Once I have a really good grasp on how to debug broken link sites on GitHub, the live site will be deployed. Instead, screenshots following the choose your own adventure game will be posted, along with a 1:30mn video of the game in play. 

“Obsessive Compulsive S(t)imulator” draws inspiration from “Depression Quest” by Quinn, Lindsey, and Shankler, an “interactive (non)fiction about living with depression.” This game distinguishes itself by challenging conventional gaming norms. While most games are designed to be entertaining and rewarding, this game strives to depict the struggles of living with depression by making the player feel drained and frustrated.

Typically, games present obstacles as external forces that players must overcome. Successful completion of these tasks often leads to feelings of accomplishment and pride. However, this game raises the question: how would it feel to play a game that doesn’t provide such positive reinforcement? How do you cope with the concept of life as a game that offers no rewards or intrinsic value in the end? Are negative feelings a result of an individual’s interpretation of events, or the actual negative events themselves?

Games often offer clear rewards at the end, but how does one maintain the belief in life’s rewards? What if the obstacle you’re facing is yourself? A person’s tendencies, designed to bring comfort and ease, can paradoxically harm the individual. This presents a challenge to the self, whether it be in the form of addiction, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or other various forms self-harm.

The interactive narration is presented with the simple objective: write a project proposal while avoiding a cleaning compulsion. However, in this short version, no completion of this objective is provided at all. It loops endlessly, forcing the user to click the ‘Back’ button at the top of their browser. The only other option provided that doesn’t involve making a ‘choice’ is the large asterisk lingering on the bottom-left of the page, which brings the user to initial landing page. Throughout the experience, the user is faced with intrusive, repetitive thoughts about questions which cannot possibly be answered, and are philosophical and frightening in nature.

1 Landing Page

1_2 Landing Page hover over ‘about’ text to explain objective of game

2 First page

3 Cleaning Choice Options

4 Cleaning > Journaling > Displays pen options.

5 Cleaning > Journaling > Pen color choice leads to dead end

6 Coffee Conundrum

7 Coffee Conundrum > Clicking any coffee choice will bring a pop-up asking for reassurance.

8 Coffee Conundrum > Clicking ‘OK’ will lead to a dead end.

9 Coffee Conundrum > Clicking ‘Cancel’ from pop-up will also lead to a dead end.

10 Running Options > Displays choices on how to pick the clothes for running.

11 Running option > Clothes organization will lead to a dead end.

I chose the concept of ‘cleaning compulsion’ to challenge the stereotypical portrayal of “OCD” as a quirky trait associated with perfection and tidiness. This portrayal is common in the media because it’s easy to visualize and understand: “If the sink is dirty, I am dirty. Cleaning the sink of external contamination rids me of personal contamination.” However, as players progress in the game, they encounter a stream of spiraling existential thoughts that seem to fracture out of control.

Texts that did not end up in the final product derived from James Gleick’s book “Chaos: Making a New Science“. Chaos theory is an “interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics focused on the underlying patterns and deterministic laws of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, and were once thought to have completely random states of disorder and irregularities.” It covers topics like The Butterfly Effect, which is described as so by Gleick:

The Butterfly Effect acquired a technical name: sensitive dependence on initial conditions… In science as in life, it is well known that a chain of events can have a point of crisis that could magnify small changes. But chaos meant that such points were everywhere. They were pervasive.

– Gleick, 1987, pg. 23

Ultimately, the theory can be summarized with a simple theoretical question: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?”

Possibly not, but the thought is indeed frightening. The complete loss of control in reality looms over us. Our significance is both diminished and magnified at the same time. It raises questions: Do my actions at this moment truly have an impact, or could they unintentionally set off a chain of events that could harm others in any capacity? In ‘choose your own adventure’ games, choices are presented as clear options leading to set paths. In reality, though, choices that may seem to offer clear options and paths are affected through variables that are often unseen, inaccessible, or, unfortunately, subjective. 

