Rereading and the SimCity Effect in Electronic Literature

Rereading, the act of going back and reexperiencing a text, is often seen as one possible measure of the quality of a literary text. However, what it means to reread a work of electronic literature, particularly one that responds procedurally to reader actions, is not clear (Mitchell and McGee, 2012). One particular way that readers reread print literature is what Calinescu (1993) refers to as reflective rereading, which involves “a meditative or critically inquisitive revisiting of a text one has already read” (Calinescu, 1993, p. 277). In this paper we argue that, in electronic literature, reflective rereading can involve examining the surface of an interactive work which one has already read, with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding and appreciation of how the underlying system functions and how this internal structure relates to the surface experience of the work. We draw parallels between this form of reflective rereading and Wardrip-Fruin’s “SimCity Effect”, which he describes as being present in “systems that shape their surface experience to enable the audience to build up an understanding of a relatively complex internal structure” (Wardrip-Fruin, 2009, p. 13). This suggests a possible correspondence between works of electronic literature that afford or encourage reflective rereading and those that exhibit the SimCity effect.

(Source: author's abstract)