For my short story, I ended up choosing A Sound of Thunder, by Ray Bradbury. I chose this story because I’m interested in the main themes, Everything Has A Purpose and A Little Thing Can Make A Huge Difference. Also, I believe the author managed to send a really important message through his work: how modern tragedy is caused by the appropriation of the world in accordance to one’s own subjectivity.
In addition to the themes in Bradbury’s story, there were a couple of other elements that made me choose this book. The Butterfly Effect rendered within the theme is a theorem of Chaos Theory and it raised some questions to me. I found it quite interesting and I think there are some potential game ideas in there. Another reason this work stood out for me is the literary movement it belongs to, Post-Modernism. Post-Modernism is based on the idea that reality is not how we understand it to be, but it is that the mind tries to understand its own reality. I believe this is a thing I can play with in my game.
I found these aspects in A Sound of Thunder interesting and I think there is a good amount of ideas to be taken from it. I look forward to starting this project and having a great time thinking about different concepts for my game.
A small amount of credit for this choice should also be given to Bradbury’s ‘fun in life’ idea: “getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me”. I want to get to this point sometime in the future and I am willing to work as hard as I can for it.