Cathy's Book

when reading Cathy's book, i didn't really notice the adverts that were a source of controversy in the articles we read. apart from naming specific colors, most of the advertising in the book seemed necessary. just like in many movies and videogames, some advertising is necessary. if a character is walking in Times square, i would hope to see real advertisement on the billboards. the advertisement adds to the level of immersion in the game (just like Zach said about the advertisements in football video games, like madden). however, when advertisement is either unnecessary or way too obvious, this level of immersion backfires. when either an actor or an avatar breaks story in order to advertise something, immersion is completely broken. for instance, in "Transformers", the advertisement for Chevy was ridiculous. every scene seemed geared on advertising either a Chevy car or a Chevy truck. An example that has both necessary and unnecessary advertisement is "Guitar Hero". the advertise3ment for Fender and Gibson Guitars is everywhere, however, it is a necessary advert. the unnecessary adverts are those for "Amp" and "Mountain Dew" drinks.  read more »

It's really interesting to me as to how interesting Cathy's Book and Photopia were. Both of them were plainly written with zero flare yet it just kept building momentum. When diagramming the narrative of Cathy's Book from left to right on a linear line in class and then putting all of the little side bits to the top and bottom all I could think about was depth vs breadth. The side information to Cathy's Book and other args could be looked at as depth, but the way I saw it was as the narrative being extremely wide with each part not being terribly deep but the sheer breadth of it all makes it great. The main narrative could be incredibly well written and that would be nice, but it doesn't have to be. Photopia and Cathy's Book are both similar in how they use mystery and interaction to propel themselves forward.  read more »

Is Cathy's Book an ARG or not? I say yes! Using Dave Szulborski's explanation of Alternate Reality Gaming, I would definitely say so. Szulborski's introduction to defining ARG's is the fact that its main goal is to deny and disguise the fact that it's even a game. When I picked up my copy of Cathy's Book earlier in the semester, I was excited because I thought that it was some sort of mystery book and that the pouch of articles was some sort of pouch of clues to help us along the story. They have helped us through the story, but in so many more ways than just by looking at each item at face value. While reading Cathy's journal, without even knowing it, we are being pulled into this ARG. Some of us choose to engage ourselves within the story: calling phone numbers, figuring out pass codes, and visiting web-sites, all the while immersing ourselves more and more into this game that isn't a game, or rather having the game immerse itself into our realities. Szulborski states that most successful ARG's are really about relationships between characters, entities in the game and the players, I think Cathy's Book covers these relationships quite well.  read more »

In his blog, Greg brought up some really good points about the advertisements in Cathy's Book. One of these points was marking the difference between advertisements found in other story-telling mediums like television or movies compared to books. And his point was that with a visual medium the audience could be, for example, watching the main character drink a soda... and that soda just so happens to be a Pepsi...with the label perfectly facing the screen. However, this plug doesn't resonate so badly with audience members because it does not take time or attention off of the main plot or mood in the scene. The difference with advertisement in a written narrative is how obvious it is when the author takes time to write, "And then he set down his empty Diet Pepsi can". I find it quite sad that authors cannot use the same marketing strategies as movie producers but unfortunately that's one of the differences found in using different story-telling mediums. I do agree with Greg that it does take away from the story because it makes the author's attempt to make a plug very evident.  read more »

On Friday, Zach brought up an interesting question to consider, with regards to the narrativity of Cathy's Book extending beyond the limits of cover-to-cover and incorporating peripherals (the evidence pack) and reader (or player?) involvement through a community. Does "open media" extend the breadth of narrative beyond the concrete text? For example, let's consider MMO/MUD communities. I'll use City of Heroes as an example. If any of you are unfamiliar with City of Heroes (CoH), the basic premise is a Massively Multiplayer roleplaying game set in a fictional metropolis (in Rhode Island, of all places) that also happens to be the boiling pot of superhuman activities. Players create a superhero and engage in a predefined, pre-programmed world with previously scripted, coded and incorporated storylines (saving banks from AI-controlled thugs, etc.)  read more »

Katie blogged a little bit about this, and I wanted to go further in this discussion. We talked a little bit about this in class on Monday as well.

