True to Platform
Abstraction and universality inform us that any program can run on any computer, but our realities are that certain computing experiences are qualitatively different. They could be thousands or millions of times faster, can be run on a smartphone instead of a server farm, use very different output devices, or otherwise be accommodated to the specifics of our computational platforms.
In electronic literature and some more off-the-cuff areas of creative computing, such as BASIC home computing, individuals working with limited resources come up against the realities of platforms all the time. In the demoscene, a fervent admiration for what can be done using a Commodore 64, an Amiga, or a modern-day Windows system with a capable graphics card leads sceners to develop with a strong sense of platform and to develop for specific platforms. Factors in the visual arts also incline artists working with computation to give careful consideration for the platforms they use. It is perhaps in gaming, where developers still dream of effortlessly producing for both iOS and Android, both Xbox One and PS 4, that the most effort is put into developing new platforms while game-makers try as hard as possible to factor the platform out.
My talk will consider how games might be made better not by being more advanced, abstractly, but because developers choose to make them more true to their computational platforms.
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