Reconstruction Vol. 15, No. 3

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Dig? Dug!: Field Notes from the Microsoft-sponsored Excavation of the Alamogordo, NM Atari Dump Site / Judd Ethan Ruggill, Ken S. McAllister, Carly A. Kocurek, and Raiford Guins ^[1]

<1> In April 2014, Xbox Entertainment Studios, in partnership with Fuel Entertainment and Lightbox and as part of its Signal to Noise documentary series, sponsored an excavation of a defunct landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico for the premiere installment of the series, Atari: Game Over (2014). It was in this literal wasteland that a trove of game cartridges-the "infamous" E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) among them-and other returned, damaged, and seemingly brand new products were reputedly buried, having been summarily entombed therein by Atari. These products were ordered for disposal by former Atari employee James Hiller, and transported from the company's warehouse in El Paso, TX to Alamogordo in September 1983. The excavation, some thirty years later, was conducted by an interdisciplinary archaeological team and by a group of municipal heavy machinery operators from Alamogordo. ^[2] The excavation was open to the public, with observers able to view the dig from behind a swath of temporary plastic fencing erected for safety purposes as well as to prevent further looting of Atari's e-waste.

<2> What follows is a precis of our field notes from the Alamogordo excavation, along with a number of photographs and a short video capturing some of the sights and sounds of the event. ^[3] Together they summarize and document our collective experience of the dig, both as observers (Ruggill, McAllister, and Kocurek) and participant (Guins). Surficially, the event-taken as a comprehensive experience-was notable only in its motive: to potentially recover trash that (to some) was in fact treasure. The dig itself-the trawling, scraping, reburying, and grading of garbage-was routine; dumps are excavated every day all over the world for the sake of refuse redistribution, land reclamation, and contaminant abatement (though rarely, if at all outside of this g, for the archeological study of the recent popular cultural past). These were operative factors in the Alamogordo event as well, though they were functionally invisible to most who came to see a longtime urban legend confirmed or finally debunked.

<3> That said, the Alamogordo excavation was also unique and compelling, imbricating elements of festival, spectacle, community creation and maintenance, archaeology, environmentalism, and more-all deployed in the service of game study (among other things). Far more than just a day spent digging in-and, in our case, inhaling-the dirt, the Alamogordo excavation signified a small but nonetheless memorable moment for those of us who are fortunate enough to study as well as play games: the maturation of the field to the point where everyday people-not just archivists, archaeologists, and other scholars-have become interested enough in an accurate history of the medium to give up a spring Saturday, pack up the kids and pets, and head off to an abandoned landfill to catch a glimpse of that history in the making. In the elaborate setup of the Alamogordo excavation-the conception, planning, approval from the State of New Mexico, adherence to City ordinances, and execution of a minor media blitz-and the resultant event-hundreds of attendees, national news coverage, governmental cooperation and support-we perceived a subtle but substantive and broad societal interest in the evolution (not just the play) of the computer game. It was an interest that spanned generations and geographies (physical, cultural, ideological), classes and convictions, and one that we strive to briefly illustrate in the descriptions and photographs below.

Caption: Zak Penn and Andrew Reinhard on the verge of showing the first recovered copy of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Community

<4> The Alamogordo excavation had all the trappings of a small community, from food trucks and portable latrines to special events such as snapping selfies with Howard Scott Warshaw (the game designer for Atari's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial), Zak Penn (the documentary's director), and Andrew Reinhard (the archaeology team leader). There were even spontaneous rituals, as when visitors took to patting a life-sized E.T. doll before heading home. People of all ages, races, creeds, and persuasions were in attendance, from as near as Alamogordo itself to as far away as New York (at least). One gentleman behind us in line had driven 28 hours straight from Oregon, while a young man in front of us had taken the Greyhound bus from Tucson, Arizona to the terminal in Alamogordo, and then caught a cab to the old landfill-surely one of the more unusual fares the driver had ever received. ^[4] There were families, expectant mothers, senior citizens, high school students, best-selling authors, local politicos, film crews, construction workers, news reporters, and of course, university professors. People shared water, sunscreen, bandanas, and other necessities of dusty desert survival, and passed the idle time between (often overblown) announcements concerning the latest discovery with innumerable impromptu conversations. In other words, like any neighborhood get-together-or academic conference for that matter-this ad hoc community had ties both strong and loose, connections that in some cases faded with the close of the event while others blossomed in the form of post-event online fora, collaborative projects, and plans to reunite at a later date (though no further excavation of the site will be permitted by the City of Alamogordo and State of New Mexico).

