In Between Worlds

stories in between: narratives and mediums @ play is a unique text exploring the interplay between stories and media. The discussion focuses around the Myst narrative as it moves across media from games to books to comics to games. Along the way, the text also discusses the Sandman comics, and the hypermedia of Ultima Online and MitterNachtSpiel. This text was created hypertextually to exist online as a website with an inter-related book.

In a world increasingly preoccupied by borders, bridges celebrate the possibility of connection, allowing the flow of goods, people and ideas. Bridges are among our grandest physical structures with the power of transforming lives and economies, but we also stand (or fall) upon the simple arch of bones in our feet. Text is a bridge between writer and reader, and conversation builds bridges of understanding between minds.

In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps—as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability. Games like the popular Everquest, she argues, are fundamentally social spaces.

Composed almost entirely in 2018 and performed by composer Giovanni Piacentini, the music on BETWEEN WORLDS serves as a brand-new snapshot of a musician's prowess at the height of his creative capabilities.