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Submission Type
Virtual Engagement Session
Start Date
18-7-2020 3:00 PM
End Date
18-7-2020 4:00 PM
Abstract
It is a longstanding Interactive Fiction (IF) convention that if you “GO EAST” and then “GO WEST” you will end up back where you began. This is the geographic binary that the session will be disrupting. Participants will collaborate on a game map in which moving forward transforms the world behind. The synchronous session will be held in a password protected Zoom room, where the presenter will screenshare the Inform 7 development environment and add participant code to the game. After a brief explanation of the rules of the jam, participants will code like the wind in a collaborative Google doc. Specifically, you will be prompted to craft a single room description and fill the room with multiple objects and their descriptions which (upon examination or use) tell a story. In the spirit of classic “one room” IF our stories will go deep instead of wide. A code template and examples will be provided. No prior knowledge of Inform 7 is required. You may, if you wish, compile along by downloading and installing Inform 7 -- http://inform7.com/downloads/ but you don't have to. When players have finished exploring a room and type GO WEST, they end up ~ not where they began. It might be an entirely different place, or it might be the original space transformed. Participating authors can make their geographical disruption mean whatever they want it to mean. Players of the game will GO EAST again to begin the next un-continuous adventure. A meta-story that links individual adventures together may collaboratively emerge, but if it doesn’t, that's okay. In this game, the journey is/not the destination!
Uncontinuous Adventuring: A geographically disruptive collaborative game jam
It is a longstanding Interactive Fiction (IF) convention that if you “GO EAST” and then “GO WEST” you will end up back where you began. This is the geographic binary that the session will be disrupting. Participants will collaborate on a game map in which moving forward transforms the world behind. The synchronous session will be held in a password protected Zoom room, where the presenter will screenshare the Inform 7 development environment and add participant code to the game. After a brief explanation of the rules of the jam, participants will code like the wind in a collaborative Google doc. Specifically, you will be prompted to craft a single room description and fill the room with multiple objects and their descriptions which (upon examination or use) tell a story. In the spirit of classic “one room” IF our stories will go deep instead of wide. A code template and examples will be provided. No prior knowledge of Inform 7 is required. You may, if you wish, compile along by downloading and installing Inform 7 -- http://inform7.com/downloads/ but you don't have to. When players have finished exploring a room and type GO WEST, they end up ~ not where they began. It might be an entirely different place, or it might be the original space transformed. Participating authors can make their geographical disruption mean whatever they want it to mean. Players of the game will GO EAST again to begin the next un-continuous adventure. A meta-story that links individual adventures together may collaboratively emerge, but if it doesn’t, that's okay. In this game, the journey is/not the destination!
Bio
Judith Pintar is the director of the Electronic Literatures & Literacies Lab and the Games@Illinois Playful Design for Transformative Education initiative at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she is a Teaching Associate Professor and Acting Director of the undergraduate program in the School of Information Sciences. She serves on the board of directors of the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation where she chairs the Education Committee.