By Maliyah Battle and Anna Quick
Inside is a puzzle game that immerses players in a dystopian world that is filled with eerie environments and strange events. Playing as a young boy, your goal is to travel through the varying landscapes solving puzzles, fighting against dangers, and uncovering the dark and twisted secrets of the world. Devoid of any type of dialogue, the focus of the story is set on environmental storytelling. Allowing the player to make their own perceptions about the nature of this society. A strong theme present in Inside is the lack of free will. Throughout the gameplay, you encounter mind-controlled human experiments and civilians who mindlessly walk through government checkpoints. With the main character being different from all of them, it's easy to believe that the young boy would have free will in comparison. It appears that he is conscious and aware of the nature of his environment. Although, this is only an illusion. The mechanics of the game only allow the boy to move left or right, forcing him into a linear predetermined path. Then as you continue further along, you may start to question if the boy is even operating on free will anymore. Any choice made by the player has minimal impact on the outcome and only serves to move the boy further along the predetermined journey.
Inside is a confusing game, and that is why it was one of our first choices. It is a game with no spoken meaning; however, you can interpret the dialogue-less game in many ways. When researching, we found countless theories surrounding the game. The main character is a little boy running carelessly through many obstacles, however, there are many times when this nameless boy can control these zombie-like creatures. Many theorize that mind control and lack of free will is what this game is about. In the YouTube video “Inside: The Story & its Meaning Explained (Horror Game Theories),” the commentator mentions a theory regarding the boy and his free will. This theory is that the boy never had free will and is being controlled by the government —which is more than likely controlling these zombie-like humans— in the game. This theory is reminiscent of the movie we watched for class, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. Both mediums explore the themes of free will or lack thereof, and this correlation is a huge reason why we picked this game to discuss.
As stated, this game never explicitly says what it is about. The whole point of the game is up to the viewer's discretion. This allows for many ways to play the main character, even though there is only one right way. Although there are no choices you can make, the game makes it seem like there are certain choices. There are no instructions or hints in the game, it is all puzzle-based. Some of these puzzles differ in difficulty, but figuring them out makes it seem like the player discovered something secret and hidden. So even though there is one correct way to play the game, some of the puzzles seem too hard for anyone to know which creates the illusion that the player has figured out this secret way to pass the part of the game they are on. Therefore, the game creates an illusion of free will and wants players to think they can control what is happening. In one portion of the game, you have to utilize a horde of ducks to complete a puzzle, but because of the illusion, some players may think that they decided to choose to use the ducks. The use of the ducks could lead some players to think that the boy is sweet and carefree even in the ruined world he is in. It is interesting to see that even in a game with no choices, it can still seem like the players are making choices and gathering information about the main character when making those choices.
Inside is a suspenseful game that keeps you waiting and guessing what is going to happen next. With so many interpretations, Inside could be whatever the player makes it, which is one of its clear affordances and downfalls. Many people love it when games are left open-ended and up to interpretation, and that is why there are countless theories about the game. However, there is a large audience that hates open-ended games. Whether you love it or hate it, Inside is a truly captivating game that keeps you on your toes and constantly thinking.
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By Msanaa Bosland, Jack Hughes, and Rayna Johnson
Gravity Falls was an animated show that aired on Disney Channel and Disney XD from June 2012 to February 2016. The show's plot was contained to only two seasons and was generally deemed a quirky kids show by critics; however, among audiences Gravity Falls developed a reputation for hiding various codes, cryptograms, and hidden messages in its episodes for fans to discover. This aspect of the show fueled large amounts of audience participation, as a strong fandom community worked together to solve these puzzles. Gravity Falls would also become a much more typical trans-media after the ending of the show, with over forty physical books and a video game for the Nintendo 3DS being released as part of the extended canon of the show. However, the crown jewel of Gravity Falls trans-media nature was the international treasure hunt orchestrated by show creator and executive producer Alex Hirsch, which started in St. Petersburg, Russia and led fans, through a series of codes and ciphers, to Japan and several disparate cities in the U.S. culminating in the discovery of a statue of the show's main antagonist, Bill Cipher, hidden in the woods around Reedsport Oregon.
