Blog

Liam Coomey

Brennan distinguishes between digital history and digital public history based on who the site is aimed for, and how it displays its information. According to Brennan “public digital humanities work requires an intentional decision from the beginning of the project that identifies, invites in, and addresses audience needs in the design”. In short the data must be easily accessible and understood by the public who interact with the site. If a digital history site does not go out of its way to do that, then, despite the work being public facing, it is not public history.

Remembering Rondo is an example of Brennan’s idea of digital public history because it both involves the community it is about, and is easily accessible to the general public. According to the article, Remembering Rondo is a “community-based, student-driven, collaborative digital archive”. It is giving a voice to the “stakeholders”, the people personally affected by the history on display. They also go out of their way to inform people about this history project, with community outreach groups and fundraisers, promoting a public interest in their site/project.

First Blog Post: Do It Yourself Digital Tool Assignment

So, I decided to try the interactive Twine game tutorial for the assignment. I have played online twine games in the past, and I really think that the interactive aspect of games, even simple ones such as these really aid in audience engagement with the material. They are more likely to be drawn into the material and actively think about it rather than passively consuming it, or lose interest. The YouTube channel Extra Credits does a really good job at explaining various aspects of game design, how they can be used, what their effect is, and how they can be used in education. Jacob Gellar also does very good video essays about deeper themes and stories in various video games.

After the introduction I started to try and create my first twine game. I didn’t really want to bother coming up with a real story yet, until I really have a hang of twine. So, I just named it test1 for now. Similarly, in the first passage I just used lorem ipsum. The interface for twine has apparently changed a bit since this tutorial was crated, so some of the controls were a bit confusing. I also didn’t realize that clicking play had opened a new full screen window, so I thought I had locked myself out of the build screen for a few minutes.

Figuring out the rest of the branching narratives and choices was pretty easy from there. Then came the macros. This is definitely the most complex part so far, but probably the most important part. You need stakes for any sort of game. The players need to feel like there is something to lose and also some kind of reward. They need consequences for their choices in order to get invested. This would probably be the hardest part of actually designing the game from a strategic point of view as well.

I had a bit of trouble figuring out where to put the (set: blanks) at first. I wasn’t sure if they were supposed to go after the passages, or the choices. The tutorial didn’t exactly do a great job explaining or showing that. I figured it out eventually though. It goes at the end of the passage and before the next choice.

After that the rest was pretty simple, if a bit time consuming. Adding more choices and what they would do with each variable, each eventually leading to different endings. I would have to think that if I was truly designing the story then this would quickly balloon in size. Each variable and each choice you add to the story increases its size exponentially, since you would have to fully write out each branching path. The best solution to that would probably be to ensure that many of the paths circle back to the same core spots later on before re-branching out.

Following that, the rest was just quality of life and user interface instructions. Stuff like how to change the background and text color, and how to introduce multi-media into the game. This would be really useful at increasing engagement for the audience, both in drawing them in, and in keeping them interested. However, I really didn’t bother much with it yet, since I don’t really have a story that would need pictures or colored text yet.

I really do appreciate how they made sure to include how to save your story. If they didn’t, then I probably would have accidentally deleted it by forgetting to save it, which would have been unfortunate.

Final verdict: Good tutorial, and a useful program to create interactive media, but more complicated than you would think at first glance.