I found this set of readings/videos/games to be extremely interesting. I thought the games were fun, and I had an especially enjoyable time playing Aisle. I found that this might be the kind of game Montfort talks about when he says that one should pause and think before labeling interactive fiction as a game. Aisle seemed to fit better into the ‘work’ category Montfort describes it rather than a game. What I assumed to be the point of the interface was to gain an understanding of the back-stories of each of the different characters you become in Aisle. I do not think the author had a particular end in mind. Montfort even says, “It would be bizarre for an interactor to claim to have won [Aisle]. Aisle reminded be a little bit of Storyteller, a game we played earlier in the semester. The point of storyteller was just to move things around in order to see different endings to the story. I think that is exactly what Aisle was trying to do.
I felt the same way after working with both ‘Storyteller’ and ‘Aisle’ – both amused but unfulfilled at the end of my session. I suppose I did feel productive, uncovering more and more endings, but in the end that was meaningless, because there was no way to tell if I had found them all (In Storyteller, the possibilities were so few this was possible, but not so in Aisle). It is impossible to even manifest my own ‘end’ or my own idea of ‘winning’ to the game. This was incredible frustrating, so much so that I could not rest until I had searched the Internet to find alternate endings that I might not have thought of. Even worse, I could not find an official walkthrough or list of possible endings. All I found was an ongoing list of endings with an invitation to add your own if one was missed.
So, I suppose I will reevaluate my claim that the point of Aisle was to uncover the different possible back-stories for your character. Perhaps this is the point of the game, although it seems debatable, because there is no way to tell whether you have discovered all the available pieces of information from the IF. If it is not the point, than I am at a loss.
On a side note, I love the idea of Interactive Fiction. A person’s game experience can be completely different from interactor to interactor – depending on how they visualize their atmosphere. Although the author seems to paint a picture of one’s surrounding, much is still left to the imagination, making a lighthearted and goofy game to one person a dark and gloomy game to another. It’s genius how these game developer’s can utilize aspects from outside the game to affect the game experience. This also makes me wonder where that type of action would be categorized in Galloway’s four different types of gameplay….
You end on a really interesting question: where does the “action” of interactive fiction occur on Galloway’s quadrants. The actual typing of commands might be considered a non-diegetic player act, while the output—what happens after you press on your keyboard—would probably be best characterized as a diegetic machine act.
I think the its fascinating to look at the “action” of these types of games, specifically Aisle. I think, while the user input falls under the category of non-diegetic player act, and the output is diegetic machine act, it is possible that the diegetic player action occurs within the mind of the player. As the player sorts through possible courses of action or inputs, the game is unfolding in their mind.
In fact, it is possible that the “point” of Aisle is less about discover the “backstory” of the main character, and more about finding out how far the player will go to uncover this “backstory”. The fact that the “backstory” changes throughout the different “stories” that are presented, and they often seem contradictory and inconsistent, leads me to wonder if they are are even that important to the game. If the the mission of the player was to piece together these bits of history, they would need to fit together in the first place.
I think the designers of Aisle were much more interested in what occurs within the mind of the player as he engages the game than the history of the grocery shopper. That seems to be where the real “action” lies.