The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
RSS feeds: v0.91; v1.0 (RDF); v2.0; Atom.
12:30pm on Friday, 1st December, 2023:
Comment
I've just finished reading Junkyard Sports, by Bernard De Koven (or Bernie DeKoven, as he calls himself on this occasion).
The idea of junkyard sports is an appealing one: provide an assortment of odds and ends and let loose would-be players to make games out of them (in this case, sports-like games). The book explains the concept, then a bunch of such games are outlined that the person organising the event (the "junkmaster") can use to inspire the players.
The assortment of odds and ends could include anything, but reading through the examples there's a heavy reliance on socks, rubbish bins and balloons. It reminds me of the TV series that inspired it (Junkyard Wars in the USA — Scrapheap Challenge in the UK) where the theory is that you have an entire scrapheap at your disposal but actually it's been secretly seeded with things you're going to need and there are "experts" on hand to direct you to use them. You can go off-piste if you want, but "ooh, look, socks, we can roll those up to make balls!".
As with De Koven's books on New Games, you get a real sense of his infectious enthusiasm but also a sense that the whole project is doomed if it's not managed by someone with similar levels of both enthusiasm and infectiousness. People might gather for one-off events, but they're not going to be going to the youth club every week looking forward to creating a new junkyard sport. I can imagine that people might have tried this system when it came out, because it has a solid philosophy and rationale behind it, but the idea didn't spread and I don't expect that it's used by more than a few diehards these days (the book came out in 2005).
A good many of the junkyard sport ideas suggested are variants on existing sports — Basketball, but you stack up bins or cardboard boxes for the basket and you use a balloon that you have to keep in the air rather than a ball that you have to bounce on the ground, that kind of thing. Some combine two sports together — Tennis, but you have to run round the court to bases like in Baseball. None are independent of other games, but given that the examples are all deliberately based on other games (for familiarity) this isn't a criticism.
Some of the variations repeat mechanics, such as bouncing a ball that's usually kept in the air or keeping in the air a ball that's usually on the ground, or using a rolled-up sock inside another sock (called a "Schmerltz" for some reason) as a bat. Adding extra balls is also common. There are some quite interesting ideas, though: I particularly like the pinball simulator, where the players sit in chairs like thumper bumpers or have brooms as if they were flippers, but I'm not entirely sure that many kids today actually know what a pinball is ("is it a kind of wizard"?).
Not all the games described are well-designed. The Basketball-with-a-balloon game I mentioned earlier (called Air Basketball) ends if someone knocks over the stack of bins or boxes, which means that the first team to score merely has to demolish the stack and they've won the game. It's an easy fix (end the game but declare the team that knocks it down the losers) but in a supportive environment watched over by someone who's going to guilt you into not doing that, you can see how the problem never arose. It would definitely arise if this game were played for real, though.
The book is very US-centric, which might explain why its ideas never took off elsewhere. The sports it suggests ideas for are Soccer, (American) Football, Basketball, Baseball, (Ice) Hockey and Volleyball. These are popular in the USA but only Soccer (that is, Association Football) is universal. Most children in the UK won't have played any of the other games listed. Unfortunately, the descriptions of the junkyard sports based on these games often presuppose an understanding that we don't all have in other parts of the world — even at a basic level, such as what the field markings are, or what "spiking" means. Pieces of equipment are named that I had to look up to find out what they are — gym scooters, kickballs, wiffle balls.
One of the games outlined, Noodle Hockey, is played in a swimming pool. Players have long foam swimming aids ("noodles") that they use to whack a beach ball into goals at the side of the pool. There are two great lines in the description:
"Yes, players can hit each other with the noodles as well (since it's inevitable, we may as well make it legal)."
"If people get too serious about the game, they might gang up on each other, which, though not necessarily painful, can be hurtful."
I really like those!
Overall, I applaud the book's aims but can see why ultimately its hopes didn't materialise as a movement. As with De Koven's other books, it's all about getting people to play and be creative, but it neglects the creativity. It's as if game design isn't a medium of expression, it's a means to an end. Yes, getting kids to have fun while gaining fitness is good; yes, putting the design of the game in the hands of the players means that the result will be inclusive; yes, it is great seeing people having a blast 20 minutes later. Those are De Koven's reasons for creating games, though, not everyone's. It's not so much about games as about play.
If your reasons are in line with this, well I recommend the book to you (along with The New Games Book). If you're hoping to teach people to design games, rather than to mod them so that they personally find them fun, you're better off putting together a box of stuff and telling them they have two hours to make a board game about (rolls die) needy (rolls die) trees.
Latest entries.
Archived entries.
About this blog.
Copyright © 2023 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).