Solarpunk Gaming

We talk to two members of the artist collective Solarpunk Surf Club about their new solarpunk game Solarpunk Futures, gaming as a method of education and organizing, and the importance of kinds of organizing that don't contribute to burnout.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to it could happen here a podcast that is
remarkably today not really so much about things falling apart
and is mostly about things in fact getting better and
how we can do that. Um. I'm your host, Christopher.
With me today is Garrison and we're also joined by
Nick and Max, who are two members of the artist

(00:24):
collective solar Punk Surf Club, who have released a very
very interesting you game that we are here in part
of talk about called solar Punk Features. Hello, Dick, I Max,
How how are you doing? Hey? Doing well? Thanks? Yeah,
doing great. Thanks for having us one excited to have
you to on. So I guess my first question is
how did you too get into game design and sort

(00:47):
of first have the idea to do a sort of
like political gaming project like this. That's a good question.
So we're not, um, we're definitely not game designers by
Ushian or trade. UM. We're members of the artist collective
Solar Punk Surf Club, and we're particularly interested in creating

(01:13):
artwork and social practice that pre figures these kinds of
egalitarian futures that we'd like to see in the world.
And so this game was something that we've been kind
of a project that we've been thinking about and sitting
on for a little while, and was kind of something

(01:34):
that made us excited, got us excited, and we think
there's a whole bunch of other reasons that we think
it's a really cool um project to work on an
important project, and um, yeah, so we kind of took
a took a deep dive headfirst into the world of
game design and learning how to how to do that
over the past year or so. Okay, so how about we,

(01:58):
I guess also start with I guess explaining what solar
Punk features is and sort of how it works, and
then we can get into the sort of political aspect
of this sort of game design project. So, solar Punk
Futures is a storytelling game where players imagine pathways to
a desirable future by collaboratively overcoming real world challenges. The

(02:25):
object of the game is to collectively remember one of
the stories that grew into our utopia. Um. The idea
is that through back casting, where you assume within the
context of the game that players are already in utopia

(02:45):
and merely remembering back to their ancestors struggle, that players
can transcend the idea that what currently exists must necessarily
exist which social theorists Murray book Chain described as the
acid that corrodes all visionary thinking. So we wanted to

(03:07):
make a system to facilitate collaborative performance sort of we
call it a collaborative performance of memory, but one that
combines sincerity with laughter and speculative storytelling. The game also
combines a lot of different elements that we saw in

(03:29):
other games, um, collaborative you know, collaborative storytelling, cooperative gameplay, uh,
some elements of role playing, and different kind of mechanics
that we thought would build out that kind of like
I said earlier, those prefigurations of those egalitarian world So
we're trying to you know, we're trying to make a

(03:51):
game that had the fiction and the idea of utopia
built in uh in terms of the goals of the game,
but it was also we wanted to build it into
some of the mechanics of how the game is actually
played too. Um. But my question from here is sort of, well,
I mean, I guess firstly is I think what sort
of specifically drew d solar Punk is sort of an

(04:12):
aesthetic for for this, Like I know, there's been a
lot of sort of like the kind of sociocology solar
punk fusions, but I'm interested in what you you specifically
to it. So we see solar punk as a visionary
utopian politics and aesthetic that critically engages the reality of

(04:35):
capitalist catastrophe while maintaining a radical optimism about humanity's hopes
for a communal, ecological future. Nick was just speaking to this. UM.
We see it as a restorative justice process on a
planetary scale among people, between humans and non human nature.

(04:58):
So that means reclaiming pieces of the past, pre pre
capitalist culture. UM, that means material accountability for old practices,
and it also means radical adaptability towards new ones. I
think it provided a useful way of synthesizing several currents

(05:21):
that we had already been thinking about and involved in
between new media and social practice, thinking not just about
images and objects in space, but also the set of
social relations that those things produced. Yeah, we're also we're

(05:42):
like partisans within solar punk. I don't think there's I
don't think there's too many pro capitalists within solar punk,
but I think there are some people who are maybe
drawn to the aesthetic but don't necessarily have a politics.
But we do think that there's a kind of a
latent horizontalism, a latent anarchistic politics in a lot of

(06:03):
the aesthetics around solar punk and so uh as a
as a collaborative as an aesthetic that is being defined
collaboratively by people online and elsewhere. You know, we wanted
to kind of stick out of position about what we
thought a really realistic utopian world might look and feel. Like, Yeah,

