Category: Reflective Post

Reflective Blog Post

,
asip

As I read my posts from the semester, I was pleased to see how much I’ve learned. As we learned different terms and themes in class, I tried my best to apply that to my blog posts. Most of all, this class taught me to look at literature in a different lens and introduced me to a new genre. 

Most of my posts related the day’s reading back to our CYOA project. For example, in my second post I argued that CYOA books were complex interactive fiction. I explained the similarities I saw between the CYOA books and the characteristics of interactive fiction. In my third post, I compared digital poetics to CYOA books and the various limitations that each genre had. Lastly, in my fourth post, I compared the quick decisions made in Bury Me My Love to the decisions made in CYOA books. Mapping my CYOA book at the beginning of the semester really helped me understand the significance of structure in storytelling and was a great basis to keep referring to throughout the semester. Not only that, understanding CYOA books was a great introduction to the rest of the course’s themes. 

I also noticed how I always tried to incorporate my own experience with the work in my blog post. After learning about interactivity and the affordances of it within electronic literature, I was hyperaware of the various ways I was engaging with the work. By explaining my own experience with the works, I was able to point out details that I thought were integral to the game. This is seen in my fourth post about Her Story and how my experience playing this game informed the players role. 

As I compare my last blog post to my first blog post, it is clear how I’ve applied the themes of our course as the semester has progressed. My first post was a simple summary of the day’s assigned works whereas my last post was a combination of topics, themes and vocabulary from class.

Reflective Post

,
altutar

I enjoyed writing blog posts. I think it became such an habit that I even considered creating a blog section to my website, where I can write in two different languages – English and Turkish. Most of the content that we talk about is available in English, but I doubt that is the case for Turkish. I indeed drafted a blog post about how someone could use the Snapchat map to figure out where you live as almost all of us are at home. This is really disturbing.

Looking back at what I learned and wrote about in this class, I explore a variety of concepts. In my first blog post, I built top of my understanding of decaying media. I was critical about all web-based art and literature becoming obsolete, and I explored how we can make these works eternal. Although my direction was to take all these games to some sort of a virtual reality version, it is also possible that every single platform we will create or created will become obsolete some point. I asked the following valid questions that I still don’t have answers to: “Would these kinds of revisions be welcomed by the creator of early hypertext pieces? Would the authors feel the need to revise their work to keep the authenticity of their stories? Is there even a need to revise and revisit these literary pieces?”

In my second blog post, I dived more into Twine, an open-source platform for text-based game creation. Twine has been a good fellow in the COVID-19 quarantine not only in this class, but also in Gender and Technology as well. In this blog post, I appreciate the rebellious nature of Twine as it has challenged the traditional practices of publishing computer games. One question I raised in this blog post was that although Twine games included a wide range of topics such as mental health, they have not taken the approach to guide you how to solve these issues.

As we discussed the importance of Flash Player for web-based electronic literature, my third blog post discussed how my understanding of this platform changed. I report in this blog post that “for me, Flash was just a tool for eye candy and games, but now I also consider it as a medium for kinetic poetry.”

In my final blog post, I discussed the faulty Manovich argument that narratives and databases are enemies. I rather posed an important question: “Isn’t it fair to argue then that databases and narratives are allies rather than enemies when we look at it outside of the modern media and information technologies?”

Looking back on my progress throughout the semester, it is amazing to see how much I learned and grew. My desire to create and be a part of the electronic literature has grown. I am excited to tell different stories as new platforms come into play.

Reflections

,
juscott

After reflecting on my blog posts from the semester, I noticed my propensity to focus on my own experience and making a personal connection to whatever piece(s) was/were assigned.

My first post found me reflecting upon a game I played with friends in middle school to personalize the concept of hypertext. Looking at my own experience with creating an information pathway through hyperlinks enabled me to better comprehend a text like “Uncle Roger” not requiring a reader to engage with it in a particular order. By bringing the concept of hypertext into my own realm of tangible understanding, I became able to detach what I knew about print literature from my broader concept of literature (including digital).

