The Kissing Game | Submitted by sebastian sohn on Fri, 10/14/2011 - 18:38. |
Kiss Controller is a unique game controller designed by Hye Yeon Nam and Sam Mendenhall. One player wears a headset that holds the left and right sensor near the wearer’s lips while the other player attaches a magnet to the his or her tongue with a denture adhesive. When they kiss, moving the tongue and magnet left and right registers to the sensors and steers a racecar.
Kiss Controller is a 2011 Indiecade finalist.
e7 is a moody little Flash game that I call a platformer in the tags above, but if it is one, it's an unusual one. You play a little half-disc in a blue-and-black landscape in a sidescrolling view, and your objective is to get to the end of the level, which in typical sidescroller fashion is always to your right. The ground level deforms oddly as you move, which you do with left-and-right arrows; and while you cannot jump in the conventional platformer sense, you can (in most locations) create a pit where you are located by pressing down-arrow, then release the key to bounce yourself upwards as the terrain recoils.
well
This will surely destroy the image of gaming as a nerdy activity.
Nerdy, yes
Actually, if you watch the video, the guy is controlling a car on a screen behind the girl, sliding left or right with his tongue. Either this makes for kissing that is extremely dispassionate, or gameplay suffers if you respond more strongly to your partner. It's a clever goof, but I can't imagine it's a particularly satisfying experience.
That's just fucking surreal...
It's an interesting idea and I really think the world is starved for this kind've experimentation, but it falls apart on a few levels for me, ignoring the inherent creepiness:
First off, the control system would work roughly 200% better if one player used both the headset and magnet together. Easy exploit.
Second, the player with the headset has no input or feedback and can't observe what is happening in the game. For all intents and purposes she isn't playing the game, she is just an extension of the controller, which makes the first point more glaring.
Lastly, and I think you already touched on this, there is no real interaction between the magnet player and the headset player beyond the incidental physical contact. The magnet player is going to be doing things based on the screen, the headset player is going to respond to the m. player as best as she can, but that reaction is meaningless to the m player.
I'm not saying this game is inherently bad though, it's great experiment! I am saying I don't think anyone would actually want to PLAY it. However, it is making me think how a game could work that encourages interpersonal contact that is actually rewarding for both players...
What do you think?
Instrumental Kissing? Really?
What an amazing advance in sexist douchebag technology!
If, *if* you get can your S.O. to put on the hat-thing, you can guarantee yourself something interesting to concentrate on-- other than her. It's like a magazine rack for her face! It makes her mouth into a tool, *and* it prevents her from talking. Also, note how he's moving her head around with its new handle-- but gently! Super classy!
And why would you want to bowl instead of kissing? Has anyone associated with this project ever kissed anyone successfully?
Insert sexism-in-gaming/idiot-nerd-boy rant here.
No, you are sexist
No, your assumption that the male party is always the controller and that that he is always kissing a female is sexist.
This game is just stupid, not integrating the kissing into gameplay in any meaningful way. Racecar, really? Mind blown.