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A Blog dedicated to Interactive Fiction like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Adventure. Try not to get eaten by a Grue
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Why Video Games Excel as a Means of Storytelling - IF Essay
For my final essay I researched the advantages video games have over traditional media like television and film. Video games allow the players to more deeply immerse themselves within the piece and the characters, feel a deeper connection with the characters in the story and allow the creators to more deeply expand the lore of their worlds
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZlRbn98w9KcWZHjO9EbpoCjXA8p5feSH1DeI9GjFPV0/edit?usp=sharing
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Blog 10 - The Future of IF
IF as a medium is a medium that seems to be constantly growing. From the base days of Zork to Bandersnatch, the medium keeps changing at a steady rate. In the future, I feel like we will see more things along the lines of Bandersnatch. A TV show along the lines of Bandersnatch is where I think the next step would be. A whole show with the multiple paths would be a wholly different experience than even Bandersnatch. By the time the season would be over, there could be hours upon hours of differing content per episode.
The most interesting idea for an evolution of IF would be incorporating VR. As someone who’s frequently used VR, adding different choices to a story told in VR would add a whole different level of immersion and interactivity to the work. You can get so immersed in VR that you feel like you are the main character of the story. Using the VR technology to personally place you in the story could vastly change how IF is told.
My final idea for the future of IF is a very ambitious one. It would be small theaters that had various buttons and everyonce and a while a prompt to click buttons would pop up. Depending on what buttons the audience would choose a different piece of the film would show up. Kind of similar to group playing an interactive fiction piece except in a bigger area. It would be an interesting experience to see how the crowd affects the work of fiction being displayed.
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Blog 9 - Bandersnatch - Pick Your Path
Bandersnatch is an interactive fiction film on Netflix. In this film every once and a while a choice pops up that can change the course of the story.
This piece stood out to me compared to the other pieces we’ve looked at this semester due to it’s self awareness and it’s meta commentary. As the piece goes on the main character starts to become aware of the choices we are making for him and actively tries to fight against the choices we are making for him.
In my experience, I never got a 5 star review on the game. In fact, I really never got a good ending. The closest thing I got to a good ending was the game getting critically panned. The most interesting ending for me personally was going back in time going with Stefan’s mother. The idea of being able to go back and change a major descision in life is such an interesting concept to me. It’s like the time travel/baby hitler scenario. Which is like if you could go back in time, would you kill Hitler. Killing hitler has a ripple effect. Sure you stop Hitler but the theory of time travel means that something worse could happen. That ripple effect applies in a lesser aspect to Stefan. Him going with his mom leads to him dying in the present.
The most entertaining ending for me was the meta ending. I love me some meta commentary, games like Stanley Parable are the most interesting games for me to play. One ending has Stefan discover he’s part of a Netflix series and that we are controlling everything he does. This leads to him meeting his therapist where you can get into a fight after the therapist complains that his life is too boring. The fight can break out to a movie set where we find out that this whole thing is just a production except the main actor believes hes stefan. This meta look into black mirror is probably the most fun ending of the group. The fight was fun to watch and it directly referencing the fact that we are watching it was just amusing to me.
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Galatea Blog - Blog 8
Galatea is a work of interactive fiction by Emily Short where you are a critic who is judging an ai exhibit where he finds a statue that is known as Galatea.
Galatea is such an interesting piece because of all the things it can adapt to. Galatea’s conversations can range depending on what you input. From telling her about the fact that she’s an AI, to telling her about her dead creator, to befriend her, to getting her to pray to the gods and various, various others. In fact there are like 70 endings. I personally had the endings of her changing into different forms, her befriending me and me being an exhibit in her place, and her praying to the gods who kill her. It seems like no matter what path you go with there is a wide variety of options available. The amount of literature that must have went into the piece is absolutely astounding.
This piece is a marvel to interact with, and the endings make the piece such an experience to do.
http://iplayif.com/?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/zcode/Galatea.zblorb.js
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Ready Player One - Movie VS Book - Blog 7
As with what happens with all successful books, Ready Player One got a movie adaptation. And like all adaptations, there were some changes made. Some for the better and some for the worse.
The first thing that always bugs me about the movie is the removal of the establishment of the OASIS. Though Cline’s book, we learn of the society of the OASIS. The school system especially was something I found interesting about the OASIS in Cline’s book. In the book, the OASIS felt like a whole world, with ships, homes, and other such things. In the Spielberg movie, the OASIS just feels like a game world or an MMO like World of Warcraft. It doesn’t really feel like people can develop a real sense of being here. Like how in the book each of the main 5 have like a home base ship that they can call their own, in the movie it just seems like they just log in every once and a while. That goes along with another issue I have with the movie and that’s with the pop culture avatars. We see in the movie various avatars that are based off parts of pop culture, like the people playing as Halo’s Spartans or the Ninja Turtles, and we assume that these are the “avatars”. I much prefer the book's version of having the avatar at least somewhat resemble you. It makes a situation like Aech a little more downplayed cause we can assume that most people don’t look like their avatars in this version of the story.
