F*ck GAMEPLAY or F*CK Gameplay? Let’s have both!

Sex and gameplay have a lot in common. They are both interactive, expressive, and, hopefully, fun. But a lot of people take one, or both activities, way too seriously. Being bad at either can cause people to feel intense shame, and to risk rejection from the ones they love. For some, having a dropped connection while French kissing or playing Street Fighter 6 with a partner who tells you to “Git Gud” before kicking you to the curb is the ultimate in humiliation. 

As such, both sex and gameplay tend to be put on a pedestal. There’s copious cash to be made in claiming to be an expert at either, charging top dollar for guides on how to do it right. Likewise, critics will treat those who do sex and/or gameplay right like gods, and those who do them wrong like trash. Most game developers I know would hate to be told they are bad at sex, but that’s nothing compared to the abject existential dread they’d feel if they were told they were bad at gameplay design.  That’s ego death of the worst kind; the pain of a million tiny bad hand jobs all chafing the brain at the same time in a massive explosion of anti-pleasure.

That’s why I was shocked, and thrilled, to see not one but two games set for imminent release (pun intended) that are unafraid to do sex and/or gameplay “wrong”. In fact, they both set out to actively make fun of sex and/or gameplay, and our worship of either or both of them, while still acknowledging the power both hold. That power, these games posit, shouldn’t be used against us, to control us or make us feel less-than. Sex, and gameplay, shouldn’t be used to manipulate people. Freeing yourself from the trappings of both can be fun and empowering. Looking gaming in the face and saying “fuck you” is, in fact, a valid way to engage in gaming. The same can also potentially be said for looking fucking in the face and saying… “game you?”

GAME YOU, GAMER

Hmm, we’ll see how that theory holds up later. In the meantime, let’s focus on Droqen’s The End of Gameplay and its main goal – to kill gameplay. You’d think that a game that hates playing games wouldn’t be fun to play, but that’s not the case. The End of Gameplay is largely a platformer, and it’s fun! Jumping around as a strange tile with a rabbit drawing on it feels just fine. And in fact, the game starts off feeling like a regular platformer, albeit one that’s in its early stages of development. 

Likewise, the various levels of the game aren’t connected by a map of a hub world. Like a game still in development, they’re quickly selected individually at what looks something like a debug menu. Most levels have text strewn throughout them, part written narration, part abstract poetry, to engage the player with some non-gameplay gameplay as they play through the game. One level, about jumping through a beach, has a surprising sundown that is pure wish fulfillment, but not the kind you normally see in a power fantasy. Another has you walking and jumping through terrain seeping with blood, taking in the horrific sights for their own sake. “Gameplay”, as it were, takes a back seat in these stages, showing the player that playing a game isn’t always the best part. 

Stages under the subtitle “The Tower” take a more active role in pointing out the absurdity of gameplay, and the folly of taking it seriously. Here, you must guide your rabbit higher and higher up a series of vertical platforming levels. It’s not long before you start to hit levels that look completely impossible to traverse. Only by defying the rules of the game that you thought you knew (AKA, the gameplay) can you hope to get through them. There are plenty of eureka moments to be had from discovering what could – but not should – be possible for this strange little rabbit avatar. These joyous little discoveries show us that The End of Gameplay hates the game, not the player. 

FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS

And speaking of players, it’s time to head back to my theory that we can say “game you!” to fucking with Sex with Friends, a new game from the creators of Genital Jousting. This realistic, physics-based co-op puzzle game has players trying to manipulate their floppy bodies into something erotic, with results that work as parody of the intended acts. Think Octodad, but you’re not an octopus, you just act like one, while trying to have sex with someone equally uncoordinated. Like The End of Gameplay, and like actual real life, Sex with Friends is intentionally unfair, but in ways that make you smile, or even laugh, while you face the absurdity of what you’re trying to do. 

In our continuing effort to reject the inhumanity of increasingly polished experiences that have shaved off all the rough edges that make games human, sometimes with the aid of actual AI that is programmed to give us exactly what we think we want, games like The End of Gameplay and Sex with Friends stand out as daring, thoughtful, potentially offensive exercises in real people making virtual things about what it’s like to actually be alive. Fucking Gameplay, and Gameplay about Fucking, are just a means to getting to something underneath that’s vulnerable, honest, and true about living. 

Many have said that gameplay, and sex, are little deaths, as they blank out your conscious mind and replace it with something else for a moment. It makes sense then that these two games that take a step back from gameplay and/or sex to show their ridiculousness, work so well at making us more conscious of what gameplay and/or sex really are, and how distant that reality is from the fantasies we’ve been encouraged to try to embody.