Lose / Lose is an art project video game conceived by Zach Gage. It’s a standard overhead space shooter, but each alien ship the player destroys deletes a real file from the player’s computer. The game was created to explore the relationship between technology that we rely on the but perhaps don’t fully understand, and the consequences of using it without stopping to think about the implications of our actions.

Although touching aliens will cause the player to lose the game, and killing aliens awards points, the aliens will never actually fire at the player. This calls into question the player’s mission, which is never explicitly stated, only hinted at through classic game mechanics. Is the player supposed to be an aggressor? Or merely an observer, traversing through a dangerous land?

Why do we assume that because we are given a weapon an awarded for using it, that doing so is right?