Two new and relatively extensive interviews with me were recently published. The first is in Forbes, conducted by David M. Ewalt. It mostly covers material from my latest book, How to Do Things with Videogames, but there’s some new material toward the end. The second interview, with Aaron McCollough, appears in The Journal of Electronic Publishing. It primarily addresses my… read more
An exhibition of new games for the Atari
I’m curating an exhibit of new Atari games at Babycastles, which opens this Sunday, November 13th. It’s called Innovative Leisure (a term I lifted from an early Atari slogan) and will take place at a new art games arcade at Death By Audio. The show exhibits games by Sonny Ray Tempest, Ed Fries, and Simon Quernhost. The event starts at… read more
A response to Mike Thomsen
The New Inquiry published a review by Michael Thomsen of my latest book How to Do Things With Videogames. It’s just the kind of review an author hopes for: fair, thoughtful, based on a thorough reading, and full of new ideas and observations. I’m grateful to Thomsen for writing it. Thomsen raises an objection that I’ve been waiting for and… read more
Garry Winogrand, circa 1974
Tod Papageorge shared with me a talk Garry Winogrand gave at MIT in 1974, which he (Papageorge) introduced. An audio recording from the University of California Riverside’s archive captures much of the lively question and answer period, which included a wealth of fantastic material. Here are two of my favorites: A photograph has to be rational. It has to be… read more
Photos of the signed, numbered set of twenty-five
I started working on my Atari “game poems” project A Slow Year almost exactly three years ago. I had spent an idle summer afternoon writing 6502 assembly on the couch, and the first versions of the summer game took form. Slowly, over time, the work revealed itself to me: a set of four 1k games, one for each season, inspired… read more
New Versions of lost Video Soft Titles for Atari
In the description of my Amiga/Joyboard homage game Guru Meditation, I made the following statement: As far as I know there have been no games released for the joyboard since Mogul Maniac (not counting two unreleased Amiga prototypes from the early 80s), so Guru Meditation also reminds us of the long history of experimentation with physical controllers in the mainstream… read more
A terminal of yore
As someone who has worked on simulated television effects for Atari games, I was happy to learn about Cathode, a “vintage terminal emulator” for Mac. It simulates phosphor burn, screen curvature, glare, refresh rates, beam desyncrhonization, jitter, and other effects common to mini-computer terminals of yore. It’s a functioning terminal program, so you can run any of your favorite UNIX… read more
A book series, Ian Bogost & Nick Montfort, series editors
Platform Studies is a book series published by the MIT Press that invites authors to investigate the relationships between the hardware and software design of computing systems and the creative works produced on those systems. Platforms have been around for decades, right under our video games and digital art. Those studying new media are now starting to dig down to… read more
Please buy one!
I’m happy to announce that my award-winning game A Slow Year is now available for purchase. I often have the pleasure of announcing a new videogame I’ve made or book I’ve written. Today I get to do both for a single release, as A Slow Year is both a book and a videogame, the one packaged inside the other. The… read more
Let me know if you want one.
A Slow Year is about to ship, and I’ll be posting information about it in the very near future. As I’ve mentioned before, the game will be released in two editions, both packaged as unusual books of poetry: a Windows/Mac edition running in a custom emulator, and a numbered, signed Atari cartridge edition, limited to 25. The general edition is… read more