(06:28):
and I think this is something else I know YouTube,
I'm very passionate about. Um is about specifically using games
as a medium to do this and sort of this
as like this kind of storytelling membrance as a specifically
political intervention. So could you talk a bit more about
you know, like a yeah, you know, good questions like okay,

(06:50):
so why this and not on you know, on this
sort of less more like like why this and not
a grilla garden? You go, why this and not some
other kind of organizing etcetera, etcetera. Um, yamage it here
you say about that. Yeah, well, I'm not gonna hate
on guerrilla gardening. I definitely think it's a both situation. Um,
it's also in the game. Yeah, that's true. It's it's

(07:10):
one of the cards, one of the tools that you
get to use as an ancestor. Um. Yeah, I think,
you know, there's a lot of different things that we
were thinking about when we were thinking about why a
game that I got a little bit into earlier. But
you know, for one, UM, I think it helps reach
abroad and often deep politicized audience with a fun way

(07:37):
to kind of engage in some thorny political questions. I
think that games as a participatory medium were especially interesting
for people who are interested in sort of anarchistic modes
of teaching and education, education through doing rather than lecture. Uh.

(08:00):
Although you know, we were also read a lot of
good political theories, so I'm not I'm not opposed to that. Um.
And then I think, uh, you know, games are also fun,
and there's a lot of there's a lot of political
organizing and activism work that happens out there that feels

(08:25):
that's hard and that is necessary to do. But just
because a lot of the important work to be done
is hard doesn't mean everything that's hard is important and
everything that's fun is you know, trifling or not going
to help us get where we're going and and overthrow

(08:48):
capitalism and build a new world. So um, yeah, those
are those are some of the reasons. And yeah, and
I think that's especially sert of interesting point because I
think a lot of what happens in left to spaces
you get a bunch of people doing stuff and they
burn out really fast because you know, you're doing an

(09:10):
enormous amount of work. It's all miserable. A lot of
the times you're getting physically assaulted. And like, I think
that's one of the things that's interesting to me about
this is you need other forms of sort of community
building and sort of like you need other forms of

(09:30):
organizing that do not involve you being repeatedly traumatized over
and over again. And that, yeah, especially just working on
something like this, and then I don't know, just playing
with your friends and having having things that are like
collaborative and joyful and community buildings I think very important
as a way to just you know, even just this

(09:51):
is not a very basically logistical level, but prevent people
from burning out. Yeah, And and I definitely think that
there's a role there to prevent people from burning out
and and inspiring people with some of the fun ideas,
the ideas that they come up with when they're not
looking at a Google doc meeting notes, but instead they're
playing a card game and maybe drinking a couple of beers,

(10:13):
and they're like, oh, how would I combine guerrilla gardening
and um, you know performance art too, bring about you know,
to solve a specific challenge of capitalism like deforestation or
these are some of the cards in the game. Um.
And so I think it can be inspiring, you know,

(10:34):
it's also um, it can be educational. I played with
some family. Uh. I think the first time I played,
when we got the physical copy that wasn't a play test,
was with some family and they don't necessarily identify as
leftists of any kind, but we had a really fun

(10:56):
game where we explored ideas of deconstructing borders, and uh,
you know they were It wasn't like I was guiding
them in this direction. It was just kind of the
assumption of the game that there was utopia, got beyond
this ingrained capitalist realism, that there just isn't that there

(11:18):
isn't an alternative. And they're like, okay, well the game
says we're already in utopia, so that means there's no
private property. And I was like, whoa, that's a that's
a jump. I didn't expect from my from my family.

(11:40):
One thing I'm interested in in terms of how it
functions as a game is like balancing the actual more
I don't know, fund based like role playing game elements
with like it's kind of structure as a thought exercise,
and like a world building game like how how how

(12:02):
do you approach trying to get a balance of like
fun role playing as well as this type of like
reverse world building. I was kind of I was still
a little bit on the y A game in the
first place question, but I'm also intrigued by the balancing
fun and politics question. If you don't mind, I wanted

(12:25):
to go back to the y A game for just
a second, um, because I think maybe it will lead
into this. Games are, you know, an ancient form of art.
I know, I said we work in new media before,
but games are actually an ancient form of art, and
I would argue social practice. Um. There's a game called Senate.

