<html><strong>porpentine:</strong></html> Noun <html><em>(plural</em></html> porpentines)\n\n1. <html><em>(archaic)</em></html> porcupine. (Wiktionary)\n2. trash princess | queer tranarchofeminist | guro witch | cyberqueen | crystal torturess | sapphic frotmind (Porpentine's Twitter bio, @aliendovecote)\n\n<<back>>\n\n\n
[[INTERESTED]]
This is reinforced through [[repetition.|repetition2]]
This is reinforced through repetition and slight, subtle [[changes.|changes]]
But there isn't any flavor, is there? Two words does not a flavor make. It can be "citrusy fruitlike" or "umami," but it's always an illusion -- always still a nutrient bar, something false and packaged and processed.\n\nCheap ramen noodles ostensibly come in different flavors, and if you pay attention, you can tell. But who wants to be in a position to know the differences? And even if they taste [[wonderful]]...
<<set $reasons = $reasons + 1>>And I can't understand that. Whether or not //howling dogs// or //Digital: A Love Story// should fall under some rigidly-defined conception of "game," they are wonderful, beautiful things that should be enjoyed and celebrated.\n\nAnd I don't understand kicking them or their authors out of the clubhouse just because they seem to like slightly different forms of media than we do. Are we scared? Is it because many of the authors of these games are not //straightwhitecismales?//\n\n[[Maybe.|why is howling dogs a game]]
"And it was later said they had burnt a saint."\n\n[[...|except that]]
//howling dogs// is a complete, coherent work. It uses the medium perfectly to do beautiful things. It has to be in Twine, and it demonstrates the effectiveness of the medium without ever falling to the level of a glorified tech demo.\n\nAnd it meant something to me. Spoke to me, personally, in a way that most [[games don't.|games don't]]
"Interesting" is the worst word in the English language -- it means nothing. To be told, as an artist, that your work was "interesting" is the lowest insult.\n\n"Interesting" is bland, emotionless, blurry. "Interesting" is ennui.\n\n"Interesting" is shallow consumption, unable to provoke even the slightest response.\n\nEverything in the simulations becomes "interesting," after too much exposure, after you've been there too long.\n\n<<back>>
My wife came home after her internship, and brought with her a puppy, my first puppy, our first pet.\n\nAnd things were better than they were that summer, but still I spend too much time in the activity room, not enough time looking for jobs, not enough time making art or writing essays or even just going outside.\n\n[[This has to change.|This has to change]]
[[LESS]]
I jumped into the activity room and stayed there, not showering, never shaving.\n\nI only left the house to drink at a dive bar with friends, maybe once a week, or to play //Arkham Horror// with another friend.\n\nThe games were good. The movies were good. The books were good, but they did not have much savor, because I was escaping, not enjoying.\n\nAfter a month of fruitless searching, my wife and I decided I should be writing, looking less for a job and focusing more on writing.\n\nAnd yet I wrote very little from August to October. Nothing for my own website, nothing for anyone else's.\n\nBecause it wasn't as [[interesting|ahead of myself]]
A Eulogy for Kuranes
Declaring these things "not games" is often another way of removing them from the discussion, of saying that they're not worth our attention. Gamers have a bizarre need to enforce the boundaries of the medium, because the boundaries of the medium are also the boundaries of the culture. Gamers are the only group I know that identify themselves based upon the medium with which they are most familiar.\n\nThis is not a new point -- while some folks call themselves "film buffs" or "big readers," it's less a statement of communal identity than it is to be called a "gamer."\n\nSo, saying that X "isn't a game," is tantamount to saying "and X shouldn't get to play in our clubhouse."\n\n[[And this is worrisome.|worrisome]]
a {text-decoration:none !important}\nbody { color:rgb(255,255,255) !important }\nbody { text-align:left; width:70% !important }\nbody { font-size:75% !important }
Some of the games you like, some you don't. Some are silly, some are serious. Some you find repulsive.\n\nSome of them offer you choices.\n\n[[This way|choiceless]]\n\nor\n\n[[That way|choiceless]]
THE END?\n\n[[How Interesting!|THE END]]
Here is my eulogy for [[Kuranes]], given in hopes that he may some day find his way back [[home.|THE END]]\n\n
[[BUT]]
Let's get this out of the way.\n\nAre you nervous and/or unhappy that I just referred to a Twine-construct as a "game?"\n\n[[Yes|why is howling dogs a game]]\n[[No|don't worry about it]]
All stories are fantasy -- all stories take place in worlds different from our own.\n\nEven the most "realistic" story is fundamentally different from the real world.\n\n<<back>>
We talk a lot about Twine saving the world, but I hadn't yet read any games that were really worth the [[hyperbole]]. Neat games, to be sure, but not revolutionary -- not world-changing, not Great Things.\n\n[[But now I have]].
