What makes a game Adventurous? (long)
Gadget
procrastinate and play way to much IF.
I just played some recent games from the comp (really LOVED eas and
eas2) and while trying to avoid thinking about that article I have to
write, I discovered I missed something. The Adventure-ness of it all.
The reason I post this is because I want to find out what
Adventure-ness is.
Big
When I played ADVENT for the first time (in the form of the C16
version Classic Adventure, by Melbourne House) it was a completely
absorbing experience. Even though I was eleven and my grasp of the
English language wasn't all that good, I really felt like 'being
there' in the Cave. And what a big Cave it was. Colossal, you might
even say. Even on that 16K micro it was bewildering.
But what was more: it *felt* even bigger then it actually was. Maybe
because it was one of the first text adventures I played and I did not
know the limitations of the system, it felt the universe of the Cave
was a lot deeper then it actually turned out to be. (I finished Advent
only two years ago, I posted my joy over this in this very ng *).
Perhaps it was the open-ness of the design which contributed to the
sense of scale. Most of the game is open to exploration from the
start, which means that every item and every puzzle available *could*
be linked to any other puzzle available. So in theory the snake could
be somehow connected to the Troll or the big Clam might be helpful for
trapping the Pirate. Of course these weren't possibilities, but it
*felt* like that was possible.
Faceless
When I play recent games, or look at my own WIP, I notice that the
Player Character (PC) has become a completely different entity from
ourselves. He (or she, I will use 'he' from now on) has become more
like the main protagonist in a book then an extension of ourselves. In
Advent, I felt like *I* was in the cave looking for treasure. They
were *my* adventures, not someone elses. Now I am not complaining
about well rounded PCs, but looking back it feels like we have lost
something along the way. By giving the PC a personality and traits of
his own, the designer creates a filter between the player and the game
world. It is no longer *our* adventure. We are just along for the
ride. Of course, in most recent games this all works wonderfully and I
am not advocating the abandoning of fleshed-out PCs. That would be
silly. But there is something to be said for a return to the 'direct
experience' where you as yourself are placed in a strange environment
and where the experiences are once again your own.
Story
Treading dangerous ground here. I see some of you reach for your
flame-o-matic already...
When I played Advent, I was not aware of any 'story'. There was, on
the other hand, a well defined *goal*, which was to find all the
treasures. Which is, I think, a vital clue in my search for
Adventure-ness. And also what differentiates Interactive Fiction from
Adventure Games. Notice how the first name indicates 'story' and the
second points towards 'play'.
Adventure was all about play. You were thrust into a strange
environment with just one goal: score points. This meant you could
play around with the game in any way you liked and there was no
pressure to save princesses or prevent global armageddon. It was about
exploration, discovery and improving your (puzzle) skills.
Advent was a place you could return to. The Cave was/is a place to
spend time and have fun. It is a micro-cosmos where you go to escape
your normal mundane life. And after finishing it, you can go back to
find the things you missed. The Last Lousy Point, however unfair, must
have been the most brilliant incentive ever devised to add replay to a
game. It gave you the gnawing feeling that *there must be more to it
then meets the eye*.
Again, I am not advocating a regression towards 'find the treasure'
games, but rather I am looking for the elements of the old game which
captured my imagination in the first place.
Fun
I laugh at myself when I read what I just wrote. I am spending a lot
of time playing and writing games which are considered 'stone age
entertainment' by all but a few enthusiasts, and now I complaint that
the innovations of the last twenty years are 'bad'. Well, I don't
think they are 'bad' (m'kay) but I would like to see more gameplay in
future games. While I like a well-written game, I would *love* a *fun*
game, where play is more important then plot.
Hope this makes sense.
Now back to the grind-stone.
Harry
"I love deadlines. I love the nice 'swoosh' noises they make when they
fly by." - Douglas Adams
* How I finished advent:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=nl&lr=&ie=UTF-8&frame=right&th=cbc1e2d72c876d70&seekm=fgbmqtk5ai4al97ffm1tdn6dkl3u5c6mgr%404ax.com#link1
-------------
It's a bird...
It's a plane...
No, it's... Gadget?
-------------------
To send mail remove SPAMBLOCK from adress.
David A. Cornelson
news:sds65v4o8c1shlb7d...@4ax.com...
> Even though I have tons of work to do, and two deadlines looming, I
> procrastinate and play way to much IF.
