Tragedy and the adventure game
Brandon Van Every
tricks. An ignoramus of a creative writer has to start somewhere. On the
advice of Lee Sheldon (he gave a workshop at the Game Developer's Conference
roadtrip in Seattle) I have been reading Aristotle's "Poetics," and now at
last I am beginning to understand the form.
It occurs to me that almost nobody writes Tragic adventure games.
It is commonly held that the adventurer must be given freedom of action,
that frustration with circumstance is to be avoided. That the player has a
"Bill Of Rights" and one must not frustrate him.
This is False.
The question is whether the audience KNOWS that they're supposed to
experience a tragedy. If they do, then they will play along. We are
observing this quite readily in The Game Of Immortals. Because Avatar knows
that he is telling a story, he does not shirk his tragic role at Poseidon's
hands. Whereas if he were a lesser storyteller and role-player, he would
believe fully in his inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of
Happiness. And he would feel angry. Cheated. Victimized.
You do NOT have to be happy, playing an adventure game.
Your needs do NOT have to be served.
However, there is a difference between frustrating a player as a matter of
poetic device, and frustrating them with irrational events that say "oh gee
you're dead." One is a plot, building to a climax. The other is garbage.
The most important feature of Tragic application in adventure games, is it
eliminates the expanding list of possibilities owing to the player's
freedom-of-choice. The universe is not simulated so as to allow the player
to move freely. Rather, the universe is directed so as to admonish him.
Several paths lead to progress, all of them bad. Any path taken, it gets
Worse. Until the player is at last let off the hook.
If the author is nice.
Victor Pelevin is not so nice. In "Omon Ra" he writes a story of cosmonauts
who are co-opted into suicide missions. There's a profound reversal at the
end, but in contemplation, one realizes he didn't HAVE to reverse a damn
thing. He could have left you to suffer, and like a good ghost story, this
realization is what scares you the most.
Choose-Your-Own-Adventure is a lot more plausible when the plotline is
tragic. Concern over exponential expansion is mitigated, you need not
please the player. Corralling them, making them feel the anguish of frail
and futile movement upon this planet, is all part of the effect.
--
Cheers, 3d graphics optimization jock
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
If we are all Gods and we have thrown our toys the mortals away
and we are Immortal What shall we do
and we cannot die to entertain ourselves?
Adam Cadre
> It occurs to me that almost nobody writes Tragic adventure games.
I'd suggest that you have a look at the extremely recent thread in
rec.games.int-fiction, "Tragic IF", before continuing to declaim upon
this topic.
-----
Adam Cadre, Anaheim, CA
http://www.retina.net/~grignr
Brandon Van Every
Mary K. Kuhner wrote in message <73fibt$19sq$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
>
>Or to put it another way, you can violate any of the player's "rights"
>and your game may well still work for some players: it will probably
>fail to work for others. In your given example, I'd note that I'm
>willing to play second fiddle to another human being, for his/her
>enjoyment, so I'd be willing to be the foil to someone else's character
>in a roleplaying game: but in a solitary IF, it would be quite another
>matter.
And this begs a question: why? I'm going to offer a guess: because the
author of an adventure game has never properly prepared you to enjoy a
tragic role? By way of crude comparison, people go to horror films to be
scared. There are devices, both in plot and cinema, that are more or less
effective for preparing an audience for the experience. By the same token,
people witness a tragedy in order to feel miserable and then experience
catharsis. At one extreme, the catharsis may simply be that upon leaving
the theater, you feel a whole lot better about your own life!
Brandon Van Every
Adam Cadre wrote in message ...
>Brandon Van Every wrote:
>> It occurs to me that almost nobody writes Tragic adventure games.
>
>I'd suggest that you have a look at the extremely recent thread in
>rec.games.int-fiction, "Tragic IF", before continuing to declaim upon
>this topic.
Shall do....
Brandon Van Every
Adam Cadre wrote in message ...
>
>rec.games.int-fiction, "Tragic IF", before continuing to declaim upon
>this topic.
Heh, almost missed that you said rec.GAMES.int-fiction, not
rec.ARTS.int-fiction. I can't read those articles yet, I haven't played
Photopia and it's been very specifically recommended to me as in line with
my interests. I'll get on it shortly, and I'll ask your forgiveness for any
repetitions meanwhile.
Incidentally, there are 23 occurrances of the word "tragic" and 58 of
"tragedy" in the DejaNews archive of rec.ARTS.int-fiction. Compare 300 hits
for the word "sword" and 400 for "dragon." Quantitatively speaking, we have
a lot to discuss.
I'd note that Infidel is not a Tragedy. It is a rough draft for a tragedy.
In Aristotelean terms the plot is not "whole": it has a beginning and an
end, but no middle. The middle is just a bunch of stupid puzzles, and
that's why you ultimately don't care when the bricks fall down on his head
at the end.
Some of the back articles on DejaNews theorized about Tragedy in terms of a
game that a player cannot win. But losing a game is not, in and of itself,
Tragic. There's a layman's definition of Tragedy: bad things happen, you
suffer, you get screwed. In the words of the scarecrow from The Whiz: you
can't win, you can't get even, and you can't get out of the game. And then
there's what bright guys like Aristotle had to say about it 2000 years ago.
Up until recently, I didn't know the difference. From the "Poetics":
"Now, one cannot undo traditional stories (I mean, for example,
Clytaemnestra's death at Orestes' hands, or Eriphyle's at Alcmeon's); but
one has to discover for oneself how to use even the traditional stories
well. Let us state more clearly what this involves. It is possible for the
action to come about in the way that the old poets used to do it, with
people acting in full knowledge and awareness; this is in fact how Euripides
portrayed Medea killing her children. It is also possible for the action to
be performed, but for the agents to do the terrible deed in ignorance and
only then to recognize the close connection, as in Sophocles' "Oedipus."
(This is outside the play: examples in the tragedy itself are Astydamas'
"Alcmeon" or Telegonus in the "Odysseus Wounded.") A third possibility
besides these is for someone to be on the verge of performing some
irreparable deed through ignorance, and for the recognition to pre-empt the
act. Besides these there is no other possibility: necessarily the agents
either ACT OR NOT ACT, either KNOWINGLY OR IN IGNORANCE." [emphasis mine]
"Of these, being on the verge of acting wittingly and not doing so is worst;
this is disgusting, and it is not tragic since there is no suffering. So no
one composes in this way, or only rarely (e.g. Haemon and Creon in the
"Antigone"). Performing the action is second; but it is better if the
action is performed in ignorance and followed by a recognition - there is
nothing disgusting in this, and the recognition has great emotional impact.
But the last case is best; I mean, fore example, in the "Cresphontes" Merope
is on the verge of killing her son but does not do it, but instead
recognizes him; the same happens with sister and brother in "Ipigeneia;" and
in the "Helle" the son recognizes his mother when on the verge of handing
her over."
So as far as Aristotle is concerned, Tragedy != you lose. Tragedy is a
change from good fortune to bad fortune. It is not required that the story
end on bad fortune. Indeed, at the last possible moment, catharsis may be
achieved by the reversal of the bad fortune. It is the narrowness of the
escape, the realization that one has been let off the hook, and that one
didn't HAVE to be, that is cathartic.
For example, Infidel would have been a Tragedy if the psychology of the
digger's ostricization from his archaeological peers, his estrangement from
his family, and his anti-Muslim sentiment had been developed. Not as a
matter of contempt, but rather as a tug against his noble ambitions of
scientific discovery. And if instead of making progress, he kept beating
his head against the proverbial brick (sandstone) wall. Precious objects
nearly rescued are snatched away by the fiendishness of long-dead Egyptian
architects. At the end, he nearly dies trying to rescue the most precious
artifact of all, the tomb collapses, he barely escapes with his life. But
finally, he recognizes that he at least escaped with his life, and that is
the catharsis. He is no longer ignorant about what is important. And the
narrowness of his escape is such that he could just have easily have been
dead, nobody would have cared. That's the Tragedy of it: to die ignoble,
unloved, and anonymous.
Mary K. Kuhner
Brandon Van Every <vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>It is commonly held that the adventurer must be given freedom of action,
>that frustration with circumstance is to be avoided. That the player has a
>"Bill Of Rights" and one must not frustrate him.
>This is False.
More properly, as the Church of Eris would say, it's true, false,
and meaningless.
Or to put it another way, you can violate any of the player's "rights"
and your game may well still work for some players: it will probably
fail to work for others. In your given example, I'd note that I'm
willing to play second fiddle to another human being, for his/her
enjoyment, so I'd be willing to be the foil to someone else's character
in a roleplaying game: but in a solitary IF, it would be quite another
matter.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Palmer Davis
>
> It occurs to me that almost nobody writes Tragic adventure games.
Count me as "almost nobody" then... I've got an _Avalon_ of a
tragedy in development. Which should tell you everything that
you need to know about why it isn't available yet, and how long
it's going to be until it is....
> The question is whether the audience KNOWS that they're supposed
> to experience a tragedy. If they do, then they will play along....
> Whereas if he were a lesser storyteller and role-player....
> he would feel angry. Cheated. Victimized.
That's assuming that the PC is the tragic figure. There are
plenty of other characters available to play with without
minimizing the impact of the tragedy. (In my case, the tragic
figure is your father.)
--
Palmer Davis <pal...@secant.com>
Secant Technologies * 4853 Galaxy Parkway * Cleveland OH 44128
Mary K. Kuhner
>And this begs a question: why? I'm going to offer a guess: because the
>author of an adventure game has never properly prepared you to enjoy a
>tragic role? By way of crude comparison, people go to horror films to be
>scared. There are devices, both in plot and cinema, that are more or less
>effective for preparing an audience for the experience. By the same token,
>people witness a tragedy in order to feel miserable and then experience
>catharsis. At one extreme, the catharsis may simply be that upon leaving
>the theater, you feel a whole lot better about your own life!
You changed the context of my post from "I don't want to play the
foil to another character unless that character is being played by
a human being" to "I don't like tragedy", so I don't have any answer
to your questions here. It's not actually the case that I don't like
tragedy.
I think I will back out of this conversation now: I don't feel it
is going to be productive. Sorry.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Bill
Brandon Van Every wrote in message
<73fgvc$28q$1...@fir.prod.itd.earthlink.net>...
>It occurs to me that almost nobody writes Tragic adventure games.
I busted my chops on LGOP2 for a year while the company almost went out of
business. The game basically tanked.
Now that's what I call TRAGIC.
(if it wasn't for that, we never would have succeeded with RTZ)
Bill "but I learned something" Volk
Michael Straight
On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Adam Cadre wrote:
> Brandon Van Every wrote:
> > It occurs to me that almost nobody writes Tragic adventure games.
>
> I'd suggest that you have a look at the extremely recent thread in
> rec.games.int-fiction, "Tragic IF", before continuing to declaim upon
> this topic.
Poor Adam thought he had a successful game on his hands before Brandon
came along and LIKED it.
SMTIRCAHIAGEHLT
Bjoern Guenzel
<vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
Funny you start this thread now, as only yesterday I thought about the
possibly Epic dimension of games (ie a game that has as much impact
as, say, greek mythology...) while listening to Griegs Peer Gynt
Suites...
Also, one game I have wanted to make for ages has the intention to
make you feel lost and lonely - I expect that nobody will want to play
it, though (daydreaming I sometimes imagine being flamed on this group
for 'whining about making the wrong business decisions' in a few years
time :-).
>In recent months I've been adding the art of Tragedy to my bag of literary
>tricks. An ignoramus of a creative writer has to start somewhere. On the
>advice of Lee Sheldon (he gave a workshop at the Game Developer's Conference
>roadtrip in Seattle) I have been reading Aristotle's "Poetics," and now at
>last I am beginning to understand the form.
>
>It occurs to me that almost nobody writes Tragic adventure games.
>
>It is commonly held that the adventurer must be given freedom of action,
>that frustration with circumstance is to be avoided. That the player has a
>"Bill Of Rights" and one must not frustrate him.
>
>This is False.
