I’m considering reviewing some narrative games for my first assessment task.

Firstly, I tried ‘Coffee Talk‘ (Steam, n.d.-a) which is described as a “Visual Novel” (Steam, n.d.-a). I played for about 45 minutes and found it relaxing and amusing but the characters were dull and I found myself thinking, “if I were reading this, would I be interested?” the answer is no. It’s not as engaging a narrative as ‘Before The Coffee Gets Cold‘ (Pan Macmillan Australia, n.d.) and lacks the charming idiosyncratic characters of ‘Midnight Diner’ (Wikipedia contributors, 2023, May 21). I’ll probably save that for a rainy or sick day. Arguably, I’m applying a standard of interest or literary merit here.

Next up, I tried ‘Papers, Please‘ (Steam, n.d.-c) for 45 minutes or so. This one was quite stressful, if witty and ironic. You play as a border guard and, even with my limited exposure, it was clear that the rules would get increasingly complex and the moral dilemmas would start to stack up. This game has multiple possible endings and has been praised for teaching empathy and being artistic (Wikipedia contributors, 2023, June 21). It has some promise but I feel I’d need to give it a lot of time to fully experience it. More than a novel? I’m unsure! Some state it can take between 5 and 16 hours (How Long To Beat, n.d.)

Lastly, I gave ‘Legal Dungeon‘ (Steam, n.d.-b) a spin and completed the introductory case. This one is the most recent (2019) and it felt slick and intelligent. My own experience led me to see it as a kind of management simulation for police and legal investigation. I thought it was good but it wasn’t so much the literary experience for me, more of a training or tutorial.

After these ‘toe in the water’ experiences, I’m unsure if I want to use these as my subject of review. I may try some other games of this type but I feel like I’m looking for something that sits further away from games.

References

How Long To Beat. (n.d.). Papers please https://store.steampowered.com/app/914800/Coffee_Talk/

Wikipedia contributors. (2023, May 21). Midnight Diner (Japanese TV series). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 11:28, July 24, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Midnight_Diner_(Japanese_TV_series)&oldid=1156091185

Wikipedia contributors. (2023, June 21). Papers, Please. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 11:16, July 24, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Papers,_Please&oldid=1161158207

Pan Macmillan Australia. (n.d.). Before the coffee gets cold. https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781529029581/

Steam. (n.d.-a). Coffee talk. https://store.steampowered.com/app/914800/Coffee_Talk/

Steam. (n.d.-b). Legal dungeon. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1013750/Legal_Dungeon/

Steam. (n.d.-c). Papers please. https://store.steampowered.com/app/239030/Papers_Please/

Cover design: The Designworks Group, Nate Salciccioli

I picked up this book to help me settle into the ETL533 course. It’s from 2008, so has some limitations. However, it provides a good overview of the history of ‘elit’ up to that point and some of the key issues and implications of the various forms under the ‘elit’ banner. The author’s focus is on works that examine the philosophical aspects of digital works, so many of those discussed verge towards experimental or metafictional works or, indeed, textual artworks.

Hayles contends throughout that all texts are digital now and that human subjectivity is being reformed by the digital landscape but also that we are doing a disservice to elit by continuing to use the tools of analysis, criticism, and teaching imported from print media. Curiously, Hayles ends by looking at three print works (one of which I know and love) that have embraced their ‘digital’ nature and played with it to interesting effect. As such they seem to sidestep making predictions for the increasing popularity or impact of the types of literature they spend most of the time discussing, in order to make a point that print books will explore the potential of digital creation and changing natures of readers. It’s not clear that is the case in 2023.

As a literature and philosophy student, I enjoyed the author’s explorations. However, as a teacher, I feel there would be limited interest in the types of digital and experimental literature she discusses. It has led me to reflect on my perception that many of the readers I see at my school, both the voracious consumers and the seemingly ‘aliterate’ are quite conservative in their reading preferences. They seem much more focused on narrative than poetics or metafictional playfulness, something that was a big thing for me in my own late teens. I am wondering if some of the postmodern nature of webcomics and video games that students I see do enjoy, is actually almost invisibly subsumed into the work and taken for granted. As such they may not find some of the elit Hayles discusses mentally stimulating, more likely the opposite.

References

Hayles, N. K. (2008). Electronic literature: New horizons for the literary. University of Notre Dame Press.

This post was originally published in the ETL533 forums

I decided to narrow this down to an area of particular interest: webtoons. This interest emerged from my own context where a) students sometimes recommend webtoons to me b) I have read print comics and found some of the peculiarities and even (as I saw it in print) deficiencies of their layout are likely a direct result of first being published online/as webtoons c) finding that books I couldn’t get from my local library or bookshop last year were being fan-translated online, and that this was also happening with comics.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the popularity of the phenomenon internationally (it is Korean in origin), there is a range of research about or connected to webtoons and, happily, from my perspective, much of it is positive about the potential and benefits of the form.