>
> I just played some recent games from the comp (really LOVED eas and
> eas2) and while trying to avoid thinking about that article I have to
> write, I discovered I missed something. The Adventure-ness of it all.
>
> The reason I post this is because I want to find out what
> Adventure-ness is.
>
I miss AFGNCAP too. (I think that's the mnemonic, but it's been so long)
Jarb
Gadget
Erm... AFGNCAP??????
Jaap van der Velde
<gad...@SPAMBLOCKhaha.demon.nl> wrote:
>On Wed, 19 Feb 2003 08:24:24 -0600, "David A. Cornelson" <david dot
>cornelson at iflibrary dot com> wrote:
>>I miss AFGNCAP too. (I think that's the mnemonic, but it's been so long)
>>
>>Jarb
>>
>
>Erm... AFGNCAP??????
I think he meant AFGNCAAP:
"ageless, faceless, gender neutral, culturally ambiguous adventure
person."
(Source: #ADOM !whatis web interface!,
http://linna.kajaani.fi/~jsuvanto/adom/whatis.pl)
Grtz,
JAAP.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Such evil deeds could religion prompt."
-- Lucretius (99 BC - 55 BC), De Rerum Natura
Paul Drallos
When I played Zork for the first time (on a PDP-11),
my wife and I played together as a team. We didn't have
the feeling that we were part of some unfolding story so much as
the sense that we were actually *there*, exploring and doing
things in this strange world. We would always refer to our
memories of the game as, 'Remember when we had to find that air
pump and pump up the raft?' Or, 'Remember the first time we
climbed up on the top of FCD#3?'
The thing is, all my memories were as if they were memories of
things we actually did. I think that was partly because there
was simply a world there to explore on your own. This made it
feel more as if the character was actually yourself.
The story-driven games seem more like someone else's
memories and I'm in some situation in which I really
don't have as much control. They are still fantastic stories
and I'm quite affected by them. But once
in a while, I want to see a new classic-type adventure so
that I can feel like *I'm* the protagonist.
François Grandjean
Yes, Zork had that great quality to be "neutral" and let you play the
character you wanted to play with no informations about you, your
feelings, your past story, etc.
A good way to put that in a game is to make the hero amnesiac. He (or
she) doesn't remember who he is, what he is doing there, etc. It was
used in many games (lastly in Arx Fatalis) but the best exemple is
Planescape: Torment.
For those who don't know it, you play this amnesiac person who awake in
a Mortuary, a floating comes and talk to you, asking your name. And
because you can't remember it, you are The Nameless One. From that,
there are many advantages on the narrative side: you don't know who you
aren then you can imagine what type of person you are and the game
encourages you to do that and play like you want to be: good, bad,
serious, crazy, make promises for real or for laugh, etc. Second good
point is that you don't know the world around, so you have to discover
it and people explains it to you just like if you just arrived (from the
player point of view, you just arrived!).
In many adventure games, the secondary characters (if there are any)
have usually a good story about them (in good games that is) but you
don't have many info on the background of the hero so you can identify
to him/her more easily. But in Torment, identification was complete for
me. When I began the game, I had the feeling I'm really incarnating
someone. Later in the game you find that you are really building a
personality and playing it the way you want.
But Zork was good for giving no info about you. There is a good
background for the GUE though (lovely manuals!) but not about. Helps you
to concentrate more on the puzzles and exploration than thinking what
kind of character you should play (you don't have many choices about the
type of character you want to play anyway and it isn't the point of the
game)
Michael Iachini
> eas2) and while trying to avoid thinking about that article I have to
> write, I discovered I missed something. The Adventure-ness of it all.
Yay! A kindred spirit! I remember a thread similar to this one about
a year ago; I don't remember much discussion on it. I feel very much
the same way as you do, Gadget. I prefer "text adventures" to
"interactive fiction" for the most part. I like a game where I get to
go exploring, solving puzzles, getting a laugh every now and then,
that sort of thing. A piece of IF that tells a good story is
certainly nice, but it's not the sort of thing that gets me excited
and wanting to play the game some more. I'm happy to see this post;
it gives me hope that I might go and finish my work in progress even
though there is no story that I can really think of to back it up.
It's just a bunch of puzzles that are, to me at least, a lot of fun.
I know that most folks seem to enjoy story-driven IF more these days,
and that's great! I'm just happy that there are at least some other
people who like the same kind of text adventures that I do.