>
>The question is whether the audience KNOWS that they're supposed to
>experience a tragedy. If they do, then they will play along. We are
>observing this quite readily in The Game Of Immortals. Because Avatar knows
>that he is telling a story, he does not shirk his tragic role at Poseidon's
>hands. Whereas if he were a lesser storyteller and role-player, he would
>believe fully in his inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of
>Happiness. And he would feel angry. Cheated. Victimized.
I don't really know what makes a tragedy but from some of the other
posts - so if a tragedy happens because of the heroes character flaws,
wouldn't it be cool if the tragedy in a game happens because of the
PLAYER's character flaws?
Perhaps you could even manipulate the player into developing flaws
with the right environment. Just as Hamlet might have become so
depressed because of his useless familiy (damn, I haven't even read
Hamlet yet, will start doing so tonight...).
>
>You do NOT have to be happy, playing an adventure game.
>
>Your needs do NOT have to be served.
>
>However, there is a difference between frustrating a player as a matter of
>poetic device, and frustrating them with irrational events that say "oh gee
>you're dead." One is a plot, building to a climax. The other is garbage.
>
>The most important feature of Tragic application in adventure games, is it
>eliminates the expanding list of possibilities owing to the player's
>freedom-of-choice. The universe is not simulated so as to allow the player
>to move freely. Rather, the universe is directed so as to admonish him.
>Several paths lead to progress, all of them bad. Any path taken, it gets
>Worse. Until the player is at last let off the hook.
Not sure about this - why do you think the universe needs to be
constrained in order to be desperate? A universe could just be
fundamentally desperate, you could still simulate it as completely as
possible.
[...]
One remotely tragic game that comes to my mind is Ultima 5, where you
have to betray some of your friends to make progress.
Also the Ultimas feel the most Epic for me - mostly because of the
brilliant music playing while you roam the landscape alone...:-)
I've been thinking about it in regard of Ultima Online, too. What
would be a deed of Epic dimension in a game like UO? You gain titles
like 'Admireable' after a while if you slay enough monsters, but in
the end, everybody could kill dragons. It's not like somebody risked
his life to save his village or a fair princess. In fact, if I see
somebody who is 'admireable', I am much more likely to think he did a
lot of macroing or has too much time on his hands... :-/
OTOH, many single player games theoretically have this Epic aspect -
in most games you set out to destroy something evil.
Again, it's the ultimas where I got the most Epic feeling - perhaps
because you are a part of the world, and if you talk to 'simple
people' they will tell you about their life and 'I hope the Avatar
will save us' etc... Basically you are adventuring in a context?
>--
>Cheers, 3d graphics optimization jock
>Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>If we are all Gods and we have thrown our toys the mortals away
>and we are Immortal What shall we do
>and we cannot die to entertain ourselves?
Bjoern Guenzel
--
At times I felt I had to make up for a
sad lack of experiences by wild imagination.
(Urs Widmer, insufficiently translated by me)
Nathaniel_Ford
>Some of the back articles on DejaNews theorized about Tragedy in terms of a
>game that a player cannot win. But losing a game is not, in and of itself,
>Tragic. There's a layman's definition of Tragedy: bad things happen, you
>suffer, you get screwed. In the words of the scarecrow from The Whiz: you
>can't win, you can't get even, and you can't get out of the game. And then
>there's what bright guys like Aristotle had to say about it 2000 years ago.
>Up until recently, I didn't know the difference. From the "Poetics":
To get history straight here: the quote "You can't win, you can't get even, and
you can't stay out of the game." was one spoken by a chemist as a way to
describe entropy. Which seguys nicely into the idea of tragedy.
Entropy is the net force of the world acting to cabotolize systems. It is sort
of that sucking void we all fight against. If I were to classify Tragedy, I
would call it those actions that ultimately succumb to the entropy of the
situation, versus conquering it permenantly. It is a common delusion, IMHO,
that a game must have a solution in which you permenantly conquer it. It does
not. For instance, I got bored with games such as Starcraft and C&C because
after a point, the learning curve allows you to beat just about any situation.
I would love to see a game in which you could play that 'tragic', lost hero who
succumbs to the situation, who doesn't live through, *while still succeeding*.
Alternately, a game which might acurately reflect the reality of war, in that
the fresh, green army that you start with progresses slowly into a few, veteran
men who survive the last battle. If the programmers took the pains to make
every death along the way mean something, it could very well be viewed as a
tragic situation.
But, I must plead ignorance as well, since I haven't read the mentioned
newsgroups, and may be repeating something as well. Is that a bad thing?
-Nate, the Neonate
Dave G
>
> Incidentally, there are 23 occurrances of the word "tragic" and 58 of
> "tragedy" in the DejaNews archive of rec.ARTS.int-fiction. Compare 300 hits
> for the word "sword" and 400 for "dragon." Quantitatively speaking, we have
> a lot to discuss.
And only 87 occurrences of the word "Aristotle". Clearly we have our
work cut out for us.
Brandon Van Every
Mary K. Kuhner wrote in message <73ha47$8re$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
>>author of an adventure game has never properly prepared you to enjoy a
>>tragic role? By way of crude comparison, people go to horror films to be
>>scared. There are devices, both in plot and cinema, that are more or less
>>effective for preparing an audience for the experience. By the same
token,
>>people witness a tragedy in order to feel miserable and then experience
>>catharsis. At one extreme, the catharsis may simply be that upon leaving
>>the theater, you feel a whole lot better about your own life!
>
>You changed the context of my post from "I don't want to play the
>foil to another character unless that character is being played by
>a human being" to "I don't like tragedy", so I don't have any answer
>to your questions here. It's not actually the case that I don't like
>tragedy.
And does that context change undeservedly? Rather, it would seem that you
hold one set of standards for participation in IF, another for traditioinal
linear media. Whereas it is my contention that the standards are still
mostly the same. They are simply not judiciously applied in IF often
enough.
>I think I will back out of this conversation now: I don't feel it
>is going to be productive. Sorry.
As you like. I'll leave the point to others.
Brandon Van Every
Nathaniel_Ford wrote in message <73i3io$j...@cocoa.brown.edu>...
>
>To get history straight here: the quote "You can't win, you can't get even,
and
>you can't stay out of the game." was one spoken by a chemist as a way to
>describe entropy. Which seguys nicely into the idea of tragedy.
>
>Entropy is the net force of the world acting to cabotolize systems. It is
sort
>of that sucking void we all fight against. If I were to classify Tragedy, I
>would call it those actions that ultimately succumb to the entropy of the
>situation, versus conquering it permenantly.
This isn't the only kind of Tragedy, but I agree it's one of the forms. And
I don't think Tragedy is ever about conquering something permanently. At
best, it's making it out alive by the skin of your teeth. At worst... well
we all know about that.
> It is a common delusion, IMHO,
>that a game must have a solution in which you permenantly conquer it. It
does
>not. For instance, I got bored with games such as Starcraft and C&C because
>after a point, the learning curve allows you to beat just about any
situation.
>I would love to see a game in which you could play that 'tragic', lost hero
who
>succumbs to the situation, who doesn't live through, *while still
succeeding*.
A great example of this kind of tragedy is "The Bridge Over The River Kwai."
>But, I must plead ignorance as well, since I haven't read the mentioned
>newsgroups, and may be repeating something as well. Is that a bad thing?
Nah. I was wondering if I was about to be taken to task for my bold
pronouncements about tragedy in adventure games. Turns out what I had to
say was plenty applicable to all of the discussions in rec.GAMES.int-fiction
about Photopia. I'm just pleased that Photopia exists, so that I can truly
say that ALMOST nobody writes Tragic adventures, and that a few prize
examples do exist.
Brandon Van Every
Palmer Davis wrote in message <365C2D6E...@secant.com>...
>Brandon Van Every wrote:
>>
>> It occurs to me that almost nobody writes Tragic adventure games.
>
>tragedy in development. Which should tell you everything that
>you need to know about why it isn't available yet, and how long
>it's going to be until it is....
Love to see it.
>> The question is whether the audience KNOWS that they're supposed
>> to experience a tragedy. If they do, then they will play along....
>> Whereas if he were a lesser storyteller and role-player....
>> he would feel angry. Cheated. Victimized.
>
>That's assuming that the PC is the tragic figure. There are
>plenty of other characters available to play with without
>minimizing the impact of the tragedy. (In my case, the tragic
>figure is your father.)
Wow. Maximizing impact through 1st or 3rd persons is a deep discussion
indeed.
Brandon Van Every
Bjoern Guenzel wrote in message <365c52f9...@news.lrz-muenchen.de>...
>On Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:51:41 -0800, "Brandon Van Every"
><vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>Funny you start this thread now, as only yesterday I thought about the
>possibly Epic dimension of games (ie a game that has as much impact
>as, say, greek mythology...) while listening to Griegs Peer Gynt
>Suites...
>
>Also, one game I have wanted to make for ages has the intention to
>make you feel lost and lonely - I expect that nobody will want to play
>it,
The trick is, you cannot passively inform a player that they're "lost and
lonely." They won't care. You have to provide them something they want,
then take it away with the other hand. As they chase the thing they want,
you then have power. You can now shape the player's experience, make him
truly lost and lonely. Or whatever kind of effect you're trying to achieve.
That's why it would be so easy to rewrite the Infidel tragedy. What does
every adventurer want? GOLD! It's such a knee-jerk reaction that like an
aikido player, you could simply toss the player to the mat over and over
again....
>though (daydreaming I sometimes imagine being flamed on this group
>for 'whining about making the wrong business decisions' in a few years
>time :-).
Just don't do it in DOS or soemthing. :-)
>
>>In recent months I've been adding the art of Tragedy to my bag of literary
>>tricks. An ignoramus of a creative writer has to start somewhere. On the
>>advice of Lee Sheldon (he gave a workshop at the Game Developer's
Conference
>>roadtrip in Seattle) I have been reading Aristotle's "Poetics," and now at
>>last I am beginning to understand the form.
>>
>>It occurs to me that almost nobody writes Tragic adventure games.
>>
>>It is commonly held that the adventurer must be given freedom of action,
>>that frustration with circumstance is to be avoided. That the player has
a
>>"Bill Of Rights" and one must not frustrate him.
>>
>>This is False.
>>
>>The question is whether the audience KNOWS that they're supposed to
>>experience a tragedy. If they do, then they will play along. We are
>>observing this quite readily in The Game Of Immortals. Because Avatar
knows
>>that he is telling a story, he does not shirk his tragic role at
Poseidon's
>>hands. Whereas if he were a lesser storyteller and role-player, he would
>>believe fully in his inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit
of
>>Happiness. And he would feel angry. Cheated. Victimized.
>
>I don't really know what makes a tragedy but from some of the other
>posts - so if a tragedy happens because of the heroes character flaws,
Aristotle would say that it's not character that makes a Tragedy, it is
plot. Character is inferior to plot. A story could be about archetypical,
characterless persons, and to be a Tragedy, it must still have a plot.
Whereas characters can be dispensed with.
>wouldn't it be cool if the tragedy in a game happens because of the
>PLAYER's character flaws?
>Perhaps you could even manipulate the player into developing flaws
>with the right environment. Just as Hamlet might have become so
>depressed because of his useless familiy (damn, I haven't even read
>Hamlet yet, will start doing so tonight...).
That would be pretty cool. Actually, that's what I was attempting in The
Game Of Mallor. Only at the time, my methods were crude and
unsophisticated. I thought in terms of torturing players, subverting them
against themselves. I didn't know how to think in terms of plot
construction at the time, hence I was unable to give with one hand and take
with the other.
With one exception, The Game Of Mallor turned into a black comedy, not the
psychological tragedy I had originally envisioned. Meanwhile, I discovered
that comedy is easy. If the audience has a shared basis of experience,
doing gags about what's shared is trivial. We told a LOT of stupid fantasy
jokes, about how stupid the fantasy genre is. We laughed our asses off.