Lynn (2016) provides a background to the growth of webtoons, citing the technological, economic and political conditions and support that helped but weighting the quality and diversity of the form as decisive. Cho et al. (2022) explored the appeal of webtoons and found they provided many of the emotional, personal, artistic, and habit-forming benefits associated with or hoped for from print but supported this with appeal factors unique to the form, highlighting especially the community and cultural aspects. Kim (2023) studied non-Korean webtoons fans and found they weren’t just reading for pleasure but explicitly using the form to teach themselves Korean, embodying out-of-school and transnational multimodal literacy. Similarly, the activity in webtoon discussion forums was examined by Jeon (2021) to provide examples of how these digital texts formed a basis for cross-cultural discussions about ethics, social justice, and understanding, something like English teachers often hope to do with prescribed texts.

Webtoons also provide or inspire as a platform for creative work. Nam and Jung (2022) talk about how the fan translation process has social, linguistic, career, and personal growth benefits, all dimensions we would hope for in education. Shim et al. (2020) highlighted the participatory and decentralised nature of webtoons and web novels, reminding us of the attraction of these forms of reading and creating. This was also the topic of Yecies et al. (2020), who, from a more economic perspective, were interested in the innovation that comes from harnassing a motivated fanship ‘crowd’ for collective work. In a more specific case, Yu et al. (2023) experimented with a multilingual text to image platform, similar to AI, where learners created narratives but were motivated by the webtoons aspect.

Thinking about the types of readers that enjoy webtoons, it was pleasing to see Nam and Jung (2022) looking at reading habits across multiple platforms and noting that the webtoons readers they spoke to are academically successful, globally-engaged, flexible, and multi-dimensional readers, which likely goes against the stereotypes some (still) have over comics readers both off and online.

Flipping to the teacher’s perspective and thinking about how some of my own colleagues are resistant to both comics in general and digital reading of any form, Loh and Sun (2022) say educators can support adolescents’ reading by being knowledgeable about digital resources like webtoons. For them, there must be a holistic ecosystem approach that allows readers to personalise their reading experience, rather than be constrained by ‘just print’ (Loh & Sun, 2022). By expanding our definitions of reading, and the types of text we use and discuss, we can address concerns about a decline in reading for enjoyment.

Based on these readings, I would like to review a webtoon for my first assessment task. It has been instructive to realise that my own prejudice against webcomics, coming from my preference for print comics, is not so different from my colleagues’ general prejudice against all comics. I would like to explore the form and its unique qualities, even though, as an outsider to the community not engaging in the discussion, translation or creation, it occurs to me that I will be missing much of the appeal.

References

Cho, H., Adkins, D., & Pham, N. M. (2022). “I only wish that I had had that growing up”: Understanding Webtoon’s Appeals and Characteristics as an Emerging Reading Platform. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 59(1), 44-54.

Jeon, A. (2021). Care as a Border‐Crossing Language: The Webtoon Reader Discussion Forum as Mediascape. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 64(6), 657-664.

Kim, H. (2023). ‘I read webtoon every day!’: young adult k-pop fans’ language learning and literacies with korean webcomics. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 14(1), 104-118.

Loh, C. E., & Sun, B. (2022). The impact of technology use on adolescents’ leisure reading preferences. Literacy, 56(4), 327-339.

Loh, C. E., Sun, B., & Lim, F. V. (2023). ‘Because I’m always moving’: a mobile ethnography study of adolescent girls’ everyday print and digital reading practices. Learning, Media and Technology, 1-20.

Lynn, H. G. (2016) Korean webtoons: explaining growth. Research Center for Korean Studies Annual, Kyushu University 16, 1–13.

Nam, J., & Jung, Y. (2022). Exploring fans’ participation in digital media: Transcreation of webtoons. Telecommunications Policy, 46(10), 102407.

Shim, A., Yecies, B., Ren, X., & Wang, D. (2020). Cultural intermediation and the basis of trust among webtoon and webnovel communities. Information, Communication & Society, 23(6), 833-848.

Yecies, B., Yang, J. J., & Lu, Y. (2020). Korean webtoons and collective innovation: expanding Europe’s creative industries through competitive localization. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 33(4), 459-473.

Yu, K., Kim, H., Kim, J., Chun, C., & Kim, P. (2023). A Study on Generating Webtoons Using Multilingual Text-to-Image Models. Applied Sciences, 13(12), 7278.

