New Media Final Project: Twine

Click to Play: At The End of My Twine

Twine, for Interactive Fiction
Session 1, 3/16/16

Starting Twine.

So I tried Twine briefly once after playing an interactive fiction game called "You Find Yourself in a Room" (which inspired both content and tone of my game). This game has evidently made it in the IF (interactive fiction) world. You can find help and walk-through tutorials on Youtube now on how to play, and the game is hosted on more than one IF site. I found it when it was still new and barely rated. It was the coolest, creepiest game ever, and I played that darn game until I beat it. I wanted to create a similar game, so I investigated all the different platforms for making an IF game. Twine is reputed to be the easiest, but don't let the "simplicity" claims on the homepage fool you. Twine is complicated. As you can see, it talks about not having to write code, and in the same sentence mentions all the different codes you're going to need--as if you're even familiar with CSS, Java, and the like. "If you can write a story, you can make a Twine game." Well, yes, but you will have worked really hard, and your Twine game won't be very good. This programming language tutorial page clarified the whole web coding programming thing:

• HTML defines web content
• CSS is the language that specifies the layout
• Javascript programs the pages' behavior

Back to Twine. Go to twinery.org. I went to download Twine to my desktop, but got immediately distracted playing the latest games listed on the homepage. I played "Brutal Tendency" and "A Study in Human Traditions #1: Hallowed Weed."  Brutal Tendency was slightly weird and creepy but nothing to jump up and down about. Hallowed Weed was pretty good, actually. It fit with the genre of IF that I expected. Creepy, unusual, confusing/fantasy circumstances, danger and suspense. I tried to play another called "O Socorro Ta a Caminho" (Portuguese for "Help is on the Way") but it wanted me to pay for the game. It didn't have enough high ratings for me to risk throwing my money away, so no, thanks.

Back to Twine. First glitch, and I just started. I successfully downloaded the program to my computer, but now it won't run. Seems that the download is 32 bit but my machine wants to run 64 bit. Don't know what that means beyond the fact that the program won't work on my desktop. I'll have to use an online version of the program. Not happy, but anyway....

Getting started isn't easy. You have to click through a few times. There's no "get started!" button. Went out to a wiki, and found a Twine 2 Guide. I'll start there. It seems that Twine is sort of hosted by a bunch of geeks and users who put wikis, forums, and twitter feeds together to help the user community. It doesn't feel commercial, and likewise it's not as intuitive or polished as a commercial product--which is difficult for me to navigate. Not the environment I'm used to.

Looking for help. I followed the direction on "Start Your Story" and already my first frame won't play, so I have to go out to the internet to find resources. Twine itself has no instructions on the site while you're using it. Someone named AntiePixelAnte has a tutorial site that's better than the Twine site. Let's see if she can help me.

She can. She advised me to use earlier releases of Twine, because release 2 is buggy. But the only free version available online (since I can't use the downloaded versions) is release 2. *sigh* Her site is so old. It helped, but it's for the earlier releases, and lots of the info is outdated. Hmmm.... Muddling through. Created and deleted 5 pages already. Now I made a great page and deleted it by accident. It's way too easy to delete pages, and there's no undo or back button. Gone. Drat! Grrrr....enough for today....

Session 2, 3/20/16

So once you type a very basic story, you need to know coding or languages (Harlowe, SugarCube, or Snowman) to spruce it up. I wanted mine to have a background instead of being on a white page, but that would have to be coded in HTML. Ugh. I went into the HTML code behind the page, but their code is not for novices like me. I started to read the code and immediately realized it was over my head, and I shouldn't mess with trying to edit it. Back out to the web to find a geek to help me: There's someone named furkle (lower case last name like boyd, so not sure I trust him/her already) with supposedly good tutorials. He says if you want to modify anything at all besides the background, you will need CSS code. OK, how about you just tell me how to modify the background, then? Here's furkle's hideous page that was supposed to help me change the background color. It's all about coding. So we're back to the same story: you don't need to know any code to make a game in Twine, but without code, your story won't be any good. So basically, you need to know how to code, or you can't even change something simple like the background, font, or colors....C'mon, Twine, I'm not asking for much....

So whatever....I'm a little discouraged, because I don't think my story is going to be that great. It's sort of plain and ugly, but I'm going to stick with it. Back to the drawing board.

Session 3, 3/26/16

Back at it. I went to twinery.org only to find that my game is gone. Oh, right, you can't save your work online, you have to download it to your computer and then upload it again to work on it. What a drag.

