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Doing less savory acts in gaming is nothing new. Grand Theft Auto makes gunning down innocent victims fun. Strategy games often require you to sacrifice your units to achieve your goals.
But what about games where the goal is not justified? All the aforementioned games have a clear reason for your morals; even Grand Theft Auto gives you reasons for the violence, otherwise sending the police your way for your behavior. But what if your goal is not only unclear, but the game creates almost no negative feedback for your actions? Sure Shadow of the Colossus did that, but the game slowly revealed the consequences and in the end made that revelation very clear. What if there is a game where the player has all but no reason to realize that what he is doing is wrong?
2D Boy’s World of Goo is one of those games.
The most prominent goal in each level of World of Goo is to use a small group of goo balls to create a structure to a pipe, which the remaining balls escape in. Of course, the player is graded on the number of goo balls that are led into the pipe, the greatest number possible often rewarding the player with the label, “OCD”, or “Obsessive Completion Distinction”. The game treats this task with a sense of whimsy; the colorful graphics and adorable giggles the goo balls make makes the game feel quite cheerful.
For me, the game is an absolute blast. Each level is creatively designed and varied so that you never feel yourself doing the same thing twice. I found myself myself becoming endeared to the goo balls and their kooky curiosity. But about halfway through the game, I started questioning what I was doing. In the stage “You Have To Explode the Head”, the pipe is behind a derlect robot. The Sign Painter leaves a description that the robot is a young model in the factory the level takes place in, and has been deactivated. However, in order to procede, the player must blow up it’s head by leading special flammable goo balls to a bomb above his head, then burning the goo balls like a fuse. Throughout the entire level, the same thought kept going through my head, “Is this right?”
In order to procede, you must destroy a peaceful robot that has nothing against you except that it happened to be deactivated right in front of the pipe. Not to mention that you have to burn the cheery goo balls to get to that point. AND all the goo balls that don’t get into the the pipe are trapped as a permanent part of the remaining structure. Compiled with the dreary, sorrowful music, and the whole scene is kind of a downer.
And that’s not just that level. Almost every level is like that. If you aren’t destroying a part of the environment, you are leading the goo balls to their almost certain doom.
Its not just what happens in the level, its what happens outside of those levels that makes it seem so conflictive. The pipes the goo balls are sucked into leads to the World of Goo Corporation, an ominous factory that takes the goo balls and manufactures them into products like facial cream and beverages. The objective of almost every level is to send the goo balls to their doom, their naive curiosity being the driving force.
It was then that I realized the true meaning of what The Sign Painter said on the sign in You Have To Destroy the Head and one of the game’s slogans, You Can’t Stop Progress. Initially, I expected it to be a reference to an industrialist ideal to go with the Corporation theme. But then I realized that I was causing the destruction. I was sending the goo balls to their doom. You can’t stop the player’s progress through the game. How about the fact that the game’s final chapter was called, “End of the World”, and is visible for the entirety of the game. I had reason to believe that there was nothing but disaster awaiting me. But most importantly, there was almost nothing to justify my actions. My main reason for continue playing was because it was a ton of fun. I could have stopped playing the game and the damage would have come to a cease. It was as if the game’s addictive nature was working against my concience.
By the end of the game, the Corporation gets ruined and there is a message of hope for an overall happy ending. But just think about what had to be done to get there. All that destruction unknowingly caused by the player, and the player alone.
