@Mister Adequate: Two words: TITHONUS SYNDROME. Even if the Singularity is going to ever happen (you know, barring the law of diminishing returns, general entropy, chaos theory, thermodynamics, quantum science, common sense), you still have to deal with the religious, the sane, the dumb, the smart, the political or artistic who are going to think that earthly immortality is a sin against God/nature/mankind/your mom.

Granted it's a syndrome made up by the trans-humanists to look like everyone's just-out-to-get-trans-humanity. Fiction has just as many positive versions of immortals as negative.

Human Bomb

@eightcell: "I don't see how you could get bored of the real world though."

Well the idea was kind of simplified for the game, so you wouldn't have to be immortal yourself just to realize its point. A world of stacking blocks in a finite 2D plane gets boring in 5 minutes (or longer for some people... :]). All the people in the world might stay interesting for a billion years before they get tiring, but what's the difference? Time means nothing to someone who is immortal.

What happens when all the people on Earth destroy themselves through nukes or environmental contamination? That will happen pretty soon, relatively. What happens when the Sun turns into a red giant and engulfs the whole planet? What happens after the heat death of the universe?

Fact is, all of these events would happen relatively before your 'life' is even getting started. It would be a pretty boring existence when there's no substantial matter left in the universe. For eternity.

And this is assuming you don't age or feel pain. An eternity would be even longer if you were a continuously suffocating skeleton floating through nothing.

swarmster

why do we have to choose in this?
I'm personally going to try and mess about with the blocks until i die naturally (timer running out). I doubt it'll be anythign special but the choice we're given is either live forever or die now, after working a little bit for whichever you want. I'll choose to leave them both and wait.

Gorp900

Hmm, interesting.
I'll have to check this out. It's neat to see games based on these certain types of thoughts or ideas (couldn't think of a better way to say it), though some might not understand it if they haven't seen the story behind it (on the blog...).

.em.

@Count_Elmdor:

No music. At least not on my machine.

I liked it. That's all I'm going to say.

concrete_d

I played the game, it worked once. Now it crashes every time I try to play. wtf?

Apreche

Ok so in the game you can move around and pick up blocks with the space bar. You have a time limit but you can collect the infinity power up and the timer goes away. The blocks with spikey things are actually like ladders and you can move up the ladders while carrying a block.

If I lived in a world where all there was to do was move from left to right back and forth and climb blocks then I guess immortality would suck.

I don't see how you could get bored of the real world though.

eightcell

Why's everyone saying that within immortality, you couldn't be able to have human relationships? In case you're not incredibly special, others would be able to be immortal as well.

Now, standing through the very same life partner for eternity, I dunno if that's possible. You'd get bored of each other sooner or later.

Ashurahori

I think the key to immortality is to take The Doctor's standpoint: avoid human relationships, because yes, they will eventually end in loss. Or, if you must, be prepared for the consequences.

Though, that's the case in any relationship. Normally, relationships don't end with "I'll love you forever oh but now I die, dang."

I'd spend my life traveling the world, learning as much as I can, seeing everything there is to see, and talking with every single person, learning the story of ever person in the world.

Then I'd write the best books EVER.

AlexDitto

I might have bothered to "finish" the game (if that's possible) if it didn't run in slow-motion...
Man, it's really testing my patience

vaterunser

Hilariously I become immortal ... And then trapped myself by stacking my bricks in such a manner that I couldn't get out.

It's going to be a very long eternity.

JamesR87

Maybe eternity is boring, but who can tell for sure? So you know what? Why don't we test it? Let's do our best to live forever and find out. As long as we live, we always have the option to choose death. Once we die, though, we aren't given the option to return to life.

Right now, I love life. And until that love has disappeared with no hope of return, I will continue to live.

Ajonos

I bet this one has some sappy "introspective" music, too, doesn't it?

Count_Elmdor

@shufly: Maybe when it gets all the way up there it knocks the tower down so you can start over.

Torgen got his apology faceplate but not his fixed GH3 disc

I bet that from all of these deep thoughts about immortality, at least one of these comments is going to end up in the "Week in Comments" post. Possibly whoever has the longest one.

enigma89

@swarmster:
truth be told, my buddy almost has it finished (sad really) has about 60 stacked so far. Nothin but space up there so far. He's almost done.

shufly

I accidentally killed myself.

I guess thats what you get for being impatient.

chaos_isnt_here

@shufly: Some fine talk, but we all know you just wanted to keep going until you beat me by 1. :p

swarmster

Shure living forevew without means of dying... and worse than that, being an old man with tons of health problems for eternity would be really bad.

But immortality, with ways to kill yourself (like Highlander), being able to freeze your biological clock to... let's say, 20 yrs old... wouldn't mind that.

At least, I think our timelimit is kinda short... I wanna have at least 10 lives to do all the stuff I want to. :P

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

It gets real interesting when you encounter the Hunters. I used the Gravity gun to hurl logs at them to save ammo.