The actual plot of Gravity Falls follows a pair of thirteen year old teens who are sent to spend the summer with their ‘Grunkle’ Stan, who runs a tourist trap in upstate Oregon called the Mystery Shack. The twins, Mabel and Dipper Pines, spend the summer unraveling the supernatural activities that are exceptionally prevalent around the town of Gravity Falls. The plot mainly revolves around a set of journals that document the unnatural aspects of the town and the mystery of their origin; these journals would also be later published as part of the trans-media nature of the show. The series culminates in a three-episode special titled “Weirdmageddon" which sees the town taken over by Bill Cipher, a multidimensional creature of chaos in the shape of a one-eyed yellow triangle complete with bowtie and tophat. The finale of the show contained a single real-life image of this character with an encoded riddle that hinted to a treasure in the woods, this would serve as the inciting incident for the ensuing scavenger hunt.
The “Cipher Hunt” was an alternate reality game, which involved committed fans exploring real world locations to find clues towards the next location in the game, like a cross between a scavenger hunt and geo-caching. However, this scavenger hunt was more entwined with the show and the creator, who regularly corresponded with the participating fans through social media. The hunt consisted of twelve clues hidden in different major cities, beginning in St. Petersburg, Russia the clues led to Tokyo, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Santa Clarita, Piedmont, back to Los Angeles, Portland, Piercy, Amity, Turner, and finished in Reedsport, Oregon with the discovery of the roughly four foot tall statue of Bill Cipher and a chest containing some paraphernalia from Alex Hirsch and some currency left by an individual who discovered the statue a month before the hunt began.
The hunt suffered from several setbacks that showcase both the weakness and strengths of this type of trans-media. Specifically, there were several times throughout the hunt where clues, or as said the final prize, was found and disturbed by people not participating in the hunt. For instance, the fourth clue in the order was originally located on the campus of Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, however, university staff accidentally disposed of said clue before it could be discovered by fans. In response to this, the creator tweeted to let fans know that that clue was missing, and later tweeted a phone number which led to the fifth clue once decoded. In the case of the final statue, Alex Hirsch was informed by one of the fans that the person who discovered it before the beginning of the hunt had posted an image of it to a subreddit, and subsequently had to pay the individual a hundred dollars and promise credit for the discovery if they took down the post. This type of trans-media storytelling is fairly different from the ones we have explored in class up to this point; however, the interaction between creator, fans, and participates in the hunt is an extremely unique way to utilize trans-media as a method to expand the story of Gravity Falls through the participation of people in the real world and on social media.
By Kemper Koslofski, Hailey Newell, and Oakley Tate
Background of Creators:
Detroit: Become Human is a AAA game created by Quantic Dream, released in 2018, and set in futuristic Detroit in 2038. It is a single-player, action-adventure game where there is unrest between androids, a machine or robot with a human appearance, and humans as the player is tested with various moral dilemmas. This game includes several famous actors, such as Jesse Williams (Grey’s Anatomy), Lance Henriksen (Aliens), and Valorie Curry (Twilight). Detroit was released the same year as Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, a branching interactive narrative on Netflix, and Detroit is still one of the most intricate branching narrative games to date. In 2018 it was nominated at The Game Awards for Best Narrative, Best Performance, and Best Game Direction; however, it lost to Red Dead Redemption 2 and God of War, which was tough competition. This game that broke ground on branching narratives in the game industry allows the player to make life-and-death choices that affect the three main, playable android characters and the city of Detroit in its entirety. Morals will be tested as the game lets the player discover what it means to be human from the eyes of an outsider, a machine, and decisions will make all the difference as the outcome of humanity rests on the player’s shoulders. Game Description: Detroit: Becomes Human is the story of three separate androids who are facing challenges living in a world of humans. The first android is a cop-like, deviant android hunter named Connor. He is particularly unique for the fact that if he is killed, he will be