Pundits have been predicting the arrival of “interactive fiction” for decades — dating back at least to the clunky, campy Choose-Your-Own-Adventures of the 1980s. Video games ploughed some of this terrain: Some of the first, like Zork, were text-based adventures, which themselves were born out of the storytelling vibe of Dungeons and Dragons. But Hotel Dusk is one of the first games to pitch itself more as book than a form of play, which made me wonder: Is it really possible to make reading into a game? —Clive Thompson —Hotel Dusk: Novel or Game? (Wired)
I don’t have a Nintendo DS, so I won’t be able to play this. The structure of the essay is a little bit like a freshman comp essay — “Some people say A, others say B, but in conclusion, the truth is somewhere between A and B.” I’d rather he start with a thesis that posits the truth being somewhere between, and spend the essay developing that idea, rather than save it for the conclusion. And, of course I would have preferred interactive fiction to get more than a cursory mention.
Nevertheless I still welcome a thoughtful review that treats the general subject of reading-as-games.
Another corner building. Designed and textured. Needs an interior. #blender3d #design #aesthetics #medievalyork #mysteryplay
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I wouldn't call it a "game" unless there was some kind of resource management governed by rules, or unless there were passages that were re-written.
Sorting the order of pre-written blocks of text is a great way to stimulate variable interpretations on the part of the reader, but (I'm echoing Aarseth's _Cybertext_ here) I'd say that if the variation is only in the interpretation, then I'd say (and I'm moving away from Aarseth now) to qualify as a class of cybertext that could be classed as a game, the medium lacks something crucial -- a losing state. I don't mean a non-optimal ending (sad or indifferent as opposed to happy). I mean a state in which the player's choices prevent any further progress. And the "go back" button on a web browser limits the severity of a "bad" player choice. It's certainly possible to trap the "go back" button and enforce a set of consequences, but since that's not the way it works in 99.9999% of the hypertexts we'll ever see, that would violate the conventions of the hypertext medium.
I'd certainly liken a literary hypertext to a puzzle, a labyrinth, or a story in which you perform the sorting function of an editor. Yet to my mind, interactive fiction is different because it requires the player to write at least a few words each turn. While that's not enough for me to think of the IF player as a co-author, I do think hypertext is to multiple-choice tests as IF is to fill-in-the-blank tests.
As I understand it, "Hotel Dusk" features retro graphics and puzzles typical of any adventure game, but that reading is a big part of the gameplay.
I'm pretty sure we've discussed this before, Dennis, but when I first saw Michael Joyce's afternoon: a story as a freshman at Carnegie Mellon in 1987, the only language I had for it was "game." I put it in my games folder next to Zork, Suspended, and (sigh: yes) Leather Goddesses of Phobos. And I was pretty sure it was the best-written game I'd ever played. What do you think about early hypertext fictions like Joyce's, Moulthrop's, and Jackson's in such a context? Is there some sort of historical osmosis among such texts, particularly given your questions about reading-as-game? I'm not sure I buy all Landow had to say about how technology proves Barthes was right... But still, there's something there.
Dennis, a Nintendo DS makes for an excellent airport and flight buddy (much more of one than my iBook), but I am interested in seeing how well text and image are balanced within this game. Maintaining a healthy balance of words and pictures may help achieve that feeling of "deep reading" that Iser describes in _Act of Reading_. I'll be looking for this title in stores.