Filled with a renewed sense of child-like wonder (and perhaps a few space martinis), a mixed crowd of lucky star gazers arrived at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City last Thursday to experience the cosmos through a lens like no other: videogames.
It was the one night only premiere of Space Cruiser, a game installation presented by renowned indie games collective Babycastles that turned the planetarium into a giant virtual space ship. Greeted by a cocktail reception set to brassy space folk anthems by One Ring Zero and surrounded by a similarly-themed arcade, attendees of the sold-out event piled into the atrium’s rear elevators to reach the main attraction: a 200+ person multiplayer game set inside the planetarium’s 70-foot wide star dome.
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Inside the darkened sphere, participants floated precariously through an asteroid field, attempting to reach the blue hyperspace gate at its center. Four control consoles lay at the center of dome, requiring individual pilots to control the pitch, roll, yaw and thrust of the virtual craft. It’s a delicate operation — players must vocally coordinate the precise maneuvers necessary to navigate the treacherous field while the disembodied voice of the ship’s computer (voiced by Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields) mocks their efforts in a charming, GLaDOS-like fashion.
The game’s creator, Ivan Safrin, had been working along with the Babycastles crew configuring and testing the ambitious project. “We had three weeks to do this,” said Babycastles co-founder Syed Salahuddin, who helped Safrin seamlessly fit his creation inside the planetarium dome. “At first, it was a lot of going back and forth with the museum, them saying ‘Yeah, you probably can’t do this’ and us being like, ‘No, we can do it!’ Finally, after all of the tests we had a demo, and they were really excited about it.” It was the first time a game had been designed to be played in such a space.
“For God’s sake! Someone fix the flux capacitor!” yelled one of the pilots from the central consoles. If the ship crashes into an obstacle, one of its “sectors” becomes damaged, and someone must run to a second set of consoles positioned along the perimeter of the sphere and press the appropriate button to get everyone moving again. People sitting or socializing near the exterior consoles were continually met with similar panicked commands from those in the center of the ship. Although there were no repercussions for not acting fast enough, their antics did provide a fun and engaging, albeit imagined, sense of urgency.
Babycastles’ experiments are continuing to launch videogames into exciting new forms and contexts, and it would seem they’re having no problem finding people to come along for the ride. Canadian game developer Phil Fish, creator of the highly-anticipated and critically lauded FEZ, was there to show his support. “It was magical, such a fucking spectacle,” he said as the Babycastles crew carted away arcade cabinets at the evening’s conclusion. “Last month I saw their calibration test and I was just floored by it. I knew it was going to be a one night thing, so I had to be here.”
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