The Pause Button

guru2.jpg
Image: Ian Bogost , Guru Meditation, 2009 (Still)

For those of us who suffer from Continual Partial Awareness, a new game has arrived that might just succeed in capturing your attention for more than 2 seconds. Created by video game scholar and critic Ian Bogost, Guru Meditation forces the player to remain still and focus. That's it. Move or otherwise signal distraction, however, and the player must begin again. "Guru Meditation" originated as an in house meditation game developed for the Amiga Joyboard by the company's programmers in order to ease their frustration with the temperamental system, and is better known as the mysterious expression appearing in the Amiga's fatal error message. Bogost revived this tidbit of Amiga history by producing a contemporary version for the Atari VCS and the iPhone. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Beyond geekdom, Bogost claims that the project stems from his fascination with the historical intersection between Silicon Valley and hippie counter-culture, which lead him to the game, along with others like it. To get into the guru-oove, click here.