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Play It Again, Sam

September 2, 2014

Who would watch a program they’ve already seen? was the reason early television honchos gave when shooting down suggestions to re-air already-broadcast shows.

Our history of reruns has proven them wrong. Which, in many ways, should not have been a surprise. Repetition has long been a sideways component of art’s appreciation. It comes into play whenever one revisits a museum, listens to the same album, or watches a movie again. In fact, anything now considered a classic has its roots in repetition, both in appreciation by multiple individuals as well as repeated individual appreciations over time.

The same applies to video games. Regardless of type, voluntary repetition is a sign of success. From Space Invaders and Tetris to games with more “sandbox” capabilities such as The Sims, Minecraft, or even Grand Theft Auto, playing them over and over is how one appreciates them. Only — unlike other forms of art, such as the Odyssey, Michaelangelo’s David, Appetite for Destruction, or Breaking Bad — the empirical experience of playing a video game varies with every appreciation. In fact, one can argue any appreciation of any video game would be incomplete without multiple appreciations. That the appreciation of video games is in fact impossible if one doesn’t play them again and again.

And would this be the same with hypertext? After all, hypertext loses its “hyper” aspect if it is only read once. Until it is read a second time, hypertext is not yet different from a traditional text.

This is the matter then: how to write hypertext that will inspire additional readings. But is this only a writerly obligation? After all, we instinctively know to read traditional texts traditionally, i.e., beginning to end. But is (or isn’t) this “instinct” just a matter of training and practice? Haven’t we simply engaged in reading traditional texts for so long (and from such an early age) that it has become our second nature? And so with hypertext, do we even know to read it again (or at least try) or do we simply fall back on our “instinct” and read it only once?

Here’s the riddle, then: how does one write a work that readers may not yet know how to read? Furthermore, how does one write a work that the writer may not how to read? How much of the act of writing hypertext (at least currently) is nothing more than throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks?

Looking to reruns might not help. The rerun’s attraction is familiarity, sameness, predictability. Aspects that in many ways run counter to art, which aims to create the new and unexpected, to present a sense of fascination and discovery. Aspects that reruns don’t carry in spades.

So perhaps video games, then. Which carry a combination of unpredictability and repetition. The game’s context remains familiar: fields of play, rules of operation. What changes is the particular instance of engagement. The result? A combination of the familiar mixed with the unknown — a new experience in an established and consistent context.

This is, I think, the question: what is (or are, or can be) hypertext’s “context(s)?” What rules of play (or reading) can apply? No doubt a variety of options exist — video games range from puzzles to side-scrollers to first-person shooters to sandbox games. Television started off with variety shows before producing sitcoms, soap operas, miniseries, and game shows. Written art runs from poetry to short stories to essays to novels; the visual arts from oils to watercolors to lithography to collage.

Strange, I think, but what it seems hypertext is missing is categorization. That is — so far — the forms of hypertext remain a mystery. Although there are glimmers: choose-your-own adventure-style link-clickers, those which alter the text on a single page, or collections of thematic writing gathered from the public. But this is still in flux (after all, so far these forms haven’t been named). In many ways, hypertext still seems to be at an early stage of gestation. Hypertext has yet to be shaped. Trial and error might be the only thing that’s called for.

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