Lots of talk about video games this week. I love talk about video games, pretty much for the same reason I love talk about graphic design: because I know nothing about it, so it fascinates me!

Elliot said that Hypertext tends to provide different kinds of links but video games present a partiucalr diegesis that you move through intrinsically. He thinks that overall, he wouldn’t consider video games hypertext. Jasmine disagreed, as she though they can be as the interface of the games changes according to the user’s choices, which makes it a different experience.

I think both claims are fair, I’d lean more towards Elliot’s point as I see that there is a particular diegesis that has been designed for the user to be taken one way or another, but then again I agree with Jasmine’s point that there is a difference of experience.

Adrian think that games don’t necessarily have narrative e.g. Tetris. I see what he means, but I still think that with things like that there’s still some sort of story. Even in a game of Tetris there is tension, climax, conflict, triumph, the user is always the protagonist with a partiuclar goal in mind and that goddamn I-shaped block that appears when you’re just about to hit the roof and have nowhere to put it is the VILLAIN! I think elements of narrative exist – it just simplifies them through blocks and simple objectives.

Adrian pointed out that words that serve as signifiers of consecutiveness and seriality are obsolete in hypertext e.g. hence, therefore. This is due to each node being highly granular and can be arrived at at time and read in an isolated way. Important to consider when trying to write a hypertext narrative – I think as student’s it’s been hammered into our brains to be able to write in cohesive, serial manners, so this part of writing a hypertext narrative could be a challenging but refreshing one.