I have thought about the importance of adjusting for an audience in storytelling when discussing oral traditions in class and how there has been less and less of that since Western colonial ideas of stories have come to dominate. It's really interesting to think that digital storytelling forms are bringing back a more interactive storytelling style.

I found that a lot of people in my creative writing class last year wanted to write for video games. I had no idea narrative was such a big thing as I have never played video games myself.

These are great for all kinds of activities, such as movement, mindfulness, and relaxation. Only thing about Virtual is that children under a certain age shouldn't use them.

Interesting when "gaming" became a thing and some games were "popular" They quickly were replaced by new up and coming games. Now, those previously popular games are making a comeback!

Gaming has moved from the historical "console" of Xbox or PlayStation. Now many people consider gaming on any device, really. Some examples include Xbox, computer, phone, or Switch can be removed from the console and act as a remote controller.

Modern advancement related to technologies, has moved quite quickly. Just to think of platforms such as AI, and the information needed to gather in order to make this exist.<br /> I don't doubt there is a large history of events documents, but as things evolve, so will technologies at a quicker rate.

People often group PC gamers with console gamers in a very generalized way. However, I think there's major differences in the entire gaming experience when juxtaposing consoles and PC. PC definitely relies on more inputs and navigations with less reliance on a responsive interface versus the console where the controller allows more ease of use.

I feel like this landscape for gamers has changed drastically over the past couple of years. For example, the big attraction for gamers nowadays is the multiplayer aspect and I think most big games allow for porting, which is more often termed cross platform. But I remember the days when this was very limited and you could only play with friends and connect with others gamers only using the same platform.

Stories tend to be more engaging when the audience can participate in the narrative in some way.

We have to be careful not to let Western colonial ideas of what a story is overtake our perceptions of what a story should look like.

I love this! We all love hearing and telling stories. I ran the children's summer reading program at my library one summer and it was a lot of fun. So many kids just starting their reading journeys. It is really beautiful to see them discover the magic of books as I had.

The stories and storytellers in our lives are so important. I have stories from the radio, stories my mom read to me, stories my grandma has told me about her life, and stories from friends and strangers. Stories are not just special for their own sake but for the sake of who tells them and where they are told. Everyone has stories.

I have listened to CBC radio out of personal interest (not just because my parents had it on at dinner) since I was five. I loved listening to radio documentary programs like DNTO or broadcast storytelling such as Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean, news, science, music and culture programming, or radio dramas. Radio was and is a wonderful way to be entertained and informed.

Stories are not defined by what they are told with. Oral stories and written stories are very different, and yet both are stories and both have value. Stories immerse their audience in an experience and it shouldn't matter if that is through spoken word, images, writing, physical or digital. Digital storytelling can be more accessible for some people or there may be a digital tool that makes a story accessible. Even being able to change the font on an ebook to help dyslexic readers is hugely helpful.

It is so cool that so many different people have the opportunity to share their stories creatively (whether fiction or non-fiction). There is so much value in people being able to tell their own stories or access stories that represent parts of their experience that are not present in mainstream media.

It is also worthwhile to ask if google can also be a medium for other storytellers as well from a business/marketing point of view? for example, other advertisements rely off google to showcase their adds based off what a given user tends to search for online. this can perhaps drive the storytelling narrative further or even make matters more complex. It's also interesting to note that I can't really remember the last time I have seen a "google" advertisement versus other advertisements that "use" google as their medium. food for thought.

I wonder how someone who does suffer with clinical depression would feel with this game?

Even though the games designed on Twine are very limited in terms of their mechanics compared to larger scale projects (relying off engineering and CS skills) is there a middle ground here? for instance, perhaps the stories designed on Twine can be inspire larger gaming companies to make spin offs based off the content created in Twine itself? I feel like its hard to follow through with a solid story based game that sells well and Twine could revive some useful ideas here.

As a gamer myself it is pretty astonishing how such a simple text based game can become so popular and influential. sometimes it's more about the message/story than how the actual game "functions" from a mechanics point of view. Most of the time I guess people crave a good story they can relate to.

Similar to that question we asked at the beginning of this course. what counts as digital humanities, what to exclude from it?

I think Twine is so easy to learn because we have almost all run into this style of content in choose your own adventure books which are rather popular on their own. Twine makes this process even easier by making an accessible and clean interface. I don't know if anyone else ever tried to make a choose your own adventure but when I did when I was younger it was difficult to keep all the pages in order and remember where each one led and which story lines were finished etc. Twine turned that into a very straightforward process.

