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• 1 2019-11-13T14:28:16-08:00 Loss Of Life 5 A recording of some game play plain 2019-11-17T22:15:26-08:00
  

  The screencast above is gameplay corresponding to the digital work known as The Dead Tower. This recording shows the players looking around and taking in the scenery at the beginning of the game. The recording itself shows a multitude of interesting details which authors Andy Campbell and Mez Breeze implemented. When the camera pans around from the viewpoint of the protagonist, the reader is confronted with a series of interesting things, firstly the apparent darkness of the world that surrounds them is instantly recognizable. This darkness helps to make the brightness of the floating stanzas that surround them clearer, this contrast between the darkness of the surrounding and the brightness of the words are what call the reader's attention initials but when you look around for a second time and consider the smaller details another reality comes into light. Instead of just seeing darkness with floating words the reader is able to discern a bus crash sight with broken objects strewn around the bus. This detritus in consort with the flipped bus and the ominous lighting lead to an inevitable conclusion relating to the author's overall theme of loss. The scene surrounding the reader is one of death, this fact is accentuated when specific aspects of the recording are taken into account. Within the trash surrounding the accident there are bones and a few skulls. These discrete details in conjunction with certain floating stanza ie. “crAshed. bus[+them, all carved + format_dangerous].” lead to the inevitable conclusion that there was a loss of life. The text’s ability to convey this concept as well as the impact it has on the reader really on the text’s capacity to be explored. “Beyond Merely telling stories as traditional narratives do, digital games allow for enactment and provide a systems-level rule set for the story’s logic.”(Flanagan and Nissenbaum PG. 4). As stated by this quote interactive works of media have the ability to enhance a user's experience and allow them to gain a deeper understanding of an author's message, in this case, the underlying theme of loss throughout the text The Dead Tower.