Drop everything and try: Waiting In Line 3D
The question: how many times will you punch yourself in the face in this "anti-viral" music videogame?
Online videogames to promote music videos by bands you’ve never heard of. Yawn. Waiting in line in a queue. Double yawn. But what if one boring thing plus another equals genius?
Waiting in Line 3D is a music videogame that literally sticks its middle finger up at you (note the icon in your browser’s tab). It’s the video to Friends Listen by ManCub (us, neither) and sees you waiting in line trying not to fall asleep. An homage to classics like Doom, as the time ticks along and your Awake health bar decreases, you have to punch yourself in the face to stay awake. Just don’t don’t punch yourself too much or you’ll die.
It’s the latest web project by Rajeev Basu, one of the guys behind FaceHawk, an interactive music video toy that builds a 3D hawk from your Facebook statuses and photos. His Drones of New York project also imagined how awesome commercial drones could look in the future – including mystical spirit drones, speed drones and shark drones.
Basu likes a laugh so it’s no surprise that as you play Waiting in Line 3D, a collaboration with designer Patrick T. Lo, you’ll look around to check no-one’s looking.
The Most Boring Video Game Ever?
Okay, we just played it four times in a row. We didn’t make it to the end of the track though. And no-one ever scores any points. But Basu promises that though it’s an "anti-game" in terms of winning points, there are "amazing rewards for players who stick it out."
Basu tells us he set out to make an "anti-viral" viral videogame i.e. it’s as boring as possible and nothing happens because the song is about waiting around for what you want in life. The last music videogame we played was tricked up the nines – a racing game that changed the percussion of the track that’s playing – but unlike Waiting in Line 3D it had almost nothing to do with the track. So there you go, boring can be cool.
Basu’s a smart guy and we hope he’s sitting there laughing at us all day. Play Waiting in Line 3D here.
Sophie Charara
Stuff contributor 
