Category: Group D

Litrouke’s “Please Answer Carefully” draws our attention to the act of seeing— the flashes of screen that make the reader feel as if their own eyes were betraying them, calls attention to the process of reading itself. One of the most profoundly broadening aspects of Twine games as Anastasia Salter points out in her article “Playing at Empathy” is there “immersive” capacity that allows a true conflation of reader/character/POV (Salter 1) . I think this is most true in “PAC” for it, more than the other games, blurs the line between text and device seamlessly through its format as a questionnaire–a pop up survey you might see scrolling on the very device you play the game on. 

Particular to this Twine game are its glitches which are the earliest sign that the questionnaire is not as it appears. These glitches become a full on hacking of the survey as it is revealed to be a sort of digital entrapment from a distant stalker. What is perhaps the most unnerving, and true to the experience of stalking is the way in which the game initially makes us distrust our own vision, and our own choices, through the employment of these glitches. There’s a theme  of gaslighting that Litrouke is clearly tapping into through this manipulation of medium. As readers we are made to question our own vision? Did we really see that? Or is our mind just playing tricks on us? 

The sound effects egg this on, as our eyes are glued to the screen we’re made to feel suddenly entrapped in our surroundings. I’m interested to see how other members of the class felt about this game, specifically in regards to gender lines.  

In this regard, I wonder how empathy can become more complicated by interactivity. I’m reminded of Saidiya Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection which addresses the complication of empathy in slave narratives written by white abolitionists, and how their attempt to embody empathy was more complicated than the parameters of good intentioned activism–an in fact resulted in a promulgation of graphic  trauma. In Twine games where for example we are asked to immerse ourselves in potentially problematic, racist, traumatic, etc subject matter, what is the effect of such immersion and interactivity? What are we, as reader/players, enacting? Salter talks about Twine games in relation to their capacity to enable “emotional growth” and “experimentation” but are such games always spaces for the positive processing of such emotions (Salter 2-3)? 

What, if anything, are we forced to experience more viscerally than we’d like to in such games? 

Work Cited:

“Please Answer Carefully” by Litrouke

Hartman, Saidiya V. Scenes Of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, And Self-making In Nineteenth-century America. New York : Oxford University Press, 1997. Print.

Salter, Anastasia. “Playing at empathy: Representing and experiencing emotional growth through Twine games.” 2016 IEEE International Conference on Serious Games and Applications for Health (SeGAH) (2016): 1-8.

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:

“Will Not Let Me Go”

“Cactus Blue Hotel”

“Playing at Empathy: Representing and Experiencing Emotional Growth Through Twine Games”

We were recently exposed to Twine games- as well as debates circling whether or not they are considered games.  I think this question is extremely relevant to the three games Cactus Blue Hotel, Will Not Let Me Go, and Please Answer Carefully.  These were very interesting to play, but made me really question whether I was playing a game or clicking through links.

I think in respect to Cactus Blue Hotel I began the game feeling that I was actually playing a game.  Soon, however, my feelings changed.  I found that I was clicking on certain words to move forward, when I was actually moving backwards.  I began to feel like I was clicking in circles.  I then started to click more so to end the loop rather than to understand the context of the storyline and find the actual end of the game.  I really did not even make it to the end of the game.  I ended up quitting when I became too frustrated with my clicks putting me in a viscous cycle.  This reminded me of how I felt when I was playing “Shade”.  In this game too, I quickly became frustrated (in this game more so with not understanding the vocabulary necessary to advance in the game, but all in all the same emotions arose.)  I am not sure if anyone else felt the torture of this twine game, but would love to discuss this frustrating loop further.

I became very frustrated again while playing Will Not Let Me Go (I am quickly learning I might not be the most patient person out there).  This game was filled with long story lines that confused me.  In this game as well I found myself clicking the key words only to move on through the story.  I did, however, enjoy this game a bit more than the latter as I could identify a goal the author wished to show.  Each different part of the game was mapped at the top of the screen by a black bar that grew as you completed the different sections.  In this way, I felt like I was playing more of a game- there was a goal to get to the end of the black line.  When you did finally reach the end, you realized that each story was connected and the ending of the previous story marked an all new beginning for the same characters to interact in the next.

Lastly, Please Answer Carefully was my favorite game from this section.  Again, this twine game did not feel so much like a game as there was no competitive aspect or major end goal.  I did enjoy this game the most though as I felt it was the most entertaining to play.  For me, (playing this game along in my not too lavish dorm room where I can hear all the sounds in the hallway and have my door unlocked) I was really scared!  I played the game with the sound on and the sound effects were quite startling.  There was deep breathing that really spooked me, not to mention the parts of the game where you had no choice but to answer the way the voice wanted you to.  I knew I was alone while playing the game, yet was so terrified there was somewhere with me I was unaware of.

Overall, these games made me really question what made a game a game.  I really had to think about what went into making games fun and entertaining.

