Massive Multiplay on the Playground

Our discussion on Monday about scale and massively multiplayer gaming reminded me of the large-scale games I used to organize when I was in elementary school in Sunnyvale, California. This was way before cell phone games, video games and Pokemon. You might be wondering how we entertained ourselves. Well, during recess we played tetherball (a game whose only design goal clearly was to find a way not to lose the ball), kickball, jump rope and Four Square (a ball bouncing game played mostly by girls). Kids were in better shape in those days.

While we didn't have Game Boys, we had various toy fads, including my favorite, clackers. These were hard plastic balls connected by a short length of cord and a ring. There were really only two things you could do with clackers (three, if you count injuring yourself): move the ring up and down so the balls swung like pendulums and bounced off each other with a clacking sound, and the dreaded "butterfly." The butterfly was a maneuver in which, by moving the ring up and down more vigorously, you caused the balls to bounce off each other at both above and below your hand in two opposing arcs. The balls would make a loud machine-gun-like clatter. More often than not, when you attempted the butterfly the balls would fly around wildly and hit your arm, causing a painful bruise. We used to wrap towels around our arms when practicing. There were all kinds of rumors about the balls shattering and blinding children, and kids getting hit in the temples and killed. Urban legends, I think.

We also entertained ourselves with Wacky Packs, stickers that were irreverent spoofs of products. These became the black market currency when I was in third or fourth grade, something like Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, except they were not a game. We like them because of the gross illustrations, but looking back it's pretty clear that Wacky Packs expressed some kind of cultural anxiety of their time. Remember, this was the '70s, the transition decade between eras of idealism and social activism, and self-obsession and hyper-materialism.

Both clackers and Wacky Packs were banned at my school, and I'm proud to say my massively multiplayer games were added to the list of verboten activities. We played three games: MMP Crack the Whip, MMP Red Rover and MMP Electricity. Of course, we didn't called them "massively multiplayer," as the term did not yet exist.

MMP Crack the Whip

When I visited my cousins, who lived nearby, we used to love to play Crack the Whip, which could be called the Shoulder Dislocation Game. We would link hands in a chain with one person at an end designated as the leader. The leader would run around the yard making violent snaking movements, trying to get people to let go. There really wasn't a way to win or lose, though if you repeated lost your grip, you were deemed a "loser." The purpose of the activity was to get dizzy, run around a lot and scream.

At the school, I introduced the game during lunch recess and everyone wanted to play. I mean everyone -- the entire school population. We would gather in the large grass field next to the school, join hands and crack the largest whip that may ever have existed, probably more than a hundred kids. Of course, there was no way of winning or losing, and we didn't care. We just ran and screamed. Sometimes the leader would tie the chain in knots by going under the hands and we'd end up in a tight bundle.

The school officials were alarmed. I guess it may have looked a little like a scene from "Children of the Damned". They glanced nervously at each other but let us play for a few days.

MMP Red Rover

Red Rover is a game most people know. Two teams face each other across a field and join hands. Someone calls "Red Rover, Red Rover, let Bobby come over." Bobby would then leave his team, run to the other team and try to break through a pair of joined hands. Potential wrist and finger injuries exist. If the runner gets caught, then he joins the opposing team. If he breaks through, then he returns to his team with an enemy player who joins his team. A team wins if the opposing team is reduced to one player. This game was impossible to finish with 50 or more kids to a team, but it looked impressive.

MMP Electricity

Electricity is a game I must have read about when I was a kid. I don't remember the source and at the time I couldn't remember the goal, so I modified it for the playground. We formed two parallel lines and held hands. At someone's signal, two players at the ends of the lines squeezed the hand of the players next to them, who used their other hands to squeeze the next players' hands and so forth. Thus, an invisible impulse raced down both lines. When the impulse reached the end, it came back to the leader, who shouted "beep" or something like that. First "beep" won."

Electricity was the game I liked the most because we were standing almost perfectly still when we played it. Sometimes we formed a circle. School officials didn't know what we were doing. All they knew was that this had all the hallmarks of a cult: kids seemingly drained of free will holding hands and obeying a charismatic leader. They had to put a stop to it.

We had three or four days of MMP fun before there was an announcement that, due to "safety concerns," we were no longer permitted to gather and play games in large groups. I suppose someone could have gotten hurt, but it hadn't happened. More kids got hurt daily by falling off the monkey bars.

From that point on, all MMP activities had to be sanctioned by the school. Thus, we were forced to square dance (OK, I liked it) and dress up like miners and "pan for gold" for Gold Rush Day. But it wasn't the same. Large-scale, spontaneous game-playing derives part of its pleasure from the very fact that its is not sanctioned, sponsored or supervised. There's a very specific kind of feeling that one gets when joining with like minds to play. Perhaps it's a long-buried herding instinct or simply a need to connect with and belong to a group of peers without the presence of an authority. I remember that, even though I was very young, I was witnessing something unusual and powerful when I saw my classmates put aside their differences to play my games. We felt the rush of independence when we realized that we could organize something ourselves and it could be fun. Who needed adults?

No wonder they banned our MMP games.