>>The most important feature of Tragic application in adventure games, is it
>>eliminates the expanding list of possibilities owing to the player's
>>freedom-of-choice. The universe is not simulated so as to allow the
player
>>to move freely. Rather, the universe is directed so as to admonish him.
>>Several paths lead to progress, all of them bad. Any path taken, it gets
>>Worse. Until the player is at last let off the hook.
>
>Not sure about this - why do you think the universe needs to be
>constrained in order to be desperate?
It doesn't NEED to be, it CAN be. i.e. you can successfully cut down your
workload. From a production standpoint, this is an advantage to Tragedy.
>A universe could just be
>fundamentally desperate, you could still simulate it as completely as
>possible.
Although I agree that it could be done, I think there are dangers here. If
you include everything, you risk including the extraneous. This can dilute
the impact of your plot. On the other hand, it could be an effective
mechanism for engineering a plot of Epic proportions. Aristotle had a lot
to say about Epic vs. Tragedy in the "Poetics," might be worth your time to
take a read. As a simple gloss, he thinks Tragedies are better than Epics
because they're shorter and the audience can remember what the heck is going
on.
An Epic might be an appropriate framework for an online virtual world
service....
>I've been thinking about it in regard of Ultima Online, too. What
>would be a deed of Epic dimension in a game like UO? You gain titles
>like 'Admireable' after a while if you slay enough monsters, but in
>the end, everybody could kill dragons. It's not like somebody risked
>his life to save his village or a fair princess. In fact, if I see
>somebody who is 'admireable', I am much more likely to think he did a
>lot of macroing or has too much time on his hands... :-/
Hmm, admirable persons. Aristotle said that you must not tell Tragedies
about people who are either too admirable or too wicked, because the results
are not credible and/or do not evoke pity and fear. Rather, it is the
middle sort of person who must be described, one that the audience can
identify with.
In traditional RPG hack 'n' slash, there is merely a mono-axial movement
from base persons to exceedingly admirable persons. The fortunes turn from
good to greater, it's a one-dimensional power fantasy. For RPG to have
tragic dimension, characters must be ordinary, and must experience turns of
fortune from bad to worse.
Traditional hard-core gamers will bitch and complain that this is not what
they want out of a game. The author's answer is: you have no IDEA or
CONTROL over what you want. A good author can make you want any old damn
thing. It's just that traditional RPG authors are not good, and traditional
gamers are trained for a lot of knee-jerk. They have deep expectations
owing to their long experience of genre at the hands of geek programmers.
Brandon Van Every
Dave G wrote in message <365C9E...@bigfoot.com>...
>Brandon Van Every wrote:
>>
>> Incidentally, there are 23 occurrances of the word "tragic" and 58 of
>> "tragedy" in the DejaNews archive of rec.ARTS.int-fiction. Compare 300
hits
>> for the word "sword" and 400 for "dragon." Quantitatively speaking, we
have
>> a lot to discuss.
>
>work cut out for us.
49 of which are attributable to me, 47 of which are just my old "ad
homeinim" .sig and have nothing to do with the discussion of Tragedy! Well,
at least with the Photopia discussions you'll be hearing this guy's name a
lot more from me, I'm like a broken record. :-)
Noah Falstein
Adam Cadre wrote:
> Brandon Van Every wrote:
> > It occurs to me that almost nobody writes Tragic adventure games.
>
> I'd suggest that you have a look at the extremely recent thread in
> rec.games.int-fiction, "Tragic IF", before continuing to declaim upon
> this topic.
Gee, that would take all the fun out of the argument! :-)
Seriously, I would like to bring up the classic use of "Floyd" in
Planetfall, a very early tragic element in an otherwise very lighthearted
game, that has touched many people over the years.
Tragedy is a dangeous thing when creating expensive entertainment.
Novels, even plays can better afford it. The audience for tragedy,
although often more serious and adult, is also generally smaller - hence
the comparitive lack of tragic games and big-budget films. It's a good
case for tragedy as a possible element of inexpensive online
entertainment.
Lee Sheldon
>Planetfall, a very early tragic element in an otherwise very lighthearted
>game, that has touched many people over the years.
>
>Tragedy is a dangeous thing when creating expensive entertainment.
>Novels, even plays can better afford it. The audience for tragedy,
>although often more serious and adult, is also generally smaller - hence
>the comparitive lack of tragic games and big-budget films. It's a good
>case for tragedy as a possible element of inexpensive online
>entertainment.
Since I seem to have set Brandon on this tragic course with my suggestion to
read the Poetics, I've been looking for a place to jump in out of the
shadows. Thanks, Noah, for providing me with an opportunity. You're
absolutely right. While not tragedy in the Greek sense, Floyd's death is an
example we can all point to as one of the few instances of a higher emotion
being generated by a computer game. Another I often bring up is the
crippled, mishapen old lady who hands you the umbrella in "Trinity" and then
you go back in time to moments before the bomb fell on Hiroshima and meet a
beautiful little girl... The moment when I realized that little girl would
grow to be the crippled old lady touched me in a way most games never try.
And need we add that both of these are from text adventures from ancient
history: the middle period of Infocom?
I also agree that since this is theoretically a profit-based industry,
trying to shovel huge piles of tragedy at gamers might turn out to be as
personally rewarding as killing your father and marrying your mom (The film
Titanic not withstanding...). But reaching for a moment of great pathos
within any entertainment is a worthy ambition, and one that is tragically
not attempted very often. Both comedy and tragedy illuminate the human
soul. Both have a place in any entertainment medium, including games.
Lee
Adam Cadre
> Also the Ultimas feel the most Epic for me - mostly because of the
> brilliant music playing while you roam the landscape alone...:-)
Have you ever played Star Control 2? The music for traversing space is
just glorious, whether it's real space, HyperSpace, or QuasiSpace. Any
one of these themes would have established the game's music as brilliant;
the fact that it contains all three propels it into the realm of the
mindblowing.
Brandon Van Every
Matt Hawke wrote in message <365cb1c6....@news.uswest.net>...
>
>I think we need to look at the definition of Tragedy. I recently wrote
>an essay about the comparison about some stories I read and how they
>related to tragedy...
>
>Tragedy n. "A Fatal Flaw"
You've given "a" definition of Tragedy, not "the" definition. I don't have
a problem with some of your developments given this definition, but it's
only 1 kind of tragedy.
Also, I think you've given the definition of Hamartia, not Tragedy.
>That basically means it's a flaw a generally good person has that
>causes their death. Romeo's flaw was killing Tybalt... But if you look
>at this word for word Titanic isn't a tragedy, and even the hurricane
>damage in central america isn't. They didn't bring it upon themselfs.
Aristotle said Tragedy requires *undeserved* suffering. This is what evokes
pity and fear. If Romeo truly deserved to die for having killed Tybalt,
then who would feel sorry for him, and who would be afraid of wearing his
shoes? We wouldn't, because we would simply act differently, i.e. not kill
Tybalt. It's our helplessness in the face of suffering that evokes pity and
fear.
Matt Hawke
I think we need to look at the definition of Tragedy. I recently wrote
an essay about the comparison about some stories I read and how they
related to tragedy...
Tragedy n. "A Fatal Flaw"
That basically means it's a flaw a generally good person has that
causes their death. Romeo's flaw was killing Tybalt... But if you look
at this word for word Titanic isn't a tragedy, and even the hurricane
damage in central america isn't. They didn't bring it upon themselfs.
Writing IF tragedy is interesting because the character must die
because of their own fatal flaw. So, curiosity isn't considered
tragedy . . . watch out with that. Just because someone touched the
equipment in the engineering bay in my Trek games and were fried
doesn't mean it's tragic.
Doing it correctly would be to give them a choice, in face coax them
into the overall choice but make sure it's a choice that causes
several other actions to happen. So you're R+J IF game you're choice
would be to slay tybalt... at which point a neat cutscene would give
you some fun with it. From there, it's even more difficult to write a
way for the character to kill themselfs... so maybe R+J isn't a good
example. Point being, if they killed tybalt the bare minimum should be
he was hunt down and killed once he found Juliet again... it'd make a
nice ending with Juliet seeing her love killed before her eyes and
then taking her own life. . .
But I'm not one to argue with Mr. S.
Matt
Joe Mason
>>make you feel lost and lonely - I expect that nobody will want to play
>>it,
I think I managed to miss the original message, and I hope I have the
attribution right.
The big problem I found when I tried this is being unable to sustain the
tone myself. The version of _In The End_ that I released (you can find
it in the competition96 directory on GMD, unless I'm remembering the year
wrong) ended up much shorter then I'd intended, almost skeletal.
When I went back afterwards to extend it, I found I couldn't keep the mood
up in myself enough to write about it. I don't think it would have been
a problem for static fiction, but IF is a lot more of a chore anyway
because of the amount of detail needed. Trying to fill in a lot of details
when the story you're writing is depressing really saps the will.
Joe
--
Surely you're not trying to tell us that you've never, nay _never_ walked
across miles and miles of Scottish heath searching for a witch only to
find that three go by all at once? -- Den of Iniquity
Neil K.
> Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
> >You changed the context of my post from "I don't want to play the
> >foil to another character unless that character is being played by
> >a human being" to "I don't like tragedy", so I don't have any answer
> >to your questions here. It's not actually the case that I don't like
> >tragedy.
>
> And does that context change undeservedly? Rather, it would seem that you
> hold one set of standards for participation in IF, another for traditioinal
> linear media. [...]
Sheesh. If you're going to go around altering the context and meaning of
other people's words, the least you can do is be polite and stop trying to
get in a last word when someone calls you on it.
- Neil K.
--
t e l a computer consulting + design * Vancouver, BC, Canada
web: http://www.tela.bc.ca/tela/ * email: tela @ tela.bc.ca
Dugan Chen
<73fgvc$28q$1...@fir.prod.itd.earthlink.net>...
> It occurs to me that almost nobody writes Tragic adventure games.
What about Planetfall?
OH MY GOD! THEY KILLED FLOYED! YOU BASTARDS!
Dugan Chen
<73i3io$j...@cocoa.brown.edu>...
> I would love to see a game in which you could play that 'tragic', lost
hero who
> succumbs to the situation, who doesn't live through, *while still
succeeding*.
>
> Alternately, a game which might acurately reflect the reality of war, in
that
> the fresh, green army that you start with progresses slowly into a few,
veteran
> men who survive the last battle. If the programmers took the pains to
make
> every death along the way mean something, it could very well be viewed as
a
> tragic situation.
A lot of Japanese console RPG's are like this. Maybe you'll like
them better than IF.
Brandon Van Every
Neil K. wrote in message ...
> "Brandon Van Every" <vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Mary K. Kuhner wrote:
>> >You changed the context of my post from "I don't want to play the
>> >foil to another character unless that character is being played by
>> >a human being" to "I don't like tragedy", so I don't have any answer
>> >to your questions here. It's not actually the case that I don't like
>> >tragedy.
>>
>> And does that context change undeservedly? Rather, it would seem that
you
>> hold one set of standards for participation in IF, another for
traditioinal
>> linear media. [...]
>
> Sheesh. If you're going to go around altering the context and meaning of
>other people's words, the least you can do is be polite and stop trying to
>get in a last word when someone calls you on it.
Excuse me, but this is a debate, not a name-calling session. Either deal
with the point or find something more entertaining to do. It is a
legitimate point: WHY does an audience often have different standards for IF
and traditional linear media? It is a deep and important subject, not
simply a matter of "oh you changed my context, my context is an
unapproachable ivory tower of clean logistical separation."
Dugan Chen
evokes
> pity and fear. If Romeo truly deserved to die for having killed Tybalt,
> then who would feel sorry for him, and who would be afraid of wearing his
> shoes? We wouldn't, because we would simply act differently, i.e. not
kill
> Tybalt. It's our helplessness in the face of suffering that evokes pity
and
> fear.
Did Floyd deserve to die?
Dugan Chen
> lonely." They won't care. You have to provide them something they want,
> then take it away with the other hand. As they chase the thing they
want,
> you then have power. You can now shape the player's experience, make him
> truly lost and lonely. Or whatever kind of effect you're trying to
achieve.