Michael Iachini
J. Verbergen
> >I miss AFGNCAP too. (I think that's the mnemonic, but it's been so long)
Gadget gasped:
> Erm... AFGNCAP??????
Jezetha answered:
AFGNCAAP is the name you're given by Dalboz, the Dungeon Master, in
Zork: Grand Inquisitor. The acronym stands for: ageless, faceless,
gender neutral, culturally ambiguous adventure person.
Hope that helped.
Andrew Plotkin
> The reason I post this is because I want to find out what
> Adventure-ness is.
> Big
The IFComp has promoted small games. I, too, miss the really big ones.
Of course everything seems bigger when you're small yourself. Zork 1
looms huge in my memory -- I was age ten -- but now it seems sort of
ramshackle and poorly described.
> Faceless
> By giving the PC a personality and traits of his own, the designer
> creates a filter between the player and the game world. It is no
> longer *our* adventure.
I dunno -- this is a personal reaction. I just don't get that.
> Adventure was all about play. You were thrust into a strange
> environment with just one goal: score points. This meant you could
> play around with the game in any way you liked and there was no
> pressure to save princesses or prevent global armageddon. It was about
> exploration, discovery and improving your (puzzle) skills.
> Advent was a place you could return to. The Cave was/is a place to
> spend time and have fun. It is a micro-cosmos where you go to escape
> your normal mundane life. And after finishing it, you can go back to
> find the things you missed. The Last Lousy Point, however unfair, must
> have been the most brilliant incentive ever devised to add replay to a
> game. It gave you the gnawing feeling that *there must be more to it
> then meets the eye*.
> Again, I am not advocating a regression towards 'find the treasure'
> games, but rather I am looking for the elements of the old game which
> captured my imagination in the first place.
This is an interesting angle. I've snipped your first paragraph
because I'm not sure it's relevant. "Story" is sort of orthogonal to
"there's more than meets the eye".
Certainly I have a prejudice that *everything in my game must support
the storyline*. But why do I think that? Some of my favorite
non-adventure (commercial) games have had lots and lots of stuff to
run around and do -- while still having strong storylines. You
didn't have to be advancing the storyline with every action. You could
explore, go back to earlier locales, improve your character's skills,
and so on.
(Examples: _Soul Reaver_ -- many "side quests", and exploration of a
vivid and deeply-imagined world. _Grand Theft Auto_ -- read any
review; the designers are friggin' geniuses at getting multiple
varieties of Fun Stuff into their games.)
Now, ending a game like this is kind of tricky. (You will recall
_Myst_, which tried to let you keep exploring after the story ended...
The gimmick utterly failed; people sat around saying "Is it over? Did
I miss something? What the hell?")
Do you just not have a final ending at all?
_Adventure_ and _Dungeon_ had endgames, and you couldn't go back from
the endgame to the main area. But then, starting over in those games
wasn't quite the big deal that it is in more modern games. (But then,
people had more patience back then for replaying stuff.)
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Ambrosine
> Yay! A kindred spirit! <snip> I prefer "text adventures" to
> "interactive fiction" for the most part.
As do I. While I admire good character development, pithy prose, and
tricky bits of Inform/TADS/etc. programming, nothing makes me 'play for
just 5 more minutes'(at 2:00am) or haunts me while I'm
sleeping/working/mopping the floor like a well-done "text adventure".
Give me short evocative descriptions, a large varied map (without
mazes), oodles of puzzles to solve, treasures to recover, and ways to
die (with fair warning) and I'm hooked.
Ambrosine
Ben Caplan
> Faceless
>
> When I play recent games, or look at my own WIP, I notice that the
> Player Character (PC) has become a completely different entity from
> ourselves. He (or she, I will use 'he' from now on) has become more
> like the main protagonist in a book then an extension of ourselves. In
> Advent, I felt like *I* was in the cave looking for treasure. They
> were *my* adventures, not someone elses. Now I am not complaining
> about well rounded PCs, but looking back it feels like we have lost
> something along the way. By giving the PC a personality and traits of
> his own, the designer creates a filter between the player and the game
> world. It is no longer *our* adventure. We are just along for the
> ride. Of course, in most recent games this all works wonderfully and I
> am not advocating the abandoning of fleshed-out PCs. That would be
> silly. But there is something to be said for a return to the 'direct
> experience' where you as yourself are placed in a strange environment
> and where the experiences are once again your own.
