Like the work of Anne-Marie Schleiner, Joan Leandre, and Brody Condon, Natalie Bookchin's pieces criticize the uneccessary violence and unfairness in video games today. The Intruder is an interactive online game based a on short story of the same name, written by Jorge Luis Borges. Basically two brothers fall in love with the same woman, a prostitute, and continue to fight over her, until her murder, when they finally reconcile. Bookchin divided the story into ten distinct parts, or levels, that in and of themselves are based on older video games that defined gaming culture today. One level is like "Pong", where the ball is the prostitute, and the walls are the brothers, bouncing her back and forth. Her work since then has been more political, criticizing George Bush and corporate domination. I like that she subtley makes statements about gaming and its side effects by combining several generations of ideas into one. She takes the classic nature of the books, the outdated technology of "Pong", and the most up to date systems to make fun of and judge players, who often don't have a clue this is happening to them. I was looking forward to playing the game on my computer, but for some reason it wouldn't download.
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