February 12th, 2020

A SLOW YEAR

Ian Bogost

​"The Atari applies certain constraints that contribute the ideas I wanted to get across with this work.

For one part, it all but eliminates the need (or indeed the possibility) of creating complex instantial assets like images and sounds. Many of today’s “artgames” adopt coarse visual and sound design as a way of recovering the simplicity of earlier games while extending them to new subjects. The Atari invites such designs by necessity. Its limited technical abilities and small file size demands invite symbolism.
For another, it lets me harness the platform’s history of more abstract gameplay, even if such gameplay was once about concrete things like dogfights or dungeon crawling. This fact should remind us that older forms are worth returning to for their aesthetics.
For yet another, even in its commercial heydey Atari games were created by a single person, which mirrors the production process for a poem. And for yet another, it imposes serious constraints on development while still allowing for many different kinds of games. And finally, it gives me a natural excuse to adopt a very small file size as a constraint."

​SPRING

One humid sweater
One puddle busts up each drive
The sogginess strikes



SUMMER
​
Sleep smells of mosses
While insects wink atop them
Wild precipitate