In my second post, I reflected upon my experience with the game-play atmosphere of the text “16 Ways to Kill A Vampire at McDonald’s”. Though throughout the semester I came to understand the potential “game”-like vibe of some digital texts, “16 Ways” prompted me to reflect on my own thoughts on the form. Ultimately determining that although the form was engaging, it lacked what I considered to be crucial features of a literary experience.

In my third (and unfortunately final) post, I used the text “Network Effects” to grapple with my final months of senior being detached from Davidson. As I noted in my blog post, I was very taken with the piece, in hindsight perhaps much of my enjoyment came from the headspace I was in when engaging with the text for the first time. The broader idea of fleeting moments narrating the story of one’s life definitely caught me at a time when fleeting moments were all I thought about. I plan to revisit “Network Effect’s” soon, as I approach my final moments as a Davidson student. Though these moments don’t look as I had always thought and dreamed of, their deviations from my expectations are part of my story.

Looking back on my blog posts made me incredibly aware of my tendency to bring the new and unfamiliar into the context of my own life to achieve an understanding. Grounding digital literature in my own tangible digital/personal experience(s) enabled me to breakdown my previous definitions of literature as a print medium, and realize the ever-expanding ways there are to tell a story.

The Blog to End All Blogs

roroberts

Throughout my blog posts, I examined the effectiveness of interactivity. As a first-time reader of electronic literature, I was intrigued by the interactive elements of every work we played. As the semester progressed, I began to compare different games and question the importance of many aspects of electronic literature.

In my first blog post, I discussed interactivity and found fragmentation to be an effective method of displaying emotions through a work. In addition, most of my blog posts compared works to Choose Your Own Adventure books. The CYOA project was my first glimpse into interactive literature and I continued to see its elements in most works throughout the semester. “Choose Your Own Adventure books have not disappeared but rather evolved”, I write in my second blog post as I discover the beauty of Twine. A theme of me discovering different forms of electronic literature and its great aspects is seen throughout my blogs. As someone who had no idea what electronic literature was on the first day of the semester, I was impressed with every new work. In addition, my views on effective elements of electronic literature began to change as I learned more about electronic literature as Dakota caused me to question the need for interactivity in my third blog post.

Furthermore, my ability to truly analyze and understand an electronic literature piece and its elements began to develop throughout the semester. By my last blog post, I was able to connect what we had learned at the beginning of the semester to How to Rob a Bank. When first learning about the affordances of a book, I did not quite understand its connection to electronic literature but by the end of the semester, I was able to truly understand the beauty of electronic literature and its connection to literature as a whole.  

Reflection

maahari

After going through my blog posts, I noticed that I wrote about the digital literature we studied in relation to other topics we discussed in class and my own experiences. One common theme I noticed in some of my blog posts is how electronic literature compares to printed literature. Digital literature allows for much more interactivity and outcomes that printed literature cannot. On the other hand, printed storytelling offers more detailed storytelling. I also wrote about my reactions to certain games, such as Shade and Bury me, my Love. With Shade, I was unable to find the right commands to move forward in the game. I was relying on trial and error but was unable to explore my surroundings more, such as get a glass of water. On the other hand, I enjoyed Bury me, my Love because it felt like you were actually texting someone on your phone. The story’s dialogue was natural and the use of photos and emojis made the game feel personal.

My understanding of electronic literature changed significantly from the start of the semester. Before this class, I was not familiar with electronic literature at all. As I learned more about electronic literature over the course of the semester, my blog posts included more references to topics we discussed in class such as the uncanny and the sublime as well as combinatory poetics. Instead of simply stating my reaction to a game, my posts included more connections to broader themes as the semester progressed.

