Narrative and Games

What do you call a game that’s good for you, good for its genre, good for the gaming industry, and good for gaming technology, but isn’t a goodgame? Easy: Façade.

Theirs is a world very much like ours, in which every word, action, and even hesitation has myriad unforeseeable consequences that affect all that follows. This means that, though specifics may vary from session to session (thus making a traditional walkthrough useless), the overall shape of the experience is always similar; the player, then, cannot simply go through the motions, but must always work to effect a resolution of the central conflict.

That conflict concerns Grace and Trip, a married couple in meltdown mode. They’ve invited the player’s character, an old friend, to their posh apartment, but can barely stop arguing long enough to open the door. Though they initially put on a brave show of connubial bliss, it’s not long before each injects quarreling and indications into the conversation; it soon becomes clear that Grace and Trip have been lying to themselves and to each other, and that without the help of the clear-eyed (and ostensibly objective) player, one or both will soon choose to sever their relationship entirely.

The player’s toolkit is limited entirely to conversation. He or she may minimally manipulate objects or hug or comfort Grace or Trip, but there’s no real action to speak of. In all you say, you must be cognizant of not only how your words affect the Grace-Trip pairing, but also the emotional well-being of the individual character you’re speaking to or not speaking to. It’s a brilliant idea, one of the most detailed and considered representations of social intercourse yet seen for the personal computer. But as a narrative concept, it’s not inherently unworkable.

Week 10 - Mira Nair's Films

One of the most successful Indian directors of today’s generation, Mira Nair started off making documentaries on the streets of Delhi before turning to feature films such as Salaam Bombay, Monsoon Wedding and The Namesake.

                                   

          Her first film Salaam Bombay - The influence of Mira Nair's sociology background is easy to perceive in this film. Her first narrative film details the lives of the unfortunate children who live in the streets of Bombay. The main character Krishna/Chaipau spends his time as a runner for a tea shop in a neighborhood replete with prostitution and the drug trade. It is in the teeming environment of the streets that Krishna must save 500 rupees before he returns to his village. At the same time several episodes serve to demonstrate the hopelessness of everyone's condition. Even though the film is interspersed with moments of occasional happiness and camaraderie, the tone of the film is predominately bittersweet and poignant. The strengths of the film lie in its extraordinary realism. 

          Following up after Salaam Bombay - Mira Nair directs a charming family drama about a very chaotic Indian wedding. Where a wealthy father Lalit who is trying to see that his daughter Aditi's wedding goes off without a hitch. Though familiar with Western ways, he has little patience with them and is dead set on seeing the nuptials done properly and traditionally. Disillusioned with her long time relationship with Vikram -- a man who is almost twice her age -- Aditi  suddenly agrees to submit to an arranged marriage with Hemant, an engineer from Houston. Yet as the ceremony nears, she gets cold feet and returns to see her former lover -- even though it could spell disaster for everyone involved. Meanwhile, Aditi's cousins Ayesha and Rai who have shocking revelation to make. This film is comic at the same time very intense, as the drama unfolds. But what’s particularly shown with a great amount of detail is hindu wedding rituals and their importance. 

          A couple coming to terms with living in a new culture discover their troubles are compounded by their son is the main theme in this drama. Ashoke  and Ashima are a young couple who are brought together in an arranged marriage and soon leave Calcutta to seek their fortune in America. As the couple becomes accustomed to one another, they learn to deal with the coolness and superficiality of life in New York, even as they revel in the opportunities the city offers them. Before long, Ashima gives birth to a baby boy. By the time the child is old he displays little interest in his Indian heritage. Several years on, he has become a thoroughly Americanized teenager, openly rebelling against his parents, smoking marijuana in his room, and dating Maxine, a preppy blonde from a wealthy family. Ashoke and Ashima are uncertain about how to deal with their son's attempts to cut himself off from their culture, but Nick begins expressing some uncertainty himself when he meets Moushumi, a beautiful girl who also comes from a family of Indian expatriates. The film travels across the globe and so do the characters behaviors and beliefs. This film mainly focuses on soul searching and yet again as of the other two films, indian culture is highly given importance.
          Therefore, Mira Nair has three common themes, that follows in almost all her films - Romance, Indian Culture and a social issue.

week 9 Political ad

Mitt Romney Style

Its very Dominant through the video that the maker, dosent approve of Mitt Romney's beliefs, and uses Pop media Gangnam Style as his way of communicating what he thinks about the elections this year. Nevertheless, its very humorous, and enjoyable.
But for people who like Mitt Romney, would surely be opposed by this video, as their views on how he will help the economy and create jobs and so on and so forth. But clearly this video dosent aim to compare either obama or romney, as other political ads do, but just tries to communicate to mass media about what romney wants to achieve and what's his beliefs and its most focused on him, therefore, its oppositional and dominant!

week 7-8 illuminated pg

Week 5-6 Lolita

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta." Sets the stage of Lolita a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. It showcases Humbert's obsessive behavior along with the portrayal of main themes of gender and power.

In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Humbert, has his need to prove himself master of everything: other people, his own desires, fate, and language itself. Time to time again through Lolita we see Humbert’s most extreme actions and emotions not as a result of his physical desires but rather his psychological need to win, to possess, and to control. Gender relations are quite simple for him: women are to be possessed, and men should compete for the possession of women. By the end of the book we see that Humbert’s hunger for domination overpowers the peculiar particularities of his desires and is the real cause of his woes.

Humbert wastes no time letting us know of his potency: “I was, and still am, despite mes malheurs, an exceptionally handsome male… I could attain any adult female I chose” (25). He reminds us of this fact numerous times. He uses it to explain how he is able to beat the competition by seducing any woman he wants, though he may want them for unconventional reasons. He marries Valeria for unconventional reasons: “It occurred to me that…all the conventions of marriage…might help me, if not to purge myself of my degrading and dangerous desires, at least to keep them under pacific control” (24). He chooses her in particular because of “the imitation she gave of a little girl” (25). And he shortly admits that she grew older, fatter, hairier, and he stopped having sex with her—there is no doubting his lack of respect. Two pages are spent mocking Valeria and their attempt at marriage before he explodes in fury at the fact that she is having an affair and wants a divorce. He even addresses the peculiar reasoning of his anger:

“A mounting fury was suffocating me—not because I had any particular fondness for that figure of fun, Mme Humbert, but because matters of legal and illegal conjunction were for me alone to decide, and here she was, Valeria, the comedy wife, brazenly preparing to dispose in her own way of my comfort and fate. I demanded her lover’s name.” p.28

From this passage we may see two reasons for Humbert’s anger: first, that a woman, whom he believed to be in his possession and control, could by her own independent actions so tremendously impact his “comfort and fate,” and second, that another man should so easily intrude on his territory. In essence, he is furious because he has been beaten by both of them and made to look ridiculous through his ignorance. It does not sit well with his self image, and he cannot let this state of affairs last: “But no matter. I had my revenge in due time” (30).  It settles the scene for Humbert—what better revenge can there be than the most bizarre, hilarious, degrading four years of torture one can possibly imagine? Humbert is able to move on only because he knows he has beaten the competition. L