The 1960’s and 70’s were an interesting time for games. Not only was the advent of computational game play just coming to light, but also traditional ways of play were being challenged and reinvented, being presented in interesting ways that sought new goals from the typical ‘win’ scenario. The alternative gaming movement that took place during this time was able to contradict traditional modes of play while still maintaining familiar game mechanics. Three games from these movements will be presented and analyzed in order to explore the way alternative games were being used during this time.
“Play hard. Play fair. Nobody hurt.” This was the motto of the New Games movement that took place in the 1970’s, a movement that strove to remove competition and aggression from games (as was, and still is, a very common part of play) in order to motivate a sense of unity, cooperation, and peace. The games that arose from this movement and similar movements were a reaction to worldwide tension and conflict, most specifically the Vietnam War. These were meant to be a welcome estival juxtaposition to the damp winter of chaos and warfare going on the world over. Thus it comes as no surprise that these games had group goals (or no clear goals at all) with no one winner declared at the conclusion of the game. One such game from this movement Knots had all the players hold hands in any possible formation. That is, your arm could be going under another’s, over, or perhaps even through someone’s legs. The idea was to create a complex knot of player connected by held hands. Then the players were required to untangle themselves without eve letting go hands. Like many games of the New Games movement, Knots required heavy physicality between players. Constant physical contact must be maintained in order to complete the game successfully. While physicality was not a new concept in gaming by any means, the longevity of proximity was novel. This, combined with group-oriented goals, such as the entire set of players working in synch to un-tie the know, opened up a new set of games for people to explore. The group mentality approach to the New Games movement has led these games to be very popular in Youth Groups, management retreats, and summer camps today, used to promote trust, team spirit, and non-aggressive competition.
Beginning in the 60’s and gaining momentum into the 1970’s was the Fluxus movement. This was a movement that promoted games as an art form, as a platform on which people could unleash creative energy and make statements and, most importantly, continually reform a particular concept. As Pearce discusses, Fluxus objects, like chess were beautiful in and of themselves, but their true beauty lay in their potential energy, in the game play that could and would emerge from them: “It is in the playing that a chessboard comes alive, and the game object becomes a catalyst for play.” The Fluxus boxes were intended as a kind of do-it-yourself kit to art. They allowed the play to manipulate the items in the box in free, creative ways, producing their own unique results. While there were cards with some direction included with the sets, the open-ended nature of the Fluxus boxes broke from the norm of conventional gaming. There was no win condition or lose condition, no teams or even true players really, in the traditional sense. Anyone could open up a Fluxus set and create their own piece of art by simply using the tools provided. This allowed for new types of game play, including heavy modding of either new or old forms of play. This tendency towards creative iterating and push for modulation expanded the world of gaming and became a precursor for digital gaming, which would, as we will see, introduce a world of constant editing, modulation, and iterative design for game culture.
Hacker culture erupted in the 1960’s and 70’s as young computer scientists converged upon this new and blossoming field. Most hackers of the day did not come from a computing background for the simple reason that there was not much of a computing background to come from, but this led to highly motivated individuals working to create work that was personally motivated. One such result was Spacewar, an early space combat game played on single consoles. Spacewar’s fame does not necessarily come from its game play, although it was extremely fun and highly addictive. It is a landmark in digital gaming more so for its viral nature. Created in 1961 at MIT by Steve Russell and colleagues, Spacewar quickly caught on in the computing world and just as quickly was being changed, upgraded, and modded by others in the field. Spacewar would seem conventional in it’s game play today – control a ship and try to kill opposing ships while not being killed yourself – but it was novel at the time, as it was on a digital produced monitor. However, even this alone does not quite stand out from conventional gaming mechanics and concepts. It was the viral mod culture around Spacewar that allowed anyone (assuming you had the computing knowledge) to edit and play the game as he/she saw fit. It was an entirely new way of gaming. While any board game or physical could and has been modded in this way, digital gaming provided a sense of definitiveness about the rules you created: while you were playing the game, the rules COULD NOT be broken. And these rules allowed players to do things they would not be able to do in the real world, like fly ships and blow each other up. In short, Spacewar provided an ever changing yet authoritative platform for game design in a way the world had never seen.
While sometimes drastically different from each other, the games of the different alternative game movements of the 1960’s and 70’s all held to a spirit of reinvention, modulation, and group collaboration that has become so fundamental in so many games today. It allowed for gaming to be seen in a serious light that could have political implications, but also a more communal light, communal in a way that never before seemed possible with the coming of digital gaming.
Works Cited
Brand, Stewart. 1972. Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums. Rolling Stone, December 7.
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, December 2005.
Pearce, Celia. "Games as Art: The Aesthetics of Interactivity." Visible Language: Special Issue on Fluxus. January 2006.
Comments