My name wasn’t in the credits.
Until recently, the idea of an electronic text seemed to me to be very much like a print text, but easier to access due to the internet. When choosing an electronic text, I had no idea where to start, because I assumed most of them would be relatively similar. As I scrolled through the Electronic text archive, I passed the category of “Games.” Being a fairly avid gamer for most of my life, this sounded appealing, and so I selected the first one available, titled “All Roads.”
From the beginning, even before I began the text, I took note of some obvious differences between this game and print texts. Not once in my life have I ever had to download a program in order to read a book. Books are self-contained entities, whereas this text was a script that couldn’t be read on its own. As I started “reading” the text, I began to notice that the text was dependant on more than just a program.
The way “All Roads” functions is by providing a small amount of text and a line where the reader can type commands. After reading the text, the reader decides what command seems relevant, and inputs it. Based on the command, the text will either progress forward, or not. If there was a locked door, I would need to find a command that enabled the character (whose thought processes were exactly like my own, in that I was controlling them) to unlock the door, but using clues from the previous text, such as “a guard dropped a key.”
With a book, the narrative moves forward in a linear fashion on its own. The writer writes it, and anyone, provided they have a grasp of the language the text is written in, can read it. The reader reads and interprets the text to the best of his or her ability. Without the reader, the text still stands. If a person decides halfway through reading a print text that the text is frustrating, the reader can stop reading the text with absolutely no consequence for the book. This may seem like an absurd statement, but when electronic texts are considered, it becomes relevant.
Without my help, “All Roads” could not move forward. Not only was I charged with interpreting the work, but my interpretation of the work had a direct effect on the work itself. If I failed to interpret the significance of a certain passage, that passage would be the last part of the text I read. Sven Birkerts would be absolutely terrified of a work such as this, where process applies not only to creating the text, but reading it as well. Birkerts emphasizes that a text is the product of a writer, and he would be stunned to find the reader contributing to a work as much as is required by an electronic text-based game. In reality, not only was an electronic text more difficult to access, but it asked more of me than any book ever has.
great start with this; the process vs. product seems a key link. you get to a fascinating idea, and perhaps some good counteragrument: this electronic text demands really intense reader interpretation, it is more serious than a typical novel.
you might check out shelley jackson’s essay on why she likes hypertext: it includes her notion that she wants readers who are willing to stop reading.
http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/jackson.html