Here is Tanya’s entry for Task 5: Twine Task:

Tanya Weder – Twine Task

And here is my entry:

Task 5: Twine task

Tanya and I took very different routes to complete our Twine Tasks. Tanya had used Twine before, I was a beginner. Tanya had a specific learning objective, I went in with no defined purpose. Tanya wanted to create something that could be useful outside of this course and applied to her work, I went in to create something solely for this task. Tanya planned out her Twine game/story on paper before creating the Twine, whereas I created in Twine as I went along. Tanya used if/then statements which created a linear appearance to the structure of the Twine, whereas I used linking back and forth, which created a Twine that appears much more complex or ‘messy’. Tanya also incorporated different fonts, text colour, and multiple images into her Twine, whereas I only incorporated a few images, and they were not as integrated with the text; more text-then-image versus Tanya’s use of text-surrounding-image.

Despite seeming to be very different, and certainly taking very different approaches, we both end up with ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ style stories, that play in very similar fashions. How can this be? Even our Twine programming flowcharts are visually dramatically different. Tanya was able to use more advanced programming, which created a more visually appealing and simple-looking design to her Twine, but the end result of the game is similar. If I were to do create another Twine, I would try to do it her way! The interconnections of my Twine layout proved very difficult to manage when I was creating the game. Two very different approaches ended up creating two games that share fundamental similarities, and I believe that this shows that the semiotic language of this text technology clearly impacts and affects what is created when communicating using it. This is a real ‘ah-ha!’ moment! The text technology we use, or choose to use, very clearly alters the communication and language we create with it. Some text technologies, like Twine, may end up creating content that is very similar in many ways, although not all, as you can still use Twine to create something very different from what we came up with, but it might require intentional thought to do so. Some other text technologies, like word processing, may have less dramatic and obvious impacts on the output – but they still exist.

Even though the ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ nature of our two Twine games are fundamentally similar, the content is of course still very different. Perhaps this is important to note. The text technology may have more impact on the form and structure of the content than on the content itself, although the content can’t be completely isolated from the form and structure, as one informs the other.