I’m finally finished with my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing degree, so I’m out of excuses for not  posting more. I plan on getting back to my revision series that I started back in June, but first I want to put some stuff up that I worked on during the program.

One of my graduation requirements was to deliver a thirty minute lecture during my final residency the week before last. I decided I wanted to introduce my interest in video games as a form of storytelling, but wasn’t sure how that would be received by the program. Luckily, once I explained my idea to the program administrators and the faculty member, Robin Lippincott, whose novel I intended to use in the lecture, everyone seemed interested.

The lecture went well, though I was quite anxious about giving one to an audience of my colleagues and faculty members instead of a group of rowdy high school students. I read straight from my lecture notes, so it probably wasn’t the most engaging experience, but I used a looped video of Passage playthroughs so everyone would have something to watch. I also passed around my iTouch to allow everyone a few moments to play the game.

I used Corvus Elrod’s definitions for the game terminology in the lecture. I’m sure there could be some discussion on how I explained game dynamics vs. mechanics, and my interpretation of the game itself, but everyone seemed to understand the explanation. There was a moment at the end of the lecture when I asked for questions that I was sure no one had any to ask because they were so thoroughly confused, but then the hands went up, and I ended up having to talk to many people after the lecture. Hopefully I didn’t lead them astray.

So without further ado, here is my lecture, including awkward pre-written jokes that mostly inspired laughter (though it may have been forced and sympathetic! The one involving pirates and ballet dancers was met with silence):

Graduation Lecture – Travis Megill

Attending PAX in Seattle this year was a delight that included many ‘firsts’ for me. It was my first time on the West Coast, my first time at any type of convention, gaming or otherwise, and my first time meeting many of the folks I talk to on a daily basis about games. Roaming the Expo floor and trying a few upcoming games was fun, but not nearly as exciting as spending time with people I’d previously only known by their words.

Another first for me was participating in a tabletop role-playing session. Corvus Elrod and Rachel Zakariasen, from the Zakelro! story studio, spent much of the weekend demonstrating the HoneyComb Engine, a storytelling system that “empowers the participants.” I have to admit I was fairly intimidated by the idea of trying a ‘pen and paper’ role-playing game, especially surrounded by hundreds of more experienced tabletop gamers. It’s one thing to fail miserably while trying out Uncharted 2 on the show floor, but the potential embarrassment that may occur during a game that actually requires imagination and creativity, as well as an understanding of a brand new set of rules, was almost too much.

After watching only a few minutes of the scenario that was ongoing when I arrived, however, I forgot my anxiety. The HCE rules are very intuitive, and with Corvus and Rachel present to guide the storytellers, became transparent enough to support creativity. As a framework for storytelling, the HoneyComb Engine worked fabulously to encourage each teller to add their mark to the story being developed.

Instead of repeating the details of our session, I’ll direct you to Corvus’s post on our session and just comment on my personal experience. Since I’m in the revision process for a collection of linked short stories, I was interested in the HoneyComb Engine’s ability to model scenarios without combat or even physical action of any kind that didn’t define a character in a literary sense. Could this system be used to model a conversation? Would the game function as a writing tool? So I asked (challenged?) Corvus, and he delivered!

Using the character prompts, each accompanied by a secret and a suspicion, we explored the situation the four family members were in, developing the relationships between the characters. I found myself emotionally involved in the story, and instead of being confused and hindered by the rules, which I expected as a first time player, they were motivating. While waiting for my character’s chance to speak, I thought about what my character would do in the situation, and then used the framework provided by the HCE to build my responses as part of the larger story being told by the other participants.

The conflict timing mechanic, in particular, seemed to work very well once the storytellers got the hang of it. Since we became emotionally involved in the characters, without the timing mechanic, our conversation would have lacked shape. We probably would have ended up shouting at each other, arguing our respective character’s position without thinking about how the character would express him or herself. The timing mechanic gave the entire experience dramatic tension. It also shaped the direction of the conversation, because my character’s opportunity to speak was governed by his previous actions and the effect other characters’ actions had on him. Though simple, the mechanic forced each storyteller to consider how his or her character would react instead of forcing his or her reactions on the character.

