{"id":337,"date":"2020-02-12T12:14:23","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T12:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/?p=337"},"modified":"2020-02-12T16:14:44","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T16:14:44","slug":"twine-open-source-platform-for-text-based-game-creation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/2020\/02\/12\/twine-open-source-platform-for-text-based-game-creation\/","title":{"rendered":"Twine: Open Source Platform for Text-Based Game Creation"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a to-be computer scientist, it is hard not to see the similarities between open source game and software creation. In resemblance to game development companies, software companies only allowed its employees to work on the company’s next milestone software project. In a Wired<\/a> article, Bill Gates says “open source creates a license so that nobody can ever improve the software.” Even though technology tycoons have disliked open-source software, it has an huge impact on how we create software today. With its focus on innovation, customization, and collaboration, the open source community created fundamentally important software technologies such as the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser and Python Programming Language. Its impact in the industry is so predominant that Microsoft not only acquired GitHub, but also promised to improve the platform with a slogan chanted by Satya Nedalla: “We are all in on open source.”<\/p>\n

Twine<\/a>, an open-source platform for creating text-based computer games, has challenged the traditional practices of publishing computer games. Similar to open source software creation, game designers from all over the world could exercise their creativity on developing games on any topic. This allowed users to concentrate on topics that are usually not conveyed in computer games. In “Playing at Empathy”, Salter analyzes Twine games that are relevant to mental health and highlights an important feature of such games: limitations on choice. While playing “Please Answer Carefully<\/a>“, one could see how limited choice plays into immersing the user into the mindset of a person, who is being stalked. Presented as a survey, where the reader is expected to have freedom over their choices, the game forces you to make decisions that benefits the stalkers. It expects you to strongly agree to the statement that everyone deserves a second chance no matter what they have done. Similarly, you are not given any freedom but to say that I forgive you, come inside in response to your stalker’s I miss you message.<\/p>\n

\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/2011\/09\/phone-story\/\"
Image courtesy Moddeindustria (Phone Story)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While playing such games, I feel nothing but disoriented, stuck, and hopeless. If these games are targeted to solve our mental health issues, shouldn’t it be that they give us hope to fight our issues? In Gender and Technology, we discussed a similar case when Apple decided to remove a game called Phone Story <\/a><\/em>that is aimed to reveal the miserable consequences of phone manufacturing. In one of the scenes, the user’s target is to save workers who are trying to commit suicide by jumping out of the FoxConn factory. Although Phone Story<\/em> helped me become aware of the exploitation that runs in the hardware industry, it didn’t show me a path how to solve this issue. I believe Twine games are also similar in a sense that they portray that mental health is a critical problem in today’s world, but doesn’t show you how you would approach it to solve it. Creators of such games should think more critically not only to immerse the user into somebody’s mental problem, but also shed light on how to escape it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a to-be computer scientist, it is hard not to see the similarities between open source game and software creation. In resemblance to game development companies, software companies only allowed its employees to work on the company’s next milestone software project. In a Wired article, Bill Gates says “open source creates a license so that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-group-d"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":352,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337\/revisions\/352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.digitaldavidson.net\/elit20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}