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Digital Media

The chapter takes readers through a semester of teaching narrative-based electronic literature works, including interactive fiction, storyspace hypertexts, web hypertexts, email fiction and interactive web-based narratives.

Scott Rettberg - 13.01.2011 - 15:24

Principles of Spatialization in Text and Hypertext

Patricia Tomaszek - 05.03.2011 - 21:48

Playable Media and Textual Instruments

The statement that "this is not a game" has been employed in many ways — for example, to distinguish between high and low culture electronic texts, to market an immersive game meant to break the "magic circle" that separates games from the rest of life, to demarcate play experiences (digital or otherwise) that fall outside formal game definitions, and to distinguish between computer games and other forms of digital entertainment. This essay does not seek to praise some uses of this maneuver and condemn others. Rather, it simply points out that we are attempting to discuss a number of things that we play (and create for play) but that are arguably not games. Calling our experiences "interactive" would perhaps be accurate, but overly broad. An alternative — "playable" — is proposed, considered less as a category than as a quality that manifests in different ways. "Playable media" may be an appropriate way to discuss both games and the "not games" mentioned earlier.

Jörgen Schäfer - 05.07.2011 - 13:35