As this
semester of college draws to a halt, it's yet again time to adopt a new
identity. This time, it's a new digital identity. As I take a look back
over my blog, I start to realize how much sarcasm and humor I have been
injecting. I realize that this is my blog. This is a digital manifestation of
me and my thoughts of video games. Even though I always see some level of good
in everything, I can't help but feel the need to find the holes and plop a
needle inside. I also recognize how fond of technology I am, but everything
will have a flaw of some degree. I notice in several of my blog posts how I
make jabs at modern technology like a humorist, but always take the time to ensure
that everything with the humor aside can still make sense. All of these add up
to me becoming an online humorist (honing in on technology). Specifically, this identity was strongly
inspired by Cracked. Specifically, this site inspired me with the
way that it can make articles humorous, yet at the same time, isolating humor
from their articles doesn't make them any less fulfilling. They inspired me to write with a humorous tone in my blog, and overall helped me to create my identity.
With
this blog, I wanted to make something unique. One of the first essays we were
assigned to read was Mark L. Samples “What’s Wrong with Writing Digital
Essays”, which pointed out to me that my blog didn’t have to be formal. I of
course felt like writing an actual blog (or diary, as I see them) would be too
dull, and I didn’t want to bore myself while writing. I decided to take my
inspiration from Cracked, a website which often writes (in a formal fashion)
about the humorous side of life. They inspired me with the way that they aren’t
afraid to exploit America, regardless of how known the issue was. Take a look at their article on comically misfortunate incidents in war or
their Photoshop contest on exams to fix incompetency. All of
these inspired me to start venting on my blog, but in a humorous style. One of
my earliest blog posts on video game staples that were once accidents, I used a
humor style strongly resembling Cracked, which used exploitative humor, subtle
humor, and photo based jokes. For exploitative humor, I was mentioning how
gamers fascinated with Lara Croft’s rack created a modification to make her
completely nude, and instead of doing the usual favor of putting a link in
parentheses, I told viewers to get lost if they were expecting me to point them
to the download. For picture humor, I continued my tradition of using captions
on photos, such as in the last photo, I joked about text orientation. In the
area of subtle humor, I took a vein similar to Cracked and added in their
signature style of sentence extension. This is seen when I describe a
purposefully lazy game developer, and made it sound like after finishing up
with testing the game, heading straight to town to blow his paycheck. Basically
my blog took a strong likeness to Cracked and it ultimately ends out amusing
for me when I decide to reread my entries.
As for
my projects, I wanted to make my projects sophisticated, and unlike my blog, I wanted all of them to look like they were created professionally. One of my first projects
that I was proud of was a survey constructed for a speech class. The purpose of
the survey was to tailor my speech on media piracy to my audience. For this, I
created an online form that mimics market research surveys (and there is also this sheet containing all recorded answers). The tricky part of
constructing this project was making it easy to understand, but at the same
time formal. The form I constructed reflects the formal part of my online
behavior, as it shows how formal my writings can be, but also at the same time
how much understanding of a subject I can have. For projects in this
class, one of my best works was my interactive narrative ("The Stakeout"). This was designed in
the classic vein of a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, and my take on stealth
games. A major portion of the game was oriented not on telling a story, but
rather using the mechanics to tell the story. For instance, the first possible
ending was the classical “It was a dream” (because it has a history of flaring up gamers and makes them feel unsatisfied), which I used to force the players to
be adventurous. Another good point is that for a puzzle in the game, the only
difference in choices was a period replaced by an exclamation point. If the
player chose the option with the exclamation point, the game would continue on
into another choice designed to look like they did nothing wrong, but
regardless of their following choice, they would get caught by a guard.
Overall, this game demonstrates my ability of manipulating the digital medium
into making viewer’s wake up and start paying attention. While we were looking
at sample projects for the interactive narrative, "Fitting the Pattern" caught
my eyes. What it did was it redefined (one of the things the interactive
narrative so that rather than using a branching narrative, the story actually
invited the player to take turns with simple motions such as cutting off cloth
for a dress or bobbing a needle, and as actions were completed, more of the
story was revealed. This narrative inspired me for my next project to redefine
generative narrative. This project was “The Infinite Road Trip”, a modified
version of the “Taroko Gorge” poem. Taroko Gorge is a generative poem which
generates itself by picking from a predefined pool of words. Since I am not
exactly a poet, I decided to revamp the code so that it would tell a story
rather than a poem. My intention for this was to give viewers a look into my
mind, since I have ADHD (Autism). I wanted to vent out my mind, and this
project was the ultimate dumping grounds. According to my professor, I did this excellently, and to her, it was a digital writing should do. It should be your
mind. All of my writings dump my mind. From the sick humored mind of mine to my
opinions on video games to my various projects throughout the year, everything
reflects me. My entries are designed by me so that it is bearable for me and
fun for a viewer. My projects are designed to innovate and point to what needs
to innovate. My blog is designed to be a place where nothing generic happens.
