The Kraken’s Day Out

April 19, 2012 by 1 Comment

Looking at “I Wish I Were the Moon” in class reminded me of a game I ran across some time ago, “(I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors” by Gregory Weir. The two works are very similar on a visual level, with flat, colorful art composed of simple pixel sprites, and they both have multiple endings, which carries the implication that the player’s goal is to find as many as possible. “The Majesty of Colors” does contain more gameplay elements than “I Wish I Were the Moon” (which I am not even sure should be classified as a game), though, and has a more explicitly presented narrative: instead of being left to infer the relationships between the man, the woman, and the moon, the player is given fairly straightforward text explaining the controllable character’s thoughts.

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The controllable character is a huge sea monster, being dreamed of by an unseen human character. This dreamer narrates the player-driven events, but is never shown, while the sea monster is. Although this creates an additional distance between the player and the controllable character, it also allows for narration that explains the sea monster’s perspective while also knowing the names of human concepts.

I’m not sure that the narration is necessary at all, though; since the written text presents the sea monster’s feelings as largely ambivalent, it might be as (or more) effective to let the player imagine what goes on in the monster’s mind. The sea monster is an interesting character, I think, because of all its ambivalence – demonstrated by the fact that the player decides whether its interactions with humans are friendly or hostile – and the question of its motives might be more compelling if its actions spoke for themselves, instead of being described by the human dreamer.

Despite my uncertainty about the game’s need to have a written narrative, I like “The Majesty of Colors” enough that I’ve recommended it to friends. The graphics are charming, and there’s an interesting contrast between those simple, bright graphics and the horror elements of the narrative itself, but the premise in particular stands out to me as creative and holds my attention. Depending on the player’s choices, the sea monster can be a traditionally destructive one or a guardian of seafarers, but the moral element of these choices is provided by the dreamer and the player; the monster is just exploring a new world, one with shining light and beautiful colors.

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Communication Connections

April 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

For this last checkpoint, I found myself at a loss.  The Electronic Literature Directory failed me, my own reading or interacting with elit online failed me, my own brain failed me – until I thought about communication.  There have been a lot of entries that have hit on it – too many to link , at least – but I wanted to look specifically at the communication aspect that this new genre of literature allows us.  Think about it – the internet allows you to talk to someone literally on the other side of the world in the millisecond it takes to connect you.  In our modern era of computers and wifi and texting and tweeting, this seems like no big deal since we are all so accustomed to it already.  But the fact that communicating with anyone is so easy in the twenty-first century is absolutely fantastic.  I’ve had conversations with people from China, Australia, Germany, people I will never meet face-to-face but who I have managed to connect with despite the miles separating us.  This global connection is a wonderful thing, and I believe electronic literature will use it to become the most common, recognized genre of literature.

Electronic literature has that special aspect of being mostly, generally electronic and available online.  It can be shared across countries in the blink of an eye.  When doing research for my analysis paper, I read an essay written by a scholar from Australia, which provided interesting insights into my topic.  Did I end up using it in my paper?  No, but the fact that I could read it, that I had access to it at all, is amazing.  How often do you go on a foreign culture’s website and think nothing of it?  Or chat online with people in other countries, and consider it normal? Almost every day, I’m sure.  I know I do.  This communication, this connection we have to the rest of the world, is what will push elit to the top of the list in future years.  Wrote a poem, want some feedback?  Post it online.  Just made an awesome video of yourself jumping on and blowing up a giant water balloon and you want to share it with the world?  Post it online.  Just made the most ingenious, fantastic piece of interactive fiction and want to change electronic literature with it?  Post it online.  Just ate a fantastic sandwich and want the world to know?  Post it online.

I know this whole ‘connecting the world’ phrase is mostly just a catch-phrase for websites like Facebook and Google to use as marketing, but have you ever really thought about how wonderful a connection like that would be?  If every country had access to the internet, had a chance to connect with someone they’ve never met in person, learn something new about a foreign culture, what’s to keep us from truly becoming one big, united world?

Okay, that’s a little too idealistic.  But at the very least, we are starting to get that chance to truly interconnect with and understand the rest of the world.  Yes, it’s an idealized, Eden-style thought that may not ever happen, but at least we have the option.  We can always start small, and make electronic literature the biggest form of literature in the modern era, perhaps even bigger than the pen-and-paper literature.  It’s worth a shot.

