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• 1 2018-11-16T05:41:59-08:00 Characterization through Social Media 7 plain 2018-11-19T03:26:33-08:00 Immediately, Killing Time at Lightspeed takes advantage of the fact the player is likely familiar with its structure of social media in order to immediately engage and immerse them in the world it creates. For most interactive fiction games, this immediate immersion is impossible; players need time to learn the systems of the game and get a sense for the logic underpinning how the system responds to their actions. Jane Douglas points this out in the context of hypertext fiction, saying "The satisfaction you might derive from reading it is contingent to a large extent upon your ability to replicate a certain approach to the text" (133). In short, designers of interactive fiction often have to spend time teaching players how to approach the game before they can really engage them with the story. Killing Time at Lightspeed is able to mostly avoid this through a structure the player is already familiar with. The player will likely have an intuitive grasp on ways they can interact with the story as well as on feedback it will return. Because of this, the game can be immediately  start drawing the player in with familiar interactions between the characters. This quickly shows the player that these are their friends, and the player should care about them. This usage of familiar social media is most clearly seen with the direct messages the player receives on the first day, shown on the right, where the player receives well wishes from their friends, something they have likely experienced. This familiarity goes a long way to grounding the story and emotionally investing the player, so the game can later subvert it to create emotional moments during its conclusion.
  
  This emotional investment is slowly deepened over the course of the story by how each character's personality comes across through their posts. Killing Time at Lightspeed utilizes its format to great effect with its characterization of the people who post regularly. Information on characters in not only gleaned by what they talk about, but also how they do so, as well as how they interact with social media as a whole. This kind of layered approach to characters allows them to reveal traits in a way that feels organic and natural. The best example of this is shown by the character Alice throughout the game. Alice's first posts, shown left, immediately gives information about her from the fact that she chooses to use social media to lament the problems of modern technology, and from how she writes about it. She keeps her poetic voice through the entirety of the game, during which it is revealed that she is, fittingly, an artist. Finally, Alice gets characterization through her use of social media from a broader perspective. Specifically, as Alice's posts about technology grow more and more disillusioned, she eventually stops using social media at all, putting action behind the philosophy she talks about. While this kind of character building is exemplified by Alice, it is shown to some extent in most of the characters in the game. This goes a long way towards making them feel like actual people that the player should care about, and eventually leads to the emotional investment the game needs to create its eventual emotional impact.
  
  
  Ashwin Datta