Games are definitely part of the whole culture-art thing, more and more particularly. Video games, role-playing games, whole universes created and experienced. And even more abstract day-to-day games can be their own little thought-worlds with rules where stories happen.

Insomuch, Man-Like Machines is interested in game-making. Indeed, Joe and George's first creative collaborations were on a Civ II Shadowrun mod and something epic called Tha Gizzame in the frequent emails before the world that was created for it turned into the Deiphobos universe (more on that in the next couple of decades, presumably - it's a long-term thing).

For the moment, all I've got to show here is Joe's brief essay on something great called the Name Game, and directions, images and rules for George's make-it-yourself strategic arcade combat board game SUPER GAME LEVEL (check it out - below). But be assured we have fingers in pies; Joe is steadily working on something big and cool about posthuman exploits in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

A brief essay on “The Name Game”

by Joe Foster

People think it started with T-Shirts.  Well that’s the legend of course, but initially it wasn’t T-Shirts, it was ninjas, hobos, captains (sea, or any other kind), and of course the mighty “loaf”.  I am referring to The Name Game.

A Hypothetical, “What does Google know about ‘The Name Game’” would result in something like this:
 The Name Game is home-made-fun
 The Name Game is on tiny slips of paper
 The Name Game is how you make super heroes
 The Name Game is “band name” craziness
 The Name Game evolves with your urban tribe.
….

In case the above didn’t provide really any useful information about what The Name Game is actually is, here are the rules:
You write nouns and adjectives on a paper.
You cut them all apart into individual slips.
Mix nouns and adjectives together in receptacle.
Pick out a couple and read them out loud if they are funny/bizarre.

That’s how it starts, but soon people start bending the rules.  Strict rationing and correlation of nouns and adjectives vanishes; phrases emerge; haiku is created from the slips -- mass chaos to be sure, but on a meta-Name Game level.  Before you know it, “Captain Hobo” (which might have been pretty funny the first time you played!) is now really lame.  The ante just keeps getting upped to “One hand washes the oriental”, or “I can’t believe it’s not ball shaped”.  After that you just start making haikus, hypothetical “Decomposing Ninja vs. Financially Irresponsible Cheesemaker” grudge matches, and other meta-Name Game constructs.  In other words, the game degenerates from its pure, though aforementioned now lame, origins.

Well, clever fuckers that we are, we made a The Name Game T-Shirt party-pack.  The “game” basically amounted to, “Hey, our shirts together say, ‘Pre-Planned Emasculation’, wanna fuck?”   We were obviously marketing to the lowest common denominator.  Inevitably, The Name Game T-Shirts became a hit at a certain Hollywood party.

The way it happened was that a picture of Jake Gyllenhal and Benicio del Toro wearing shirts that say, collectively, “Deus Ex Hobo”, appeared in People magazine.   That this has multiple layered meanings cannot be overstated at this point.

The orders poured in. We made quite a lot of money in the short time that it was fashionable to have The Name Game parties.    Enough money, it turned out, to fund the beginnings of the empire that would be called Post-Capitalism.