DATTOPIAS
A new narrative game, and the first collection of speculative futures encoded in electronic literature
Original sketch from @constantbageltherapyPresented with the sentiment: “These days, there is this dystopia and that dystopia. Which one are we going to get?”, The Time Travel Agency proposes:
What if… neither?, and offers DATTOPIAS instead!
Dattopias are uncommon, alternative narratives that fall in the spectrum that is the Future.
DATTOPIAS occupy the space between dystopias and utopias; these narratives offer futures of our making that are realistic, hopeful, and optimistic. Dattopias want to show us the everyday of the human experience and the ways in which society has adapted to overcome challenges.
Dattopias are accessible through speculative design, narrative games, and electronic literature. The first-ever collection of Dattopias were found offline and in gif form.
What if… neither?, and offers DATTOPIAS instead!
Dattopias are uncommon, alternative narratives that fall in the spectrum that is the Future.
DATTOPIAS occupy the space between dystopias and utopias; these narratives offer futures of our making that are realistic, hopeful, and optimistic. Dattopias want to show us the everyday of the human experience and the ways in which society has adapted to overcome challenges.
Dattopias are accessible through speculative design, narrative games, and electronic literature. The first-ever collection of Dattopias were found offline and in gif form.
What if collective narrative games / computational creativity was another portal to the futuremaking of hopeful futures?
The DATTOPIAS of 2024 mark a few important milestones at The Time Travel Agency
- Dattopias is The Time Travel Agency's first electronic / e-lit Book of Futures.
The Book of Futures is the first delivery of stories compiled after finishing Stage 1 of our time traveling process. Before Dattopias, Book of Futures existed solely as a handmade editorial publication in paper.
- This edition of Dattopias is the first-ever collection of Dattopian literature published in the world.
It is a “panel story” about a group of people who traveled to another time using a lost agenda, and the things they saw there.
- This collection is the first-ever collection of speculative futures encoded in electronic literature.
- DATTOPIAS is a new physical and digital narrative game (one of its mechanisms being netprov), becoming the sixth original game invented, designed, and produced by our studio. We are excited to share early prototypes:
Dattopias is a narrative game and a speculative design game.To play, one needs to do some netprov / improvised narrative games while using the speculative design framework.
It is possible that multiple Dattopias collections can exist
The analog version of Dattopias
Slides & viewmaster to expand on a glimpse of the futures
Closeup of a “futures frame”
The publication of Dattopias as gifs (which are made of many panels) means that gifs, and futures, can be deconstructed
Slides (or slices) of Dattopias 
A “tree” formation of Dattopias, meaning that the future story has a common start, and then branches that expand in random directions. Other formations can be “train”, “circle”, “shell”, “fern”.
A completed contact sheet signifies that the story if ready to be made into a GIF (each line of the contact sheet is one gif) or to be re-told by the players.Don’t worry too much about Dattopias as a game.
The process is the thing.
THE FIRST DATTOPIAN COLLECTION
– As a piece of electronic literature published in gifs:
WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO ENJOY THE PIECES ABOVE OUTSIDE OF THIS PAGE, AND OUTSIDE THE SPATIAL CONSTRAINTS WE PLACED THEM IN!
For each story, you can try RIGHT-CLICK +
For each story, you can try RIGHT-CLICK +
> OPENING EACH IN A NEW TAB
> DOWNLOADING AND PLAYING THEM ON YOUR PHONE
> SENDING THEM TO A FRIEND VIA TEXT MESSAGE
> ZOOMING IN WHILE READING THEM ON YOUR PHONE
> DOWNLOADING AND PLAYING THEM ON YOUR PHONE
> SENDING THEM TO A FRIEND VIA TEXT MESSAGE
> ZOOMING IN WHILE READING THEM ON YOUR PHONE
Here is context:
- The reason behind the choice of medium (e-lit, and more specifically, gifs), is accessibility.
Are gifs and tiny futures adventures without continuity?
We are interested in transmitting the difference between reading and traversing a piece of literature.
What if electronic literature was accessed and produced in small screens?
What if new futures were accessible via small devices? Which futures pieces work well for the small screen?
Mobile is an immersive and private experience of readership, just like we hope new, vulnerable futures are.
What if futures could be passed around as gifs to read while waiting for the bus?
New generations are not always reading long texts: what are some healthy constraints to consider when publishing futures for the small screens?
And what about accessibility of language? Or accessibility of futures for disabilities?
What if the futures we create today limit folks with disabilities to online life, so that these stories have no real life implications?
How can artistry and accessibility make the content alive?
Can new futures be playable stories?
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Using gifs allows us to play with small stories which are not social media stories.
- Gifs can be downloaded and experienced offline.
- In our case, also note: the speed of gifs is not random– why do some panels have more text than what we can consume in the alloted seconds?
NEWS
DATTOPIAS will be showcased and played for the first time during NarraScope 2024 (x) this June, as The Time Travel Agency is one of the panelists of the conference and the Dattopias were selected!
Details to be released via Instagram, LinkedIn, and The Time Travel Transmissions.
NarraScope, hosted by the Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation, celebrates the diverse voices of game design. This year, NarraScope 2024 is celebrating narrative games from June 21 - 23 at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester NY.
Our hope is that DATTOPIAS is ultimately the story of how creation helps return spirit and life to the worlds, this time transmitting from the Internet.
What if, indeed, collective computational creativity was another door to the futuremaking of hopeful futures?
Grateful, proud, tired, and excited,
The Time Travel Agency xo
The Time Travel Agency xo