Except that this _always_ seems artificial in adventure and role-playing
games, which are often too obvious in relying on scripted events.
The loss of the helmet in Space Quest 1 smacked of manipulation.
As did the loss of party members in Final Fantasy II. I can't
think of any IF that ever tried this.
The only games that try this and manage to pull it off are the Quake
Mission Pack 1 (Gremlins steal your weapons. Kill them and get
them back) and The Legend of Zelda (A monster eats your magic
shield, and the only remedy is to buy a new shield).
> That would be pretty cool. Actually, that's what I was attempting in The
> Game Of Mallor. Only at the time, my methods were crude and
> unsophisticated. I thought in terms of torturing players, subverting
them
> against themselves. I didn't know how to think in terms of plot
> construction at the time, hence I was unable to give with one hand and
take
> with the other.
From what you're saying, I think you'll like Japanese role-playing
games. They have a devoted cult following here. All of them feature
grand (linear) storylines and obligatory tragic events. One of the
best, _Final Fantasy VII_, has been ported to the PC.
But Japanese role playing games and Western interactive fiction
are completely different medium.
> Hmm, admirable persons. Aristotle said that you must not tell Tragedies
> about people who are either too admirable or too wicked, because the
results
> are not credible and/or do not evoke pity and fear. Rather, it is the
> middle sort of person who must be described, one that the audience can
> identify with.
Like the characters in most (er, all) Japanese role playing games?
> In traditional RPG hack 'n' slash, there is merely a mono-axial movement
> from base persons to exceedingly admirable persons. The fortunes turn
from
> good to greater, it's a one-dimensional power fantasy. For RPG to have
> tragic dimension, characters must be ordinary, and must experience turns
of
> fortune from bad to worse.
In Final Fantasy II's VERY linear plot, to take one example, the
character's
fortune definitely gets worse as he progresses through the game.
> Traditional hard-core gamers will bitch and complain that this is not
what
> they want out of a game. The author's answer is: you have no IDEA or
> CONTROL over what you want. A good author can make you want any old damn
> thing. It's just that traditional RPG authors are not good, and
traditional
> gamers are trained for a lot of knee-jerk. They have deep expectations
> owing to their long experience of genre at the hands of geek programmers.
It would take a skilled IF author to pull off what you propose. Why
not write a tragic IF yourself, and prove that it's possible to
do it well?
David Glasser
> Brandon Van Every wrote:
> >
> > It occurs to me that almost nobody writes Tragic adventure games.
>
> Count me as "almost nobody" then... I've got an _Avalon_ of a
> tragedy in development. Which should tell you everything that
> you need to know about why it isn't available yet, and how long
> it's going to be until it is....
Hey! You can't make fun of Avalon any more! It's out! It's sitting
next to me! (Well, maybe not under that name. But "Once and Future" is
cool anyway. Reminds me of "Above and Beyond", which is sort of the
other halt of the story, eh?)
--
David Glasser gla...@NOSPAMuscom.com http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser
DGlasser @ ifMUD : fovea.retina.net 4000 (webpage fovea.retina.net:4001)
Sadie Hawkins, official band of David Glasser: http://sadie.retina.net
"We take our icons very seriously in this class."
Stephen van Egmond
In article <73gclb$93o$1...@oak.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
Brandon Van Every <vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>I'd note that Infidel is not a Tragedy. It is a rough draft for a tragedy.
>In Aristotelean terms the plot is not "whole": it has a beginning and an
>end, but no middle. The middle is just a bunch of stupid puzzles, and
>that's why you ultimately don't care when the bricks fall down on his head
>at the end.
Thank you very much for inadvertently ruining Infidel for a lot of people.
Please observe the FAQ's guidelines for posting spoilers.
--
,,,
(. .)
+--ooO-(_)-Ooo------------ --- -- - - - -
| Stephen van Egmond http://bang.ml.org/
Brandon Van Every
Dugan Chen wrote in message <01be1923$60a18360$278e42d8@desktop>...
>
>> Traditional hard-core gamers will bitch and complain that this is not
>what
>> they want out of a game. The author's answer is: you have no IDEA or
>> CONTROL over what you want. A good author can make you want any old damn
>> thing. It's just that traditional RPG authors are not good, and
>traditional
>> gamers are trained for a lot of knee-jerk. They have deep expectations
>> owing to their long experience of genre at the hands of geek programmers.
>
>It would take a skilled IF author to pull off what you propose. Why
>not write a tragic IF yourself, and prove that it's possible to
>do it well?
Sort of am. Currently it's tragic PBEM RPG not IF, and the genres are
somewhat different. You might think of PBEM RPG as a "planning tool" for
IF. I hope to convert the better episodes to 3D IF.
In the meantime, take a look at Photopia. It's a pretty successful effort.
The key is you have to accept the buy-in of the plot premise, though. If
you don't have the obvious instincts about the main character, and you
aren't trying/willing to do the obvious, then you aren't going to have your
emotional harpstrings pulled.
>> The trick is, you cannot passively inform a player that they're "lost and
>> lonely." They won't care. You have to provide them something they want,
>> then take it away with the other hand. As they chase the thing they
>want,
>> you then have power. You can now shape the player's experience, make him
>> truly lost and lonely. Or whatever kind of effect you're trying to
>achieve.
>
>Except that this _always_ seems artificial in adventure and role-playing
>games, which are often too obvious in relying on scripted events.
>The loss of the helmet in Space Quest 1 smacked of manipulation.
>As did the loss of party members in Final Fantasy II. I can't
>think of any IF that ever tried this.
I don't mean literally "take something out of the player's inventory that
they want back." That's crude. Time for another Poetics quote, regarding
"Kinds of Recognition." I think it's terribly relevant to the art of
manipulating a player:
8.2 Kinds of Recognition
We have already said what recognition is. Its kinds are:
(i) First of all, the least artistic kind (and the one which people use the
most, because of their lack of ingenuity) is that by means of tokens. [BVE:
the helmet in SQ1 as you describe above?] Some of these are congenital
(e.g. 'the spear of the earth-born bear', or stars such as Carcinus used in
his "Thyestes), and some are acquired; of the latter, some are physical
characteristics (e.g. scars), others are external (e.g. necklaces, or the
use of hte boat in the "Tyro"). It is possible to make better or worse use
of these. For example, Odysseus is recognized by means of the scar both by
the nurse and by the swineherds, but in different ways. Recognitions that
are used only for confirmation are less artistic (so too all recognitions of
that kind); recognitions which arise out of a reveresal, as in the
bath-scene, are better.
(ii) Second are those which are contrived by the poet; for that reason they
are inartistic. For example, Orestes in the "Iphigeneia" revealed his own
identity; Iphigeneia's identity is revealed by the letter, but Orestes
declares in person what the poet (instead of the plot) requires. This
brings it close to the error mentioned above: it would have been possible
actually to bring tokens with him. There is also the 'voice of the shuttle'
in Sophocles' "Tereus."
(iii) The third is by means of memory, when someone grasps the significance
of something that he sees. This is how it is in Dicaeogenes' "Cyprians,"
where he sees the painting and bursts into tears, and in the tale told to
Alcinous, where Odysseus listens to the lyre-player, is reminded of his past
and weeps; recognition results in both cases.
(iv) Fourth his that which arises from inference. For example, in the
"Choephori:" 'someone similar has come; no one is similar except Orestes; so
he has come'. There is also the recognition which Polyidus the sophist
suggested for Iphigeneia; he said that it was probable for Orestes to infer
that his sister had been sacrificed, and so it was now his turn to be
sacrificed. Also in Theodectes' "Tydeus," that he came to find a son, but
is perishing himself. And the recognition in the "Sons of Phineus;" when
the women saw the place they inferred that it was their fate to die there,
since that was where they had been exposed.
(v) There is also a composite kind arising from a false inference on the
part of the audience. For example, in "Odysseus the False Messenger," the
fact that he can bend the bow and nobody else is contrived by the poet as a
premise, as is his claim that he will recognize the bow which he has not
seen; and although he is going to make himself known by means of the former,
he actually does so by means of the latter, which involves a false
inference.
(vi) The best recognition of all is that which arises out of the actual
course of events, where the emotional impact is achieved through events that
are probable, as in Sophocles' "Oedipus" and the "Iphigeneia" (her wish to
send a letter is probable). Only this kind does without contrived tokens
and necklaces. Second-best are those which arise from inference.
Brandon Van Every
Stephen van Egmond wrote in message <3_k72.967
>
>Thank you very much for inadvertently ruining Infidel for a lot of people.
>
>Please observe the FAQ's guidelines for posting spoilers.
Good grief haven't you people played this damn thing by now? I played it 15
years ago! Oh well I guess Treasures of Infocom are like old mold that can
never die....
Jon A Conrad
>Stephen van Egmond wrote in message <3_k72.967
>>
>>Thank you very much for inadvertently ruining Infidel for a lot of people.
>>
>>Please observe the FAQ's guidelines for posting spoilers.
>Good grief haven't you people played this damn thing by now? I played it 15
>years ago!
Ummm... New people being born, and growing up, all the time, and all
that???.... Not everyone was fortunate enough to be in perfect synch with
the first wave of Infocom publications. It's to be hoped that new readers
discover this NG periodically.
Jon
Neil K.
> Neil K. wrote in message ...
> > Sheesh. If you're going to go around altering the context and meaning of
> >other people's words, the least you can do is be polite and stop trying to
> >get in a last word when someone calls you on it.
>
> Excuse me, but this is a debate, not a name-calling session. Either deal
> with the point or find something more entertaining to do. It is a
> legitimate point: WHY does an audience often have different standards for IF
> and traditional linear media? It is a deep and important subject, not
> simply a matter of "oh you changed my context, my context is an
> unapproachable ivory tower of clean logistical separation."
Hey, cool! Thanks, buddy. You illustrated my point perfectly.
Brandon Van Every
Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote in message
>
>Yes, I would like to see some really good
>tragic IF. And I don't think the fact that
>it's a tragedy needs to be given at the
>outset; however, I do think it's necessary
>to write the tragic ending in such a way
>that it's obvious that you have in fact
>reached the correct ending -- the one you
>were meant to reach.
However, in The Game Of Immortals I'm starting to see that more than one
tragic ending is possible. If you read my excerpt from the Poetics, you see
that Aristotle classifies several kinds of Tragedy. In addition, there are
several kinds of recognition by which to reach a tragic ending. So it is
possible to have several irons in the fire, and to focus on one specific
iron at the story's end, in order to bring the Tragedy to wholeness. This
is an almost inevitable process of free-form RPG if you're giving the other
players/authors their freedom. They choose to go off in unanticipated
directions, and you stretch your existing materials to compensate. Over
time, you realize that certain materials stretch easily, and others stretch
tenuously.
I'll give better concrete examples of this at some point in the distant
future. For the present, I will be satisfied to write ONE complete tragedy
for The Game Of Immortals.
>(Otherwise the
>players spend hours and hours -- nay,
>possibly days and weeks in some
>cases -- trying to find the happy ending,
>which could be very frustrating indeed.)
As long as each different ending is actually tragic, there is no problem.
Brandon Van Every
Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote in message
>
>mood of emotion at the conclusion* make it clear to the player that
>this is the ending of the story that was meant to be reached?
One possibility is to sidestep. Have multiple tragic endings, all of which
result in complete narrative wholes. This is a matter of emphasis upon
different ingredients within the same soup.
Another is to build the sensation of Inevitability midway through the story.
You believe you have freedom of action at the outset, but as the story
progresses, you recognize the inescapable conclusion. You sap the will of
the player to explore further options. Thus the problem is not the end, it
is of the entire path that leads to the end.
A third is simply to allow a happy ending. It might not be an authorially
bad thing to do, in some circumstances. But you'd better know why you're
doing it. Gratuitous happy endings are sappy.
