I’ve been behind on my forum browsing and am now eager to give this a look but can’t download it, your site says there are issues due to too much traffic! While that stinks for me (I’ll patiently wait) I think that’s possibly a good sign for you folks.
<edited out, grabbed the demo from a mirror site!>
Rock on!
This is simply brilliant.
I love the camera control, though I agree with aras that it should wobble and shake like the character.
One art crit: Less fog or else less contrast in the sky.
Is anti aliasing enabled on any graphics levels? I tried good and fantastic and didn’t see it. I think it would probably add a lot to the look of the game.
I find this whole thing to be very interesting. I like that they are getting attention for blurring the line between game and art.
Something I believe here is that if you agree that this is “art” then you shouldn’t be criticizing it in specific details or in technical ways. Anymore than you would look at a painting and say the artist should have made the sky more blue or the background landscape more detailed… It is what it is. You either like it or you don’t.
However… having recently experienced the death of an older family member, I find it way too morbid and depressing. I also do not like that people are paying to watch the lady die. I would rather pay to NOT watch her die… or to keep her alive.
You’re not paying to watch somebody die. You’re paying to have an experience. This is fiction, not a snuff movie. It’s not about the story. It’s about how it affects you, what it makes you feel and think.
By charging for this, we wanted to focus on that aspect of interactive art. It’s not about numbers of features or length of time. It’s about the quality of the experience.
Actually you are paying $5 to watch someone die. Fact is that the only feature the $5 unlocks is that the old lady dies. I believe that most people who have had real life experiences with death, with losing someone you love, would find the paying of $5 offensive. I do.
I would argue that if the fiction was done realistically that there is no real difference in watching the work of fiction or watching an actual snuff movie. The “experience” is the same for the viewer.
I would say that, regardless of your intention, you are attracting the lowest common denominator. People who just want to watch the old lady die.
Maybe I will make a “game” where you get to drive slowly passed the scene of a car accident and, for the low price of only $5, you get to see the dead bodies. I’ll do it in black and white to make it appear more art-like. :twisted:
I have a suggestion. Why not have a $10 price level that would actually make the old lady’s head explode? that would really affect me, really make me think. 
:shock:
If you don’t like the game and don’t find any value in it, that’s fine. But I’m curious why you feel the need to attack the merits of the game and insult anyone who actually appreciates it by accusing them of being lowly people? Have you considered that just because you can’t see any true qualities in the game, it doesn’t mean that other people can’t either?
Rune
I think it’s wonderful. Maybe it’s me getting old, but it put a tear in my eye.
d.
Let me ask you a question… How many deaths have you observed? 100… 500… 1000? Watch Tv for one evening or most any movie and I bet you will see at least one person die. Obviously it is fiction, but really whats the difference? It is disturbing that we all can watch horridness things happen to other people and call it entertainment.
I think Graveyard is a work of art. I like that it is getting attention for blurring the line between game and art. I just don’t, personally, like the subject matter, I find it disturbing. Death is a part of life. It is natural, but I don’t think it is right for people to pay to watch it -for any reason, art or not-
Also, things like this help to blur the line of what is socially acceptable. Enough people say this is art and it is beautiful and then everyone else feels like “ok this must be acceptable and good”. But the next time someone goes a little farther, then a little farther, then farther, until finally we are watching televised public executions on pay-per-view while eating microwave popcorn and drinking diet coke then patting each other on the back saying “wow that was really powerful, i liked the director’s use of the light shadow to emphasize the victom’s…”
So why are you attacking this game when there are mainstream movies and games with countless of horrible deaths in them?
I think you are completely contradicting yourself here. Yes, death is exactly a natural part of life, so what is so horrible about paying for a piece of art that revolves around death? Why is it worse than paying for a piece of art about love, parenthood, passion, courtship, birth or any other natural parts in life?
The death in graveyeard is not violent at all; it is a very natural death, so if you find it disturbing as the subject matter of a game, it says something about your way of thinking about death, not something about the game, in my opinion.
Your slippery slope argument is completely off the mark, as we are not talking about an execution here, nor a victim at all, but just a natural death that the old lady may even have hoped for for a long time, depending on the interpretation.
Rune
One of the most fundamental purposes of art is to stimulate an emotional response, so it’s clear that this exercise has been successful.
Again, well done Michael.
