Andy’s New Media Blog

One of the aspects of New Media that intrigues me after today’s reading is the idea that computer technology has the ability to create art that interacts with and can be directly affected by its audience. Unlike print, film or television, which are only capable of showing unchanging scenarios, computer based art forms such as video games potentially allow users to directly affect the outcome of their experience. This is interesting to me because video games are obviously a form of artistic expression, but still allow for radically different things to occur each time the text is revisited. For instance, Elizabeth Bennett will always marry Mr. Darcy at the end of Pride and Prejudice but when I put Grand Theft Auto III in my Playstation, there is literally no way to know what will happen.

This doesn’t quite hold up when one considers that all the choices and actions one makes in a video game are still completely limited to the game designer’s whims. Despite this, technology is increasing rapidly and allowing for the creation of games that allow for unprecedented freedom when it comes to user interaction. One example I am particularly interested in is Spore, a currently unreleased game being developed by the makers of Sim City. It will supposedly allow players to follow and affect a species from its birth as a single celled organism through their evolution into intergalactic travelers. Only time will tell whether the game lives up to its hype, but regardless of whether it succeeds, it still shows another step towards using New Media to craft experiences that allow for multiple outcomes in ways that traditional media cannot.