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“Dawn”: Why I Think It Worked

April 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I decided to check out this short piece by Alan Sondheim and Reiner Strasser called “Dawn”.  It made me feel like I was living out a William Wordsworth poem.  It was a very thought provoking piece despite the fact that it only lasted for a few minutes, if that.  One of my class mates actually already looked at this piece but I disagreed with what she thought.  She said that she understood what the correlation was between the scrolling pictures and sound but that it took away from the words.  However, if the audio, the pictures, and the words are all put together, I think this piece brings out meaning.

“Dawn” is an interesting piece of electronic literature because the only interaction that the reader has is clicking on the title to start the piece.  After that, the reader is free to just watch.  There are five pictures that scroll through the screen, along with the verses of a poem.  The audio of the piece is the same continuous sound.  In all honesty, it sounded like a rain pounding on something hard with the wind blowing in the back ground or the crackling of a fire.  The audio added an effect that I didn’t quite understand at first.  When contemplating a fire, it dawned on me that fire was often used in burial as well as in giving life and heat.  The author refers to nature as both beauty and death just like fire.

These three elements of the piece point to the fact that this piece is about nature and the beauty and the death that come along with that.  The poem that scrolls along with the background of the beautiful scenes of fields and rivers is about the author dealing with a dying parent.  He laments the fact that his parent can no longer visit the beauty of nature which is rolling behind the words.  He, then, curses that death has to be in something so beautiful.  I had a feeling of reverence toward nature; of a mentality that nature was the “force that rolls through all things” (for all of you who have taken a class with Lorentzen).

The unpredictable changing of the screen and the word makes the reader very conscious of the fact that nature has its own way with many things.  Death, being the one that the author focuses on, is something that no one can control and is entirely up to God or nature.  The pictures often have fog or mist in them.  This compares life to mist or fog.  It can be there one minute and then gone the next, like the author describes in his poem by saying, “the world calmed, death another day.”  Some of the pictures were chosen specifically for a stanza in the poem.  One picture of the deer in the river shows up when the stanza about the blue deer occurs.  Another interesting part of the piece is the loop like effect.  The audio, pictures, and words are in one continuous loop or circle.  I had the feeling that the author was trying to get across the circular feeling of life.  His father was getting old and in a while he would also be getting old while someone else would be taking his place.

The poem ended with the typical Wordsworthian awe of the nature around him.  The author even talks about trying to find out everything he can about “the beginnings and endings of the world” before he is gone.  For all that it attempted to do, I think this piece was a success.  It captured the essence of nature being “god-like,” cruel, and beautiful.  Even though it was short and there was no interaction required, it was amazing for what it was trying to convey.  I also think that without the pictures and audio I would not have come to the conclusions about this piece that I did.  It just all tied together so nicely.

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Video Games: Elit or Art?

March 29, 2012 by 2 Comments

I’ve seen discussion in this blog about what counts as elit, what doesn’t, and what balances on the edge.  One common topic is that of video games as electronic literature; but part of me doubts that video games lean more towards electronic literature than they do as an art form.

The debate about whether or not video games are an art form is common enough on the internet and in several gaming magazines.  Personally, I don’t see why they wouldn’t be considered an art form.  Consider the aspects that make up a video game: programming design, character design, plot and  narrative, setting design, music and sound effects, voice acting.  Almost every aspect of art is put into a video game.  People are needed to create the settings and characters via graphic design, writers are needed to create a coherent storyline for the player to follow, musicians are needed to provide the background music and oftentimes orchestral pieces of the game, programmers are needed to put the whole game together – what part of this process does not say ‘artistic?’  Yes, video games are essentially nothing but games and meant entirely for entertainment purposes, but why can’t they provide entertainment and be a part of the arts as well?

Now, I’ll consider video games as electronic literature.  Games like Gravitation or Passage have definite deeper meanings beyond their simplistic gameplay, likely because the easiest way to make a game with a significant theme is to make it with simple gameplay.  More complicated games like Assassin’s Creed, Skyrim, or any FPS on the market sometimes have themes and messages beyond the simple ‘if you are good and defeat your enemies, you’ll live happily ever after.’  There is the overcoming of one’s past present in the Assassin’s Creed series, or the connection between people over decades or even centuries.  Left 4 Dead, despite its inherent ‘kill all the zombies’ gameplay, has a theme of how necessary teamwork can be, and how even the most different of strangers can connect in desperate times.