Found my ugly little game.  Working on it, then I'll have to figure out where it can live so I can share it with the class.

Working, working, struggling, trial and error, working....after a couple hours, my game WORKS! No graphics, no weird background, no cool font, no music...but it works.

My first tester (my daughter) called it "creepy."  That's exactly what I wanted!!! The genre of interactive fiction is sci-fi, goth, creepy, dystopian, fantasy, etc. I was going for "creepy," so I'm really happy! Now, the story is saved on my computer, but I have no idea where to put it so it can be played. Hosting? Hmm....

Session 4, 3/28/16

After I realized the game works, I also realized that there are great YouTube tutorials out there by a guy called Vegetarian Zombie. Glad I didn't find him before, though, because he's got hours and hours of tutorials, and I could have easily fallen down that rabbit hole....Must. Stay. Away. From. Vegetarian Zombie. But if I just watch one of his HTML for Twine videos, I might be able to change some colors, and add CSS and JavaScript. It would add interactivity....just a couple tutorials.
[...]
(Hours later) Learned some programming, but I don't think any of it will really enhance my game. Enough. NO more tutorials. I'm done.
[...]
Went to google and spent all of 30 seconds finding a site to host my game.  Philome.la offers free Twine hosting. It took another 15 seconds to upload my game. Then, I fell down the rabbit hole of learning the basics of CSS code at W3schools, just to change the background and font colors, but it was sooo worth it. Enjoy! Here's the link; be careful playing:

At The End of My Twine

Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: Chapters 6 & 7

CHAPTER 6

This chapter talks about people developing a political sense of agency and a "civic imagination." Jenkins tells about his own time of discovery in the 70s when he was a Trekkie.  The changes he wanted to see in the world were in part reflected on the show through its diverse crew. Star Trek fans advocated for further change, such as a LGBT crew member. Jenkins says he "forged my political identity and articulated my ideals for what a better society might look like" (154). Fiske later wrote about pop-culture influencing one's political identity.

The idea of participatory politics is interesting. Peer based and influencing public issues. Isn't all politics like that? I guess participatory just means that it is more inclusive, or that it involves connectedness through technology. YPP thinks young people engage in politics not just because of family, school, or mentors; they engage because of informal learning communities, including fandom or gaming. Example: My daughter got drawn in because of boys on social media. She doesn't care at all yet about politics, but wants to know the players and particulars so she can be participate in the conversation with her social group via group text. I guess it's a start.

When I read the words "different kinds of communit[ies] have used new media platforms and participatory culture practices to recruit, train, and support young activists" I immediately thought of the ISIS videos I saw. I know that's not what Jenkins meant to conjure up for his readers.

Ito is positive and realistic. I always like her sections. She says, "We really need everyday folk to step up and take on responsibilities in public life, whether it is by blogging, organizing, or funding. Its so important that youth develop the capacity for engaging in these ways" (159).

boyd talks about the student walkout in California and ends by saying they were dismissed and ignored. I remember watching that walkout on TV and reading about it in the news. I bet there are plenty of political movements that would LOVE being "ignored" that way, with robust national media coverage. I have trouble following boyd's logic.

Jenkins continues to talk about DREAM. He says "The Obama administration was trying to seem tough on immigration, and it actually deported more people in its fist term than the Bush administration did in eight years" (160). I'll need to triangulate that when I have a moment. Ultimately, Obama changed his policies, and the Latinx (Jenkins uses the term "Latino") vote was mostly for Obama. Not sure if he changed his policy because of DREAM or if his advisors informed him that Hispanics are often swing voters. Not sure how I feel yet about the term Latinx.

Civic engagement coming from "affinity networks." I think that's always been the case, but it's easier now with technology and social media and connectivity. I agree with Jenkins about student council. It's just a popularity contest, and the office usually has notumph behind it. A WoW guild leader probably does have more power.

Ito talks about transferability of skills. That is an issue dear to me, and I try to find ways in the classroom to ensure that students understand the skills they learn can transfer to other situations and can understand in what context they could be useful again.


Jenkins told the story of the rides at Harry Potter World that didn't accommodate all sizes of kids, basically because some kids were too big. I understand how humiliating that must have been for those kids. Not sure the answer is as easy as getting Disney to change the ride. The issues include public health and political pacs, and large corporations and FDA regulations. Making Disney fix a ride doesn't fix the problem. All those obese kids will be humiliated again elsewhere, and then die of preventable diseases. It is a tragedy way beyond a Disney ride.

