Literature: October 2008 Archive Page
Men at Forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.
At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.
And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practises tying
His father's tie there in secret
And the face of the father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something
That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.
Donald Justice (1925-2004)
Tell Me What Art Is, and I'll Tell You What Games Are
That's the story that's been set up for the player to experience, and he travels along that path like a tourist on a Disneyland ride. However much choice the player seems to have in between these story checkpoints, the overall path of the game is geometrically equivalent to those of film or theater or books. We choose to ignore the fundamental quality that makes games different and so compelling-- their interactivity.
The other approach is to "open up" Moby Dick, to allow the player real, significant choices in the course of events and their outcomes. In this configuration, an especially skillful player might be so good at the game that he does indeed catch and kill Moby Dick, triumphantly achieving Captain Ahab's revenge-- and along with it, destroying the whole point of Melville's story. Allowing such an alternate ending robs the work of its power; the story of Moby Dick is engaging precisely because Captain Ahab cannot find extra lives, rewind time or load an old save for a second chance, and the story of his obsession and undoing is fixed over time, a static sculpture in four dimensions.
The issue of these changeable outcomes is what the critic Roger Ebert infamously identified as the central problem with games-as-art, and despite the emotional flurries and dismissive grumblings from the gaming community, it is actually a good point without a clear answer. If Melville had so much as allowed for any possibility at all where Captain Ahab "wins," no matter how remote, the work's message and its interpretation of the world completely changes. Instead of destiny and fate, we would now speak of probability and chance. Work hard enough, get lucky enough, and anything is possible -- Matthew Wasteland, GameSetWatch
good lord.....I finally see the light.
Last semester, as a sophomore, she took a very demanding 300-level course, "Media Aesthetcis," the theme of which was the history and future of the book. As part of her work in this term's "Writing for the Internet," she blogged about a major revelation that she had a few hours ago. This is exactly what I needed to read on a drizzly gray day when I had been feeling a little grumpy and overwhelmed with various projects and responsibilities. This is the sort of thing that reminds me why I love my job so much.
Now I finally see what the point of that class was. El 336 was theory, and EL 236 is the practical application. Wow, what an epiphany. I'm a little in shock because when I say I loathed EL 336, I wasn't kidding. There was a 4 page paper due every week (think a super- ultra synthesized essay pertaining to all the readings you blogged about), not to mention forum presentations, an 8-10 page midterm paper and a final 12-15 page paper. I haven't had Digital imaging, Topics in media aesthetics, or Publications Workshop yet, so I can't speak for the rest of my time here, but EL 336 has been the most difficult (sans General Chemistry 1) class I have taken at Seton Hill so far.Ideally, the practical "EL236: Writing for the Internet" is a prerequisite for "EL336: Media Aesthetics," but I let her take the 300-level class first because it fit better with her plans for her double-major.
Since the subject changes every time the class is offered, I don't know if you will have the same reaction as I did. But if you do find yourself cursing you papers to hell (especially when your hard drive crashes in the middle of your mid-term paper and you didn't save a backup because you were in the zone too deep to pay attention and then have to re-write it while wondering if the $1300 machine is ever going to run again !!@#$!@$), I will offer you these words of wisdom:
you will be so glad you took the class (and will also feel an immense weight lift off you on the glorious day the class ended). You will be a much better writer by the end of those 3 1/2 months.
It's strange how one little reading can cause you to have an epiphany. I haven't gone past the second link in Is Hypertext Fiction Possible?. --Daniella Choynowski
It's possible that, had she taken the classes in the intended order, the theory class would have been a little less stressful, but then she wouldn't have had the "aha" moment that brought the material into such clarity for her.
