shameless's blog

This isn't the final project that I wanted.

I had a very cool game concept put together and planned out, but couldn't tie everything together, which is a shame.

I'm sure that over break all the planets will align and I will be blessed with the time and foresight to complete it the way I have it imagined.

Instead here is a bit of prose about the real, and a few trailheads and a puzzle that are almost ready to be tied together.

I think there is enough here to make something really cool, or, at least, virtually cool.

Reflecting on the class as a whole, I really love the concept of comparing the Virtual and the Real, and think reality is completely subjective.

I've enjoyed the idea of creating little bits and pieces of a world, starting with a webpage, interactive fiction and then on to full blown ARG-ness. One thing that i really liked about this class is that you get a chance to make something up, something completely random and off the wall, and then physically insert it into the world, and that act makes it real. So Cool.

Crazyness.

Cheers!

//EDIT// Let's try this with the attachments this time.

A pirate isn't a pirate without an ARG.

Now that we have that out of the way.

I have the pirate ship mentality, and our ARG is no different. We designed a game with multiple endings and let the player make the game turn out their way.

I wish that we had the time/skill to really put an ARG together, so that a semesters worth of work resulted in a full put together and multi featured ARG.

From the webpage to the IF to the ARG creation in general, I think that it would have been cool to be assembled into the same universe. I like the openness of being able to create whatever you want, but I also enjoy seeing the different variations on a theme.

I really enjoyed creating puzzles, and would love to do more of it. Our game has two different endings, and two different puzzles. I found it very cool to create a moral challenge for the players. I think putting a player in a position to make a snap judgement on morality is great. There are no black and whites, and no universal good.

I looked at the Golden Dragon puzzle yesterday and thought it was very interesting. I like the idea of wrapping my head around complex puzzles and seeing what comes out.

I first did a little background on the certificate itself, and while not leading to the solution, provided a rich history of unofficial naval traditions.

SPOILERS  read more »

I can't shake the conceptual limits that society has put on my brain.

I know that there is more to life than what I am seeing and experiencing.

How do we reach these new perspectives on reality? Let's examine what reality is.

We can say that reality is objective, but we cannot prove it, as our brains may be deceived by our senses. The same brain chemicals that are responsible for our flight or fight mechanism, trigger massive lags in time when confronted with tremendously stressful situations. This is why we 'see our lives flash before our eyes' right before a traumatic event.

If we assume that all interactions correspond to the disbursement of neurological chemicals in our brains, than couldn't we simulate reality by directing these chemicals?

This is kind of touched on in Avalon. Second Life provides a different type of interaction, but Avalon creates a world in which you forget your are in a world at all. There are no lies, only untruths.

What are we capable of when we remove the only restrictions on ourselves?

Let me begin by saying that I am excited about the potential that Second Life offers.

I enjoy the conceptual base that they are building. I love the idea that anyone, anywhere in the world, can be, do, make or talk about anything or anyone.

Even better, is the revolutionary rethinking of interaction. What does it mean to have a business meeting? What could it mean? In a world where anything is possible, why can't you make anything possible?

With information costs dropped to zero, its incredibly tough to pass up. Who doesn't want a format to interact on a global level. Companies are able to establish online personas which are extensions of their real world entities. Seminars are able to be conducted from overseas.

As for the execution, well, its a growing world, and it will take some time to work the kinks out. As the platform becomes more advanced, certain aspects will work themselves out by the citizens, but until then, things can be choppy.

I like that in a world without limits, the only real restrictions are on your own abilities of conceptualization.

Cathy's Book was interesting, but I'm not sure that it really was a true Alternate Reality Game.

It seemed to me that there was a huge difference between some of the true alternate reality games, and Cathy's Book. I know that the book encourages you to view websites, and to call phone numbers, but to be honest, doing so doesn't lend too much to the reading experience. It isn't quite interactive, and aside from using the voicemail, there is little the reader can do.

I did think that the packet of information in the book was a cool feature, and you could definitely get more out of the additional material. All the source material added to the layout of the story, and gave you all you needed to connect the plotlines before you finished the book.

It wasn't such a compelling story, and I didn't feel it was taking place in our world. I'm not the target market for the book so maybe that is it.

