Yeah, I know when I really started to read a lot, I worried about that. I’d worry I was too imitative once I read something I liked and I tried to write. There’s still that worry, but at least if I find a cool funny name I can google to see if it’s been used yet, and if it’s been used in something famous, I try to change it up.
Also once I realized if I were paying attention, I could fill those gaps in. And I actually submitted something to writing class and people were shocked to hear that I was sort of imitating someone, and they’d never heard of Author X…
I think self-expression is very important. But I think there are two sorts of self-expression: the type that illuminates and lets people relate, and the sort that tries to blackmail people into relating. It’s easy to say you’re all for the first…there’s self expression that leaves me feeling crowded out, and I’ve felt less and less guilty about giving it the thumbs down the more I share works.
Well, if the main game is good enough (as it was) you probably get a pass on that and people can imagine a wild weird ending for a bit. Of course, you can always throw out an updated version! The changes don’t have to be big. Hunger Daemon didn’t have super-big changes, and I was glad to see an update of that.
Well, if the main game is good enough (as it was) you probably get a pass on that and people can imagine a wild weird ending for a bit. Of course, you can always throw out an updated version! The changes don’t have to be big. Hunger Daemon didn’t have super-big changes, and I was glad to see an update of that.
[/quote]
You’re right. I should update it. I already know what the new ending is going to be. I thought of it right after reading that transcript last year. I need to change that ending, and erase that ‘SAY THAT TO WHO?’ message. I tried hard to stamp out almost every default Inform 7 library message to make the game intentionally dumber, because simple games like that work better when they’re dumb and thus liberally accept input, but that one slipped through somehow, and ended up diverting y’all into trying to think of things to say to people, which is exactly why I try to wipe out many default messages.
It’s really worth it and fun to update an old game. I think you’ll find more fun new ideas and tweaks than you expected. So I recommend doing so. Parts may take longer than you expect, but it’s neat to know you’ve really fixed stuff.
Plus anything that gives an old compilation more exposure is a good thing, and this sort of update will help.
Great link. It’s got two comments I particularly like.
One is the one that goes “Where Aristotle was right, it has become part of the assumed knowledge that we all have at our basic levels; where he was wrong, it was just stupid; so why study him in great detail?”, because it’s a valid argument and because I fully understand some people prefer to focus on what can be done NOW than to understand why people thought wrong things back THEN (given that “wrong” is a complex thing; sometimes they just thought wrong things, sometimes they thought things which are almost alien to our modern views. I’m simplifying here)
Mind, I like the comment, but I personally don’t agree. I much prefer the C. S. Lewis quote on the reading of old books. It’s a beautiful thing, which seems very relevant to this discussion (in favour of Laroquod’s point):
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain
truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore,
need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own
period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to
some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem
most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read controversies of
past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without
question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought
that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact
they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and
against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We
may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth
century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could
they have thought that?”—lies where we have never suspected it, and
concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between
Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl
Barth. None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall
certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only
modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half
knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with
which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the
clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this
can be done only by reading old books.
Yowza. I had no idea I’d trigger this rant. But I’m not at all sorry. I think I’ll agree to disagree on a few points. I happen to think theory (BTW, I meant the collected “IF Theory” “book”, not theory in general, but it works out to the same thing, I guess) is vital for the growth of any artform, but only if it doesn’t stunt it. I haven’t much time right now, so I’ll have to be brief (huzzah!): let’s say that theory which studies the old ones to see why they were so great, and what they did so well, is very important; and theory that states that you cannot do this, or you cannot do that, because game X and author Y did so and so and… well, no, this idea of “theory” is not one I’d subscribe to.
I read your post yesterday. And today, just before I started writing this reply, it did cross my mind that different people have different ideas of fun. I wonder if we’re not just seeing the rise of the people who never had any fun with Adventure but do have fun with some more modern games. Just sayin’. I’m not sure that’s bad. What I’m sure would be bad would be if the old-school were to truly vanish… but I’m not seeing that either. Which makes me happy.