First, let's move through art mediums. Movies are the most expensive art medium (by far) and as consumers, we almost expect advertisements in all movies. I've noticed in recent years Steven Spielberg's knack for throwing advertisements in. If you're watching a science fiction movie, for example, the movie will show tons of advertisements to give you this "Look at advertising in THE FUTURE!" feeling. As an audience member, I feel ok with a few instances of this, because I understand the need for it.  read more »

Cathy's Book was kind of cute, I mean don't get me wrong, I enjoy angsty narcissistic teenage girl fiction as much as the next person, but as far as it qualifying as an ARG, I believe that it's sort of like a hybrid between standard literary narrative and an ARG. The book as a discourse contains a relatively linear story with characters, plot, etc., all of the components for a narrative. The addition of the extra clues, or "kernels" and "satellites" if we're applying Chatman's terminology, make the story ARG-esque, but it doesn't actually meet the criteria of an ARG.  read more »

Cathy’s Book fulfills my fantasy of being a successful detective, especially because of the handful of clues provided at the beginning, the random phone numbers, and links to websites. As a child, I wanted to become part of the experience to solve Nancy Drew’s mysteries, or at least for them to happen more in real life. This book satisfied this desire for me, but in a reassuring way because it did not overcomplicate the mystery or make the participant go out of his/her comfort zone.  read more »

I don't see anything wrong with an interactive novel.
Personally, I loved Cathy's Book. I thought the pieces of evidence that came with the book only helped to enrich the experience of reading it- instead of imagining the pictures, the notes, the websites, and the voicemails, we were given them to look at for ourselves. We could draw our own conclusions, and then test them out by reading the book.
Even though there was some disappointment- I didn't imagine Victor looked the way he did in the photo we had to piece together- overall, the evidence helped make the story more real for me, and I found myself treating it as more of an experience, more interactive, than other fictional novels I've read, where everything is left to the imagination.  read more »

Now that we've all finished Cathy's Book, I think it is safe for me to say that I don't consider this book an Alternate Reality Game. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book - the mysterious forbidden romance was captivating [I know real girly]. Its a great book, but claiming Cathy's Book to be an ARG is a bit of a stretch. In my opinion, ARG's are supposed to magically break the barrier between fictional world and reality [not to the psycho extent of some people, as we discussed in class on Wednesday, but you know what I mean]. By definition, an ARG uses the real world as a platform; Cathy's Book however, lacks that. Sure one could say all those clip-bits, websites, and phone numbers are "real world," but get real. Those added props make the story more interesting, but personally I don't think its ARG material. It would have been more believable if the numbers in the book had to be called during a certain time period. For instance, 10:00 p.m ET, 9:00 p.m CT, or 7:00 p.m PT to get a certain message, other than the "normal" time [any other time excluding the times listed above] messages. Yes, that would have been more convincing.  read more »

So I think I should start this blog off by saying that I absolutely LOVED Cathy's Book. I had never read anything like it, and I thought the whole experience was great. Like we touched upon in glass, the attention to detail is noteworthy, and it really adds to the authenticity of the story. All of the phone numbers and the Web sites enhanced my experienced and really immersed me in Cathy's quest to get to the bottom of this mystery. By examining all of the "evidence" included in her book, I was able to follow along with story and even figure things out on my own before Cathy had any idea. I literally finished the whole thing in one sitting, which I think says a lot for its immersive quality. It really sucks you in and makes the world seem as real as possible. Since I was so actively involved in the discovery process, I become really determined to find out ALL there is to know. Unfortunately, I haven't figured everything out yet, which is killing me because one of the articles we had to read mentioned that the biggest secret of Cathy's Book isn't even contained within it's pages. Hopefully some people in class tomorrow will have some more insight as to what I've missed.  read more »