The Marriage (video game)

The Marriage
Designer(s) Rod Humble
Platform(s) Windows
Release date(s) 2006
Genre(s) Art game
Mode(s) Single-player

The Marriage is an experimental art game for Windows created by Rod Humble in 2006. Humble had set out to explore the kinds of artistic expression unique to video games, leading him to express his feelings associated with marriage by relying on game mechanics rather than traditional storytelling, audio, or video elements.[1][2]

Gameplay

The game's instructions suggest playing it first, before reading the detailed description of its mechanics and intended meanings.[1]

The player interacts using only mouse movement, hovering over abstract shapes. The player's actions or inaction enlarge or shrink pink and blue squares, increase or decrease their opacity, and move them towards or away from each other.[1][3] To sustain the existence of both squares, the player must balance activities which increase the size and opacity of each. Humble intended this to convey the complexities of balancing the sometimes conflicting needs of partners in a marriage.[1][4] The background color changes as the game progresses, eventually arriving at a fireworks display on a black background if the player is able to sustain a balance.

By combining heavily constrained mechanisms for interaction and control with abstract visuals, the game encourages experimentation and meaning-making based on kinds of engagement and interpretation.[4]

Background

Humble is an industry veteran known for his high-profile roles in the development of several well-known games, including EverQuest, The Sims, and Second Life, though his independent work is noted for its experimentation. The Marriage is his second attempt at a game which derives personal meaning primarily through mechanics, following A Walk With Max and preceding Stars Over Half Moon Bay.[5][6][7][8] The Marriage is comparatively and intentionally more abstract than its predecessor to further restrict the role played by more traditional audio, video, and storytelling elements.[1][2]

The core ideas and mechanics behind The Marriage began while Humble was on a trip to Carmel, California with his wife and developed over the weeks that followed through a process he described as "like carving with the grain of the wood or painting with the brushstrokes rather than against them."[1][2]

"The challenge as I saw it was to have the primary medium of expression something unique to games. So it couldn’t be a story for example, because stories can be told by other mediums. It couldn’t be a poem or sounds because they also have other counterparts. In other words I didn’t want to limit games to being a hybrid art form. [...] I wanted something that was not easily representable by other media. I wanted to use game rules to explain something invisible but real."[1]

Reception and influence

Engadget described the game's critical response "enormous", noting the attention it has received from both inside and outside the video game world.[9] It has received praise for its innovation, effective expression, and impact on its players.[2][4][10]

Several reviewers commented on its value as art and the extent to which it generated discussion and reflection.[11][12][13] For fellow art game designer Jason Rohrer, "The game, and my experience discussing it, have reminded me of experiences at galleries of modern art---for each piece, I stare at it, scratch my head a bit, and try to mine the piece for meaning of some kind. I'm also reminded of watching a David Lynch movie with friends---we'd spend the rest of the evening discussing what the movie might mean."[12]

Writing for MTV, Stephen Totilo expressed that the difficulty he encountered in playing the game and his inability to beat it actually generated anxiety about his own relationship.[2] Humble told IGN he wanted to avoid player failure but explained that while he tries to subvert traditional elements of video games, in practice doing so is challenging: "you discover quickly why they are used to much, they are very useful tools which get you out of tricky design situations all the time."[5]

In an interview, Humble commented that the most common criticism he received "was that they felt my explanations were unduly detailed. I stand by the decision to include the explanation however as I think it helped some folks understand my intent and I didn't think it was fair just to leave them without explanation."[10]

The Marriage was showcased at the 2007 Experimental Gameplay Workshop.[14] For designer Petri Purho, The Marriage was "the most interesting game presented".[15]

