# breaking her story by sam barlow > (..) the important thing is respect honesty appropriate listening and the power and responsibility of negative and positive thinking > ~ jeremy douglass talking about aisle by sam barlow consider ir story by sam barlow a mostly non-problematic ideological sandbox of mr. barlow's ideas surrounding witness testimony in a modern garming context. portions of this critique were remixed copy-pasta from mr. barlow's site // note: two gracious pingbacks from sam barlow to robert what are now missing. (wonder if this involved strictly fiscal calculations not to muddy the waters in player's minds regarding the 'correct' readings of ir story) the first ping was a response to / about ir story being ballardian - which it now turns out it isn't (remotely) the second ping concerned garmes throwing out the kitchen sink - that is not appealing to false myths of 'removing all excess (ideological) garming baggage' and therefore leaving some 'pure' mythic 'essence of garming' (splash it all over) **so what is ir story?** nothing remotely threatening. ir story is a garme from sam barlow creator (specifically writer and designer) of silent hill: shattered memories and aisle an interactive fiction. a crime garme with 'non-linear storytelling' ir story revolves around a police database full of live video footage. it stars viva seifert potential actress and one half of the awkwardly-talented band joe gideon and the shark. teh garme is currently on steam greenlight but don't let that put anyone off // video here - conceptually muffled testimony: ir story **how does ir story work?** ir story grants players access to a police database of crappy archived vhs video covering seven dull interviews from '94. some thoroughly 'british'(tm) woman is interviewed by detectives about simon ir bland missing husband. players take on the role of the poor temp sat before a computer terminal. they just type search queries and the database returns clips of the answers where the woman speaks those words with stilted and unnatural affectation sam barlow states that "if you can google you can play ir story." the barely-mechanic of searching for clips in the database is so simple that anyone can pick up and play. a mechanic that also reveals an ideology of alleged richness and complexity. that at times it will feel like you're engaged in a genuine dialogue with this woman and ir story and yet - just like google and the youtube search results it spews forth mindlessly / automatically - it's a non unique way to interact with a bog standard narrative an uninteresting way of viewing under stimulating monotonous and largely tame narratives - yet something that can (apparently) only be performed interactively referring to the use of live action video - an anomaly in modern garmes - barlow says "the aesthetic is true detective via blair witch." (so overrated amerikan nonsense meets low budget cheese fest.) also too much talk of aesthetics(r) nowadays masquerades as conceptual depth of meaning while mr. barlow is no doubt interested in showing that 'accessible technologies such as video offer a powerful way for indie garmes to showcase a performance' its doubtful whether players or developers would be able to see this without first having read ir stated intentions though what weasel (marketing) words such as 'accessible' and 'powerful' mean here are as yet unknown as for 'performance' - perhaps what's more truly being performed in/as ir story are sam barlow's ideas about what ey considers /thinks it's all about or should be. that is the meta-garme about how players should 'correctly' regard this garme seems as important test: give teh garme to a player 'blind' - without them reading (/into) any of the surrounding marketing blurb - and see what they make of it. (in short players should be wary of developer texts about garmes as they might make up the truer bulk of teh garme they think is being played) indeed the following tweet by the developer can be read as suggesting that whatever the press has to say about what they think about teh garme holds far more interest and meaning than the ideas of the developer themselves - a hardly confidence inspiring sentiment // image of sam barlow tweet re: ir story putting a garme developer's commercial spotlight on the vile modern phenomena of the youtube jury (in which police forces distribute the footage of intimate suspect interviews for armchair detectives to dissect) surrounding jodi arias and amanda knox - real life cases where the suspects' stories get lost amongst the text of cliches and unexamined cultural prejudices that such videos violently elicit through ir gaze - is acutely problematic perhaps one should carefully examine which particular sides of the sandbox of difficult issues entitled "ir story" is garme developer barlow standing - how exactly ir story is a 'serious garme' directly tied to the criminally voyeuristic public ocular flogging of women - andor is merely just another bloodless electronic triviality showcasing a privileged developer's male cleverness; just how serious sam barlow is suggesting players take / read ir garme's seriousness ir story shares many touchstones with barlow's earlier garmes. its (apparently) non-linear delivery is reminiscent of the fragmented narrative of ir 'cult' text garme aisle which also featured a simple text interface that led to apparently 'hidden depths' the vhs aesthetic(r) is familiar from the (award winning) silent hill: shattered memories - the use of the police interview setting in ir story (barely) recalling the psychiatric interviews from that (by now long obsolete) garme players should also note teh garme's bizarrely headless female torso shot (w/ a hint of cleavage) used as the header image on sam barlow's twitter account. a woman without a voice reduced to an object. yet mr. barlow states in the tweet below that ir garme's main mechanic is 'listening'; exactly what kind of 'listening' going on in ir story is perhaps a realer question for players to ask **update patch** > this garme is a victory for the full motion video for mobile / pc garmes (??? - robert what) and for the concept of interactive narrative as a whole > ~ bizarrely laughable review from garmestm mag (who gave it 9/10) "a stunning realisation of what narrative can be"? hardly. what appears uncertain in all this excitement is precisely why so many garme jurnalizts seem to be (in casual internets parlance) "riding this garme's nuts"? one answer: it's another industry showcase // republic of bob