And that’s not a bad thing, I think — after all hypertext fiction was getting pretty lonely before game designers recently picked it up and claimed it as their own. But traditionally hypertext fiction and games have worked in very different ways — and have been aimed at very different audiences — and it’s just not useful to treat them as if they were identical for critical purposes. After all, if your definition of game is “an experience created by rules,” you could call buying groceries a game, or using the toilet, or sitting in a prison cell. It’s technically accurate, but doesn’t evoke any truth about the actual experience itself.

Look at the word “art,” a term which has gradually expanded to include so many definitions that it has become entirely meaningless. The word now only signifies an attitude, a vague sensibility, a certain high-culture caché — which is why most people avoid using it entirely.

So much for avoiding the discussion about semantics. I guess what I’m saying is that obviously I don’t support people saying “that’s not a Game” in the same way that tourists say “that’s not Art” when they visit the MoMA — that is, if the purpose is to exclude from some imaginary canon. But that’s not what dukope was saying. He was offering some thoughts on game mechanics — not at all dissimilar to past work done by Anna Anthropy — that might better support the themes of the story. I imagine he would not have offered those thoughts if this website were called Free Hypertext Fiction.

If we are discussing AEGIS WING as hypertext fiction, I agree with you that the structure did effectively evoke the sensation of remembering. But the writing just didn’t stir anything in me. I know Anna Anthropy’s not a bad writer, which is why I compared it to a love letter: something that one dashes off quickly without considering how it might read to a larger audience. If you find this story affecting because it reminds you of a relationship in your own life, that’s great. But I think you can recognize that for most people, sentences like “there’s a Twist(TM) – if our little spaceships fly near each other, they can attach, one on the top and one on the bottom, forming a larger, more powerful spaceship” may not exactly be finding the universal in the specific.

I don’t say this to be dismissive, and I’m all in favor of personal sentiment in games. But I think craft matters too.

People are saying, ‘this didn’t work for me…and therefore this isn’t a game/this game should have been a different game/my opinion is all by itself intellectual critique worthy of consideration.’

It’s fine if a game just doesn’t hit you — eg, you say this game played to you like it was alienating for anyone not intended as the recipient. I’m definitely not the recipient, but this game made me cry and over-filled me with love for my partner and made me so happy that other people feel that way for their partners too.

But I don’t think that me feeling that way (or any way) stands in for an actual critique. My critique is that I like how Anthropy used Twine passages of various lengths and loop-backs to simulate the way memories work, the way you can’t just remember *one* thing, the act of remembering branches and you don’t just remember a look or a game you remember your job during that game and the city where you saw that look and whether you were hungry or in mourning or elated or or or.

i wanna point out that i don’t agree with dukope that this would be better if it wasn’t twine. this game did what it set out to do perfectly well. just venting i guess.