A mind-changing game: The Parable of Natural De-selection

A game that shifts the players’ mindsets from competition to coexistence.

“Through a neoliberal transformation in our society,
we see an overall high in the need to compete economically,
and a general low in sensibility and human relations.
And what is the core of Neoliberal ideology
is that you are alone,
an individual competing with everybody else.
Winners thrive; losers perish.
And when you figure out that you can not win, what will you do?”

The Parable of Natural De-selection is a seemingly easy yet sophisticated game based on P5.js. It is a 2-player, “competitive” game that challenges the mentality of Social Darwinism and Neoliberal Competitions.

Two plants are forced to stay in the game of “natural selection” - The one growing the fastest and reaching the laser beam first will trigger the shears on the other side of the mechanism to cut the competitor’s stalk.

The gameplay is very simple and plain — Plants grow a certain amount of height each time the player presses the corresponding key (“A” or “L”).

The game is composed of 9 levels. As the players go on to the next levels, a new kind of neoliberal notions would be introduced through the change of resources and conditions. In other words, each level is a new set of games.

Overall, the 9 levels reflect the different kinds of competition in a Neoliberal society, and players would be surprised at how they win or lose the game.

“The game tricks you into thinking that the more you press, the faster you’ll win. So when you play, you don’t actually pay attention to the slightly different rules, and you won’t think about it until the result appears, indicating that you shouldn’t play like this.” Said one playtester.

Unequal nutrient (the bar at the left and right side) distribution — Sometimes the sky is the limit.

Random deduction to the height of the plant indicates random misfortune — The competition is never fair.

Not just competing with the other player but the whole crowd — The competition is way bigger and fiercer than you would imagine.

The winner becomes the “winners”. What are we competing for?

“Though the ultimate goal of this game is to survive, it doesn’t mean that the two players are against each other.” The game designer, Xiaofan Jiang wants players to think differently. “Once we’re in the game, we tend to follow the rules and forget our right to refuse to play. Therefore, level 7 is set to be a turning point for the whole game when the two players would discover that there’s a win-win situation, a tie.”

In this level: When either key is pressed, the plants gain the same height. It’s always a tie.

Now it’s time for the player to practice the new mentality for playing — collaboration instead of competition. The player shall reach the top at the same time to pass this level.

The trickiest level is the last one. Under the condition that no plants have enough nutrients to grow to the top and trigger the laser beam to kill others nor sacrifice themselves to help the middle flower grow to the top, the strategy to win is to “do nothing”.

One of our playtesters said: “My friend and I got stuck after losing a couple of times, and as we paused for about 15 seconds, a message appeared, saying: Why compete but not coexist? I was blown away.”

“This game makes me think about competition and co-existence. If I know I could lose when I’m trying to win, am I still willing to compete? Is noncooperation with the rule a way to co-exist with others?”

The Parable of Natural Deselection is a criticism of Neoliberalism. It’s a game that will shift the players’ mindsets from being devoted to competition to starting to think about coexisting.

Reference:

The game was inspired by the artwork, Natural Deselection, by Tim Simpson.

The plant that grows to a predetermined height first trips a sensor that triggers shears poised at the base of the competitor plants’ stalks. The last plant standing possesses the superior biological design to survive in this particular environment. Simpson’s darkly subversive work bluntly demonstrates how evolutionary science — a field of inquiry that radically enlightened the world in many ways over the last 150 years — can be manipulated to create artificially designed hells.

Source: MoMA

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