But are those themes the main aspect of these games, as they would be if they were true pieces of electronic literature?  Or do game mechanics, game design, and storyline hold more importance? I would say that the artistic part of video games comes before the literary part.  While games do oftentimes have those deeper themes, most of the modern games today are created to provide entertainment and create income, not to send a message.  I highly doubt that the Grand Theft Auto series seeks to impart on its players a lesson about thievery and drugs instead of simple enabling their players the chance to live out these gang related activities in a safe environment.  If theme was a major consideration in the making of a game, wouldn’t you make the game as simplistic as possible to avoid distracting the player from your message?  And if you wanted to sell a product to consumers and show off the advanced mechanics of a gaming system, wouldn’t you focus on the design and creation of the game?

Of course, not all games put more emphasis on mechanics than theme.  As I said before, Gravitation and Passage are video games made simply, which allows more room to think about the message behind each part.  But most modern day video games, the ones made for consoles and computers, bend more towards artistic than literary.

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Inanimate Alice: Russian Chapter

March 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Look familiar? I just found Inanimate Alice in the Electronic Literature volumes, and was so excited to write my paper on it; however there has already been extensive analysis on the first and fourth episodes. So, I decided to look at Episode 3. If you want to play the Russian episode of this game, check it out here.

 

Inanimate Alice is so profound because of the interaction and graphics, not the actual story. There is so much to discuss but I want to focus on Alice’s reliance on Brad and the movement of the words in the story.

 

Throughout the series, Brad seems to be Alice’s only friend, and this friend is simply a skateboard game on her precious player. This skateboarder represents Alice’s safe place in a world seemingly filled with danger. When Alice hides in a closet, Brad is the one that she goes to for comfort. When Brad is almost taken away at the end of the episode Alice will not allow it. Instead the player has to go back and find all the dolls in order to survive because Alice refuses to give up her precious player, her only friend.  Brad is the one constantly saving Alice throughout the five episodes; her sanity, her family, and her own life. It is no coincidence that Brad is the one that collects all the dolls, again saving Alice from the terror of the guard.

 

The use of movement in this episode further contributes to the action of the story. When Alice is hiding in the closet the words appear from behind the door. When Alice’s parents are fighting, the words shift back and forth, depicting their argument, when Alice later interrupts, her words come from the bottom of the screen, interrupting her parent’s side to side movement of conversation.  Often there is a blurring of the words on the screen. In the first episode, this happened with every screen that included words, whereas this episode it only happened on certain screens. Though this can be interpreted many ways, I believe this directly correlates with Alice’s fear in conjunction with her lack of knowledge about the actual situation.  I compared it to watery eyes, on the verge of crying and temporarily unable to continue with the story.

An ignorant young girl that notably matures from the first episode to the last fills inanimate Alice with symbolic and literal meaning. The symbols become more complex, her mother’s paintings more organized (like the boxes in this episode compared to random shapes in the first), her defiance more noticeable, and her strength maximized as the episodes go on. Though this is a nontraditional way to tell a story, it is novel that everyone should take 15 minutes to complete at least one episode.

 

To see all of the episodes, go to the Inanimate Alice Website. 

 

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Addicting game for iPhones!

March 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Jason Rohrer is an independent video game designer. Rohrer has released 13 games over the last four years. For these thirteen games he made all of the code, graphics, and music. Jason produces some of his games on a broken Dell which was given to him by his sister. He also operates on a used iPod and his wife’s first generation tray loading iMac to make games for Apple products. Jason Rohrer is most famous for the first game that we played in class called, Passage. This game was really confusing for me due to the limits that Rohrer makes. In Passage you only could move in four directions. Although the game was really confusing to me I loved how Jason Rohrer provides the source code for his fans to look at. Out of deep respect for Rohrer I decided to play some of his other games. I really liked his game called PrimRose.

 

PrimRose was Rohrer’s 6th game that he made over the last four years. PrimRose is a tile-based game designed for the iPhone. This game is a little different than Rohrer’s other games. In an interview Rohner stated, “Working on Primrose felt very different, much more like a process of design than a process of making art… The goal in designing Primrose was to make something with gameplay that was as interesting and compelling as possible.” In this game Jason Rohrer developed gravity free chain reactions.

Rohrer got the idea of developing PrimRose from other puzzle games such as Tetris, Bejeweled, Drop7, and Puzzle Fighter.

Every time I played PrimRose I developed another pattern. To play this game you choose where you would like to place the first color block. Next you are given limited choices where you can place the first block’s pair. The music in the background really gets you into the game.