Caption: The early morning line to get into the dig. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Caption: Crowds amassed at 1:00 p.m. on April 26, 2014 just as the excavation begins. (Photo credit: Raiford Guins)

Caption: Spectators listening to an announcement made from the dig's impromptu stage. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Caption: The impromptu stage-the liftgate on the back of the film crew's equipment truck. (Photo credit: Ken McAllister)

Caption: Chaos Bistro food truck at the dig site. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Caption: A family out for a day at the dig. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Caption: A dig-side arcade replete with Atari 2600 consoles and portable generator for power. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Caption: Howard Scott Warshaw, game designer for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. (Photo Credit: Ken McAllister)

<5> To us, the diversity of the event recalled game studies' history, from its early days as a field comprised largely of scholars doing work in other areas and stealing time only occasionally to conduct hobby research, to the best iterations of the field today in which colleagues new and old join together at meetings ranging from public hackathons to old school paper and panel conferences. A decade ago, the Alamogordo excavation probably could not have happened, and not because the dig location was unknown or funding was unavailable. Rather, it would not have happened because the game studies community was too nascent to expend its limited resources and cachet on a potential lark. Moreover the field paid little attention to the research and writing of game history as other interests (e.g., the ludology v. narratology debates) took precedence. It is also unlikely that the general public would have brooked throwing the weight of even a small city government behind such an esoteric (i.e., not yet nostalgic) scheme. In this way, the community of the Alamogordo excavation-and by community here we mean the various corporate, municipal, public, and academic interests involved in the dig-provided a snapshot of what the field of game studies has become: a sphere capable of bringing a wide range of people together to study, teach, build, and play together, which is to say, to establish and maintain productive communities, even in inhospitable environs.

Spectacle

<6> For many approaching the dig site on Saturday morning, the first thing they saw was a line. The line initially formed organically as people clustered waiting to enter the landfill, and then it became more formal as security escorted the general public to the excavation site. As the event start was repeatedly delayed, the line eventually snaked into hundreds of people, and families pulled out folding chairs and sent delegates to buy sodas from a nearby McDonald's. The line was something to see; the whole event, in fact, was something to see. It was an opportunity for community to be sure, but also an opportunity for something else-to see, to be seen, to witness (the event itself, the reclamation of e-waste, history in the making, and so forth). What it means to have been there, to have stood in line, to have collected a commemorative water bottle and t-shirt, to have watched the excavation while cameras hovered like flies and the dust and wind beat everyone's skin raw is at best ambiguous. But, throughout the day, the sense of spectacle was palpable. It was, perhaps, why the event started late-a longer line makes for a better shot, and there were plenty of still and moving image cameras being deployed by the documentary and news crews (not to mention the public). The archaeology team was equally dumbfounded as their mere presence in ventilators, hard-hats, goggles, and all manner of field equipment added to the spectacle even though they too were outside of the documentary crew's production schedule, seemingly playing the role of stage prop at times. When the distribution of t-shirts slowed the flood of entering audience members, the t-shirts were pulled back in order to be given out later in the day. This was not an event of raw energy, but instead a calculated effort to produce something worth watching. The event was spectacular by design. In fact, it had already been framed as such by the media, by the longstanding mythology of the burial, and by the event's sponsors who had worked hard to lure and hold the audience with commemorative gewgaws, event updates (one of which announced the discovery of a rubber cap for an Atari joystick found blowing in the wind), and food trucks and other portable facilities intended to keep spectators on site and relatively comfortable.

Caption: Members of the archaeology team (left to right): Andrew Reinhard, Richard Rothaus, and Raiford Guins. Initially the processing station was located between the pit and the crowd, but these conditions proved too difficult to work in. (Photo credit: William Caraher)

Caption: Relocated processing station documenting the first sample of Atari items. The winds proved a constant challenge with gusts exceeding 60 mph. In-field processing was abandoned and all items were processed on Sunday, April 27, 2014. (Right to Left): William Caraher logging items, Raiford Guins describing items, and Richard Rothaus organizing the sample. (Photo credit: Andrew Reinhard)

Caption: Lining up to enter the dig. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Caption: Souvenir canteen from the dig. Note the 8-bit sprite from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and the latitude/longitude coordinates of the excavation site. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

<7> While the attendees were molded into spectacle, they also participated in that spectacle's construction, gathering for announcements and hovering along the orange temporary fencing. Many attendees even dressed specially for the occasion, and not just in makeshift survival gear that served as a de facto uniform. There were the expected retro-gaming t-shirts and Atari-themed jewelry, of course, but also more elaborate costuming, such as the young woman with an E.T. doll strapped to her backpack. This was not the careful pageantry of cosplay for a gaming convention, but a more subtle effort at displaying affinities and expertise, an effort to be seen and recognized in a way that was reminiscent of U.F.O. enthusiast pageantry. There was actually something quite delicious in this display, not only in the resonance of community but also in the crowds, discomforts, and peculiarities of the event-all things that made it an occasion specific enough to recall and record. And even though this specificity was thoroughly planned and highly engineered, there was also a certain feeling of spontaneity, as if something had just sprung up. The stars aligned. The dust storm raged. And so we all stood there, listening to the symphony of clanging excavation and wind and idle speculation, waiting for something to happen...and many things did.

