The Divorce
The Divorce is a classic game of Pong, inspired by Rod Humble’s The
Marriage where the rules of the game were crafted to communicate how the
developer felt about the concept of marriage. Petri Purho turns that idea
around in this game, dealing with his parents’ divorce.
The game is completely identical to the original Pong game, and therefore does
not fit his series of monthly experimental games with innovative gameplay.
Instead, it was later revealed it was just an April Fool’s joke. The game
mocks The Marriage where players where encouraged to find their own
interpretation of the game’s rules or meaning, while they are close to non-
existent for this game.
This is what Petri Purho came up with himself: The bats are of course my
parents. My parent are very long and thin, so this is represented by the shape
of the boxes. The ball is an unwanted child of their marriage. I was quite
young when my parent’s divorced so, that is represented by the size of the
ball. Goal of the game is to score 10 points in court to ensure that the child
doesn’t end up living with you.
The Divorce