Digital Humanities – Spring 2018

Digital Humanities – Spring 2018

One Student, One Fire

Sarah DeLena

Digital Humanities – Reflection

Kevin Rutherford

4/26/18

One Student, One Fire

In order to make “One Student, One Fire,” Barbara, myself, and Megan had to brainstorm a basic premise for the game. We already knew it was a text-based adventure, so all that was left was to make a character and a goal. The most exciting topic we’ve covered in Digital Humanities so far was the Cortland 1919 Fire at the Cortland Normal School, so we thought that would be the best topic to make a game out of. Originally, we wanted to do a “Whodunit” type game where the player had to figure out who started the fire, but that seemed to be a common idea in the class, so we scrapped it. Instead, we thought of a new premise — the idea that the player was a student at the school and before he left the building during the fire, he wanted to save some archives from the library. This idea came to our group as we thought about our history-exhibit projects and we remembered that the students and teachers had actually gone back into the burning building to save archives, all in order to save some of the school’s history. So with this idea, we crafted the main character, Derrick, who is a student at the school and is the player, in a second-person narrative.

We started to make the story in a shared google doc, each writing a few lines and then possible options for the player to take, numbered 1 and 2. Depending on what the player chose, we wrote separate storylines to follow those choices, but this method of writing got messy really quickly. We realized that this game could take forever to create if we did so many possible options, so we narrowed the general story into two sects: if the player decides to follow the mysterious man or if they don’t. The stories do come together at a point, though, when Derrick is given the option to go to the archives in both storylines, but the player needs to choose a lot of right answers to get there in the scenarios.

All of our mangled options and storylines really came together when they were put into Twine. Twine helped organize the options and eased the task of making the story coherent and gave it the ability to flow nicely. Once we saw that options could be repeated and dead ends could exist naturally, the story worked itself out very well. The option to play the game on Twine was awesome too — I think if we weren’t able to play it dozens of times, we wouldn’t have been able to see continuity errors or plot holes (which there was an abundance of). The issue of using an option over again was also important to see in playthroughs — sometimes if we included the same option again, the narrative didn’t make sense because the original passage that option was connected to was worded differently — so we had to make options that were worded just right or else we had to make entirely new options for the player. All in all, “One Student, One Fire” was a pretty easy game to create using Twine and collaborating on google docs. When it came to creation, it worked well that we all put plot points and narrative pieces in the google doc, and then I personally put it into Twine, since you can’t share the Twine page until it’s published.

When I think of the word humanities, I think of literature, poetry, rhetoricians, and literary scholars, which seem hard to connect to games. Through this project, that difficulty of connecting humanities to games disappeared, especially because of the type of game we made (a narrative-based adventure). The game was filled with literature; it had a plot line, a narrative, characters, and more, and it was so heavily depended on the words for the game itself (no imagery), that humanities and the game couldn’t be anything but directly connected. So, technically speaking, with this opinion of how games and humanities are connected, I guess the work I did was humanistic work. It depends on how you characterize and define both games and humanities, but with my definition and associations, I definitely did add something to humanities with this game. I think the only kind of games that I would not define as humanistic would be games without any type of narrative or plot. It wouldn’t necessarily need any text, but as long as there’s a story, it’s humanistic — for example, no, I don’t think “Tetris” would be a qualified enough game.

My Systems

One system I personally interact with on a daily basis is music. There are so many rules and regulations in music; For example, attributing a specific artist to a certain genre determines the content of their music. Country will often focus on topics such as beer, trucks, America, and outdoor activities, to name only a few. Rock is often politically driven, and is also historically associated with certain drugs, and even certain emotions. Rap is stereotypically subjected to certain gang contexts, including a focus on drugs, violence, hyper masculinity and the objectification of women. Also in rap, there are racial restrictions. White rappers are generally not allowed to use the “N” word, but black artists can use it as freely as they please (not that I am arguing that white rappers should be allowed to use such language). Although these assumptions do not limit such genres to just these topics, as many artists break from their genre limits to comment upon other topics, it can generally be agreed that these subjects heavily exist within these specific genres. Now, generally people are attracted to one specific genre of music, so the subjects they are exposed to through music are limited to said genre. Since the subjects from genre to genre differ, the values portrayed to a person who listens to rap may be much different than the values absorbed by a person who listens to country. Also, lyrics can be analyzed through a range of lenses. A historical lens can be used to compare a certain artists life to their music. A deconstructional lens can be used to compare certain lyrics to specific discourses and literary archetypes. When it comes to music, the possibilities are unlimited, and as a strong pop-cultural entity, it affects its listeners both subconsciously and consciously. Overall, I think music is a strong system that influences the lives of those who participate in it.

 

-Peter McKasty

“Procedural Literacy” in My Everyday Life

I often interact with academic systems!

In my day-to-day life, I interact with academic systems. For instance, the system of a basic classroom setting — the rules that constrain my behavior are: having to raise my hand to speak, having to participate in discussions for a better grade, handing in homework that should be completed beforehand, and more. If I were to do a critical reading of the classroom system, I would focus on how all the students follow the behaviors expected of them and compare them to those who disobey. What are the benefits and losses of following the rules of the classroom system, for both the students and the professor? I’d also look into putting pressure on those rules — like, are there specific consequences for breaking patterns or disobeying rules?