Here's an idea:
Make the PC coincide with the player. In the intro, say that the player has
been magically sucked into their computer and is now in a strange land,
which it proceeds to describe. (The ultimate justification for second-person
narration!) This might be more interesting with graphics -- you could show
the intro text tilt sideways, then swirl together into an indistinct mash of
color...
Does anyone except me *not* think that this is a stupid idea?
boa13
>
> Here's an idea:
> Make the PC coincide with the player. In the intro, say that the
> player has been magically sucked into their computer and is now
> in a strange land, which it proceeds to describe. (The ultimate
> justification for second-person narration!) This might be more
> interesting with graphics -- you could show the intro text tilt
> sideways, then swirl together into an indistinct mash of
> color... Does anyone except me *not* think that this is a stupid
> idea?
The authors of Myst surely agree with you. So do the authors of
the Ultima line of CRPGs, and probably lots of others games, too.
--
spam....@free.fr
You have my nick and my hostname: you can mail me
Gadget
<erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>
>Now, ending a game like this is kind of tricky. (You will recall
>_Myst_, which tried to let you keep exploring after the story ended...
>The gimmick utterly failed; people sat around saying "Is it over? Did
>I miss something? What the hell?")
>
>Do you just not have a final ending at all?
>
>_Adventure_ and _Dungeon_ had endgames, and you couldn't go back from
>the endgame to the main area. But then, starting over in those games
>wasn't quite the big deal that it is in more modern games. (But then,
>people had more patience back then for replaying stuff.)
>
>--Z
I don't see why you should not have an endgame. A game does not need a
story to have an ending. Just like, as you pointed out, Advent has a
definite 'final level'. But in Advent, you could reach the end without
a full score. Which means there was a reason to replay. And I'm not
sure if people lack replay-patience today. I myself replayed several
80hr RPG's (which proves I had *way* to much free time. ;-) ) and I'm
sure I'm not the only one.
(Oh, and please people, for the love of Zork: Please don't spin this
thread off to which games you all replayed...)
L. Ross Raszewski
Not the only one. The "you get sucked into your computer" premise was
one of the more popular ways to begin a computer game up untill the
early 90's. It's the gimmick of the Ultima series, Companions of
Xanth, and at least half a dozen C64 games I've played.
Andrew Plotkin
> On Thu, 20 Feb 2003 07:56:14 -0600, Ben Caplan <b...@hayscaplan.org> wrote:
>>Gadget at gad...@SPAMBLOCKhaha.demon.nl pontificated:
>>
>>Make the PC coincide with the player. In the intro, say that the player has
>>been magically sucked into their computer and is now in a strange land,
>>which it proceeds to describe. (The ultimate justification for second-person
>>narration!) This might be more interesting with graphics -- you could show
>>the intro text tilt sideways, then swirl together into an indistinct mash of
>>color...
>>Does anyone except me *not* think that this is a stupid idea?
> Not the only one. The "you get sucked into your computer" premise was
> one of the more popular ways to begin a computer game up untill the
> early 90's. It's the gimmick of the Ultima series, Companions of
> Xanth, and at least half a dozen C64 games I've played.
All the way up to ".hack", a console game released just a couple of
weeks ago, which has the supremely weird premise that you're playing a
massively-multiplayer online RPG (which the game *simulates* on your
non-networked Playstation) and you get sucked into *that*.
More or less.
However, introductions always weigh less with me than the meat of the
game. A good intro can convey a lot of information, but it doesn't
change the way I feel about actually playing.
Nikos Chantziaras
> Even though I have tons of work to do, and two deadlines looming, I
> procrastinate and play way too [sic] much IF.
Don't we all?
> When I play recent games, or look at my own WIP, I notice that the
> Player Character (PC) has become a completely different entity from
> ourselves. He (or she, I will use 'he' from now on) has become more
> like the main protagonist in a book then an extension of ourselves.
> In Advent, I felt like *I* was in the cave looking for treasure. They
> were *my* adventures, not someone elses.
> [...]
> When I played Advent, I was not aware of any 'story'. [...] And also
> what differentiates Interactive Fiction from Adventure Games.
I think this has a lot to do with the game's setting, not it's story.
For example, Winter Wonderland's PC was a small girl with a known
background (unlike ADVENT's PC). But the game's environment had this
"adventureness" that you describe (I think the correct spelling is
"adventurousness"). If you haven't played the game yet, I urge you to
do so ASAP. The game was *so* good, that I almost started crying after
I finished it; I couldn't accept the fact that I was suddenly thrown
back to reality.