There's no real reason to throw away the food wrappers and water bottles, it's just polite. Keeps your room clean — maintains an atmosphere of cleanliness and self-respect. If you don't, your room is described as becoming increasingly dirty.\n\nThe trash simply goes somewhere else — it's a long chute, and you can't hear the [[bottom.|bottom]]
<<set $places = $places + 1>>"They're delicious," the game says, and then that's that, you're back in the activity room, going [[back to sleep.|Pulses]]
Not in some hack desire to be politically relevant ("This is an allegory for racism/sexism/AIDS/the Palestine-Israel conflict,") but because it speaks to something more than just itself while also working as a story all on its own.\n\n//howling dogs// isn't just a story about some futuristic, [[soporific hellhole.|trapped in your house]]
[[Wittgenstein]] was aware of it long before videogames were a thing. So the truth is that while it might be more accurate to subdivide the category of "games" into a variety of sub-categories, perhaps reserving the term "game" only for a certain set of those, that would involve radically changing the way the word is used in common discussion.\n\nAs it is, while <html><em>howling dogs</em></html> and things like it are substantially different from most of the games I listed earlier, I'm not convinced they're so different that they can't belong in the same category. They share in the [["family resemblance."|subdivisions]]
Porpentine is one of them. She wrote a [[long piece|http://www.nightmaremode.net/2012/11/creation-under-capitalism-23422]] for Nightmare Mode detailing how Twine allows [[minorities]] to fight back against gatekeeping, to fight back against capitalism.\n\nThe current resurgence of Twine is always surrounded by this kind of language -- Twine is the tool of the oppressed to fight back against the capitalist system of producer/consumer in art. Twine's relative simplicity and incredible potential allow for people to make brilliant works of art without having to pay for expensive schooling.\n\nThe language is often [[hyperbolic]].
But whatever changes your choices make in the game, they change nothing outside. Shepard lives or dies but you are still alone in your house.\n\nJoan of Arc may burn a saint or a victim, but you are still trapped in that featureless, decaying room. Trapped and aware that you're trapped and becoming\n\n[[MUCH]]
No, this is not the way out. It's simply a way to get rid of your trash, to keep your room clean.\n\nBut you can't keep your room clean, because, like everything else, the trash disposal [[stops working.|Summary]]
Kuranes, who dreamt of the city of Celephaïs, and abandoned his life and body to reach it in his dreams.\n\nKuranes, who became the king and chief god of Celephaïs, but later wished to return to the England of his youth.\n\nKuranes, whose body had died, who was trapped in the city he dreamed of and unable to return to the real world.\n\n<<back>>
<<set $places = $places + 1>>They haven't, not really. \n\nYou're back in the chair, back in the activity room, back in the trash-filled bedroom. \n\nYour choices -- your glorious victory or tragic defeat -- changed nothing [[here.|Pulses]]
So, what's our motivation for <html><em>not</em></html> calling <html><em>howling dogs</em></html> a game for ease-of-use? Since we're not writing super-precise academic papers, <html><em>which we're not</em></html>, why do we care so much?\n\nWhen, in the comments of a Kotaku piece or even an OntoGeek piece about <html><em>Analogue: A Hate Story</em></html> or <html><em>Dear Esther</em></html> or <html><em>howling dogs</em></html>, we see folks protesting that the thing in question "isn't a game," it becomes not just a statement of pedantic definitions, but a <html><em>statement of cultural boundaries.</em></html>\n\nAfter all, if it's not a game, what business does Kotaku have [[covering it?|not games]]
