Matt's blog

Finished my final project if anyone wants to take a look...

After looking over a few ARGs, in order to get ready for the quiz Friday, I really began to appreciate how in-depth they can be. And it made me wonder, how often does the line of reality and game get blurred?
I think we mentioned this in class but, every time I think of ARGs and the real world I think of the movie, The Game. Long story short, ok movie about a guy who is wrapped up in an elaborate, real life ARG, but doesn’t even know it. I think that people can get so wrapped up in these games that they forget reality, or better yet, they wish for the game to be real. I’m not sure if its escapism, or just a yearning for something they enjoy to be a reality. I know that when I read a good fiction book I wish some of the characters were real, that the story was real. I think that ARGs in that sense are important. They allow people to participate in things that entertain them, get their mind of the world. I think Zach said in class that there is a little level of excitement- cubical worker by day, ARG puzzle solver by night, uncovering mysteries, and scouring the internet for clues.  read more »

The other day in class we had a discussion about genre. Most of the discussion focused it seemed on books. There was much debate about what makes literature fiction and genre fiction. I’m guessing that literature is simply what the wise academics in there ivory towers decide is literature; while genre fiction (westerns, romance, horror) appear to be less “distinguished” and follow a specific pattern. While I don’t necessarily prescribe to this thinking or parameters, for arguments sake, lets just assume that this crude interpretation is correct.  read more »

We discussed in class the idea of fiction and non-fiction and how elements of each are present in both. In Avatars of Story, Ryan writes, “In the past few decades, the boarder between fiction and nonfiction has been the site of numerous violations which have caused, if not the spilling of blood, at lest the spilling of ink.” There as been some controversies as to how much truth goes into fiction, or how much fiction can go into a nonfiction.
This idea made me think of an Ernest Hemingway quote: “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened…” The idea of a true fiction. I believe that Hemingway was referring to the idea that the author has to tell the truth about his story, even if it is not real.  read more »

In class on Wednesday, there was some discussion about theme park rides. I from Orlando, so I guess that makes me an expert on such rides, considering the proximity to Disney, Universal, etc… I think theme park rides are a good discussion for this class. They immerse you in a narrative. In a way, you live out the story. For example, the Spider Man ride at Universals Islands of Adventure. While waiting in line for 3 hours, if you were paying attention, you are told that while you are in the ride you are no longer a tourist, but rather a reporter for the Daily Bugle, testing out a new reporting vehicle. The same can be said for many other rides that attempt to create an illusion that you are not on a ride but instead are in a story. This effect got me thinking about theme park rides, their properties, and their aims when it comes to narrative. My conclusion: Rides are an illusion, they put you in a story, but you have no control. In many ways they are novels and short stories brought to life, a reality that you are thrown in the middle of. This is a clear distinction to video games.  read more »

So I played around with the little Eliza artificial intelligence, wanna be, incompetent, sorta-but-not-really psychiatrist computer. I have to say that I was not to impressed. My only real experience with artificial intelligence- or rather just a computer that talks to you- is Hal, for 2001: Space Odyssey. Comparing Eliza to Hal was a little disappointing. I mean, Hal was smart, no offense Eliza. But, in her defense, Hal is fake. Anyway, minus the fact that Hal was fiction, he was way better than Eliza, I mean he was smart and even managed to kill the crew of the ship. Moving along from Space Odyssey (Note: this movie might have been cool thirty years ago, but, now it seems tediously long, just FYI), after “talking” with Eliza about how she was dumb and thinking about Hal, I started actually trying to relate these things to the class.  read more »

I have never really been much of a gamer. I enjoy the occasional game of Madden or maybe a quick season of Nazi killing with Call of Duty, but other than that I have never really gotten too much into video games. However, that class has changed that… in a way. While I still don’t play video games on a regular basis, I am getting more out of video games, particularly the ones that have more of a meaning than scoring touchdowns.
In particular, I have to say that I enjoy, for lack of a better term “deeper” video games and the story behind them. So far these games only include Passage and Space Refugees, since as I stated before, my gaming experience is limited. I like these games because unlike melting my brain in front of a game of digital football, these games make me think and have more meaning to them. They spark conversation as to what they really mean and the story of them.
I already wrote a blog entry about Passage (if you haven’t read it then same on you) so I think I’m going to concentrate more on Space Refugees. But, just to some up my last Passage entry: simply design, deep game, lots of meaning, a.k.a. I liked it. Ok, now on to Space Refugees.  read more »

So I have to admit, I haven’t watched the Helvetica documentary yet. I couldn’t make it to the viewings. I know what a bad student I am. However, after listening to the classes comments today and actually paying a little attention to the world around me, I picked up a couple things about Helvetica. So I’m going to use this blog entry to hypothesize what the documentary is going to say. Go out on a limb a bit. Then I’ll watch the video and try to learn something, an probably see how wrong many of my conclusions are…  read more »

In class today we looked at the board and there was an example of how image and text can clash. I think it said something like, “capital letter a” and “lower-case letter A”. There was also an example of a large capital letter B, with the words, “this is not a B”. I don’t think I need to explain much more, you guys were in the same class I was. But, these exercises did make me think of a science project that my next door neighbor was doing back in High School. Just a quick summary: he took a poster board and but 30 colored squares on them; in the squares he wrote the name of a color that did not correspond with the actual color of the square. So, for example, he would have a blue square and he would write the word “green in the middle. The point of the exercise was to see how fast a person could correctly name all the colors of the squares without being thrown off by the word written in the middle. Surprisingly this was a very hard task. Your brain would see the color or the square but would instead say the word you saw, not the right color. Our discussion of image/text made me think of this exercise.  read more »

I have to admit that I was pretty entertained by animator vs. animation. I don’t think that I really need to explain to anyone what was going on, it was pretty simple: animator creates stick-figure, and then tries to kill it. What made A vs. A different and entertaining was that it broadened the dimensions of the story. Instead of the discourse and story space being restricted to the simple plane white canvas of the processing screen, the story was expanded to include the tool bar and the boarders. Every icon and button was in play. For some reason, A vs. A reminded me of the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I know, sounds dumb, but there are scenes in that movie in which the characters simple draw objects and they appear, much like A vs. A when the stick-figure (or perhaps the protagonist) draws lines and shields, only to have them suddenly part of the story, in the form of protection and weapons. The same idea can also be said for Krazy Kat. There are frames in the strip in which a character would draw something (or erase something) and it would affect the story. For example, Officer Pup drawing Ignatz in jail, or Ignatz erasing a brick in mid-flight.  read more »

So I think that after playing passage and discussing it in class, we all can come to the same conclusion that it is essentially a game about life. How you choose to play the game determines how you live your “life” in the game. You can get a spouse, move quickly through, move slower and explore, search for treasure, or just keep on moving. What impressed me most about passage was its simplicity, from the graphics to its game play. I believe that it is passages’ simplicity that really creates its effect.

If the graphics were too detailed people couldn’t relate to the game. If the game play was difficult and full of objectives the purpose would be lost. It is the simplicity that makes the game, but you can not mistake simplicity for not making you think. This game is so simple. It reduces your life to five minutes. No matter what you do you die, no matter how you live your life you die. Overall it is somewhat depressing, casting a light of triviality and futility on life, qualities that are not seen in many other games, where, when you die, you simply come back to life.  read more »