>> Some of the back articles on DejaNews theorized about Tragedy in terms of
a
>> game that a player cannot win. But losing a game is not, in and of
itself,
>> Tragic. There's a layman's definition of Tragedy: bad things happen, you
>> suffer, you get screwed. In the words of the scarecrow from The Whiz:
you
>> can't win, you can't get even, and you can't get out of the game.
>
>Those three ideas weren't original to TWOO, although their statement
>may have been (I don't know). I have heard it said, however, that
>they were originally published as the Three Laws of Thermodynamics.
Sorry I misspelled, it was from "The Wiz," an all-black musical based on The
Wizard Of Oz. Has all the regular characters, but they sing different
numbers, there's a subtext of racial exploitation, and that's what the quote
refers to.
>> either ACT OR NOT ACT, either KNOWINGLY OR IN IGNORANCE." [emphasis mine]
>
>Which makes a total of four possibilities, actually.
>
>> "Of these, being on the verge of acting wittingly and not doing so is
worst;
>> this is disgusting, and it is not tragic since there is no suffering.
>
>With variation, however, there *could* be. Say, for example, the
>protagonist nearly acts to the betterment of everything, but fails
>to do so out of ignorance; later he realises what he could have
>done as he is forced to live out the consequences of his inaction;
>admittedly, the bulk of the plot would probably fall after the
>inaction in question, so there would need to be some additional
>action later to avoid the problem of not having a good place
>to end the story.
All you're saying is "he is unwitting, he does not act." Recognition and
reversal is part of any complex plot. The basic framework of the plot is
still as stated.
This is a different framework from "he is witting, he does not act."
Athough, it is an interesting dilemma when the framework of action/inaction
and witting/unwitting is extended ad nauseum. Like waking up from nested
dreams, when you're not sure of the underlying reality. I don't know if
this can be Tragic, it is definitely Surreal.
>> So as far as Aristotle is concerned, Tragedy != you lose. Tragedy is a
>> change from good fortune to bad fortune. It is not required that the
story
>> end on bad fortune. Indeed, at the last possible moment, catharsis may
be
>> achieved by the reversal of the bad fortune. It is the narrowness of the
>> escape, the realization that one has been let off the hook, and that one
>> didn't HAVE to be, that is cathartic.
>
>This does not, however, defeat entirely the value of complete Tragedy
>(i.e., the protagonist is ultimately defeated). That has value as
>well, although it is admittedly more grim.
Tragedy is complete by virtue of having a Beginning, a Middle, and an End.
Not by virtue of the protagonist dying. Selecting one form of Tragedy as a
matter of authorial preference does not make it more complete than any of
the other forms.
Brandon Van Every
Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote in message
hero
>> > who succumbs to the situation, who doesn't live through, *while still
>> > succeeding*.
>>
Kwai."
>
>Yes, TBOTRK is an excellent work, very well done. I too
>would like to see a work of IF done similarly; essentially, the
>beloved protagonist's great goal that he has been striving
>toward for much of the story ends up being less important
>than something else, and he is forced to willfully sacrifice it.
Worse: he has created a monster.
Brandon Van Every
Neil K. wrote in message ...
>> > Sheesh. If you're going to go around altering the context and meaning
of
>> >other people's words, the least you can do is be polite and stop trying
to
>> >get in a last word when someone calls you on it.
>>
>> Excuse me, but this is a debate, not a name-calling session. Either deal
>> with the point or find something more entertaining to do. It is a
>> legitimate point: WHY does an audience often have different standards for
IF
>> and traditional linear media? It is a deep and important subject, not
>> simply a matter of "oh you changed my context, my context is an
>> unapproachable ivory tower of clean logistical separation."
>
> Hey, cool! Thanks, buddy. You illustrated my point perfectly.
Illustrated what? Nothing was added to the debate by your last remark. Are
you just worried about the structure of one-upsmanship for its own sake??!?
Brandon Van Every
Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote in message
>
>non-electronic typewriter to a television set and make
>a computer, if you knew what you were doing. Also,
>15 years ago, I figured anybody who had a home
>computer (or a colour television or a dishwasher) must
>be wealthy.
Huh. I bought 1/2 of an Atari 800 computer with saved-up allowance money
for $600. (I had been saving a long time.) My parents threw in the other
$600. I was 11 years old.
Brandon Van Every
Mary K. Kuhner wrote in message <73l7os$1bgm$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
>
>Make your own damn points, in your own postings. Don't misquote
>me to make them.
Well nyah-ne-nah-ne-nyah-nyah to you too. I suppose it's my burden to
reread your point, you couldn't possibly have offered a sentence of clarity
rather than invective to one who clearly didn't understand?
From my standpoint I now see my error. I stopped paying close attention
when you said "I think I will back out of this conversation now: I don't
feel it is going to be productive. Sorry." It's like geez, so you don't
even want to talk, and my brain isn't even worth your time.
So, let me recast my original point. Forget my bumble of attributing the
words "linear media" to you. I do not in fact know how you personally read
linear media. But the point still stands:
It would seem that as a Role-Player, you are generous.
But as a lone reader of Interactive Fiction, you are selfish.
How do you feel about Books? If the author treats you with brutality, makes
you miserable, do you berate him? How do you express your grievance? By
never buying another book by that author again? By putting the book down
halfway through? By skipping to the end of the story, thereby thwarting his
narrative agenda? Or do you accept the plot for what it is, experience it,
and then read another book?
Films? Other linear media?
To recall your own words, why is IF "quite another matter?" I see no
necessity in IF being quite another matter. Rather, we are conditioned as
selfish adventurers with an inalienable "Bill Of Rights." The difference is
in the training of the players, not the potentials of the medium. IF can
have its tragic form and the player's will can be denied. Same as any book.
Or film.
In fact, Role-Playing is where I'd expect people to be LEAST generous in
these issues, as a matter of knee-jerk. Too many role-players are inferior,
they do not know the difference between suffering in their character and
suffering in their person.
We perhaps play Interactive Fiction as bad role-players.
There. Now, if you're thoroughly irritated with the conversation (I know I
am) I won't be shocked. But at least I've finally gotten straight what you
said, and I think I have responded appropriately to it, in exactly the same
vein as before. The issue does not dissolve.
If people follow up, or don't, so be it.
Brandon Van Every
Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote in message
>> plot. Character is inferior to plot. A story could be about
archetypical,
>> characterless persons, and to be a Tragedy, it must still have a plot.
>> Whereas characters can be dispensed with.
>
>Whoah. That's guaranteed to be misunderstood
By someone, sure.
>and flamed.
No pity for such. Flaming as an act of ignorance is, well, flaming.
>Let me clarify what I think he's saying, and he can correct me if
>I'm missing it. But I think he's not saying that a work without
>characters would be effective; rather, he's saying that the Tragedy
>is in the plot more than in the characters.
No, he is saying very strongly that the Tragedy is in the plot. Not the
characters. He makes a five point argument about why this is so. I need to
find an online version of the Poetics, I'm tired of typing stuff out! :-)
>> With one exception, The Game Of Mallor turned into a black comedy, not
the
>> psychological tragedy I had originally envisioned. Meanwhile, I
discovered
>> that comedy is easy. If the audience has a shared basis of experience,
>> doing gags about what's shared is trivial. We told a LOT of stupid
fantasy
>> jokes, about how stupid the fantasy genre is. We laughed our asses off.
>
>You realise, of course, that we've now switched to the modern
>definition of comedy, which is altogether different from the
>definition of comedy as the counterpart to tragedy.
Pity Aristotle didn't finish the parts about comedy in the Poetics, or at
least they are lost to us. Must have been that evil finger-dipping monk
from The Name Of The Rose. :-) Anyways, please enlighten us as to the
difference of definitions? Aristotle does mention that comedy is an error
or disgrace that does not involve pain or destruction. Such as a comic
mask: the face is distorted, but not from pain.
>> Hmm, admirable persons. Aristotle said that you must not tell Tragedies
>> about people who are either too admirable or too wicked, because the
results
>> are not credible and/or do not evoke pity and fear. Rather, it is the
>> middle sort of person who must be described, one that the audience can
>> identify with.
>
>That's the usual, although the death of an extremely respected
>person can be quite tragic too, if done well. Think Gandalf.
>(The fact that he didn't actually die is only relevant later, as
>the reader is definitely supposed to assume that he's dead.
>The other characters all do.)
Hmm. Actually the quote from the Poetics is a little more specific:
7.2 First deduction
"The construction of the best tragedy should be complex rather than simple;
and it should also be an imitation of events that evoke fear and pity, since
that is the distinctive feature of this kind of imitation. So it is clear
first of all that decent men should not be seen undergoing a change from
good fortune to bad fortune - this does not evoke fear or pity, but
disgust."
Is Aristotle merely off-base? Maybe not. One way to read it, is to say
that the complexity of the plot is paramount. We're not talking about
Gandalf dying heroically, that's a simple plot. We're talking about Gandalf
going through suffering after suffering after suffering. Each one worse and
worse and worse. Indeed, this is perhaps disgusting. He's a good man, why
should he suffer so? We do not feel fear, or pity, rather we feel righteous
indignation (disgust). What mean, cruel Fate torments Man? Does this sound
like the story of Job in the Bible? I've not read the whole thing....
We feel fear and pity when the protagonist is like us. Some good, some bad.
Because then we cannot escape the possibility of Justice in the suffering,
even though the suffering is undeserved. We are guilty and ashamed, what
might we have done wrong? What is our frailty? How close were we to
pursuing the same folly?
If an ordinary man is neither good nor bad, then his plot can go through
recognition and reversal. It is not one-sided, like the story of Gandalf,
or the story of Job.
With Gandalf, there is indeed a reversal, but it's not a Tragic reversal.
The reversal is that fortune swings to Good again, he's alive. That's not a
Tragedy. (What is it, just "Drama?")
Geoff Bailey
In article <73krsh$ebp$1...@ash.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
>>
>> Thank you very much for inadvertently ruining Infidel for a lot of people.
>>
>> Please observe the FAQ's guidelines for posting spoilers.
>
> Good grief haven't you people played this damn thing by now? I played it 15
> never die....
I, for one, hadn't. For that matter, I haven't played Planetfall yet, but
I've become pretty resigned to the fact that few people spoiler flag the
qrngu bs Syblq in that. [ It only took one to do the damage, of course. ]
But being resigned to it is not the same as being happy about it.
(I do have Masterpieces, so I will play them someday, but not until I get a
home computer again.)
Cheers,
Geoff.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Geoff Bailey (Fred the Wonder Worm) | Programmer by trade --
ft...@cs.usyd.edu.au | Gameplayer by vocation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen van Egmond
Brandon Van Every <vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Good grief haven't you people played this damn thing by now? I played it 15
>years ago! Oh well I guess Treasures of Infocom are like old mold that can
>never die....
It happens to be that Infidel is one of the ones I haven't gotten to:
other, more appealing efforts caught my eye every time. I did, however,
know about the ending from reading it in a (properly spoilered) post.
But that is beside the point. New people will come to interactive fiction
all the time, and will not have played the games you have. It is
exceptionally unkind to ruin the experience for them in this way.
For those who haven't seen the FAQs on this point, it is nice
to your readers to indicate spoilers for particular game(s),
then skip a whole bunch of lines before going on with your
post. (If you're using vi or emacs, throw in a ^L.)
/Steve
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> > I would love to see a game in which you could play that 'tragic', lost hero
> > who succumbs to the situation, who doesn't live through, *while still
> > succeeding*.
>
> A great example of this kind of tragedy is "The Bridge Over The River Kwai."
Ah, thank you. Now I understand what he meant by that.
Yes, TBOTRK is an excellent work, very well done. I too
would like to see a work of IF done similarly; essentially, the
beloved protagonist's great goal that he has been striving
toward for much of the story ends up being less important
than something else, and he is forced to willfully sacrifice it.
My favourite quote from that movie: "I HATE the British."
(Context required for understanding.)
- jonadab
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> >It is commonly held that the adventurer must be given freedom of action,
> >that frustration with circumstance is to be avoided. That the player has a
> >"Bill Of Rights" and one must not frustrate him.
