Game scholars and critics sit quietly in a darkened room in Snowbird, Utah, for the Well-Played Summit at the Digital Games Research Association’s 2014 conference. On the front wall, the game being shown has the telltale short fat pixels of the Atari VCS, yet the game does things graphically that the Atari never achieved during the peak of its popularity some three decades ago. As volunteers take turns passing the controller, I read aloud from a collection of haiku that seem to have subjects and objects out of joint. For the first three minigames, themed by season, participants have done well given nothing but a didactic
haiku to guide them through each game: they catch wayward leaves with a waiting pile, sip coffee at sunset and pair thunder with lightning. But the last game gives them trouble; I hand over the book to another reading and take the controller. The volunteer reads: “A lonely surface / Grasses whirl beyond hot groves / Brush retires it.” On the screen, logs float along a placid stream and the speakers produce a metallic approximation of the cyclical hum of insects. My task is to match my gaze with one of the logs floating lazily downstream. I press the red button on the Atari controller; I close my eyes; the screen goes black, the curtains of two eyelids rising and falling from top and bottom. “The pond tapped its shores / Gardens shut over smooth floors / Dream reinforcements.” I hear a soft chuckle while I count silently, then release the button. Out of practice, I have missed: the cursor representing my pensive gaze is a few pixels short of the target log. I mutter and try again, counting more slowly this time. This time, when I release the button and the idyllic squat-pixel screen pops back on screen as I open my eyes, the cursor and log are aligned: the game gives a validating beep and a yellow dot counting the point appears at the corner of the screen. “One
voyage did end / Low, lonely, still indigo / Across blues, shorelines.”
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