More Articles Than My Fragile Brain Can Take!!! Week 2

So here I go AGAIN to attempt to manipulate these articles into something educational and understandable unlike the awesome compositions our dear friends Eric Zimmerman and Nick Montfort have put forth for our troubled minds to discern. See what I mean! I'm talking like I actually understand what I'm saying! :-) Well then. I would like to start off with something that did make sense to me; "Once Upon a Time" (CBS article). (Are you truly surprised that I didn't say Zimmerman/Montfort?) After I read it a tsunami of concepts popped into my mind. Such as, with video games, as described in class, really are quite similar to the select a quest books one or more of you have picked up, down the short painful road of youth. As are instructed, you select what your next move will be based on the options provided. With each one of those options comes a torrent of new adventures, people, and narrative. Equally with video games each action you make creates more of a story line which encourages the player/reader to seek what is lurking around the corner; a page turner in relation to written literature. With most games and of course books, yes, there is a predetermined destiny to the completion to the game/book BUT it doesn't have to end! There are two options game designers and authors alike have taken to keep the mojo of their creation alive...SEQUELS! As defined by the Webster Dictionary, a sequel is "a literary work, movie, etc., that is complete in itself but continues the narrative of a preceding work." Continuing the narrative is the key element. No one wants to play the sequel to the game if the start is nothing like the end of the first one. Interruptions in the events that follow the ground breaking numero uno will either win the player/reader or lose their interest completely. As far as the second option, it applies to game designers more for the fact that the game, seriously, NEVER has to end! With MMP games every time you log on you decide what the journey will for tell. You can pick to do as many options as your heart desires, writing the pages of your virtual opus one or numerous spells at a time. Take the highly addictive WoW for example. (For those of you not so up to par with gaming acronyms yet it stands for World of Warcraft, you'll catch on soon!) When does the game really end? When you hit level 80? Where you have maxed out your tiers and have organized the largest and fiercest guild to ever walk amongst the undead? Or... Could it be that video games have taken it to the next level of entertainment, where your avatar becomes an extension of you and this "game" now becomes your reality. Another MMP game called Warhammer ,which is VERY similar to WoW, equips your avatar with a quest journal. This thing documents everything your player does! Places you go, battles you fight, you name it! So literally, you are writing your own virtual novel while experiencing the game's challenges head on.

I do have a couple things to say about Nick Montfort's article, "Interactive Fiction." He implies that with video games, due to their complexities, "involves a mode of thought alien to ordinary reading" and that "progress through the text of a novel is not arrested when the reader comes up with the wrong answer." I totally disagree. For example, haven't you ever read a book in your years of schooling as a class and was asked independently what your take of the plot or a character was? Was your answer similar to theirs or completely opposite? It could have been that you were wrong on your assumption. With that in mind you have missed out on possibly a very important image that the author was trying to portray which in turn could ruin the whole book for you! I have discussed readings that my mom and I have both read and found that I had missed out on an important scene or character because of the intircacies of the writing. The mind processes visual scenarios in similar matters whether it be words on a page or the imagination come to life on a gaming console. Key elements of equally convoluted natures can create wrong answers that can constitute books that end with "The End- Wait! What the Heck Did I Miss!" or games that leave you bloody, lifeless, and wondering where extra life elixir was hidden cause you swear you searched everywhere!

OK kids my brain is leaking from my nose, eyes, and ears. Heidi...OUT!