rebuilt and sent back into the field. The second is an android named Markus owned by a famous Detroit painter, Carl Manfred. Markus acts as Carl's companion and caretaker, which builds a strong bond in their relationship. Carl’s son is jealous of this bond, creating part of Markus’ conflict at the beginning of his storyline. The last android is a housekeeper named Kara whose owner is aggressive and abusive to her and his daughter. Each android plays its part in the android revolution and the player makes the choice whether to help the androids achieve sentience and freedom or stay on the side of humanity. Themes: This game is focused on discrimination and oppression in the future that stems from the greed of humanity. Androids in a sense represent the struggles minorities face in the present day. Markus’ storyline as a revolutionist, whether successful or not, Connor’s own sentience and Kara’s freedom all depend on the choices of the player. These decisions can change the course for these parallels, making one’s own adventure in the game a completely unique experience to them. Should you help the androids because they are playing as the androids? Should you help them because you think it is the right thing to do? Should you put yourself in humanity’s shoes as you are a human yourself? These are the tough questions someone would have to ask themselves when the difficult subjects are thrown upon the player.
Experience:
Detroit is a game solely based on the decisions a player makes. Part of the game’s mechanics, on top of the branching choices, are percentages that the game will give the player when making a decision. It will clue the player in on certain likelihoods of things that might happen or the feelings of characters. There are quick-timed events (QTEs) in which you act in defense of the character, buttons need to be pressed in a small time frame in order to act. In this game, there are many instances where the narrator is faced with ethical choices as well. The 3D environment in this game lets players discover, sometimes, only what they go looking for. This becomes a really important aspect of major choices in the main storyline as well.
Detroit utilizes extremely realistic graphics to form this more intensive experience, created by using motion capture with actors. To implement motion capture they use a software called Maya. They use Maya due to its versatility. With it, they can download plugins, code their own plugins, create tools, and edit the graphics all the way up until they release the game. They send the motion capture straight through Maya which allows them to create game elements seamlessly. This seamless transition allows the artists to spend less time designing and exporting assets, and more time increasing the quality of the game.
By Ember Kvande, Grace Talbert, and Carly Thomas To the untrained eye, Minecraft is an open world survival sandbox that has no inherent story to it. You spawn in with no direction or instruction, and you’re in an infinitely generating open world. It’s up to the player to choose what they want to do with this world — fight monsters, build structures, farm, adventure, or “defeat” the game as it doesn’t have a hard-stop ending. Minecraft seems entirely open and plotless, but this could not be further from the truth. Minecraft, despite a lack of written words and explicit explanation, has an interesting and creative way of telling stories. Firstly, there's all the ways that the game encourages and enhances the stories you as a player chose to create. There are naturally occurring landmasses that demand exploration, mobiles (mobs) to interact with for items or fight, and ways to tame certain mobs into pets. On a world all alone, players can make a tragic story of surviving the night, trusting nothing but their fists until they tame a dog. The dog is inevitably killed by a monster (probably a creeper), and the player truly mourns losing a trusted companion, probably making a grave. Perhaps even more influential than the setting and mobs is the option for multiplayer. Players can bring real life friends in to shape a world together. There are whole genres of Twitch and YouTube dedicated to the stories people create with their friends on Minecraft, enhanced by inherent game mechanics and the creativity Minecraft brings out in people. It’s hard to name how many Minecraft worlds have been razed in the name of accidentally killed dogs or stolen loot. To build your own story, Minecraft offers five types of game modes: Survival, Hardcore, Creative, Spectator, and Adventure. Survival and creative mode are the most popular modes. Survival mode is quite challenging for beginners. Players spawn into a world randomly and have approximately twenty to thirty minutes in real time before dusk falls. During this time, they must find resources like food, but they also must find resources to craft tools and other useful items as well