Pixelsocks: So, what’s the spiel for A Slow Year?

I didnt get Ian Bogost’s photo at the GDC, but I hope
he won’t mind this one instead

Ian: It’s a new game created for the 1977 Atari VCS. The concept is four 1 kilobyte games, each about a season. They’re very slow and methodical. I’d compare them more to poems than to stories or even action video games. I’m putting them together on limited edition Atari cartridges and a custom PC and Mac emulator.

Pixelsocks: That actually resolves a concern I had about this game, because it’s not terribly easy to come by an Atari these days.

Ian: You have to want one; it’s not like you can go to Best Buy. However, compared to other old video game systems, they’re relatively easy to find. Atari made millions of them between 1977 and actually they only stopped in 1990.

Even then, most people don’t have it hooked up. The Atari is up in the attic or in a box somewhere. However, for those people who do want an object like that in their lives, I’m going to make some limited edition sets. There’ll be a cartridge, a book, and the sets will be very hand-made.

Everybody else can get the downloadable version so you can get the experience. The challenge there is communicating I’m not joking, this is really an Atari game. So I’m working on ways of contextualizing it, say with box art, but that’s still an open problem for me.

Pixelsocks: Can you unpack the idea of a “game poem?”

Ian: Well, when you adopt a phrase like “game poem,” it’s not at all clear what it means. So, rather than give a definition of what it is, I’d rather allow the phrase to resonate with the people who encounter it.

The games are about nature in large part. They’re about looking at things and slowness and methodical action. So they have some similarity to poetic traditions, particularly Haiku and Imagism, and those have been an inspiration for me during the development of the game. So by putting that term in the subtitle of the game, I hope it impacts peoples’ reactions. So they might think the game is abstract like a poem, or that it’s not exactly clear what the game means. So they have to do some work to bring some meaning to the game.

So it’s an invitation. Even the instructions for the game and some of the packaging will have traditional written poetry. The instructions are written in Haiku, for example.

Pixelsocks: Which is the best way to impart instructions, I think.

Ian: You know actually it is. Well, in this case it might be. Poetry sets an expectation when you read it and it’s not really clear what it’s telling you to do. Everyone can recognize Haiku, so it gives you a place to start.

Pixelsocks: You don’t want people to bounce off the project.

Ian: On the one hand, people tend to have a very negative reaction to so-called art games. They’ll call the game pretentious and that kind of thing. I’m not really sympathetic to that position and won’t pander to that sort of an audience. On the other hand, I do recognize that this is an unusual work, and I have to make some effort to make it more approachable, but without changing it in a way I wouldn’t want.

Pixelsocks: Games as a medium are defined by agency. Even genres break down by the way you interact with a game. However, this game is more about stillness and observation than the things you actually do. How do you reconcile that with the medium?

Ian: You don’t do a lot of twitchy action, but there is a joystick and you interact instead of just watching it. Well, you can just watch it, but it takes an enormous amount of concentration to play well. These are actually games, and they’re very difficult. There’s score and systems. You can win and lose some games, and you can do better and worse.

It’s just as active, but it’s a different sort of activity than twitching your way onto a platform or strategizing your way across a map. In that respect, I don’t know that this piece is really so far outside the medium in a lot of ways. I’m trying to get you to pay attention in a different way, without just doing nothing. It’s an interesting gamble.

A Slow Year from Ian Bogost on Vimeo.

Pixelsocks: So what’s next, then?

Ian: In my game development life, I have a number of little projects that aren’t really quite ready to talk about. However, my next game will probably be on the Atari. It’s kind of a precious thing; you can’t do this all the time.

Pixelsocks: Between your development history and your academic position, I think you’re in a unique position to comment on the state of indie games. Would you care to?

Ian: Indie is a big word to fill up. It means a lot of things, and different ones to different people. There was a kind of indie gold rush for a couple of years. Now that it’s turned out well, maybe we need a variety of different indies. It’s not just one style, one attitude, or even a “fuck you” to the industry any more. That’s not really a lasting way to build alternative styles of games.

That’s where I see things going: a greater variety. Maybe the games will all be indie in their own way, but indie won’t be a scene. Like punk burned out after two years, and then you realize that you can take that inspiration and do something else with it.

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Tags:   a slow year · GDC · gdc 2010 · ian bogost · IGF · IGF 2010 · nuovo award nomineeNo Comments

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