Some reviewers have been critical of what they perceive as Humble's depiction of stereotypical or simplistic gender roles.[2][10][16] Stephen Totilo said he was "left assuming that Humble thought it was husbands who benefited from engaging in stuff (and people?) besides a wife, whereas the wife only benefited from contact with the husband".[2] According to Humble, though he intended to allow for a great deal of interpretation, this was not a message he intended.[2][10] Rather, "the central point [is] that if both needs were not satisfied, the Marriage dies. In other words, love is satisfying different needs. For myself, I do need 'alone time' as well as 'together time,' but not one exclusively, and the games rules were a way of exploring that."[10] Edward Picot called the game "poetic" but also expressed concern about the game's "stereotypical view of the sexes" which he notes are particularly apparent through the use of blue and pink for the squares.[17] Others criticized the premise, arguing against reducing the complexities and ambiguities of human experience in order to correspond to simplified representation and a fixed model of interaction.[13][16] From these criticisms and other interpretations, Humble said he learned an important lesson: "that the first mechanics you show define everything that follows, the power of that initial impact between the two squares and your reaction to it defines how you look at the rest of the game. It didn't realize this before and its instructive going forward."[10]

The Marriage inspired games by designers Petri Purho and Brett Douville. Purho's The Divorce was an April Fools Day clone of Pong with a similar artistic explanation, while Douville's My Divorce is a wholly new game utilizing similar aesthetics and tone.[18][19][20][21]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Humble, Rod. "The Marriage". Rodvik.com (official site).
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Totilo, Stephen (24 April 2007). "Multiplayer: If Marriage Were A Video Game …". MTV.
  3. ↑ Moring, Sebastian (2015). "Simulated Metaphors of Love: How The Marriage Applies Metaphors to Simulate a Love Relationship". In Enevold, Jessica; MacCullum-Stewart, Esther. Game Love: Essays on Play and Affection. McFarland. pp. 196–215. ISBN 9780786496938.
  4. 1 2 3 Sharp, John (2015). Works of Game: On the Aesthetics of Games and Art. MIT Press. pp. 51–53. ISBN 9780262029070.
  5. 1 2 Thomsen, Michael (28 May 2008). "Independent View: The Marriage's Rod Humble". IGN.
  6. ↑ Humble, Rod (February 2008). "Stars Over Half Moon Bay". Rodvik.com (official site).
  7. ↑ Rohrer, Jason (20 March 2008). "Critique: Stars Over Half Moon Bay". Arthouse Games.
  8. ↑ Walker, John (3 April 2008). "SPACE WEEK: Stars Over Half Moon Bay". Rock Paper Shotgun.
  9. ↑ Bardinelli, John (4 April 2007). "Rod Humble spills his thoughts on 'The Marriage'". Engadget.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Rohrer, Jason (28 March 2007). "Interview: Rod Humble". Arthouse Games.
  11. ↑ Bardinelli, John (20 March 2007). "The Marriage unties the 'games as art' argument". Engadget.
  12. 1 2 Rohrer, Jason (19 March 2007). "Artgame: The Marriage". Indie Games the Weblog.
  13. 1 2 Queiroz, Chico (28 May 2007). "The Marriage - A Review". Gameology.
  14. ↑ Waugh, Eric-Jon (7 March 2007). "GDC: Sound and Perspective in Experimental Games". Gamasutra.
  15. ↑ Purho, Petri (20 March 2007). "Rod Humble's The Marriage Released". Kloonigames.
  16. 1 2 Auerbach, David (10 August 2011). "Rod Humble and the Marriage: Not Labels, Not Pointers, but Live Fragments". Waggish.
  17. ↑ Picot, Edward (30 April 2009). "Play on Meaning? - Computer games as art". Further Field.
  18. ↑ "But I'm Not Even Married: My Divorce". Rock Paper Shotgun. 7 September 2010.
  19. ↑ Douville, Brett. "My Divorce". My Divorce.
  20. ↑ Carless, Simon (3 April 2007). "Rod Humble Explains His (Game) Marriage". Game Set Watch.
  21. ↑ Purho, Petri. "The Divorce". Kloonigames.

Further reading

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