New forms of literature

I still think of electronic literature as more of an art than as literature. And again, while I don't feel art and literature are mutually exclusive, I still tend to interpret forms of electronic literature as I would interpret art, instead of doing close readings of passages to find meaning as I do with conventional print literature. Bogost’s argument that “similar principles underlie both contemporary literary analysis and computation thus intrigued me. I must admit I zoned out when he started discussing game theory, as that was never my strong point in the past. As I continued to read part one, I simply became more and more confused, as the different system units scrambled together in my head and began to look like physics so much that my brain immediately dismissed the concept as one incapable of being understood by one such as myself. I skimmed through the rest of the passage with mild disinterest, and moved on to some of the actual games. I didn’t understand them either. I stayed on Nelson’s “nothing you have done deserves such praise” much longer than any of the other games, and only lasted about two minutes on Lialina’s “My Boyfriend Came Back From the War,” even though that one seemed to tell as much of a story as the first – if not more. The latter seemed like more of an interactive novel, but I am more accustomed to having all the words right in front of me when reading literature. This was also the reason I gave up on Nelson’s first game after the fourth chapter; the pace of the character and its journey was too slow for me. In this way, I suppose electronic literature in relation to print literature is the opposite of common perceptions of electronic devices and their usage in relation to more traditional means, as it is often said the Internet has shortened the attention span of our generation by handing information to us in massive, easily accessible quantities.

"Videogames rely on a foundation in the industrial arts. " -Bogost