RRRRThats5Rs.com was created in early 2006 with the goal of satirizing and mocking online gaming, but has grown into a social experiment. The site's games are designed to be simple, frustrating and pointless to see how players will react to slight changes of expected gaming behavior.
Although online games seem like a chaotic and fluid genre, the types of gameplay intensely clusters around the latest trends. One game becomes tremendously popular and a long slew of copycat games follow... whether defending a castle, escaping a room, or anything involving stick figures and death. These waves of games condition the average player to behave in a precise manner and expect a nearly identical gameplay.
At RRRR, we see this as the perfect opportunity for experimentation, so we create behavioral traps in our games by installing non sequiturs - changing some aspect that is always constant in most typical games, and not warning the player.
Below is a summary of design experiments we created on RRRR - the rationale behind each game, some playing statistics, and our favorite comments.
"this game is really easy, just dont click or roll the mouse after you hit start, jeez" - Joseph
"OMG I WANT TO SHOOT HIM SO BAD!!!!" - DAN
"i hate all the distractions" - qaz
"Скачать бесплатное порно, порно за смс, все виды порно" - Lawagichfah
"awesome game I f@#$ing hate dogs" - bill
"This game was hard man. I took me three hours to beat it!" - Isabella
"Unless you have ADHD this game shouldn't be hard at all." - Lauren.
"do i let him suffer or kill him?" - bob
"i think this game is stupid and pointless! (no offense) " - taylor
"it froze on level 11" - cody
"how do you move the gun?" - ij
"the one who made this game should come with me to hell!" - devil
"shooting the puppy is quite hilarious" - billy
"I'm at 291K, and I've not stopped yet... I think I win. =3" - Kissa
"I'm up to 600k and it's not stopping. D:" - Nex
"woot, highscore ^^" - SecksiSam
"I have been doing this for 3 hours" - jay
"19016, this game is to easy!" - annoyingfan
"BAM SUCKAS 819" - ahchoe
"MINE WON'T STOP" - QUINCY
"This game is obviously designed so you cant lose. very poor." - Weldy
"Yay Tetris oh no i lost :(" - Nick
"I got it. You don't let us comment. the first two comments are not real, it's just supposed to confuse us. Then we comment, the comment stays put for some time then eradicates by itself, leaving us frustrated and typing the same message again and a again. " - Yuval GreenPeace
"Cool a Tetris game that gives you the worst pieces it can cook up my best was 14" - HeavyD2
"this is basically tetris!!" - cherry
"My god, this website is so weird." - person
Why talk to computers when you can talk to real people instead?
One of the many goals of artificial intelligence is to create a computer that can act human. This turns out to be incredibly hard. If you are talking to someone online, it is very easy to tell that they are not really a human. Computers just aren't very good a pretending. Just try any other chatbot out there and you can experience the robotic responses.
But what if you were supposed to be talking to a computer: could you tell it was really a human?
This is the goal of Cheer Up the Chatbot. Players are faced with a cute image of a computer, and made to think that it is a chatbot. They ask it questions, and it responds with varying degrees of intelligence.
"It's pretty stupid at times, but sometimes it's bloody brilliant. The programming is pretty spiffy."
We aren't dedicated enough to create an intelligent chatbot. Fortunately it is easy to fake. When a player loads the page, they are connected to our server. So if more than one person is playing at the same time, we can just have them talk to each other. If there is an odd person out, they are stuck talking to our terribly stupid chatbot.
And just to make things exciting, an algorithm switches people around sometimes, mid conversation. This creates an exciting sense of uncertainty. You never truly know if you are talking to a person, or if it is even the same person as before. It is such a simple system, and yet it is still fun to play even after you know the trick. People play the game just to talk to and trick the uninitiated.
A few people have asked us for a special chatting mode that distinguishes between players in the game, instead of always saying "chatbot." These people were so desperate for this playing mode that they paid us $5 for the secret ability.