> Adventure was all about play. You were thrust into a strange
> environment with just one goal: score points. This meant you could
> play around with the game in any way you liked and there was no
> pressure to save princesses or prevent global armageddon. It was
> about exploration, discovery and improving your (puzzle) skills.
> Advent was a place you could return to. The Cave was/is a place to
> spend time and have fun. It is a micro-cosmos where you go to escape
> your normal mundane life. And after finishing it, you can go back to
> find the things you missed.
I think every game that introduced a new genre (or the first game you
play that's of an unknown genre to you) has this "adventureness"
quality. In my case, I found Dungeon (the original Zork that later got
split in 3 parts because it didn't fit in the RAM of home computers)
very boring and I never finished it. I'm pretty sure that the reason
for this is simply that Dungeon was not one of the first text
adventures I ever played (I first played it about 2 years ago).
Furthermore, I find Dungeon awful and very unfair. For me, the best
text adventure I ever played is "Das Stundenglas", but most other
people find it very average (and that's true actually).
I'm interested in other people's opinion about this, especially from
those who didn't start with Zork or Adventure. Do they also find these
two games boring?
> The Last Lousy Point, however unfair, must have been the most
> brilliant incentive ever devised to add replay to a game. It gave you
> the gnawing feeling that *there must be more to it then meets the
> eye*.
But it only worked the first time. After that, I never tried to get
that point again. Now I find it annoying.
> Again, I am not advocating a regression towards 'find the treasure'
> games, but rather I am looking for the elements of the old game which
> captured my imagination in the first place.
Again, try Winter Wonderland for a very, very good example of how the
"spirit of IF" looks like (IMO, of course). The author of this game
(sorry, I forgot the name) is a real genius (I almost missed an
examination at school because I was playing this game the whole night
long). The only other game that came close (but didn't quite reach
that level), is Curses (not that Curses isn't an excellent game; no
flames please).
> I laugh at myself when I read what I just wrote. I am spending a lot
> of time playing and writing games which are considered 'stone age
> entertainment' by all but a few enthusiasts, and now I complaint that
> the innovations of the last twenty years are 'bad'. Well, I don't
> think they are 'bad' (m'kay) but I would like to see more gameplay in
> future games. While I like a well-written game, I would *love* a
> *fun* game, where play is more important then plot.
>
> Hope this makes sense.
It makes perfect sense to me. I also find most recent games too
movie-like. What I would like to play is a game that drops me in the
middle of nowhere, far away from the "civilized" world, with the only
explanation being that the PC wants some adventure. At the same time,
it shouldn't be a cave-crawl nor a puzzle-fest. What I want is
exploration and interesting things waiting to be discovered.
-- Niko
http://members.lycos.co.uk/realnc/
PS:
By the way, did you know that there's a spell error in you sig?
boa13
>
> It makes perfect sense to me. I also find most recent games too
> movie-like. What I would like to play is a game that drops me
> in the middle of nowhere, far away from the "civilized" world,
> with the only explanation being that the PC wants some
> adventure. At the same time, it shouldn't be a cave-crawl nor
> a puzzle-fest. What I want is exploration and interesting
> things waiting to be discovered.
For me, Worlds Apart closely matches what you just described,
except for "the only explanation being that the PC wants some
adventure". Have you played it?
J. Robinson Wheeler
> The reason I post this is because I want to find out what
> Adventure-ness is.
>
> Big
>
> When I played ADVENT for the first time (in the form of the C16
> version Classic Adventure, by Melbourne House) it was a completely
> absorbing experience. Even though I was eleven and my grasp of the
> English language wasn't all that good, I really felt like 'being
> there' in the Cave. And what a big Cave it was. Colossal, you might
> even say. Even on that 16K micro it was bewildering.
This seems to have turned out to be one of those "You had to be
there" experiences. Adventure never seems particularly absorbing
to players who didn't come across it at the time, but it has
left its mark on those who did. I don't even think I ever really
got that far in it, but I have memories of walking around in that
environment -- I guess memories of what I imagined the first time
I played it -- that are still strong to this day. It was extremely
immersive, and I have no idea why.
I suppose this would be an interesting side-topic to discuss: is
there anything actually inherent to Adventure that made it seem
compelling and immersive (ie, did we, the inheritors of the genre
it invented, just "luck out," in that the first real text adventure
game happened to be really, really good, inviting future interest
and imitators), or was this just an illusion created by the fact
that it was the only thing like it, and it was new, and we were
frightfully young, and there was all the time in the world to
explore it?
