lobster_king's blog

Hooray, my game is done! And! It mostly came out how I wanted it to (...mostly)!

First off, make sure you at least have Zoom Version 1.1.2 or it won't run.  read more »

The first thing I learned for myself about ARGs and ARGing is that being confused is generally a typical state of affairs. For me, it didn't help that I started off reading four forum threads simultaneously, switching between each of them after reading a page of posts. (Though the ensuing 'narrative' about parasites killing television hosts through people's memories while incorporating GPS technology - well, it would have been one heck of a plot.) Also, unfoums.com is definitely not to be confused with unforum.com. Though a United Nations sponsored ARG would be pretty cool.  read more »

All of the big names, high rollers, heavy hitters were there: WJT Mitchell, William Blake, Scott McCloud, Laura Mulvey, Jacques Tati, Barry Windsor Smith, Mikhail Bahktin, Frank Stockton, Jacques Derrida, Barbara Gordon, Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Jacques Lacan. There was even a cameo appearance by Darby Crash, punk rock frontman for the The Germs. And I'm sure Sigmund Freud was lurking around in the background the whole time. It was quite a star-studded guest list.

Not surprisingly, however, they all showed up only in name, on paper, or via powerpoint. Luckily, the conference included work by Aaron Kashtan, Laurie Taylor, John Kennett [Panel 1], James Newlin, Tof Eklund, Mollie Dezern [Panel 5], and Jordana Greenblatt, Rachel Edidin, Katherine Schaeffer [Panel 6] - who all had enough sense to bring along the 'stars' of the conference, in whatever form suited their purpose.  read more »

Oh dear. I knew there was trouble brewing when I first started to read Markku Eskelien's 'Towards Computer Game Studies'. "What's this?" asked my brain, "Complete and utter refutation of the narrative theory we've been studying, in relation to video games, which we've also been studying?!" What a mess. Jeez, it's just like an English/literature class to bolster your confidence in one theory or theoretician and then bring it all crashing down around you a few weeks later with the next name on the list. Except after four years of this, you start to realize that they're all right. Or they're all wrong. Really, they got some of it right, and they were just guessing at the rest. Anything to stir up some controversy.  read more »

Janet Murray defines the "four essential properties of digital environments" (p71 of 'From Additive to Expressive Form') as being able to "separately and collectively make [the computer] a powerful vehicle for literary creation" in which the digital environments are marked by "procedural, participatory, spatial, and encyclopedic" elements (classified into "interactive" and "immersive" categories). I think there might be one more 'property,' but I'm not sure if it's necessarily 'essential' (perhaps it's 'inevitable'?) – and, well, a lot of the discussion that could be made for or against Murray or myself kind of depends on certain definitions of words or concepts.  read more »

There was a milestone in narrative history this week. Do you know what it was? And more importantly: Did you celebrate? Well, if you weren't aware, as of Wednesday February 13, the Writers Guild of America (our Hollywood screenwriters, et al) went back to work, after 100 days of being on strike. Hooray! ...Right?  read more »

My own thoughts (read as: biases) toward Helvetica have previously (meaning: before watching the documentary) been that it was just that annoying font that everyone has on their computers. Most of my dislike for it was entirely based on the fact that there were a number of other fonts I could use that would make an essay seem much longer. Seven pages in Helvetica? How about eight and a half in 'Geneva'! Now, of course, I can only bring myself to print things out in Times New Roman. Printed at 12-point font, Helvetica and Geneva just look giant and cartoonish; Times New Roman seems a little bit less like 'cheating'.  read more »

So, as some people may or may not have noticed, at the end of 'game, game, game and again game' there was a note or something about emailing the creator (Jason Nelson) if you finished the game and/or had comments. On a whim, I said "Sure, why not!" and spent a minute and a half typing my thoughts (obviously, there weren't many) and hit 'send'. Of course, being the type of person who checks their email at least once a day (and by that I mean several times a day), I was chagrined to not get any type of response back within a few days or even a week. Ah but what happens when you least expect it! This morning I found this in my inbox:  read more »

I love a reading like Robert Bringhurst's writings on the principles and tactics of typography. Though it's really not the subject matter here that draws me, so much as the self-reflexivity. Like Mitchell's point about meta-pictures, there is a tension within "The Grand Design" since the ideas that Bringhurst brings up are being (or have been) utilized in the printing of the text itself. I read how a typographer does (or should do) their job; I realize someone has done that job for this very text. (My brain says, "Ah, how clever!") ...So, have they done their job well?  read more »

For two years, I've been involved with Theatre Strike Force, the improvisational comedy group on campus – and if there's a good way to learn the importance of narrative (as far as keeping an audience's attention), improv is probably one of the best teachers you can get. Having just been to an audition on Thursday night for the TSF-affiliated long-form improv groups (and not doing too well, I might add – for reasons both in and out of my control), the aspects of narrative that Chatman describes in Story and Discourse (Ch. 2) certainly pertain even to completely made-up situations, although at times, improvising wholeheartedly ignores or breaks the 'rules' or necessities of narrative.  read more »

One of my first thoughts after playing Passage was "Wait, why did the girl die first?! Everyone knows that the lifespan of the average human female is longer than that of the average human male! Blasphemy! Ridiculous! [Assorted sounds]!" Well... something like that, at any rate. Which brings me to the point that 'video games aren't real life'. Which is an obvious point. Which is thus easy to overlook. But necessary to make.

This game isn't a substitution for actual reality - that much is made clear by the graphics alone. I know that I'm not some thing comprised of a very small and limited number of pixels, and so I'm not confused as to whether I'm the wonderful and amazing creature poking at the directional arrows on my laptop keyboard or if I'm the little pixel people on the screen. But what about games that -are- striving for a much higher degree of realism? It'd be a bit easier to accidentally/unconsciously read those games more literally. I guess that's where you can find some validity in the arguments of those lovely individuals who are quite concerned about violence in video games. (Think of the children!)  read more »