Currency: An Interview with Chris Wille and Brian Patrick Franklin (original) (raw)

2017, Analog Game Studies, vol. 2

Currency (2014), by Chris Wille and Brian Patrick Franklin, uses an antique Burroughs adding machine to control player movement on a constantly- printing roll of receipt paper. Players traverse levels generated by real-time Bitcoin exchange rates. Developer Chris Wille describes the project as “an ASCII generated 8 BIT game”1 modeled after Atari’s classic Defender (1981). But Currency throws players into a map generated by live financial information, not by some developer’s omnipotent hand. Everything about Currency challenges our commonsense classification of games as either “digital” or “analog,” from its paper display to its antique controller.