as build a proper and safe shelter. When dusk falls, players are met with monsters like creepers, zombies, spiders, and more to fight off. The player has ten hearts (worth 2 points each) to survive. The days basically replay based on your tasks of finding resources, food, and fighting monsters, but the game is beatable once you finish the final boss. Hardcore mode is the most difficult mode in the game. This mode is survival mode, but if you were to die, you would not be able to respawn. The game would simply be over and have to be restarted. Mobs and other monsters deal more damage in this mode, and they are stronger. This means they will likely find your shelter and easily break through without good reinforcement, which can be difficult to find. Hardcore mode is known to not be for the faint of heart. Creative mode is very popular for beginners and nonchalant players because there are no dangers, and players are given unlimited lives. Players have access to all items in the game including blocks, tools, weapons, seeds, potions, and food. This mode offers flying to make building and getting around easier as well. Creative mode is best known for its name because it is used for players to get more familiar and creative with mining, building, killing, and other tasks that could occur in a more difficult mode. Spectator mode allows players to simply fly through worlds. No interactions can take place, so players cannot interact with animals, or mine blocks. Instead, they can fly through everything. This mode works best with creative to allow players to quickly scope out the world. It is also a great way for players to spectate what they have built, especially if it was a village or something large to look for any changes that could be made or just for admiration. Adventure mode is how many creators make their own Minecraft “minigames.” Stories and other experiences are often made in this mode because it limits what tools can be used for certain tasks. Games with levels or multiple worlds are created in adventure mode since the games made within the Minecraft game are meant to spark adventure in players. On top of the choice that it gives to the players, Minecraft also has a rich and interesting story that the players can learn about by simply interacting with the world around them. Throughout the game there are a number of abandoned or inhabited structures that tell us about the world if we just ask why they are there. For instance, there are the strongholds. The stronghold is a place where the player can transport themselves to another dimension to find glorious treasure and do battle with a dragon who serves as the “final” boss of the game. But these strongholds are uninhabited. There are no living creatures there, save the silverfish left behind to defend the place from intruders. Whoever built these strongholds believed they were returning from wherever they were going. The catch is that it is impossible to return until you have defeated the Ender Dragon. If you venture out into the end you will find cities on islands far far away from where the dragon lives. These cities are also uninhabited, and contain rare loot for the players taking. Some even have end ships which float in the air as if parked right outside the end cities. What these the stronghold and the end cities tell us in conjunction is that there were a group of people skilled enough at magic or technology (what’s the difference?) to transport themselves to another dimension, but were unable to defeat the terrible monster that lay on the other side, so without a way home they fled into the outer reaches of this new and strange dimension. They created homes but could only survive so long until they died out. Without a single word spoken, the story conveys a tragic tale of adventurers stranded from home forced to make the best of their situation.
At first glance, Minecraft may look like a straightforward sandbox game to let creativity run wild without story or direction. But in reality, this game has pieces of a story players can put together if they so choose. By Harris Dorgan and Ethan Rhoades In 1987, MicroProse published Sid Meier’s Pirates! for the Commodore 64. Sid Meier, a founder of MicroProse in 1982, created the game as a combat vehicle simulation game in which the player plays through a pirate's life. The game is a single-player open-world game that allows its players to simulate a pirate's life. The game has received multiple remakes, the most notable being the 2004 version. The 2004 version of Pirates! was produced by Firaxis Games and released on multiple platforms (including Xbox, PC, and Wii), but the general idea of the game remained the same. This time, however, added story elements and interactivity. The game begins with your character at a family dinner when a group of pirates breaks down the door. They kidnap your family, but you manage to get away. All you have with you is a