Rob's blog

We've spent the past few months talking about the narrative features of various types of interactive fiction, and the differences in how we define and perceive types of narrative, but most of the time we were discussing it from the perspective of the reader. Now that I am working on my project, I'm beginning to understand the differences and challenges that a creator of interactive fiction faces as compared to writing a traditional novel or story. An author writing a novel is writing everything as if the story is in the past. No matter when the story takes place, everything that happens has "already happened" in the mind of the author, there are no future unforseen events, no paths the story could follow that aren't anticipated by the author. "This happened because I say so, and nothing else besides what I said happens because the reader doesn't get to ask that question".  read more »

Although I had a lot of technical problems with Facade, I am pretty amazed by it. I would say it is the most immersive piece of interactive fiction we've experienced so far, and that is even with my computer running the very slowly or the AI occasionally crashing resulting in no response whatsoever. When it was running well, it almost made me uncomfortable how accurately they recreated the awkwardness of being around a fighting couple. Even when the program ran slowly, it didn't break the immersion too much. I would almost say it enhanced the imitation; sometimes people start to talk at the same time or trail off their sentences or respond awkwardly. At one point Grace kept talking about how terrible the room looked, and I think it was because the program was behind on the conversation, but it could just as easily have been interpreted as Grace having a one-track mind and refusing to drop the issue.  read more »

I'd hoped to write a blog about Facade before I go to work, but since it is still downloading, I thought I'd write about some thoughts that Doom made me remember. Doom, Wolfenstein, and the other members of the first generation of shooters came out when I was still in elementary school, and I remember being terrible at playing them, and having trouble visually figuring out what was going on. They were still great fun to me at the time because I thought I was participating in something new and cool and exciting. I remember hearing/reading that some people became nauseous from playing, and found that kindof scary new-ness very intriguing, similar to all the buzz about The Blair Witch Project when it was released.  read more »

Well I just finished Photopia, and it was a lot less confusing than the other text games so far, as has been mentioned. The only part where I was stuck for a bit was the crystal maze. For anyone stuck there, it's not a non-euclidean space sort of problem, you just have to think outside the box a bit. It seemed to me like Photopia was more straightforward because there wasn't as much to figure out (or maybe I'm just getting used to adventure-game-logic). As the description on the website says, Photopia is more story than game, and it is difficult to get lost or change the intended flow of events in any way. Because of this, I found the Purple "level" much more significant than I perhaps would have if something like it was in Zork or Adventure.  read more »

I was messing around on the internet today and found a link to a new game by Jason Rohrer, creator of Passage, and I thought everyone might be interested in checking it out.

http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/gravitation/index.html

It is extremely similar to Passage in many ways. The graphical style is almost exactly the same (the main character uses the same avatar, and instead of a wife you have a daughter), and the play style is similar too. The amount of the screen that you are able to see is affected by your gameplay and has a story meaning, the trials of life are again boiled down to simplified tasks such as collecting stars/pushing ice blocks, and the game lasts a fixed amount of time (this time 8 minutes) no matter what. This time around, however, Rohrer's creator statement doesn't spell everything out for us. After playing through a couple times and reading what Rohrer did say in his statement, I think I have it mostly figured out, but I'd love to see what other people come up with or if anyone can notice anything I missed. If you haven't played it yet, stop reading now, because I'm going to post my interpretation of what's going on metaphorically in Gravitation.  read more »

I found myself frustrated when playing both Adventure and Zork. Eventually I would get so far into the cave or so deep into the forest that I would lose all sense of direction and couldn't remember how to get back to where I was. After reading "From Additive to Expressive Form" it became very easy to describe where things broke down for me. These two games very much take advantage of the spatial property of digital environments, but text-based interaction with the procedural rule set without visuals makes it very difficult to perceive the space portrayed. I frequently found myself in rooms that would have a south east exit or path, for example, and then the computer would tell me I couldn't go south east. Other times, it was possible to go south into a room but then be told that you can't go north even though no obstacle is described, or to end up somewhere by going E-W that should be N-S of your current position.  read more »

After hearing about the art school semi-ban on Helvetica I wasn't terribly surprised, once something simple is used to great effect to the point of becoming a standard, it can and is easily abused. This doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of suitable uses of Helvetica that aren't derivative, and it doesn't even mean that Helvetica's application can't be punk. A short list of cultural artifacts that prove this:

1. Jackass. The logo for MTV's Jackass was the first worthwhile example of Helvetica I've noticed in the wild since our discussions on it, and is as close to textbook punk usage of Helvetica as you can get. Helvetica's simplicity and boldness compliments the simple nature of the show (camcorder-quality footage of amateur stunts). The logo uses no capital letters, increasing the raw informalness it attempts to convey. With the skull and crossbones symbol above the word, it is a possibility that they are trying to invoke the feel of a warning label/sign, so it follows that Helvetica can be "punk" when used ironically or as a subversion of its widespread common use.  read more »

Having our discussion on the narrative-communication diagram as it applied to Lady in the Lake so recently made the reading from The Grand Design even more striking with regards to the largely ignored role typography plays in the transmission of text. While reading the end of section 1.2.2, specifically the quote "Typographers, like other artists and craftsmen - musicians, composers and authors as well - must as a rule do their work and disappear," I was immediately reminded of all the film jobs that were suggested in class when we were trying to decide who the Real author of Lady in the Lake was.  read more »

Game game game and again game (hereafter referred to as Game) blew my mind, and although some levels had a more obvious meaning than others, the whole thing seemed like a nihilist-nougat center wrapped in a schizophrenic candy shell. I started to think of some comparisons to other more straight forward media we've experienced so far in class, and noticed how The Dot and the Line, Passage, and Game have all taken advantage of simple or rough art design to varying ends.

The Dot and the Line told a very simple story, which was proven in class when we watched it without sound and still understood it, and almost all of the cartoon's novelty was based in the simple art. Even though all we had to work with was a dot, line, and squiggle, they still became characters we were able to relate to, and it was probably for the better that such simple images were used for the characters. If the story was told with, say, puppies, I think it would have seemed shallow to the point of worthlessness.  read more »