Agree to disagree. I won’t say that Verdi is more fun than Simon and Garfunkel - just yesterday I went on a binge of “Istanbul, not Constantinople”, “Sound of Silence”, “Hernando’s Hideaway” and “Finnegan’s Wake”, but usually I hear Rossini, Verdi, Puccini. Not because I want to look smart, or because I think Opera is inherently better, and not even because I have fun - just because I love it. I do also have the Rayman soundtrack in my iPod, which I often listen to, because it IS fun - but “fun” isn’t always what motivates me to listen to music. Similarly, strange as this may sound, there may be more to a game than fun.
Now, careful with my last statement. I don’t think a game that eschews fun completely can still be considered a game at all. I’m just saying that a game which has a focus on something else than fun (and “fun” will be different things to different people") won’t necessarily be a bad thing. If the game actually removes fun from the equation, then it probably went too far.
EDIT - And, classical music was fun once. I sometimes listen to music that has been forgotten, hardly ever played… and trust me, there’s a good reason for it. Maybe it was popular in its day, but more often than not, it wasn’t popular then and isn’t popular now. We talk about the classics willy-nilly - in fact, we are talking about the specific pieces that have survived this long, pieces which people still like to hear. You don’t want to listen to the ones that got left behind, trust me.
That sounds a lot like theory to me. The good kind.
Before theory exists, there has to be something to theorise about, and that doesn’t happen unless people indeed make and play the games they want to make and play. Which means I agree with you in that it’s a necessity. I’m just unsure that we’re seeing prohibitive theory here - people are still making the games they want to. Yes, they do find some frisson in some forums - so they come to others, which is great, and is why this place right here exists.
Let me get something straight, though. You want to go back to how the classics made the games fun - especially Adventure - but you don’t want to theorise about it, draw any conclusions? Again, if your point is to avoid theory being prohibitive, I can get behind that and understand it better. I just want to make sure that, when you keep talking about the dangers of “IF Theory”, you mean a perceived, prohibitive enforcement of that theory, rather than actually just taking a good long hard look around and drawing conclusions (which is my basic definition of theory).
That’s a beautiful quote. I love it. Lovelovelovelovelove it.
Agree to disagree. I won’t say that Verdi is more fun than Simon and Garfunkel - just yesterday I went on a binge of “Istanbul, not Constantinople”, “Sound of Silence”, “Hernando’s Hideaway” and “Finnegan’s Wake”, but usually I hear Rossini, Verdi, Puccini. Not because I want to look smart, or because I think Opera is inherently better, and not even because I have fun - just because I love it. I do also have the Rayman soundtrack in my iPod, which I often listen to, because it IS fun - but “fun” isn’t always what motivates me to listen to music.[/quote]
Alright, as you wish. I am out of my depth with opera, anyway. 8)
[quote]Similarly, strange as this may sound, there may be more to a game than fun.
Now, careful with my last statement. I don’t think a game that eschews fun completely can still be considered a game at all. I’m just saying that a game which has a focus on something else than fun (and “fun” will be different things to different people") won’t necessarily be a bad thing. If the game actually removes fun from the equation, then it probably went too far.[/quote]
I know what you mean, you mean serious or dark, tragic games that make a point. This is what a lot of people mean when they say they don’t want games to be ‘fun’. But it’s the wrong way to say it. It’s like saying ‘Movies don’t have to be intriguing’ because you want people to be free to write movies like Schindler’s List. But actually… Schindler’s LIst is intriguing, it’s incredibly damn intriguing. And anything intriguing is fun to watch. Nobody wants to SAY it’s ‘fun to watch Shindler’s List’, because that would sound like they enjoy atrocities, but there have been plenty of holocaust movies, and the simple plain truth is that the reason Schindler’s List did so well, is that it was the fun one to watch. It’s the most fun holocaust movie ever put to film. Spielberg used all of the narrative tricks in his master toolbox to make watching it so intriguing, it wouldn’t let you go. The other holocaust movies are mostly just boring and preachy and that’s why everybody has trouble calling up their names. They are things you are supposed to like. Schilnder’s List was a tragic movie you really do like. The difference can only be in one arena: what’s fun for the viewer.