This game is really addictiong! For the second level the blocks have numbers and letters on them. I noticed that I was placing the blocks in the same pattern as I did in the first level, but this time I wasn’t scoring as high. After playing this game for over 45 minutes I decided to download it to my iPhone. I really like playing it on my iPhone due to the touch screen!

Check out this link for more of Jason Rohrer’s games!

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The Face Behind the Façade

March 27, 2012 by 3 Comments

We’ve recently been discussing Façade’s unique meta-media approach to Electronic Literature (as well as its very…  permutable platform).  Yet, to be quite honest, I feel very underwhelmed by our conversations thus far.  Perhaps it’s just me, but I feel there is still so much to say with regard to Façade’s brilliant execution.

To use an old cliché, Façade is nothing if not ambitious. But there is even more to Façade than is immediately apparent.

Whether or not you define Façade as an Interactive Story, a game, or both, one cannot ignore its use of modern game mechanics.  The first person perspective, the tangible in-game items, and the interactive characters are common features in many of today’s more popular games.  What separates Façade from the pack, however, is more than just its inclusion of a parser and a colossal array of input values:  it’s Façade’s commitment to the complexities of virtual reality long since abandoned by the game industry.

I was not surprised to see this image at the bottom of Façade's homepage. In fact, I felt it entirely appropriate.

No, that was not a hasty generalization — there was indeed a time when many game developers shared Michael Mateas’ (co-author of Façade) focus on Immersion and Transformation.  Games like the Petz series of the early 90′s, which Mataes coincidentally promotes at the bottom of Façade’s homepage, strove to produce the same unscripted realism that we encounter in our everyday life.  More so than that, these developers sought to add the same subtle yet very distinct behavioral patterns and personalities now absent in most modern games.

It was unfortunate that the game industry’s rapid climb in commercial viability during the 90′s changed developer’s focus.  The little nuances such as facial expressions, music-accented mood changes, and involved character interaction have taken a back seat to more profitable mechanics like game content and…  well…  more game content.  Of course, the recent rise of game publishers certainly hasn’t helped matters either.

And this brings us to the question I’ve slowly been working to from the start:  is the New York Times correct then in their assertion that Façade is indeed the “future of video games“?  I typically try to open that question up to everyone else, but this time I’ll do that in conjunction with actually answering — and you’re damn right it is.  Façade argues with convincing sound and fury in favor of quality over quantity; it suggests a recognizable value in the culmination of these nuances, and proves that a one-room game with only two characters, no leveling system, no DLC or add-on packs, and no scale of benevolence can still be fun.

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About Amnion

March 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

People often talk of rebirth, or finding themselves born again. But how deep does the phoenix go? Where is the cutoff point when it is no longer an option, and who’s to say?

As the title suggests, a huge theme within Amion, my creative project, is rebirth.

A little background first. Originally, Amnion started out as an untitled assignment in an Introduction to Creative Writing class. We had  about 4 or 5 different options we could choose from, but the one that jumped out the most to me was the task of writing from the perspective or a murderer but without ever once mentioning the murder itself. In a sense, you end up with this sinister literary detachment.

The initial run of the story about approximately 730 words. i attempted to channel a sort of Faulknerian vibe into the text by writing long winded sentences injecting several adjectives in quick succession–that mega-stream-of-consciousness style, making up my own word by combining others (“notyetspehere”), and using 5 dollar words such as “liminal.”

 

William Faulkner

Like a boss.

 

The end product was pretty neat to me and one was one of the only pieces of mine whose end product i felt truly great about. One fellow girl in my peer review group had some really cool mixed feelings: her conflict was the haunting relatabilility of the unnamed male protagonist coupled with the knowledge of his past crime.

In short: i managed to accomplish my goal of accessible uneasiness, relatively speaking.

But only the teacher caught the rebirth concept floating in there at the end. So i had to find some way to make the protagonist’s coming-out-of-the-river more noticeable, and thus i chose the name “Amnion.” Why that word specifically? The word has an eerie yet comfortable liquid sound to it with the 2 vowels flowing with the soft consonants. i may have been also playing Silent Hill: Homecoming at the time whose final boss has the title.

This short story of a previous assignment was chosen for the creative project initially because i wanted to revisit the work to make the text a bit longer and to edit and revise. Paul Valéry once said that “[a] poem is never finished, only abandoned.” i took this statement to apply to most literary works of text and i think the words have quite a bit of merit. One can always come back to their brainchildren and find things to shift about and improve. (Except for you, George Lucas.)

