After pressing the “Begin” button, the interactive fiction game, Found Floppy, takes the player back to a time, not so long ago, when floppy disks were used and having a giant PC was a really big deal. It starts with various text files and picture files that the player clicks on in order to understand the full story. I think that the point of having an old, but still (sort of) readable text is to show that although a lot of time has passed, humans are still facing the same problems every day.
The overall story of the text is that there is a writer who lives next door to a woman who has an abusive boyfriend. The text starts out as the writer complaining about his neighbor banging on the wall asking for help, and then goes into a rant about how people should be taking this problem lighter because it happens to almost everyone. He see’s abuse as an excuse for human behavior and that no one is actually abused. He uses his own experience with this and says that he does not complain about what happened to him because he does not think it actually affects him.
However, this is false. In the text, he admits to not having too many friends and doesn’t really get out much. He stays in and works on his computer and does things on the internet. He is trying to hide himself away on the computer rather than face reality of what goes on in the real world. The computer and the internet has, in fact, become his reality. I think the reason that he gets so upset with his neighbor asking for help is because she is not doing anything and he wants to block all types of reality out of his mind and apartment.
For the game, Andy Campbell uses the simplicity of the old Windows screen to show that although the computer and floppy are out of date, the problems the writer is facing is something the readers could probably relate to. The background music also gives the effect that someone is clicking on the mouse or typing on the computer, which is something that computers have always done and (to our knowledge) will always do.
I think that the purpose of this interactive fiction game is to show that although technology will continue to change, human behavior will not and people react to problems differently. It just happens that the writer copes with his problems with abuse by ignoring the world and staying in on his computer while his neighbor is still trying to get help to get away from the abuse she is facing.