E-Lit Digital Fictions
For this week, we were tasked with exploring the Electronic Literature Collection and reading various digital fictions. (I say "task" like I'm not thoroughly enjoying this homework. Seriously, this class is so cool, you guys.)
I started by trying to read "Everyone at This Party Is Dead," which promises "a psychogeographic memory palace" that a user can explore through through a virtual reality interface -- I mean, how cool does that sound?? But unfortunately the site where it was hosted is defunct, so I would have to download the entire game file, which is close to 1 GB in size. I considered it -- I really did, because it sounds so cool -- but I'm running out of space on my computer. So that was a no-go. Then I tried to read "Dead Tower," which is a flash game where snippets of poetry appear in 3D on a surreal landscape, but I guess my computer can't handle the graphics, because I could barely even move left and right once the game had loaded. That was a non-starter, too. A very frustrating start to my journey! And a frustration that, of course, is at the heart of a lot of the discourse around digital literature: you might spend all this time and energy creating something amazing that, in just a few years' time, nobody will be able to access anymore as technology advances.
Next I tried "The Hunt for the Gay Planet" by Anna Anthropy, which turned out to be tongue-in-cheek and really silly. I was relieved to see that it was just a Twine game, so I knew I'd be able to play it with no problems. Go figure: I was so happy to see that it was hosted on a platform I didn't even know existed a month ago.
The premise here is that you're a lesbian searching for Lesbionica, a paradise filled with other lesbians, because everywhere else in the universe you've traveled to, people keep constantly asking you if you have a boyfriend. Those pesky heterosexuals! You try exploring planet after planet, but none of them is the right one. Unlike Porpentine's "With Those We Love Alive," which we read last week and which blew my mind, this one was really simple: there were very few choices to make, and obvious/clear paths to take to get through the story. What it lacked in complexity it made up in humor, though:
Funny, right? It was a cute story.
Comparing this one to Porpentine's, it was helpful to see what I do and don't want to do in my own story, if I end up making a Twine story (which is what I'm leaning toward). I loved the complexity of WTWLA, and the gamification of it, where you had to do things in a certain order to make other things happen. In contrast, the easy "choose A or B" style of this one had me feeling less involved in the story and (perhaps as a result?) less invested in the outcome. Part of that could also be that this one was much shorter/quicker to play through, and more about being funny, whereas WTWLA it was more serious and took a lot longer to get through, so you could get lost in the world a bit more. Either way, it was a helpful comparison to get me thinking about what I want to do for my own e-literature.
I started by trying to read "Everyone at This Party Is Dead," which promises "a psychogeographic memory palace" that a user can explore through through a virtual reality interface -- I mean, how cool does that sound?? But unfortunately the site where it was hosted is defunct, so I would have to download the entire game file, which is close to 1 GB in size. I considered it -- I really did, because it sounds so cool -- but I'm running out of space on my computer. So that was a no-go. Then I tried to read "Dead Tower," which is a flash game where snippets of poetry appear in 3D on a surreal landscape, but I guess my computer can't handle the graphics, because I could barely even move left and right once the game had loaded. That was a non-starter, too. A very frustrating start to my journey! And a frustration that, of course, is at the heart of a lot of the discourse around digital literature: you might spend all this time and energy creating something amazing that, in just a few years' time, nobody will be able to access anymore as technology advances.
Next I tried "The Hunt for the Gay Planet" by Anna Anthropy, which turned out to be tongue-in-cheek and really silly. I was relieved to see that it was just a Twine game, so I knew I'd be able to play it with no problems. Go figure: I was so happy to see that it was hosted on a platform I didn't even know existed a month ago.
The premise here is that you're a lesbian searching for Lesbionica, a paradise filled with other lesbians, because everywhere else in the universe you've traveled to, people keep constantly asking you if you have a boyfriend. Those pesky heterosexuals! You try exploring planet after planet, but none of them is the right one. Unlike Porpentine's "With Those We Love Alive," which we read last week and which blew my mind, this one was really simple: there were very few choices to make, and obvious/clear paths to take to get through the story. What it lacked in complexity it made up in humor, though:
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Comparing this one to Porpentine's, it was helpful to see what I do and don't want to do in my own story, if I end up making a Twine story (which is what I'm leaning toward). I loved the complexity of WTWLA, and the gamification of it, where you had to do things in a certain order to make other things happen. In contrast, the easy "choose A or B" style of this one had me feeling less involved in the story and (perhaps as a result?) less invested in the outcome. Part of that could also be that this one was much shorter/quicker to play through, and more about being funny, whereas WTWLA it was more serious and took a lot longer to get through, so you could get lost in the world a bit more. Either way, it was a helpful comparison to get me thinking about what I want to do for my own e-literature.
I tried the "Everyone At This Party is Dead" too and was bummed I'd have to DL a large file to read it. That's obviously not happening on satellite interwebs!
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