Sign up now to receive free updates on the latest happenings in the gaming world. We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email every morning, summarizing the most recent gaming news. Pippin Barr is widely regarded as the most prolific solo game developer in existence, having released a mind-boggling 81 games since 2011. While many of his games may be short and pixelated, they more than compensate in terms of provocation and wit.
Barr, a 44-year-old associate professor at Concordia University in Montreal, is not only a comedian but also a creator who crafts virtual stage performances, puzzles, and jokes for an anonymous audience. For example, his game Sisyphus, first launched in 2011, requires players to repeatedly roll a massive boulder up a hill, only to watch it fall back down and start over again. Barr explains, “It’s a commentary on games and the act of mindlessly performing tasks over and over again, regardless of their actual difficulty level. But players do it anyway because the game instructs them to.”
In addition to developing games for players, Barr is fascinated by the idea of creating something specifically for the computer itself. In his CPU Edition of Sisyphus, he eliminates human input and compels the computer (or its central processing unit) to continue straining itself, repeating the king’s punishment indefinitely until instructed otherwise. The game acknowledges the computer’s efforts from the player’s perspective. As Barr puts it, “I find it fascinating how a machine can inspire empathy. There’s something very poignant about witnessing your computer attempting an impossible task.”
Challenging both humans and hardware lies at the core of Barr’s new book, The Stuff Games Are Made Of. This engaging book delves into the intricacies of game design, showcasing his own peculiar creations and exploring the history of video games. Although Barr has a background in computer science, having completed his PhD in the subject, his book is far from a dry academic read. Likewise, his games are far from ordinary.
“I even playtest my games with my parents,” Barr reveals. “They’re not gamers, but if they can understand and enjoy my games, then that’s a job well done.” Above all, Barr aims to redefine how games are played. On his podcast Gamething, which he co-hosts with writer David Wolinsky, the duo currently focuses on speedrunning, the practice of completing games as quickly as possible. In The Stuff Games Are Made Of, Barr not only explores the process of iterating and deconstructing common gameplay tropes but also encourages deeper contemplation about the ways we engage with games.
In his game Pongs, Barr aimed to distort the classic 1972 blocky game by creating 36 variations of its rules. For instance, Trace Pong allows a line to be left behind in the ball’s path, resulting in intricate patterns on the screen. Unfair Pong gives one player a paddle that is 24 times larger than the other, with five times the scoring potential. Viennese Pong, my personal favorite, asks the player if they are currently in Vienna; if they answer no, the game promptly quits as it imagines itself taking place in the Austrian capital.
The outcomes of Barr’s experiments are amusing, unsettling, and disruptive. “You need someone—usually artists of a certain kind—to push boundaries in completely different directions, without worrying about whether it will succeed,” Barr asserts. “With games, the real opportunity lies in the ability to conduct these experiments ourselves and have players experience them.”
Perhaps one of Barr’s most successful experiments has been The Artist Is Present, a game inspired by Marina Abramović’s 2010 performance piece. Similar to the Serbian artist’s silent sitting sessions with visitors at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the game challenges players to endure a virtual queue for the performance. However, this is no easy task. The game only allows access during the museum’s regular hours and checks the computer’s clock for legitimacy. Additionally, each virtual visitor ahead of the player is randomly assigned a duration between two minutes and eight hours to spend with Abramović. If the player fails to move forward within 30 seconds of the queue progressing, they are bumped and must start over. Barr himself spent five hours waiting in his own game, trying to resist distractions and bodily needs. “Trips to the bathroom were filled with anxiety,” he remembers. “The West Wing was a blur. I burned my omelette.”
Interested players must brave the queue to discover what happens when they finally reach the front. Fortunately, all of Barr’s games are available for free on his website. This reflects his philosophy of wanting to see people play, especially those who might not typically spend money on games.
As for Barr’s priceless experiments, his library of 81 games is about to expand to 82. “I created Super Mario Nothing this morning,” he casually remarks, referring to an empty game file he plans to release soon. It serves as an artistic counterpoint to the Super Mario titles with their escalating Land, World, and Galaxy suffixes. Another punchline for his ever-expanding universe.
The MIT Press recently published Barr’s book, The Stuff Games Are Made Of.
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