The Influences available to each character also shaped how the story played out. Since each character had strengths and weaknesses, the storyteller had some guidance as far as how the character would react. The guidance is subtle, though, so for example, my character may have been physically and emotionally intimidating, but not manipulative. The HoneyComb Engine suggests a range of possibility, but allows the storytellers to determine what works and what doesn’t.

From my perspective, HCE made the storytelling process both exciting and nearly effortless. Since multiple storytellers were working together to explore a story, I never felt frustrated like I sometimes do while developing my fiction. Instead, I let my character wait before speaking and allowed one of the other storytellers to step in and give me something to work with. Even used individually, however, I think the system provides a framework that would encourage the development of a story. I can’t wait to attempt to apply it to my own storytelling when the manual is released.

Thanks to Corvus and Rachel for helping us through the session, and to my fellow storytellers, Joe Tortuga, Deirdra Kiai, and Max Battcher. It was a great experience, and I can’t wait to see how others use the HoneyComb Engine for their own purposes. The possibilities are legion.

“The training of literary talent requires repetition of the experience of reading . . . it does not require repetition of the experience of writing (other than that required to achieve general literacy) in the same way that piano playing or drawing does.” – Samuel R. Delany, About Writing

My first packet is off to my mentor, so now is the perfect time to take a step back and explain this whole “Creative Thesis” thing. The thesis is one of the graduating requirements for my MFA degree. It can take on a variety of forms, but it must be at least 75 pages of publishable fiction (publishable meaning, I suppose, that no one would be horrified if they received it to be considered for publication, and not that it will be snapped up by literary magazines like dog treats). My thesis, if everything goes according to plan, will be around 120 pages, and that’s a pretty considerable “if.” Mostly it depends on which stories my mentor decides are polished enough to be included.

The ~120 pages contain ten short stories that I’ve worked on as a Spalding student. They were conceived as a story cycle, so the narratives are linked. The first story I wrote is the last story in the collection. It was written when I was an undergraduate, but the number of words that still exist from the first draft are evaporating quickly.

The cycle is loosely based on my family, and the overarching narrative follows a woman from childhood to death and a little bit beyond. The stories cover three generations of the family: the grandmother, two sons, and two grandsons.

The first story works as an introduction, and takes place a few months before the final story. Story II & III jump back to the grandmother’s childhood. S-IV transitions from one generation to the next and is narrated by one of the grandmother’s daughters. S-V and VI feature the grandmother’s sons during childhood and early adulthood. S-VII is about the relationship between the grandmother and one of her adult sons. S-VIII transitions to the next generation, narrated by one of the grandsons as a child. And finally, S-IX and X are told by the grandsons, one as children and the last as adults.

So what’s the story cycle about? I’ll boil that down into a list of themes or goals, the subjects I’m aiming to consistently present across the range of stories. It’s about generational influence, mental illness (directly and the fear/fascination that family members experience indirectly), undeserved guilt, relationships between brothers, emotional and physical distance between family members, and the mythology a younger generation creates to explain the older generation.

Yes, that’s all very vague, but it works as an overview of the structure and content. The stories are arranged chronologically except for the first, which takes place between S-IX and X. Who knows if I’ll keep this order, but it’s made me happy for a few months so that’s better than the previous iterations. Other factoids that are probably interesting only to me: 5 are told in first person (1 by the grandmother, 1 by each son, 2 by a grandson | 3 are retrospective), the rest are in third person (2 grandmother, 1 daughter, 2 grandson | 2 retrospective). Perspectives and narrative distance are the most likely elements to change, but it’s helpful to know where I stand at the moment.

Today I mailed out Stories I-IV. In July, V-VII, and for August, the remaining VIII-X. Since I and IV were brand new stories this time around, I’m planning on focusing directly on revision for the rest of the submissions. Hopefully I can look at each of the stories on a few different levels: the micro-level to examine words, sentences, and paragraphs, the story-level to look at structure within each story and higher level elements like character, setting, tension, theme, and then the macro-level as I continue to shape each story as part of the larger cycle.

