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Slow Games, Slow Poems: The Act of Deliberation in "Slow Year"
“Video games are actions,” declared Alexander Galloway in a manifesto that stakes out the
essential differences between videogames and other forms of expressive culture, such as
literature, photography, and cinema. But what about videogames in which action looks like
inaction? What about videogames in which action means sitting still? What about a videogame
that purports to be less a game and more a meditation—a work of literature? In this paper
I explore a prominent yet remarkably understudied example of a slow game—a game that
questions what counts as “action” in videogames. This game is A Slow Year (2010), designed
for the classic Atari 2600 console by Ian Bogost. Comprised of four separate movements
matching the four seasons, A Slow Year challenges the dominant mode of action in videogames,
encouraging what I call “acts of deliberation.” These acts of deliberation transform the core
mechanic of games from “action” (as Galloway would put it) into “experience”—and not just
any experience, but the kind of experience that Walter Benjamin identifies as Erfahrung, anEric Dean Rasmussen - 21.06.2012 - 12:55