R0bster

@dawimp523: Honestly I think the controls were made this way to purposely make this game seem like "an eternity". That or just poor programming, take your pick =p

shufly

This is definitely his hardest game yet as far as controls. Why can't you jump from block to block? I know it's a new concept for games (SARCASM!!!) but it would have made the game a lot easier. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to line up the blocks where the arrow was or get one of the blocks in the sky. Another thought-provoking concept! I'm glad these games are coming out once a month now!

dawimp523

im bored already. i think most people are, beyond childhood. they just spend their lives avoiding admitting it.

immortality would be ok for a while. at some point life would get too boring. assuming the human mind doesnt have an intrinsic breaking point and just snaps after a few thousand years, when every place you go looks the same and every person you meet is like someone else you met before and your senses become an annoyance at their lack of originality. people go crazy in a short time when locked into sensory deprivation. perhaps that effect applies to all sensations eventually. not to mention the consistent mental impact of losing everything you ever care about again and again. perhaps after a few millennia you would cease to care about anything at all and become a monster. theres a whole bunch of problems that spring immediately to mind, the point is, seems obvious to me youre not going to last too far before you go insane.

red

Just watch "Groundhog Day"

m3rcer

Currently at 37 bocks up, in a three row column. The point I think this game is trying to conjure up is laid heavily in symbolism. While the choice of immortality is laid clean and bare, the idea of what you do with immortality is represented in the blocks. From my perspective, I see each block as a small piece of experience, say like driving a car, or reading a book. While you can only do so much driving or reading in one lifetime, you can do it almost indefinitely as an immortal (not counting if your "invulnerable", because the planet you live on eventually would also die, and you along with it in that case).

As you build the tower higher and higher, it becomes clear that the acquisition of knowledge and experience becomes an endless cycle, building and building, scaling and scaling, with no end. Which begs the question of the point of it all. Is there a checkered flag at the "top"? Is there even a top at all? Is there something of benefit to anyone or yourself that all your effort and experience has gained?

And there lies the conundrum in itself, we don't know. A man of science could say that everything, including the universe, is meant to end someday, and the cycle that we all live and experience in would be rendered moot if we were to "break away" from that cycle, as it would demean the very essence of the experience (in the long run) of the universe itself.

So after 37 Blocks high, I finally chose death, I'm a stubborn fellow, but I just wanted to see how far I could get, human nature I suppose.

Also, since I took blocks from only one side of the tower, I found something interesting.
[i16.photobucket.com]
"I have seen the end of the world, and it has black blocks, lulz"

I'm guessing there is a limit to how high you can actually go in the game, but knowing the creator this philosophical piece, your probably left with nothing to do after words with the big screwing question of "what now?"

shufly

Play Lost Odyssey, you won't want to be immortal.

drweazel

Sadly, my Mac is not EXE ready... :( Ah well, I'll just have to be one of those mortal chumps. Sucks to be me.

2NinjasTapedTogether

Immortality would be "boring"?...
That's a valid response because it relies on the definition of "Immortality" instead of the experience of immortality.

*Rolls eyes*

MoaM

@able_to_think: @Metal_Slug_Solid:

Are you kidding, macs play games? neeerg.

For real though I need a mac version aswell :(

chorx

You can either choose to the immortality symbol and spend your days mindlessly stacking blocks for the rest of your life. Or you can choose the skull symbol and rest in peace. I, for one, chose death

dagnasty

I installed this and now it won't let me remove it, haven't tried restarting and trying to delete it yet. *Not impressed though*

QuasarSquirrel

Stack the regular blocks on the arrow. Then put the Left facing on the left, right facing on the right... The dude will keep walking whatever direction you're going if you alt+tab out of the window. I'm building a tower while making a presentation.

Interesting, still.

Xerloq

A block fell on me....and I died

dagnasty

@Murrytmds: Try... oh, I dunno... reading what it's about? That may give you a hint.

Ontopic: It's not bad, but anyone who's seriously considered immortality for more than five minutes has already reached this conclusion. Nic to see it turned into a game of sorts, though.

ShaggE

Although I haven't really "got" any of these games since Passage, the comment threads they generate make for some interesting reading.

I still think immortality would be cool. I'm a fairly unsocial creature anyway. But I'm still young. If I'm still unsocial and happy by the time I'm 70, I'll seek out the philosopher's stone.

It seems the idea of immortality becomes less popular the older you get. I suppose until you've lived a certain number of years you won't have anything to extrapolate for the feeling of eternity.

zoz

Well, using all of the right-facing blocks to the right of the score marker I got a high score of 36. Anyone else?

bottom: [www.flickr.com]
top: [www.flickr.com]

iTunes started playing 21st Century Schizoid Man in the middle of playing, which was pretty eerie.

