A-ha! Here is a kind of digital "game" (of sorts) I could imagine creating myself: text- & hyperlink based, interactive fiction.
(You can make them more complex graphically too.)
The player reads bits of text and clicks on options [kiss the "boy" or "girl"] that move the story forward and affect its outcome.
It's "game as conversation."
"…a lot of this stuff is coming from people who grew up with games and are saying, “I want to make things now.”
--Meritt Kopas [links to interview with Kopas, editor of Videogames For Humans, about Twine games]
You can make them for free, easily––insofar as there's no computer programming involved, you still have to conceive of, design and write them in a way anyone would want to interact with––
on open-source software, Twine.
(You can make them more complex graphically too.)
The player reads bits of text and clicks on options [kiss the "boy" or "girl"] that move the story forward and affect its outcome.
It's "game as conversation."
"…a lot of this stuff is coming from people who grew up with games and are saying, “I want to make things now.”
--Meritt Kopas [links to interview with Kopas, editor of Videogames For Humans, about Twine games]
You can make them for free, easily––insofar as there's no computer programming involved, you still have to conceive of, design and write them in a way anyone would want to interact with––
on open-source software, Twine.
Twines can be like youTube videos about other people's pets––or a writer can make them pretty intriguing, like Conversations with My Mother [links to the short, free game] by Merritt Kopas:
you play the mom writing an e-mail to their trans kid:
Kopas, a trans woman, talks about this and other text-based games here: "Trans Women and the New Hypertext".
The Conversations with My Mother game is rather disappointing. I played it 3 different ways and it barely changed. It does make me want to write one though...so much potential. I would love to see the same story swing between romance, sci-fi, and mystery, depending on which choices you made. Hmmmm... so much Dada potential too...love that.
ReplyDeleteBINK: Yeah, it's a little too simple, but I thought it illustrated the possibility of a game where you shirt your pov.
ReplyDeleteYou'd be brilliant at designing games like this!