People who make serious games but still believe in fun, are more like to make something like Schindler’s LIst. People who believe ‘games don’t need to be fun anymore’ will make boring crap that you are supposed to like anyway because to be seen not liking it would make you a Nazi or a misogynist or something. So why bother to make it fun: they can try for players out of guilt instead. That’s the modern affliction of art that concerns ‘social justice’. It’s bad art. Exceptions are very rare, because in the current climate, it doesn’t even need to be good art to win loads of support. Making bad art good is incredibly painstaking and where 90% of the difficulty lies, especially when it’s interactive fiction. Why even bother, if you don’t have to? I think this also explains the ascendancy of CYOA. Writing a parser game is harder, but if your game is a boring social justice piece, it will get the same amount support whether it’s a parser game, or a CYOA, or is fun or isn’t, or even if it crashes on the second move. As long as the first move expresses the tragedy of your identity, you’re good. So stop working so hard. You don’t have to be an obsessive stay-at-home nerd who spends your life in front of a screen to write IF. You can just choose as your subject matter a topic nobody is allowed to criticise. Finish your game in an afternoon, then go to a party to up your cool kid cred. Mission accomplished!
This is a treadmill of the wrong kind of reinforcement that is churning out a flood of crap games nobody can criticise without risking moderation. That flood is going to bury interactive fiction if we do not start a countermovement. That’s all I am asking for here – the reason I wrote this essay, much of the reason I joined GG. What is happening in gaming needs a countermovement — badly. A movement to remind everyone why ‘fun’ was so important in the first place. Wherever that movement begins, it’s going to get labelled as misogynist, for obvious reasons. So that’s our future: support bad games, or join some movement that will be dismissed by the core community as misogynist. GamerGate is just one iteration of this logic, and it won’t be the last.
I believe you.
[quote][quote=“Laroquod, post:13, topic:105”]
I was actually referring to questions of process, not content.
The purpose of my study of what Crowther did is to increase my chances of successfully replicating it,
[/quote]
That sounds a lot like theory to me. The good kind.
Before theory exists, there has to be something to theorise about, and that doesn’t happen unless people indeed make and play the games they want to make and play. Which means I agree with you in that it’s a necessity. I’m just unsure that we’re seeing prohibitive theory here - people are still making the games they want to. Yes, they do find some frisson in some forums - so they come to others, which is great, and is why this place right here exists.
Let me get something straight, though. You want to go back to how the classics made the games fun - especially Adventure - but you don’t want to theorise about it, draw any conclusions?[/quote]
Before you go to much further on this ‘You need theory’ tack let me remind of something I said earlier:
“Not as a concept”.
I don’t disagree with the existence of ‘IF Theory’ (in general or the book). I disagree with the majority of our current collection of IF theorists. The point of my anti-IF-Theory rant was: Prove it to me. Don’t just quote a theorist as if theorists have a better handle on the truth, because they don’t — they just like to intellectualise their bad handles on the truth. Give me an empiricist over a theorist, any day of the week.
I played through about half, reviewed a few on my blog and realized that the ones I hated, everyone else seemed to love because of who the author was or the “message” of the game fit a narrative that was deemed “proper”. And on the flip-side, the ones I had fun with were seen as amateurish or misogynist or not worthy of high praise because they were not a well known name. I enjoyed entering and playing Shufflecomp because the persona wasn’t apparent at the onset, and for the most part if I recall, the ones I found fun did seem to do pretty well.
I definitely agree with “supposed to like” vs liking. If I feel like people are surrounding me telling me I am supposed to enjoy a game, it’s just no fun. I was immediately out of the loop on Creatures because I just don’t like the sort of games it’s based on, so I’m not sure I can make any criticisms about it.
