The New Games Movement emerged from the early 70ies onward, when groups or individual creatives engaged with the civil rights movement, gender equality, pacifism and environmentalism in the States brought games into play for social change. Their raising concern was a response to the context of the Vietnam War, of dramatic social and economic change fueled by a looming energy crisis, and of widespread drug abuse.
As Ludica (game design/art collective of Celia Pearce, Jacki Morie, Tracy Fullerton, and Janine Fron, ) report,
the New Games movement,formed by Stewart Brand and others in the early 1970s in the United States as a response to the Vietnam War,against a backdrop of dramatic social and economic change fueled by a looming energy crisis, civil rights, feminism, and unhealthy widespread drug abuse. (Ludica, 2007)
In their article, Ludica provide a brief overview of the emergence of the NGM back in the 70ies, as they propose a revisiting of its spirit. Written in 2007, their approach resonates a time before the advent of omni-present connectivity, the digitization of social life and the sophistication of today’s digital games. Hoverver, the environmental, sociopolitical and gender concerns still appear as urgent issues, and as such, the gesture of revisiting the NGM and games’ political agency is still highly relevant.
Further on the genealogy of the New Games Movement, Jason Johnson’s personal account from the gaming’s hippie era (between fun, spirituality and protest), until the gradual application to the early digital games of the 80ies.
I found it very informative on the political agency of games at the time, plus it provides some haunting documentation images and describes the end of a chapter.
***Spoiler Alert *** do not leave your games unattended ***
For the purposes of TiP, I have extracted a set of questions based on the two articles:
- What is the social context within which a game emerges?
- What kinds of values “govern” the game?
- In what ways do designers embed those values to their game design?
- To what extent are games didactic, and to what other extent offer a framework for negotiating with the proposed values?
- How did the first era of the New Games Movement came to a closure?