Title: Digital Literature Topic: Play and Game Designs in Digital Literature 1
1Digital Literature TopicPlay and Game Designs
in Digital Literature (1)
- _at_Shuen-shing LeeUnless specified otherwise,
texts quoted in the lectureare mostly taken from
Shuen-shing Lees Explorations of Ergodic
Literature (dichtung-digital 2002) and Code at
Work, Text at Play (Bookman 2004).
2- Outline
- Defining Terms and Jargons
- Demonstrating Works
- Analyzing Forms of Expression
- What to Do
- Well discuss literary play, games, and texts
that contain ludic components. Keywords such as
play (paidia) and game (ludus) will be
elucidated. A differentiation of forms of
representation and simulation is also included in
our discussion list. Armed with such a basic
understanding, well explore a multitude of forms
of simulation employed in digital literature. -
3Terms and Jargons
- Hypertext Literature (done wk1)
- Cybertext (done wk1)
- Play 4 categories
- competition, chance, mimicry, vertigo (see
Caillois 12-13 print ) - Play 6 properties
- Free, Separate, Uncertain, Unproductive, Governed
by rules, Make-believe (see Caillois 9-10 print
see next slide)
4- Free from obligations in which playing is not
obligatory if it were, it would at once lose its
attractive and joyous quality as diversion - Separate being spatially and temporally
independent circumscribed within limits of
space and time, defined and fixed in advance - Uncertain the course and result uncertain the
course of which cannot be determined, nor the
result attained beforehand, and some latitude for
innovations being left to the players
initiative - Unproductive creating nothing physical
creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new
elements of any kind and except for the exchange
of property among the players, ending in a
situation identical to that prevailing at the
beginning of the game - Governed by rules under conventions that suspend
ordinary laws, and for the moment established new
legislation, which alone counts - Make-believe accompanied by a special awareness
of a second reality or of a free unreality , as
against real life - -- Caillois, Man, Play and Games, 12-13
5Terms and Jargons
- paidia, play (??)
- ludus, game (??)
- Games are dominated by the ultimate goal of
win-lose or other similar binary patterns of
opposition, while play embraces no goals of such
kind (Frasca 1998).
6Terms and Jargons
- Representation ??
- Simulation behavior modeling ??
- Representation is "the act of portrayal,
picturing, or other rendering in textual and
visible form" (Random House Dictionary), a way of
presentation prevalent in analog media such as
fiction and film. By comparison, "Simulation does
not simply represent objects and systems, but it
also models their behaviors" (Frasca 2002 to be
further discussed in Simulation 101)
7Terms and Jargons
- For a comparative definition of simulation and
representation, see Frascas Simulation 101 (HTML
or try this online version).
8Beyond Mimicry (Literal Simulation) a
metaphorical transformation (game)
- Asteroids(Atari, 1979)
- (seelist-game.htm dd)
9Beyond Mimicry (Literal Simulation) a
metaphorical transformation (game)
- arteroids (lt????gt) Asteroids (lt???gt)
- The shooting mode of Arteroids is modified from
that of Asteroids, an early arcade game. - In its first Canto, the default defensive is the
word "poetry," whose mission is to shoot,
cracking open charging words or phrases such as
"death," "fear," "insecurity," "nothing," or even
"poetry" itself but in different colors. -
- (see list.htm dd)
10Beyond Mimicry (Literal Simulation) a
metaphorical transformation (game)
- You will be able to construct sentences such as
- The battle of Poetry against itself and the
forces of dullness (??????,??????), poetry
poetry all is poetry destroyed and created
(????????,?????????). - Symbolically, "poetry" is a weapon against the
dark side of life and destroys even itself for
the sake of resurrection. The interactive form of
Arteroids," in which the gamer assumes the role
of a poet/fighter responsible for the gaming
consequence of winning or losing, has
re-energized such cliche motifs as "poetry vs.
death" in literature. - This work transfers the motif of resistance from
the platform of representation to that of
simulation, wherein the imagineering (imagining
engineering) experience is greatly different from
the imagining perception .
11Beyond Mimicry (Literal Simulation) a
metaphorical transformation (game)
- See also Trigger Happy. Using Foucaults text
(selected from What Is an Author?) as the
shooting targets.(see list-game.htm dd) - Screenshots(DOC)Foucaults Text (HTML)
12Beyond Mimicry (Literal Simulation) a
metaphorical transformation (game)
- Trigger Happy is based on the arcade game
Space Invaders. - (see list-game.htm dd)
13Beyond Mimicry (Literal Simulation) an ironic
simulation (play)
- lt?gt(Bear)( Teddy Will Comfort Me????????)
