Interactivity
So I’ve seen two separate (and yet similar) webcomics go up this week from veteran creators, ones that involve a healthy dose of reader interactivity. Since we could all do with a good distraction, let’s take a look.
First up, David Hellman (of the still-revered A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible launched They Always Die on Monday — an improvised fantasy adventure that relies on reader feedback to determine the action. It actually started at the end of June over Twitterward, with an explanatory post on the site. Updates have occurred at intervals since, and what Hellman actually launched was a summary of what’s happened before — twenty or more updates all put up on the 7th, and providing a wide-ranging and fairly loopy story for your enjoyment. Get caught up and keep an eye out for the next installment.
The second (and somewhat more immediate) iteration went up Tuesday morning, that we might all tolerate Election Day more easily. Randy Milholland dropped the announcement and then the sole rule: turns last thirty minutes, with voting to determine the next action. At the conclusion of the poll, Milholland would draw the scene and set up the next poll. It was a bloody, funny, failure-filled affair and it was enjoyed by all.
Enough so that today Milholland announced a new Twitter account, with a more-than-slightly disturbing name: Uncle Randy’s Game. The first poll (running until tomorrow) will determine the genre of the game and this time the character will have stats and hit points, also to be determined by poll.
It’s that last that sets the next Uncle Randy’s Game apart from They Always Die, an earlier locked-room puzzle from Jon Rosenberg¹, or Ryan North’s occasional forays into crowd-driven Shakespearean choose your own adventures (most recently also on 8 November via Twitter poll) — stats! There could be dice. Instead of a path inevitably leading to disaster², there is now an element of randomness that could shift defeat to victory and back again.
Unfortunately, I’ve got work on Monday (and pretty much every Monday), so y’all will have to tell me how the game (at present, the most votes are for humor/scifi) goes. I’m betting there will be Space Marines and Facehuggers.
Spam of the day:
Get New Laser Eye Care Results
Unless this is about giving me laser eyes, I don’t care.
_______________
¹ Running on 5 September, it involved a featureless room, a table, a lightbulb, a pile of cocaine, and an increasingly bizarre plotline.
² Milholland listed eight different ways you could have died in his first game.
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