<8> Computer games have long been something to watch, as demonstrated most readily by the coin-operated game arcades that thrived in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But the spectacle of games can also be seen in the tendency of many players to play in groups, with friends or family members hovering over shoulders and whispering advice, as well as by the increasing visibility of professional and semi-professional tournaments and leagues. Indeed, there are many arenas in which computer games become a spectacle, an attraction. To make history into one, however, requires care; consider reenactments and landmarks, living history exhibits and documentaries. All of the event planning, audience luring, and press releasing that led up to the Alamogordo excavation was an effort to transform the work of history into the experience of spectacle. The fans and viewers that lined up that Saturday morning were-as the legally binding releases signed by everyone in attendance indicated-willing participants in that spectacle.

Materiality

<9> Computer games are unquestionably evanescent. Their life on store shelves-both brick and mortar and click and order-typically lasts for only a few months before being retired to the bargain bin when consumers lose interest. Computer games are also surprisingly delicate. Their cartridges, disks, chips, tapes, manuals, and containers are made from the cheapest of materials, and are particularly subject to the wear and tear of clumsy hands, unfiltered sunlight, household dust, and changes in humidity. Even the bytes themselves that comprise a game's code-and which exist as flickering physical states inside the machine-are ephemeral, here and gone, replaced with other code or shut off entirely. In short, game materiality is hopelessly fragile, ironically making the recollection of time spent at play seem robust by comparison. Nevermind the crushing blows of a bulldozer which marked the fate of many of the game materials dumped in the Alamogordo landfill in 1983.

<10> Yet the Alamogordo excavation confirmed games' hardiness. Many of the cartridges hauled up showed little sign of having been entombed in rotting refuse for thirty years, save their nauseating odor. Their plastic was intact (not all were crushed), their labels and packages still brightly colored due to low moisture levels and the anaerobic state of the pit.

Caption: Raiford Guins' foot quickly trapping the first Atari item that he located on Saturday, April 26, 2014. (Photo credit: Raiford Guins)

Caption: Richard Rothaus recovering a small cardboard shipping container with copies of Defender (1981). (Photo credit: Raiford Guins)

<11> Some looked as if they had been buried that day, not half a lifetime ago. And as for the games themselves, it was unclear how many of the cartridges still functioned, but at least one cartridge booted right up when plugged into an onsite Atari 2600 system. What the functionality of a game cartridge buried over 30 years ago means is anyone's guess, but we suspect that optical discs are not nearly so resilient.

Caption: A variety of Atari cartridges, manuals, containers, and promotional materials combined with the rotten trash discarded on the same day as the celebrated materials. (Photo credit: Ken McAllister)

Caption: William Caraher displaying a stack of recovered Centipede (1982) game cartridges still in blister packs. (Photo credit: Raiford Guins)

Caption: Zak Penn holding a recovered E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial cartridge. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Caption: The archeology team's collection buckets. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

<12> Obviously, the materiality of the Alamogordo excavation went far beyond the games and paraphernalia exhumed. ^[5] Consider the accoutrements of the event: the dust masks and game-themed clothing worn by many of the observers; the event-branded souvenirs handed out by the dig's corporate sponsors; the special, themed menu taped to one of the food trucks; and even Ernest Cline's DeLorian sports car, which he drove right up to the edge of the excavation site while blasting the score to Raiders of the Lost Ark and showering observers with Reese's Pieces (a reference to the ET movie). ^[6] These were the objects with which the flesh and blood participants-also material-interacted, and through which they were connected. Without the food, beverages, swag, and memorabilia, the gathered crowd really would have been just standing in a garbage dump; the materiality of the event transformed the space into a stage, a performance, a happening marked by souvenirs and filth.

Caption: One of the documentary crew's location sound recordists. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Caption: Happy onlookers hiding a purloined souvenir from the dig. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

<13> Then there was the landfill itself, a buried mountain of antique garbage-genuine, awful domestic garbage-and a monument to the stuff of quotidian life.

Caption: The pit as it appeared at 7:00 a.m. on the morning of Saturday, April 26, 2014. The current depth shown here is 15 feet. An additional 15-20 feet were dug before Atari items were located. (Photo credit: Raiford Guins)

<14> As the dirt was scraped away, a nest of old tires and bedsprings, broken toilets and shirt rags, children's toys, and cassette players was revealed. The smell downwind was ghastly, a putrid wreck of odors off-gassing the fetid juice of tons of organic and inorganic waste. Without this assaulting materiality, the Alamogordo excavation would have been little more than another nerdy retro gamers' convention like PAX, California Extreme, and Classic Gaming Expo. It was the garbage, and the opportunity to excavate a landfill, that made the event unique, just weird enough to draw people to attend, but not so strange-ironically-that it turned their stomachs or changed their minds and made them go to the movies instead. This was their garbage (more or less), and as foul as it was, the appeal of the treasure within-like the notorious durian fruit that hides a sweet morsel inside a mass of reeking flesh-and the challenge of reaching it, were competing material factors that helped give the event its particular and curious flavor.