This reminds me of a game called Pathologic about curing a plague, it is also a kind of depressing game in that lots of odds are stacked against you and sometimes you can do everything right and still not get a good result (I haven't actually played just heard a lot about it). I sometimes wonder what the point of these games are because usually people wants stories for the escapism right? I think as this creator talks about, there is a sort of power being able to face horrible things head on and video games can help you do that emotionally while still remaining physically safe.

I've heard about GamerGate but I did not know about it's origins. wild

This might be a bit too off topic but all the talk of games as ways of storytelling also got me thinking about board games, and tabletop games as well. These games have also advanced in a rather similar way to video games i think. Starting off with simple games then moving to more elaborate ones as well as the making of different genres and different modes of interaction. Having a deck of cards can let you play a lot of different games, D&D lets you play the same game over and over again with vastly different settings and tales, certain board games have expansion packs, each type can vary how much you need to consider/ interact with the other players.

This is another aspect I find really interesting when you start to consider videogames just another facet of storytelling. The fact that not only is the creator making a story for you to explore but that other consumers can alter your experience in a very direct way.

It's an interesting concept to consider how the interface interacts with the player of a game as another aspect of storytelling. Movies, books and lots of media wont react to or take input from the consumer. The only other time I can think of when this happens is when humans are verbally telling stories.

I have seen multiple games tell stories that have stuck with me than any tv show, or book ever has. This may be due to my avid childhood "addiction" to gaming. Gaming series like Assassin's Creed and God of War gave light to a whole story as I went from game to game. Each cut scene within them brought me closer to the story and to the character I was portraying in the game.

The cutscenes that I have always loved due to their in-depth story telling have always been a focal point in games for me as my thought process has always been, "why play a game that you don't care about?" and to care you must be invested. This also stretches to other facets of my life, from cooking to people in general to everything else you can think about. Below is a link to the Media material that literally gave the best and by far most articulate description of an opening cut scenes of the game Bioshock I have ever heard from someone. It basically had me relive it as he told it: https://youtu.be/tq-4hJEihWE?t=2638

If game cut scenes are digital storytelling would that mean any actions you do in the said game are considered to be part of the story as in some games such as in Infamous (Really fun btw). Your actions, quite literally affect how the games society treats you and perceives you. Changing cut scenes according to circumstances.

I wanted to share a content creator that looks at the psychology behind video games. I love his world and just shows you the depth behind video games. It's not just data and things for bland entertainment. https://www.youtube.com/c/DarylTalksGames

Some of my favourite stories are from games, such as Breath of the Wild and Genshin Impact. I think gaming is wonderful in that you get to be a part of the story and interact with the world. I know a lot of other generations find gaming to be pointless or even childish, but games are nothing to shame or push aside.

It is really fascinating how complex technology really is. Social media has changed so much, even in the last decade. Social media allows communication between the whole world. It allows communication even when language barriers are present. For example, people are still able to communicate through pictures and videos through instagram. The ability to embed media also contributes to the complexity of digital networks.

I originally hadn't considered video gaming when I thought about digital storytelling but it would be a great example of it. Gaming is following a storyline and interacting with it, which makes it a very impactful source of storytelling. Having the community get so absorbed in the story would indicate more reaction from the audience and greater engagement.

Games are an expensive storytelling market to get into. I built a $1500 computer when I was 14 that I now use for schoolwork and other tasks I could finish with a 10 year old laptop.

One can argue that any piece of literature can tell the reader a little bit about the author. They may have biases and opinions in their books that they also have in real life.

Stories commonly have a beginning, middle and an end or in more complex terms the intro, rising action, climax, falling action, and conclusion as stated above. But, this is not always the case for every story such as children's books (does not always have a climax). Is this a requirement for a digital story? I am assuming a digital story can be any type of story and there is no need for a specific sequence of events.

This is the wonderful thing about digital story telling, people can get as creative as they want with it! It really allows a person to show their personality if they want to.

I attended a lecture once on how to make good powerpoints and I kinda thought it would be a bit of a waste of time honestly but they brought up some really good points about how much info to include as well as how to structure visuals and stuff like that

I think finding the balance is key. I'm sure many of us have experienced watching a show/ movie (or even a documentary) that after many minutes (or hours) has not given us any answers or sizable clues to the questions/ mystery posed at the beginning. And of course it can also be boring when answers are just given straight with no curiosity developed on the part of the audience.