Another type of system I interact with is a social system, in my friend group. For a critical reading of our interactions, I’d focus on how conversations are carried out, what topics they include, who speaks and when, what actions are taken as a group and separately, and more. What are the dos and don’ts of my specific friend group? What kind of slang do we speak with or hidden references do we make constantly that an outsider wouldn’t understand?

A critical reading of any system I interact with would look like, I think, an in-depth study of a discourse community and what my relation to that community is — am I an insider or outsider? Do I understand the rules?

– Sarah DeLena

Dream Game-Sarah Feinman

-If I had unlimited time and resources to create a game based off of one thing we have learned this semester, I would create a virtual reality of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This museum is one of my favorites, and holds various collections of databases, containing more than 270,000 records. I think that a virtual reality of this museum will definitely be beneficial and spread awareness.  Essentially, a virtual reality of this museum can also be extremely helpful to the people who live far from Washington D.C., which is where this museum is located.

-The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum  is significant to spread awareness of the many horrors that occurred during the Holocaust. This museum truly helped me feel more connected to my ancestors who were killed in this tragic time. I think that this museum is extremely sentimental, and personal, based on the many different interviews, home movies, memoirs, diaries and films shown throughout the museum. Many of the films in this museum contain historical forage and contemporary films about the Holocaust. I truly feel like everyone should at least have the possibility to tour this museum, which is why I chose to create my game based on the Holocaust in a virtual reality.

-Besides the unlimited information that will be shown in my virtual reality of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, there will be games on each floor of the museum. The ultimate goal is to end up on the third floor of the museum, where there are many essential historical artifacts. The player may advance to the next floor after they win that floor’s game.

-The first floor of my virtual reality tour of the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum will consists of documentaries, and realistic movies about the Holocaust. The documentaries and movies will be cut down in this virtual reality, but will address the main focus and message that the documentary or movie is trying to express. Each movie will be no longer than 10 minutes, allowing the player to truly take in the essential information. The player will then have to answer a series of trivia questions relating to the mini movie they watched. The player will not be able to advance to the next floor until they have answered every trivia question correct. This will definitely intrigue the player to closely analyze the essential parts of the mini movie they are shown on the first floor of the museum.

-Once the player answers all of the trivia questions correctly, they will then have access to the second floor of my virtual reality museum. The second floor is based on personal memoirs of Holocaust survivors. After the player fully reads the memoirs shown to them at random, they must play a matching game. There will be cards consisting of different names, all who wrote different Holocaust personal memoirs. Additionally, there will be another set of cards which consists of quotes, each from different Holocaust memoirs at the virtual museum. With these two sets of cards, the player must correctly match each memoir section, with the author who wrote it. The player will not be able to move onto the 3rd and last floor until they have matched all of the cards correctly.

-The final floor of the museum will consist of  historical artifacts from the Holocaust. When the player reaches the third floor of the virtual museum, they basically won the game, and will now have access to see artifacts from the Holocaust, which are only present in this museum. A few of these artifacts consists of shoes, and the clothes that prisoners were forced to wear at the concentration and death camps.

Ultimately, I hope that that my virtual reality game of the United States Memorial Holocaust museum helps the reader gain more knowledge about this horrific tragedy, and will become intrigued to continue playing this game. The beauty of this game is that the trivia questions for each game will be chosen at random, so the player will be learning new information every time they play!

If I Could Make a Game

The game would run on UnReal Engine. It would be an open world single player RPG and you would be one of the students enrolling into McGrawville College. The game will have a story to it, but because I despise linear play, it is optional and can be picked up at any point during the game (whether it requires you to talk to certain NPCs standing by to start the story mode quests. This game will require a lot of grinding, as in constant hours to increase your level in order to receive certain items of rarity that can aid your progression as a college student ( a rare golden pencil that you found will increase your quest rewards and exp gain). Whatever major or specialty (class/specialist) that you choose will grant you inherited abilities that can be upgraded as you level up during the game. An English major for example will allow you to except more quests at a time where a science major can have a larger crafting skill. Then there are multiple minors (sub-classes) that a player can acquire and upgrade in a skill tree format. These will also grant certain specific abilities for your character. There is no “completion” of the game because after your bachelors you can go for master, doctorate, and then proceed to acquire bachelors in completely other stuff (in a sense there could be a completion but it would take a shit ton of time).

Dream Game

If I were asked to create a game based on topics we’ve covered in class with unlimited resources I would incorporate what we’ve learned about with the Cortland 1919 fire. I would have the game be either virtual reality or augmented reality in order for the player to feel more immersed in the experience. In order to feel connected to the game I would incorporate sounds of footsteps, fire crackling and floors creaking as if someone is really walking through this old building. I would have the game begin in the Cortland Normal School and the player would first find a detailed plan on how the fire would be set and where the assailant would head to next. In order to stop the fire from occurring and progressing to engulf the entire building the player would need to try to follow the choppy plans they found in order to attempt to beat the assailant to the beginning or completion of the fire. The player is essentially racing the clock to save the school and themself before the fire begins and burns the building down.

 

Kara Smith