kristothae's blog

I really enjoyed creating this final project. I think it was a great end to a pretty cool semester. I was debating between doing an ARG and a short story. However, I ended up choosing a short story because I felt that my ideas could be expressed more clearly in a short story than an ARG. Once I began to think about all the movies and short stories we've read, I began to find connections within each one. I found that each one focused on a reality that was unlike our own and that each of these realities were undefinable. I especially focused on Level Real of Avalon where that reality was static and posed the question if it was real or not. In my story, I tried to pose that same question, how do we define reality? and is our definition of reality the right one? My story deals with the idea of dementia and schizophrenia and how those realities connect to our own. I guess you just have to read the story for yourself because it has a twist ending that I'd rather not give away. This semester has definitely taught me to look at what I consider reality very differently. Like someone previously said, for all we know, we could be sitting in a comatose in a nursing home.  read more »

So after playing second life, I think I like first life (real life) a lot better. It just took too long to get into and by the time u actually dress your character, 30 minutes have gone by. Also, it seemed kind of pointless to have a whole bunch of people wandering aimlessly around an island. There were also some technical aspects that bothered me like when people could not quit dancing for over ten minutes and were just waltzing around trying to get their feet to stop moving and I also didn't like the face that there were no consequences, like many games if you fall off a cliff. you die. simple as that, you aren't able to fly. In leu of the "sandwich technique" I will say that I did like the graphics of Second life, it reminded me of the sims. Plus I liked being able to look at other people's avatars and guess who they were in the class.
As for the ARG project, I am looking forward to it and all the possibilities it holds.

I had actually read both books last week and found that I could not put either of them down. I absolutely loved both of these books and found the stories very engaging and easy to relate to (minus the whole immortal thing haha). I won't ruin the ending of Cathy's Key for those that haven't finished it yet, but it definetly made me rethink the whole thing about it being an ARG. I loved the evidence that each book gave and found that even though I could't really interact that much with the phone numbers, they were still pretty neat. I had never experienced novels that were quite this interactive. After reading both books, I began to think about ARGs and how we define them, I thought back to the ARG Professor Whalen talked about at the beginning of the semester and compared that one to Cathy. I think what we each get from these books are our own opinions but I think that Cathy as a ARG is highly plausible. Regardless of its existence as an ARG or not, I found both books engaging and I couldn't stop reading them.

Finally here is my IF project.
Enjoy the ride.

Surprisingly, I liked the IF project a lot more than I did our webpage project. I felt that I could get more hands-on with this project and really incorporate my own ideas into the project. With the webpage project, we were given guidelines and an idea that we couldn't mold too much. However, with this project, I was able to generate a story and make it more intertactive. When working on this project, I kept thinking back to all of those old books I used to read when I was a kid where you got to choose what action you took and that would change the outcome of the story. This was really similar and I enjoyed that. I like IF a lot, I feel that you can really do some extraordinary things with it. Playing those games from the competition, especially Grief really made me think about how much work people really put into making these games. Making my own has really given me an appreciation for these kinds of games that I did not have previously.

So first off, Avalon is defnietly not my favorite movie in the universe. I thought I might enjoy it because I really enjoy foreign films and virtual reality films. I respect the idea of avalon and the plot, I think the concept behind it was genius. I mean an illegal virtual reality game? How cool?! I thought that concept was very well thought out and it very much connected to many ideas today whether it be drugs or the old issue with unions. I also enjoyed the concept of the "unreturnables" where you end up like a vegetable for the rest of your life. I thought the existence of those people made the game even more of a taboo, which would make more people want to play, just for the pure excitement that something like that could happen to them. To put it in very simple terms and I mean very simple, like without the possibility of death simple, when we were little kids and our parents told us not to do something. I bet 9 out of 10 of us would have been more inclined to do that certain something after our parents had forbade whatever the activity was. So like I said, I really enjoyed the plot to Avalon, just not the movie itself.  read more »

Upon beginning my Aleph project, I honestly had no idea what I was going to do. At first the only thing that drew my attention was the part in the quote that talks about the artificial worlds. So I spun off of that to make my project. I began with a basic myspace looking home page with what my project was about and an about me section. From this my imagination ran wild with the thoughts of Lawnmower Man's prediction and how different the world would really be had it come true. From the quote, I developed a whole new world in the future, focusing mainly on aspects I thought would change the most or would be just really cool (like the worlds). I generated an alternate life for myself, that has a new virtual career. When thinking of what other pages to include in my site, I started thinking about religion and how different religion was in The Machine Stops. The whole project and this alternate world I am creating relates directly to the story of the Machine Stops, especially what with everyone being hooked up to technology.  read more »

I'm actually a big fan of sci-fi movies and had never even heard of Lawnmower man before last week, let alone knew that it was based on a Stephen King story. After watching it, I 1)realized this in no way whatsoever seemed like a horror movie to me 2) That we could be very close to something like the idea the movie projects. It's true the government does a load of things behind our back without telling us or failing to broadcast it publicly. Take for instance, the LHC that was just initiated yesterday, before yesterday, me and many others I know had no idea what it was or what it was for. So basically what I'm saying is, is that the government could be conducting experiments similar to Dr. Angelo's, just meddling with the idea of a virtual reality. The concept of VR has been around for decades, there has to be some development concerning it other than just in the movies or video games. I think that the idea of an alternate reality like Lawnmower man's can be very possible with the acceleration rate of our technology.

So upon completing Shrapnel, I realize I'm actually starting to like these text-based adventure games. They are still aggravating at points but I think that's what makes them so fun. If it wasn't frustrating at some point, then you wouldn't want to see what happens next. I'm beginning to look closer into IF and see how much work it really takes people to come up with this. The descriptions and story line behind shrapnel were incredible. God knows how long it took someone to come up with this. The term shrapnel to me seemed as a double meaning upon finishing the game. One, it obviously has the denotation of a piece of metal through Whitman/Blakes leg. However, on a different connotation it offers a much deeper meaning, seen only when you have finished the game. Throughout the whole game, you're given little clues as to your condition and some vague idea that you're looking for something or trying to figure something out, otherwise, why play a game if there's no point, right? Well, you have this constant frustration to figure out something, unknownst to you, so in a way that struck me as virtual shrapnel. Don't know if that makes any sense, but it sounded good in my mind haha.  read more »

I completely understand why I'm not such a big fan of games like Shade. I'm not even quite sure I completed the game. It started over with the same message so I assumed I had. I liked it but I didnt like it. I would like it if it wasn't so specific with the text and if it stayed consistent. I agree with the previous post, there were numerous things on my list that I had crossed off without realizing. Like the package in the kitchen, what happened to that? I used to have a game like Shade called Hugo that was textually based. I did like Shade for its visual aspect.  read more »