Reflections

kacowan

In my very first post of the semester, all the way back in January, I discussed how, unlike traditional literature, electronic literature cannot be confined to a narrow definition. It has too many various affordances and forms to be easily labeled and sorted away. Over the course of the semester, I think that I have found this to become even more true.

The next two posts speak of very different works- Shade and procedurally generated literature. One thing that has surprised me throughout the semester is the inclusion of works like Shade into the curriculum. Many times, these works feel more like games than literary works that we should be studying for a class. (I did make an explicit comparison to the work Game, Game, Game, and Again Game to the video game platformer Mario in my final post.)  However, I do think they have merit, and I have really enjoyed studying them.

Both these works provide a poignant example of the ways in which electronic literature differs greatly from traditional literature, which is something I’ve been interested in throughout the course. With Shade, and works like it, the player has a direct influence on the story. While the plot does not change (although in other works it can!), the player is given free rein to explore the environment and progress at their own pace. In contrast, with the procedurally generated works, their vastness is not something that can be replicated in traditional literature. Further, it is often the reader that interprets the work and gives it meaning because there is no authorial intent.

Over the course of the semester, my understanding of electronic literature has been greatly expanded, and the ways in which I can analyze these types of works have also changed significantly. Coming into this class, I didn’t even really have a sense of what electronic is. While I still don’t think I could define it, this comes more from the genre itself being so vast rather than a lack of understanding.

The Evolution of My Thoughts on Digital Literature

,
asrobinson

Looking back through my posts, I can definitely say I’ve learned a lot over the course of this semester. I really enjoyed looking back and reading how I applied concepts from readings and class discussions to the pieces we looked at. This class introduced me to a new form of literature, and I think my blog posts reflect how I started to view literature differently.

All of my posts focused on the player experience when interacting with each piece. For example, in my second post, I noted how learning the rules for navigating howling dogs facilitated my game play. I also discussed the feeling of confinement felt by the player. In my fourth, I mentioned the freedom the player has to parse through videos of Her Story and how it the videos alter the plot the player pieces together. The fact that I got a lot out of the user interaction with each piece highlights how highly interactive digital literature is.

Furthermore, I noticed my posts always included some discussion about the form of the work. This is probably due to the fact that we started off the semester mapping CYOA books. From then on, I always looked at how the structure of the work affects the experience. I think this was most prominent in my first post when I discussed the intentional choice of phrasing in interactive fiction. This example and others demonstrate how I started to think critically about digital literature.

There were several times that I found myself puzzling over distinctions within digital literature. This is a topic I would love to revisit if we had more time. A debate on the distinction between game and literature would have been interesting. It was brought up in class several times, but we just left it as something for our own interpretation. While I always intended to use “work” or “piece” to refer to my blog’s content and stay neutral, more often than not I slipped up and called it a game.

The most noticeable change throughout my blogs is that over time, I had more vocabulary in my tool kit available to describe the pieces I looked at and the scope ideas I extracted from pieces grew. I was better able to compare and contrast two works from the lens of interactivity, to structure, to player agency.

The End

Orion

Thinking back on my blog post for this class I noticed a pattern in discussing the properties of electronic literature. The usual darkness that exists in most of the pieces we’ve seen, the mundane and the creepy, the interactive fiction and navigating an undefined space. And in which category do we place these; are they pieces of art, of literature or are they video games?

My first post focused primarily on the importance of authority, control and power in these works of IF. Is it the reader/viewer/gamer or is it the author/game engineer/plot of story? In my second post I definitely focused on “the dark, the mysterious and the futuristic”. A lot of the works and games that we visited, such as My Body – A Wunderkammer or Howling Dogs are characterised by the unknown, the unsettling darkness and the futuristic/sci-fi thriller. These definitely influenced my Tracery project but also reminded me of many other digital study courses where we heavily discussed such topics. My third and fourth posts focused a lot on works such as The Flat and Her Story, where the line between game and art gets blurry. We talked a lot about associating these pieces of works with something that we would see in a modern art museum and the artist’s/creator’s/writer’s meaning behind the game or art work that is left to be explore in the vast field of the internet.

