Equipment Consumption Rule for New Games

The Equipment Consumption Rule for New Games is the World State policy that a new game must require at least as much apparatus as the most complicated games already in use. The Director explains it while watching children play Centrifugal Bumble-puppy: recreation is not to be approved merely because people enjoy it; it must also stimulate consumption.

The Rule in Practice

Centrifugal Bumble-puppy makes the principle visible in a chrome-steel tower surrounded by twenty children. A ball thrown to the tower’s top rolls inside, drops onto a rapidly revolving disk, and is hurled out through one of the apertures in the casing for a player to catch. The game’s machinery is not incidental to its design: its elaborate apparatus makes it an approved form of play.

The Director’s Explanation

As the Director and his students watch, he contrasts the elaborate contemporary game with the simpler past, when games used little more than a ball or two, a few sticks, and perhaps netting. He calls it folly to allow games that do nothing to increase consumption, then states the approval standard: Controllers will not authorize a new game unless its equipment demands match or exceed those of the most complicated existing games.

Social Purpose and Significance

The rule makes consumption a formal criterion of innovation. A game’s value to the World State lies not only in occupying its players but also in requiring equipment; recreation is organized to sustain demand for goods. The contrast between the spare materials of older games and the engineered tower of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy gives the policy a concrete form: under this system, simplicity is not an advantage when it fails to produce consumption.