If you confess your sins, you die alone and unmourned, almost casually. But if you stay defiant, the room is hushed, and people come to see you burned, the executioner almost cannot do it.\n\nAnd then, my [[favorite line]]:
I have spent the last six months at home, not far from unemployed.\n\nMy wife was out of town at an internship, a thousand miles from home.\n\nI was alone, and [[mostly out of work]], and felt guilty and awful and powerless and...\n\nSo I played a lot of videogames, and watched a lot of television and movies, and even read some books.\n\nI jumped into the [[activity room.|bill activity room]]
<html><em>howling dogs</em></html> is a [[game]] made in [[Twine]] by a person named [[Porpentine]].\n\nIt's a bizarre, wonderful, beautiful, sad thing. It may or may not be as good as I think it is, but it hit me, hard, right in the face.\n\nLet me try to explain [[why.|Summary]]
So you stop showering, stop noticing what you're eating, don't even go outside any more, and you just keep consuming these games, trying to find some way to keep yourself interested but you know it's futile.\n\nYou have to [[get out.|get out]]
<<set $places = 0>>I anticipated perhaps a basketball court or even a full-fledged holodeck, back before I knew what <html><em>howling dogs</em></html> was about.\n\nInstead: "A reclining chair in a dark room with a visor hanging from the ceiling."\n\nThe chair is reclining -- comfortable. Easy. You can abandon your physical body.\n\nIf you've nourished yourself on nutrient bars and small bottles of water, you have no choice. Upon entering the activity room, you immediately "pull the visor over your head," and "squeeze the drip tube between your teeth."\n\n"Sickly sweet fluid floods your mouth. [[Pulses]] fire into your retinas."
I am not a member of a minority. I am a straight, white, cisgendered American male. A Christian, even!\n\nSo I sometimes feel as though I'm trespassing when I do stuff in Twine -- as though this tool is "not for me."\n\nBut [[that's dumb]].
Great science fiction or [[fantasy]] is made of more than just fun stories in some new or bizarre or wonderful setting.\n\nGreat sci-fi [[means something.|sci-fi means stuff]]
[[IN ANY OF IT]]
Next you lie in a bedroom with your lover, trying to decide whether or not to answer the phone that lies, vibrating, beneath the sheets.\n\nBut try to ignore it though you might -- eventually you [[answer the phone.|answer the phone]]
Bill Coberly
You are in a jail cell, "cut off from the passion of religious women." You have been here a while, starved and losing track of reality.\n\nYou are probably Joan of Arc, though the game does not say so in so many words.\n\nYou prepare for your [[trial.|trial]]
<<set $reasons = 0>>A Eulogy for [[Kuranes]],\n\nA review of Porpentine's //howling dogs,//\n\nby Bill Coberly.\n\n[[Start|<html><em>howling dogs,</em></html>]]\n\n
The lavatory has a shower, the shower the one moment of respite in the featureless dark haze that is reality. It is "wet space, warm space, flowing space."\n\nThe shower stops working halfway through.\n\n<<back>>
Eventually you attend a festival for dreaming, where you take opiates and have marvelous dreams.\n\nThis leads you to a wall of text full of beautiful language, every other word a link to another passage, //nearly// all of them reading [["How Interesting!"|interesting]]\n\nI did not click on all of them -- there are too many, all in one paragraph, hard to read. I clicked four or five and then skipped the rest, opting instead to "drink deep" of the dreamliquid and sink into a dreaming sleep, ending this simulation and returning me to the activity room.\n\n<<set $places = $places + 1>>This will be important [[later.|Pulses]]
And that drives your lover to kill you, but here the perspective is confused -- are you the phone-answering man in the bed? Or are you the woman who strangles him with a knot of rope? Or perhaps you are the knot of rope itself? Or are you some other, unnamed third person, some friend of the woman?\n\nI'm not sure. I think maybe you're [[all of them]] at once.