That’s different from the feeling I’m missing something, or a feeling that I wished the author had a bit more technical skill. Those can be tuned up. People get better.
I also dislike games that Make a Statement. I mean, they can, but I’d like one to have–well, a bit of humor or oddness in it. I think it’s also sadly possible a book or whatever may be heavy-handed, but in a way that can make people feel good about themselves “appreciating” it, and that’s bad news.
My cutoff is generally for one or two lines which seem odd or unusual or funny or shows me that a person is writing it, not a writer. I can’t quantify it, but I want to have something unexpected.
I’d like to think I adhere to my own ethos, because even if my games are potential logic-grinds, I hope unlocking the puzzles gives something funny and maybe even insightful. I try to make sure relatively little is in there to Be Impressive.
Thanks! It took me a while to think of that, but I’ve found mathy thoughts can help me out of emotional boxes, if I think hard enough. I’ll try and remember a few more. On the opposite end of the spectrum, when I’m having a coding problem lining up if/then statements, I note that there are only so many ways to do something wrong. For instance four truth-states make 16 possibilities, which isn’t trivial, but if I take a deep breath I’ll figure it out.
People were aware of who the authors of the games in IFcomp were? With a couple of exceptions, I wasn’t aware. I thought most of the author names were pseudonyms, though some might be guessable from the style. But when you roll what to play randomly, you aren’t guaranteed of getting to the big names so maybe I just largely missed them.
[quote=“AndrewS, post:28, topic:105”]
I definitely agree with “supposed to like” vs liking. If I feel like people are surrounding me telling me I am supposed to enjoy a game, it’s just no fun. I was immediately out of the loop on Creatures because I just don’t like the sort of games it’s based on, so I’m not sure I can make any criticisms about it.[/quote]
Creatures Such As We is the type of game that offers you all sorts of moral choices as if they matter and not a single one of them makes a damn bit of difference. It’s a pretend-interactive narrative model that it shares with the game series it is attempting to defend: Mass Effect. Which is a great game series because of the gameplay and the epic scope for roleplaying, and some good acting in the story bits, but the narrative just isn’t interactive, in that typical RPG way. But Mass Effect insists on offering you a bunch of moral choices as if they make a difference. That’s what Creatures Such As We does too. And that’s the only thing it does, besides trolling gamers who didn’t like the ending to Mass Effect 3. Ripping that bullshit interactivity off of Mass Effect absent the gameplay is the worst thing you could do — and especially absent the roleplaying which is the only possible area that could benefit from ineffective moral choices, because it’s all happening in the player’s head anyway – ‘I’m a starship captain so I make moral choices’. OK so that makes sense. The choices are just there to help me make-believe. Not so in Creatures, where they are often artificially shoehorned into conversations in which they are totally unnatural and out of place. If you’re roleplaying a tour guide of Mars in that game, then you’re roleplaying the most unprofessional, incredibly prying and intrusive tour guide there’s ever been. But there’s never any consequence for that, because none of the game is truly about letting you explore the story space. I played in such a way as to try to piss off my tour clientele as much as possible, and still became fast friends with them so I could be thrown into moral quandaries with uniform, didactic outcomes regardless of my actual moves. Anyway, I can’t rant enough about the awfulness of that game and it blows me away that it won second place.
(small voice) I wanted to see what happened when things messed up, too. But they never really did, and that felt unrealistic. I think one problem with the structure was, you really did have to play through the whole game at once. ChoiceScript games I’ve seen haven’t really had the option to let you die and take back a move, and I don’t know if that’s a weakness of the technology or a stylistic thing for the authors.
The thing is, I like a game that can give as well as it gets, one that will tell a good joke if you mess up–not insulting, but still, help you laugh at yourself (vs sneer at you and say “What? You don’t think it’s funny?”) The one most in my mind is Final Girl, when you lock yourself in the car and the pretentious film critics scoff at how cliched it is to do that, because it’s been done before, and “everyone” knows that. Andromeda Apocalypse did some of that, too, where you could figure a few awful ways to die.
