Oh God what is THAT?

And here it is, the final blog post. This week we discussed Realism and Reality, and what those terms mean to us. Even though we've not yet officially discussed the Uncanny Valley, I'd still like to delve into it a little bit, as I find it quite interesting. The Uncanny Valley is, of course, the hypothesis that claims that when a human replica acts almost as a real human does, but not quite, it causes feelings of revulsion. To this day we've not yet captured a human face precisely right without getting these feelings of revulsion, although perhaps we are getting close.

Why we have this reaction is most likely because we spend most of our lives identifying faces, it comes as second nature. It is also why people keep finding faces of Jesus Christ in slices of toast and such. I believe it's also important for us to be able to tell that a person is ill or even deceased, for our own safety. As we spend so much time looking at exactly how a face moves and where the skin folds, it's really not surprising that we are able to pick up on such tiny disrepancies. Not surprising, but nevertheless impressive.

This brings me on to the next topic which I found interesting: Suspension of disbelief. This refers to a willingness to suspend common sense temporarily to truly believe in an illusion such as the ones found in fiction. For as long as it lasts you stop to be critical and are content to believe what's happening is true, or at least to put your disbelief aside for the moment.

This can actually be linked to the uncanny valley. People will complain that Jeff Bridges' face in Tron didn't look quite right, but you don't hear anyone complain that the entire premise of the film is nonsense! After all, light cycles. Need I say more?

So you want to be a storyteller...

This week we discussed storytelling in all its glorious forms and shapes. I'm a great fan of storytelling and how to get a meaning across. This is most likely why I was originally interested - and still am somewhat - in communication. Of course, linking storytelling to films and books and the like is not that difficult, but seeing how it relates to games is something I have not done before and is thus very interesting to me.

My favourite games are adventure games, especially the ones with a lot of freedom to let you make your own choices. I like the feeling (or illusion rather) of freedom it gives. Even if there is a set path, just letting me decide when I want to do what is incredibly appealing to me. In the lecture it was said that aporia is a greater problem in games than it is in books, as you get completely stuck if you can't get over a certain obstacle, whereas in a book you can just skim over it and hope later you will be able to catch up on what just happened. However, games make good use of this by purposely putting blockades in your path and especially adventure games, which are practically built around this. Making you overcome themon your own leads to an epiphany. It is this feeling exactly that makes me love games full of difficult puzzles and obstacles.

A good example of this is King's Quest. This is an old series of games, where you usually had to draw your own maps of the mazelike environments, and if you did not approach a dangerous situation in the right way, your character might actually die, forcing you to search for a new approach. And treating you to some excellent puns.

Another form of storytelling I find very interesting myself are ARGs (Alternate Reality Game). This is a type of interactive narrative usually involving hints over multiple media. The internet lends itself very well for this type of storytelling, as it evolves along with people's reactions to it in real time. Usually these are presented as a certain mysterious event or puzzle, allowing you to explore by yourself, forcing you to think outside the box. Often participants collaborate and discuss the problems online, which adds to a sense of community. Some participants might get different clues than others. Personally I especially like these because they're a bit unsettling. It always feels like you're in on a secret, like you've just found something you shouldn't be knowing about.

A popular example of an ARG is ilovebees.com, which was a viral marketing campaign for the game Halo 2. It involved a normal looking website on beekeeping which would after a while be "taken over" by an artificial intelligence of some sort. In the official trailer, the URL to ilovebees.com flashed for a split second and audio logs were posted on the website which slowly revealed more and more clues as the data of the website was slowly corrupted. This campaign was a huge success, leading to over 3 million pageviews in the 3 months it was up for. A great marketing move, seeing as it spread like wildfire with hardly any effort on their part.