E3 2011: Our appearance on Indie Games Searchlight

Not pictured: hidden instruction to tie your opponents' shoes together.

While we I haven’t heard of Indie Games Searchlight before, I have heard of Normal Boots, their publishing affiliate. How’s that, you ask? Well, it came to pass that someone recommended a video series of theirs to me, something called The Jon Tron Show.

For those of you who remain willfully ignorant of my identity, it was only slightly bothersome that there was an entire gaming show that shared a title with my actual name.* Enraged, I visited this imposter’s YouTube channel and watched some of the videos. Nothing could contain my fury, since it turned out this guy was actually hilarious and I therefore stood no chance against him. Life had handed me lemons, and I began a sour quest of vengeance that led me to the Indiecade booth at E3.

Unbeknownst to me, a cohort of Jon Tron, Mark Carr was also in attendance, and he proceeded to capture footage of Rabid Ferret and me making fools of ourselves as we played B.U.T.T.O.N., which would be more appropriately titled as Fuck You, The Game. What’s the object of B.U.T.T.O.N., other than ending friendships?It’s simple, really. Each player has a controller, but only one button is used on it. At the start of each round, the game instructs players to step away from their buttons, perform a silly action (though the game has no way of knowing if you are actually standing on one leg**), then make a mad dash to the controllers to press your button. Or hold your button. Or not hold your button.

You won’t know what you have to do until the prompt comes up, so one round the key to victory may be spamming your button like a meth addict, and the next round the winner may be the person who presses his/her button the least. While that sounds easy, it’s harder when your opponents reach over and press your button for you. Or unplug their controller so nobody can press their button. Or punch you in the face because of that time you slept with their sister but you swear you didn’t know but they didn’t believe you. Ahem.

Calamity ensues, as do laughs and occasional black eyes. And while the following video captures only a brief glimpse at our ridiculous gameplay (near the end, though you should really watch it all), it also highlights my personal vendetta against Jon Tron. Seriously, dude, what the hell? I bet it’s not even your real name!

Looks fun, doesn’t it? We played several interesting Indiecade games at E3, all of which Rabid Ferret would be more than happy to explain, if you’d be nice enough to beg him for it in the comments.

* Not by spelling, but by pronunciation.
** Look for B.U.T.T.O.N. Kinect next fall on XBLA