(12:50):
There's a game called the Royal Game of Er, which
both date to five thousand years ago in ancient Egypt
and ancient messo but Amia, respectively. We did in making
the game, we did a bunch of research on the
history of of games. There's a fifteenth century game called

(13:10):
the Game of the Goose from uh well, present day
Italy that paired like these gorgeous illustrations, also with like
didactic moral instruction. In the early early twentieth century, the
Surrealists created a series of games um with the intention
of breaking through traditional thought patterns and unleashing the potentials

(13:37):
of the unconscious. They also wanted to subvert academic modes
of inquiry um. And then today, you know, some of
our most popular table top games. You know, I think
Nick was mentioning this earlier, how they can sometimes inscribe
oppressive logics. So, you know, rather than a game where

(13:58):
you're competing in against other players to drive them into poverty,
or a game where you're trying to colonize other players land,
you know, for the purpose of world domination, we wanted
to make a game that actually practices the cooperation, interdependence, care, consent, uh,

(14:20):
these things that will be needed, you know, for it
actually to transcend the social ecological crises of our day.
And kind of to that point, you know, I would
say that games always reflect the beliefs and norms of
their historical context. So with solar Punk, futures. We wanted
to kind of flip the script and UM project using

(14:44):
you know, the modalities of like speculative fiction, collaborative performance.
As I mentioned, the values and more is of a
of a desirable future. So games are are very human thing,
an ancient human thing. And why do people play games? Uh?

(15:04):
As I mentioned, you know, education is part of it, UM,
but also building social bonds is another important piece, and
that always is a company. It's a very like academic
way of talking about it, maybe, but it is. It
is fun. It has to be fun. That's why people
do it. In terms of the To get a little
deeper into the balancing question, you know, every game is

(15:25):
a balance between a bunch of different competing factors. There's
a lot of people who were talking about the balance
between randomness and planning in in games and the balance
um between structure and free form. And it's definitely something
if there's any game designers out there thinking about making,
you know, games like this, play testing it will help

(15:48):
you so much because you know, the game in a
rough form existed in the spring of last year, but
playtesting really helped us refine a lot of those questions
and find that kind of balance between structure and freeformness.
We wanted it to be accessible to people who aren't

(16:10):
d n D players, but we've also played with people
who play a lot of d n D and GM
and all this stuff, and they took it in a
lot of fun and wild directions that we didn't expect.
That helped inform kind of new ways that we could.
You know, we added some optional rules in there for
people who want to take it in a different direction

(16:31):
or or add more complexity, or or even or for
other people who need a little bit like a handhold
and want to flip a coin to decide something rather
than um, you know, come up with it totally on
their own. So I think, um, yeah, it's a hard
it's a hard thing to balance, you know, all the

(16:52):
different factors that go into a game. But I definitely
think play testing and all the people who who played
with us in those early games really helped helped us
figure out the right balance. And to your earlier point
about burnout, like activists burnout, Um, some people who we've
invited to play the game maybe have have expressed this

(17:16):
idea of like, well, um, I'd love to, but I
don't have time, And maybe maybe they they think of
of gaming. And I know I've certainly been guilty of
this too, of feeling like guilt over things that feel
like it indulges like you should be doing the real

(17:36):
work all the time. But you know, I think it's
important to hold that in the perspective of the tradition
of of feminism, civil rights advocates, others on the left
that have talked about the importance of um joy that

(17:56):
needs to be integral to our struggles. There's the famous
Goldman quip, if I can't dance, it's not my revolution.
So perhaps you know, these ideas of like guilt and
shame or martyrdom or whatever are kind of toxic parts
of the old world that we need to to let
go of. UM. So I guess this is kind of

(18:17):
coming back to say that there's, as as Nick was saying,
there is an ethical, pre figurative case of um of
how games can allow people to um express themselves through play,
but there's also a tactical one, and that games can
be a structured way of thinking about how do we

(18:39):
create a liberated society? On everything I think is sort
of interesting about Well, like, I guess this is somewhat
less true of tabletop games as in medium because typical
games are a lot of sort of cloud storytelling ish stuff.
But like I know, like like so like I'm I

(19:00):
I put a lot of video games right, and it's
like it's like a lot of the structure of what
gaming is is sort of like it basically just turned
into like another job that you have, and it's interesting. Yeah,
it's like I mean, you know, and you get you

(19:21):
like you get, you get the same you even get
like bog like crossover between the terminology of like like
you know, like I think like grinding is like a grind. Yeah,
like grind. I think I think that came from getting
first and then moved over into the weird grindset stuff.
But like I think you're right, yeah yeah. And gamification, right,

(19:42):
that's another way that like gaming is being almost like
weaponized by capitalism to get squeezed just a little bit
more out of everyone. Yeah, there's there's a really interesting
article whose name I am forgetting because I am yeah,
I um, but Vicky Astawall wrote it like a while

