9/15 Your Experiences with Altgames

So like a lot of people in the class, I decided to play "hair nah". The reason for this was because as someone who doesn't play a lot of video games, this was easier to play. I tried to play the a couple others like "don't bleed your pants" and "everything is going to be okay", but I ended up closing both those tabs and clicking for hair nah instead. The "don't bleed your pants" game, although interesting it seemed, was kind of complicated to play so I opted for a simpler game. The "everything is going to be okay" game was a bit of a visual overload for me, especially since I don't do well with a lot of neon colors and flashing lights (I can get headaches easily if I'm staring at a screen like that for a while). For "hair nah", even though it was repetitive, each level you went through had an increase in hands that you had to swat away (a visual aspect). I suppose the arrow key pressing was an interactive part of the game, and so was choosing the hair style and skin tone of your character. Even with something as simple instruction like that game, it gets competitive very easily and I found myself getting more engrossed in the game as I played on. Overall, I did enjoy trying out alt games and definitely look forward to exploring more.

I played a few of the games, mainly Hair Nah and the Diary. I also played don't bleed through your pants, but that one was honestly pretty confusing so I winded up closing it early. I'll talk about the Diary the game uses visual and aural, and minimal gestural ways of interactivity. Visual comes from the very bleak setting of the game, there's garbage everywhere, it seems to be an abandoned house, and you have to take note of all these surroundings to understand where you are at. The aural gesture comes from these audio clips that play on a laptop in the abandoned house. When you hear the girls tone of voice and the state of this house only two things really come into the mind, she either moved out or she took her own life. The gesture interactivity comes from actually moving your arrow keys in order to traverse around the abandoned house and selecting the audio clips. This game was sort of different from ones that I have seen, but also not extremely different. I've seen a lot of games that seek to tell short multiple stories like this with a plot twist or a moment that ties everything together. Regardless, it was still a nice and touching experience, and definitely raised my awareness on my mental health and others.

This week I played through the game "Don't Bleed Through Your Pants." As others have mentioned, one of the reasons I chose this game was its easy accessibility with playing in a browser instead of downloading a file to my laptop. This game also caught my eye as it is, ahem, that time of the month for me (no shame!), and so I was intrigued to see how this game would approach the subject of menstrual cycles. The game structure is very unique and effectively gets the author's points across, utilizing snarky, blunt commentary, a countdown to add time pressure, and background music to help set the mood. From an interactivity standpoint, the player can choose between three different game modes, Ninja, Survival, and Doctor, and each emphasizes a different aspect of menstrual cycles through snarky or blunt language

In Ninja mode, the user can attempt to go out several times to increase the happiness bar. However, doing so poses a risk, as menstruation can strike at any moment and if you are not ready to click on the toilet and run to the bathroom, you lose the game. Survival mode is similar but adds further user interactivity, as you can now select to wear (and replace) protective layers of tampons, diva cups, and pads, and either go to the bathroom / go out to events / try to catch some sleep. The final scenario, in Doctor mode, is that of presenting your medical case to a gynecologist by composing your argument with elements of research, symptoms, calm mannerisms, or emotions. In each of these modes, the user is able to interact with the options and put themselves in a woman's shoes. This website may be just a game, but to women this is our life. One wrong mistake, like thinking your period won't start overnight in your sleep, or surely your gynecologist will believe when you tell him your symptoms, could have awful ramifications.

The game I played was called "Hair Nah," which put you in the role of a black women who wants to avoid having her hair touched. The game structured interactivity mainly in the form of visual, aural and gestural modes. It uses visual modes through text, such as the intro, which explains the background story of the game. It also uses visuals when it presents you with the initial choice of the game, which is skin color and hair type. What this visual mode does is let the player know that this game is meant to tell the social issues that certain groups of people face on a regular basis. The game uses aural modes to annoy the user with questions, to help the player connect with the plights that the creator usually faces. Finally, the game uses gestural modes in the form of having the user wave the characters hands to block incoming unwanted hair touching. Again, this puts the player in the shoes of the character/creator, and the issues they face. This multimodal experience is meant to help the user empathize with the issues that black women face with their hair, by putting the user in a scenario that they have faced. This game differed from other game experiences that I have played before in that this games sole purpose is to inform and educate, it is not meant to entertain. While this makes it seem like it is not a fun game, I think that is the point. Having your hair messed with without your permission is not fun, and this game is meant to demonstrate that. It is similar to those old stories that people tell in order to teach a lesson, said story is not necessarily meant to entertain, but teach the listener something important. This game follows the same principle.