I think that I would strongly attribute my strong intriguing of viewing  this type of literature and works with a more dark and spooky perspective probably because of the previous connection I have made from other digital study classes that involved futuristic worlds. I think it would have been interesting if I had started off with a clean slate and had to try and figure out what else these works could be representations of.

Reflective Blog: External and Personal Connections

anonymous

One theme I had in my blog posts was external or personal connections to our class material. Four of my blog posts or comments focused on these connections. In my first blog post titled, “Why would you read a book twice?”, I wrote about Choose Your Own Adventure books and my personal experience reading them as a child. I attributed my obsession with them to their competitive, adventurous qualities. In another blog post called, “Combinatory Tweets: “Slotted” Technique vs. Markov Chain”, I wrote about an external connection to combinatory writing. The external connection was a Markov chain called Automatic Donald Trump. In my post, I described Automatic Donald Trump as a “site that allows you to generate a realistically fake tweet by Donald Trump with just the click of a button.” This external connection was also a personal connection because a friend showed it to me. The third post, which focused on an external connection to our class topics, was a comment replying to a classmate post about COVID-19 and its sublime qualities. This is entirely an external connection to the topic of sublime. I recalled a personal experience from my trip home from Davidson, “When my friend and I crossed the George Washington bridge last week, there was no traffic. What normally takes us an entire hour took under a minute.” Lastly, in my most recent blog post titled, “Texting: Careless or Purposeful”, I made multiple connections with the outside world and the game, Bury Me My Love. The game Bury Me My Love has the format of a text conversation. In the post I explained how when you’re playing there is distance between yourself and the character you’re playing which reminded me of cat-fishing. The one post that didn’t revolve around external connection was a comment I made on a classmates post about Shade by Andrew Plotkin. I wrote about this game’s frustrating aspects and that I preferred hypertext pieces that are easier to maneuver.

After reviewing all my posts or comments, I saw a clear positive progression in my blog posts that was spawned by a larger understanding in digital literature. While this might seem like an expected shift as class progressed, it was especially evident in my blog posts. By a positive progression, I mean that I felt my blog posts improved in content and writing style as time went on. Especially in my last post, I felt a comfort in my writing in the topic of Bury Me My Love that wasn’t present in the CYOA book blog post. This progression came from developing a better understanding and appreciation for the class material we covered. Coming into digital literature, I had no idea what I was getting into. I recently explained the class to an outside friend and they asked if we read books on kindles, and that is exactly what I had assumed when I entered the course. Not to worry, I was able to set them straight on digital literature and its intriguing qualities beyond kindle books.

Reflection

erlee1

Reading over my posts again, I found that I could separate them into two categories: posts that compare two works to each other and posts that discuss the use of medium in one work. In posts of the former category, I always ended up examining the relationship between the player and either the player character or the game mechanics. My first post is the most obvious example of this, as it focuses on whether the player of that day’s games play as the character or as themselves. Similarly, my second and fourth posts examine how the game guides the player (or maybe how the player guides the game) through its narrative possibilities. I think I focused so much on the role of the player in these posts because it serves as both a common ground and a narrative split between games. Every game has a player, after all, but every game will treat them differently.

The posts I wrote about a single game were not so player-centric. Instead, they were about how games used techniques built into their medium and to what extent they worked. For example, my third post discussed signal degradation, or technological errors with visual effects, and why it’s used intentionally in horror games when it would be a detriment to any other genre. I didn’t bring up any technique in particular in my fifth post, but I did mention how the creators of the relevant game did their best to simulate a realistic stream-of-consciousness, and how the attempt was ultimately doomed to fall short due to the limitations of the medium.

Overall, I was primarily interested in discussing player-game relationships and the way games present themselves to us. I was a little surprised to discover that I had a few topics I naturally gravitated towards, since before I thought I was just writing whatever came to my head.