In our last unit “The Variable”, we learned that a common characteristic that Twine games share is limitation of choice. Often this limitation of choice can force players to have an emotional experience and to develop empathy, for example, we saw how the limitation of choice in “Will Not Let Me Go” forced players to experience Alzheimer’s through Fred’s eyes. Now in Dakota, this limitation of choice takes on a new function and purpose.
“Dakota” is literary animation that was produced in Flash. Rettberg in Electronic Literature describes Flash as a “multimedia software platform” that was seen as a “movie-based production metaphor”. On the other hand, “Dakota” displays black text on a white background and contains no graphics and animations. As mentioned in “Speed Reading”, the creators of “Dakota” ,Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries (YHCHI), aimed for minimalism and therefore did not want to include anything that may want to distract the reader away from the text. Since the game includes no graphics or any intricate design, the reader is forced to only focus on the text of the animation and to “close read”.
In the first half of this class we explored hypertext text fiction and how interactivity is a common element these text. For example, we have explored the interactive work of “Queers in Love at the End of the World”. On the hand, Dakota would not be classified as a hypertext electronic literature work due to it’s lack of interactivity; there are no instances in the animation where the reader can participate. As a result, there is limitation of choice in “Dakota”. This lack of interactivity then forces the reader to concentrate on text presented in front of them. Pressman states that “ “Dakota” resist the alignment with electronic literature with hypertext and,and favor the foregrounding of text and typography”. When playing “Dakota”, I felt that I paid a lot of attention to the text because there were no interactive elements and I also had no control of the timing of the work. Since I did not have any control, all I could do was try and pay close attention to the text, even though I could not keep up the text at some moments. Thirdly, I definitely paid more attention to the text in “Dakota” in comparison to “Queers in Love at the End of the World” . Since “Queers in Love at the End of the World” is a timed hypertext fiction, I felt the need to click on the hypertext words and create as many stories as I could within those 10 seconds. As a result, I did not pay that much attention to the text itself. Therefore this demonstrates how limitation of choice forces the reader to really pay attention to the text itself.
To conclude, limitation of choice can be used as a technique to get readers to pay greater attention to the text presented in front of them.