Caption: The archaeological and documentary teams sifting through the refuse. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Caption: 30 year old refuse being unearthed by an excavating shovel. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

<15> Despite all of these powerfully material elements, however, the most tangible aspect of the Alamogordo excavation was the pervasive dust. Loosened by vehicular traffic, nearby ATV riders, the massive steel treads of bulldozers and backhoes, and kicked up by an unrelenting wind, southern New Mexico's fine, sharp dust made the scene less reminiscent of Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and more like David Lynch's Dune (1984). If the objects, people, and garbage were the set, characters, and backdrop of the production, the dust was the script, a didactic farce that through its monochromatic coverage humbled the proud, amused the unwashed, and ultimately made sublime the mundane. An open landfill at the edge of town? Ho hum. A garbage dump dust storm so violent it scattered lawn chairs, green plastic recycling bins, and archaeologists' survey notes across the landscape? A cinematographer's dream. Standing in the parking area saying our farewells to our friends old and new, we noted that each crease in our skin-anything exposed-was lined with a sickly and dark yellow grit, emphasizing our ages and complexions. In this way the dust travelled home with us all, an added reminder of the material connection we shared among humans, detritus, and the landscape.

Caption: Clouds of dust blowing across the dig site. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Caption: Carly Kocurek fighting the wind and blowing dust. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Parting Thoughts

<16> In truth, it was not only fascinating but exciting to be part of the active construction of both the archaeology/history of the contemporary past and the 2 ^nd/3rd order simulacrum that was the Alamogordo excavation. Atari's industrial detritus that went into the landfill thirty years ago came out not simply as an unearthed time capsule, but an amalgam of the original material artifacts and decades worth of game industry growth, government regulation, and fan experience and speculation. In other words, the event was less a rematerializing of a specific cultural, economic, and technological moment decades after its instantiation-a moment that had really happened and been functionally dematerialized over time and space into an urban legend-and more the co-creation of that event's sequel or legacy. The community that formed at the event embodied the urban legend, corporealizing the corporate history. It was more than just putting a face to a name; it put bodies in context and in situ. Histories are people, not just artifacts. Perhaps this event was a kind of post-memory, a memory of experiences related to someone else's memories, the experience of other people remembering. The question "Do you think it's true?" pervaded the event, as if to confirm the past materiality in the present.

<17> At first, there was an awareness of an event that might not have happened, which, upon the finding of the first cartridge, was instantly transformed into a nostalgia for something that had. This partially explains the stealing of objects from the dig site at the end of the day when people were allowed closer inspection. To acquire a token (i.e., a souvenir) is both to concretize and confirm one's direct experience of a notable historical event with a unique artifact, and also to participate in perpetuity with the community that was finally realized through the construction of the event on this day. The ability to say-and prove-"I was there" lends gamers (and scholars) no small amount of capital (cultural, historical, spatial, and so forth), like a musician able to say "I was at Woodstock," a human rights activist present at the "I Have a Dream" speech, or the aerospace engineer at mission control when the Curiosity Rover landed on Mars. The token is thus a recognition of and investment in the newborn nostalgia created when the legend transmutes into cold hard fact (even one that reeks of a 30 year old landfill).

<18> Of course there is no such transmutation. At most, there is a simply another element added to the amalgam. The Atari disposal legend did not die on April 26, 2014. It grew and deepened. And of course the "community" isn't wholly constructed in the moment and place of the dig. The community existed, in a more disparate form, well before the dig: they were the people who made the various fan sites and Wikipedia pages, who wrote scholarly articles and books about the E.T. debacle, and remotely anticipated, followed, and subsequently commented upon the event through social media.

Caption: Re-sealed. The pit as it appeared later in the day on Saturday, April 26, 2014. (Photo credit: Richard Rothaus)

Authors

Caption: Judd Ruggill and Jason Thompson (University of Wyoming). (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Judd Ethan Ruggill is an Associate Professor of Communication at Arizona State University.

Caption: Ken McAllister. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Ken S. McAllister is a Professor of English at the University of Arizona.

Caption: Carly Kocurek. (Photo credit: Judd Ruggill)

Carly A. Kocurek is an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities and Media Studies at Illinois Institute of Technology.

Caption: At the end of a long day. (Left to Right): Raiford Guins, Zak Penn, Richard Rothaus. (Photo credit: Andrew Reinhard)

Raiford Guins is an Associate Professor of Culture and Technology at Stony Brook University.

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