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'Howard Glitch' Rethinks YouTube as a Gaming System

by Ben Deitz on December 5, 2010 at 10:30 AM

Howard Glitch
What makes a game a game? Must it follow the goal oriented tropes of interactive entertainment? What if there were no goals? How far can we push the idea of what a game is before it simply becomes an synthetic experience? This week we're going to take a look at some games that push these boundaries. They make us question not only how we play, but what we get out of the experience of playing. So sit back and take a trip into some of the more experimental corners of gaming.

'Howard Glitch' may be the most uniquely presented game we've ever covered -- a 'Choose Your Own Adventure'-style tale told entirely through YouTube videos. The game is ostensibly about a crashing space shuttle and your attempts to escape the harsh reality of inevitable doom. What we love, though, is how 'Glitch warps YouTube itself to serve its gameplay needs. By turning something that has become commonplace into a tool for interactive storytelling, Howard Glitch makes us take a second look at the omnipresence of technology and reassess it from a wholly new perspective.To put it another way, playing Howard Glitch is almost like having our microwave oven's LCD suddenly tell us, "You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door...."

Tags: FlashGames, gamesonthego, howard glitch, HowardGlitch, timewasters, top, videogames

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