Another aspect of the project that didn’t end up in the final piece involved animated visualizations of fractals. As users selected different options, the background fractal zoomed in, revealing a continually repeating pattern. This illustrated the fractal’s self-similarity at varying scales, a concept described in the book as: “In the mind’s eye, a fractal is a way of seeing infinity.” Major anxieties stem from smaller ones, which in turn originate from even tinier concerns. The user gradually realizes that the fractal in the background is both repetitive and infinite. A therapist once advised me during a session to “just look at the bigger picture” while I was fixating on minor details. However, I found it impossible. There is no bigger picture. Large existential anxieties consist of minute, intricate details. Everything is intertwined, and I can’t extricate myself from this web. I suppose the most anyone can do is to keep trying.

“The ceaseless motion and incomprehensible bustle of life. Feigenbaum recalled the words of Gustav Mahler, describing a sensation that he tried to capture in the third movement of his Second Symphony. Like the motions of dancing figures in a brilliantly lit ballroom into which you look from the dark night outside and from such a distance that the music is inaudible…. Life may appear senseless to you.”

– Gleick, 1987, pg. 163

OCD_Simulation_ScreenRecord_1223

In 1917, Virginia Woolf published the short story The Mark on the Wall. The first-person narrative is written using a stream of consciousness. My final project proposes a digital intervention of this text, using the 3-dimensional space of the screen and play elements to combine various characteristics of hypertext and interactive fiction.

The text itself has play elements with a narrator fixated on a black mark on the wall while her mind wanders in thoughts ranging from gender roles, identity, and WWI. The black mark could be a grounding force, a thing out of reach, or the impetus for the thoughts. A digital environment for this text could exploit the black mark, turning it into a constantly moving target to chase, to click on, to get more thoughts, to re-arrange thoughts, to reach the conclusion of the story. Perhaps, the task of reaching the black mark is made challenging by using speed, or position in space. The black mark can be the play element while still functioning as a literary symbol.

The space the text occupies is another area to explore digitally. Hayles briefly mentions the use of perspective and the z-axis to create the illusion of 3-dimensional space in IF, “One need only recall Edward Abbott’s Flatland to imagine how, as text leaps from the flat plane of the page to the interactive space of the screen, new possibilities emerge.” Instead of using digital graphics and artwork to replicate a space or a room, I will attempt to use the typography of the text, moving it through space along the z-axis to create a layered narrative. Although, in this case, Woolf’s text is less of a narrative and more of a series of thoughts, floating through digital space, like the narrator’s thoughts floating in and out of the proverbial mindspace. The interactor may be able to control when or how thoughts appear, becoming a creator of the work while “playing” it or “playing” with it.

This concept has been used in Noah Wardrip-Fruin’s Screen, a virtual reality game in which the interactor controls the movement and appearance of the text using their body, also cited by Hayles. A VR environment might be more fitting for this type of spatial experiment but there are also ways to manipulate elements on a flat digital screen to mimic 3-d space.

As in most experiments, I don’t have a solid picture of what this might look like yet but I’m open to what the process will lead to. I plan on using html, css, vanilla javascript along with some libraries.

I felt uneasy with Bogost’s centering of procedurality, specifically in how it undervalues the role of play and interaction – the overall role of the player – in the interpretation of media. Although meanings and subjectivities may be embedded in the rules, it is only through playing with the game and poking at its boundaries that we come to some meaning. Everybody brings something to the game, and meaning arises out of that dialogue between the player and the material.

Sicart pushes back on this somewhat in his “Against Procedurality” (2012), a fairly direct challenge of Bogost’s conception of procedurality in games. Sicart argues that the designer is not necessarily the meaning-creator in the equation, and that the players in conversation with the game – playing it – are also central to the meaning-making process. I agre with Bogost in that procedurality can certainly explain how games can promote certain behaviors and lead to reflection from the player. But the other component of that experience is the play, and it felt like that discussion was missing from Bogost’s piece. Whatever meaning is embedded in a game, the personal ethics and politics of the player are integral towards the disentangling process that renders that content into something comprehensible and meaningful.

