Janet Murray, "Hamlet on the Holodeck?"

(In Hamlet on the Holodeck)

- "Cyberdrama" need not be meaningless entertainment
- "Narrative beauty is independent of medium."
- Digital media should help us understand the human condition
- Procedurality is the new element that digital media brings; we are establishing the building blocks of how to use it, and getting used to it
- Numerous comparisons to the development of other media
- Fixed, single author vs collaboration, ephemerality
- Distinction between formulaic entertainment and art that reshapes and transcends those formulas (interesting in context of the rhetoric of artgames such as Braid that explore/use conventional gaming elements)
- The promise of the new medium is found in stories about whole systems (the human psyche, the global community), ie: simulation
- Tension between "blasters" (violent gamers) and "builders" (storytellers, artists, etc.) in digital media
- Computers as a representational medium of great power that should be used for our "highest tasks," ie: storytelling and art