bliss.troisen.com
March 21st, 2011, By Duncan Gough
So I think we can call it quits. Troisen is the home for a bunch of prototypes I’ve been building over the last year or so. It’s a made up word, a trojan horse of inspiration. A reaction of the broheimification of the internet, the masculinity and obviousness of what the internet has become. A reduction of titles for the sake of memory, the recidivist nature of one-button gaming, the way that mainstream games reveal a fear of asking players to pretend by abstracting those details away. And in amongst all that I came up with bliss.
It’s a play on the idea of friction. It’s a game about presence. In reality, you play by checking-in, and you check-in by loading the page. Stick around for long enough and you’ll see other people come and go. I think the game works best if you’re in London, I don’t know how it will appear if you visit from somewhere else.
With each check-in the world gets busier. If enough people are online near to the newest player, then a chain reaction begins, and the world comes to life.
If the opposite of foursquare is bliss, then bliss is a place where every check-in means something, and where every check-in disrupts the network. Where everybody means something.