> But what was more: it *felt* even bigger then it actually was. Maybe
> because it was one of the first text adventures I played and I did not
> know the limitations of the system, it felt the universe of the Cave
> was a lot deeper then it actually turned out to be. (I finished Advent
> only two years ago, I posted my joy over this in this very ng *).
> Perhaps it was the open-ness of the design which contributed to the
> sense of scale. Most of the game is open to exploration from the
> start, which means that every item and every puzzle available *could*
> be linked to any other puzzle available. So in theory the snake could
> be somehow connected to the Troll or the big Clam might be helpful for
> trapping the Pirate. Of course these weren't possibilities, but it
> *felt* like that was possible.
Hmmm, interesting. I agree, and this is what I like about adventure
games when I play them for the first time. I like a broadening
landscape that feels like it can be explored without end, and I
like a sackful of curious objects whose uses haven't been discovered
yet, where everything is pure potential. I recently played the first
Mulldoon game, and remember feeling disappointed when the number of
new areas to explore started to diminish, and long-locked doors only
led back to areas I'd already seen (actually a helpful bit of craft,
allowing more shortcuts as the player becomes more experienced with
the game and farther along in the plot).
Playing Riven also helped me to realize that the exploration part of
the game -- the rewards for early puzzles being more rooms to see --
is my favorite one. Makes me think that I should be writing games
that satisfy this, because none of the ones I've written have
particularly large exploration phases. (First Things First is the
closest, but really it's a small map seen from several perspectives.
Although it does have an abundance of curious objects of potential
utility.)
I am definitely a fan of older-school games when I'm a player, but
writing good ones isn't trivial, I've found. I always feel like I'm
on this quest to write -- rather than the Great American Novel --
the Great Classic Text Adventure Game, and I haven't quite come up
with the goods yet.
> Again, I am not advocating a regression towards 'find the treasure'
> games, but rather I am looking for the elements of the old game which
> captured my imagination in the first place.
Yeah, what was it about them, anyway? I think these are fascinating
questions.
--
J. Robinson Wheeler Games - http://raddial.com/if/
j...@jrwdigitalmedia.com Movie - http://thekroneexperiment.com
JJK
> I think every game that introduced a new genre (or the first game you
> play that's of an unknown genre to you) has this "adventureness"
> quality. In my case, I found Dungeon (the original Zork that later got
> split in 3 parts because it didn't fit in the RAM of home computers)
> very boring and I never finished it. I'm pretty sure that the reason
> for this is simply that Dungeon was not one of the first text
> adventures I ever played
I think Nikos got it right in the quote above. I felt exactly as you
described when I played advent on curling yellow paper coming off of a
teletypewriter hooked to a Xerox Mainframe (Yes, Xerox) in 1978. But a
large part of that was the newness. You can only have a first time once.
-Jim
Howard
Advent is not, strictly speaking, Interactive Fiction. The boys at MIT
looked at Advent and said "We can do better" and they did. They blew
away the two word parser, added lots of excellent prose and cute
one-liners BUT as you mentioned.. Zork 1 had no plot though it did have
an object.
THEN the Implementers got creative. Goodbye Interlogic, Hello
Interactive Fiction. Voila! Deadline, Cutthroats, Suspended, etc.
After all, a dude underground looking for treasure can only go so far.
I ought to know; Pentari: First Light has a good deal of underground to
explore and there happen to be treasures there in need of discovery BUT
you're also contending with other NPCs, solving mysteries, connecting
dots (so to speak) as you reach a multi-pronged objective. There's a
REASON why you're finding 20 treasures. In short, you're a dude on a
mission.
Was something lost? I don't think so. I see it as evolution.
The PC today is a different entity; in Deadline he was a detective. In
Cutthroats he was a treasure-hunting adventurer looking for the
shipwreck. As such, a shipwreck-hunting adventurer isn't going to be
all that charmed by Chaucer, Hot cocoa or New Yorker magazine. It's
really no different from the main character in a book.
How did Graham Nelson explain this? "Commander Spock should certainly be
disallowed from shooting Captain Kirk in the back" or something to that
effect. If you were writing a piece of IF based on the original Star
Trek timeline would it be even conceivable for Chekov to shag that
little blonde yoman babe (forgot her name)... NO! With story comes the
main character. And with those two elements come parameters.
