WTF?! I cant believe it took, what some 20 odd years b4 some sad fool went and built a site based on the philosophical side of gaming...c'mon man...they were made for straight forward entertainment. while some infuse a "deeper meaning" sometimes into their plot it isnt for anything other than to flesh out an otherwise reoccuring theme of "Command & Conquer".

Why you sad pieces of garbage needed to make this site to justify to your girlfriend/wives your gaming is beyond me...go and solve some sort of world issue or universal mystery if you think your sooooo damn smart. otherwise shut the #$%^&* up and just play.

JC - Thanks for expressing your opinion. That's certainly what this site is here for. You're probably not familiar with the wide variety of resources available for studying, building, and thinking about videogames as cultural artifacts like art, literature, and film.

I should point out that myself and my colleagues make a living at making, discussing, and writing about games. I'm sure many people would be quite envious of our lucky situations.

There are a wealth of materials available, some of which are linked to in our "links" section at left. You might want to read up on the subject before you make such broad-based rejoinders.

PS - I've taken the liberty of deleting the repeat comment you left in another post. I assume it must have just been an error to post the same comment twice.

To be exact it took a little less than 20 odd years before some 'sad fools' decided to build a site about the 'philosophical' sides of gaming. Websites didn't really take off until the early 90's when the Mozaic browser became available. So let's say 14 years just to be on the safe side ;]

On to the game. I wasn't expecting much from the game after reading your commentary. I assume the 'bored housewives' you wrote about a while back are not the target audience for this game.

What I would expect from this game was a beat of somesort as background music. It's what Kos is all about for this audience a big techno party. So where's da beat at? I'm sure this game will be circulating on many email lists among 'bored male office workers' in the near future.

Tore -- As long as we're being honest about the target audience, I was a bit surprised that the breasts didn't bounce when your avatar jumps on them.

Yup. Bouncing breasts would definitely have ensured this game a much higer spam mail-ratio with several branches of my male-friends. I think I would receive about five mails with 'Check this out!' *sigh*

When you see a game this obsessed with breasts, you hardly have to preface the post with "UK-based". That much is pretty much implied. :)

Considering it's a viral marketing device, the game itself is surprisingly playable, with enough of a learning curve (pardon the pun) to last a few replays, although some sort of high-score list or other reward for playing would make the site a bit more compelling (I was going to use the fave marketing term "sticky", but I thought that might be inappropriate in this context).

The controls are a bit touchy (get your mind out of the gutter!) - some leeway in how much damage hitting a wall does would make the game a bit more accessible and offer more variety, and the seemingly random point values might be better represented by values corresponding to the height of the objects.

Chris -- good observations. I agree that the death-by-wall design is a really poor one. I'd have left that out and come up with another obstacle.

I think I probably would have integrated the bonus objects more deliberately into the vacationing process. So, you'd have a bunch of icons you have to get, and you split those up into different levels. The first level is all about pre-trip planning. Suitcases, clothes, cheap tickets (via lastminute.com of course), cab to the airport, etc. And you'd have a little icon bar at the bottom that lights up as you get them. You have to get all these objects as quickly as possible. I think the individual point values of the objects should be based on a combination of how hard they are to reach and how long it takes for you to get them. So, the points could reduce over time. Then when you get all the objects for the level, you advance. And maybe you can click on these objects to get more information about how lastminute.com can help you organize your trip. Or there could be specific promotions, discounts, special offers tied to the bonus items you catch in the game.

Other levels could have different themes. Techno-trance dance party, beach, romantic dinner, orgy, whatever. And you'd want to change the background pix, vary the scene (sunset, morning, show actual sights from Kos) as well as the bikini (uhm, different endowments yield different bounce power?)

I don't think a much higher budget would have been required to implement these changes. And it would make the game a lot more fun to play and a lot more applicable to the promotion.

Maybe in the next-generation version they can offer a set-up screen and pick which pair of famous "trampolines" you want to bounce on today? (Pam Anderson, A. Jolene, C. Elektra, etc.)

(And on a more serious aside, while this is one of the best web sites devoted to discussing the more serious "real world" aspects of gaming, it isn't a new subject and was an active topic long before the web came along. In the early 80's Tim Leary wrote a monthly column for my computer magazine that explored the philosophical and evolutionary aspects of computers and digital entertainment. When they re-open their web site, I think they are going to publish some of those old articles there.)