Works Cited:

• Astrid Dalmady, Cactus Blue Hotel (2016)
• Stephen Granade, Will Not Let Me Go (2017)
• Litrouke, Please Answer Carefully (2019)
• Andrew Plotkin, “Shade” (2000)

The way language is presented and the choices available can make a reader truly understand and empathize with the main character. In Will Not Let Me Go, the reader takes the role of an aging man with Alzheimer’s. The piece first starts out saying that the game will remember where you are, and as the text fades, ‘remember’ stands out a little longer to give a hint as to whats to come. The reader is then launched into the scene of a funeral. People are sad nearby the main character, Fred, but he feels he is only there since he is expected to be. He also has no idea who is next to him despite some physical similarities. What the reader does not realize at this crucial moment is that the person who has died is Fred’s wife, and the man next to Fred is his son, and he has no memory of who they are.

This beginning launches the reader into the realization that if he does not recognize his own family, then there must be a problem with his memory. The story then reverts back in time to when the problem first started, letting the reader connect deeply with Fred by making decisions for him. Fred will either cope his ever growing memory problem, or lash out and become aggressive to everyone and everything that slightly bothers him. As a reader, one must make a decision that seems the best given the limited context since Fred begins not to remember anything.

As time progresses, it reaches a point to where the text just gives you snippets of whats occurring as Fred barely even knows what is going on around him. Even after he lapses back into a period of partial stability, he does not even remember his own family who come to see him, creating an ever furthering burden upon them that he regrets causing.

As the text becomes more sporadic and confused, it is a representation of the evocative meaning that Fred is not in tune to what is happening. This is similar to the idea that My Father’s Long, Long Legs has a meaning that is evoked from the way the story unfolds. Will Not Let Me Go cleverly immerses the reader in a world that might otherwise be hard to understand, conclusively showing how the use of language and choices can allow the reader to connect to a main character in unfamiliar circumstances.

We had to read from the book, Electronic Literature.  When I first picked the book up, I didn’t think much of what the title could mean, the two words in general really.  However, upon reading and from past class discussions, I have already grown to understand and appreciate a little bit more about what electronic literature actually entails.  Simply put, electronic literature, as I have been growing to understand, is an online space in which to put actions from books or even real life.  Pages 73-86 from Electronic Literature exemplify my point well.

One of the first online game examples this reading addresses is that of dolls, The Doll Games.  This game is a very good representation in my opinion of electronic literature.  The way the book describes the game, “The work takes a layered metafictional approach, taking a phenomenon- playing with dolls- that is often dismissed as an ordinary idle pastime of young girls wrapping layers of commentary around it from the imagined voices of the dolls themselves, to the reflections of the sisters on their games at different stages of their lives as writers and researchers, to the fictional voice of the scholar, to the relation of their stories to larger questions of how children use weird forms to play to wrestle with their emerging sense of identity and their place in the world” (Rettberg, 74).  I think this quote is particularly useful in explaining what electronic literature means.  The act of playing with dolls is something I think a lot of young girls have done at some point in their childhood, I know I have.  But the way in which that same action is translated to a digital platform is so interesting and really expresses electronic literature.

The book also talks about hypertext fiction, which is something we have discussed in class as well when talking about other games.  I really enjoyed reading about this as I felt I could easily relate it to the in-class games we had previously discussed.  It made it easier for me to understand what the book was trying to exactly get at since I had been previously exposed to the concept of hypertext fiction.

The game that was assigned for homework, My Body- A Wunderkammer was in my opinion a game of adventure and exploration.  This is something else we have spoken about in class that I saw relevant to our assignment.  The game has you click on different body parts to learn more and read more of the story.  As you clicked, you got to learn more about which each part of the body meant to the main character.  You were essentially part of writing the story you read by choosing which body parts to click on and when.

I think the following link is a good example of how I am trying to explain Hypertext as I have been understanding class discussions.

Work Cited:

Rettberg, Scott. Electronic Literature. Polity Press, 2018.

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.

When first reading Ryan’s Many Forms of Interactivity, I didn’t quite understand the purpose of a story being both external and exploratory. If the reader was neither a part of or had a lasting impact on the story how interactive could it really be? Both My Boyfriend Came Back from the War and My Body-A Wunderkammer display the power of hypertext and its use of fragmentation to display and replicate emotions. The external and exploratory nature of these pieces allows the reader to interact with the story in a way to truly understand the emotions of characters through the use of both fragmentation and multilinear narratives.

In My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, the divided black screen with blurry text shows the wide range of emotions between the couple. The constant confusion and incoherence the reader experiences mirror that of an argument going nowhere. The hypertext nature of the story allows the reader to step into the couple’s shoes. Although the reader is an outside observer, the fragmentation and multilinear narrative allow the reader to truly experience the confusion and uncertainty faced by the couple as they end their relationship. The confusion the reader is overwhelmed with as they interact with the choppy and bleak storyline replicates the disorder experienced by the broken couple.

The complexity and memories within one’s body are displayed in My Body-A Wunderkammer using fragmentation. Bodies are complex with marking and memories, and the hypertext nature of the story allows the reader to explore Jackson’s body in a multilinear way. The insecurities and the views of our body can be complex, confusing and often rooted in memories. The use of hypertext allows the reader to deep dive into the inner thinking of Jackson and how her memories connect to her body image. In Tattoos, Jackson first gives a general description of her tattoos but as you continue to click on the text you learn about the memories and experiences that inspired them.  Very similar to the process of getting to know a person, the story begins with surface-level descriptions and as the reader continues, they randomly learn personal details about the author.