My next post will describe the various revision techniques I’m using to analyze the stories at each of those levels. If I haven’t completely bored you by this point, come back and check that out. In the meantime, if any of this seems interesting, please visit The Creative Process and share your ideas, inspirations and practices with the rest of us.

Somehow, time has passed me by. I started the Master of Fine Arts brief-residency program at Spalding University in the Fall of 2007, but it seems ridiculous that a year and a half has passed already. Working full-time and filling the rest of the hours with a writing program is quite the time machine. I’ve had the opportunity to work with wonderful mentors and workshop leaders: Ellie Bryant, Joyce McDonald, Robin Lippincott, Kirby Gann, Rachel Harper, Jody Lisberger, Julie Brickman, and Crystal Wilkinson, as well as participate in a community of writers that have consistently inspired me to improve.

And now I’ve started my final semester.

Three projects form the bulk of the MFA program: the Creative Thesis (a story cycle, for me), the Graduation Lecture, and the extended critical essay, which I completed last semester. So the months before graduation will be spent rewriting, revising, and polishing the stories in my thesis and developing a lecture to give at my final residency in November. Fortunately, I’m excited about both the lecture and the thesis, and feel like they are ready to be pushed toward final, presentable products.

There is, however, a lot more that goes into that final push than I would have thought before I started the degree. Since I’ve been working on the stories that comprise the Creative Thesis for a year and a half, they’ve become so familiar to me that it’s difficult to see their flaws, and even the noticeable ones seem impossible to fix. Stories that seemed strong at the end of a first draft are flimsy when placed next to their brothers,  and the possibility of them all standing together seems laughable at the end of a long day. Pulling it all together is the hardest part.

So I’ve decided to write a little about this final leg of the program. Putting the process into words where I can see them helps make the whole thing less daunting, and hopefully it will be helpful to others as well, whether fellow MFA students or anyone else trying to complete a project that’s occupied their minds for so long it’s difficult to imagine letting it out.

I also hope that some of you will join me in cataloging your projects, writing or otherwise. The most exciting things I’ve learned as part of a community of artists have always arrived from a sharing of process. Just knowing that a multitude of paths exist that all lead to that final goal is encouraging. As more light is  shed on the ground in front of us, it becomes easier to pick and choose, and the creative process is strengthened.

If you’re interested please join the social network I’ve started at ning.com: The Creative Process. I’m hoping it can serve as a hub for individual blogs. It has a discussion board, a chat room, individual profiles, and a number of other features designed to make creating a community online easy (as long as I can figure them all out).

For anyone that’s just getting started on the whole blogging thing, you can either blog at The Creative Process page, or if you’d prefer to have your own separate space, I recommend WordPress.com. If you sign up for a free account, the site will lead you through the entire process and set up a blog just for you. Then you can connect your WordPress blog to The Creative Process and you’ll be ready to go. Let me know if you have any questions by leaving a comment below.

]]> http://theautumnalcity.com/general/the-final-stretch/feed/ 0 http://theautumnalcity.com/general/the-autumnal-city-has-been-hijacked/ http://theautumnalcity.com/general/the-autumnal-city-has-been-hijacked/#comments Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:15:27 +0000 Travis Megill http://theautumnalcity.com/?p=586

Don’t worry, it’s not as serious as it sounds.

Over the past few months I’ve only been posting entries to Corvus’s Blogs of the Round Table, and I’ve noticed my game design ideas have begun to dovetail with my MFA Creative Thesis. Since I’ve just entered my final semester at Spalding University, and only have three months to whip my thesis into shape, I’ve decided to use this space to catalog and discuss my process.

I hope all of my current followers will find my creative process for writing interesting and informative since I believe it shares a lot with any other creative process. I’ve found that any differences in the act of creating across forms is usually an opportunity to examine my own methods and often offers a new perspective on my writing.

For those not interested in improving or comparing their own creative process, I’m interested to see if a peek into my development of an idea from first to “final” draft changes your perspective on creation or sheds any new light on how stuff comes together in the deranged mind of a writer.

To begin sharing my experience this semester, I’ve decided to write a series of introductory posts. The first will give an overview of the requirements in my last semester of graduate school, along with personal goals I’ve set for myself that extend past graduation. The second will describe my Creative Thesis and my intentions for it this semester. The last will explain the  graduate lecture I’m giving in November at the Spalding residency.