This post was first shared in the ETL533 forum

As I was working through the readings my thoughts were being drawn toward what the writers were doing with their tools and criteria for assessing digital narratives. Firstly, as my interests are not so much directed at digital picture books, I was skeptical if the advice would apply to other digital genres or formats, arguably not.

Besides that, there are some themes suggested in both Yokota & Teale (2014) and McGeehan et al. (2018), that again may be born from the advice being specific to picture books for teaching, especially picture books that are ‘originally’ in print and then ‘enhanced’ digitally.

Firstly, what might be called ‘the primacy of print’. Both articles have a theme of reassuring the reader/teacher that ‘the old standards apply’ and should be considered first. The reassurance is that educators need to ‘remember the basics’ and don’t need to learn a whole new approach, instead of being distracted by the bells and whistles of digital. This reduces the potential or newness of digital texts to create new approaches in education.

Secondly, digital picture books must be everything print can be and more, they must build upon or enhance what a print book can provide, in order to be of value. That seems fair but it also implies that a digital text cannot be of value because it is different, that, effectively, it must be like print but better. An analogy here might be that of equality vs. equity in education or society: judging everyone by the same standards may be equal but not equitable. It may also be the case that saying digital narratives need to conform to how children learn to read ‘in general’ may actually mean ‘how children learn to read in print’. Again, this might be appropriate for enhanced picture books but restrictive when applied to other interactive literature or digital literary experiences.

Lastly, there is a tone of threat and control in the two articles.  Teachers are positioned as being on watch for inappropriate, frivolous or ignorant (developers) use of digital features. The conclusions of McGeehan et al. (2018) are almost entirely negative. It concerns me that the digital is then positioned as something teachers need to be on watch about, that it could sneak in and damage education.

Behind these thoughts, inevitably, is my own context. As a Teacher Librarian a lot of my purchases and library sessions are about getting and sharing materials that readers (not ‘students’) enjoy for pleasure, rather than for study, so it’s fair to say that seeing these criteria that focus on educational benefits rarely apply, as I don’t check my own purchasing decisions against educational criteria but a pleasure/interest/developmental/diversity criteria as the library must represent the users. My belief is also that any materials of interest can be used educationally as well, based on how educators use the materials and students’ interests, rather than any intrinsic ‘educational’ qualities of the text; that the education in the conversation and application, not the text, necessarily.

References

McGeehan, C., Chambers, S., & Nowakowski, J. (2018). Just Because It’s Digital, Doesn’t Mean It’s Good: Evaluating Digital Picture Books. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 34(2), 58-70.

Yokota, J., & Teale, W. H. (2014). Picture books and the digital world: Educators making informed choices. The Reading Teacher, 67(8), 577-585.

Reading through the introductory and first modules made me realise I have some familiarity with the mechanics of digital literature but don’t yet have the language to discuss or analyse examples. Like many people my age (46), I grew up playing video games, many of which used a lot of text. I was also a kid who loved the ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books, and recently re-read some and got some students at my school interested in them. Similarly, I remember talk about ‘hypertext’ narratives back when I was studying English Literature and people like Jeff Noon were discussing it. I’ve also had an interest in what may be called ‘ludic’ fiction, such as Cortázar’s Hopscotch (Wikipedia contributors, 2023), and feel that many if not all stories are ‘meta’ works in that they are layered with references to other texts, from Shakespeare and Don Quixote onwards.

All of which is a rambling way of saying I feel like I’m already into or primed with an orientation for this ‘stuff’ and ready for a deeper exploration of digital literature but… My own recent experience is pretty limited.

I enjoyed using the Yalinguth app (Piantoni et al., 2021), for instance, but that was something I did for my own personal benefit. Within my work I have not yet had a chance or made a chance to use digital literature, mostly presenting eBooks and audiobooks. Although I have also modeled and assisted students with making their own poetry collections in Book Creator and making mystery and suspense podcasts.

Looking to the future, I am involved in helping shape a Y9 Creative Writing unit for T4 this year, looking at including generative AI, and feel that could be useful as inspiration here. I would also like to take some of our units beyond the usual response tasks like writing reviews, making presentations or posters. There must be more ways to include a storytelling response, for example.

References

Piantoni, M., Hunter, C., Woolmore, C., Bundle, R., Nicholls, B., McLean, R., Barker, C., Cawley, K., McGaw & J., Wallis. (2021). Yalinguth (L. Massari, G. Braybon, N. Goodman & T. Buckley, Illus.). Apple Store OR Google Play. https://www.yalinguth.com.au/get-app

Wikipedia contributors. (2023, February 21). Hopscotch (Cortázar novel). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:43, July 12, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hopscotch_(Cort%C3%A1zar_novel)&oldid=1140795810