On to the keys/eggs. There are some aspects that I like about one and some that I like about the other. Being a huge fan of DND and Joust, I love the book's version of the first key. It being on the home planet of a big school is something that I found was an interesting aspect. The film's version is much more of a visual spectacle which I liked and I can’t deny that I loved seeing King Kong and Jurassic Park. Though I had a problem with the solution since it seemed way too easy to solve. This segways into the movie’s biggest enhancement to the book. Artemis and Wade.
In the book Wade, put it simply, is a loser. And as I discovered recently and discussed in another blog post, kinda creepy. His weird obession with Artemis is thankfully cut out and the film does a better job of establishing any form of a romance when Artemis rescues Wade from Sixers in the stacks. While we miss out on the reveal of Artemis’s facial mark, we instead get more development of the two together. Wade in this film just seems like an average guy who’s had bad luck up until now.
I’m personally not a fan of either of the jade key quests/gates. The Shining thing seems kind of average to me even though the way they find the key’s location is cool. As a film aspect, I love how they recreated the Shining. The books quest isn’t much better in my opinion. While I liked the Zork playthrough, the second gate is where it falters for me. Not having heard of Black Tiger, it just felt like a dumb reference.
While Wade’s infiltration of IOI is given to Artemis in the film, I do prefer Wade as the spy. It shows more of the mundane life that IOI gives to people.
Onto the final battle. While I wish they included Leopardon (as a huge Spider-Man fan who recently read Spider-Verse where it appeared) I think the finale in the film is miles better. Just seeing all these iconic pop culture things fighting it out is just an awesome experience.
The simplicity of the movies ending made it stand out to me. Just having the final challenge being Adventure made more of an impact to me. Also the reveal of Ogg being the keeper of the Anorak Almanac in the film was more effective to me personally.
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Maybe Make Some Change
Maybe Make Some Change is a piece of fiction by Aaron Reed where you are a soldier in Afganistan who only knows how to do one thing. Shoot. As the story progresses you unlock more and more options to use. In the background of the main text, you see sentences that don’t relate to the main story. For example, while you are encountered with a civvie you can see a passage in the background talking about an attorney. You then realize that you have to use the new options you unlocked on objects in the background.
These are:
Miss Uncle
Listen to Trainer
Hug leader
Calm Attorney
Threaten Sargent
Warn Blogger
Once you go through all these you get a text conversation with the soldier we are playing as, Adam, talking with his dad about how his fellow soldiers had planned a premeditated murder of Afgani people.
This is one of the most impactful stories I’ve experienced for this class. The story does a real good job of making you feel like you are in this situation and gets you invested in trying to find another way around this other than just shooting. The piece portrays a feeling of hopelessness and doubt better than most things I’ve read
Link here
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Ready Player One and Parzival’s weird celebrity worship
In part 2 of Ready Player One, we see Parzival and Artemis’ chat logs with each other and Parzival brings up that he has a crush on Artemis and has had a crush on her before he ever met her. He forms this crush with reading her blog, watching her POV and basically cyberstalking her for years. This brings up a weird stigma of celebrity worship which you can see everywhere nowadays especially with the advent of YouTube and social media. With YouTube and other social media and streaming services, you can really get to know a person. I, for example, watch a youtube channel called “Achievement Hunter”. Achievement Hunter is a group of men and women who upload daily video game let’s plays that range from a half hour to two hours long. They also produce other content including podcasts, shorts, and other stuff along that line. As a viewer, I feel like I really know these people. What they like, how they act and even some stuff about their personal life. Similar to Parzival and Artemis. But the thing is, even though you know a lot about them, they know nothing about you. Like I feel like I know these people more than some people in my personal life yet I’ve never met them face to face. It gets worse when you factor in attraction into the mix. Similar, but not to the same degree as Parzival, I had a tiny crush on youtuber Meg Turney. Meg is the girlfriend of one of the members of Achievement Hunter, Gavin Free. Meg is a model and as such has elements of revealing outfits in her videos and posts. I bring this up because last year an element of celebrity worship similar to Parzivals fascination with Artemis happened to these two. A fan who was obsessed with Turney went to the couples house and tried to kill her boyfriend cause he was “jealous”. Luckily neither were hurt but it brings up a kind of disturbing aspect of streaming and social media. We form connections with these people but they know nothing of us and that can be disheartening to some. Because social media allows you to spend time with these people it allows connections to be formed that don’t really exist. Just like Artemis and Parzival.