After the introduction, I’ll discuss my revision process as it grows and changes, since it is constantly revising itself. I’ll look at specific stories and explain why I made the changes I did, as well as how I discovered a change needed to be made. One of the goals of sharing all of this is to constantly refine my process, so feel free to let me know what’s working and not working, or what works and doesn’t work for your process.

Also, I’d love to be a part of an ongoing cross-form discussion about the creative process, so let me know in the comments if you have a blog pursuing similar interests in writing or any other creative outlet.

To dispute rumors being spread by 8bithack on Twitter about me being an ARG ploy to sell more copies of Dhalgren, I’ve recorded a podcast with Corvus Elrod of Man Bytes Blog and Deirdra Kiai of Deirdra Kiai Productions. We discussed literature and video games. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that I’ve been recorded outside of home movies, so enjoy the awkwardness of a quiet person speaking!

The poem is entitled, “Wii Death.”

http://bestpoem.wordpress.com/category/lafayette-wattles/

This month’s BoRT topic allows each of us to build upon another blogger’s game design idea, so I’ve chosen Joe Tortuga’s idea based on Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The notion of an unreliable narrator in a video game is one that fascinates me, and Joe does a great job of discussing the issues video games have dealing with that narrative technique, so please check out his post!

For school, I’ve been reading the short story collection Points of View, which does a great job of explaining the various options a fiction writer can use to tell a story and then giving examples for each type. “Subjective Narration” is the type most often used to portray an unreliable narrator because the person telling the story is close to the events and the reader experiences the story in the character’s voice. This allows the author to set up a schizm between the reader’s expectations and the character’s thoughts and actions.

In a video game, as Joe talks about in his post, the developers attempt to eliminate any difference between the player and the character to aid immersion. Most video games attempt to put the player directly into the action, to create that viscereal feeling of experience. Instead of attacking the problem head on as Joe did, I’m going to sidestep the issue a bit and make the gap between player and character wider. I love the idea of causing the player to feel real guilt over the actions of the character, however, so I want to incorporate that into my redesign of Joe’s idea.

My game is an ARG that lets the player maintain their identity and instead involves them in the story by making them an accomplice. The entire experience will be short, around 30 minutes. The game’s name is “Help,” and it begins with a call from a stranger that the player receives on their phone. A strange man has found a lost cellphone with your number in the address book, and he sounds desperate. The phone conversation is key, and the player will remain on the line for most of “Help.”

“Help” will incorporate voice recognition to enable the player to communicate with the man, but the limitations will be obscured by the call’s poor connection and the panicked state of the caller. Sometimes he’ll say that he can’t hear you, and other times he just won’t respond, instead background noises are heard that suggest he isn’t listening. Players will answer questions prior to starting the game that provide the name of the person who lost the cellphone. The game will select the name that is easiest for a simulated voice to pronounce.

The man explains that he needs a few favors for you in exchange for returning the phone to its owner. He gives you a web address and account information for his e-mail, asking you to filter the messages for a specific person and find a street address mentioned in an e-mail. You follow the man’s instructions, but also notice a number of other intriguing messages in his inbox. If you take too long, he will warn you that he has little time and become suspicious that you are rooting through his e-mail. You can respond to his questions with “yes” or “no.”

“Help” will use the phone call to control the pace of the game. If the player has difficulty entering the password and needs it repeated, they can say, “What is the password?” and the game will recognize “password” and repeat the information. Noisy dead air will occupy any extra space that the player needs, and cues will be used to move the dialogue forward. When the player opens the website, the man will ask, “Are you in yet?” and when they enter the username and password they’ll hear police sirens in the distance, etc. This will add tension to the experience and also allow some flexibility based on player speed.

