For my final project, I will be continuing my exploration of Habbo. In particular, I will be expanding on my week 3 project concerning the ways in which “Agencies” operate inside of the game. I will be paying special attention to the ways in which hierarchy within these agencies is central to the process of identity-making within Habbo. Furthermore, I want to understand the ways in which the aesthetics of these agencies, modeled after real-life organizations like the FBI, inform relations between members and reproduce power inside of Habbo. In other words, I’d like to understand how power and hierarchy are viewed by members of Habbo agencies in relation to the creation of an in-game identity. Fortunately for me, I have already joined an in-game agency, the FBI, and as such, have quite a bit of preexisting data to work with. Furthermore, I have in-game friends within Habbo, many of whom are high-ranking members within the organization, that I am planning on conducting interviews with.

When thinking about the multimodal nature of my project, I was immediately drawn to Twine. The way in which stories are created inside of Twine, the user interface, is extremely conducive to seeing the sorts of structures that exist within stories. Because all the parts are laid out clearly in front of you when writing, you are constantly aware of the sort of organization that your story takes. Because of this, I think that Twine would be the perfect tool for creating a story with hierarchy at its center. Ideally, this story would place the reader inside of Habbo and would reveal the relationship between identity, hierarchy, and power. Furthermore, I hope to organize the very structure of the story in a way that deals with these ideas. Because of the interface, the creation of a “hierarchical story” is seen in the very shape of the story (see example). In this way, the structure of the story itself would produce an oppressive hierarchical environment, allowing the reader to truly experience these sorts of affects. However, power inside of Habbo does not always function in a hierarchical manner (as I’ve already seen in my participant observation). As such, I believe that two stories are actually required. This second story would be organized in a much more organic manner, representative of the ways in which individuals inside of Habbo challenge power and subvert hierarchical structure. I plan to organize this story in a network like fashion, with radically disparate points of the story connecting with one another. Hopefully, this would be a truly “non-linear story” with many points of entry and exit, allowing for an entirely different affective environment to be created. Content-wise, these two stories will be informed by participant observation within the game and from interviews. Quotes may be used and incorporated in the stories if I can get permission from my interlocutors.

Although Twine is a limited platform in that it mostly only allows for text, I have looked at a few tutorials which indicate that one can actually add music to the games. Hopefully, I’ll be able to figure out how to do this and add some sound effects and music to make the story a little bit more immersive.

Hierarchical Organization within Twine