>
> >This is False.
>
> More properly, as the Church of Eris would say, it's true, false,
> and meaningless.
Then it's false. A statement that's partly true and partly false is,
when taken as a whole, false.
> Or to put it another way, you can violate any of the player's "rights"
> and your game may well still work for some players: it will probably
> fail to work for others.
Or you can adhere to all of them and the same applies.
> In your given example, I'd note that I'm
> willing to play second fiddle to another human being, for his/her
> enjoyment, so I'd be willing to be the foil to someone else's character
> in a roleplaying game: but in a solitary IF, it would be quite another
> matter.
I'm pretty sure a sufficiently well-written IF could be very
effective with a tragic ending. Many of the greatest works
of literature of all time have been tragedy.
It's true that a lot of people don't have much taste for
tragedy; however, it's also true that a lot of people
don't have much taste for quality literature. They'd
rather read a list of half-baked jokes; so be it. You
can't please all the masses. So write something
you'd like to have associated with yourself.
Personally, I think the idea of Tragic IF is
excellent. I do think we could do with more
of it. It would have to be well-done, of course,
but comic IF isn't much good if it isn't well-done,
either. Detective is a comedy (in the sense in
which we're using the term here), and Hamlet
is a tragedy. The conclusion I draw from this
is that comedy is not inherently more fun to
read than tragedy. In fact, tragedy can
be a very thoroughly enriching experience
if it's done right.
Yes, I would like to see some really good
tragic IF. And I don't think the fact that
it's a tragedy needs to be given at the
outset; however, I do think it's necessary
to write the tragic ending in such a way
that it's obvious that you have in fact
reached the correct ending -- the one you
were meant to reach. (Otherwise the
players spend hours and hours -- nay,
possibly days and weeks in some
cases -- trying to find the happy ending,
which could be very frustrating indeed.)
It would be tricky to do that without
breaking the mood, but I imagine it's
possible. It merely requires some
careful planning and good writing.
- jonadab
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> Incidentally, there are 23 occurrances of the word "tragic" and 58 of
> "tragedy" in the DejaNews archive of rec.ARTS.int-fiction. Compare 300 hits
> for the word "sword" and 400 for "dragon." Quantitatively speaking, we have
> a lot to discuss.
In which case we should probably dispense with the pleasantries and
start breaking into specifics.
I'll pose one question to get the ball rolling; it relates to my
other post on this topic:
What would be some plausible ways to *without breaking the tragic
mood of emotion at the conclusion* make it clear to the player that
this is the ending of the story that was meant to be reached?
> I'd note that Infidel is not a Tragedy.
I can't say, since I haven't played it.
> Some of the back articles on DejaNews theorized about Tragedy in terms of a
> game that a player cannot win. But losing a game is not, in and of itself,
> Tragic. There's a layman's definition of Tragedy: bad things happen, you
> suffer, you get screwed. In the words of the scarecrow from The Whiz: you
> can't win, you can't get even, and you can't get out of the game.
Those three ideas weren't original to TWOO, although their statement
may have been (I don't know). I have heard it said, however, that
they were originally published as the Three Laws of Thermodynamics.
> either ACT OR NOT ACT, either KNOWINGLY OR IN IGNORANCE." [emphasis mine]
Which makes a total of four possibilities, actually.
> "Of these, being on the verge of acting wittingly and not doing so is worst;
> this is disgusting, and it is not tragic since there is no suffering.
With variation, however, there *could* be. Say, for example, the
protagonist nearly acts to the betterment of everything, but fails
to do so out of ignorance; later he realises what he could have
done as he is forced to live out the consequences of his inaction;
admittedly, the bulk of the plot would probably fall after the
inaction in question, so there would need to be some additional
action later to avoid the problem of not having a good place
to end the story.
> So as far as Aristotle is concerned, Tragedy != you lose. Tragedy is a
> change from good fortune to bad fortune. It is not required that the story
> end on bad fortune. Indeed, at the last possible moment, catharsis may be
> achieved by the reversal of the bad fortune. It is the narrowness of the
> escape, the realization that one has been let off the hook, and that one
> didn't HAVE to be, that is cathartic.
This does not, however, defeat entirely the value of complete Tragedy
(i.e., the protagonist is ultimately defeated). That has value as
well, although it is admittedly more grim.
- jonadab
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> so maybe R+J isn't a good
> example.
Pick one of Shakespeare's *good* tragedies.
- jonadab
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> Seriously, I would like to bring up the classic use of "Floyd" in
> Planetfall, a very early tragic element in an otherwise very lighthearted
> game, that has touched many people over the years.
That's a good point: Tragedy, done right, is very touching.
A Separate Peace, anyone?
(Wow, that would make a huge IF)
> Tragedy is a dangeous thing when creating expensive entertainment.
> Novels, even plays can better afford it. The audience for tragedy,
> although often more serious and adult, is also generally smaller - hence
> the comparitive lack of tragic games and big-budget films. It's a good
> case for tragedy as a possible element of inexpensive online
> entertainment.
Like IF? I think that makes sense.
- jonadab
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> I also agree that since this is theoretically a profit-based industry,
?
CMP notwithstanding, I'd hardly call us a profit-BASED industry.
- jonadab
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> Aristotle would say that it's not character that makes a Tragedy, it is
> plot. Character is inferior to plot. A story could be about archetypical,
> characterless persons, and to be a Tragedy, it must still have a plot.
> Whereas characters can be dispensed with.
Whoah. That's guaranteed to be misunderstood and flamed.
Let me clarify what I think he's saying, and he can correct me if
I'm missing it. But I think he's not saying that a work without
characters would be effective; rather, he's saying that the Tragedy
is in the plot more than in the characters. You can have Tragedy
without any significant character development (although adding
the character development will enhance the expereince) but
you can't have Tragedy without plot.
> With one exception, The Game Of Mallor turned into a black comedy, not the
> psychological tragedy I had originally envisioned. Meanwhile, I discovered
> that comedy is easy. If the audience has a shared basis of experience,
> doing gags about what's shared is trivial. We told a LOT of stupid fantasy
> jokes, about how stupid the fantasy genre is. We laughed our asses off.
You realise, of course, that we've now switched to the modern
definition of comedy, which is altogether different from the
definition of comedy as the counterpart to tragedy.
> Hmm, admirable persons. Aristotle said that you must not tell Tragedies
> about people who are either too admirable or too wicked, because the results
> are not credible and/or do not evoke pity and fear. Rather, it is the
> middle sort of person who must be described, one that the audience can
> identify with.
That's the usual, although the death of an extremely respected
person can be quite tragic too, if done well. Think Gandalf.
(The fact that he didn't actually die is only relevant later, as
the reader is definitely supposed to assume that he's dead.
The other characters all do.) A better but less well-known
example would be Morgenes, and in that case you only
gain respect for him as you find out more about him post
mortem, which makes his death seem even *more* tragic.
Note, however, that there was a connection on a personal
level that brings to bear during the death scene itself.
There is also the issue of substitution, which applies in
both examples. The respected figure dies in order to
preserve someone more mundane. In spite of the
necessity of it given the situation, it just feels tragic.
- jonadab
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> >And only 87 occurrences of the word "Aristotle". Clearly we have our
> >work cut out for us.
I do think we would be amiss to discuss Tragedy without mentioning
Shakespeare a few times and Shelley at least once.
- jonadab
Mary K. Kuhner
>Excuse me, but this is a debate, not a name-calling session. Either deal
>with the point or find something more entertaining to do. It is a
>legitimate point: WHY does an audience often have different standards for IF
>and traditional linear media? It is a deep and important subject, not
>simply a matter of "oh you changed my context, my context is an
>unapproachable ivory tower of clean logistical separation."
You took my statement, which was a comparison and contrast of
face-to-face roleplaying games and computer text adventures, and
persist in trying to make it be about the difference between IF
and "traditional linear media". This makes nonsense of what I said.
I don't care to continue a conversation, or debate, or anything
else with someone who is interested in what I say only as a
springboard to make his own points.
Make your own damn points, in your own postings. Don't misquote
me to make them.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
David Glasser
> Great big spoilers for Infidel below.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> In article <73gclb$93o$1...@oak.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
> Brandon Van Every <vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >I'd note that Infidel is not a Tragedy. It is a rough draft for a tragedy.
> >In Aristotelean terms the plot is not "whole": it has a beginning and an
> >end, but no middle. The middle is just a bunch of stupid puzzles, and
> >that's why you ultimately don't care when the bricks fall down on his head
> >at the end.
>
> Thank you very much for inadvertently ruining Infidel for a lot of people.
>
> Please observe the FAQ's guidelines for posting spoilers.
Because the raif FAQ does mention that, right? Right?
OK, that's one more addition. I can't horribly plagiarize your FAQ, can
I?
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> Good grief haven't you people played this damn thing by now?
No.
> I played it 15
> years ago!
15 years ago I thought it might be possible to attach a
non-electronic typewriter to a television set and make
a computer, if you knew what you were doing. Also,
15 years ago, I figured anybody who had a home
computer (or a colour television or a dishwasher) must
be wealthy.
- jonadab
Bjoern Guenzel
<vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
[...]
>In the meantime, take a look at Photopia. It's a pretty successful effort.
>The key is you have to accept the buy-in of the plot premise, though. If
>you don't have the obvious instincts about the main character, and you
>aren't trying/willing to do the obvious, then you aren't going to have your
>emotional harpstrings pulled.
Does Photopia have an URL? Thanks in advance!
[...]
Bjoern Guenzel
--
At times I felt I had to make up for a
sad lack of experiences by wild imagination.
(Urs Widmer, insufficiently translated by me)
Sean Timarco Baggaley
***
(But it's a long way down already.)
Brandon Van Every wrote in message
<73ll7p$n7s$1...@ash.prod.itd.earthlink.net>...
>
>Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote in message
><365cfa36...@news.bright.net>...
>>"Brandon Van Every" <vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>> Aristotle would say that it's not character that makes a Tragedy, it is
>>> plot. Character is inferior to plot. A story could be about
>archetypical,
>>> characterless persons, and to be a Tragedy, it must still have a plot.
>>> Whereas characters can be dispensed with.
>>Whoah. That's guaranteed to be misunderstood
>By someone, sure.
>>and flamed.
>No pity for such. Flaming as an act of ignorance is, well, flaming.
And unjustified. Brandon ain't kidding, folks.
>>Let me clarify what I think he's saying, and he can correct me if
>>I'm missing it. But I think he's not saying that a work without
>>characters would be effective; rather, he's saying that the Tragedy
>>is in the plot more than in the characters.
>No, he is saying very strongly that the Tragedy is in the plot. Not the
>characters. He makes a five point argument about why this is so. I need
to
>find an online version of the Poetics, I'm tired of typing stuff out! :-)
http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/poetics.html
It's an 80K download in .txt format.
(They've got plenty more stuff on their site too. Project Gutenberg doesn't
seem to have done Aristotle yet, which is a bit of a surprise.)
>>> With one exception, The Game Of Mallor turned into a black comedy, not
>the
>>> psychological tragedy I had originally envisioned. Meanwhile, I
>discovered
>>> that comedy is easy. If the audience has a shared basis of experience,
>>> doing gags about what's shared is trivial. We told a LOT of stupid
>fantasy
>>> jokes, about how stupid the fantasy genre is. We laughed our asses off.
>>You realise, of course, that we've now switched to the modern
>>definition of comedy, which is altogether different from the
>>definition of comedy as the counterpart to tragedy.
Actually no, that isn't comedy at all. It's parody.
(This is why Terry Pratchett's books are so popular: they mix both comedy
*and* parody to varying degrees of success. The climax to "Moving Pictures"
is actually a parody, not comedy.)
Comedy is a damned sight harder to pull off than most people realise.
Stand-alone parody, on the other hand, is a piece of cake to do. But it is
still very hard to do it well. Especially if you want to apply it to IF (or
even LF.)
And no, a bunch of mates laughing their arses off isn't proof that you can
do it well; it just means you've got some basic material for a stand-up
comic. Even in a linear fiction parody, you have to *have* a story to tell.