You ask the man questions as you search for the e-mail, like where he is (he responds with a city pulled from the questionaire), and where did he find the phone, “In a fast food restaurant.” The man seems distracted and you hear some sort of struggle. The man drops the phone, you hear it bang against the plastic shield around the payphone. He apologizes, but seems out of breath. After you find the street address he needs, you read it to him, and he hangs up without saying anything. You’re upset and confused, but you continue to explore his e-mail account, finding a link to a Facebook account. You try to use his e-mail address and password on the site and they work. As you explore his account, you find out the man’s name is Samuel Neat and other personal details, and then your phone rings again.

“Help” will use subtle clues in web material to show the player that Samuel Neat is not what he seems, but the primary clues will be provided in the phone conversation using background noise. Players can use information they gain from the web to find out more about Samuel on the phone by throwing him off guard, but if he becomes too upset he will hang up, ending the game.

Samuel calls back and you greet him with his name. He sounds surprised and a bit hostile. He realizes that you’ve access his Facebook account. You ask him where he is and he tells you he’s at a payphone outside of the apartment complex, but the phone connection seems better and you don’t hear any street noise. You hear the sound of a gun being cocked. Clicking back over to Samuel’s e-mail account, you notice the phone number he’s calling you from is listed as the home number for David Perez, the sender of the e-mail. You find David’s profile on Facebook, one of Samuel’s friends, and examine it.

You hear something shatter in the background, and then the sound muffles and Samuel is shouting. He sounds like he is inside. When he returns he has you order pizza from a local place that you don’t recognize. When you ask why he responds, “Because I’m hungry.” You hear faint police sirens and Samuel cocking and un-cocking the gun. Samuel asks you to send a message to David, and include a picture of a little girl from another e-mail in his account. The picture shows a girl on a swing, but taken through a chain-link fence from inside of a car.

The player has many opportunities to mess with Samuel. Order the wrong kind of pizza, mention his name, ask him about the sounds. The player can ask, “Who is the girl?” and Samuel will respond, “My friend’s daughter, he wanted me to send him that picture I took.” Bringing up other friend’s names from his Facebook account will get a reaction, allowing the player to learn more about the character.

When David responds to the Facebook message with the picture he asks what Samuel wants and why he won’t pick up his phone. Samuel tells the player he wants the money David owes him for the girl’s swing set, and gives the player a bank account number. If the player sends the information to David, they’ll get a message saying that he transferred the money. The ending of “Help” is determined by the player’s actions:

- You tell Samuel that David won’t send the money. You hear a ripping sound, like tape being removed, and a little girl screams. A gunshot is heard and the screaming stops.

- You tell Samuel that the money is there. He tells you to send the address to David and you hear him drop the phone and walk away. A door slams. Something shuffles toward the phone and you hear muffled pleading. Eventually police sirens are heard and a police officer knocks down the door.

- You tell David the address and he calls the police. Sirens are heard, Samuel starts to yell, curse, and throw things around. The police knock down the door and you hear them order Samuel to drop the gun. A single gunshot is heard and the thump of a body on carpet. Multiple gunshots follow and the phone hits the ground.

- You tell David the address and explain that Samuel has a gun and his daughter. David responds that the police are on there way and you tell Samuel that David has transferred the money. Samuel leaves the apartment as the police arrive and you hear muffled gunshots. The little girl’s muffled voice says “Thank you” over and over again.

Check out previous month’s entries at the Round Table’s main page!

Corvus has given us another opportunity to delve into some game design without all of the real world limitations that actual design would entail. I’m sticking with science fiction again this time around, though I have a feeling more people have read A Scanner Darkly than Dhalgren (or at least have seen the horrible, in my opinion,  film adaptation). Philip K. Dick has been one of my favorite authors longer than anyone else I’ve read. I’m fascinated by the way his life is intertwined in his fiction, the way reading his biography is almost like reading one of his novels. His ability to create mind-blowing worlds and situations with relatively simple prose inspired me to become a writer. I think a game based on a novel that explores identity has numerous opportunities to play with crossing the fourth wall, but for this post I’ve decided to stick with  more subtle implications.