A through-line that connects many of the CYOA games and hypertext pieces we’ve been exposed to thus far this semester is a propensity for them to contain sexually explicit content–often surrounding culturally taboo sexual interactions. “My Body–A Wunderkammer” perhaps makes this thematic undercurrent most visually evident in its literal connection of the author’s physical body to the digital text. Wunderkammer itself is german for “a place where a collection of curiosities and rarities is exhibited” according to Lexico. I’d like to focus on this notion of exhibition and somaticism that hypertext and digital storytelling seem to adhere to frequently. 

One interesting paradox of “My Body” is the mediation with which the story is told. Ostensibly such digital/technological intervention into autobiography would feel inherently alienating or rather disembodying. And yet, the opposite is true. Shelly Jackson invites her reader into the somatic space through the graphic fragmentation of the artistic representation of the body. Such access is made clickable, and therefore virtually tactile through the hypertext. 

We as readers are literally invited to touch the body, albeit through the form of a cursor. 

In our chapter on hypertext in Electronic Literature, Scott Rettberg makes a passing reference to Donna Haraway’s theory of “cyborging” in literature. In her essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” Haraway argues that “a cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction”(Haraway 1). Haraway’s manifesto is dense and complicated but can be summarized best by these above lines. Haraway is useful in an analysis of “My Body” in her theorizing of a body which inhabits a mechanical and “social reality”–one in which the body is inherently tied to the technology through which it understands itself. 

To return briefly to the sexually explicit nature of the hypertext, specifically that of the passage regarding the penetrative tail, the reader, through their interactivity with the body of the hypertext, is asked implicity to participate in this sexual act. Therefore the technological mediation of the fictive text enables the reader to engage in a more embodied way with the subject matter of the text. 

A similar dynamic could be seen in the game “The Girl and The Wolf“ in which the reader was provoked to analyze the most sexual and violent aspects of the story’s axis. Perhaps the formal way in which hypertext engages the tactile senses and POV of its readers/users lends itself to these more exhibitory narrative plotlines. But when these narrative lines have inherently misogynistic or sexually violent, a potentially problematic participatory voyeurism is at play

While the hypertext does mediate suh embodiment, it equally evidences and attempts to make lear its thematic concern with disembodiment. “My Body” also evidences what Rettberg references in his chapter as a medial reflexivity in which the fragmented and seeming alien nature of the intervention of technology in this deeply personal autobiography reflects the author’s view toward such embodiment. The author’s characterization of her body is told in an inherently, quite literally fragmented manner (the body parts are cut up and sectioned off). Therefore the alienating/disembodying nature of the autobiography is reflected in the games very structure. 

As a final note and to harken back briefly to my time in Death in the Digital Age with Dr. Sample, the inhuman humanity of the text or rather the bodiless body that the hypertext enables is ultimately an uncanny creation: one which seems to, by its very nature, necessitate discomforting content. 

.Work Cited

Haraway, Donna Jeanne. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women : The Reinvention of Nature. Routledge, 1991.

“Wunderkammer: Definition of Wunderkammer by Lexico.” Lexico Dictionaries | English, Lexico Dictionaries, www.lexico.com/en/definition/wunderkammer.

In the work ‘my body — A Wunderkammer‘ by Jackson, hyperlinks were used as a way to explore the author’s past and interpretations of herself. Throughout the piece you are invited to click on various drawn body parts which then redirect you to another page with an anecdote about that particular part. By reading the passages written by the author, we are able to learn about the insecurities faced by the author, either physical or mental. As the author of ‘Electronic Literature‘ explains, Jackson interpreted the body as “a kind of inscription surface for personal history and memory.”

Among these different pieces within the hypertext story we can see patterns appear that reveal deep-set insecurities. For example, in the ‘hips‘ and ‘shoulders‘ section, she constantly compares different parts of her to male ones. She remarks in ‘shoulders’ that she appeared to have male genitalia but was potentially glad she did not. At the same time, in the hips section she remarked she had musculature similar to men idolized by the Greeks. Both of these remarks seem portray to the idea that she was uncomfortable with parts of her body and how some aspects of her did not hold up to her image of a proper female body.

These remarks went further than just physical, they also bled into psychological uncertainties as well. In one section called ‘tail‘ the author claims she has a tail that likes to move on its own and even assault her. In one recollection, she talks about her friend using her tail for sexual pleasure. The unlikelihood of this part seems to instead point at her insecurity of her body and how it is not perfectly “female” to her. She even describes trying to remove it by tying it to a door handle without success. From this we can assume the tail is a manifestation of her mind of how her body appears partially masculine.

This work is an intense view into the author’s mind and cleverly uses hyperlinks to portray a story of both body and mind. Similar styles that use hyperlinks can be seen in other hypertext stories from class including the like of ‘Uncle Roger‘ that contains several stories hidden away until the user accesses them through a hyperlink. Jackson clearly showed the versatility of hypertext stories and how the author can use it to explore many different aspects of life.