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1. Labyrinth: the Rulebook without Game

   An ergodic Flash text exploring video game culture through the lens of playable manuals.

   How does one read this clever piece, which touches on so many genres, such as poetry, fiction, game, theory, game manual, and codework? It claims to be a manual for an absent game, a bottomless pit, and a labyrinth for readers to get lost, wondering if indeed the game has already begun. The reader inhabits a character from the outset, a 35 year old married man, who can take on different roles in games belonging to popular RPG and videogame genres: science fiction, spy thriller, fantasy, and labyrinth exploration. Most of the writing is in the tradition of game manual for these types of games (here’s an old favorite) which at their best help immerse the readers into the world of the game and can be more fun than the game itself. In the case of tabletop RPGs, like Dungeons & Dragons, the game is the rulebooks, and all it requires is players and some dice for the necessary randomizations— making them good recipients of the label “cardboard computers,” as Matthew Kirschenbaum has used for tabletop wargames.

   Mark Marino - 28.03.2011 - 16:12

2. The Wedding Celebration of Gunter and Gwen

   Exploring connections between surveillance and interference in the lives of artists, "The Wedding Celebration of Gunter and Gwen" is a hyperlibretto where the experience of a wedding celebration is created with words, graphic icons, and glockenspiel intermezzi. 

   Artist Statement

   "The Wedding Celebration of Gunter and Gwen" is informed by a strategy of following signs and signifiers that point to ancient systems of control of people's lives. It is a device used by Dan Brown in Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code, although actually it was through the performance artist's strategy of looking at hypertextual connections in my own eventful life that "Celebration" took on this aspect. 

   Scott Rettberg - 09.01.2013 - 16:29

3. Default Lives

   This satirical game poem creates a small deterministic universe— a system into which a player is faced with choices, real and illusory, as they shape their “life.” Conceptually patterned after the Hasbro “Game of Life,” this hypertext version presents similar choices to its players but using an interface that lays out the general structure yet retains the element of surprise. Coverley uses this to drive home a critique of gender roles, career choices laying bare how they determine and limit one’s choices in a supposedly free and open American society. Her tongue-in-cheek tone, hokey music, prosy lines of verse, and a humorously generous ending soften the biting commentary enacted in this game, inviting readers to play, explore, and reflect.

   (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)

   Scott Rettberg - 18.01.2013 - 23:04