<<set $reasons = $reasons + 1>>I don't even think you have to much extend the term "game" to include <html><em>howling dogs</em></html>. <html><em>howling dogs</em></html> features interactivity, a branching storyline, choices, art, and programming. The only meaningful differences between <html><em>Myst</em></html> and <html><em>howling dogs</em></html> are that one is presented primarily through text while the other is presented primarily through graphics.\n\nSo, if <html><em>Myst</em></html> is a game, so is <html><em>howling dogs</em></html>.\n\n[[Very well.|why is howling dogs a game]]
Because how many times can you rescue the princess or save the galaxy or shoot the badguy or even have\n\n//genuinely moving emotional experiences about the human condition made by minorities//\n\nbefore you realize you are still trapped in your goddamn house and haven't [[changed a thing in the world?|changed]]
The room is bland, boring, familiar, detail-less. There is nothing here to focus on except the photo, in which the player becomes much less interested after each activity.\n\nThis is reinforced through [[repetition.|repetition1]]
I get a little tired of the rhetoric sometimes, but you know what? It's okay to be excited about something. Twine is really, really neat.\n\nAnd that's [[exciting!|brilliant]]
In the cell, the [[featureless]] metal room, systems are breaking down, the room is becoming filthy, and you stop bathing. Things are getting [[worse.|worse]]\n\n<<if $degrades gte 2>>It is this interplay, between the gradual failure of the systems, the drabness of its description, and the vivid and fascinating stories in the activity room that make this game work, and, more importantly, make it start to [[mean something.|mean something]]<<endif>>
<<set $places = $places + 1>>Something happened last year -- the man did something to the woman, something which changed her, something which simmered and boiled and festered until she killed him for it.\n\nHe trapped her in that blank and empty house, a house without secrets, and you, whoever "you" are, can help or simply watch, but for his sins he dies, and she runs, barefoot, out the door and onto the moor.\n\nAnd then it's over, and you're [[back.|Pulses]]
You're still eating [[ramen.|nutrient dispensers]]
<html><em>howling dogs</em></html> is [[brilliant]].
So here's to //howling dogs//, and Porpentine, and Twine.\n\nHere's to the future, and falling out of the [[activity room.|eulogy]]\n
This has to change, needs to change, before I sink in deep and become unable to see anything but that I am awake because it is most interesting that I am [[awake.|So]]
"Consider for example the proceedings that we call [['games'.|Wittgenstein games]] I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games and so on. What is common to them all?--Don't say: 'there <html><em>must</em></html> be something common, or they would not be called 'games'-- but <html><em>look and see</em></html> whether there is anything common to all.--For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to <html><em>all</em></html>, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that." -- Wittgenstein's <html><em>Philosophical Investigations</em></html>, Section 66, translated by G.E.M. Anscombe.\n\n<<back>>
Most attempts, even academic ones, to pin down a precise definition for the word "game," one with clearly defined boundaries, end in futility. Especially in common parlance, we use the word "game" to refer to a wide swath of things, many of which have relatively little in common with one another.\n\n<html><em>Mass Effect, Myst, Civilization V, Call of Duty, Braid,</em></html> and <html><em>Street Fighter</em></html> are all uncontroversially called "games," even though they have about nothing in common. Some feature strict narratives, others no external narrative at all. Some are played by oneself, others primarily with others. Some show the rules to the player, others attempt to hide the number-crunching as much as possible.\n\n[[This isn't a new problem.]]
