DIG 220 ⚡ Spring 2020
The Story of Pretty Hannah Brown is a quest game made with Twine. It is based on the old fairy tale The Story of Pretty Goldilocks. In this story, you play Daniel who is Charming in the original fairytale. As the brother to the famous actor, Liam Hemsworth, you are sent on a quest to try and convince Hannah Brown to go on a date with your brother.
Link to game: https://elwarner.itch.io/the-story-of-pretty-goldilocks
Throughout this semester I have written five blog post and there were some recurring themes and topics in my writing. Firstly, I wrote about limitation of choice and the consequences of it for two out of the five blog posts .In my second blog post, I wrote about the limitation of choice in “Cactus Blue Motel” and “Will Not let me go”. Both of these twine games represented how limitation of choice can be used as a technique to “increase empathy and create emotional connections.” In my third blog post about the video-animation Dakota, I also talked about limitation of choice. In this post, I talked about how limitation of choice was a technique used to force the reader to really pay attention to the text itself. As a result, I believe that limitation of choice was a recurring theme in my post. Secondly, I realized that in several of my blog post I compared these games to more “stereotypical” videogames. For example, I compared “Her Story” and the “Cactus Blue motel” to “stereotypical” video games and commented why they are different those videogames. Lastly, another recurring element of my blog post was that I tried to decipher the evocative meaning in some of the games that we played for class . In my post about “Cactus Blue Hotel”, I stated that on an evocative level the “hotel represented a dangerous mindset that people may have, if they want to escape the realities of life”. I also thought that “How to rob a bank” was “a social commentary on much personal information exist on our phones in this modern era”.
In the past 15 weeks, I believe that the nature of my blog post has changed. My first blog post was basically a summary of chapter 3 from Electronic Literature. I did not really write about what I thought about the chapter; I just basically wrote a summary on it. In my later blog posts, I analyzed the games assigned that day and wrote more about what I thought of the game instead of just writing a summary. I realized that Dr. Sample wanted more than just a summary post, but wanted to know what we thought of the game and the connections between the concept we discussed in class or the reading. I was surprised about how much I wrote about limitation of choice and the “Cactus Blue Hotel”. I really enjoyed playing the “Cactus Blue Hotel” and it is probably the reason why I refer to it so many times in my blog post.
I would like to revisit my idea about how “as technology developed, so did the possibilities for hypertext fiction” in my first blog post of the semester. I feel this the statement that I presented in the first blog post was true but I feel like the idea about making my blog post centered around that idea was pretty boring. Instead, I would analyze the two games assigned to us that day “My boyfriend came back from war” and “ My body-AWunderkammer” and then maybe relate it back to how these games would not be possible without technological advancement.
To conclude, I believe that I wrote about some interesting themes and topics throughout the duration of the course, and that the nature of my blog post improved especially between my first blog post and the second one.
“How to rob a bank” is an interactive twine game that tells the story of Ted, an inexperienced bank robber, and Elizabeth, his female partner in crime. The game also tells their “Bonnie and Clyde” love story. This interactive story is told through their I-phones; the stories unfold through their google searches, text messages, and apps. I thought that watching their lives unfold via their phone is a social commentary on much personal information exist on our phones in this modern era.
In the first three stories of the game when the background was blue, Ted’s phone would be on display while Elizabeth’s phone would be displayed when the background was pink. In addition, an instrumental reggae song was background of these three parts which gave a feeling of calmness even though they were robbing banks. I thought this music emphasized the fact that these young adults really had no idea what they were doing , and highlighted their calm disposition even when being fugitives on the run.
In the fourth story,”home”, the mood of the whole gameshifts because they are “thought to be” retired from robbing banks, and they have a child. The music in the background seems reflects the place in which they are currently living Hudson, Ohio; the music is composed of birds chirping, and cars passing. The last story, “sister, sister is a compilation of Huffpost articles written by Elizabeth’s sister, Deborah Franken. Lastly, I thought it was pretty cool how the game was put together; you could see their text, what they were searching, and you could see the time in which they were doing so. As a result, I felt as if I was walking through life with them.
I thought the whole concept of telling a story through phones was brilliant and the player discovered so much other information about the characters in the story by what they were searching on the internet, their text messages between one another and etc. For example we learned early on the age of Ted, 25, through what he types into “Will you have enough to retire” and that the reason why we wants to rob a bank; he does not want to get a conventional job, but wants to retire now. In addition, we learn more about their personalities and the type of people they are through their google searches. We learn that Ted is an adrenaline junkie because he gets so bored being in Ohio and misses the thrill of robbing banks. These are two of the many details we learn about these characters through their phone usage. I believe that interactive fiction game is a social commentary on how much personal information is on a person’s phone including their web searches, text messages, social media apps, etcs. It’s actually a little bit scary how much a person could uncover about you by going through your phone or any of your devices. In addition, in the last story “sister, sister” Debra comments “Also, it seems like someone is reading my mind. Seriously, I see ads related to things I’ve been thinking about. Can they do that? How is that possible.” This is referring to the targeted advertisements that we receive on a day to day basis and highlights how tailored these advertisements are to us.
