Week 10: Interactive narrative

This workshop explored interactive narratives, before we made our own.

I firstly played with some different forms of interative narrative to learn more about them. Until this week's lecture, I never thought of play as a form of research / experimentation; yet play is indeed exploring different options and avenues to uncover what the outcome may be.

When playing, I considered effect (getting the message across; how did creators do this?) and affect (how creators make us, the audience, care). The 'Adventures with Anxiety' game was particularly good at using these two tools, as it spoke directly to the gameplayer asking them to 'tap into' their true emotions and feelings. before diving in and trying to make my own interactive narrative.

I opted to use Twine, and got along with it impressively smoothly. I actually really enjoyed it, and it was fun adding different nodes and choices for the audience. I used a real-life story/setting, from my first year at Leeds during the pandemic in 2020, so portraying this in a comedic way - whilst reminding myself of the need to include options and the notion of affect - was fun. Find a screenshot of how far I got below; if I had more time, I'd certainly extend it and add more complexity and more paths.

I then explored memes, and meme culture; which, as Chris described on Minerva (and I rather enjoy), "pack a semantic punch". They have potentialities to portray a particular message or stance through a tongue-in-cheek, even approachable, manner, and could be used to reach audiences in a form of propaganda, potentially. Find one below that I quickly generated, which I deliberately made with a political punch in mind...

Memes can be a creative way in which to portray a message that could be viewed as easily accessible, and decoded in a relatively straightforward way although deeper meaning may also be encoded within it. As anyone or anything can be the subject of a meme, there might be ethical questions (for example, using the picture of someone or disseminating information about someone in a 'satirical' way could be questioned). However, I view them as an interesting way of portraying a message in a short, snappy way.