Digital Literature Topic: Play and Game Designs in Digital Literature 1

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Digital 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).

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• 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.

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Terms 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)

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• 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

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Terms 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).

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Terms 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)

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Terms and Jargons

• For a comparative definition of simulation and
  representation, see Frascas Simulation 101 (HTML
  or try this online version).

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Beyond Mimicry (Literal Simulation) a
metaphorical transformation (game)

• Asteroids(Atari, 1979)
• (seelist-game.htm dd)

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Beyond 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)

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Beyond 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 .

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Beyond 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)

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Beyond Mimicry (Literal Simulation) a
metaphorical transformation (game)

• Trigger Happy is based on the arcade game
  Space Invaders.
• (see list-game.htm dd)

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Beyond Mimicry (Literal Simulation) an ironic
simulation (play)

• lt?gt(Bear)( Teddy Will Comfort Me????????)
• (see list.htm dd)

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Beyond 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.

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Simulation (Play) As an Interactive Illustration
Hermit (lt???gt)
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Simulation (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)

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More 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)

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More 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

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More 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).

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• 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.

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More Artful Behavior-Modeling Works Carving in
Possibilities
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More 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.