It's probably best for you to just go play the game. <html><em>howling dogs</em></html> takes maybe thirty minutes to [[play.|http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/howling%20dogs.html#2m]]\n\nIn <html><em>howling dogs</em></html> you are trapped (intentionally? against your will?) in an endless, banal cycle of VR simulation and featureless, gray reality. You are in "A room of dark metal. Fluorescent lights embedded in the ceiling." There is not much to do here: a [[lavatory]], [[nutrient dispensers]], [[trash disposal]], a so-called [["sanity room"|sanity room]]. There is a [[photograph]] of a woman, someone important to you (lover? sister? wife? mother?) pinned to the side of your bunk, and a clock which displays how many days you've spent here.\n\nBut most important is the [["activity room."|activity room]]
You can't go into the activity room without eating and drinking -- it refuses to work if you go in on an empty belly.\n\nThe food is in the form of "nutrient bars," wrapped in plastic. The [[flavor]] is chosen at random from four or five different options.\n\nThe water comes in little bottles. Halfway through the refrigerator stops working and the water becomes tepid.\n\n[[Back|Summary]]
"You no longer see the appeal of this photo." \n\nYou have forgotten the subject and now only see some strange piece of paper with an image on it, an image much less vivid than those in the [[activity room.|Summary]]\n
Twine is for everybody and nobody ever said people like me couldn't make neat art in Twine. \n\nAnd if anybody ever did say it, well, that person would also be dumb, and not worth listening to.\n\n[[Back|Some folks]]
There is a photograph on the wall, of "Her." When you start, you remember her. You wish the photograph was better -- "Every day you think of ways this photo could have been improved."\n\nAs time goes by, you think less of her and more of the photograph, more of the object, less of the subject, until eventually, [[tragically]]:
Every year we have all these games that we exalt for being different, but are nevertheless incoherent or [[mediocre]].
There is a way out, another ending to //howling dogs//. Hidden deep in the mess of links during the Empress "activity" is one which does not lead to "How Interesting!".\n\nFollow that link, stay focused on it, and you can get out.\n\n[[MAYBE]]
<<set $degrades = 0>>A flash of random colors, and you are in, into the simulations, the interesting places you can pretend to go, and the interesting people you can pretend to be.\n\nHere, in the games-within-the-game, you experience vignettes -- stories more obviously interesting than the cold, drab room with the fluorescent lights.\n\nThere are six. In order:\n\n[[A garden.|Garden]]\n\n[[A bedroom.|Bedroom]]\n\n[[An orbital strike coffin.|Coffin]]\n\n[[A jail cell.|Joan]]\n\n[[A palace.|Empress]]\n\n[[Finally, a square of silver leaves.|Silver]]\n\n<<if $places gte 6>>Were this the whole game it would be interesting, but it's not. It's also what happens in the cell, each time you come back, until you [[don't.|Degradation]]<<endif>>
At the end of the day, call it what you want. I will call //howling dogs// and things like it by the name "games," because I think it's useful, inclusive, and accurate.\n\nBut however much this may offend your ludology, try to see past that. Whatever //howling dogs// is, it's brilliant, and it would be a shame to miss it because of a category [[dispute.|brilliant]]
The blogosphere is full of discussions about what is or is not a "game." We've inherited a semi-academic fascination with defining our terms, which is, at first glance, kind of a noble goal. The problem, however, is that the games-blogosphere is <html><em>not</em></html> academia.\n\nI'm not going to waste too much of your time trying to explain why I think it's helpful to use the word "game" to describe things like <html><em>howling dogs</em></html>. But I have three main points:\n\n"Game" is already kind of a [[useless term.|What's in a game]]\nDeclaring <html><em>howling dogs</em></html> not to be a game has [[cultural ramifications.|cultural ramifications]]\nAnyway, <html><em>howling dogs</em></html> is [[totally a game.|totally a game]]\n\n<<if $reasons gte 3>>[[And, in conclusion:]]<<endif>>
Twine is what this review is written in -- an easy-to-learn mechanism for creating hypertext documents, often employed to create hypertext fiction, like <html><em>howling dogs</em></html>.\n\nTwine is exciting because it is free and relatively simple to learn. You can jazz it up with various HTML and CSS gadgets to make it as complicated as you want, but you can also create a very simple game using almost no coding.\n\n[[Some folks]] talk about Twine as though it's going to save the world.
