[SOUND CLIP FROM SCARY GAME PLAYS]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: An unusual video game has been popping up in exhibitions throughout Europe this past year -- the PainStation. Dubbed a contemporary dueling system by its creators, the PainStation allows two players to square off and inflict pain on one another while playing a version of the classic video game Pong. Force your opponent to mess up, and the PainStation gives your opponent's hand an electric shock, a blast of heat or several whips from a wire. If you pull your hand away from the pain, you lose. Despite leaving a trail of bloodied knuckles in its wake, the PainStation has been winning awards as a pioneer among interactive video games. PainStation creators TilMan Reiff and Volker Morawe spoke to me last year about the genesis of their now-notorious game.

VOLKER MORAWE: The original concept kind of was from this -child games -- in Germany they call it Falte Mau Mau which is a game of cards, and the one who loses, he gets slashes with the remaining cards he has in his hand. And then we came up with the idea of making a video game that inflicts pain and then we were thinking about what kind of pain could we inflict? And obviously the electricity was the first, and then we came up with the whip and the heat and then we combined it to form the pain execution unit. It is fun, because you play against your opponent, and you will see him suffering, and, and the next time you will suffer, and the pain is not all that bad, so--

BROOKE GLADSTONE: It's the-- the pleasure/pain principle.

VOLKER MORAWE: Yes.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Does sound like fun. [LAUGHS]

VOLKER MORAWE: Mm-hm. [LAUGHS]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: How much pain are we talking about? [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

TILMAN REIFF: It is!

VOLKER MORAWE:The heat will get very bad if you play for a long time, and the, the same with the whip, because the whip always hits you on the same spot.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And it's the whip that can get your hands bloody.

TILMAN REIFF: Yeah, that's the whip.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Are you targeting your game to sado-masochists? I mean who's interested in doing this?

TILMAN REIFF:A lot of people are interested in playing this! It's a really intense gaming experience because you have to concentrate on the game very much because you don't want to get hurt, and the game is accompanied by a lot of noises and the PainStation will talk to you and say [SPEAKING IN SCARY VOICE] Ohhhh, come on, my friend. [LAUGHTER] And stuff like that, so you're really getting involved into the game.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:Is this an acquired taste or do you think you can really just sort of sit down and have fun getting hurt just from -- right out of the box?

TILMAN REIFF: Some people, they play it once and they never play it again. And other people, they play it once and they can't stop playing. They come back even though their hand looks really bad already -- they still keep playing.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Why do you think that is?

TILMAN REIFF:If there is danger involved, it's way more fun. It's a big thrill. Also winning is way more fun if it's combined with pain or this physical stress -- you can see this in all the extreme sports nowadays.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Well when you wanted to bring the body into the virtual world, what made you decide on pain? Is it harder to give pleasure?

TILMAN REIFF: Yeah, I think so. I mean it's, it's really easy to give pain. [LAUGHS]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Did you mull over the idea of trying to give pleasure?

TILMAN REIFF: No, not really. [LAUGHTER]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:I don't know. It sounds to me like you're tapping into the age-old adolescent desire of playing chicken -- see who can withstand the most pain or take the biggest risks. Is this something we really need to be encouraging kids to do?

TILMAN REIFF: I'm not sure. I -- one guy came up to me and he said if his son would ever come to him on Christmas and say [SPEAKING IN CHILD VOICE] oh, daddy, I want to have a PainStation for Christmas! [LAUGHTER] -- what, what would he do? I mean the PainStation raises questions like this, and I think this is also a message -- to raise these questions and to discuss these questions. But it's not that, that there has to be a PainStation in every children's room. [LAUGHS]

BROOKE GLADSTONE: [LAUGHS] Thank you very much, Tilman Reiff.

TILMAN REIFF: Yeah, you are welcome.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And Volker Morawe.

VOLKER MORAWE: Yes. [PRONOUNCES HIS OWN NAME] [FOLK er mor AH vuh]. [LAUGHTER]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:[LAUGHS] Thank you. Volker Morawe and Tilman Reiff are students of the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne and co-creators of the PainStation. This week they debuted the PainStation II--: a bigger, better and yes, more painful version of the game, complete with several different whips and a flashlight that blinds you. Coming up, Europe tries to make internet speech more fair and balanced, and why Americans increasingly are logging off. Also Dick Cavett explains how he got Lester Maddox all riled up. This is On the Media from NPR.