#mrplimpton

The stories I’ve been covering on this blog have typically followed the same format. Games that the player inputs commands and directions to proceed farther in said game while telling the story of said game. The pieces I am looking at today are more unique in nature. These pieces use different forms of technology to tell the story the authors want to tell.

The first piece was “Mr. Plimpton’s Revenge” by Dinty Moore. The interesting twist with this piece was the fact it was told in Google Maps. The story focuses on a writer who has to pick up famous author George Plimpton from the airport. Problem is that the main character got hopped up on all types of drugs before getting to the airport and leaves an awful impression to George Plimpton. Throughout the main character’s life, he keeps running into Plimpton and believes that the author remembers his awful experience after the airport. The main character becomes an esteemed author and runs into Plimpton again and finds out that Plimpton doesn’t even remember that awful experience the author has been dreading on. The interesting thing with this story is at each of the author’s experiences, the google map location shows where the author was which adds a layer of investment for the reader. This piece is missing some of the most important aspects of interactive fiction. AKA the interaction and different endings. You can’t really influence what happens in the story as the ending is always the same. The only change is what order you go through it. I really enjoyed how this one worked, the google maps made the story more interesting to read and I was actually disappointed when it ended.  I can personally relate to the author’s experiences as I have had embarrassing experiences with people that I dread remembering and turns out the person has no clue what I’m talking about.

The next piece is “That Sweet Old Etcetera” by Alison Clifford. This piece is an adaptation of the poem “That sweet old Ecetera” by E.E Cummings. The twist with this piece of fiction is as you click on the words on the screen, the poem develops more and eventually becomes a beautiful background. For example, a tree sprouts with small branches and as you click on the branches the tree expands and becomes a full-sized tree. Once the tree is formed you can click on the branches which lead to developing the environment more. This is an interesting way to tell the poem but I had trouble actually getting the gist of the poem due to all the weird aspects of the poem like letters and words getting jumbled together. I also had a problem where I got stuck on the leftmost branch with many colors and couldn’t progress. It doesn’t fit in with interactive fiction like previously covered. The actions that the player takes actually affect the world in those types of games. What the player does will change the course of the story. Solid piece and an interesting experience

The last piece is called “The Last Performance” by Judd Morrisey. This piece was very weird. It took place on a website and as you clicked the words it acted out a dance. I had a problem with this piece personally. It didn’t give much explanation to the dance itself. The dance looked as if it was telling poems but it was not clear on what the poem was. Once I clicked on The Scene at the top there was another area which directly led to different poems or “lens” as the site told me. The dome had a large variety and amount of poems which I figure are the poems the dance was going through if you let it go for the whole length. I found a good video that goes through a live performance of the piece here. This piece is incredibly not an interactive fiction piece. It seems to actively reject interacting with the piece and just creates pop-ups that don’t move the piece forward. It makes you figure out what to do to progress more than most if works do. At the very least, you can at least interact greatly with it.

Links to the pieces:

Mr. Plimpton

That Sweet Old Ectera