locket with a picture of your family and the will to find them and avenge the pirate who kidnapped them. The game then fast forwards 10 years later, when your character is now an adult. He arrives at a tavern with the intent of signing up for passage to the Caribbean as part of a crew. There, you can customize your character and choose your name, hairstyle/color, as well as facial hair. More importantly, you also have to choose your level of experience (apprentice, journeyman, adventurer, rogue, and swashbuckler) and choose your special skill (fencing, gunnery, navigation, medicine, and charm). Both of these decisions impact both the story and the gameplay. You also can choose which decade in the 17th century, which incorporates historical elements into the game. Choosing a decade dictates which countries are at war with each other, which other pirates you might come across, and other details. Finally, at the tavern, you can choose whether you want to be associated with the French, the Spanish, the Dutch, or the English. Each country will have port cities that you visit, and your experience in them is influenced by what country you choose. Once your character is fully customized, there’s a cutscene at sea where you start a mutiny and take control of the ship. After being given the opportunity to fully customize your ship, the gameplay officially begins. From here, the open-world elements of the game come to life. Most of the game is spent sailing across the Caribbean. While doing this, you have the option to try to develop a fleet by attacking other ships you see. In combat, you start with a naval battle where you try to line yourself up with the other ship and fire cannon shots at them. If the enemy hull is hit enough, the ship will eventually explode. Conversely, you can intentionally crash into the ship and swordfight its captain. If you win, then you claim that ship as part of your fleet. You also have to opportunity to hire its crew to join your crew and take their supplies. If you loose against the rival captain, you either get captured in put on a small island (if you lose to a pirate), or put in prison where you have to escape (if you lose to a captain who’s associated with a country). The other main aspect of the game is what you do in port cities. Once you arrive in one, you have the option to do multiple things. One of the key activities is to visit the governor, where you may be assigned tasks that will help their country. If you help the country enough, then you’ll be promoted, which gives you new abilities and things to do. Additionally, you might have the chance to dance with his daughter. If you do well enough at the dance, you might even have the chance to marry her later in the game. At a port city you also have the ability to visit the tavern, where you can recruit new sailors to your fleet or talk to strangers, some of which will give you clues about where your family is. If you choose to, you can follow up on these clues and eventually complete that aspect of the story. In all, Pirates! provides a fulfilling roleplaying experience in a game that may not seem that complex on the surface. But, the open world elements allow the story of your character to be truly up to you. In other interactive storytelling mediums there is usually a more concrete plot to follow, and the interactive elements only change a set amount of resolutions. In Pirates!, however, you can have complete control over the life of your character. There is the loose plot of finding your family, but there isn’t a time frame for that or any penalization for not completing it. This allows the game to feel truly immersive, even if it isn’t as mechanically complex as many other roleplaying games. Overall, Pirates! is a very enjoyable game that doesn’t portray itself as particularly complex, but still plays with the medium of video games in a way that gives the player the feeling of immersion into the life of a pirate.
By Devin Gloeckner & Phillip Nelson Are you a fan of the procedural corporate slaughter of every one of your favorite pieces of pop culture? Have you ever looked at the gaming industry and found it lacking in a through line? Look no further than our friend, Fortnite, peaking at 11 million concurrent players (the size of their servers no doubt) all time and 3.7 million concurrent players earlier today (Fortnite Player Count). As it has remained totally inescapable since its launch in 2017, it bears quite the merit on the digital stage. Before the big blue bus dumped Peter Griffin, Son Goku, and Spiderman out of the sky, there existed a simpler, more peaceful existence: Fortnite: Save the World. The idea of Fortnite was first formed to create a hybrid between the success of a fully customizable survival game like Minecraft and a “zombie shoot’em up” like the Zombies mode in the Call of Duty franchise. The point was to defend or complete an objective against an