Galatea and Interactive Fiction

In our English 230 class we are working on Interactive Fiction, which is a game that is used by words to describe what is going on during certain events. In class we worked on three interactive fiction pieces; “All the Roads,” Galatea,” and “Whom the Telling Changed.” Out of these three interactive pieces, I had thought Galatea was easier for me to understand, and so I choose to write about it in my blog today. In this blog I am going to talk about two articles, one being Twisty Little Passage by Montfort and the other one is Interactive Fiction as Literature by Buckles.


Galatea, is a stone women who the reader, meaning you, is having a conversation with, the reader asks many questions and listens to her life. During this interactive piece you learn a lot about this character and the experiences that she has gone through, when she was stone. When you are talking to Galatea, there are many commands that are happening, when she types to you, it is called an output, because the computer is writing the text, but when you are writing the text, it becomes an input which Montfort discusses. And that gives you the back and forth conversations. These commands happen all throughout the Interactive piece.

When you begin this piece, you start off with a prologue, which is shown in the screenshot above, which is a description of the IF world given before there is any opportunity for the instructor to give a command, which Montfort talks about in her article, and it explains what is going on or about to happen. Here he talks about you, the reader(Montfort), walking over to meet Galatea and the first like she says, “They told me you were coming," and this as well gives you a brief description of where she is "sitting on a pedestal." There are many ways that you can play this game and many opportunities that are given to talk to her and ask her questions. When she talks about her life, listen to her and ask her questions about it, and also ask her any questions that you may feel could help with the conversation. A lot of the questions I had asked were about her maker and the stone that she was made out of, and then later when she I believe was comfortable I asked about deeper connections, like family, friends, love, to see what she believed and her experiences with it. And then I told her my experiences with family, and how mine are different then hers. There is a word that I can describe this game by and it is a first date, you are getting to know her and it is personal, and you the reader are trying to keep her interested and keep talking.

When she keeps talking to you and you get her to open up and move to front profile, which you can see at the top of the screen, then you are doing a good job. In this image above, the view is one-quarter profile. And when I mean front profile, when you start the game, she is not looking at you, he back is to you, but when she gets more comfortable she slowly begins to turn and then finally if she is very comfortable she might even sit with you and the bonding will grow stronger. But that is only if you find the connections to her and if you ask the right questions at the right time. This whole interactive fiction piece is diegetic which means; anything that is a part of the world of the story, because Galatea does not go out of the story like a Extra-Diegetic, which is not a part of the story. By Montfort telling this it explains the setting of the story because it does not change at all, which is said above.

When you are talking to her you are in the same setting the whole time, but it feels like you could be somewhere else because of the descriptions. When she talks about the water and her master she brings you to where she was made and the descriptions almost make you feel like you are there.


This game took me a while to figure out what to say to get her to open up to me, and there are many different ways you can talk to her, there is a help guideline, if you type the word “Help” in then you will be able to read the command that was given and in there is a website that gives you a cheat-sheet which will help you with how you talk to her, which is shown in the picture above. All of these are ways that will help you further in the game, so that you do not get frustrated. Once you figure out all of these hints and Galatea opens up to you will see how the game works and soon enough you will be getting to the end of the game. You know the game is over when you get the words “restore”, “quite” or “restore” and these words are called directives as seen in Montfort’s article, which is shown in the picture below. When you get to these words you know that you finished the game or if you left on your own.

My personal opinion of this game is that it is both a game as well as a story. I think that it is a game because it is a date in my eyes, and I think that you are trying to win over her and get her comfortable enough to open up to you. And you get here by trying different techniques on her just like you would do on a date. It could also be a puzzle because when you learn something about Galatea you could be trying to put all the pieces of her life together to understand what exactly she has gone through, throughout her life. This is a good way to look at the game-like aspect because then you will be able to learn and listen to her and put everything together to get an initial theme, which in this story I feel could be Galatea being lonely, because she didn’t realy have any one to talk to, just people looking at her. And when you finish the whole piece then you will be able to figure out what you feel about her and her life.


In Buckles Article with the link at the end of this blog says that the If has roots in, counterparts in various kinds of literature. And Buckles is right because in this IF piece there are types of literature, it was like a story and there was no stopping in talking, there was always a way to think of something when you are talking to Galatea and to keep the conversation going. And it is literature as well as a game because when you are on a date with someone you just don’t think of it as a game or puzzle but it is trying to find the right words to say and what she is going to respond to you. When you are playing this game you know that actions have consequences as well as the choices that you make, and when you are on a date or in this case talking to Galatea you are going to going to try to make the best choices that you can with your words so that you can impress her. And when you are going through the story you are learning about the character Galatea as well as yourself, and without literature that would not have happened in this IF piece.

Bibliography for the articles mentioned above:
Montfort, Nick. Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction. Fist MIT Press, 2003.

Buckes, Mary Anne. Interactive Fiction as Literature.

PowerPoint Software/Writer Response

While watching and reading electronic poetry, I never thought that I would have the capability to be able to create one of my own as well. Making an electronic poem is not easy, it requires, animation that flows with the description of the poem, sound that could possibly go with it as well, and images and creations that you will design. The only way I know how to use all of these creations is by going onto Microsoft PowerPoint and then start from there. Almost anyone can use this program, whether you are a computer expert to non-experienced with computers you can still use it, there are places where you can ask questions and it will walk you through the steps that you may need help with. While I was working on my animation that is what I had to do as well, because some things are difficult to understand while others may not be so bad. The poem that I wrote about was called sisters and was written by Shiv Sharma in importance of her sister, and when I had found this poem online I thought it would be perfect for my sister as well.

