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Deep Surface
Deep Surface is the monstrous progeny of a strange romance between a reading machine and a free-diving simulator. Literature at crush depth. Hypertext gets wet. Generically, it is yet another instrument: one of those things you can play (or play with), without playing a game. There are rules here, and procedures, and (as in Real Life) a more or less invisible scoring system; so astute players may be able to invent clever and even elegant strategies. But if you're not feeling astute, you can plunge in and have a dip, immersing yourself in what signs and symptoms may present themselves as you pass by, dreaming perhaps of meaning... till robot voices wake you, and you drown.
(Source: Author's description from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume Two)
Eric Dean Rasmussen - 20.02.2011 - 14:26
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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
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Golpe de Gracia
Golpe de gracia is an interactive multimedia piece that combines text, illustration, audio, modeling, and animation and tells the story of a character who undergoes a "near death" experience; this particular situation also functions as a metaphor for the cultural transitions of the present moment. The text is comprised of three "narrative worlds": Cadáver exquisito, L'nea mortal and Muerte digital (Exquisite Corpse, Mortal Line, and Digital Death, respectively) and four "deepening rooms" (games, reading texts, study, and construction). The work offers several different degrees of interaction that range from taking decisions in order to follow the routes, all the way up to the collective construction of the text, along the way participating in several interactive games. Golpe de gracia also has an educative and communicative purpose, which is to make us aware of, and to contribute to, the development of collective knowledge.
Scott Rettberg - 15.04.2011 - 14:53
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Reconstructing Mayakovsky
Inspired by the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky who killed himself in 1930 at the age of thirty-six, this hybrid media novel imagines a dystopia where uncertainty and discord have been eliminated through technology. The text employs storylines derived from lowbrow genre fiction: historical fiction, science fiction, the detective novel, and film. These kitsch narratives are then destabilized by combining idiosyncratic, lyrical poetic language with machine-driven forms of communication: hyperlinks, "cut-and-paste" appropriations, repetitions, and translations (OnewOrd language is English translated into French and back again using the Babelfish program.) In having to re-synthesize a coherent narrative, the reader is obliged to recognize herself as an accomplice in the creation of stories whether these be novels, histories, news accounts, or ideologies. The text is accessed through various mechanisms: a navigable soundscape of pod casts, an archive with real-time Google image search function, a manifesto, an animation and power point video, proposals for theatrical performances, and mechanism b which presents the novel in ten randomly chosen words with their frequencies.
Scott Rettberg - 15.04.2011 - 15:38
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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
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Clues
Clues explores the nature of communication, knowledge, and identity through the language and postures of mystery fiction. It's a metaphysical whodunit that invites you to solve the mystery by uncovering clues linked to images throughout the work. The search becomes a game that leads you down wooded trails, back alleys, and empty hallways. Which characters should you pursue? Which objects should you investigate? To win the game, you must separate all the clues from the red herrings. Your final score determines the outcome of the text. But is the mystery really soluble? Is winning actually better than losing? Are the answers or the questions more revealing?
(Source: 2002 State of the Arts gallery)
Scott Rettberg - 16.06.2012 - 11:45
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Living Will
To experience “Living Will,” a story-game and interactive fiction, the reader must choose to be one of the heirs of Coltan-magnate E.R. Millhouse, who has made his fortune in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While reading, the heir navigates this unique legal instrument, slowly accruing medical and legal fees, while also grabbing bequests from her fellow heirs. The piece explores the long shadow of colonialism, the conflict minerals buried in our mobile phones, and the heart of darkness of a dying imperialist seeking to extend his control beyond the grave.
Scott Rettberg - 01.12.2012 - 13:00
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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
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Kontrabant 2 (Smuggler 2)
This game is not in slovenian but actually in serbian.
Dan Kvilhaug - 14.03.2013 - 13:54
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Písanie v interaktívnych médiách. Digitálna fikcia /Writing in the Interactive Media. Digital Fiction
The subject of the thesis is to introduce and contextualise the possibilities of writing in the interactive media as well as to study the literary art of interactive media in the Anglophone area. One of the attributes of the contemporary art pieces of interactive media is their intermedial character; the authors often link text, image and sound to introduce the fictional world. The aim of the thesis is on one hand to refer to the questions that are not new but have appeared in new circumstances due to the digital format and internet and on the other hand to refer to the questions typical for the digital fiction research. The research concentrates on the digital fiction – a digital piece written in a computer programme, in which the author offers a fictional world. The thesis addresses several aspects of digital fiction, whose combination indicates its characteristic status within the group of digital art – fragmentarity of narrative, multilinearity, interactivity, performativity, dynamics, intermediality and the principles of game and play.
Zuzana Husarova - 28.06.2013 - 14:46