In the lecture this week, Bryan Alexander says that a story has mystery or intrigue, or makes the reader/experiencer curious. I liked that way of thinking of it but I am interested to read further on this take

This is a major form of digital story-telling I would say I have encountered. Especially recently as the emergence of short form content has hit a recent boom with applications known as TikTok. On this app within as short as 10 swipes, you are presented with multiple stories of all facets of life. Yet it is all automized to be slightly relevant to what interests you. This form of content has recently brought alot of engagement with the youth of todays age. We can see communities form and support one another in active time and quite literally see these stories fold out in real time. Companies tend to show a more humane side to them on this platform where they use stories such as experiences their staff have had and how they are currently very happy with working with/for them now. Almost like a complication of multiple short interviews put together. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEwa3sCiYq0&ab_channel=PostConsumerBrands

As said above, this would include forms of digital media as well. A great example of digital storytelling was displayed in a YouTube video provided in Media of Week 6 (Bryan Alexander - Digital Storytelling). In the below link, It shows the exact example I will be referencing to: https://youtu.be/tq-4hJEihWE?t=2054 In the video, it shows a quick/short version of the Shakspearian play known as Hamlet. It displays a digital and more playful version of the play yet provides you with enough detail to perfectly capture the idea of what was done/said/thought during the play. As it is on FaceBook, it is readily present to a large population to experience said stories. This can be done for any form of information such as the news as well! And that in it self is amazing!

It seems that with a definition such as this the term story becomes more a personal decision than a black and white concept to be accepted by everyone. If one person was unmoved by an object but someone else saw meaning in it they may see it as a story.

does that make podcasts to radio what netflix is to cable?

It's wonderful how creative we are as beings. Think of the stone paintings you associate with the cavemen times. We will find a way to create with every resource we have access to. I think the digital landscape has made creating things a lot easier to do, with writing programs like Microsoft Word or art programs both free and feed.

Data can certainly be cold, just as a story may be flat and uneventful. It's all about how something is presented. How it is written or presented may give it life and it may not longer be cold, whether or not it's simply data on a screen.

I think whether something digital is classified as a story or not really depends on how the information is utilized. It makes sense that people think data is not a story, it just looks like a bunch of random numbers. If the person who has the data is interested in sharing it with the rest of the digital community, they have the ability to make it into a story. Interpret the data, explain the patterns or lack of patterns. If there is no pattern to the data, they could try to explain why. My point is that I think anything can be a story if it is explained and interpreted well.

Here is an example I found of digital storytelling: [(https://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/index.html#/?part=tunnel-creek)] It is a story released in 2012 about the avalanche that occurred in Tunnel Creek. I think the event is really well described and they created a very good digital story from it.

I think it is great that they made it so accessible to the public. People are able to participate and learn the program fairly easily which allows a great amount of people to participate as well as enabling a large target audience.

As seen in any literature, the possibilities are endless but I do worry about the person who made that cannibal dating simulator game. Like what type of thought process had to occur for someone to think of the idea and then actually preform the necessary steps to make it a reality. Anyways, this idea of Twine creating interactive story's for the reader to feel more invested seems like a great way to actually teach younger children. It makes reading into a game and promotes actual interactions and understandings of the material. Development in this industry is huge and will continue to be huge as long as creativity never dies (WHICH IT WON'T)! I can already tell if I had read "The Hound of the Baskervilles" as an interactive story through Twine, I would have instantly had been more invested as it would have felt like I took the decisions to get to the conclusion of the story. As I said before, Twine seems like a great tool that can be used to teach children and even any other age range specific things or just retell stories with a twist.

I think new developing technologies, especially within the gaming industry is really exciting. Having more people participate in the formation of different video games just means more video games, made by people like myself, usually just for the sake of enjoyment. (Which is my favorite type of art). Of course you might end up with bad video games here and there, but I think it's overall more of a positive move for humanity, and gives more people a chance at enjoying video games.

I find this statement is very parallel to storytelling in a digital medium. As this question of ‘what isn't and is a video game’ is already being asked with storytelling.

Different types of art, like video games, are becoming much easier and more accessible to people because of rapidly advancing technology. However, this new method of creating video games may appear disheartening to those who have studied, worked hard, and attended school for it, as if all the effort they put into learning their craft has been abruptly overtaken by a new programme.

This is how I feel as an artist given the increase in stunning AI-generated image artwork. Why spend hours creating something when a cutting-edge piece of digital technology can create an original image that's arguably better looking than my art in only a few seconds? I believe that as new digital storytelling technologies are created, adapting to them seems to be the only viable course of action. Changing similarly to how people went from writing by hand, to a laptop. Digital technologies are made to arguably make our lives easier.

As it may help in maintaining humanity and its narratives within a digital medium, I believe the value of digital humanities will increase in the future. Knowing that our mediums were developed with intent is, in my opinion, one way to preserve their "authenticity" as we go forward in the digital realm. Regardless of whether you use Twine or another technology that saves time, your intent will still be apparent in the finished product. Instead, artwork created by AI or other machine learning software is based on keywords and lacks the same level of intention as a human artist.