You do raise a good point by the contrast; is our imagination somehow
filtered by this? Are we constrained by the story? Perhaps so. In that
regard, Zork and Colossal Caves may be irreplacable. As you so rightly
pointed out; there was an object but not a story.
But without a story do we still have Interactive Fiction?
Howard
http://www.malinche.net
dgr...@cs.csbuak.edu
>>Here's an idea:
>>Make the PC coincide with the player. In the intro, say that the player has
>>been magically sucked into their computer and is now in a strange land,
>>which it proceeds to describe. (The ultimate justification for second-person
>>narration!) This might be more interesting with graphics -- you could show
>>the intro text tilt sideways, then swirl together into an indistinct mash of
>>color...
>>Does anyone except me *not* think that this is a stupid idea?
>>
> Not the only one. The "you get sucked into your computer" premise was
> one of the more popular ways to begin a computer game up untill the
> early 90's. It's the gimmick of the Ultima series, Companions of
> Xanth, and at least half a dozen C64 games I've played.
I never thought of the Ultima series as having a "sucked into your
computer" gimmick. It always seemed quite clear that your character was
teleported to another world througg a moongate.
--
David Griffith
Benjamin Penney
> The thing is, all my memories were as if they were memories of
> things we actually did. I think that was partly because there
> was simply a world there to explore on your own. This made it
> feel more as if the character was actually yourself.
I think what really made the exploration experience was more the fact
that with earlier games, the writers employed a vastly different
authoring system. There was a lot more collaboration and interactive
fiction authors worked in programming teams, but this is still not
uncommon today. More importantly, games were added to significantly
after their first release. I'm thinking in particular here of
Adventure and Zork. Zork in particular was something like half the
size of the final game after its first release.
The contributors who wrote later additions to the initial releases of
games like Zork, most importantly, weren't consultants to the author
or part of a team, but writing for themselves. They took another
writer's existing work and spun it off into an entirely new direction.
This is what added significantly to the breadth of early text
adventure games.
--
Just my humble opinion,
Benjamin Penney.
Neil Cerutti
Robinson Wheeler wrote:
> This seems to have turned out to be one of those "You had to be
> there" experiences. Adventure never seems particularly
> absorbing to players who didn't come across it at the time, but
> it has left its mark on those who did. I don't even think I
> ever really got that far in it, but I have memories of walking
> around in that environment -- I guess memories of what I
> imagined the first time I played it -- that are still strong to
> this day. It was extremely immersive, and I have no idea why.
Graham Nelson's theory on that is contained in the original
_Craft of Adventure_ essay. He says it's good because it has it's
roots in a caving simulation.
> I suppose this would be an interesting side-topic to discuss:
> is there anything actually inherent to Adventure that made it
> seem compelling and immersive (ie, did we, the inheritors of
> the genre it invented, just "luck out," in that the first real
> text adventure game happened to be really, really good,
> inviting future interest and imitators), or was this just an
> illusion created by the fact that it was the only thing like
> it, and it was new, and we were frightfully young, and there
> was all the time in the world to explore it?
>
> I am definitely a fan of older-school games when I'm a player,
> but writing good ones isn't trivial, I've found. I always feel
> like I'm on this quest to write -- rather than the Great
> American Novel -- the Great Classic Text Adventure Game, and I
> haven't quite come up with the goods yet.
I think part of it may be that computers back then were almost as
mysterious and arcane to most people as a magical cave simulation
was meant to be. It'll be very difficult to get that kind of
leverage from the modern blase attitude to today's ubiquitous and
dull computer.
--
Neil Cerutti
Magnus Olsson
Neil Cerutti <ne...@norwich.edu> wrote:
>I think part of it may be that computers back then were almost as
>mysterious and arcane to most people as a magical cave simulation
>was meant to be. It'll be very difficult to get that kind of
>leverage from the modern blase attitude to today's ubiquitous and
>dull computer.
But most people who held that kind of attitude (computers as something
mysterious and arcane) didn't typically have the kind of regular access
to computers required to play computer games. In fact, they held those
attitudes precisely because they didn't have access to computers.
I suppose computer games may have played an important role in
de-mystifying computers to the general public.
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se)
PGP Public Key available at http://www.df.lth.se/~mol
Rikard Peterson
entire 108 lines of the original post below his reply.
Please snip, and don't top post!
