It wasn’t innocent. We knew what “queer” meant, even in the early 80s. We weren’t targeting presumably queer kids with the game, you had to want to play, it wasn’t directed at them — but I don’t want to pretend the name was innocent, because it wasn’t.

Ummm just to be clear, the word meant gay, we knew what it meant, and we called the game that anyway. No one was confused about it. That’s just how things were then. “King of the Mountain” had a sort of similar vibe without being inherently offensive.

I was a pretty naive kid, but even I knew it was derogatory and precisely what it implied. We called it “smear” around adults because we’d get chewed out for using the full name.

In the context of that game it 100% did mean gay. Maybe the word itself had a different original meaning, but it was sematically changed when used in reference to the game. Happens all time (is gay still solely used had happy?). The game name was smear the q***r and again the term was being used to reference someone who was gay.

News flash: It was always a terrible name; we were just too young to realize it. Some of us eventually grew up and realized why it was wrong.

It wasn't innocent

It was intended to be offensive