Whiffle Hurling

Clive Thompson of Wired writes about an MFA grad student at Rutgers, Tom Russotti, who invented a game he eventually called "Whiffle Hurling" - apparently a version of the Irish game of hurling played with whiffle bats and ball.

In addition to the apparent playworthiness of this game, what struck me was Thompson's perspective on the whole thing, as a games columnist for Wired. He writes:

"After all, we live in a golden age of play. The video-game industry is bristling with innovation: You've got haptic controllers on the Wii, titles like Eye of Judgment merging card-games with computers, and the increasingly strange economic activity in online worlds. Our culture is clearly hungry for new forms of play.

"Yet how many new major physical sports have you played in recent years? Zero, I'll bet. The pantheon of major team-sports -- football, basketball, baseball, soccer, hockey -- hasn't significantly altered in decades.

"So Russotti decided to expand the field a bit. By creating a new sport, he decided, he could level the playing field between athletes. When you join a pickup game of basketball or football, it's always slightly marred by the fact that some of the players will be totally experienced -- making it slightly more dull for the less-expert folks. A new sport wouldn't have that problem."

We, of course, are aware that people are continually inventing new sports as reported so faithfully in the Junkyard Sports News. But Tompson, typical of so many of those who have come to define games as things that happen on a computer, saw Russotti's accomplishment as groundbreaking. Well, for Thompson, and Russotti, it is true enough, groundbreaking enough. And perhaps the same will be true for those computer game players who read this article. I hope so. I hope they pay special attention to Russotti's comment:

"Essentially, were figuring out how to play. And this is, counter intuitively, a big part of what makes a new game so great: You get to explore the intriguing and unpredictable ways that the rules interact."

Yup. That's what it's all about, the fun of new game and sports and Web 2.0 even. Not just the newness, but more the getting to invent them together.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith