Choose Your Own Bar Stool Adventure
The Apple-Gizmodo saga has certainly raised eyebrows over the last few weeks, and brought up various issues of journalistic integrity. Though a myriad of outlets have covered the story, none have provided a take as amusing as the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style hypertext account by Dan Nosowitz.
From the beginning, you can choose to dismiss the whole story as a publicity leak (resulting in a Game Over) or continue listening to hear more.
It’s interesting how the denial of content through the game over mechanic greatly influences your decisions and alignment within the story. This is true of all games to some extent, but a simple shift in which decision constitutes a game over easily sways what the player must think if she wants to continue the narrative.
To be fair, this exists in other forms of media as well—one can always choose to close the book—but the conspicuousness of this decision in games is unique and interesting in its relation to the player-avatar connection.
But don’t take my word for it; Nosowitz offers a straight narrative of the saga for comparison with the hypertext.
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