- (see list.htm dd)
14Beyond Mimicry (Literal Simulation) an ironic
simulation (play)
- "Teddy will comfort me" is the only phrase on the
"Bear" page in Nobody Here (anonymous). Above
this phrase rests a visual paidia environment
wherein the reader/player is invited to torture a
Teddy bear with an array of objects such as
scissors, tape, and nails. Irony immediately
arises from the clash between the text
(representation) and the paidia situation
(simulation) the consolation is derived from
sadistically torturing a cuddly toy rather than
being comforted by its cuteness. Notably, it is
the input of physicality from the reader/player
which converts the paidia situation into a
signifying system.
15Simulation (Play) As an Interactive Illustration
Hermit (lt???gt)
16Simulation (Play) As an Interactive Illustration
Hermit (lt???gt)
- Herman was lying in the tide
- afraid of everything,
- until I took him to the safety of the city,
- where he now hides
- in drugs, religion, money and lust.
- The hermit crab is a peculiar animal.
- http//www.nobodyhere.com/justme/hermit.here
- (See list.htm dd)
17More Artful Behavior-Modeling Works
- Digital Fortune telling? IChing Poetry Engine
- (see list.htm dd)
- A fortune telling toy? Oracle. (see list.htm
dd) - Textual Carving Carving in Possibilities
- (see list.htm dd)
18More Artful Behavior-Modeling Works IChing
Poetry Engine
- lt????gt(IChing Poetry Engine)
- From fortune telling to poetry making
- The state in this screen shot represents that
three tiny circles have been clicked. The
current hexagram on display is called
CONSTRAINT, the 30th of I Ching (?). - The screen shot indicates a randomly generated
poem gliding into the 3D space and shrinking into
the dark depth along the z-axis. In this reading
of mine, the poem goes as follows berries
everywhere, / ripe for picking / will swift
justice propel you forwards? / deliver your blow
soundly now! / truth burns / make choices in your
doing / feet on the earth, / flame ahead to light
up the way! / proceed. - From divine chance to artful randomness
Mysteriousness persists in the transformation
from the supernatural to the artificial
19More Artful Behavior-Modeling WorksOracle
- How to operate oracleTo get an answer to his
question from the machine, the user has to go
through the following steps (1) arranging three
peculiar symbols randomly provided by the machine
in the way he thinks fit (2) inputting his own
interpretations to a statement, called
situation, randomly provided by the machine
and (3) repeating Steps (1) and (2) once. When
the user finishes the procedure, his
interpretations and the statements provided by
the machine will combine at the end of the
ritual, forming an answer to the question he puts
forth at the beginning. - Im someone who values the random process on
many levels, who considers oracles much more than
fortune telling toys, and for whom the activity
involves a profound (and profoundly playful)
meditation about the nature of time and
synchronicity. . . (Slattery, anxieties.htm).
20- The alternative use of randomness deftly frees
Slattery from such generic charges as Michael
Mateass on fortune telling programs implemented
in gears or in code They work by giving
ambiguous responses that can be interpreted by
individuals in the contexts of their own lives
by having the responses relate to important life
themes, such as love or career, these systems
effectively push most of the sense-making onto
the human participant instead of into the system.
The participant does all the work of reading
meaning into a random process (2004). Mateas is
perfectly right to point out that the users
engagement in an oracular interpretation hinges
upon a free but subjective association with what
the user is concurrently concerned with. But
Mateas has not perceived that serious fortune
telling involves a particular kind of willing
belief the message in an oracle is not from a
machine or human-made agent but a deity. Or to
magnify the point, Mateas does not differentiate
algorithmic randomness from divine Chance, at
least in the case of I Ching. Taking I Ching as a
cybertext or a fortune telling object driven by
algorithmic randomness is one thing, while
treating I Ching as a divine oracle provider is
another matter. See Mateas_on_fortunetelling.do
c for more info.
21More Artful Behavior-Modeling Works Carving in
Possibilities
22More Artful Behavior-Modeling Works Carving in
Possibilities
- Texts and a graphic bust of Michelangelos
David in this work unravel step-by-step in
response to continual random re-positioning of
the mouse. - The motion of the mouse, accompanied by pounding
sounds which imply steel carving stone, connotes
the process of transforming a shapeless rock into
a statue with a human form. - The application of mouseover/play design elevates
the playground of random search to that of a
metaphorical quest for a certain object.