The rise of the New Games Movement and the Fluxus movement are just a few movements that seek to break the traditional conventions of gaming or play. However, what exactly are the traditional conventions of a game? According to Pearce, games all share six distinguishable features: parameterized play (rules of the game), a goal, obstacles, resources, consequences (rewards and penalties), and information (Pearce, 69). By altering or changing these features, movements such as the New Games Movement and Fluxus movement have essentially changed the ways in which players interact or play. Three games from the aforementioned movements that subvert these common features are Prui, Uru, and Velvet-Strike.
Ludica states that games within the New Games Movement “’take back the rules’ and break free of the oppressive constraints of commercial games” (Ludica, 5). The New Games Movement is also non competitive and promotes player collaboration, while still making the play enjoyable and fun. One game of the non-digital context of the New Games Movement is Prui, where players wander around blindly shaking other people’s hands saying the word “prui”. However, later in the game a leader or the Prui is introduced who cannot say the word “prui”, and players who shake the leader’s hand are converted into leaders as well. The game is finished once everyone is silent due to everyone turning into leaders. What is interesting is that once the game unfolds players tend to bend the rules. This is especially true in the USC case study where self-appointed leaders emerge, which also happened when we played the game. Clearly this is not meant to happen because it breaks the rules set in place, but as DeKoven said to the USC study group, “These things happen” (Ludica, 3) and it in no way detracts from the game. The game is more focused on the interaction between the players and not the common convention of having to win or lose, a concept similar to DeKoven's view on games where he says, "victory is not determined by who wins, nor by what game we play, but rather by the quality of playing that we have been able to create together" (DeKoven, 12).
Another game is Uru, which is apart of the digital aspect of the New Games Movement. Uru is a massive multiplayer online game in which players are tasked to restore the culture of the D’Ni people (Ludica, 4). After the game closed, fans created their own servers in which they created new games such as the D’Ni Olympics, manifested games that used the properties of the game, but are unrelated to the actual game itself. By subverting the traditional aspects and play of the game Ludica says that Uru “became a playground in which players could inscribe their own rules and game activities” (Ludica, 4).
Finally, Velvet-Strike is one of the games of the Fluxus movement due to the fact that it is a mod of another mod, Counter-Strike. Counter-Strike is basically an online first person shooter where players compete on two different teams, Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists. Players compete on different maps where goals and objectives are different such as planting a bomb or saving hostages. Counter-Strike is mainly a very competitive and violent game involving shooting and killing other players. However, Velvet-Strike puts a twist on the game in that it “transforms a weapon into an artistic tool that shoots graffiti rather than bullets at a targeted surface” (Pearce, 77). By doing this, Velvet-Strike completely alters the game mechanics in Counter-Strike where the game is now central on art rather than killing.
Bibliography:
Brand,
Stewart. 1972. Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death
Among the Computer Bums. Rolling
Stone, December 7. Online:
http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/stone/rolling_stone.html
DeKoven,
Bernie. 2002. The Well-Played
Game, 3rd ed. Lincoln, NE: Writers Club Press.
Ludica
(Fron et al.). 2005. Sustainable Play: Towards A New Games
Movement for the Digital Age. In Digital
Arts & Culture Conference Proceedings, Copenhagen, December 2005.
Pearce,
Celia. 2006. Games as Art: The Aesthetics of Interactivity. Visible Language: Special Issue on Fluxus,
January 2006.
Comments