Creative
After reading through N. Katherine Hayles’ essay “Electronic Literature: What is it?,” I found her discussion on video games and their role in interactive fiction to be somewhat lacking in regards to their creative potential for a narrative. If the essay was older, I would feel more lenient in this aspect, but since it was published in 2007, there would be a wide variety of games out there that played with the narrative form in more ways than what Hayles details. For example, she never mentions visual novels, which are a genre of video games that very much function similarly to more traditional literary forms. In addition, while she mentions “visual displays, graphics, animations, and clever modifications of traditional literary devices” in her essay for what video games add to literature, she never addresses how video games, and interactive fiction by extension, allow for the player to change the narrative for themselves and craft an ending based on their own choices throughout the story and gameplay presented (Hayles). Games can allow for multiple endings and thus for people to shape the narrative on their own. In this way, games have the potential to creatively play with their narrative and not just follow a specific streamlined plot like one would have to in other creative mediums, like in a movie, TV show, or novel. Because of this omission, I feel that Hayles does a disservice in representing how, through video games, electronic literature can further break the conventions of how typical narrative operates and bring even more options to the literary landscape as a whole.
As a last thought, I will suggest some video games here that involve choices and/or multiple endings like I have discussed here! My suggestions would be Undertale, Silent Hill & Silent Hill 2, Dragon Age: Origins, The Stanley Parable, the Zero Escape Series, NieR & NieR Automata, Until Dawn, etc. I would list more, but there's way too many. Also, since I briefly mentioned them, my recommended visual novel series would be the Zero Escape, Danganronpa, and Ace Attorney series. Anyway, thanks for reading! ~ Ultimate Sith Lord
