Daniel Spargo Week 5 Blog Post

 I loved how Rettburg looked at interactive literature as being seen as games. He seems to think that it attracts a different audience, making it beneficial for literature as a whole, and I would agree. I love games in many different mediums. I play console games quite often, which is almost like a form of digital literature. They tell stories through a combination of visuals, writing and dialogue. I think that hypertext becomes games when it engages the audience beyond simply reading the words to see a story. In my opinion, games become games when they are interactive, making the player make decisions. Hypertext has every ability to do this, as the hyperlink method can be used to ask players to make choices that will affect how the story moves forward. Their decisions have a direct impact on the outcome of the story.

My favorite example of this type of game is the Oregon Trail game. While it is not traditionally hypertext, it is a text based game that displays prompts and has players give inputs to make choices. It uses a simple system of odds to randomly progress the story along. A players decision may have consequences, or it may not. The game is quite engaging despite its simplicity, as the player develops a sense of responsibility for the family they are playing as. It may be a game, but it is just as much a piece of literature as it tells the story of a family's journey across the country during the mid 1800s with the supplies that you have chosen to purchase on their behalf. You may not be clicking on hyperlinks, but it functions in a similar manner to most other hypertext games, just with prompts and user inputs rather than links.