Reflections – ◢ ◤

Interactive Narrative Sharing

Make Me Pulse is an interactive website which has amazing user interactivity accompanied by eye-catching aesthetics. I was particularly drawn by the concept of holding the mouse or buttons as the graphics unfold and how objects trail the mouse. This also invokes the stuff we learnt in Processing.

I personally feel this website is underrated and needs more views. It aims to get audiences to contemplative about their resolutions for the year ahead. The general idea and concept of interactivity is versatile and could be adapted for other projects. Could be something I’d like to work on for my FYP!

Interactive Narrative Inspiration

With our project on the topic of mental health, I found an narrative game that also seeks to raise awareness on this illness. A feature of this game that caught my attention were the kinds of metaphors is uses to illustrate depression – it’s not direct which leaves room for interpretation.

The game has its high and low points where at certain parts, the character drifts and breezes through a canopy and the music gets cheery and faster. The mood gradually changes where falling leaves start to get fewer and backdrop gets gloomier – a great play of metaphorical emotional landscape. Essentially, the player is going on a search on their passion.

For our project, perhaps we could adopt the idea of contrasting moods of what a person with depression might go through. Also, the play of character choices where the outcome of the character might not exactly correspond with what the player chose.

Interactive Narrative Sharing

Cronulla Riots – It was described as a day that shocked the nation. In December 2005, a nasty racial riot broke out Down Under triggered by Lebanese Muslims insulting the Australians. The violent mob that had 26 injured is now documented into an interactive website where an experience is introduced to the viewer. We get explore themes and navigate around the issue literally, allowing us to delve deeper into the riots. An interactive website is a brilliant as riots are caused by social, economic or political factors, no matter which would domino into emotional strain and tension within the rioting parties. With an immersive experience, people are able to relate to it and reflect on the aftermath.

Visit the website here! http://www.sbs.com.au/cronullariots/documentary

Reflection: garden of forking paths

This non-linear narrative is mind-blowing and non-understandable at its first read.

Yet the enigma compels you to read on at the same time. It goes on to intrigue you with his style of writing and decipher the paragraphs by piecing one information with another.

A feature of this literature i’d like to point out and commend is its genre. It interestingly fits into several categories. You could call it mystery, detective, or psychological thriller.

Have your pick, but I’ll classify this as magical realism. With its reality context, we are able to relate to it yet things get slightly peculiar when a tinge of magical realism is injected into the narrative.

Ultimately, I was immensely fascinated by the allegory of the ‘garden of forking paths’ which was actually came in both physical and symbolic forms. I am impressed as they were well blended into the plot. The labyrinth was a physical setting, seen as Ts’ui Pen’s Pavilion of the Limpid Sun.

Also, I saw it as setting of non-linear branches of its plot, which encompasses many levels. Last but not least, Ts’ui Pen’s novel is also a labyrinth, consisting of countless endings.

All in all, this was in fact a good read as the author did a fairly good job with this genre of magical realism. If not done well, it would turn out cheap but this one was applaudable.

Although I woudn’t be exploring in this direction for this semester’s project, I actually do look forward to reading more mind-blowing narratives like these.

Interactive Narration

Quandary is an online game that challenges students to make important decisions and think critically when there are no clear right or wrong answers.

It has a narrative that comes in comic format. I’d say it’s perfect for lazy people as there is even a voice narrator when you hover over the speech bubbles!

A higher level of interactivity comes to play when users get to exercise their decision making

How it goes

You play the captain aka the judge. The fate of planet Braxos lies in your hands. It starts off by laying out 4 solutions and narrowing down with two, followed by making decisions that are built on the previous ones.

At the last part, your aim is to sort out who will agree and who will disagree. Eventually, the conclusion is told in a brief comic and your score is tallied.

This is a practical game for schools to adopt as part of teaching students to work with ethical skills and decision-making. The storyline is engaging and it actually compels you to think and tests your memory.

I would’ve scored a better grade back in junior school if i played these games instead of Battleon.

Play it at https://www.quandarygame.org/play

Testing

“Narrative, Interactivity, Play, and Games: Four Naughty Concepts in Need of Discipline” – Eric Zimmerman

Narrative, interactivity, play and games. The author describes the need of discipline for these four concepts to sit well with each other and how they get to their audiences. While the definitions for a ‘narrative’ is generic, what was defined for ‘interactivity’ was more thought provoking.

Eric Zimmerman describes them as four concepts that come together and work nicely instead of seeing them as categories. Indeed, this strikes a strong point as a successful interactive narrative displays a good amalgamation of these points, with no one point overweighing the other. They are namely 1) Cognitive interactivity, or interpretive participation with a text 2) Functional interactivity; or utilitarian participation with a text Mode 3: Explicit interactivity; or participation with designed choices and procedures in a text Mode 4: Meta-interactivity or cultural participation with a text.

I was rather enlightened that an interactive piece could be viewed in such levels which also draws my attention to the reading ‘Medium is the message’. It made me question if a higher level of interactivity would REQUIRE a more complex choice of medium.