 

Why, damn you? Why?!

 

So then comes to my decision to use Twine as my modus operandi to transpose this mother into a digital counterpart. Initially i started out making this a work of interactive fiction much in the vein of Galatea. i started to map out the the area the protagonist was in and try to find ways to make a cohesive world in which to interact. The idea was to have players control this murderer after the murder took place and he (or she if i made the work gender neutral and universally accessible) just finished burying their victim. That relatability would be intrinsic of the players whether they wanted it or not and were forced to relate. Maybe have a different ending or 2 so the illusion of choice was present.

i soon found that, given the nature of the short story, this medium didn’t really fit the desired direction. i felt a person wandering around a bunch would be frustrating (and was frustrating for me at first to make and to play) because the gameplay would detract from how i wanted the story to be perceived. Additionally, the ending had to happen the way it did. People had to be uncomfortable that an unpunished crime happened and that, not only did it go unpunished, but a sick sort of redemption concept was an inherent part of the story’s narrative.

So Twine happened.

Twine is great for some who’s into visually mapping something and doing so quickly. As an interactive fiction i drew and mapped out the forest area and river and the burial site with a pencil and paper. But Twine catered more to my needs and i found the software to be much more accessible. Jonah was ultimately the format used. This work started out as paragraphs of continual text; the Sugarcane format made previous text disappear. While Sugarcane fit the need of not allowing a player to go back after making a decision, the previous text was gone. Jonah allows a trail of previous text to see where you’ve com from. Although with Jonah i had to explicitly state in the directions that after a choice had been made it is verboten to click back.

The neat way i used Twine and am a little proud of is how i utilized Twine’s ability to create infrastructure that mirrored Faulkner’s writing style. A teacher who once taught us Absalom, Absalom! provided a great way to comprehend (sort of) how Faulkner got at things: his writing style and narratives were done in such a way that readers were given just enough of the fringe of the goings-on to get an idea what was actually happening in story but without looking at the happenings directly until culminating to some ending. You are always looking on these fringes and have to painfully piece stuff together to understand the whole and its shaky epicenter.

There are not too many path choices in Amnion, but different paths lend themselves to getting a better idea of what’s going on. A few playthroughs give the player the full picture. The story is linear with a single ending because the nature of the story itself is to have a specific ending proper. The risk was writing about something nastily taboo and to freak people out once they get what was actually going in. Readers are put in this twilight time and path of things in motion and are forced to feel uncomfortable but to find something disturbingly human in this redeeming yet inhuman descent.

 

The map itself.

 

The true way to consume the story digitally was to allow multiple tries to totally grasp what is going on. Specific word links to each new lexia allows one to think about why one path signifies going to one direction while another goes elsewhere. For example, one choice has the protagonist finishing his burying and clicking the actual word “finishing” skips over two lexia. If one has the trigger finger itch to click to “finish” quickly, some stuff gets missed. Other choices are more complexly related and up for subjective interpretation but there is a method to the madness’ path.

The biggest narrative change i did make, though, was the introductory quote by rapper Ian “Aesop Rock” Bavitz.

 

"None Shall Pass"

 

Aes’ vocabulary and use of diction to me are really onto some sort of new age Hip-Hop Faulkner lyricism (all right, all right, hold up, yo, hold it. This seems kind of overblown and overshooting and somewhat pretentious but i think there is a little something to this.).  His style has a rather stream-of-consciousness vibe and oftentimes is metaphorical to an extreme. He thrives on abstraction a lot. As Aes has put it:

“It’s probably because it’s not the most accessible music in the world. It may pose a slight challenge to the listener beyond your average pop song. I’m no genius by a long shot, but these songs are not nonsensical, that’s pretty preposterous. I’d have to be a genius to pull this many nonsensical records over people’s eyes. It’s not exactly fast food but when people pretend I’m just spewing non-sequiturs and gibberish I can’t help but think they simply haven’t listened and are regurgitating some rumor they’ve heard about me. Even if it’s not laid out in perfect sentences—is any rap?—you’d have to be an idiot to not at least grasp a few things from these songs. Or have had no interest in pulling anything from them in the first place.”