(20:04):
ago that was about how like games are like it's
you know, it's it's used sort of mechanically doing the
same thing over and over and over again. But it's
it's a problem because it's like it's it's labor that's
like too perfect. I guess it doesn't create anything. There's
no sort of like I like, there's there's no sort
of like um like aspect that produces like value that

(20:30):
could be extracted. You're just sort of you're just doing
the thing over and over again. And it's like and
you know, and that then then that, you know, becomes
a problem for capital in some sense, is why there's
all these panics about like everyone being addicted to gaming,
because it's like, well, okay, you're not making money for us,
And but I think it's interesting truck simulator you could
be driving some actual Yeah. Yeah, but you know, I

(20:50):
think it's interesting that this is a political intervention into
that of creating something that's you know, precisely the opposite
of that that it's you. You're not sort of like
it's not just like an incredible intensification of the sort
of like reward systems of working. It's hey, we're gonna
come together and we're gonna tell we're gonna you know,

(21:11):
make collaborative decisions and overcome challenges. And I think I
think that's a very interesting sort of political angle to
come at this from. Yeah, I think a lot of
a lot of tabletop games in particular, compared to video games.
I think, well, I'll say, role playing games in particular
put you in a driver's seat in a way that

(21:33):
I think can is is hard, right, Like sometimes I'm
too tired to or if I think, you know, I
have a I have a D and D night, and
I'm like, I don't know if I have the energy
for this after working all day, um, whereas I might
have energy to play you know, a video game RPG
that kind of walks me, you know, handholds me through

(21:54):
a story. Um, it's kind of more like watching more passive. Um.
But I do think that there's I just think there's
something so important about thinking through what it might be
like to live in this utopian society. And it's important,

(22:19):
I think because if we don't, well, for one, a
ton of people just don't even think about it. Um.
And so to the extent that this game is something
that gets bought or played with families of people who
are you know, one of the many people who have
been deep politicized in this country. Um, I think that
can be really helpful. But I also think that, um,

(22:43):
I've played it, and I've found really fun and exciting
ideas that I wouldn't have thought about if I was
staring at a power map or something and thinking where
can we intervene in my city too, you know, help
help solve this or that problem. So I think, yeah,
I think there's power there. So I think one of

(23:13):
the other things I think is interesting to me about
how you cute sort of the team put this product together.
And it's also like you know, so like you can
buy the versions of it that have like very very
nice art, but you also just put the cards and
the rules up for free and you can just sort
of print and play it. So I ownered, Yeah, if
you could talk a bit about decision you do that
democratic accessibility is really important to us. It's part of

(23:34):
the concept that we wanted to integrate into every aspect
of the game's production and distribution. And so yeah, the
whole thing is available as a free print and play
PDF download. Um it's all Creative Commons licensed. UM. So
that's yeah. And you know, at the same time, as

(23:57):
you mentioned, we we uh are interested in materiality and
want wanted to create, um, something that could could accompany
you know, a face to face interaction as well, which
is you know, frankly, well, I'll just speaking for myself,
that's probably more my interest. Um, even though I think

(24:19):
you know like that. We have a tabletop simulator version too,
which I think is really cool. But as far as
the decision to make the game, you know, free, free forever. Um,
we want people to play, We want it to be
genuinely useful. Um. This is not a this is not
a capitalistic business venture. We're running a break even budget

(24:42):
and want to just keep doing projects and you know,
elaborating like the solar punk tradition and connecting it to social, ecological,
communalist politics. So if this can be a catalyst towards
being able to do more of that, then um, then
it's you know, we'll have we'll have succeeded on our

(25:02):
on our terms at least. What's this at us of
physical copies of how can people if they want to
use cards and stuff? What is how how would one
go about getting those? Yeah, so there's a couple of
different ways. People can download the free print and play
if they like, If they really love it, they want

(25:23):
to buy the physical copy. We sold out of the
kind of first edition that we were able to afford
to print, but we're raising money on Kickstarter for a
second edition. So if people back us at a certain
tier there, I think it's forty five dollars or higher. Uh,
you get a copy of the game when we're able

(25:44):
to print them. Uh And so yeah, so it's a
um and of course, as Max mentioned, you can also
play on tabletop simulator. But yeah, we're we're really excited
about it. I think we're also hoping to take it
around on to some you know, political workshops, probably on

(26:04):
Zoom for the foreseeable future, get maybe game convention, tabletop
game conventions and stuff, and also some art art shows
um to be announced, to be announced, but there's a
couple of art shows that we're excited to be showing
it in. So um yeah, yeah. One one thing I'm