A room designed to help you maintain your sanity which mirrors that sanity's decline.\n\n"Immersed in a room where every surface is glowing screen," you see pastoral scenes, at first. Meadows and bamboo and aspen trees.\n\nBut as the rest of the rooms (prison? spaceship? house?) degrade, so too does the sanity room. You get a discomfiting simile (Mesas like "shaved teeth"), and then dead pixels here and there, and then pure red panels with low white noise.\n\n<<back>>
The problem is that some of these games still aren't very //good.// \n\n//Catherine// is about relationships instead of killing people (Yay!), but it's also terribly plotted, weirdly sexist, quietly transphobic and, worst of all, [[boring.|boring]]
Trapped in your house, unable to leave because you're scared or tired or depressed, you seek refuge in screens -- in complicated narratives and beautiful vistas, in experiences you could never have and relationships you have always wanted.\n\nYou escape into the Xbox, into the computer, into the [[Activity Room.|escape to the activity room]]
<html><em>howling dogs</em></html> is not one of [[those games]].
Why doesn't anyone fix anything? You can't, maybe you don't know how. The clock says 367 when you start -- if this refers to a number of days, you've been here over a year! Are you imprisoned? Lost? Forgotten-about?\n\nTrying to shower or eat twice in one session gives you a message about the conservation of resources being necessary for "mission success." What is the mission?\n\nIt doesn't matter. As your sanity degrades, so too does the room, the real room, the only one that really exists.\n\nThe trash piles up, the sanity room is broken.\n\n<<set $degrades = $degrades + 1>>There is nothing left to do but try the activity room again, try to escape this foul-smelling [[mess.|Degradation]]
This is a claim about me, not about every Twine game in the world -- I'm sure there are other just as good, I just haven't happened to read them yet.\n\n<<back>>
Is this maybe the Empress from the later simulation?\n\n<<back>>
<<set $places = $places + 1>>A beautiful garden which you are asked to describe in one of three ways, choosing the "character" you are playing for this brief vignette. \n\nDescribe it aesthetically, and the [[Empress|reference maybe]] has it preserved, where the plants are discovered either to be opiates or to be terribly annoying weeds which overflow the rest of the woods.\n\nDescribe it bureaucratically, and the garden is cut to regulation, and you can see the city.\n\nDescribe it horticulturally, and you think of it again later after your mother's funeral, and duck through to find prisoners brought in and the garden being pruned.\n\nShort and pretty. Interesting -- you want to know more.\n\nBut then it's over and you're [[back.|Pulses]]
Through the fog you hear the words, and you have a choice -- that choice put to all the heretics: to confess your sins and renounce your heresy, or refuse to bend, staying defiant until the end.\n\nYou can shout back at the inquisitor, tell him how very wrong he is -- stand defiant and proud, or meekly admit defeat.\n\nBut either way, [[you burn.|burn]]
If you object to the morbid violence, the game sputters and takes you somewhere else -- tea with a "charming and influential socialite," who isn't all there -- in her description, if you mouse over the sentence describing her face, it vanishes.\n\nYou can't look at her too long.\n\nYour only action is to [[try the biscuits.|biscuits]]
We get excited in games-crit whenever we find a game that is Different. \n\nA game which breaks the rules we're used to, or actually tries to tell us something as players, a game which is not content just to wallow in the same muck of derivative, boring dreadfulness. \n\nA game which treats us like [[adults.|adults]]
Very good. Some folks are, you know!\n\n[[Let's go back to the main review|brilliant]]\n\n[[Well, now you've piqued my interest|why is howling dogs a game]]
Did she find you somehow in that featureless metal hell and pull you to safety, or is this just another level of simulation? Did the activity room just realize it needed to make things more [[interesting?|interesting]]\n\nAre you damned to do this over and over again, or are you free? Are you stuck somewhere down in limbo with Dom Cobb, or enthroned in sweet Celephaïs with Kuranes?\n\n[[Does it matter?|does it matter]]\n
