RIDDLE ME THIS

Adriana Naccarato

Team-Tastic

Farman/DTC375

4-29-09

wc:1052

RIDDLE ME THIS

When given a task to pick an online piece for inspiration, we try hard not to copy the piece exactly. E-lit and online works give us the platform and we use our creativity to make it different and our own. Coming up with the idea was easy, how we were going to put it all together was the difficult part. Working with a great, intelligent group of individuals makes it that much easier though.

Our vision was simple: create a riddle game online. We created a work that allows the audience only three choices. The three initial choices are hyperlinks and you choose from the hyperlinks of: Person, Place, or Thing. It is very simple in its layout and easy to follow as well. We decided to keep the interactivity extremely basic, simple and to the point. Not too much content was needed to meet our needs of interactivity. The audience picks one of the three choices and then waits for the descriptive words/clues to appear. Random images flash in the background as soon as a new word appears to somewhat confuse the player and then they are supposed to guess who, where, or what it is that is being described. The interactivity comes into play with their initial choice and the user needs to stay interacted with the work in order to see all the clues and guess wisely. We give the answer at the end after a delay of about five seconds.

We used Flash as our medium because we wanted to somewhat replicate an initial link we liked and it is what we replicated our piece after. It was very simple and easy to follow. Flash was simple and easy to use, so we thought it would fit perfectly into the creation of our piece. We liked the simplicity of words coming onto and off the screen, in somewhat random patterns. We did not want to overload the audience with too much to do and Flash allowed us to keep it from being confusing. Without extreme knowledge of Flash, it kept us from adding too much information, which would then, take away from the game. In a perfect world we wanted to do at least four different people, places, or things for each category, unfortunately our designers had little to no knowledge of Flash an had to apply what basic knowledge they had, as well as learn while doing the projects. So for that simple fact we had to simplify our idea even more and limit it to one riddle for each category.

We want the audience to have specific interaction with the work. They have to specifically choose a person, place, or thing. They then have to read all the clues given and at the end of the riddle, take a guess. The interaction may be somewhat limited, but they have to stay focused throughout the whole work, in order to make that final guess. If they initially click and then look away, there is a huge chance they could miss one of the clues that would allow them to guess accurately. The clues are the main part of the game. We actually didn’t offer much agency in our work, besides clicking over a few hyperlinks, there is no agency, no avatar or character.

I believe the dilemmas concerning interaction is the fact that we do not have any special characters the audience can use or create. We have no avatars because it is not that kind of game. The way ours is set up is that you have to wait until the end of the first riddle and click on the answer to get back to the home page. We should have created another link, so at anytime the user can get “home”. If we had the chance to add more options we probably would have done that. Marsha Kinder was correct in saying: “All interactivity is also an illusion because the rules established by the designer of the text necessary limit the user’s options”. Also, we ran into the problems of wondering if our piece was aesthetically pleasing and stimulating. Would the user be enticed to initially play and keep playing? It is hard trying to decide all the key elements of the piece; color of background, color of text and font, color of images, how do clues appear, how long of a delay for an answer, all these factors can make or break our piece.

Our piece utilizes a computer instead of printed page because nowadays people are online more and more. Computers keep up with people who are in that fast paced atmosphere/environment and spend ridiculous amounts of time in front of a computer screen. The computer adds great dissemination of our work because the minute you type in the word riddle, instantaneously, you are bombarded with infinite finds for that word, which, one of the finds would be our link. The more people online, the better the turnout is.

Our work fits in with the history of e-lit because it is solely meant to be read on a computer. You cannot interact with our work any other way than through the net. The narrative component is minimal, but it does impose interactivity. Our work is in fact a game rather than a story, but still allows the audience to choose which clues/words they will see first. It is procedural, participatory, and online. The way our culture and society is advancing can only mean that so is our technology. Most games are already accessed online and create a new place to do so. E-lit is advancing with the amount of whom or what is presented to us.

Overall this was a fun project. We enjoyed making an interactive game for our fellow peers. We are excited to see the other projects, as well as hear if they had the same dilemmas. When working with and catering to those who absolutely love and get lost in technology, we have to push the envelope. We have to think, “sure, this may have been done before, but has it been done like this?” It is up to us to add that little something extra to make it unique and make it our own!

Dr. Farman ROCKS and so does his class, we loved it!!!!!

link: mattlarsonmedia.com/riddle