Ito talked about ravelry.com. I love that site; it's a great community.

boyd and I agreed on something on page 172. She and I both like the Dove "Evolution" commercial. I show it in my HUM 101 class, because the theme is advertising and consumerism. Students love this, and usually only 0-1 in 27 have ever seen it. It's just 1 minute long. Students often go home and share this short video with others once they've seen it. Political?

Jenkins ends the chapter by asking us to recognize some of youth's cultural change as political change.

CHAPTER 7

This short summary chapter, written as a collaboration, discusses the authors' core values in participatory culture. They also discuss their political biases (in case we didn't notice?) and concede that politics and participation is happening on both sides of the political fence. They say participatory culture isn't about the technology, but rather about the shared practices of users. In the "Relation to Capital" section, I kept thinking of the book "Feed" by M. T. Anderson. I wonder if they've read it. They end by hoping their book will inspire conversation, debate, collaboration, and understanding.

Air B-N-Me

Let me start by saying Periscope is just a rabbit hole. I had a hard time putting it down, because I like to check out what's happening in places I've been, even thogh the people I see are strangers, and to hear spoken languages that I don't get to hear all the time. I have to remove it from my phone...Ew and after the New York Times article on Monday documenting how officially disgusting it is, let's get out of that app, ok? But I had a good time playing with Debbie and Jess on this live broadcast.


The Air-B-N-Me project was okay. Not jumping up and down about it. It could have been a little cooler if we were all actually playing the same game. The instructions were a little confusing, so folks sort of made up their own rules. Good games don't ususally work well that way, and this one didn't. There was a lot of unnecessary confusion. Some folks were live streaming themselves on Periscope, some others were uploading prerecorded youtube clips, and others were just recording ads. Also, that the ads disappeared for some first time users was frustrating. The search function on the air b-n-me site didn't work well either, so you had to scroll through all pages of "swapportunities" instead of searching for what might interest you as a lurfer. I bet if they ran this again and had the kinks ironed out, it could be fun.

The part about creating a character was fun/creative, but wasn't really necessary to play the game. In fact, it was actually detrimental. Once you created and advertised a character, to do this right, you had to deliver a streaming "live" experience. If the character is fictitious, it's pretty tough to deliver a decent live experience that isn't super contrived. It would have been better to create a character based on your own actual life, or, not create a character at all, but enter the game as yourself. Then, the live stream is easily deliverable. That way, though, you'd lose the creative part about creating a character. I guess it really depends on the goal of the game and what the leaders want the participants to get from their participation. Once that's settled, then the plan of action needs to be clear for participants from the outset for the game to really work. This could be a decent collaborative game, just needs some tweaks and clarity.

My character was Jibaro's Wife, but of course when it asked for a sign in name for the site, I put mkein, and so that became my (unchangeable) character name. Oh, well. I made a couple videos and had fun with it. My videos disappeared, and there is no way to go back to your own swapportunity and edit it. So I had to make new ones....drag. Uploaded one, but the forum posts on our own page only shows 5 posts, and you can't get back to the earlier ones by clicking load more, because it goes to an error page. So I had to scroll (buttons don't allow you to go more than 2 pages at a time) through to page 27 to find my original post to copy and respost it. The technical aspect is poor and annoying.

Looking for lurfer opps is hard, because some people stream, some post videos, and some posted nothing but a text ad for a video. Not sure what to do with that.  Like this one. What are we supposed to do with it? Looked at a few videos, like someone making a breakfast smoothie, someone reading a book with her dog, someone looking at fabrics, and someone checking the markets online. Overall, pretty average stuff.

The idea was good, but execution was meh. Not a huge fan of the game.

Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: Chapters 4 & 5

CHAPTER 4

Ito talks about learning and literacy and focuses on out-of-school learning. She says learning and culture are inextricably tied. Learning should not be about filling heads with knowledge, but rather about belonging, participating, contributing. Her example using real-world math is good. I wonder if the guy measuring would have "gotten it" though, without years of background, however shaky, in academic mathematics learning in schools. Likely, he wouldn't have known how to read a fraction. I think you need both types of learning. A mini lesson to pour information into heads, and then practical real-world participation to use and learn the information.

