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Persuasive Games launches Disaffected!
by Ian Bogost January 17, 2006

Disaffected!I'm happy to announce that my studio Persuasive Games has released Disaffected!, a videogame parody of the Kinko's copy store. The game puts the player in the role employees forced to service customers under the particular incompetences common to a Kinko’s store. It gives the player the chance to step into the demotivated position of real FedEx Kinkos employees. Feel the indifference of these purple-shirted malcontents first-hand, and consider the possible reasons behind their malaise -- is it mere incompetence? Managerial affliction? Unseen but serious labor issues? Disaffected is the first in (what I hope will become) a series of anti-advergames, games that enact dissatisfaction and criticism against corporations.

The game is available for free download, for Mac and Windows.

Many thanks to the small yet talented crew who worked with me on D!. And equal thanks to those who gave me feedback during the development, including especially Nick Montfort and Stuart Moulthrop. Disaffected! is also a finalist at the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemaker Competition, and it will be exhibited this weekend in Park City, Utah. We entered but were not accepted into IGF, but I have some very interesting judges comments from it which I'll be sharing soon. In the meantime, go play!

Update:
- MTV News published a very good article on Disaffected
- Disaffected! is now available on Download.com
- Coverage on Gamasutra, Kotaku, Boing Boing, Joystiq, Grand Text Auto, We Make Money Not Art, The Consumerist, and more via Technorati

Comments (17)

Once again (you keep releasing games!), congrats. I was just in a Kinkos yesterday and felt some _game-a vu_.

Thanks Andrew! I recommend playing the game in Kinko's if at all possible...

BTW, I just rev'd the Mac version of the game. Any of you who acquired the Mac version yesterday may want to get a fresh one with a couple useful bug fixes.

I was excited to hear about an anti-advergame, having gotten kind of sick of the increasingly overt product placement and "messaging" in a lot of small games out there. And criticizing Kinko's in a humorous parody sounds great.

But here's what I actually learned from the rules of Disaffected:

1. Kinko's would be a much better place to work at and get copies at if the aisles were wide enough for two people to pass each other.

2. As a Kinko's employee, your coworkers are your real enemies

because they get in your way and move people's orders are at. If there were fewer people working at Kinko's, it would

be a much better and easier place to work.

3. A good Kinko's customer is one that yells their name out over and over again so you don't forget who they are.

4. Sometimes employees at Kinko's get confused or apathetic for no apparent reason, from no apparent stimuli. It's not clear if this has to do with Kinko's, or if it is just part of who they are. In any case it doesn't really matter because there is always another virtually identical worker to do their job, maybe with a different hair cut or skin color.

5. There is nothing that Kinko's or anyone working there can do about upsetting mistakes that are made to your orders, it's futile.

6. Playing a game intended to showcase apathy, frustration, and boredom, strangely enough, leaves one feeling apathetic, frustrated and bored.

This is strange, but when I close out of Disaffected, it dumps my refresh rate down to the minimum level for my monitor.

Congratulations to Ian and Persuasive Games on the new release.

I really love that combination of game design rich in symbolic content and metaphorical implication along with social and political commentary. Especially taking advantage of the computer gaming medium -- the player embodies the experience of "disaffected" employee, frustrated manager with incompetent staff (via employee lethargy and confusion), and secondarily experiences the frustration of the waiting customer. The specificity of Kinko's is a strength because of the corporate sterility of their stores. It's too bad you could not add another modality and immerse user's in the aroma of toner and three color inks.

There seemed to be a couple of occasions where the order was not in any of the stacks though, is that one of the Mac bugs that was fixed?

Here are some of my ideas:

1) It is effective to emphasize potential frustrations with the work environment and open up the possibilities of disgruntled, underpaid, or incompetent works as a potential sources of negative retail experiences.

2) It offers several alternatives as a source for error, systematic or human error.

3) A good customer is not one that repeats his or her name over and over, it is one that waits relatively patiently as opposed to one the comes in angry and wants an employee to work double time.

4) In terms of task orientation and completion, from the perspective of management in a corporate hierarchy, retail staff at Kinko's effectively *are* the same but with varying appearances. This fact is worthy of critique.

5) There is nothing anyone can do about upsetting mistakes being made, they are unavoidable.

6) I can see that the game could leave someone frustrated or bored, though the fact that it has inspired discussion seems to be an argument against apathy. However, the frustration or boredom is in the grand tradition of old arcade games in which skill mastery, repetitive play, high score list fame, and incremental difficulty are all celebrated. This type of game is not everyone's cup of tea, but the characteristics of the genre are not a failure of Disaffected! in particular. I personally don't have the patience to play a game with that type of reward structure for very long, but it can be fun for a short duration (my wife also said it was fun).

Anecdote: Incidentally, on my wedding day I happened to notice that the wedding programs, small booklets with particular paper types and colors, (reproduced by Kinko's) had an error. To be more clear, this was not exactly the case. In fact, the first several programs in the box were correct, but somehow the rest of them all had "Thank you for coming!" printed upside down on the last page. My sister rushed back to get them reprinted at the last minute, was late for the ceremony in which she had a role, inducing great stess, etc. In short, reflecting back on my Kinko's customer experience I have been a part of an situation so dissatisfying as to be worthy of parody. It is nice to witness a send-up, in video game form, of another perspective of my frustrating story.

Customers at the harvard branch are a bunch of impatient selfish asses who think the world revolves around them.They actually believe that they are superior to other humanbeings be they waiters or kinkos employees or anyone who doesnt have a phd.Guess what your not superior to nothing'A dog has more manners you pompous asses By the way if your so smart how come you cant read the instructions on the copiers the self serve kiosk or the card readers example;Wheres the color copier? answer;right below the 3'x4'sign that says COLOR COPIER I rest my case'

So... Kinko's employees have web access, but perhaps a limited grammar access?

I didn't have time for proper grammar because I had to attend to another superior being like yourself o Flawless Grammar King.

First, it looks like b is properly disaffected, although this may stem from fights with English prior to joining Kinko's.

Secondly, the game is conceptually brilliant. Unfortunately, I started having multiple bugs around level two. Too many to list without doing a proper test, but I would advise someone to play the Mac version for about 20 minutes to check it out. Thanks for the free fun. Please post when it's fixed, and I'll start spreading the word!

Whew, trying to catch up.

Kevin: that is strange. Haven't seen that one. Email me OS and the like.

Satorical: multiple testers checked the Mac version on a variety of OS X installations. If you can, email me your bugs and system stats and we'll be able to look into it better.

Holly & Fox: thanks for your lengthy comments; I'll be reading them thoroughly and commenting again.

I worked at Kinko's for seventeen years until FedEx bought them and I couldn't take it anymore. I had many days that were longer versions of playing your game.

I also had great days were everything worked right! Kinko's was a much funner place to work before it went corporate.

This is strange, but when I close out of Disaffected, it dumps my refresh rate down to the minimum level for my monitor.

Josh - we've just revv'd the game with a small update, you can get the new version over on our website. Maybe you could try it again and let me know if it still does this.

Do you have DirectX installed?

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