Week 10: Inspiration & e-lit projects

    My project & Twine chatbots

     A large part of my inspiration for my final project was the conversational hypertext I did my analysis on, Hanna Feels by David Inglis. I enjoyed these two aspects about it the most: (one) how it was able to tell a story that was mental health focused & that inspired empathy and (two) how it used a conversational approach to tell the narrative through chat messages. Using this project as my inspiration, I really want to make my final project as a chatbot made in Twine. I plan on using the story format Trialogue to portray the look of a chatbot in which the user can choose from a preset of options to send as a message. I haven't really thought of a story yet, but I am interested to see how I will end up making a narrative play out with the affordances & constraints of telling it through a conversation. 

    "Customer Service Chat" by Christy Tucker

    This is an example of a chat bot that was made in Twine, much like the one I want to make. It is a model of a conversational hypertext with the story format Trialogue that I downloaded. It is a story about a water companies' service agent who has to help a customer with recent charges to their account. The user can choose from a couple sets of messages, and they vary in how much attitude the customer service gives to the customer. I played out two runs, one being civil and one being disobedient, and I think it's funny to see how rude the customer can be. The author, Christy Tucker, wrote a behind-the-scenes article where she said that she made the story in Twine in about 2 hours. I think it's very impressive and we'll see how I do with this using the tips in her article.

    Her article: https://christytuckerlearning.com/how-i-built-a-chat-simulation-in-2-hours/ 

    The game: https://christytuckerlearning.com/wp-content/uploads/files/customer-service-chat.html 

    "C ya laterrr" by Dan Hett

    This isn't a chatbot but is another powerful peace that I found in my research for inspiration. It is a biographical piece which tells the heart-wrenching story about the death of Dan's brother in 2017, who was a victim of the Manchester Terror Attacks. The story uses real text messages from Dan's life and shows the narrative all through Dan's  (or the user's) phone. I played a bit, and it was a moving experience.

    The piece: https://danhett.itch.io/c-ya-laterrrr