k and it's not stopping. D:" - Nex
"woot, highscore ^^" - SecksiSam
"I have been doing this for 3 hours" - jay
"19016, this game is to easy!" - annoyingfan
"BAM SUCKAS 819" - ahchoe
"MINE WON'T STOP" - QUINCY
"This game is obviously designed so you cant lose. very poor." - Weldy
When someone plays Tetris, they follow a simple rule: try to fill the deepest gap. When a gap forms, they will try to fill it with the best piece available, sometimes waiting for that perfect piece to show up.
What if that piece never shows up? This game has an AI that finds which piece that player most desperately needs, and doesn't give it to him. More specifically, it finds the deepest hole, and gives you only the pieces that don't fit into it.
The Best of 683 Comments:
"Yay Tetris oh no i lost :(" - Nick
"I got it. You don't let us comment. the first two comments are not real, it's just supposed to confuse us. Then we comment, the comment stays put for some time then eradicates by itself, leaving us frustrated and typing the same message again and a again. " - Yuval GreenPeace
"Cool a Tetris game that gives you the worst pieces it can cook up my best was 14" - HeavyD2
Statistics:
When you lose a game of Stacked Odds, it used to send your score to our server. After 2175 games, we created this histogram of scores. We were impressed to see that someone stuck with it long enough to clear 101 lines, but many people failed to even clear one.
What happens when quantitative questions start getting more and more vague? And what happens when you have a multiple choice question where nothing is correct? Pretty self-explanatory and well-received, except for a few who couldn't tolerate a game where losing points was required.
The Best of 138 Comments:
"this is a easy game but hard, too" - bluestar leader of thunderclan
"How do you get 20 out of 20?" - Neville
"it goes way to fast to count the stuff on the screen." -
"What the hell I can't use my weapons?!" - WTF
Perhaps the deepest realization comes while playing this game: "I'm playing myself!" As the player moves up the grid on each level, their chosen path is used to block him in later rounds. New users see the new moving pieces as pre-programmed enemies, figuring out patterns to avoid the complex AI. Only later do some figure out that they're actually avoiding their own past decisions, and can carefully plan their own movements to save themselves later on.
The Best of 111 Comments:
"I cant pass level 5" -
"This game gave me cancer." - Who, Me?
Ever yell at your computer before? Ever do it while laughing? This simple physics-based puzzle game has one twist: you use your microphone to play. We created this hoping that people would laugh at themselves, and it certainly works.
The Best of 210 Comments:
"this is the best game EVER!!!" - lol
"Level 9 frustrated the hell out of me and I hate you for it" -
"U JUST NEED A VIDEO ON YOUTUBE!!" - IDIOOOTS
"ahahahahahah its hard cause i can't just talkk i have to yell" - piecee
"it made my voice squeky in the mornig1 dont go on it! i couldnt tlk for 2!days!" - sophie
The loading bar is the game. When it's full, the game is finished. About 50/50 response between those who thought their time was wasted (since there was no game afterwards), and those who appreciated that the loading bar was the game.
The Best of 623 Comments:
"thats is the most boring thing ive played in my life pushing a button is better" - tietiff
"it loads long" -
"takes ages to load" -
Just funny.
The Best of 323 Comments:
"funny stuff. Lol had do you get past the part when you wear people's skin?" - Blaz3
"THIS A DUNB GAME ASHOLE" - NONE OF YOUR BUSSINES
"make it in dutch! xD" - aragorn
"my mom think this game is boring" -
Someone got over 1,000 on this. 1,000 minutes. Need we say more? Also, despite how completely pointless this game was, some users created automated scripts to play while they were running errands; others just had 1 minute alarms at their desks. No hidden tricks, just an example of the effort people spend playing the dumbest things.
The Best of 619 Comments:
"time flys by" - dan
"what kind of stupid idiot would play this dumb game?" - I don't have a name
"My highest score is one" - Brian
Why would anyone want to play a simple tic-tac-toe game? Because they can't figure out why the game says they've lost. If only one person wins, then everyone hasn't won. The only way to beat Everyone's a Winner is to work with the computer and create a tie game.
The Best of 190 Comments:
"I WIN" - winner
"so wat r u sup to do, lose, wat a sukki game" - skullhead941
Named after Helen Keller, this experiment explored Flash games from a blind person's perspective. An exercise in gameplay without clicking on buttons or GUIs, only interacting with the words that tell you what to do. With almost no visual feedback in the entire game users grew frustrated, and with time limits that no one could see (blind people can't cross the street too slowly) winning was never as simple as it seemed. Some users think their resolution is the problem, because a game can't be completely dark, right?
The Best of 522 Comments:
"a dog attacked me!!!" - andy
"Walk forward, find the retard, help him get hit by a car, when he's on the ground steal his wallet, then find the nearest thing wet, slushy, and alive and shove it down his pants. Did I win yet?" - Wolf
"dude what the hell is wrong with helen" - me'
Guaranteed replay value. The critic asks you to draw things and decides if what you made was good enough, but unlike most games the probability of him approving is random. Instead of the yes-or-no deterministic games everywhere, can people realize when a game is ruled by chance? No one in the comments seemed to notice, only complaining that once it was beaten there was no replay value. So we made it impossible to win the first 12 times you play, and even though some have won after 12 times they still haven't mentioned that it could be chance.
Instead of simply changing the graphics (like nearly every other memory matching game on the web), a simple twist makes this game much more challenging and fun. Actually, making it fun was an accident.
The Best of 163 Comments:
"63" -
"This is ass. Why is there only sixteen?" - Wolf
Don't count your chickens before they hatch.
The Best of 110 Comments:
"seriously, these games suck" -
"A bird in the hand is better than 10 on the roof" - pk
The early bird gets the worm.
The Best of 61 Comments:
"Whaz the point in this stupid game?" - Who knows?
An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
The Best of 100 Comments:
"eewwwwwww gross end" - hjkhkjhkjl
Money doesn't grow on trees. Cheesecake.
The Best of 123 Comments:
"pffft too eazzy" - the tiggsta
This game has pretty vague directions, and that's pretty much it.
The Best of 165 Comments:
"this is boooooring" - Joseph
"Wow! It's A Classic!" - RRRocker!!!
"all the games on this website are rubbish" - fwefwe
"i really really REALLY dont get it" - momma
The game with the clearest message, Get A Life has nothing for you to do but quit. The faster you realize that, the higher your score. But it is hard to figure it out when there is a big red count-down timer in your face, a "1-up" sign, and other distractions. If you want a good laugh, watch someone frantically click while they try to play it.
The Best of 2027 Comments:
"I CANT DO IT" -
"Okay, I am on the fifth level with all the black acorns, but what do I do with the orange power crystal?" - TholomewP
"You have to click the fifth harp three times." -
"how can you play as mario?" - Henke
Statistics:
This map shows clicks of 70 players who are trying to "figure out" Get a Life. The data was sent to our server when they finally gave up and pressed Quit. Lines connect consecutive clicks.