Interactive Fiction

I found Eve’s article very interesting.  I consider myself a gamer, and have over the years gone beyond the conventional forms of game.  I had never heard of this type of game specifically, though it seems almost like a virtual Dungeons and Dragons with a little less freedom on the part of the player.  It is also similar to online role playing games.  I once joined a Star Trek based role playing game online.  I was grouped with four other “ensigns” and we were all given an area (tactics, biology, etc.) of expertise to be in charge of.  We were assigned to a superior officer who delegated a mission to us and the rest of the game unfolded depending on the narratives that the other players and myself would write, and send to each other via e-mail.

In Eve’s IF game, it is very clear that the success of play depends heavily on the narrative.  I have not played his game, but from the pictures of the interface in the article, I can see myself becoming bored quickly.  I attribut this to a few things: the fact that i grew up playing loud, bright, and animated games from a young age, and games have only gotten more complex and engaging as time went on, and I am a visual person, there needs to be something that I can see to really immerse myself in it (in terms of a game).  Even when I play D&D there are dice, and miniatures, notes to be taken during play, etc.  However, if the story was engaging enough, I can see how a game like Eve’s could become very compelling.  It seemed to me that it was like Myst without the environment.  You have a PC who is bound to a certain eventual course, but he/she decides his/her pace, when certain actions/objectives are completed, etc. 

 The above really comes from my viewpoint as a gamer, looking solely at the entertainment value.  In that department I think that the IF game type comes up short, at least in this day and age when there are so many consoles and programs that have high levels of activity, color, and other bells and whistles.  That being said, I think that this type of game could be considered “serious” in that it seems it would require a higher level of concentratiion and thus a better retention when play was ended.  Something could be learned from games of this genre.

Alternate Reality

John Boreland’s article, Blurring the line between game and life is an article that deals with the seeming junction between the games and what we know as reality.  I found this to be an interesting subject.  Specifically, the article deals with the game “Perplex City.”  According to the article, the game is an online role playing game, but that there are elements in the physical world that correspond to the game.  Players receive items in snail mail that carry ciphers or codes that need to be solved in order to further progress in the game.  There is even the feature of people calling the players phone in the real world

This game seems to be at the very cutting edge of the gaming experience.  I have visited the website, but am a little wary to sign up and try it out.  I then began to think about what this meant for the future of gaming.  While this method of game reality and real world reality may work for puzzle games, what about other genres of game?  FPS games already made the jump into the real world with things like laser tag, but those games are objective based.  What if a laser game was developed with a storyline? 

A problem I see with this development is a loss in the sense of true reality.  Or, perhaps a loss in the quality of reality.  What are the long term effects of a game that has aspects of play in the real world?  Maybe this thought is the beginning of a slippery slope, but I think that it is worth asking, if simply just to mull over it.  I think that anything that plays with the fabric of our own reality needs to be taken seriously and analyzed if not explored.

“Ritual” in Recent Literary Criticism

    In his essay, Richard Hardin discusses the use of the term “ritual,” exploring its many uses, and questioning the authority from which the term came.  He challenges the convential wisdom about “ritual.”  One of the things that he dicusses is the proposed origins of ritual.  He focuses on the Greek drama, which is theorized to have come out of ancient Greek rites.  He goes on further to say that iof that is the case, are all forms of drama (which evolved from the first Greek soliloqies and plays) in effect ritual?  This ties in to the blog question we had earlier about the division between storytelling, gameplay and movies.  Under the assumption that ritual was born out of drama (that is to say acted out storytelling) then it can be said that storytelling led to drama, which led to film which led eventually led to a combination of the two in video games.  Now I know that this is a bit of a stretch, but the idea remains an interesting one.  However, it seems that one of Hardin’s points is to show that drama is not the mother of ritual.

   Oner of the things that he says is that ritual cannot exist in a vacuum; that is to say that in order for there to be ritual, there needs to be a defined group of people from whom the ritual exists.   Also he reports one definition as  “‘any noninstinctive predictable action or series of actions that cannot be justified by a ‘rational’ means-to-end type of explanation’.”  I always find definitions about abstract concepts interesting because it seems like academia is trying to contain these ideas that are not necessarily concievable.  Obviously ritual is something that is a little more involved, as it requires the participation of at least one person to achieve.  However, even that idea, that rituals can be carried out by only one person was something that Hardin talked about. 

   Ritual is a word that had religious connotations.  When I hear the word ritual I immeadiately think of the way Mass was conducted in the church I went to when I was younger.  The Eucharist in particular was something that was always handled in the same fashion from Sunday to Sunday.  Obviously this type of ritual practice follows the above definition, in that it is a series of repeated practices carried out mainly by one person (the priest) but then also has aspects from the audience such as repsonses to prayer and the Our Father.  However, ritual is not limited to religious practices.  A person with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) can also be subject to “rituals” as part of his/her disorder, such as touching every fence post he/she passes, peculiarities in terms of odd and even numbers, etc.  This also follows the above definition in that it can be series of repeated practices with no justifiable reason or result.  Obviously one problem with this argument is that Christians will say that Mass is a means to an end (literally).  However, operating in a purely rational plane, I think that it can be given that this is not the case.  Under that premise it is easier to see the similarity between the two classifications of ritual.

    The vast difference in meaning and practice is at the crux of Hardin’s argument, which is a criticism on the literary sense of “ritual.” After I read this essay, I began to think about what “ritual” meant to me.  I am a religious studies minor, so my tendancy was to think of ritual within that framework.  But I could also understand the way

Cell Phone Use and Worship

Michelle Boorstein wrote an article in November of 2006 outlining what she percieves as somewhat of a revolution in the way technology participates with worship.  Her main claim is that as cellphones, pdas, and other handheld have become items that people cannot seem to separate themselves from.  I know that I always have my cellphone handy, and feel almost naked if I happen to forget it at home.  With this in mind, Boorstein points to the fact that these small devices are becoming cabable of holding more and more data with each coming year.  2007 saw the inception of the iPhone, which is basically a handheld computer.  In her article, Boorstein mentions that certain religious organizations have taken notice of this, and in an effort to gain favor among a population that seems only to be motivated by moving pictures and new, fancy technologies, have created companiesdesigned to pump religious comics, news, wallpapers, and other media to subscribers phones.  One representative of one of these companies stated that she did not beleive that this process was a means of instant conversion, but that in this day and age, when it seems that the attention span of people is limited to the amount of time it takes to check their phones, it is a way to re-integrate religion (even if it is piece-meal) into their lives.

I think that the premises of this article are very interesting.  It does seem that the world is moving to an abosolutly tecnological civilization (maybe not in our life times, but I wouldn’t count it out).  However, I was puzzled by some of the features of the religious programs.  In the article peoples’ short attention spans was noted more that once, and usually in conjunction with the act of reading.  If a person downloads a digital Bible, wont it take them the same amount of time to read it on his/her cellphone as it would the actual Bible?  Actually it would take longer, because rather than looking at a ful page, he/she would be looking at a 2in cell phone screen.  This is one of the things that I found problematic about this article.  The issue of whether these technological advances will water down religion as whole is another thing that I do not take stock in, which is admittedly easy for me, because I am an agnostic.  My opinion of that issue is that anything that can get people interested in the church or religion in general is an important tool that should be utilized to its fullest ability.

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