It sounds to me like randyedmonds is having trouble coping and is projecting negativity. This is a woman who can die over and over again. It is art. It is not a living creature. It is different. This reminds me of a time when someone I knew had a relative who died of cancer from smoking, and so wrote a paper about how smoking should be illegal. I am sorry for your loss, but censorship, taking away choice based on your own ideas of the moment, and likening this to a public execution, is out of line.
Also, as is obvious from me and other people simultaneously praising and criticizing this work in many comments, you can love a piece of artwork and still want to see improvements. The digital world is a great place to make that happen. I don’t know where the quotation originated, but I heard it in some form from George Lucas: art is never finished. It is abandoned.
Maybe it’s just that this is the Unity forum, but the graveyard reminds me of the one in Copenhagen with Kierkegaard and Niels Bohr.
Beautiful work. I love the contrasty look.
+1 on that.
@dock: spot on
Hi there,
I really enjoyed the “experience” - and I think this is done really brilliantly, except for 3 things:
The “sliding” while walking spoils a bit of the otherwise lovely and polished scenery. While the rest looks very very professional, the sliding feet look a little amateurish. You wouldn’t notice that if the rest wasn’t done so well - but you’ve set a standard to yourself, and with the sliding, you break that.
I “got lost” when I wandered off because I couldn’t see my own character anymore, and had a really hard time turning in such a way that the old lady would come back into view. While this might even be an intended effect, that doesn’t come to me intuitively. I really have to mentally think and make up an explanation - so it more feels like “a bug” to me.
Finally, in the end, you use the default GUI skin. To me, that really ruined a lot of the experience simply because the “tech-style” of the default Unity GUI really doesn’t work with the rest of the “experience”. Maybe you’re not really into GUI skin design, but having something that looks “worn off” would definitely be much more consistent. Really, at that point, it felt to me like an “unfinished product”, while the rest looks really finished.
Concerning the “paying for dieing discussion”: Even though I do like the overall concept, idea and implementation, I wouldn’t pay for the possibility of dieing. It just doesn’t feel like making sense to me. Again: I can think of reasons why this does make sense, but my heart tells me that’s just thoughts that are made up (of course, other people’s hearts may say something different ).
However, I have to admit that, at the moment, I have no alternative ideas that feel like making significantly more sense… sorry about that I don’t mind seeing an old person dieing a natural death - but it seems to me a bit like going for the effect of having people want to know “how does it look when she’s dieing” and paying for that. Death is a natural part of life - but seeking death (which is what you do when you pay to see someone dieing) is something I don’t consider a healthy part of life.
HA - that’s a solution I could think of: Make her consistently die randomly before reaching the bench in the free version, and make her die after she had been sitting on the bench in the paid version. Then you’d immediately get my EUR 5, without any hesitation. The reason is quite simple: I avoid investing into death, but I love investing into life. And that simply feels much better to me
This is not meant as criticism - it’s your work of art, and I don’t mean to tell you what to do with it. I’m just sharing how I feel about it.
Sunny regards,
Jashan
Jashan, I’m with you completely on your technical criticisms.
However, I think a lot of you people are taking this death thing way too seriously. A sound reason to not pay $5 is that you don’t get much for it. The fact that any kind kind of moral weight is being put into this is something I find to be completely ridiculous.
If you have to perceive this thing in this manner, consider that the woman is old. She can hardly walk. Seriously, how long do you think she’s going to live, anyway??
I’m not morally judging this. I’m just wondering why I should pay 5 bucks to see someone die. I would be glad to pay 5 bucks to see the cutscene, though… It’s that simple. Seeing her die before I “get what I find interesting” would be a good motivation to pay so that I can overcome that.
Well, but others might find the dieing the interesting part, so there might be a market… It’s just a market I’m not in, and that I wouldn’t serve
Sunny regards,
Jashan
I’m with you on that. You are obviously not in the target audience, and while I may be, I think it’s too much money.
But then again, cheapskates might not be in the target audience either! 
I love this. It is definitely a work of art and it’s so bloody brilliant.
The major Toronto paper, The Toronto Star agrees with me and I was pleasantly startled to see a review in the Saturday (big) edition giving the game a rave review and high recommendation. Normally things like Halo 3 (yawn) and that ilk get reviewed … bravo!
I can scan and send along the article if you’d like.