I particularly loved Sicart’s reference to Tati’s Playtime used to underscore his argument – that structures and architectures motivate certain behaviors and carry certain politics, but it is still up to the individual to engage with this environment, wring the meaning out, and act upon that knowledge. This complements Flanagan’s earlier writings on radical game design, and the post-human possibilities found in the world of play.

With respect to the meaning embedded in games, I’m reminded of the Metal Gear Solid series, with it’s cinematic 80’s-style action hero gunplay and grandiose international espionage scenarios within a world plagued by the ills of neo-colonialism, widespread wealth inequality, environmental catastrophes, and nuclear proliferation. I’ve never felt the games shy away from critiquing the US government or western hegemony, and yet it feels like a game series where it’s really easy to miss that message amid all the cool and hyper-stylized action sequences.

My experiences have also shown me that despite the game’s ostensibly more left-wing political orientation, its’ players readily assign it a meaning based on their existing political and ideological orientations – and so Snake can be a fascist colonizer or an anticolonialist freedom fighter, depending on how you look at things. The whole series seems to be in conversation with Truffaut’s old adage about there being no true anti-war film – that perhaps you can’t depict war objectively through visual media, or in our case interactive playable media, without also glorifying and romanticizing the events depicted secondhand.

As with all art, we arrive at a meaning by interacting with the work, but in the case of games, this interaction is – ostensibly – all the more immersive due to the gamified, structured, rules-based environment in which they’re encountered. However, I think that interactive quality in and of itself does not necessarily make a work more engaging, as witnessed in Brianna’s in-class example of Nox, by Anne Carson, wherein a physical, non-digital work renders the material more immersive and engaging in it’s design than would its’ digital analog. Since a physical book can be manipulated in more immediate and tactile ways than would a digital copy, the format engenders a different form of engagement and immersion between the work and author – one that gets partially lost in the digital format. And so, digitality is not necessarily a shortcut to immersion, but can be an appropriate component of an immersive experience depending on context and application.

Hayles’ writing on digital literature brought this exact parameter to mind, since the multimodel potentials of many of the works listed – namely Patchwork Girl – really render the author as more of an auterist designer than simply a writer. This is particularly applicable to those examples which incorporate art and music and other stylistic components. Many of the works listed were masterminded and coordinated by individuals (if not by very small groups), mirroring the auterist qualities of the cinema of Wes Anderson or Hong Sang-Soo. I thought these examples really laid bare the distinction, or lack thereof, between the role of an author and the role of a game designer – I’d have to place the writers of digital literature closer to game designers on that spectrum due to the greater control they retain over aspects of the finished product. For instance, in how writers generally don’t have ultimate control over binding, font, typeface, illustrations, cover art, etc., while creators of digital literature (especially in the free for all of web 2.0 in the late 90s) encountered greater freedoms in these additional aspects of publishing. This calls to mind the potential liberatory or democratizing potentials of the Web, although I’d argue that those potentials seemed a lot more attainable in the context of late 90s web culture than in the context of today’s.

As discussed, our third and final group project involves “playing” a novel in ways that draw widely from several different scholarly modes and cultural forms, from the creative writing workshop to the dramatic improv troupe to the textual scholar to the Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast.

To get organized, please sign up on this simple spreadsheet. After our discussion at the end of last week’s class, most of you know that we’re dividing into two groups that will play one of two texts: Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (1919), and Paula Fox’s Desperate Characters (1970).

I’ve roughed in sites for both games. Refer to them to get a quick sense of some options for roles to play. You’ll start to build your role Monday, but it will help to a) read the text you want to play and b) think a bit about what roles would be most fun in advance.

• Winesburg site
• Desperate Characters site

And here are Zotero groups we’ll use to gather and share materials and notes for both games:

• Desperadoes (Fox group)
• Grotesques (Anderson group)