I have played ARG's before, and thought that they were pretty interesting, but this fell flat.

My IF project is here.

There is a lot of work to be done in fleshing out the manual in Inform, and working within the language itself was the hardest part of developing the story.

I've found the fiction part to be much easier than the interactive part. I also had trouble getting the program to do EXACTLY what I wanted. It was a frustrating experience, especially typing using just two fingers.

I'd like to continue working on this project, and refining it for further distribution, but we will see. The concept of world creation can be pretty addictive.

I chose the IF game Magic, from the competition, and while structurally interesting, the game itself was boring.

It seems that the interactive part often takes precedent over the fiction part.

I couldn't bring myself to finish "Magic" so I looked for a more interesting game.
I found "Search for the Ultimate Weapon" and was impressed.

The premise of the game is rooted in medieval Chinese philosophy, which provided a moral incentive to play this game.

Structurally, the game had three different times of day, a really nice GUI system for running the game, and detailed command buttons, which made the game more like a conventional, if old, computer game. The addition of light and sound made it more than a text game, and the GUI framework shows how games were able to make the jump from text to GUI interface.

With storyline aspect of the game is very Eastern, as the character has to solve problems in order to exact revenge for the death of his parents at the hands of an evil prince. What appear to be simple problems are more complicated, and require thinking about the problems differently, which requires thinking about yourself differently.  read more »

I've read Snow Crash before, but never before has it seemed this prescient. Stephenson looked ahead in 1992 and his world is maybe just a few years off from where we are today.

I'm pretty sure that most Americans don't have a clue how properly screwed we are with regards to the credit situation. The $700 Billion being asked for a bailout is the tip of the iceberg. 10% of the mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are $500 Billion on its own. Chinese investors have been buying up our debt at a furious rate. The risk markers of the United States to default on our debts has climbed higher than McDonald's.

We have seen the emergence of franchises across the world, and globalization has only sped up this trend. Once the binder is written, there is no idea which can't be parroted back by a shift manager.

Enclaves have been established. We can see the extrapolation of gated communities to their logical end: completely self-sufficient, self-policing, privately administered collections of people based on shared cultural identifications.

I've always looked at science fiction as the potential future, or possible outcomes. That's what makes it compelling.  read more »

It's up. It isn't pretty, but it is up. My First programming job ever.

As Neal Stephenson says, if it isn't what you are passionate about, you might as well be making license plates.

Well, there are people who like to code. I am not one of them. I do however have a new respect for those who can knock the bottom out of a complex program, let alone some weak html script.

Codemonkeys work for a living, I know that now.

I tried to create a dystopian future, where remnants of technology can be found beneath the surface, but there are no more networks. Network connectivity is what the Lawnmower Man thrives on, so life in the ancient tunnels under London is based around substinence level existence until the numbers of Nowhere Men can challenge Judd for control of Meat-Space.

You can find my Aleph project here.

Plato and his cave are very well known destination for those contemplating alternate or virtual realities. As the oldest example of challenging the 'realness' of reality, its importance cannot be underestimated.

Plato's cave dwellers know nothing about the world outside their cave, and can't conceptualize the idea that they don't know anything about the world outside. This disconnect between the conceptual reality of the prisoners and the true reality shared between those outside of the cave is incredibly important.

The great irony, is that IF a prisoner was freed, and able to see the true world, coming back to the cave to tell the others of their faulty view of the world would seem like a good idea. Instead, they look at him like he is a crazy man, being so removed from their context that they cannot process what he is saying.

I can liken this experience to the taking of psychedelic drugs, either LSD or even mushrooms. There is something to be said for challenging your brain's flexibility and understanding that your view of the world is based on the Perception you form for yourself, instead of the true shared reality.  read more »

Shade wasn't my first experience with interactive fiction, but it was the first time I became aware of IF as a genre. I had played similar games before, like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but didn't conceptualize how in depth and nuanced they could be until Shade.

As for the game itself, I thought it played on the concept of an unexamined life not worth living. The main character seems to be living a depressing, meaningless existence, and fails to comprehend the last seconds of his own life.  read more »