The visuals that I had used each have a specific meaning to this poem. The overall theme of this poem was sisters and I wanted pictures and details that my sister and I have done together and would have used. I searched my albums and choose recent and one older picture to show the audience about my sister and how I felt about her. I put each of the pictures with the text that I thought would fit it properly. For example, the saying “she doesn’t let you get, bored at family dealings; I had purposely put a picture of her and I being goofy on a day where my whole entire family was there taking pictures.


To me, this would show the audience that no matter what occasion it would be, something good and funny would come out of it, because my sister was around. I also used many other pictures and used them in that exact same way, to emphasize what was being said in the text. Another example could be, the saying “memories will last, miles and miles,” I put a funny picture of my sister and I, because it was a vacation that we had picked with my family, and that picture will always be remembered and is always talked about when our family talks about the past. I used these images in this poem because I thought that it would have a greater effect then finding pictures from clip-art. I thought that if I put each picture in a proper space then the reader would understand what my sister and I are like and what bonds we share together.


(The words on the right side of this image is all of the steps that was taken within this slide. It shows all of the animation that was portrayed within the words and the pictures. As you can see the image also shows a bunch of slides on the left, those slides are all of the other pictures/slides in my PowerPoint.)
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This image is from I-spring, it is a program where you can publish your PowerPoint and play it through. I captured a picture when I-spring was in progress and this is what it looks like. As you can see the words Beauty of a Dove are spread out and wide and that is because they do that right before it goes to normal in the PowerPoint, that is one of the animations, that was used for this slide.
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This picture shows the types of steps that were taken in the beginning. This is the fist slide of my powerpoint and there are only two different animations that I used, one for my sister and the other for the picture of my sister and I. When you go down to more slides though you will be able to see how many animations were used based on the right side of the bar when editing.

This software had opened up many capabilities that I didn’t even know of. For example, I never knew you could animate a picture on your page in PowerPoint let alone animate words as well. When I had used PowerPoint in the past I always just used the basic. Write down words, and add a colorful page in the background. When I was in class I finally realized how many creations you could really make with this process. I enjoyed having all of these creations very much because I felt like I was able to animate my own image as well as express what I was saying not only by words but by images as well. In a book or on paper you cannot express words in animation like you can do in PowerPoint. For example, when I was writing down a word in my “apart” I was able to animate each word showing that my sister and I will never be apart. And also I was able to animate pictures, so when I talked about something special, I then put a picture next to it. For example, in the poem it said, are worth much more than dimes. I then put a picture of dimes in the text and then when you saw the dimes, I made them vanish away. By having this animation, dramatizes what the author is trying to say and points out key terms that he or she may want the reader to catch upon and by having animation, it then draws that to the reader’s eye. You cannot do this on paper at all, you can have pictures but when you are using the electronic poetry it seems to bring your pictures to life.
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This image is of all of the animations that had to be done for one of the slides that I had animated. And it goes with the other picture above. As you can see there is a lot of animations that were used for this one slide, and with this animations you can make a picture go into the PowerPoint right after a word and before the PowerPoint begins again you can make it escape.
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These are the options that you will be able to choose from when you use Animations, this is what I had used to design all of my slides and to animate them.

The only thing about the animation is that it is very time consuming, if you have never done it before, there is a lot to do with the PowerPoint and animation. The first step is to log into PowerPoint and then hit animation, and press custom animation. Then you are going to put whatever words you want in the text box and highlight that would and press change, and then click your animation. It sounds really easy here, but when you are working on it, it could get difficult. Luckily there are help areas and a question box, where you can post your questions. Without the help of Professor Liu, at Eastern Connecticut for English 230, it would have been very difficult for me to understand where all of it is. I have been using PowerPoint for years, and I just learned last Wednesday that animation existed. If you have not tried it, please do because it is really interesting and fun. I thought that I had understood the material that was presented and I had used the animation well, with the help of my professor. I believe that the only thing that was tough was getting the hang of it, but after you animate one word or phrase then the rest will come easy. I thought that everything worked out perfectly for PowerPoint for me, if you do have troubles though like I have said above there are help areas to where they will fit your needs to what you may need to know.

In this electronic work, I really didn’t get too side-tracked. The only thing that I really enjoyed and got side-tracked with a bit was, drawing more and more images and finding out where I could put pictures in the poem to animate it more. I realized when I put a lot of pictures on one page that I was overdoing it a little bit and that I should delete some of the pictures that I had. By doing this I believe that it had then emphasized the pictures that should had been emphasized and left the other pictures alone. I think that electronic poetry was easier for me to write and design what I wanted to do with the poem, even though I did not write this poem, I think by having e-poetry and the designs made it easier for me to express what I wanted to by using the text that was given.

In conclusion, i think that these tools in PowerPoint are very helpful and that by learning about them is a very good idea. I have already used these tools in my math PowerPoint, and I just learned about it on Wednesday's class. By learning how to use animation you can design anything you really want with images that you want as well. It is very helpful and is a lot of fun as well.