The production he makes himself and most prominently with longtime collaborator and producer Blockhead is wild, especially when  coupled with his unique flow. But his lyrics are where he maniacally jumps out. One has to really sit down and read his lyrics if they want to get all the messages floating around. His use of words are offbeat, imaginative, multi-syllabic, complex, and just downright playful. One can certainly garner a few one-liners here and there just listening but sitting down and reading this stuff is getting onto a whole different plane.

At first, the inclusion of the quote seemed ridiculous and completely subversive of the short story. But something about the quote really hooked me. The origin is from a song composed by Aesop Rock for a friend, Jeremy Fish, who performed a San Francisco art gallery showing who also works directly and frequently with Aes for album work and other various music related oddities.  The song played at the gallery showing and was distributed in a limited edition run of USB flash drives with some collectible swag. The title of the whole show: Ghosts of the Barbary Coast.

USB drive with attached woodprint.

 

The song: Tomorrow Morning

YouTube Preview Image

 

The quote used to kick off Amnion is the first half of the chorus while the latter half features fellow Weathermen colleague, rap family, and Definitive Jux associate/former CEO El-P. i’m a huge Hip-Hop fan in the sense of any of the music and artists that advance the genre as an art form, so i wanted to do something hip with the short story. The line seemed really to have nothing to do at all with the text initially, but then i thought the water connection and coming out of that surreal and dissociated state the next morning only to have the cycle start again. Somehow something clicked with the story. Cycling, recycling, and rebirth; keep it going intriguingly.

So all in all out came Amnion. It was an interesting exercise in digitally creating and consuming literature in our infornographic age and was fun to do, albeit frustrating every now and then. The result is not the flashiest, most creative, clever, or incredibly imaginative thing done but for the most part i like what came out given the nature of the text i was working with and my personal vision of how to manifest it digitally.

So if you haven’t played it, check it out maybe. Given it a run and see what’s up. Provide some feedback. But most importantly, thank yah!

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Alice and I

March 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Inanimate Alice- Episode 4 takes you through the life and times of a young girl named Alice. Her stories are alright but what is  interesting is the way she presents them. Immediately the user is blasted in the face with some techno music so you get a sense that your traveling around with a girl who is growing into maybe some kind of rebellion phase. The story is also told in a some what scattered and chaotic way mimicking a child’s story telling. She is always eager to show you around her house or around the city. This story is littered with great photos and interesting graphic design techniques to help make her tours interesting. I feel like this sort of story would actually be useful in teaching children about Geography.

I like how it gives the user some sense of interaction even though most of the time it will not change the out come of anything. It still is enough to keep some one engaged, especially with the music. The music always sets the tone of the story, and makes you feel stressed out for this girl who is always having to constantly move from country to country.

 

I would be interested to know how long it took the developers to make this entire story. It takes approximately 30 mins just to play it, but I imagine it took around 30 days to make it…if not more. With all the user options, music, and pictures that had to be collected from these places and sorted out in a rational way. The editing was probably the most intensive part of the project, the way this was all put together was very impressive. I think this is a great tool for children to learn and use multimedia, I expect that Alice’s story will unfold for quite some time. I recommend this type of story to anyone who has a lot of time on their hands and doesn’t have the energy to read a book. The stories are simple but the graphic design and sound effects will keep you playing til the end.

 

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Poetry Poker Game

March 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

I’ve been playing the game Poetry Stud  which I found in one of the volumes of electronic literature on the blog.  This game is an interesting take on a poker game.  Instead of playing with a regular deck of cards, there are words on the cards.  It is run just like a poker game with each player betting, raising, or folding on their turn.  You are playing against the computer so you only get to see all of your cards.  Poetry Stud could be called poker for English majors.  However, you do not have to any writing ability to play the game.  As long as you can read the words and try to make pairs then you can play.

The words are randomly doled out so there is no order to what cards you get in your hand.  The cards are used to create strings of random poetry.  These lines are used to determine the winner of the game.  There are recurring words as you play several hands.  At first the words seem like they might be related but very quickly it is obvious that they are not connected.  At the end of the game you get to see all the cards that the remaining players had.

The author insists that players believe in the magic of words.  This seems evident as he has selected certain words to put in his decks of cards.  He has included an assortment of words such as have, color, light, dark, respond, balsam, and man.  These words could hold some important meaning to him as he chose these ones to be in his cards.  It also seems that part of the game is to enjoy the strings of words you create and to look at what the other players have.  This game is fun to play but rather offsetting if you are accustomed to playing regular poker.

 

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