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Play (and code) the Munch Museum heist
September 18, 2006 - by Ian Bogost

Silence VariationsRecently I wrote about documentary games, games that depict an account of a real-life event. Silence Variations is a new one from Overdog. The game reenacts the 2004 armed robbery of the Munch Museum in Oslo, in which "Scream" and "Madonna" were stolen.

The game was commissioned by Bergen Kunsthall for an exhibition in Norway, so it only exists in multiuser installation form. However, the team has released all the code for the game under a Creative Commons license. So, you build your own variations, or use it as a basis for another work.

More on the game from the Overdog website:

Silence plays out endless variations on this theme, as a two-player computer game installation: Wave your guns, find the paintings, and get the hell out. If nobody gets hurt, all is well. It's the classic heist story, but with a twist: There is no flaky partner, no smart-ass heroes, and no wise-cracking cops. Too simple? Well, this time that's the tune.



Comment from Harlekin on September 18, 2006

This looks quite interesting. I wish more teams would release game code in that manner. It can only result (eventually) in more diverse, political, subversive and potentially artful games.
I think you will find, by the way, that the museum is called the Munch museum, after the painter Edvard Munch who painted the Scream as well as other masterpieces...

Comment from Ian Bogost on September 18, 2006

Thanks, fixed. It's what I meant to say, of course, but my fingers had something else in mind :)

Comment from SidKant on September 18, 2006

Considering myself to be somehwat of a student of art and knowng that my friends think of me as pretty cynical and sarcastic sometimes, the Munch Museum Robberies provided a hell of a lot of conversation for me when they occured. I think the idea of making a simple gun waving, twistless action game of the event instead of a ridculous heist puzzler of this event is interesting because of its accurate portrayal. I also like that it gives a real comic feel to the situation which might seem over the top if that wasn't the nature of the crime. With the pop culture thats grown up around art heists in movie sand novels showing intricate planning on how to slink past the laser grids and pressure sensors gaurding priceless artifacts, the reality that these gunmen jsut ran in, tore the famous Scream off the wall and tossed it in the back of a broken down little hatchback and still havent gotten caught these two years later is the perfect source material for a tongue in cheek installaton piece.

Comment from Fredrik on September 20, 2006

Thanks for all the nice words guys, that really makes it worth wile sharing code, and encourages us to do the same around the next corner. The stuff we relased is the script code and the compiled engine. If you want to tweak even further, the engine itself and all the code can be purchased at a friendly 100$ from
Garage Games
If any of you end up doing anything with it, give us a shout!


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