In a bunch of spots in the first third of the game I did replay to find out if it was as railroady as it seemed, and my suspicions were always confirmed. Another way to test that is, as you say, try to mess up the arc that seems planned by the narrative. If the choices seem to pertain to that arc, and if even though you choose always the most contrary choices, the same narrative arc plods ever on virtually unaltered toward the same didactic conclusion, then how interactive can any of the other options be? So I just did that for the final two-thirds (the ‘game’ is incredibly long actually, and except for a moonwalk sequence — wait did I say Mars? I forget which — was generally without suspense except in the sense of being trolled); my contrary moral choosing made no difference. And theory-wise, I kept trying to choose a middle way between player agency and total authorial control, but such a middle path was simply not available; middle choices were always interpreted as radically pro-player-agency choices. The ironic part is that this exactly is what fans didn’t like about the ending to Mass Effect 3: no matter whether you played the game ‘paragon’ or ‘renegade’ style or whatever you choose in the game’s supposed climactic choice, you got almost the same ending, mostly with different background colours. The fact that it was a depressing ending just made the railroad extra annoying; but every news outlet had to focus on the ‘unhappy ending’ part as if gamers are idiots. Anyway, Creatures replicated the same crappy style of non-interactivity while writing a morality play in defence of such railroads, so in that sense at least it is unified: in defence of sanctimonious boredom.
I understand you much better now. Thank you for taking the time to explain things in a way I finally managed to understand.
CSaW, it was an interesting experience for me… It never really drew me in, but it would occasionally throw sentences I enjoyed reading. I didn’t even get as far as the dating sim part, though, because I was playing it late, and there was no SAVE function, and the next day I thought about whether I wanted to replay what I’d already played, and I just went “Meh, no I don’t”. I suppose that is more telling than anything else.
From what you and Andrew say, it seems that CYOA games are now making a big deal of offering you way too many irrelevant choices. Surely it’d be better to trim it down to a couple of meaningful ones? I mean, Choice Of Games proundly states that in all their games you can be male or female, bi or straight. And I’m asking, does it make one wit of difference? Is it in any way relevant? Why make such a big deal out of it? But then, we’re talking about the guy who thought “Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons” was sexist, so hey. I’m waiting for the day, which I’m sure will come soon, when they’ll advertise “You can play male, female, male trans, female trans, genderqueer, homophobic, bisexual, straight, homosexual, or a completely asexual character!”, thus reducing the complexity of all these individual traits to a sentence or two. “You have chosen to play as a 65-yr-old homophobic trans woman of asian ethneticity. Well done! Now let’s play a game where the relatioships you have with other people will be actively dynamic based on your choices while the actual story takes a flying leap and is actually of no relevance to your character’s choice whatsoever!”. Unless the game happens to be more about dating and management sims, which is apparent from some reviews, in which case I’ll just go and play a proger game with a proper story, thank you very much.
DISCLAIMER: I never played a Choice Of games. This is just the impression I’m left with from their overly-proud blurbs. I may be completely wrong.
Mind, I do like useless choices sometimes. If well done they heighten the sense of lack of agency, like in Rameses. But it’s an occasional effect, rather than a pervading design choice.
I think CoG has definite potential just to help you get a sophisticated game out there. Paradox Corps was by a previous author who’d been panned for submitting incomplete works, and it helped him make a big jump in placement. I still don’t understand the radio buttons, though. Why not hotkeys or tabbing? Why, why, why? The code is so simple and elegant! (If you want an example, look at PC’s source. It will make immediate intuitive sense.)
Yes, there are many good sitcoms or even dramas about helplessness etc. But usually they have funny responses along the way. One Foot in the Grave is, to me, a great example of this, with the absurdism. Victor Meldrew may be an everyday grouch who has bad things happen, but, well, the bad things certainly are original.
