Monday, February 24, 2020

Zork is a text-based game about exploring a fantasy world. Like many other works we have looked at Zork gives the reader freedom of choice. However, the main difference with Zork is that it does not show the reader what options they have. Rather they must type in a verb and then the game gives the reader text based on their choice. This is very different from hypertext because hypertext gives the reader less freedom. Zork lets the reader create their own story instead of discovering someone else’s story. I found Zork interesting, but the question of, “what is literature?” came to mind as I was playing it. In many ways Zork resembles video games: absolute freedom of choice and wandering around a fantasy world are both aspects of modern games. Although this game is completely text-based, I do not consider it to be literature. Traditional literature has no interactive aspect, and Zork is entirely interactive. I feel that if we were to consider games like Zork to be literature then there would be an argument that other video games are also literature.

No comments:

Post a Comment

YAY!

HAPPY GRADUATION to the VERY first class of TBD majors!!! (I wish we could celebrate in person!)