Digital writing is not supposed to be boring (unless it is a research paper).
This blog is not supposed to be a webpage with words on it. It is the picture
of how I view video games, turned into a thousand words they say pictures are
worth.
-Jacob Bacci
-Jacob Bacci
My handiwork:
1.The
Generative Narrative Project- For this project, I chose to take the
Taroko Gorge self-generating poem and modified it heavily to tell the story of
what I feel like when I am on a road trip. As a person with ADHD (Autism), road
trips can make me feel extra squirmy and bored. That alone justified a theme,
since to me, a road trip feels like nothing more than an infinite cycle, and
since Taroko Gorge is designed to be a poem with an infinite cycle, I dived
into the code and made several adjustments that turned the poem into a story.
My intention with this was to share how I feel on road trips, and as my
professor noted, this project is a well-made look into my mind. This reflects
my online personality when it comes down to creativity, as I turned a peaceful
poem into a frantic poem about mental distress. Initially, I was planning on
rearranging the code, but since I already pulled most of it apart, I felt like
it would not be worth risking corrupting the entire project, and my professor
stated that she felt the project was done very well and pointed out several
parts which I did not intend, but ended up helping the project in a way beyond
what I imagined.
2. The
Interactive Fiction Project- For this project, I chose to make a text based game based on a
typical stakeout. I did not have any particular inspiration for this other than
the flash game Stealth Hunter and the classic "Choose
Your Own Adventure" book series, respectively promoting the theme of
stealth, and the type of path I wanted the story to branch into. I used a
different style of thinking for this project where the only abrupt endings were
used as a way of leaving players unsatisfied and make them try harder if they
wanted a more fulfilling story. For instance, the first possible ending was the
classic "It was all a bad dream" joke ending, which I used as a
device to redirect players into a more adventurous route. The only change that
I made to the project was correcting a misspelling in a choice. This can easily
tie into my online personality since it shows my love for telling a thorough
story with humor, which can be seen in several of my past blog entries.
3. (External Project #1) Accidents in Gaming (Blog Post)- This
post was designed with humor in mind, and also seemed to be the easiest one to
inject with irreverent/exploitative humor. I chose to modify it to have a sense
of humor and style similar to Cracked, and ultimately ended out making it more
sophisticated, but also ended up making the humor sharper. Ultimately, this
post seems to be one of the best posts for showing off the humor I incorporated
into my online personality, and the writing style used here is also noticeable
in many of my blog posts.
4. (External Project #2) Survey on Media Piracy- For a previous course
in Public Speaking, one of our speeches required that we aggregate data from a
variety of demographics. I created this 3-page questionnaire based off of how
market research companies usually format their surveys. This form was intended
to help me adjust my speech so that I could present the important statistics
and facts to students in my class. I decided to clean up the form in order to
alleviate any confusion the original form caused. This link will take you to the responses that I have
recorded (Several of the options may have not been chosen, as
there were additional choices added in to keep the form up to date.). This can
tie into my online personality as there was a great attention to detail in
making my form appear to be formal, yet at the same time, it would be clear and
concise, and I always tidy up my work to avoid loose ends.
The articles which
inspired me:
1. Fitting the Pattern- This was one of the
sample pieces our class explored as a way preparing us for our interactive
narrative. While this is an interactive narrative, it is not an interactive
narrative in the vein of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book, but
instead I viewed it as a sort of video game, since user actions helped the
story to progress. What really inspired me about this was how it added a new
picture in my mind to how I view interactive narratives, especially with how
the story only goes as far as the user wants it to go. On my next project, the
generative narrative, I took the generative poem "Taroko Gorge" and I
reworked it into a generative story "The Infinite Road Trip" based on
the concept of a story that never ends. Overall, this narrative helped me to
think outside of the box, and inspired my projects to take some level of an
unorthodox approach, and they ended out being hits.
2. What's
Wrong with Writing Essays-This Mark L. Samples post introduced me to
the various ways I could be creative in writing. It was with this essay
that I realized that I did not have be writing with the formality of a research
paper (but of course I chose to keep my blog's formality within reason,
especially since this was more or less a series of articles). This essay tied
into my online personality in the way that it inspired me to write my posts (or
articles) in a humorous fashion so that anybody who takes a look at the article
can feel thoroughly amused and overall helped me to keep humor as my fashion,
leading to my online personality as a humorist.
Overall, thank you for
looking at my portfolio. If you want to look at the rest of my blog entries,
you should hopefully be able to tell that I am not a comedian, but a humorist
who enjoys poking fun at various problems with video games. I hope that you
find my spin on digital writing to be unique, and that it might inspire you!
-Jacob Bacci
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