In yesterday’s meeting we discussed the seventh chapter of Ensslin’s book, and there was a lot of good discussion regarding interactive fiction, the nature of “hints” or other purely mechanical visual or written aids to help a player through a game, and whether they help or hinder a player’s experience (in short: it varies). We also talked about the way we interact with games, dialogue, and the written element in any game. Dave noticed that we were generally zipping through dialogue while playing The Dream Machine, and we discussed why we thought that might be as well. We either let a written dialogue moment linger, or, if we parse it and identify that it has no future use or relevance to the game’s puzzles, we are generally quick to discard it. A contributing factor could also be the fact that the game has no (so far, anyway) consequential choices. It is a linear story, but with a varying level of interactivity to the world. Your level of engagement in dialogue trees depend on your investment in the story.
An extract from the game Blue Lacuna, which we had a little look at after Ensslin discussed it in Chapter 7
Next week is midsem break, so we will be meeting again in two weeks time. The reading for then is Ensslin’s Chapter 8.
We are now on Chapter 5 of 6 of The Dream Machine – we have almost finished. Soon we will be moving onto another game, but not before breaking down The Dream Machine a bit when we have finished it, and attempting to pick apart basically everything interesting the game had to offer.
This week we went over Chapter 6 of Ensslin’s Literary Gaming. We talked a lot about the antiludicity of games – that is, the way we can challenge how games get us to play them, and how, with that knowledge, we can subvert games as objects to be played. This involved a bit of discussion around pushing the boundaries in games, how we can play them as the developers did not intend them to be played – or if you wanted to push further, you could mod or cheat the game. As we push the boundaries, we find out whether the developers put in safety nets or difficulty barriers to stop people from breaking the game. As we discovered, quite often you can find a way to outsmart games – in this instance, we discussed Pathologicand Skyrim – simply by playing them in an unexpected way – though sometimes the game becomes traditionally unplayable as a result.
We also had a bit of discussion around the idea of griefing, of destroying another player’s works or of pushing past a certain boundary and causing another real person some form of distress through the actions undertaken in a virtual world. This can range from something as simple and “disconnected” from a real person as getting to areas in games that are supposed to be developer-only through exploits and glitches, or something as harmful as the hostile takeover of another person’s avatar and making them perform horrible actions.
Next week’s reading is Chapter 7 from Ensslin’s book. We will meet at the same time – 1pm on a Tuesday (in this instance, the 30th), in room 1W4 in the Arts Building. We are still playing The Dream Machine, though we are also preparing to move on to another game, and discussing possibilities for those games. One of those is The Outer Wilds.
This week we discussed Chapter 5 of Astrid Ensslin’s Literary Gaming, which primarily revolved around the idea of learning how to play through play itself, with engagement and interactivity as a product of the interface and UI itself. There was also an interesting point about categorizing movements – that is, the physical way we play games as in mouse-clicks, arm movements, and eye movements – and the potential of analyzing them to find how we best interact with a game.
We also played the primary text referenced by Ensslin – the game Loss of Grasp by Serge Bouchardon, which you can play here. It is, suffice it to say, very clever, and worth your time. You do need a webcam to see the ending though, as we discovered…
I have also attached next week’s reading to the email, Chapter 6, entitled “Loss of Innocence”. We will be again discussing it in 1W4 in the Arts Building at 1pm on Tuesday.
We continued playing the third chapter of The Dream Machine this week, the game made of real cardboard and clay that took two people nine whole years to finish. Not much new to report on that front there beyond the fact that we are still enjoying the experience of the game, and I’m looking forward to dissecting it a bit more when we’ve reached a later point in the game. The whole game is currently on sale for NZD $6 until the 23rd of March, so if you were interested in buying it to play for yourself, you can pick it up from Steam!
We had our first meeting of the Literary Games Group for this year on the 10th, where we discussed our plans for at least the next five or six weeks of semester. We’re going to be continuing with our reading from last year, Astrid Ensslin’s Literary Gaming. I’ve attached a link to the book for your perusal. When we reconvene next week (as always, Tuesday at 1pm in the Digital Humanities Hub, room 1W4 on the first floor of the Arts Building) we’ll discuss the chapter we are currently on, hopefully in relation to some of the games we will be playing.
We began playing our first “project-game” as a group, The Dream Machine, a story-rich point-and-click adventure game with some themes that aren’t normally explored in a lot of video games. It also has a fairly unique art style for a video game, being a game made from clay and cardboard. I’m hoping to explore this game’s story and themes as a group, as well as some of the simple and traditional mechanics that the game has, and whether they are good enough to carry the game’s fairly heavy themes.
We also played a short, politically motivated (and darkly humourous) game made in Twine called You Are Jeff Bezos, which is also free if you wanted to check it out. To finish the meeting we also looked at a few interesting, almost archival, videos that attempt to summarize years of gaming in roughly two minutes. You can watch the best one here.
![[Literary Games Group] 30/3/21 – Interaction, Hints, and More Dreams](https://digital-humanities.otago.ac.nz/wp-content/uploads/Just-a-dreamer-1200x600.jpg)
![[Literary Games Group] 24/3/21 – Boundaries, Dreams, and Systems](https://digital-humanities.otago.ac.nz/wp-content/uploads/tdm1.jpg)
Hello again everyone,