Auction Adventures

The first page I looked at was Sotheby's site. The site's "Auction Adventures" let you "test your eye, learn about auctions, and develop your skills as a collector in this interactive area." There are three stories offered, each using a different format and offering a different level of difficulty. The object of the "game" is to go to the auction with enough information to make a successful bid.

Fitting out the Home
The first story is that of Amanda and Richard, newleyweds who want to purchase a dining room table. The reader is presented with four choices in each lexia that lead to discussions about the financial aspects of the auction, the pieces they are looking at, other bidders, and the auction itself, where the reader is asked to place bids. These choices are presented by graphical links that are not descriptive enough to let the reader know what is on the other side of the link. Each page shows the time as well, but this is not helpful because the reader is not informed when the auction will be held. The conclusion, whether you "win" or "lose," tells what actually happened when the hypothetical furniture was sold at Sotheby's auction

Time Is of the Essence
The second story involves the young executive, Steve, on his search for a watch. This tale is presented in a manner very similar to the first, but includes mostly graphics. Some of these graphics are animated, but scroll through the images only once. They flash by so quickly that a reader cannot see what the images are of. This style of graphic is distracting, and can be lost if you blink while loading the page. Additionally, some lexia contain only graphics, which is rather unfulfilling to a reader looking for a story line. As in the previous story, you "win" by sending the bidder home with a good deal.

Of Babies and Bordeaux

The final story, presented only in text, and offers a more flowery fictional account of Ben's thoughts and worries as he searches for a bottle of wine to celebrate his wife's pregnancy. The text is actually an image with links on certain "hot words" or phrases. Some of these links lead to descriptions of wine and others to developments in the plot. This is the most satisfying story, as the reader is not lost in confusing or distracting images, and instead is offered a charming character sketch.

All in all this is an amusing site that allows the average web-surfer see how the wealthy waste their money, or to let the wealthy polish up their auctioning skills. It has not been updated since 1995, though, and some of the lexia describe information that will be posted regarding auctions that "will be held on November 10 & 11, 1995." As for style, each lexia was slightly bigger than my browser window, so i would have to scroll a tiny bit, but it was not too distracting. The graphics were overall pretty subdued and were consistant throughout each story, keeping them coherant.