unforum

[shamrock_on]

Showcasing ARGs/interactive fiction in a literary journal?

[notgordian]

Figuring out how new media could be integrated into the magazine relies in large part on the parameters of the journal. Will it be online-only? If so, that makes it easier to integrate hyperlinking into the storytelling process (moreso if the author can lay out numerous "pages"). Is it print? If so, knowing the size of the journal might help, since any integration of graphics / multimedia would have to be considered, as would the color / black and white choice. If it's both print and online, that raises other issues of either ensuring the story is appropriate for both media or creating different versions.

Since ARGs (and IF) in particular rely on the medium of expression used, these factors play a more salient role than they would normally. Thus, the inquiry becomes are you looking for placing ARGish/IFish experiences in the journal, or are you looking for stories about those subjects (see transmedia books like Cathy's Book, 39 Clues, Skeleton Creek and Level 26 for examples of the former, see Tim Pratt's Artifice and Intelligence and Walter Jon Williams' This Is Not A Game for examples of the latter).

As for more scholarly works and case studies on games, there are a number of journals that have published similar pieces in the past. In that case, the inquiry is more into the nature of your journal's editorial process, and what media you permit as examples.

Sorry if this doesn't provide much actual guidance...just some things to think about.

[shamrock_on]

I appreciate your response - things to think about help as well.

Yes, the journal is going to be online-only. I agree that trying to get new media into a print journal would come with many obstacles in trying to preserve the "feel" of it. Since we'll be online-only, I thought that it might be a good opportunity to try to figure out how to present IF and/or ARGs in a more academic context. I understand that "publishing" an ARG isn't really possible. I suppose I was thinking more along the lines of publishing a clue or a puzzle or something that went along with an ARG as part of the storytelling process and maybe getting an "inside" explanation of that piece of ARG, how it goes along with the rest of the story, whatever.

I'm mostly looking to place ARGish/IFish experiences in a journal. It's pretty impossible to publish an ARG, but at least with IF, it is possible to publish a work in its entirety online. We're interested in the writing processes behind both ARGs and IF and how that compares to traditional writing and storytelling. We are supposed to include interviews in our journal, so maybe that would be a more appropriate approach that makes more sense for ARGs and IF. New media, transmedia, insight to the creation of ARGs and IF...we're looking for how that might fit into genre fiction (mostly fantasy and science fiction).

It's definitely a challenge to wrap my head around the idea, but I'm willing to work at it if it means that I can successfully include ARGish/IFish experiences in our journal. There's a lot to think about how to actually publish these things and I'm trying to find a jumping off point. I realize now that the ARG and IF communities are a bit more separate than I thought -- I took a New Media class last semester and we touched on both, so in my head, they're a little closer together, at least in the ways they seek to tell stories. Before taking the class, I had no idea that ARGs or IF existed. I've since become really interested in both and I'd like to be able to get ARGs and IF out there to others who've never heard of it.