I can totally see Jason Rohrer's point, though. Having immortality would suck if you couldn't carry giant blocks over your head with one arm.

swarmster

If I could become immortal, and keep a body that's about 25-35 years old, I would definitely do it. While yes, it might get boring and I'd probably kill myself after a few lifetimes (as Veit so wonderfully put it), I would love to experience life as a human as much as possible.

Think about it. There are so many things we can do in life; so many careers to choose from and places to see. However, our short lifespans and exponentially decreasing endurance after reaching adulthood limits our capability to experience all those options. It's unlikely a professional musician will get to go to space. An astronaut may never become a professional sports player. A pro-sports player has little chance of becoming an engineer.

Long ago, I figured out that the quote: "You can be anything you want in life." needed the addendum "... but you can only be one of those things."

A potentially infinite lifespan lets you do anything you've been interested, provided you have the motivation. You can travel to every city in the world, then become a pilot, then a mortician, then a racecar driver, then a real estate tycoon, then a captain of a ship, etc. etc. etc. On top of that, you have the opportunity to experience anything that man creates from now on.

Yes, there is the depressing side. You will loose thousands of friends and family members while you live on. It wont be long until you loose a friend at a rate of one a day, and you feel that it might be pointless for an immortal to have friends and family.

To look at it another way, you get to learn everything about mankind, about people's beliefs and demeanor and all about psychology. If you wish to pursue more careers, you'll know exactly what you need to say and do.

I'd say more, but I have to go.

Tolgak

well this was pointless. what am i supposed to do? keep movin? try and built something? what?

Murrytmds

@Veit: Oh things would seem novel, you can be sure of that. Until you've seen the entire universe, nothing big would ever be boring.

Ashurahori

As a Philosophy Major, I found this game to be quite clever. Indeed, living for an eternity would be boring.

Spamwise14

Hmm. Can't get this to work. It downloads in about 1 second, and when I try to open it, it says its corrupt or something. Help?

DontFearTheHobo

@Veit: I'd go with no, no sarcsm on your part.

InsidiousTuna

@Ashurahori: Oh, it's not that I wouldn't be able to handle not loving one person forever. It just seems to me that eternal life would become a litany of loss, and eventually, nothing would seem novel, as shiny as it may be.
Except of course for Apple products, because that's one industry that we all know perfectly and fairly equates shininess with performance and utility.

The real question: Am I being sarcastic?
...am I?

Veit

@Veit: Most people you love, you don't end up loving forever. And life partners, as much as you love them, you get tired of them after one or two lifetimes, that's how the human mind works. I'd love to have new experiences everytime, that's what makes the world less boring. I don't think I'd ever get tired of seeing technological advances, new things in the world being fixed, and I don't think there's enough knowledge in the world for me to even learn in an eternity.

Ashurahori

@cornpopsicle: Yep.

Yuki

Jesus, immortality would be nothing but depressing, if there weren't someone sharing it with you. If anyone here reads Neil Gaiman's Sandman, there's a normal human that has achieved immortality, and one comic deals a little with his experiences. Everyone he knows dies, and he does not. He says goodbye to love after love; the only constant figure in his life is the main character, Morpheus, with whom he meets only once every hundred years. Still, he's the only friend he can ever keep. Were I to achieve immortality, I wouldn't have the Sandman to meet with, and would probably end up killing myself after only a few lifetimes.

Veit

I pretty much don't have to play this game to know what happens. It's starting to get less clever each time one of these games comes out.

dowingba

Immortality is nothing without eternal youth though...

cornpopsicle

This guy's meaningful games are kind of cool.

Aethyr

If I were Immortal then it'd be me vs The World (minus the Hot Women).

Grimmjow Jeagerjaques

No Mac version?? How COULD they? I don't feel like booting into windows right now.

Metal_Slug_Solid

Actually the technological singularity suggests we're probably going to develop massively longer lifespans over the coming decades.

I will be at the front of the line.

Mister Adequate

What if your immortal, and someone gives you some nice cement shoes, and then tosses you in the ocean, it'd be a nice life.

Firemane

Eh, Highlander has taught me that immortality is badass, so Im going with that. and as for the game, it does get the point hes trying to make across, but I'm sure actual life is more interesting then moving a bunch of blocks around. >_>

bbqostrich

If I was asked to be immortal I would answer yes without hesitation. I never want to meet my end I want to see everything even the end if possible.

Bluejuan85

I don't see how this game has anything to do with being immortal. But then again, I apparently wasn't playing it correctly. I just kept running to the right until I ran into a large black wall. Then I stopped playing.

Jorw

Blah, I would love to be immortal. Mankind being immortal would mean the whole experience of man would never be lost, we'd be on other planets and have no need of wars since no one could die.

fraggenstein

cool will check this out

Jagzthebest

Mac please.

able_to_think