(26:26):
really excited about in terms of playing this at some
point is the I think starting from the point of
like you're trying to build the world now, you can
really easy, it's really easy to run into ruts. Um
starting at the end point than working backwards, I think

(26:47):
because that produces that reverse type of thought. I think
it's a little bit easier for to find the path
than just starting here and looking at the world will
be like, oh, how do we do it? You thing
to make it better, instead of being at the opposite
place and being like, what's what is the way to backtrack?
I think can maybe give you some connections and ideas

(27:10):
that you may not have had otherwise because we're kind
of always stuck in the now. How do we get
now better? So I would be very excited to uh
try try this out at some point and uh and
experience that backtrack thinking because I think it's a yeah,

(27:30):
and I'm really intrigued with that specific aspect of the
game because yeah, I'm sure there's gonna be a lot
of solar Punk games within the next decade probably, um,
and this is one aspect that I think actually is
really unique and something that's not just intrinsic to Solar Punk. Um,
you know, it's something that's kind of been added on.
So uh, that's something I'm really excited about. And yeah,

(27:52):
I would love to love to pick this up uh soon. Yeah,
thank you for saying that. Um. I think one of
the things that we hope that the game does is
help people break through that capitalist realism. Yeah, like there
is no alternative. It's easier to imagine the end of
the world than the end of capitalism, etcetera. Um. And

(28:16):
you know, similarly, if you ask people to imagine the future, uh,
it's very hard and uh and if they are able
to at all, it is often extrapolating sort of the
worst trends of today into a dystopian future. Yeah. I remember.
I remember so when when I was in I was

(28:37):
in middle school or something, we had this acietment. We
had to like write a you like write what are
perfect like utopian society would be, and we like did it,
and like three quarters of the like society people come
up with were just like the worst imaginable dystopia And
it was just like, it's just like grim sort of. Yeah,
if I was gonna if I was gonna make what

(28:57):
I thought was an accurate prediction of the few uture,
it might be more similar to the first season of
this podcast than uh, some of the hopeful futures. But
I don't. I also don't think. I don't think the
door is closed on any kind of solar punk future.
I think it's important one of the important aspects that

(29:19):
we included that that is that makes solar punk different
than just kind of vague utopianism, is that we think
we ask people to also think about the barriers they
run into, to think about, you know what, who's gonna
who's gonna oppose you if you're trying to um, you know,

(29:40):
deal with polluted water and you find some really great
system and improve a region's water supply, you know, Nestley
might come in and buy the rights to the whole region,
the whole watershed. So you know, imagining those that opposition,
the material conditions that might change, and how you adapt

(30:04):
to them. We hope that's something that people also benefit
from who played this game and and make some predictions
about the strategic decisions that capital is going to make
to oppose your your utopian vision. And I hope there
are more solar punk games, Like you said, I hope

(30:24):
there's a preponderance of solar punk art in the in
the next decade. That would be amazing. And you know,
to what you were just saying, you're right, solar punk
doesn't mean the end of politics, doesn't mean the absence
of conflict. UM. So I think we tried to integrate
that into the game. What makes a good solar punk

(30:45):
stories that it is plausible yet distinctly anti utopian, anti
dystopian rather um it you know, provides a glimpse into
a future possibility for say, the reharmonization of humans with
other humans, humans with non human nature. Um and that

(31:09):
is going to involve some amount of opposition on the
one hand and reconstruction on the other. In short to
to critique by building as the slogan goes, all right, yeah,
plugs time. What do you what do you need to
have plugs? Uh? So, Yeah, we have an upcoming live

(31:29):
stream on Twitch with Veterans for Peace. They have some
gamers for Peace and Tuesday night on at eight p
m they're gonna be playing Solo Punk Solo Punk features
with us. UH. If people are interested in the game,
they can download it for print and play on our
website at H T T P colon slash Slash the

(31:49):
Future dot WTF UH and UH. People can also find
a link to our kickstarter on that website if they're
interested in pre ordering physical copy, which we very much appreciate.
We're getting close to funded. That's very exciting. I hope,
I hope, I hope, I hope it gets funded. I

(32:10):
want to see more of these because the art is
extremely cool. And yeah, well, thank you to you for
coming on this. This has been It could happen here
and we'll see you the next time an episode goes up.
I don't know when that's gonna be right now, so yeah,
wonderful extros. It could happen here as a production of

(32:35):
cool Zone Media. Were more podcasts from cool Zone Media.
Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
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