onslaught of zombies. Unfortunately, the mode has always left a bitter aftertaste in the mouths of those who remember the heavy corporate promises around it. When it was in its alphas and betas, the developers promised that it would one day be free to play. This promise encouraged people to purchase the game earlier rather than be stuck alongside the hordes at its full release. This promise has since been rescinded, with the latest season receiving its own newer survival mode branded with LEGO. In terms of gameplay balance…there is no balance. Save the World, while fun and initially exciting, has a tendency to become repetitive in similar ways to other mission based crafting survival. A mission is the same no matter how many times you play it, with several missions being required several times. The weapons are diverse but there are objectively correct answers in order to have the tools and damage output to progress in the story. While building is a core system, often levels rely on abusing a trap gimmick(such as tires bouncing down slopes) to easily cruise through. The reduced player count of recent seasons has slowly turned the game mode from a largely co-op game to a single player scramble. Party matchmaking and the game mode’s age are such that it is difficult to find anyone else who is towards the middle of the game. Instead there seems to be a firm divide between those that have already finished the story, and those who have started the game only recently. The game’s difficulty is dramatically increased by playing it single player so this disparity is self-fulfilling. In terms of the UI (User Interface) there is simply too much. Between expeditions, survivor squads, heroes, hero squads, defenders, blueprints, and the inventory, there are just too many factors to be constantly min-maxing (optimizing) or trying new things. The over-complication often just leads you to find one thing that works and sit in it for as long as you can. While I personally enjoyed the game for its tongue and cheek dialogue, big numbers, and nostalgia, Fortnite: Save the World is simply not up to modern gaming standards in several departments. The developers of Fortnite: Save the World also made a multiplayer counterpart called Fortnite: Battle Royale. This game mode didn’t initially have a story or direction, just more of an arena mode for a different form of gameplay. As the mode gained popularity, though, the developers realized they needed to go somewhere with it before players became disinterested and it died off. It started with a meteor. The meteor was originally just a small dot in the sky in season 3 of Fortnite: Battle Royale. It started growing in real time, day by day, as more players noticed and speculated what it could be. As it continued to grow, so did the conversation around the game. The meteor spawned theories and clickbait and predictions about where the game was headed. In the later part of the season, the meteor became a bigger feature of the game, when smaller meteors started to rain down during matches as the screen occasionally shook. This spawned even more conversation, and made more people interested in playing the game as gameplay changed. The collision of the meteor started season 4 of Fortnite: Battle Royale. There was now a large crater near the center of the map, with a research base built around the remains of the meteor. Immediately, players speculated about the purpose and origins of the base, who owned it. Then, the meteor broke open, and the first member of “The Seven” was introduced, “The Visitor”. As the season progressed, the visitor built a rocket in a secret base hidden in the mountains. The season concluded with a live event of the rocket launching, opening a giant inter-dimensional rift in the sky, starting season 5. New map changes were rifted in, and they made an ARG: a giant “Durr Burger” in California. Then, in game, the rift in the sky started shooting lightning down on a mountain, and boom, more conversation. The lightning started shrinking the rift, until the final strike, where the entire rift went into one strike in the center of the mountain and formed a cube. Players lost their minds. The cube was an active, in-game… thing. Players could interact with it, and that added more and more interest to the gameplay. The cube made its journey through the map until it reached Loot Lake, and it dissolved into the water. Then the island started floating. Season 6 started with the cube lifting the central island of Loot Lake out of the water, moving around the map and infecting certain areas with “cube monsters”, basically just zombies. Near the end of the season, the island arrived back at the lake where it started, and the cube exploded. This is nicknamed the “Butterfly” event after a rift butterfly that led players through a surreal event that showed the Fortnite “zero point” for the first time, which sets up much of the later story.
