The design of Word Surfing encourages exploration and discovery. No directions are given, but one quickly learns the rules of the game, mimicking the discovery and exploration of language and words.

Traditionally, games present the player with a challenge to overcome. People enjoy this, and the challenge is what makes them want to play, and keep trying even if they are failing. Inherently with Word Surfing there is no intellectual or physical challenge. The purpose is to discover, to explore, and to open one’s mind.

Language is fluid. The only link the initial word, ‘fréolic’, has with modern English is through an obsolete definition of the word ‘freely’, which was a “principle epithet of compliment”. It means ‘free’ in a poetic sense (goodly, noble, and beautiful). (Oxford English Dictionary, 1993) The word ‘fréolic’, and the definition which is a derivation of ‘fréolic’ is no longer used, but can still be linked to almost any modern word illustrating the tremendous ability language has to change. Through this project I set out to demonstrate the fluidity of language and how it remains connected even throughout this constant change.

By connecting it to Wiktionary, I made this change literal and incorporated it into my gameplay. Each person, family, community, and society has their own dialect. A word can mean something different to each person. As a result, the definitions on Wiktionary are constantly changing. Five years from now the paths that one can take through my game will be entirely different. Even now, one could go and change a definition, or fix a formatting error which is causing them to hit a dead end, and come back to my game and go down a different path.

This project is part of the evolution of art. It is not a “traditional” art form, but is part of the new digital era of art. We use words to describe art, and so it seems fitting to have an art piece which shows that words also evolve. If the words we use to describe art changes, the art itself must change as well.