And it's that story that defines whether you meet the classical,
Aristotelean criteria for Comedy.
(Today's definition has been so heavily diluted by ignoramuses over the
decades that practically anything that makes you laugh is classified as
'comedy'.)
Examples (with only one mention of The Great Bard):
Shakespeare's "All's Well That Ends Well" is a Comedy in the classical
sense.
The BBC's "Red Dwarf" (at least the earlier serials) were primarily Comedy
with some parody and heavy satire. The humour came mainly from the satirical
elements, as the SF genre itself was not heavily parodied.
The BBC's "Blakes 7" was a Tragedy in the classical sense. Although it did
contain humourous episodes, the series itself was played for Tragic effect,
right from the start.
In contrast, Paramount's original "Star Trek" series is a Comedy in the
classical sense. Note that this does not imply canned laughter or a
monologue by David Letterman; the classical Comedy has *NO* requirement for
humour.
Parodies of the original "Star Trek" series - as you have no-doubt noticed -
are so common and easy to create, that they have been a [deeply unfunny]
cliche' for some years.
[... major snippage as I haven't gotten around to reading Poetics yet...]
*SPOILER FOLLOWS* If you don't want to know, don't read on. Stop here. Right
now.
Still reading? Okay, you asked for it...
>With Gandalf, there is indeed a reversal, but it's not a Tragic reversal.
>The reversal is that fortune swings to Good again, he's alive. That's not
a
>Tragedy. (What is it, just "Drama?")
As with many of the truly classic works of literature, "Lord of The Rings"
can be viewed as both a Tragedy and a Comedy.
As a child, most will see it as a Comedy in the classical sense. It has a
happy ending, with all our heroes returning home, beating up the 'evil'
Saruman and winning the day. The departure of some of the lead characters
has little impact on the child; merely hairy cowboys riding off into the
sunset.
But re-read as an adult, the Tragic aspects become apparent: a higher-level
story initially appears to be one of the slow, sad departure of the Elves,
but with Frodo and Bilbo, *and* Gandalf's departures across the sea to
faraway lands, as well as the hint that Sam and the others may well follow
them later, Tolkien makes it clear that the Elves aren't going to be the
only race leaving.
It is an allegory of the gradual exodus of innocence and 'magic' from our
imaginations as we grow up. All those 'magical' things we believed in as
children slowly disappearing on a journey from the lands of our
imaginations, leaving only the Men.
In the classical sense, that makes LOTR a Tragedy.
--
Sean Timarco Baggaley
Shimizu Kahei
<vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote in message
>>
>>15 years ago I thought it might be possible to attach a
>>non-electronic typewriter to a television set and make
>>a computer, if you knew what you were doing. Also,
>>15 years ago, I figured anybody who had a home
>>computer (or a colour television or a dishwasher) must
>>be wealthy.
>
>
>Huh. I bought 1/2 of an Atari 800 computer with saved-up allowance money
>for $600. (I had been saving a long time.) My parents threw in the other
>$600. I was 11 years old.
>
And what I'd have to call 'rich'.
o...@mailcity.com
> years ago!
I wasn't very good at typing when I was one year old.
Ozone
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Emerick Rogul
: In article <73krsh$ebp$1...@ash.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
: Brandon Van Every <vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
:: Good grief haven't you people played this damn thing by now? I played it 15
:: years ago! Oh well I guess Treasures of Infocom are like old mold that can
:: never die....
: It happens to be that Infidel is one of the ones I haven't gotten to:
: other, more appealing efforts caught my eye every time. I did, however,
: know about the ending from reading it in a (properly spoilered) post.
: But that is beside the point. New people will come to interactive fiction
: all the time, and will not have played the games you have. It is
: exceptionally unkind to ruin the experience for them in this way.
Agreed. Although I'm a _huge_ fan of IF and have been playing the
Infocom games on and off for the past 12 years, there are still a
significant number that I haven't played at all. Now that I own
Masterpieces, I've been playing the ones I've missed. IMO, even
though they're old games, they will always contain spoiler-able
material for someone. Let's try not to ruin it for those people.
-Emerick
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emerick Rogul /\/ "i've said many, many, many unkind things about
eme...@cs.bu.edu /\/ philadelphia, and i meant every one of them."
----------------------------------------------------------- david lynch
Mary K. Kuhner
>What would be some plausible ways to *without breaking the tragic
>mood of emotion at the conclusion* make it clear to the player that
>this is the ending of the story that was meant to be reached?
"Muse" does a good job, at least for many players, at cuing
"You couldn't have done better than this" with the combination of
box-quote and commentary on the meaning of the ending. I believe
one thing that cues me that an ending was meant to be reached,
and not just an "oops you failed", is the degree of artistry
and care put into it: quality of ending text, degree to which
images at the end correspond to foreshadowing throughout, amount
of interpretation provided, etc.
You might try explicit foreshadowing, too. If a scene at the
beginning mirrors the tragic ending, that might help cue its
unavoidability. "Photopia" does something like this and many
(though not all, as we've seen) players grasped that there was
no way to reach a "better" ending.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Adam Cadre
> Does Photopia have an URL? Thanks in advance!
Yes, but I'd rather you hold off on visiting it until I upload version
1.2; barring unforeseen debugging problems, that should be in a matter of
hours. The URL will be:
http://www.retina.net/~grignr/photopia.html
Thanks for your interest.
-----
Adam Cadre, Anaheim, CA
http://www.retina.net/~grignr
Stephen van Egmond
David Glasser <gla...@DELETEuscom.com> wrote:
>> Please observe the FAQ's guidelines for posting spoilers.
>
>Because the raif FAQ does mention that, right? Right?
>
>OK, that's one more addition. I can't horribly plagiarize your FAQ, can
>I?
Sure, why not. rgif's FAQ on spoilers is in the context of asking/giving
hints. raif's would presumably about citing things in a game that would
spoil it for others.
Ferinstance,I haven't solved the Bank of Zork puzzle yet, and if in a
discussion on fiendish puzzles someone gives that away, I'm going to find
where they live and spill their blood on the floor.
Brandon Van Every
Sean Timarco Baggaley wrote in message <73magp$c97$1...@plug.news.pipex.net>...
>
>And no, a bunch of mates laughing their arses off isn't proof that you can
>do it well; it just means you've got some basic material for a stand-up
>comic. Even in a linear fiction parody, you have to *have* a story to tell.
Well, actually our discovery was that you DON'T have to have a story to
tell. If the reader likes the gags, then the reader will keep on collecting
the gags like Easter Eggs. There doesn't have to be any plot at all.
You've established something that the reader WANTS (to laugh), and you keep
giving it to them. By way of comparison: the performance of a stand-up
comic typically does not have a plot. Rather, it is a collection of
unrelated material.
>And it's that story that defines whether you meet the classical,
>Aristotelean criteria for Comedy.
Do you have a well-centralized reference for this Aristotelean criteria?
It's not very well elucidated in the Poetics, it's sorta strung about in
bits and pieces. For instance, nothing in the Poetics clarifies for me why
Star Trek TOS is a Comedy. Other than that it isn't a Tragedy, i.e.
"everyone quits the stage as friends at the close." But still, men slay and
are slain.
Brandon Van Every
Mary K. Kuhner wrote in message <73mm29$v2q$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
>Jonadab the Unsightly One <jon...@zerospam.com> wrote:
>
>>What would be some plausible ways to *without breaking the tragic
>>mood of emotion at the conclusion* make it clear to the player that
>>this is the ending of the story that was meant to be reached?
>
>"Muse" does a good job, at least for many players, at cuing
>"You couldn't have done better than this" with the combination of
>box-quote and commentary on the meaning of the ending. I believe
>one thing that cues me that an ending was meant to be reached,
>and not just an "oops you failed", is the degree of artistry
>and care put into it: quality of ending text, degree to which
>images at the end correspond to foreshadowing throughout, amount
>of interpretation provided, etc.
Another possibility: subvert the "intended" ending. Make all endings
well-crafted.
Brandon Van Every
Shimizu Kahei wrote in message <365ebaf4...@nnrp.gol.com>...
>On Thu, 26 Nov 1998 22:41:24 -0800, "Brandon Van Every"
><vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>Jonadab the Unsightly One wrote in message
>>>
>>>15 years ago I thought it might be possible to attach a
>>>non-electronic typewriter to a television set and make
>>>a computer, if you knew what you were doing. Also,
>>>15 years ago, I figured anybody who had a home
>>>computer (or a colour television or a dishwasher) must
>>>be wealthy.
>>
>>
>>Huh. I bought 1/2 of an Atari 800 computer with saved-up allowance money
>>for $600. (I had been saving a long time.) My parents threw in the other
>>$600. I was 11 years old.
>>
>
>And what I'd have to call 'rich'.
An 11 year old kid spending $600 of his money that he saved up for a very
long time by doing chores and etc. is "rich?" That's not rich, that's
Protestant Work Ethic.
I bought an Atari 2600 when I was 8 years old for $150, entirely with money
saved up from washing cars. And it took awhile to save up.
Brandon Van Every
Bjoern Guenzel wrote in message <365e97c8...@news.lrz-muenchen.de>...
>
>Does Photopia have an URL? Thanks in advance!
Grab the game at:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition98/inform/photopia/photopia.z5
and for Win95 grab the following interpreter:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/infocom/interpreters/zip/wzip21.zip
Be advised that this interpreter doesn't handle color properly. You'll have
to manually fix it. But hey, it runs on Win95 and you don't need the silly
DOS box. Looks better. I hate icky DOS boxes. If you want a better
interpreter peruse the archive until you're satisfied. Been there, done
that.
You could also just grab the B&W version instead:
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/games/competition98/inform/photopia/photobw.z5
Brandon Van Every
Stephen van Egmond wrote in message ...
>
>Ferinstance,I haven't solved the Bank of Zork puzzle yet, and if in a
>discussion on fiendish puzzles someone gives that away, I'm going to find
>where they live and spill their blood on the floor.
It's not a fiendish puzzle, it's a shitty puzzle.
Brandon Van Every
Scott A. Munro wrote in message <365f85c4...@news.nextdim.com>...
>On Wed, 25 Nov 1998 16:44:10 -0800, "Brandon Van Every"
><vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>The trick is, you cannot passively inform a player that they're "lost and
>>lonely." They won't care. You have to provide them something they want,
>>then take it away with the other hand. As they chase the thing they want,
>>you then have power. You can now shape the player's experience, make him
>>truly lost and lonely. Or whatever kind of effect you're trying to
achieve.
>
>Or, if you're going for a more literary type of player (or "reader"),
>provide a bit of backstory, in the form of letters, a diary, whatever;
>you could do this in an accompanying file to be read before starting.
>Make it short, well-written and in keeping with the tone of your game,
>or it will feel tacked-on.
But I think that the danger of such a "letters and diary" backstory is that
it's boring plowing through such things. Much better to have the backstory
revealed as the story itself moves forwards. That way, you're accomplishing
something active. Similarly, it is better to define character in the course
of their actions, than to spend a long time setting up the character of the
characters.
>Once the player understands the character's
>motivations, he'll be willing to play along, just as he would with a
>piece of straight fiction.
No this does not follow. The player may not like your characters, or their
motivations. You have to give the PLAYER something that they want. Not
simply say "ok I explained everything about these characters to you, now act
them out consistently." And finally, even if the player wants to go along
with your agenda, they may act inconsistently for lack of skill. So you
should incorporate the PLAYER's desires as a method of enforcing
consistency. It's easier than expecting the player to have skill. Lead to
where the player would probably go anyways.
>I'm not saying that this is a commercially viable strategy, but if you
>wanted to get rich, you wouldn't be writing IF, would you? I do think
>it has the potential to attract a small but feisty group of
>supporters.
Why does the IF crowd think so small? Get over the text stuff. There's a
whole genre of games like Grim Fandango emerging, master it and make money.
All your IF literary skill is still required.