I’ll also stay much closer to the plot for this idea, so some details of the story will be spoiled, however, the novel is much more than a fancy “mind-fuck,” so I would encourage everyone to read it. The central novum of the novel is known to the reader early on, so the plot summary that follows spoils little. The main character, Bob Arctor, is a narc, but even his employers are unaware of his identity. He wears a “scramble suit,” which hides any distinguishing details. Bob takes a drug called Substance D on a regular basis, and as the story progresses, it causes a schizm between Bob, the civilian, and Fred, the law enforcement agent. Fred is assigned by his superiors to monitor Bob, much to his initial dismay, who they suspect is a big-time drug dealer, but as the split between the main character’s identities widens, Bob becomes suspicious of himself.

The game interface is “scanner” themed, after the video surveillance device Bob/Fred use to watch the inhabitants of the house he dwells in with a few friends. A perspective similar to The Sims is used, except the camera would be fixed in each of the house’s rooms. Outside, a birds-eye view is utilized, like a shot being filmed by a helicopter circling overhead. The view will rotate and shift, but the motion is slow and subtle, so the player isn’t distracted.

The gameplay evolves over the course of the game as Bob’s mental state changes. At the beginning, when Bob realizes he is Fred, the player’s goal is to keep Bob’s friends and officers unaware of his true identity. The player controls Bob, and must consider that anything seen through the scanner may be viewed by his superiors, so the player must position Bob out of the scanner’s view for any actions that may be suspicious. The player must also consider Bob’s friends, so keeping them occupied is important. This segment of the game will pass in realtime, and player’s can make suggestions to distract or get rid of their friends. If some of the characters are working on a car in the driveway, the player can hide a tool, or remove the car’s brake to send it barreling down the driveway when it shifts.

If Bob is caught by either his friends or the scanner, suspicion will cause their relationship “score” to lower. The player has to balance the levels of suspicion between Bob’s friends and the police by considering what the scanner sees and what his friends see. The player can also take action to lower the suspicion bars by talking to the characters (the conversations are one of my favorite parts of the novel), doing drugs with them, or helping with whatever task they’re involved in. The player can lower the police’s suspicion by taking Substance D, which the police consider something a big-time dealer wouldn’t do.

As the game progresses, and Bob takes more Substance D, the gameplay changes. The player starts to lose control of Bob and can interact directly with the world while Fred has control of the character. Fred’s thoughts will be revealed as an interior monologue that plays over the game. Other characters’ speech will be displayed as text during these portions, denoting their assumed inferiority to Fred. The player must keep Fred from finding out information about Bob or his friends by manipulating objects in the house or outside.

The player will regain control of the character whenever Bob is dominant (in control of the character’s mind). Bob is becoming increasingly paranoid, and believes that Barris, one of his roommates, is trying to kill him. The player will help Bob investigate Barris, but is also able to set up situations to thwart Fred during this time.

Developing relationships between Bob and his friends is an important aspect of the game because inevitably Fred will discover that Bob is himself and mental breakdown will follow. The player puts this off as long as possible, but the strength of the relationships the player develops determines whether Bob will be taken care of after his breakdown. Relationships are raised by spending time with friends and lowered by suspicious activity and Fred’s actions, so the player is constantly trying to balance the relationships with progressing the narrative.

The status of the relationships at the time of mental breakdown will result in a variety of endings based on which character the player chose to spend the most time with. If the player fails the game before developing a relationship successfully, they get the bad ending, death by overdose, but the other endings aren’t necessarily “good”.

(Putting the Game Before the Book What would your favorite piece of literature look like if it had been created as a game first? In a time when bits of Dante’s Divine Comedy are being carved out and turned into a hack-n-slash game, I find myself longing for intelligently designed games–games with a strong literary component–not merely literary backdrops. So rather than challenge you to imagine the conversion of your favorite literature into games, I challenge you to supersede the source literature and imagine a game that might have tried to communicate the same themes, the same message, to its audience.)

Delany’s Dhalgren is a massive, complicated novel, and since I’ve read it several times in anticipation of the extended critical essay I’m writing for my MFA, I’m going to talk about it as much as possible. Dhalgren, despite its complexity, is the perfect novel to inspire an amazing game. Since Corvus has asked us to reimagine the literature we choose as a game that precedes the novel itself, I’m using the structure of the novel as a design guideline instead of the plot.

