Roguelikes as “Concrete Gaming”, more Poetry than Art
An early, not-quite forgotten tradition, is that of the roguelike. While Rogue was the first notable game to use a cursor-addressable video terminal, there are also interesting all-text games that were played on a print terminal and visually depict some sort of terrain or playing field. I argue that despite some superficial similarities and historical overlap, these games have very little to do with so-called “ASCII art” and the similar ANSI and PETSCII art, however beautiful, that is done for instance in the demoscene. Instead, I make a connection to the literary avant-garde of concrete poetry, with its strange systematic adaptation of characters. An implication is that creators of such games today should look to the work of concrete poets such as Steve McCaffery and Dom Sylvester Houédard for examples of how to develop radical landscapes made of characters. Extending a discussion I developed for the first Roguelike Celebration last year, this talk looks far beyond mainstream literary and gaming concepts for ways that unusual but systematic deployments of letters and other characters help to create environments that are visually or interactively navigable.
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