lcimino's blog

Cathy’s Book fulfills my fantasy of being a successful detective, especially because of the handful of clues provided at the beginning, the random phone numbers, and links to websites. As a child, I wanted to become part of the experience to solve Nancy Drew’s mysteries, or at least for them to happen more in real life. This book satisfied this desire for me, but in a reassuring way because it did not overcomplicate the mystery or make the participant go out of his/her comfort zone.  read more »

The other night I went to the Hippodrome to see an improv group perform. They came into the intimate room with folding chairs, sat down and then asked the audience for a historic event. A member of the audience suggested, “When Florida beat Ohio State in the first national championship.” Everyone laughed. The lights immediately turned off so we could barely see the outline of their bodies. The show began.

The narrators started yelling the Gator chant and then impersonating characters from the UF and Ohio State teams. Within thirty seconds, the story changed to something completely different, maybe about a robot or people in war. The story continued to shift from one event to something completely different, but always came back to elaborate on each event later in the performance. As we could not see their faces or characterizations, the narrative propelled our mind to see images. For instance, when one actor pretended to be a gay soldier, we all thought of what a gay soldier might look like and so on and so forth.  read more »

I am twenty-two and just played Doom for the first time in my life. It is one of the few violent games I have ever played and I feel slightly disappointed. I started out slowly moving through the maze of walls and then learned to go faster and pick up tools to help me survive. Although I realize that Doom is the first first-person shooting game and therefore the graphics are basic and unrealistic, I did not feel pleasure or glee when playing this game. The demons did elicit emotions of fear in me, but mostly because they looked gruesome and moved rapidly towards me.  read more »

Earlier this week, I beat Photopia. It took me many hours to do this because before this class, my experience with videogames only included Mario Brothers and occasionally watching guys play Halo or MLB baseball.

Every game has rules and also as I found out, limitations. Sometimes I would write, “Pick up shovel,” and the game responded with, “do not know that verb.” Instead, I needed to say, “Take shovel. Dig.” Other times, to amuse myself, I ‘played’ with the game by giving the game instructions such as, “Sit.” The game would humorously retort something to the effect of, “You cannot sit on Alley. You are an adult.” I found that there were a lot of things I was not allowed to do, like eat on any occasion or in outer space.  read more »

The first video games, such as Pong, lacked a storyline or in most respects, characters. In these scenarios, the object to win overwhelmed all other desires, but eventually the players needed or desired more incentive to save the Princess in Mario Brothers. How do we begin to justify playing a game for our whole day unless our immersion into the game suffices?

The answer becomes quite apparent in video games. Video games have adapted to create not only violent scenes or daring adventures of new worlds, but also to construct story-lines to entice the player. A video game can resemble a continuation of when children play “pretend” games, such as creating storylines for their Barbies or army men. For example, Ken marries Barbie, they drive around in their make-believe car, have babies, and sometimes fight with Kelly, Barbie’s younger sister. Or maybe the scenario in your storyline was completely different. Yet, as children and adults, we crave to become immersed in a story different from our own, such as in Final Fantasy.  read more »

Many mediums require the reader or viewer to participate in interpreting the medium, but in order to do so, the participant must first learn the rules of the game, much like in Zork. In order to understand the meaning of a piece, the reader or viewer must adjust to the medium or as stated in Immersion, “immersion implies learning to swim” (99). For example, in the film, Life is Beautiful, if the viewer is American, he/she must learn that in order to understand the film, he/she must read the subtitles. As with learning how to swim or ride a bike, this takes a few minutes before it becomes natural to the reader or viewer and they are able to participate with ease.  read more »

In the film, Rise of the Videogame, they mention that videogames created order in a time where people felt they could not control life’s circumstances, especially around the world. Homo Ludens also makes this point in the Nature and Significance of Play, “Inside the playground an absolute and peculiar order reigns. Here we come across another, very positive feature of play: it creates order, it is order” (Ludens 10).

I find this easy to understand: videogames create order. Only so many features and events happen or exist in a videogame. What is the significance of videogames in relation to images? Do images in videogames lose their impact or shock value because they are stylistically depicted?  read more »

Metapictures force the viewer to take a moment and further evaluate the meaning concocted by the author or by the meaning of a picture within a picture. Without the inclusion of the artist in the drawing of the New World (p 38), we might forget about the artist. We forget how they set up a picture, write a story based on their life, or portray an image a certain way.

The Pulitzer Prize winning image in 1994 was a picture of a powerless, starving Sudanese girl crouching in the fetal position with a vulture only a few feet a way. This image is not metapicture; we only see what the photographer allows us to see or how he might wait until he gets the most powerful picture.

I am fascinated by how metapictures create a tension between the artist and the viewer and they do not let us forget the presence of the artist and the artist’s ability to manipulate or impact an image, but sometimes, not including the artist creates a greater tension.  read more »

Chatman’s depiction of time clearly defined the elements that compose most narrative forms: summary, ellipsis, scene, stretch, and pause. The most remarkable part of identifying these elements is the distinctive role they play in different forms of narratives. The stretch element occurs when discourse time is longer than story-time. One of the most prominent ways I have seen this manifest itself in cinema is during momentous events, like the winning of a state championship in Remember the Titans or the making of the final shot in Hoosiers to win the game.

The stretch technique helps build anticipation or suspense in the viewer which is valuable when a whole film has been based on the victory of a team. If the gaming winning shot occurred as it does in real time, in a few seconds, the viewer would not have the time to feel nervous or excited. The drawing out of these moments gives us a chance to see the player’s intensity, the coach’s passion, and the mother’s worried lines on her face.  read more »

The Passage allows the viewers to insert themselves in the narrative discourse because the characters shown lack individuality. If two actual people were portrayed instead of cartoon images, the viewers would struggle to place themselves into the story line. When viewing Passage, the viewers can identify either with the man or women which makes this medium different from other types.

As discussed in Story and Discourse, the medium may concentrate on certain narrative effects while lacking others. For example, a movie must include all physical details of the character, such as their clothes, hair color, face structure, and more, yet often does not disclose any of their internal thoughts. Passage’s strength as a game and as a place where we can understand the course of life comes from its ability to ignore the physical details such as elaborate setting or clothing, and allow us to become a part of life’s journey.