Dhalgren has a particularly interesting structure. The novel is a circular narrative that ends where it begins: a fragment. The opening sentence is the second half of the thought that begins on the last page. Delany describes the novel, through K. Leslie Steiner, as a Necker Cube. Since the beginning and the ending of the narrative can’t logically exist side by side, the reader is forced to look at each as a possible reality, which changes the meaning of the often nonlinear events that occur between the book’s covers.

The game I imagine is a graphical adventure game (because I love and miss them). The player can swap between two characters that have conflicting goals and exist in separate, but linked, realities. The characters are not protagonist and antagonist, but simply twisted reflections of each other. In order to solve the puzzles, the player must use both perspectives in unique ways to eliminate obstacles. Since the characters have conflicting goals, actions taken by one character will seem to negatively affect the other, but will actually spur conflict for the opposing character that enables them to complete the challenge. In addition, the NPC’s each character meets will be different, but connected in interesting ways.

Aside from the “twisted reflection” aspect of the characters, the setting, time period, and narrative distance from the player will be manipulated as well. In one situation, the characters will seem to be separated from each other by a long period of time, say a century, and the puzzles solutions will require the player to think about cause and effect based on time. In another situation, the characters will appear to be conversing with each other, though each character’s idea of their own appearance and their “alter-ego’s” will be different. The player must figure out a way to help each character through their dilemma without hurting either character. In a third situation, one of the characters will ostensibly be the player, and he or she must interact with the other character in order to proceed.

Dhalgren challenges the reader’s perception of the relationship between author, character, and audience, as well as the authority or validity of the text. The main character, Kid (or Kidd, or the Kid, depending on the situation), writes on blank pages and in the margins of a journal that contains previous writing that may or may not be his own. The primary text of the journal appears to be the novel itself. When snippets of the journal are revealed to the reader, they may be sections from earlier or later in the novel. The last chapter of Dhalgren is direct entries from the journal, including marginalia. Also, at one point, Kid looks into a mirror and sees Samuel R. Delany instead of himself. These metafictional elements would be interesting to explore in my imaginary game.

Delany pulls the reader into the morass by establishing an elaborate system or signs, or symbols, throughout the novel. These “clues” become an obsession to the reader, who wants to figure out the meaning of the novel. When Kid tries to find meaning in the signs, the reader does also. As Kid becomes less and less reliable, sometimes not even acknowledging the symbols that appear, the reader still blindly attempts to attach meaning to them. By the novel’s end, the symbols are both meaningful and meaningless, depending on the reader’s perception of the “Necker Cube.”

The identity of the characters in my game would be questionable, in order to allow mutability. The system of signs would be developed in order to cast doubt about each characters origin or purpose. Are they characters? Are they the developers/creators? Are they players? Their purposes will twist accordingly. The player may create a situation for one of the characters that puts them in the role of creator, but the tables will be turned later on. The game will depend on the tension created by the player’s doubt, and both the gameplay and the narrative will reinforce this unpredictibility.

The game will incorporate elements of an ARG into its design. Each player will provide an e-mail address, a phone number, a mailing address, etc. at the game’s start, during a required registration. Players will be contacted in a variety of ways by “developers,” characters, and other “players” in order to disguise the boundaries of the game.

The visual and auditory experience of the game will also be disruptive. It will have a strong visual style that exists in a concrete “world,” but sometimes the world will fade away, revealing code, the desktop, or a website. The character will sit down at a computer and read their e-mail, but it will actually be the player’s e-mail. Or they will surf the web and connect to actual websites, even the player’s blog or the developer’s site. Sometimes the player must quit the game in order to proceed, using the web to progress the narrative and bring information back to the characters.

Dhalgren’s conclusion is fragmentary, and Kid’s exit from Bellona, the city he enters at the novel’s beginning, is chaotic. My imaginary game ends in a similar way. One of the characters will be eliminated most of the way through the narrative, leaving a single character and the player. The game will deconstruct itself, slowly losing its visuals, then its sound, and then all traces of the game on the players computer. The game will delete itself from the hard drive. The conclusion will be conducted via text message or e-mail. The end will probably be inconclusive, after all, was it truly the end or just another point of entry into the game? Reinstall and try again.