A remarkable find was made in 2019 by researchers at the Computer Games Museum in Berlin: a basic Pong console constructed from salvaged electronics and plastic soap-box joystick enclosures. When the aerial connected the beige, rectangular tupperware with its wires to a television, a playable copy of Pong would appear on the screen.
They believed that the homemade device was a singular example of ingenuity behind the iron curtain at the time. However, earlier this year, they discovered yet another Seifendosen-Pong (also known as “soap-box Pong”) and a copy of the state-produced magazine FunkAmateur that contained schematics for a DIY version of Atari’s 1970s gaming phenomenon.
The discovery challenged the conventional wisdom that socialist East Germany had, at best, tolerated and, at worst, suppressed the early days of computer gaming. Instead, there was evidence that gaming was supported by the government, including the notorious secret service of the regime.
Cold War gaming artifacts from both sides of the iron curtain, including East Germany’s only arcade cabinet, the Poly-Play, are on display in a new joint exhibit from the Allied Museum and the Computer Games Museum in Berlin. Visitors can try it out. Only 2,000 of the machines, with brightly lit typeface and honey-colored wooden panels, were produced. When youth clubs and holiday retreats were available in the late 1980s, adolescents would clog the cabinets to play a variety of games based on western classics.
The Poly-Play, however, “was only possible with help from state security,” according to the Allied Museum’s Veit Lehmann. Manufacturer VEB Polytechnick sought assistance from the Stasi because it lacked personnel and programming expertise. They were the ones with “the experts and the computing capability” to code the games.
Hase und Wolf was a dog-avoiding hare that was used in place of Namco’s famous ghost-evader in the shape of a cheese wheel. There was Hirschjagd (“Deer Hunt”), a repackaged take on the sci-fi shooter Robotron: 2084. Among the other games, there was Schießbude, a recreation of a carnival shooting game; Schmetterling, a game about collecting butterflies; memory puzzles; skiing games; and racing games.
According to Regina Seiwald at the University of Birmingham, the Poly-Play “opened up a completely different world for them.” It was the first computer for many East Germans. “The Poly-Play was seen as a machine for the whole family, who’d enjoy a weekend, go for a walk and then jointly play on one. It was seen as an innocent pastime, but with a bit of technical skills training added in.”
However, unlike arcade goers in the West who commandeered tanks in Battlezone or shot dragons with jetpack-propelled gunners in Space Harrier, the Poly-Play had no violence at all. The GDR’s media law declared that all forms of “calls to violence” were against the constitution, and it liked to portray itself as a peaceful and idyllic state. “The GDR’s attitude towards computers was an idea of a harmonic self-image and a fear of the unknown,” Seiwald says.
Yet, away from the Poly-Play and its PG approach to gaming, self-described “freaks” gathered at computer clubs to test the tolerance of the police state. The east declared technology an economic priority in the late 1970s but, with the CoCom trade embargo blocking exports to the socialist bloc, western technology was only available through smuggling routes, with ZX Spectrums sewn into car seats or hidden in chocolate boxes for cross-border journeys.
State factories did produce their own machines – such as the Bildschirmspiel 01 pong clone and the VEB Robotron series of microcomputers – but only in small numbers.
Most people couldn’t afford them because of their high costs. The state wondered if this young interest could help it find a way out of its technical quandary as early enthusiasts started clubs at universities and youth centers in Berlin, Dresden, and Leipzig. “They thought if young people spent their time with games and computers, they might develop something better,” says Lehmann. Perhaps, the state thought, this interest could stir new generations into careers in microelectronics, where they might develop much-needed homegrown chips.
An oft-repeated phrase among GDR officials, adds Martin Görlich, managing director of the Computer Games Museum, was that “learning from the Soviet Union means learning how to win”. As a result, the USSR’s embrace of computing was similar to that of the Soviet Union, which also had arcade games, which were hybrids like Frankenstein that combined physical action with screens, and operated its own computer clubs.
Of course, the USSR also gave birth to Tetris, the fast-paced puzzler designed by software engineer Alexey Pajitnov to test a new computer. (The game was initially traded between engineers, but Henk Rogers, a game designer from the Netherlands, and Kevin Maxwell, the son of disgraced media mogul Robert Maxwell, raced to get distribution rights from the Soviet Union.)
Over in East Germany, citizens often relied on bootlegs to get around restrictions or shortages. Would-be fashionistas stitched their own clothes, musicians cobbled together audio equipment, and enterprising sorts hand-painted banned board games such as Monopoly, with Mayfair swapped for Karl-Marx-Allee and a party conference square taking the place of jail.
A DIY approach to computing was thus in keeping with the state’s policy of self-reliance, where civilians were encouraged to knit, build, tinker and repair all they could. As a response, official magazines like FunkAmateur and Jugend und Technik promoted games, which they referred to as “computer sports,” and published programming code. According to Seiwald, “the GDR was very aware of the constraints it had in technology.” “People educating themselves in technology, or pushing the boundaries of what was available, was viewed positively.”
Tantalisingly for young hobbyists, some of the computer clubs, such as the House of Young Talents in east Berlin, possessed much-desired Commodore 64 machines, which were far superior to the GDR’s domestic equivalents. Unsurprisingly, the majority of clubgoers were young men who were primarily interested in games. Some learned to code their own games on state computers such as the KC 85 by VEB Mikroelektronik, while others played them, such as René Meyer, who was 16 when he was introduced to a computer club at the University of Leipzig.
According to Meyer, whose favorite game was Bennion Geppy, with its hero tasked with traversing dungeon rooms, avoiding monsters, and collecting keys, “the GDR’s home computers were not compatible with other systems, creating a unique ecosystem for computing in the east.”
Paradoxically, while the state seemed to support these groups – club-goers were sometimes rewarded with fast-tracked routes to engineering colleges – they were also infiltrated by Stasi informants and closely monitored, their computing activities regarded with suspicion.
All of the games that are available at the House of Young Talent are listed in a report that comes from the Stasi archive. Games like Rambo and Stryker, which glorified violence, were singled out in comparison to more respectable options like Superbowl and Samantha Fox Strip Poker. The Stasi became more wary of war-themed games, computer viruses, and software with anti-socialist messages later, as internal conflicts in East German society got worse. Perhaps their fears weren’t unfounded: in neighbouring Czechoslovakia, underground gamers programmed titles such as The Adventures of Indiana Jones in Wenceslas Square, a text adventure where the fedora-decked explorer could meet a grisly fate at the hands of bloodthirsty police officers.
The east wasn’t alone in its mistrust of technology.
Concerned that arcade games encouraged gambling, West Germany banned children from playing in 1984. Then, supposedly violent games like River Raid from Activision were subject to stringent age limits. This suspicion around gaming extends well into the 21st century: publishers have had to alter the content of their titles to get around censor boards.
In the well-known “No Russian” mission, where terrorists murdered travelers at a Moscow airport, players of the German version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 were punished with failure if they shot civilians. While the West held a firm monopoly on telecoms and criminalized home networking and hacking, East Germany promoted decentralized computing. In the 1980s, activists in West Germany responded by founding the Chaos Computer Club, which continues to this day, even creating a DIY modem from toilet pipes in protest: the Datenklo (“dataloo”).
Seiwald asserts, “The West was very harsh in punishing hackers and crackers.” Many people are surprised by the GDR’s greater permissiveness.