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Sissyfight

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/04/27/sissyfight/index.html

Sissyfighter Meet Eric Zimmerman, the brains behind the Net's nastiest little game.

April 27, 2000 | You might be surprised to hear this, but the guy behind the Web's nastiest and most notorious new interactive game -- Sissyfight 2000 -- is a card-carrying academic brainiac. Eric Zimmerman, a freelance game designer out of Manhattan, is also an adjunct professor at the Parsons School of Design and New York University. The 30-year-old intellectual/geek has lectured at more than 30 universities about the aesthetics of video games, writes scholarly papers on the social theories of play and discusses his chosen field with a hybrid lyricism, mixing words like "transgressive" and "butt-ugly" in the same sentence. Which, at first, belies the fact that Zimmerman, along with the staff of Word.com, helped create the meanest, most popular little back-stabbing game on the Net.

Six little cartoon girls enter a pastel playground where playful music sets a nursery school tone. That's where the niceties end. The goal of the game is to reduce the other little schoolgirls, in their little schoolgirl outfits, to whimpering sissies. Through a barrage of scratching, teasing, tattling and grabbing, players knock each other out of the game by chipping away at their opponents' self-esteem. There are various defensive moves -- cowering or licking your lollipop, for example -- but mostly this is a game of pure childish cruelty and aggression. Entertainment Weekly, which gave the game an "A" grade, says, "Sissyfight brings forth a player's nasty, repressed child like no other game -- except maybe fifth-grade dodgeball and corporate retreats."

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