To conclude, I believe that “How to rob a bank” is a social commentary on how much personal information can be discovered through our electronic devices.
Her Story is a video game in which you use a database to try and piece together the murder of Simon, the player’s fathers. In my opinion, Her Story is not your stereotypical type of video game for many reasons. When you first start playing the game, there is not a clear finishing point or marker that you have to achieve; you don’t really know when you are approaching the end of the game, which frustrated me. In addition, at the beginning of the game you know that you are trying to piece together a murder case but you do not know why. It is only when you have watch most, if not all of the videos that the game reveals that the character in which you are playing is Eve’s daughter and the reason she is trying to piece together the murder. She is trying to understand the actions of her mother. In more stereotypical video games, the main objective of the game is usually pretty clear and laid out at the beginning of the game.
Secondly, in most video games you leave the game feeling pretty accomplished and settled. However, after finishing this game I felt unsettled and questioned if I truly understood the storyline of the murder. At first, I thought that Eve was a figment of Hannah’s imagination, and then towards the end of the game I believed that Eve was her identical twin sister, who had gotten pregnant by Simon. However, after playing the game I thought that maybe Hannah had had a spilt personality, and at some points she would become Eve after looking at her reflection in the mirror. Even though, I was pretty sure that Eve was Hannah identical twin, I still had doubts if that was the case or if she had a spilt personality. As a result, I still felt unsettled after “finishing” the video game unlike the feeling I would have after finishing more stereotypical video games. In addition, I thought that the background music when you were not watching a clip and the background of Hannah with the police sirens (that would sometime come up after you finish watch a clip) were pretty ominous.
Lastly, using a database to try and understand and piece together the murder was a unique way of solving a mystery video game. “Cactus Blue Hotel” was kind of like a mystery interactive twine video game, and the methods for you to understand why the motel was not just your average motel was completely different from having a database system. In that game you had to go to people’s apartments and talk to them to understand the mystery of the game. While when playing “Her Story”, you had to enter words that seemed related to the crime and see if new videos appears. In watching the new videos, I would be on the lookout for new key words and people to try and piece together the murder, which I think is pretty neat and an innovate and more interactive way of piecing together Simon’s murder. In addition, I think “Her Story” is an example of how the databases could be used to form a narrative.
To conclude, I believe that “Her Story” is not your stereotypical video game.
Letters from World War 2 is a British World War 2 love letter generator. The love letters are written by British soldiers to their wives and and vice versa during a six month period of time, January 1944 to June 1944. These love letter try to represent the realities and consequences of the war.
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.
According to Salter, Twine, released in 2009, has provided a new platform for game designers of diverse backgrounds to create “non-typical” games and has highlighted the concept that games have the potential to “increase empathy and create emotional connections.” In addition, we can see these aspects of Twine games in “Cactus Blue Hotel” and “Will Not Let Me Go”. Firstly, Salter states that Twine is a code free environment and therefore people with no programming background can be the creators of these games. As a result, this allows the Twine community to have a different group of creators with diverse backgrounds in comparison to the main-stream and homogeneous gaming community dominated by white males. Consequently, the concepts and themes of twine games are “non-typical” and “not clearly goal-oriented, and instead place emphatic development at the center of play”. Salter also states that there are some characteristics that are shared between twine games which includes personal voice or autobiographical influence, limitation of choice, dark color palettes, limited imagery, and use of internal monologues and dreamscapes. I believe that the games “Cactus Blue Hotel” and “Will Not Let Me Go” have some of these characteristics that are intrinsic to twine games.
“Cactus Blue Hotel” is about three friends that are driving through the desert on their way to California, for their last hooray together before they start a new chapter of their lives and go to college. While driving they ended up stumbling on a hotel, and decided to spend the night there.However, they soon found out it is not a regular hotel when the hotel’s cactus sign bloomed a blue neon light flower and the hotel appeared more lively afterwards. Dean, a character in the story, described the hotel as a place “where people never got tired” and “a place you can just stay put and do nothing”, but they discover that it is essentially a trap. On a representational level, this hotel represents a place where you can get trapped in because you want to escape and get away from your problems. In addition, the main character realizes that all people have problems that they want to escape from, for example, Lex doesn’t seem to have the money to pay to study and live at NYU and Becky is having relationship problems with her boyfriend. While on an evocative level this hotel can represent a dangerous mindset that people may have, if they want to escape the realities of life. They might let their entire lives go pass them without moving forward and they end up stuck in the same position for a long time. We can see this through the hotel guests. Some of them have been stuck in the hotel for ages, for example, when the band member asked “we made it through Y2K?”, it definitely highlighted how much time he had been stuck there at the hotel.
