The creation of new games often seems to become bogged down with the myriad preconceptions of culture. All games require depictions of violence; there must always be a clear winner; the point of the game is to win; games are idle wastes of time and cannot serve any additional, functional purpose—all these arbitrary restrictions lead to a narrow-minded approach to creation that limits innovation. The Fluxus and New Game Movements present alternative ideas in response to these cultural limiters, bringing about the creation of different kinds of games. Drawing from these movements, several games demonstrate the potential of games to break free of traditional molds. Four particularly relevant ones are Spacewar, Earthball, White Chess, and Multicycle.
First is Spacewar, which is not a part of the Fluxus or the New Game Movements, but it does reflect a similar spirit of innovation. The central gameplay mechanic is simple: two spaceships fly around and try to blow each other up. Unfortunately, Spacewar was unable to break free of the typical gameplay focus on violence. However, as the first computer game, Spacewar, demands a different perspective. While its gameplay sounds similar to myriad games of today, it was quite novel in 1962. The idea of using a computer (previously just a computational tool) as a medium for play transformed cultural perceptions of the device. Stewart Brand, in his essay “Spacewar,” discusses how the game proceeded to develop a culture of its own. Programmers continued to “hack” the game, adding new features and minor changes to improve the gameplay. Several versions of the game appeared, all tweaked according to the tastes of individual programmers. In this way, Spacewar might be considered the first “modding” community game. Also, the game itself served as a test space for practicing or testing code, serving a dual-purpose that ultimately benefited the professional (non-game) productivity of the programmers as well. Thus, while Spacewar lacks innovative gameplay, its very inception was innovative, as well as its ability to cultivate a society of “modders” and provide a useful space for programming practice.
Next is Earthball, which came about as a part of the New Games Movment, driven by the mantra “Play Hard. Play Fair. Nobody Hurt.” The movement emphasized physicality, interactivity, emergent gameplay, and the importance of players as people. The gameplay of Earthball is simple: two teams attempt to push a giant inflated ball towards opposite goals. The physicality and interactivity are evident in the description. Fron et al., in the essay “Sustainable Play,” made an interesting observation about the emergent aspect of Earthball. In some games, players would defect and switch teams when the ball was about to be pushed past a goal. By their efforts, the ball was pushed back the other direction until the same thing happened again, perpetuating the game as long as possible. At this point, the goal of the game was no longer to win, but to play. Players intentionally broke the rules in order to make the game more fun—an idea that is both acceptable and encouraged by the New Games Movement. Earthball also reflects the ideas of a "well-played game" presented in DeKoven's book The Well-Played Game. It's focus is on fun--on a means, not an end. The game itself is dynamic and changeable into whatever it needs to be to suit the desires of the entire group. In all these ways, Earthball delivers a unique gameplay experience that is fun, active, social, and flexible. It is "well-played." Even though it has an end condition, the point isn’t to achieve victory. By perpetuating its own gameplay, Earthball discovers fun without becoming bogged down by what games are “supposed” to be.
The last two games are White Chess and Multicycle, which both clearly demonstrate the Fluxus ideal for games and provide good examples of Celia Pearce’s argument for “Games as Art.” If games are art, then they can be more than just play—they can have a message or exist to make a statement. For instance, Yoko Ono’s famous White Chess was conceived as a protest to the violence of the Vietnam War. In the game, all the pieces are white. This results in an inevitably convoluted game that is almost impossible to actually play. Such intentional obfuscation of game mechanics is also present in George Maciunas’s Multicycle: a vehicle of 16 bikes combined into one. The actual game arises from trying to drive the bizarre vehicle, a task that is impossible without cohesive teamwork and communication. Thus, like Yoko Ono’s piece, Multicycle also makes a statement, this one about the value of collaboration.
From these examples, it is clear that games need not be limited to the narrow restrictions of mainstream game-design conventions. Games can be innovative and useful (such as Brand's observations on Spacewar), "purposeless," emergent, and flexible (according to DeKoven, Fron et al., and the New Games Movement), politically-charged and artistic (according to Pearce), and/or serve any number of functions beyond the basic idea of “play.” These special cases serve as a challenge to game designers to dispose their preconceptions and pursue new and creative ideas.
--Daniel
Works Cited:
Brand, Stewart. "SPACEWAR: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums," Rolling Stone, Dec. 7, 2001.
DeKoven, B. (1978) The Well-Played Game: A Player's Philosophy. New York: Anchor Books, 2nd Ed.
Fron, J., Fullerton, T., Morie, J. & Pearce, C. (aka Ludica) (2005). "Sustainable Play: Towards a New Games Movement for the Digital Age." Digital Arts & Culture Conference Proceedings, Copenhagen, Dec. 2005.
Peace, Celia. "Games as Art: The Aesthetics of Interactivity." Visible Language: Special Issue on Fluxus. Jan. 2006.
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