I’ll be honest right now, I have not actually read this week’s readings to completion. I skim read the last third of the first extract and opened the second extract in a new tab, so I’m pretty well versed on 2/6ths of Douglas’ ideas. But I’m going to write a post anyway, because it’s Monday night and I have class tomorrow.

Douglas explores some pretty cool uses of hypertext is his writing. I tried to think of examples of interactive hypertext stories that I know of, but the closest I got was The Sims, which meant that I took a three-hour break to be born, become and architect and have 6 babies. I thought of Pottermore, J K Rowling and Co.’s interactive website, but realised that it’s remains a linear story, and basically just a re-telling of the books. I struggled to think of anything else that I knew of, which shocked me, because Douglas had plenty of examples in 2000.

In an only slightly relevant example, this article details the way in which the consumer, in this case the player, can have a huge effect of the original intention of a product. Within the online game, Neopets, the game currency has had major inflation issues caused by large numbers of new accounts, large numbers of inactive accounts and players placing an increased importance on having the ‘best’ items. While Neopets is not strictly an interactive narrative in the sense that Douglas discussed, this example goes to show just how much power an audience can have.

I’m now off to play Neopets, so I guess my next post will be in about 3 years.