Ripon

Ripon,  an original video game created by artists Troy Richards and Knut Hybinette, is a series of installations integrating with large-scale digital prints that use the setting of a violent broken down society.  The main object of the game is to get players to work together in an almost utopian socialist type fashion.  However, the main objective isn't about winning, it is more about survival.  The players, up to 10 playing at once, are surrounded by huge digital prints of icons from the game in order to heighten the gameplay experience.  Within minutes of starting gameplay, players who don't work together die.  Moreover, Ripon can't be outsmarted by typical mainstream game repetition, players eventually will die in the game and once this has occurred it ends the game and there is no way to continue, unlike most other games.  The game takes away from the focus of the player and shifts it to the environment in which they are playing in.  The game attempts to help take away the notion of "every man for himself".  

Ripon also provides commentary on the breakdown of utopian society.  in addition, Ripon seems to try to indulge the player in the experience rather than by the typical win/lose formula.

I being a huge gamer, like all sorts of video games.  I especially appreciate those game which are thought provoking and take the player on an experience.  Ripon is a great idea in my opinion because many of today's video games don't focus on true issues but they rather create a fantasy world.  Fantasies are not a bad thing of itself, but it helps ignore real problems and the solutions that might take to solve them.  Ripon has an creepy feel to it, like a post apocloyptic type of setting.