Seasons 7 and 8 were where Fortnite diverged from the main storyline, and became more about flashy map changes and different gameplay so the developers could get more money. In season 7, there was snow, with a mountain castle named Polar Peak. In season 8, there was a volcano. It erupted. That’s all you need to know. Boom -- season 9. Mainly, it was another cash-grab focused on flashy gameplay and beefing up the competitive scene. However, the volcano eruption cracked a season 7 ice-mountain named Polar Peak. It exploded, and a character named Singularity started building a giant Mech-Robot. That was finally another moment of speculation for Fortnite players, as there was something big actively going on for the first time in months. The purpose of the Mech was finally revealed as the cause of the Polar Peak explosion, a giant, one-eyed monster, emerged from the ocean. They fought in an epic live event that players absolutely loved, it was one of the highest received events of the game. Within the event, the robot used the “zero point” to kill the monster, and the zero point started messing with time. In Fortnite season X, the zero point reversed time in tiny areas all over the map. Mainly, it reverted to just before the meteor struck the map. In this season, there were constantly new updates, weapons, and gameplay features that were decently controversial, and mostly a cash grab. The game became too fast-paced for many casual players, and too unbalanced for many competitive players. This season ended with the most discussed event in the game, “The End”. In this event, the zero point exploded, and sent the entire game into a black hole. For three days, Fortnite was unplayable, it just opened on a black hole screen, and then chapter two started. Since then, the story has gone on significantly. They finished The Seven’s storyline, and went off the rails many times. There was an entire three-month season dedicated to a collaboration with marvel. It was just about money, and they can do that because of Fortnite’s insane popularity. What started as a need for direction turned into a way to attract more attention and money. While developers are still making some good gameplay decisions and keeping the game interesting, they slowly cared less and less about a through-story. Hopefully, they get back to a better narrative, but at the moment, it once again feels like just a different mode of gameplay. We’ll see where it goes. By Serena Tuan and Abby Willis What is it?: Club Penguin is an interactive game for kids. You can customize your character (a penguin) and make friends with the other penguins online. You can build your own igloo and invite other penguins to it. There are also interactive competitions and conversation threads where players can ask questions and reply to each other. There are penguin comics that players can read and penguin parties that players can attend. Since all penguin players are real people who are online at the same time as each other, it is a very interactive game. The options of chatting, creating, and competing are all aspects of the game that make it diverse. The game was originally launched in August of 2005 through beta testing and was founded by Lance Preibe, a creator of several other youth focused games. After being fully released in October of 2005, a couple years later, the game was bought by Disney where it began to grow tremendously. Headquartered in Canada, it began with only ten employees; it ended up having over one-hundred by the end of its first year. Originally designed for players between the ages of 6-14, the game had over 300,000,000 accounts from 190 countries. Unfortunately, it was discontinued in March of 2017 but there are several different versions still played today (New Club Penguin, Club Penguin Journey, Super Club Penguin). Why we chose it: We chose Club Penguin as our game mainly because it holds nostalgia from our childhoods. A popular online game for kids in the 2000’s, the website reminds us of our early years getting involved with technology. Not only does the game have personal connections to us, but it also exemplifies great examples of digital literature including transmedia and interactive media. Parents tend to be strict with the games their kids are playing due to safety concerns. Putting simple information like your name or chatting with strangers online can be major safety concerns for parents. With Club Penguin, however, parents do not have to worry about safety as much as they would with other games. The website tells players not to use their real names which keeps it confidential and private. Other players won’t be able to find out private information about who they are interacting with online, which makes it a safe place for kids to play. The game is also monitored by parents through a parent page and by requiring the parent’s email when you sign up. Correlation to the class: As previously stated, Club Penguin holds a lot of examples of digital literature. To be specific, transmedia is seen in the different websites that they have for interaction. Aside from their main website, they have Twitter, YouTube, Discord, and TikTok accounts that users can follow along. In terms of storytelling, the game allows players to create their own story and make their own friends. In the game, instead of parties being available to be joined at any moment, the parties were set for certain dates each month. This replicates real life events more closely and makes it more interactive and realistic, which isn’t the case with a lot of other games. The story is more heavily based on the players’ decisions than the games we played in class. The games we played in class gave the players options to choose from; however, Club Penguin allows players to say/do/build whatever they want to. The target audience for this game is kids, and it is a good way to introduce them to the idea of interactive games, digital storytelling, and transmedia. Although meant for fun, the game remains somewhat educational for children by giving them passages and stories to read, and forcing them to make informed decisions.
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AuthorWe are the students of "Digital Literatures" at Millikin University. These are some of the digital narratives that entice, inspire, and challenge us. Categories
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