Edited to fix quote from Laroquod to Peter Pears. I think I quoted a quote within a quote, or something.
I kept meaning to say this but got severely sidetracked:
Thanks a bunch for posting the links of the ZCode ports of the various versions of ADVENTURE, I had one or two but was missing the others. If you happen to know of any more ZCode ports, like versions past 550, I’d be very interested to know about them. The 770 version would be cool.
I was looking to find a version that I thought had various versions. I thought it was Colossal Cave Revisited for TADS, but it doesn’t seem to be it. I was sure there was a game file where you could choose th play the 350 version, or the 550, or this one, or that one, or etc - all in the same game file. Meh. I guess I imagined it.
Yes, there are many good sitcoms or even dramas about helplessness etc. But usually they have funny responses along the way. One Foot in the Grave is, to me, a great example of this, with the absurdism. Victor Meldrew may be an everyday grouch who has bad things happen, but, well, the bad things certainly are original.
[/quote]
I think something went wrong in the quoting — Peter said that, not me. I just agreed with it.
I wish I had more, but every zcode link I could find is in the piece. Most of them are by Arthur O’Dwyer. Many thanks to that guy. His ports are very faithful, and he ported like 4 different versions AND provided web playable landing pages for all of them. I asked Chris Conley if I could post a ‘play online’ link for Crowther’s original, because when there is a web playable link, non-IntFickers are wayyyy more likely to try it. But he never got back to me… Usually he does get back to me… maybe it’s the holidays?
Paul.
P.S. I think the game you’re thinking of is PolyAdventure or something. It’s in the list of links in Adventure’s IFDB page (having only one page for all those different versions of Adventure is not really something I agree with, either – if that is the case then why aren’t all the Zorks on one page? They were all originally one game. The differences between the different Adventures are much greater than the differences between the original mainframe Zork and Zorks I, II, III, but those collectively have four pages whereas Adventure has one page with like a hundred links dumped in it). I’ve heard that PolyAdventures is not very faithful. It is merely David Baggett’s version (which I myself have verified isn’t very faithful at all, although it’s more faithful than Nelson’s which was based on it), but extended and modified to resembled the other versions. It’s probably the worst way to experience them. I recommend O’Dwyer’s 350-point port. I can’t really vouch for his 440-point, 550-point, and 551-point points, although they seem faitfhul and solid: I just can’t vouch that they are relatively bug free. After all, he seems to have had a lot of trouble getting playtesters!
Technically speaking, you can use tab, space and enter, if you’re into that. I think it may be geared towards mobile devices, which sort of makes sense. Still, with the flexibility ChoiceScript has for story writing, it’d be nice.
I’d still like to be able to choose 1-9 to move to the next screen. The problem is, if I’m really involved in a story, it sucks to have to remember to twiddle my mouse. It’s inserting a quasi-video-game element into written text, and not a very good one.
YES IT IS! The second I saw the name I rememberd. Cheers!
Re IFDB and Zork, I think it’s mostly because the Zork that everyone remembers now is the final commercial trilogy. It’s also the one, presumably, that the implementors were ultimately satisfied with. The original Zork, or Dungeon, is regarded mostly as “the adventure clone that became Zork”. Whereas all those different versions of Adventure are expansions stemming from the same base.
Mostly, though, I think it’s just that one person or group of people thought it made sense and it kinda stuck. A lot of things happen that way, and it usually isn’t that bad a thing.
I think I’ll agree to disagree on a few points. I happen to think theory (BTW, I meant the collected “IF Theory” “book”, not theory in general, but it works out to the same thing, I guess) is vital for the growth of any artform, but only if it doesn’t stunt it. I haven’t much time right now, so I’ll have to be brief (huzzah!): let’s say that theory which studies the old ones to see why they were so great, and what they did so well, is very important; and theory that states that you cannot do this, or you cannot do that, because game X and author Y did so and so and… well, no, this idea of “theory” is not one I’d subscribe to.