Firstly, this game is limited in the choices the player can make which is a characteristic common to Twine games. It really only follows one main story-line until the end. The choices that you make mostly, are mostly related to the emotional response of the main character and the things that she might say. Therefore, although there is not a lot of choice, I ended up building an emotional connection with the main character because I felt that I was her while playing the game. It is also because of the personal voice used in the game. The game was written in the perspective of the main character and therefore the personal pronoun “I” was used a lot. Secondly, I believe that this game places emphatic development at the center, but also includes elements of it being goal-orientated. The story made me remember when I was a teenager and how intimidating it could be leaving high school, because you do not know exactly what is in store for you at college or any of your future endeavors. However, the game also has the player do specific tasks before they can move forward in the game, for example, going to the shed. At some points you can get stuck in the game, if you are not entirely sure how to find the shed. Lastly, I thought the form of her twine was really amazing, because it was kind of like a mini map but in text. If the word “Room” was a hypertext link , you could click on it and it would take you to your room. So, it was pretty easy to navigate once you got the hang of it, which took me a little while.
“Will Not Let Me Go” had some similar characteristics to “Cactus Blue Hotel” for example, limitation of choice and the game places emphatic development at the center of the game. “Will Not Let Me Go” was centered around the main character Fred, who has Alzheimer’s disease, and the game features many excerpts of his life during the different stages of his Alzheimer’s disease. For example, the first excerpt was at his wife’s Virginia’s funeral, but he didn’t know it was his wife’s funeral. Since the story is from his perspective, I also did not know that it was his wife’s funeral until at the end of that scene when the young man next to him said “C’mon dad.” Firstly, I believe that the limitation of choice forces the player to experience Alzheimer’s disease. In this game, the choices that you make have no direct impact on the main plot of the story-line, therefore I had no choice but to follow Fred’s story and go through his life with him. I even got really frustrated when he was looking for his glasses;he was looking everywhere for them and then he went outside and got lost . As a result, I feel that by limiting our choices, I was forced to go through all the motions and emotions of having Alzheimer’s disease which lead me to feel empathy for people who have to go through this disease. In addition, I think the form of the of the twine game emphasized how scattered a person with Alzheimer’s disease could feel because the excerpts were not in any sort of chronological order, they were kind of all over the place.
To conclude I believe that both “Cactus Blue Hotel” and ““Will Not Let Me Go” both have characteristics of the twine genre proposed by Anatasia Salter in her paper.
Works Cited:
“Playing at Empathy: Representing and Experiencing Emotional Growth Through Twine Games”
One of the main takeaways that I got from of chapter 3 by Scott Rutberg was that technological advancement has allowed the genre of hypertext fiction to develop and evolve. From our class on Monday, we established that Jorge Luis Borges’ story “Garden of Forking Paths” published in 1944 ,even though itself was not a hypertext fiction, served as inspiration for later hypertext fictions. One example of a hypertext fiction that used Borges’ story as inspiration was Staurt Moulthrop’s Victory Gardens published in 1992. Rutberg describes that Victory Gardens was a hypertext fiction with multilinear narrative structures and multiple potential outcomes, similar to Tu’ui Pen fiction novel in the Garden of Forking Paths. This grand undertaking of hypertext fiction was only made possible with the advancement of technology and different software. At this point in 1992, most hypertext fiction were published by Eastgate publishers and used Storyspace as their software of choice . As technology developed, so did the possibilities for hypertext fiction. It was now possible for hypertext text to become “playable media” with the invention of the web. Moulthrop describes this idea of hypertext fictions now being ‘playable media” instead of conventional point and click hypertext fiction. As mentioned in this chapter, with the invention of the web it was no longer necessary to be published by Eastgate publishers and it allowed these hypertext fictions to be overwritten and changed.
The hypertext fiction, Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, that we were assigned for today’s readings was the first hypertext fiction to be published on the web. This hypertext fiction, for me, in a way demonstrates how the pictures and gifs help us understand the underlying context of the hyperfiction novel. My body-Wunderkammer published in 1997, was another hypertext fiction assigned to us. This hypertext fiction highlighted the multilinear component of hypertext novels. In this hypertext fiction when you clicked on a body part, it took you to page with a story about that particular body part. Then some specific words were hyperlinked and depending on the word you clicked on, it would take you to a page of another story. Lastly, I believe that both Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back from the War and my body-Wunderkammer demonstrate the hypermedia elements that developed due to technological advancement.