1700

"Im Jahr 2014 kam es in Wien zu einer Räumungsaktion der Polizei in Wien-Leopoldstadt. Um einen Gerichtsbescheid zur Räumung eines Abbruchhauses durchzusetzen, war die Polizei mit 1.454 Beamten aus mehreren Bundesländern, sowie einem Polizeipanzer mit Räumschild, einem Wasserwerfer und einem Hubschrauber im Einsatz. Die Räumungsaktion dauerte einen ganzen Tag, 19 Hausbesetzer der „Pizzeria Anarchia" wurden festgenommen.[41] Die Aktivisten verschanzten sich im Haus und leisteten durch massive Verbarrikadierung der Zugänge Widerstand gegen die Räumung. Zudem warfen sie Farbbeutel, faule Eier und Flaschen auf die Polizisten. Die Räumung verursachte Kosten in der Höhe von 870.000 Euro." - Wikipedia

In 2014, a police action took place in Vienna-Leopoldstadt. To enforce a court order to clear a condemned building, the police deployed 1,454 officers from multiple federal states, along with an armored police vehicle with clearing shield, a water cannon, and a helicopter. The clearing operation lasted an entire day, and 19 squatters from "Pizzeria Anarchia" were arrested. The activists barricaded themselves in the house and resisted the eviction by massively blocking the entrances. They also threw paint bags, rotten eggs, and bottles at the police officers. The eviction caused costs amounting to 870,000 euros.

This occupation was so full of absurdities that Asifism decided to document it for posterity, as the game 1700. The first preview of 1700 took place on November 5, 2014 (Guy Fawkes Day), and since then it can be experienced as an HTML5 browser game. It tells the real story of a police eviction of a house in Vienna, where punks were given space in the house, probably with the motive of getting the old tenants out of the house faster. However, when the house residents showed solidarity, the house was cleared with a huge police contingent, floor by floor the police fought their way up against the solidarity.

The game can still be played today at 1700.at.

The Absurdity of Power

1700 police officers against 19 squatters. The sheer disproportionality of this operation became the heart of the game. Each floor of the building represents another level of escalation, another layer of absurdity in the deployment of state power against a handful of people defending their temporary home.

Lemmings in Uniform: The Game Mechanics

The game borrows its core mechanics from the classic puzzle game Lemmings-and this choice is deliberate. In 1700, police officers spawn at the entrance and march forward mindlessly, like the titular creatures of the original game. You don't control them directly; instead, you assign special skills to individual officers to help the swarm reach their objective: clearing each floor of the building.

The mechanics perfectly capture the absurdity of deploying 1,454 officers against 19 squatters:

• Climber Cops: Assign officers to climb walls, but watch as they hit overhangs and fall back down, creating pile-ups of confused personnel.
• Blocker Badge: Turn officers into blockers to prevent others from falling into traps-but forget to release them and they'll stand there all day, just following orders.
• Builder Brigade: Officers can build riot shields into staircases, but only 12 steps at a time. Run out mid-climb and watch the whole unit tumble.
• Basher Battalion: Some officers bash horizontally through barricades, but can't tell the difference between protester barriers and their own equipment.
• The Tank Problem: Special vehicle units move like super-lemmings but get stuck in narrow passages. The player must figure out how to extract them or sacrifice them to clear a path.

The genius of using Lemmings mechanics is how it transforms state power from something threatening into something absurdly comic. Officers mindlessly follow each other into tear gas clouds, build elaborate paths that lead nowhere, and trap themselves with their own riot barriers. You frantically try to save them from themselves, assigning skills to prevent a 1,454-officer pile-up, all while pizza boxes rain down from above and the timer counts towards that €870,000 final bill.

Game as Documentary

1700 represents a new form of documentary practice-using game mechanics to preserve and communicate the emotional and political reality of an event. By making the player experience the escalation firsthand, the game creates a more visceral understanding of the event than traditional documentation could provide.

The choice to release on Guy Fawkes Day was deliberate-connecting this local act of resistance to a longer history of opposition to authority, while also acknowledging the sometimes theatrical nature of both state power and resistance to it.