Link to article about Meg and Gavin: https://www.pcgamer.com/youtubers-gavin-free-and-meg-turney-survive-break-in-by-armed-deranged-fan/
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Non-IF Fiction Works
The stories I’ve been covering on this blog have typically followed the same format. Games that the player inputs commands and directions to proceed farther in said game while telling the story of said game. The pieces I am looking at today are more unique in nature. These pieces use different forms of technology to tell the story the authors want to tell.
The first piece was “Mr. Plimpton’s Revenge” by Dinty Moore. The interesting twist with this piece was the fact it was told in Google Maps. The story focuses on a writer who has to pick up famous author George Plimpton from the airport. Problem is that the main character got hopped up on all types of drugs before getting to the airport and leaves an awful impression to George Plimpton. Throughout the main character’s life, he keeps running into Plimpton and believes that the author remembers his awful experience after the airport. The main character becomes an esteemed author and runs into Plimpton again and finds out that Plimpton doesn’t even remember that awful experience the author has been dreading on. The interesting thing with this story is at each of the author’s experiences, the google map location shows where the author was which adds a layer of investment for the reader. This piece is missing some of the most important aspects of interactive fiction. AKA the interaction and different endings. You can’t really influence what happens in the story as the ending is always the same. The only change is what order you go through it. I really enjoyed how this one worked, the google maps made the story more interesting to read and I was actually disappointed when it ended. I can personally relate to the author’s experiences as I have had embarrassing experiences with people that I dread remembering and turns out the person has no clue what I’m talking about.
The next piece is “That Sweet Old Etcetera” by Alison Clifford. This piece is an adaptation of the poem “That sweet old Ecetera” by E.E Cummings. The twist with this piece of fiction is as you click on the words on the screen, the poem develops more and eventually becomes a beautiful background. For example, a tree sprouts with small branches and as you click on the branches the tree expands and becomes a full-sized tree. Once the tree is formed you can click on the branches which lead to developing the environment more. This is an interesting way to tell the poem but I had trouble actually getting the gist of the poem due to all the weird aspects of the poem like letters and words getting jumbled together. I also had a problem where I got stuck on the leftmost branch with many colors and couldn’t progress. It doesn’t fit in with interactive fiction like previously covered. The actions that the player takes actually affect the world in those types of games. What the player does will change the course of the story. Solid piece and an interesting experience
The last piece is called “The Last Performance” by Judd Morrisey. This piece was very weird. It took place on a website and as you clicked the words it acted out a dance. I had a problem with this piece personally. It didn’t give much explanation to the dance itself. The dance looked as if it was telling poems but it was not clear on what the poem was. Once I clicked on The Scene at the top there was another area which directly led to different poems or “lens” as the site told me. The dome had a large variety and amount of poems which I figure are the poems the dance was going through if you let it go for the whole length. I found a good video that goes through a live performance of the piece here. This piece is incredibly not an interactive fiction piece. It seems to actively reject interacting with the piece and just creates pop-ups that don’t move the piece forward. It makes you figure out what to do to progress more than most if works do. At the very least, you can at least interact greatly with it.
Links to the pieces:
Mr. Plimpton
That Sweet Old Ectera
The Last Performance
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The Sweet Old Etcetera Playthrough
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Mr Plimpton’s Revenge Playthrough
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IF Blog 4. 9:05
9:05 is a piece of Interactive fiction by author Adam Cadre. In it, you play as a businessman who wakes up to a phone call saying that if he doesn’t get into work to do the presentation he’s done for. My first playthrough was very mundane, I got up, showered, ate and got my stuff ready for work. The twist of this game comes once you get on the road. The first time I stopped at work instead of driving by. I think this is the default ending of the game as with how the story builds up it feels like the ending the author wanted the reader to experience. Once you get to work, you sign the form on your desk and go to give it to your boss. Here is where the twist of the piece is found. Once you enter the bosses’ room, the boss looks at you and questions who you are. Turns out, the main character isn’t who he says he is and gets arrested. Investigating the room on a subsequent playthrough I found some interesting pieces of information. Looking under the bed you find the corpse of the man who actually lives there and looking in the trunk of the car you find a bunch of valuables that you stole from the owner’s house.
The piece does a good subversion of the reader’s expectations. Starting up the piece, you expect it to be a story of a worker trying to get to work or something along those lines. Yet the author subverts it where you are actually playing a thief. Playing the game like you expect gets your character arrested. The only ending you get out safely is where you don’t go to work and get on the freeway. The other endings have you die in a car accident, at least the other ending I got. Maybe there’s another ending where you get out alive and free but I couldn’t find it.
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