Lecture:

Game of War

Alexander Galloway on the new version of Guy Debord's board game

25 Oct 2007
25 Oct 2007

In 1978 the French Situationist Guy Debord designed and fabricated a board game called “The Game of War.” Thirty years later Alexander Galloway (USA) is resurrecting this largely forgotten game. He translated the game instructions from French to Java and released it as an online computer game.

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'Game of War' at Mediamatic -

Galloway explored the contradiction between Debord, a symbol of radical politics and art in 1960s France, and the nineteenth-century Napoleonic campaign game he created. In Debord’s own words the game was the only thing in his entire body of work that had any value. Was it nostalgia, or a vision of things to come?

Alexander R. Galloway is an author and programmer. He is a founding member of the software collective Radical Software Group and creator of the data surveillance engine Carnivore. He teaches at New York University.