When she talks about kids who learn because of their own interests, she is right that they will work harder to pursue their interests than to pursue a grade. But she also warns that this applies only to some kids, and says, "The youth who are learning in this way are not typical....Most young people needed support from parents, educators, or other caring adults in order to broker connections across settings." We need to learn how to best fill that role for the kids who aren't self-directed.

boyd talks about information overload, and says it's not easy to decide what to focus on.

Ito draws a comparison of calorie abundance to information overload. Excellent analogy.

Jenkins touches briefly on values and civility. Then boyd says:

What captures people's attention is often the most salacious, fearful, and gossipy content available. It's the junk food of content.

I agree with boyd. Problem is, you can't call anyone's content junk. It would offend, and the implication would be that you don't value their self-expression, therefore you are (fill in the blank). So how to we navigate Jenkin's question of values and civility, and boyd's discusson of junk? boyd says,

...social media democratizes participation, but is this what we mean or even want?

But this doesn't mean we necessarily need to enforce controls onto the web, or consider it "bad." Wikipedia, the authors feel, is considered bad in academia. My class uses it as a springboard for research, but I don't allow them to actually use or cite the page as information. I show them how to read for general knowledge and use the sources at the end of the post.

Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: Chapters 2 & 3

CHAPTER 2

This chapter is called "Youth Culture, Youth Practices." boyd starts by saying that youth practices with technology are not understood, and are assumed to be insignificant and same among all younger participants. She outlines how the terms adolescent and teenager came to be used. Parental fear has been an issue for generations, and the internet is the newest boogie-man. boyd considers research on youth practices to be activist in nature.

I agree with Ito about teen girls being on the cutting edge of mobile text and visual communication. All of the authors have so far advocated for youth's right to agency, creativity, and innovation. I agree wholeheartedly. None have yet discussed the obsessive and often undisciplined use of mobile text and visual communication by these teens. I don't need a study to tell you that teens use text and visual communications apps all day long, starting at 5:30 am and ending at 2:00 am. While the authors are vocal about not hindering teens use and innovation, they haven't discussed the need for minors to be guided in their habits by parents. They see almost any type of supervision as oppressive and stifling.  That's naïve. It is certainly not in the best interest of high school girls to get 3 hours of sleep because they lack the willpower to ignore their technology.

Participatory Culture in a Networked Era: Ch 1

CHAPTER 1

The book starts with some strong questions about participation, exploitation, commerce, and culture. It becomes clear quickly that the chapter is written with all three authors individually participating in the content generation of the text. It proceeds as a conversation might, each referring to the other. They spend a while discussing Jenkins's coined term "participatory culture." The example about the samba schools is particularly relevant. It seems Jenkins is the senior guy here, as Ito read his works as a grad student and boyd had him as a professor in grad school.

I agree with Jenkins that digital cultures are not necessarily "oppositional or resistant."

Even with very open, participatory cultures with low barriers to entry, people find ways for maintaining status and distinction.

Human nature, no?

boyd brings up the question of whether technology really offers participation for everyone, and then she decides it doesn't, and talks about agency, skills, connections, and status, among other traits. Henry agrees that while there are still obstacles, we are shifting towards more participation. danah says:

New sources of power, status, and control emerge and introduce new forms of inequality.

This was my point when we discussed the Jim Gray case in class. It's a matter of access. A student replied saying in sum that it's human nature to stick together, so the programmers stuck together to help their own. When that kind of thing happens by race or by class, hmmm, not so easy to accept anymore, is it? But when it's a group of computer programmers and scientists? New forms of inequality emerge. Some may call it human nature and others may call it crowdsourcing; boyd and I see possible problems that cannot be overlooked. I'm not suggesting that any of it should be stopped or regulated. Just saying it should be noticed and acknowledged.

I'd argue that participatory culture enables -- if not empowers -- disturbing practices alongside positive ones. I believe in participatory culture because of its potential, and I don't want to see negative outcomes or fears being used to justify centralized control or censorship -- but nor do I want the hopeful vision to gloss over or otherwise ignore the darker side of things.

boyd opens the discussion of individualism and addresses a question I used to use in classroom discussion at Essex. Because of both changes in technology and individual smart devices, are we able now to see, read, and listen to only things that support our own worldview? boyd responds to my question:

I want to believe that networks result in healthier communities, but I also think that they promote a form of egocentrism.

Andrew Sullivan warns in his essay "We Have Retreated into the iWorld" that society is actually becoming less connected and  more egocentric because we can choose at all times what to pay attention to. And that people will usually pay attention to what already interests them, what doesn't challenge them. He says, "Americans are beginning to narrow their lives."