"HOW THE HELL CAN U MAKE HIM/HER SMILE!?" - hopeless
"my friend kevin made this website!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" -
"Um my friend and I were on the phone while playing this and we were telling eachother what was going on in the conversation, and it turned out we were talking to eachother through the game. WHAT THE HELL? " - Nelly
"I give up. What's the catch?! I'm sure there's more to it than just a completely randomized answering system, because that would just be too obvious. Also, he tells me that he's trying to cheer me up and that he's not sad." - Lorenzo
"I do not understand the purpose of game" - Léa
"THIS IS NOT A CHABOT IT IS A GAME WHERE IT CONNECTS YOU WITH OTHER PEOPLE. YOU ARE CONNECTED WITH A STRANGER.... BE WARNED. " - FBI
"OMG HE WANTED ME TO PULL MY PANTS DOWN! im scared..." - Frightened
"he had sex with me" - sexxy
"The glass house is sinking" - Bort
"your all idiots" - idk bill?
"this is a easy game but hard, too" - bluestar leader of thunderclan
"How do you get 20 out of 20?" - Neville
"it goes way to fast to count the stuff on the screen." -
"What the hell I can't use my weapons?!" - WTF
"I cant pass level 5" -
"This game gave me cancer." - Who, Me?
"level 42 bullshit" - yo mama
"this is the best game EVER!!!" - lol
"Level 9 frustrated the hell out of me and I hate you for it" -
"U JUST NEED A VIDEO ON YOUTUBE!!" - IDIOOOTS
"ahahahahahah its hard cause i can't just talkk i have to yell" - piecee
"it made my voice squeky in the mornig1 dont go on it! i couldnt tlk for 2!days!" - sophie
"this whole website sux. the games are so damn boring!!!" - get a life
"So awesome but in the end I had a sore throat but it was fun I didnt get past level : Keep away" - Girl you dont know
"thats is the most boring thing ive played in my life pushing a button is better" - tietiff
"it loads long" -
"takes ages to load" -
"no! This is fake! Do nut playyyy!!!!!" - Titosurus
"is my computer messed up or some thing" - mystry womon
"funny stuff. Lol had do you get past the part when you wear people's skin?" - Blaz3
"THIS A DUNB GAME ASHOLE" - NONE OF YOUR BUSSINES
"make it in dutch! xD" - aragorn
"my mom think this game is boring" -
"time flys by" - dan
"what kind of stupid idiot would play this dumb game?" - I don't have a name
"My highest score is one" - Brian
"I WIN" - winner
"so wat r u sup to do, lose, wat a sukki game" - skullhead941
"a dog attacked me!!!" - andy
"Walk forward, find the retard, help him get hit by a car, when he's on the ground steal his wallet, then find the nearest thing wet, slushy, and alive and shove it down his pants. Did I win yet?" - Wolf
"dude what the hell is wrong with helen" - me'
"i think this may be rigged" - confused
"HOW DO I SHOT WEB??!?!?" - spidre mna
"what is the surrealist hand shake?" - matt
"63" -
"This is ass. Why is there only sixteen?" - Wolf
"A great game for dyslexics!" - rayybags
"my brain is working to hard!!!" - me lazy
"seriously, these games suck" -
"A bird in the hand is better than 10 on the roof" - pk
"I got the hammer, but I still can't figure out how to open the pink box." - eric
"Retard. It's Don't count your chickens before they hatch." - Rem
"Whaz the point in this stupid game?" - Who knows?
"how long do you wait?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!" - caleb
"because they had gravity on backwards :D" - Fox
"When you finally get the drift of the game, and you get a chance to look at the guy's face, you suddenly realize he's pretty ugly." - Lorenzo
"Grass is always greener on the other side. Make sure it stays that way." - Emmy
"Hahaha, your a programmer, and you can't even spell programmer right? You're the fucking tard hahaha asshole" - computar guy
"eewwwwwww gross end" - hjkhkjhkjl
"oooh i like getting physicals" - med
"oh man this is creepy.... doctors will scare me forever..." -
"pffft too eazzy" - the tiggsta
"114 points!!! cheesecake" - hannah
"this is boooooring" - Joseph
"Wow! It's A Classic!" - RRRocker!!!
"all the games on this website are rubbish" - fwefwe
"i really really REALLY dont get it" - momma
"watever mike your so retarded then my little brother" - brady
"all u do is paint it black then paint it white! WHT THE FUCK!" - A-Hole JKJK IM NOT A A-HOle
"Damn you fancy color man! quit ruining my fantastically clean single colored canvas!" - Snike
"I CANT DO IT" -
"Okay, I am on the fifth level with all the black acorns, but what do I do with the orange power crystal?" - TholomewP
"You have to click the fifth harp three times." -
"how can you play as mario?" - Henke