<<set $places = $places + 1>>There is very little detail here, and very few lines. You consider going back to sleep before realizing: "I am awake now because it would be most [[interesting]] to be awake."\n\nYou have fallen -- unable to distinguish real-life from fantasy, fantasy reduced only to "interesting" distractions, never satisfying, never reaching you, always fleeting, always blurry. \n\nTry to look at them and they fade -- try to mouse over the text and it vanishes.\n\nLife goes on this way, blurry and pointless and, worst of all, "interesting."\n\nThis is game [[over.|Pulses]]
Transcription work, from home, typing-typing-typing, staring at a screen, listening to the drone of far-off voices and reifying them onto a Word document before sending them off into the ether never to be thought of again...\n\n//earnings calls and lectures and business meetings and earnings calls and conference calls and tax discussions and lectures and earnings calls//\n\nand so on and so on.\n\nIt's good work, I'm glad to have it. It's much better than no work.\n\nBut there isn't often enough of it, \n\nand enough of it hurts my hands and starts to fray the edges of my brain.\n\n<<back>>
Deep in the mass you realize the ambassador is going to try to kill you, but you can run, and if you do -- if you run, you meet a woman in a mask who kills the ambassador, and then all the walls turn back to the featureless metal walls of the real world and you run together, into the wild unknown.\n\nShe takes off her mask and she's the woman from the photograph, and you run forward, onward, into something new.\n\nBut you have to stay focused -- several links, descriptions of the decomposing world, put you back in the chair, back asleep, back to the pale silver leaves and the endless blurriness.\n\nAnd if you follow her, the woman from the photograph, are you [[really]] out?
A grotesque parody of a certain kind of violent game -- dropped in coffin-ships onto a planet, you swing your bone-scythe in a violent raid and collect living souls for your bone-sparrow back home.\n\nIt's ridiculous, but if you told me it was from a Warhammer 40K sourcebook, I'd probably believe you.\n\nIt's also the only simulation which you can [[opt out of.|opt out]]
The player is always right -- there are no wrong choices in games. \n\nThe NPCs will always exalt the player character as wonderful and special, the best of them.\n\nThe player is [[always right.|dreaming]]
Incidentally, the German word for "games" which Wittgenstein uses is <html><em>Spiele</em></html>. The verb for "play" is also <html><em>spielen</em></html>.\n\n<<back>>
<<set $degrades = $degrades + 1>>Each time you eat a nutrient bar, all that changes is the flavor -- the fourth or fifth time you probably don't even notice the different flavor. The food is just food, something you have to do before you can get back into the activity room.\n\nThe water becomes tepid, signalling the gradual degradation of the system, but it's a one-word change, easily missed. Did you even [[notice?|Degradation]]
Missives come from your subjects, and you must issue orders to soldiers and ministers and farmers. Regardless of your choices, of how merciful or terrible they are, your actions are sanctioned as [[Wisdom Invincible]].
The palace is yours, and you are the Empress of a mighty empire, still a child, with a Sign marking you who you are -- one of your feet has no flesh, and is only bone.\n\nThere they teach you how to die, for all the Empresses are murdered. Once you are ready and grown, you assume your throne and [[rule the Empire.|rule]]
Sure, you can subdivide <html><em>howling dogs</em></html> and other things like it into a separate category like "interactive fiction," or further into "interactive hypertext fiction" and so an ad infinitum. And there's value in that, when you're trying to be super precise.\n\nBut generally, I don't see any good reason not to lump <html><em>howling dogs</em></html> in with the rest of the "games" for common usage.<<set $reasons = $reasons + 1>>\n\n[[Very well.|why is howling dogs a game]]
Maybe none of this has anything to do with //howling dogs.// Maybe if Porpentine ever reads this she'll scratch her head and wonder what the hell I'm talking about.\n\nMaybe it's about something else entirely.\n\nBut it struck very close to home.\n\nAnd I finally got Twine, understood why it was [[worth it]].