You get your news from your favorite blogs, the ones that won't challenge your view of the world. You tune in to a satellite radio service that also aims directly at a small market -- for new age fanatics, liberal talk, or Christian rock. Television is all cable. Culture is all subculture....Technology has given us a universe entirely for ourselves--where the serendipity of meeting a new stranger, hearing a piece of music we would never choose for ourselves or an opinion that might force us to change our mind about something are all effectively banished.

boyd feels that most technology platforms are about enabling individual expression, and can then be used for collective action. Ito argues that opposing the individual and the collective is a Western idea, and Jenkins ends the chapter by advocating for a more participatory culture even though there is still much we "do not understand very well about dealing with the diversity of a networked culture."

Seeing Ourselves Through Technology: Chapter 2 and 3

SEEING OURSELVES THROUGH TECHNOLOGY

Chapter 2: Filtered Reality

Starting with skin tone bias and getting to baby journals. Let's see where this chapter goes. What do I start off knowing about filters? I guess in terms of photos, that the kids all know which filters they prefer, and use them on all their snapchats and insta photos before they post them. A filter is used to remove imperfections.

Baby journals. I have two of them. The first is chock full of notes, photos, and journal entries. The second, not so much. Third child didn't even get a journal. Who had time to write reflections and paste in locks of hair with all those babies?? The books are like the authors describe: written prompts, charts to fill in, spaces for specific photos. The Sprout Baby app sounds like overkill. Who needs all that info every day? Some moms focus a bit toooo much on baby.

Filtering out content: "Twitter filters out long form writing, requiring us to limit ourselves to 140 characters at a time." The idea that social media filters out certain types of people who aren't "neoliberal subjects" seems accurate and reminds me of my favorite YA book of all time, "Feed" by M.T. Anderson. "An effective neoliberal subject, Marwick argues, ‘attends to fashions, is focused on self-improvement, and purchases goods and services to achieve “self-realization.”" What a bore. No wonder social media doesn't entice me.

What is this emotional contagion experiment on Facebook? Is that ethical? Were the users aware that they were test subjects?  Yikes! Facebook filters our behavior...

Back to the baby journals. The authors say that we save the moments in photos that we think we are supposed to share because we've seen other baby books. I disagree. I think we save the joyful moments that we want to remember.  Why would I want to save and cherish photos of the sleepless nights and spit up on new clothes? It's ok to let those moments go. Are we acting to the logic of a filter? Maybe we just want to capture the important milestones, and the filter isn't the driver.

Photo filters. They make ya look better. "Seeing ourselvs through a filter allows us to see ourselves anew." SkinneePix, OMGosh.  Reminds me of DFW's bit in Infinite Jest about the video phone and how everyone used a filter, and then they started staging their surroundings, and then the filter wasn't enough and everyone had to buy masks and then prosthetic faces and bodies to use for videoconferencing. It was hilarious and eerily accurate, written 20 years ago. 

On skin tone bias:

Even today it can be difficult to take a photo of a light skinned and a dark skinned person together without losing all detail in one or the other face.

This is so accurate. My son wanted to show me a pic of him and "his boys" at a house party. But there were two pictures: a "black kid pic" and a "white kid pic." Because in one photo, you could see the faces of the white kids, but the black kids were just eyes and teeth. In the other photo, the whitest kids were like lightbulbs, but you could see the even the darkest black kids clearly.  So funny that the kids just know to take two photos of the group.

Chapter 3: Serial Selfies

The premise is that we need to look at feeds, not individual posts or photos.  Social presentation is cumulative. Kalina and Lee's projects do not sound appealing to me.  Let me look them up. Yeah, that type of project holds no interest for me. (Athought watching Hsieh's hair grow might be vaguely amusing.) Maybe that's why I'm not that interested in producing or consuming social media? It's the visuals I have no interest in. I like to read blogs... Rebecca Brown's video, on the other hand, was awesome! Maybe the notes and the purpose made it more relevant and less narcissistic/artsy. 

Ah, the profile photo. Stress! I have no profile photo on my account at NJIT, and they ask me about it every semester. Procrastinating. Used Snoopy here at Kean, and it's ok.

Photobooths are so much fun. Bald booth, fat booth, etc. The coolest photo booth was the one we hired for my husband's birthday party. It was a digital photo booth with a green screen and everyone could add backgrounds, props, celebrities. Huge fun for everyone to just play around in.