So, I attempted another playthrough of “Whom The Telling Chanbed”, and the complexity of the work is becoming clearer to me. This is my third playthrough after the 2nd one described here and the first one described in my initial critique here.

This time, I focused almost entirely on war, interpreting the Gilgamesh story as a heroic one, and mocking Saiph when he tries to say anything in support of peace. Of particular note, I found that the attitudes of Sihan and Saiph changed as well. Where before my lover supported me in peace and my enemy stood against me in support of war, the roles were reversed. It seems like the game was able to quickly realize I was on the side of war, resulting in my enemy, Saiph, becoming an advocate for peace. I found myself saying things that Saiph had said as my enemy in the previous bout, and Saiph saying things I had previously said. Read the rest of this entry »

I decided to do a second playthrough of Aaron Reed’s “Whom The Telling Changed”, as discussed in my critique. I initially intended to try and take a completely opposite approach, trying to bring about war. However, I ended up having a hard time doing that, and found myself making the same arguments. Instead, for this game, I tried to focus on seeing what else I could do differently. In doing so, I discovered some interesting aspects of how the game is put together. Read the rest of this entry »

A critical review of “Whom The Telling Changed”, an interactive fiction by Aaron Reed.

“Whom The Telling Changed” is an interesting and unique entry in the genre of interactive fiction, written by Aaron Reed. Typically, a lot of interactive fiction is characterized by puzzles, of which there really aren’t any in this game. And even those works of IF that don’t specifically involve puzzles usually involve the player taking on the role of the protagonist and experiencing and guiding the story (like a Choose Your Own Adventure book). Reed does something different here.  In this work, the actual “story” being told is from the Epic of Gilgamesh, the story of how Gilgamesh and Enkidu fought the demon Humbaba. But the “story” in this work involves the player taking on the role of a warrior in the village, who helps to direct the story being told by the village’s storyteller. Just to say this upfront, this critique is based on a single playthrough of the game. Further playthroughs would definitely offer further insights into how the story works, and just what the ramifications are of certain choices you make.

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Part 1: The Introduction

So, this is my manifesto for ENGL344, Intro to Digital Writing in the Genres. And specifically, this is the introduction to my manifesto. I have to admit, even after reading through some of the other manifestos my classmates have written, I’m still not completely sure how to approach this. I’ve never really been very good at really bold statements – I think Bridget’s Manifesto is great, but I don’t think I could write something quite like it, even though I know that’s the purpose of things here. To be honest, part of my struggle with all of this might have to do with the fact that I’ve never thought of writing as an art, even though I know it is. But there are things I associate with art and the mindset of art that I’ve always felt were fairly separate from writing. I’ve heard of people refer to writing as more of a craft, and somehow that makes sense to me. Granted, thinking about it now, I’m not completely sure how I would define the difference between a craft and art, but I think it does seem to factor into why I don’t think of writing as art.

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Hello, and welcome to my blog for the Spring 2009 session of ENGL344 (Intro to Digital Writing in the Genres) at GMU. I’ll be using this blog to post various assignments/etc. including my introductory manifesto.