The game I played for thursday's class is 'Hair Nah'. It was a browser game that was easily accessible, which was easy to start off. The game starts with an introduction saying 'A travel game about a black women who is tired of people touching her hair'. This is a simple linguistic interactivity to let the players understand the context of the game. It continues with another text in which it uses linguistic, aural, and visual modes together. The game text box type font and color included with typing sound gives a more visual understanding that this is a game while stating once again there is a purpose to avoid unwanted touch. Before entering the game, there is two choices to make. One is your character's skin color and hair. It uses visual modes to give choices to the user. In my opinion, I would guess the use of such skin tone is to make the character familiar to the user itself so there is more connection between the character and the user. The game itself is very simple. The character stays in the middle and other's hand comes in with the aural modes of 'can i touch your hair' . Gestural mode is the main point of the game as once the hand comes with thee arrow or mouse, you can hit the hands away with motions and sound of it comes out once you do it properly. In general, I did not find much difference with games that I experienced before. Of course its different than money making video games, but as there are many simple mobile or web games nowadays, it wasn't to unfamiliar to me. However, one main difference was that there wasn't really any gaming aspect to keep the users playing or extra content. For example, these types of games usually use score systems to compete with other people. As this game isn't for such competition, the game is repetitive, but states its purpose clear.

I played the game "Don't Bleed Through Your Pants". The game "Don't Bleed Through Your Pants" used an aural mode by playing background music. The music intensified the interactivity. The game has three interactive modes - Doctor, Ninja, and Survival. These modes only last approximately 20 seconds each with the objective being not to bleed in your pants for the Ninja and Survival modes. The Doctor mode was more to tell your doctor that you are having period problems. Playing the doctor mode was frustrating, because the doctor did not believe me and thought I had a mental illness. I think the result was to show how it is difficult for women to open up to their physicians about their problems and for their physicians to take them seriously. The visuals in the game were also intense with images of blood all over the screen if you did bleed through your pants in either the Survival or Ninja mode. In the Survival mode, you had the interactive choice to use a Diva cup, tampon, or a pad to stop the flow. You are also graded on your happiness scale, but if you feed the happiness meter you can not run to the bathroom to change your cup, tampon or pad. Additionally, you can double up using a cup and a pad or tampon and pad. But you cannot use a tampon and cup at the same time for obvious reasons for females. This video is similar to video games I have played, but with a little ambiguity. I am not sure what choices I should have made to fill the happiness meter. Overall, this game did meet my expectations and ended up having one of those periods from a TV commercial. I think this game is great for the aspect that it tries to erase the stigma of periods and educates the viewers. It was highly interactive and fun to play for a bit, so for the most part it met my expectations.

The game that I decided to play is called "Hair Nah". This game uses linguistic, aural, visual/spatial, and gestural modes. That game uses linguistics by beginning the game with a background story that players can read. It uses aural because it features sound effects, and the voice of the main character in the game. For example, the hands in the game each ask a question such as, "Can I touch your hair?" The game uses gestures that allow audiences to move the hands out of the woman's face. Players are encouraged to use the left and right arrow keys. The game uses visual/spatial by featuring different cartoon-based graphics that features the main character, and players get to choose which location they would like the main character to be in. I am not a video game player, but this game differed from my expectation of video games. I never thought that a game with this ideology and storyline would be possible. Being a black, young woman myself, I understand the main character's concern of people touching her hair. I never thought that someone would think to make it into a game, but I have to remember that games depict our reality. It was definitely a fun game to play!

The game that I played is, "the ghastly specter has arrived" this game structure in interactivity by proving visuals, aural, and spatial. These actions made it easier for me to control the little ghost with arrows that are provided to me. Also, it had background music that seemed very appealing with the visuals provided it enhance my attention in entertaining me to keep playing. However, to get to this game, I first clicked on the game for "Everything is going to be okay" by Nathalie Lawhead's. When doing this it took me to another page where I had the option to download the application for mac or windows. I clicked on visit me where it took me to the ghastly ghost and see other options of games. Through this is when I found the "the ghastly specter has arrived" game.

How this was different too other games that I have played was by being more scary but intriguing. The little ghost will make a squeaky noise that will make the game less scary when going around with dead people and skeletons. I am used to playing games like street fighter and Pac-man. These games differ because you will join a challenge or have to go through steps in a game to get to another step that can lead you to a trophy. The game on my mac was more about going through from point A to point B having little opticals. It was also different because I don't play desktop games but actual games on home video games.