Rikard
Robin Munn
> I suppose this would be an interesting side-topic to discuss: is
> there anything actually inherent to Adventure that made it seem
> compelling and immersive (ie, did we, the inheritors of the genre
> it invented, just "luck out," in that the first real text adventure
> game happened to be really, really good, inviting future interest
> and imitators), or was this just an illusion created by the fact
> that it was the only thing like it, and it was new, and we were
> frightfully young, and there was all the time in the world to
> explore it?
I'd say we "lucked out" -- the descriptions of the environment were what
really captured my imagination. Rivers of orange stone...
Someday I hope to plan a trip out to Kentucky to actually see Mammoth
Cave for myself.
--
Robin Munn <rm...@pobox.com>
http://www.rmunn.com/
PGP key ID: 0x6AFB6838 50FF 2478 CFFB 081A 8338 54F7 845D ACFD 6AFB 6838
Cedric Knight
> The reason I post this is because I want to find out what
> Adventure-ness is.
Adventure was a collision between spelaeology and riddle-like puzzles.
The first was simply a kind of background which added interest to
everyone with a child-like fascination with caves.
The riddles were often guess-the-verbs but reasonably clued; the most
memorable for me (stumped me for a long time) was killing the dragon.
Adventure was the first of a kind and there was no standard interface to
compare against; you were exploring the interface at the same time as
the cave. This was in the days when getting any new response from a
command line seemed like a reward.
Adventure could use classic puzzles which we can't now because they risk
seeming hackneyed; it was also unconstrained by any realism, a fact it
celebrates towards the end. The range of puzzles (e.g. 'alike' and
'different') was varied and intended to play with expectations and
require unexpectedly different strategies to solve. Another reason I
describe them as 'riddles' not 'puzzles' is because the solution was
often rewarded through humour.
Why was I so unimpressed in comparison by Zork when I played it for the
first time after a lot of modern IF? I was older for one thing, and had
become much more familiar with different categories of puzzle by then,
and not satisfied with short descriptions. Therefore it didn't have
anything like the same impact, and even seems a bit dull and irrational.
My experience of Adventure was also superior to that of many other games
because there was no possible recourse to hints; I felt completely on my
own. There must be solutions (the program wouldn't be on the system if
it were buggy) so I was working problems through in my mind even away
from the terminal. Nowadays, even if there's no walkthrough, it is
possible to ask on RGIF, so the only way to restore the full impact of
Adventure would involve destroying the internet....
CK
Adam Thornton
Howard <how...@malinche.net> wrote:
>After all, a dude underground looking for treasure can only go so far.
There is some horrible pun about Venus, Tannhauser, and Stiffy Makane
lurking here, but the margin isn't wide enough for me to figure it out.
Oh, and please don't top-post, and please do trim the post you're
replying to.
Adam
Nikos Chantziaras
news:2389508.V...@maya.boanet:
> On Jeudi 20 Février 2003 21:46, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> >
> > It makes perfect sense to me. I also find most recent games too
> > movie-like. What I would like to play is a game that drops me
> > in the middle of nowhere, far away from the "civilized" world,
> > with the only explanation being that the PC wants some
> > adventure. At the same time, it shouldn't be a cave-crawl nor
> > a puzzle-fest. What I want is exploration and interesting
> > things waiting to be discovered.
>
> For me, Worlds Apart closely matches what you just described,
> except for "the only explanation being that the PC wants some
> adventure". Have you played it?
Not yet, but I plan to. I liked the intro and the setting.
-- Niko
http://members.lycos.co.uk/realnc/
David Brain
gad...@SPAMBLOCKhaha.demon.nl (Gadget) wrote:
>
> Faceless
>
> When I play recent games, or look at my own WIP, I notice that the
> Player Character (PC) has become a completely different entity from
> ourselves. He (or she, I will use 'he' from now on) has become more
> like the main protagonist in a book then an extension of ourselves. In
> Advent, I felt like *I* was in the cave looking for treasure. They
> were *my* adventures, not someone elses. Now I am not complaining
> about well rounded PCs, but looking back it feels like we have lost
> something along the way.
>
I wrote "Sun and Moon" for similar reasons. There is no pretence at a player
character in that - you play the game as you, not anyone else. I also wanted a
goal that felt like you had achieved something at the end (although I may have
misjudged that).
(I'd also like to add that I'm somewhat upset that the maze in Constraints got a
Xyzzy nomination, and the one in mine didn't, since mine was at least a genuine
puzzle. Well OK, perhaps not *that* upset... :-)
--
David Brain
London, UK