ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the strains of game design and play that formed part of Groundcourse at Ealing and Ipswich, placing them in the context of a cybernetic theory of play and relating it to the dispersing aesthetic and conceptual influence of Cold War technologies. Game play and its incarnations through time can tell about social mores, traditions both aesthetic and cultural. They are engineered frameworks for human interaction, a matrix of social values that comes to life through play. Game play doubled back at its point of origin and it became a military training or assessment strategy. The use of computer games and role-play games in the military occupies a peculiar space, given the popularity of leisure computer games based on war and other violent situations. For cyberneticists, machine gameplay served as the perfect illustration of the tangled philosophical problem of technology, agency and the possibility of artificial life.
