Alternative Game Movments: Breaking the Mold

    It seems lately that every game I rent, buy, or play derive from the same concepts:  there can and must be one winner (whether it be a team or a single person), and the winner is usually the person who kills or destroys the other players or the computer characters.  The Fluxus and New Games Movements sought to break away from this gaming standard.  Three particular games I found that uniquely challenged the standards in the gaming world are:  Rock Paper Scissors Tag, Velvet-Strike (Counter Strike patch), and Spacewar.

    Fron et al’s Sustainable play speaks of a number of games introduced in the New Game Movement.  One of these games, Rock Paper Scissors Tag, which I’ve had the pleasure of participating in, was introduced along with the Lap Game and a version of Earthball in a case study at USC.  Rock Paper Scissors Tag was, according to the article, was the group favorite.  During the game two “teams” play rock paper scissors and in each iteration, the winning team chases and tries to tag a member from the losing team, who would then become a part of the other team.  Since throughout the game individuals are constantly switching teams, people are constantly winning and losing and often times (as was the case when I played) the participants become too tired to continue and end the game.  The interesting part of the game was that it was highly competitive, but in the end, everyone was on the same team supporting DeKoven’s idea that “victory is not determined by who wins …but rather by the quality of playing…”  In spite of the competitive nature, there was no score and no real winner, just participants having fun.

    Spacewar is worth mentioning because it brought about the use of the computer as a game medium.  The game itself didn’t stray from the kill to win strategy, however “It bonded human and machine through a responsive broadband interface of live graphics display.” [Brand]  Putting a game onto a computer and into the hands of hackers revolutionized the world of gaming.  As the game spread to other computer research centers, it evolved. New features like the ability to “enter hyperspace” were added to the game within weeks of its spread.  The game, like hundreds that followed, followed the standards of gaming, but it introduced on a new platform, which would bring the gaming world into a new generation.

    Velvet-Strike, the mod on Counter-Strike, was a patch introduced to challenge the combat and militaristic aspects of digital games.  The patch transforms weapons in to artistic tools that shoot graffiti rather than bullets.  This is another example of how, by putting the rules and art of games into the hands of hackers, we’ll see the militaristic standards of digital gaming challenged and introduces into the digital game world a new form of protest.

 

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.