>The first piece I'm planning (for some unspecified time in the future,
>since I've just started learning Inform) will have no such concepts as
>"winning" and "losing." Either you get to the end, or you don't. Along
>the way, you don't so much solve puzzles as make choices, some of
>which are extremely unpleasant. Often, you will have to make the worse
>choice in order to advance the story. Of course, the choices will get
>harder as the game proceeds. The final choice will invove doing
>something horrible in order to accomplish your goal, or refusing to do
>it and letting the goal slip away. Which one the player chooses (the
>first time, that is) will depend on both his own personality, and on
>the personality of the character (assuming the player is sensitive to
>the personality of the character).
Interesting framework, would love to see it. Reminds me in many ways of the
stated intents of The Game Of Immortals, if not the results we've seen so
far. Your plan will definitely depend on leading players to goals they
actually care about. This is why Photopia worked for most people. (See my
tongue-in-cheek post about the demographics it *doesn't* work for. :-)
>The point, as in straight fiction, is not to award someone a certain
>number of points and say "Congratulations, you've reached the level of
>Apprentice Wizard Third Class" but to excite certain emotions and
>trains of thought.
Yep and to do this you must secure the audience's buy-in somehow.
Brandon Van Every
Joyce Haslam wrote in message <48abeaa...@argonet.co.uk>...
>
>Hey Stephen,
>
>He lives in Seattle...
Is this a private conversation or can anyone join in?
Brandon Van Every
David A. Cornelson wrote in message <73o9rf$g...@newsops.execpc.com>...
>Brandon Van Every wrote in message
>>
>>Stephen van Egmond wrote in message ...
>>>
>>>Ferinstance,I haven't solved the Bank of Zork puzzle yet, and if in a
>>>discussion on fiendish puzzles someone gives that away, I'm going to find
>>>where they live and spill their blood on the floor.
>>
>>
>>It's not a fiendish puzzle, it's a shitty puzzle.
>>
>
>
>[spoiler]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
There's not really any "feedback" as you pass through the gates. No reason
to know that you should now pass through this gate in this direction. Nor
any particularly logical explanation as to why the gates should operate in
this fashion. It smacks of gratuitous adventure gaming logic, sans
referants. Your only clue is you KNOW that there's a puzzle here,
somewhere.
This puzzle sold hint books. It's only because I was clever enough to find
a few bugs in Zork II, that I didn't need to solve it.
Joyce Haslam
Brandon Van Every <vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Stephen van Egmond wrote in message ...
> >
> >Ferinstance,I haven't solved the Bank of Zork puzzle yet, and if
> >in a discussion on fiendish puzzles someone gives that away, I'm
> >going to find where they live and spill their blood on the floor.
> It's not a fiendish puzzle, it's a shitty puzzle.
> Cheers, 3d graphics optimization jock
> Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
Hey Stephen,
He lives in Seattle...
Joyce.
--
Joyce Haslam
http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/dljhaslam/ for Gateway to Karos [INFORM]
Powerbase is for RiscOs only
c o m u s @ a r g o n e t . c o . u k
Scott A. Munro
<vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Bjoern Guenzel wrote in message <365c52f9...@news.lrz-muenchen.de>...
>>Also, one game I have wanted to make for ages has the intention to
>>make you feel lost and lonely - I expect that nobody will want to play
>>it,
>
>The trick is, you cannot passively inform a player that they're "lost and
>lonely." They won't care. You have to provide them something they want,
>then take it away with the other hand. As they chase the thing they want,
>you then have power. You can now shape the player's experience, make him
>truly lost and lonely. Or whatever kind of effect you're trying to achieve.
Or, if you're going for a more literary type of player (or "reader"),
provide a bit of backstory, in the form of letters, a diary, whatever;
you could do this in an accompanying file to be read before starting.
Make it short, well-written and in keeping with the tone of your game,
or it will feel tacked-on. Once the player understands the character's
motivations, he'll be willing to play along, just as he would with a
piece of straight fiction.
I'm not saying that this is a commercially viable strategy, but if you
wanted to get rich, you wouldn't be writing IF, would you? I do think
it has the potential to attract a small but feisty group of
supporters.
>>wouldn't it be cool if the tragedy in a game happens because of the
>>PLAYER's character flaws?
>>Perhaps you could even manipulate the player into developing flaws
>>with the right environment. Just as Hamlet might have become so
>>depressed because of his useless familiy (damn, I haven't even read
>>Hamlet yet, will start doing so tonight...).
The first piece I'm planning (for some unspecified time in the future,
since I've just started learning Inform) will have no such concepts as
"winning" and "losing." Either you get to the end, or you don't. Along
the way, you don't so much solve puzzles as make choices, some of
which are extremely unpleasant. Often, you will have to make the worse
choice in order to advance the story. Of course, the choices will get
harder as the game proceeds. The final choice will invove doing
something horrible in order to accomplish your goal, or refusing to do
it and letting the goal slip away. Which one the player chooses (the
first time, that is) will depend on both his own personality, and on
the personality of the character (assuming the player is sensitive to
the personality of the character).
The point, as in straight fiction, is not to award someone a certain
number of points and say "Congratulations, you've reached the level of
Apprentice Wizard Third Class" but to excite certain emotions and
trains of thought.
-----
Scott A. Munro http://www.nextdim.com/users/smunro/
Read my fiction at http://tale.com
David A. Cornelson
>>
>>Ferinstance,I haven't solved the Bank of Zork puzzle yet, and if in a
>>discussion on fiendish puzzles someone gives that away, I'm going to find
>>where they live and spill their blood on the floor.
>
>
>It's not a fiendish puzzle, it's a shitty puzzle.
>
Funny. I thought it was an excellent puzzle. And very fiendish.
Jarb
Adam Cadre
Some works are better suited to text than to visual media. Why am I
suddenly picturing you cornering someone like JD Salinger and demanding,
"Hey, why'n'cha go to Hollywood, huh? That's where the MONEY is, man!"
> There's a whole genre of games like Grim Fandango emerging, master it
> and make money.
My college roommate was the lead programmer on Grim Fandango. You have
no idea what is entailed in the process you sweepingly refer to as
"mastering it and making money."
> This is why Photopia worked for most people.
Please don't presume that you know why this is so.
> (See my tongue-in-cheek post about the demographics it *doesn't* work
> for. :-)
See, you can call it tongue-in-cheek, and you can adorn it with your
little smiley face, but you're still implying that you've done some sort
of research on the readership instead of making stuff up and sprinkling
it with a healthy dash of offensive stereotypes.
Brandon Van Every
high-caliber) flammage, for entertainment purposes only, we're not real
psychics....]
>
>
>[spoiler space]
>
>
Adam Cadre wrote in message ...
>Brandon Van Every wrote:
>> Why does the IF crowd think so small? Get over the text stuff.
>
>Some works are better suited to text than to visual media. Why am I
>suddenly picturing you cornering someone like JD Salinger and demanding,
>"Hey, why'n'cha go to Hollywood, huh? That's where the MONEY is, man!"
No, more like why don't you make an (independent) movie?
You conveniently eliminated the context of the original poster, who claimed
it was a glory to remain poor and little known in the name of IF. Bollocks
to that! There is no necessity in it. You just have to be willing to think
in terms of a career and not a hobby.
>> There's a whole genre of games like Grim Fandango emerging, master it
>> and make money.
>
>My college roommate was the lead programmer on Grim Fandango. You have
>no idea what is entailed in the process you sweepingly refer to as
>"mastering it and making money."
Give me a friggin' break. What are *your* 3D graphics credentials?
>> This is why Photopia worked for most people.
>
>Please don't presume that you know why this is so.
[context ruthlessly eliminated]
You know Adam you're a good author but a real snot. I've heaped nothing but
compliments upon your game (Photopia), at extreme verbosity over the course
of many articles. I've said several times, "Adam, you've done good." And
yet for some lame reason, you chose to zero in on a fairly irrelevant quip
about text vs. 3D, because you'd rather play ego games with me than discuss
the title of this thread. As a man who just pulled off a tremendous feat of
leading a player along according to their desires, do you happen to have
ANYTHING to say about the subject?
Let's play it your way. I'm an egomaniac. I have the golden answer for why
your game worked, it's a real kick in the teeth, an abuse to all your
authorial perogatives. BECAUSE PEOPLE WANTED TO SAVE THE CHILD. Now,
refute it. Prove me wrong.
If you really think I'm off-base here, then you're more of a Postmodernist
than I would have guessed.
>> (See my tongue-in-cheek post about the demographics it *doesn't* work
>> for. :-)
>
>See, you can call it tongue-in-cheek, and you can adorn it with your
>little smiley face,
Adam it's a GREAT BIG smiley face, didn't you notice?
>but you're still implying that you've done some sort
>of research on the readership instead of making stuff up
Ok here's the rocket science: I hear 2/3 of people like your game
unequivocably.
>and sprinkling it with a healthy dash of offensive stereotypes.
Adam, I'm beginning to think that you want my body, I'm not sure whether
warm or cold. What part of "child haters" and
"over-(under?)-intellectualized gay men" can't you understand as irrelevant
farce? I live on Capitol Hill, the gayest neighborhood on the west coast
outside of San Francisco. In case you're wondering this is Liberal Central,
and I can make any damn crack about over-the-top political ideologies I
want. Here's another one while I'm at it: "Why did the chicken cross the
road? Because the chicken's feathers are white, the asphalt is black, and
it's the white man keeping the black man DOWN."
Cheers, 3d graphics optimization jock
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
Dave G
Brandon Van Every wrote:
> Let's play it your way. I'm an egomaniac. I have the golden answer for why
> your game worked, it's a real kick in the teeth, an abuse to all your
> authorial perogatives. BECAUSE PEOPLE WANTED TO SAVE THE CHILD. Now,
> refute it. Prove me wrong.
I don't want to get involved in y'all's flame war; I just want to insert
a quick comment about Photopia.
I loved Photopia. Great game. Deserves all the praise it has
received. But I never, not even for a moment, had any illusion that I
could save Alley. Nor did I "want" to, really. Nor did it even occur
to me to go back and try to do things differently -- it seemed starkly
clear that I could not. (I did do an undo and type "STOP CAR" my first
time through, but had no expectation that it would succeed in avoiding
the accident. I just wanted to see how the author dealt with that
option.)
I can certainly understand the (perfectly reasonable) opposing viewpoint
-- the fact that this is interactive fiction could easily fool someone
into thinking they could have done something to change the ending. But
approaching the game in that way is not necessary to enjoying it -- as
proof, my personal experience. I believe rgif discussions have shown
several people to have experienced (and loved) the game "my way", and
several "your way". Obviously both are entirely valid.
It was a great story, expertly written. "Two thumbs up, way up!"
Mary K. Kuhner
>The first piece I'm planning (for some unspecified time in the future,
>since I've just started learning Inform) will have no such concepts as
>"winning" and "losing." Either you get to the end, or you don't. Along
>the way, you don't so much solve puzzles as make choices, some of
>which are extremely unpleasant. Often, you will have to make the worse
>choice in order to advance the story.
I think that last line is the sticking point, the thing you'll
need to have a brilliant solution to or your game will bomb for
many players.
If I find that I have to make the worse choice in order to advance
the story, generally speaking I feel nothing akin to tragedy: I
feel bullied by the author. The emotions engaged here aren't
character identification, but my desire as a player to make the
game progress. My usual experience with "if you don't do what I
need you to do, the game stops progressing" moral choices is that
they destroy my identification with the character: he's not making
a bad moral choice, I'm overriding him out of my player-selfish
desire to continue.
The COMP98 game which came closest to making this work for me
was "Persistance of Memory". ("Photopia" dodges the question
by not really allowing a lot of decisions.)
I know I'm in the minority here, but "The Plant" failed for me on
exactly these grounds: I tried to care about the main character,
and then the requirement that he steal everything that's not
nailed down really annoyed me. I stopped playing the character
and started just playing the game--which was a fun game, but I'd
hoped for more.
I believe there are ways to make this work, but some real artistry
will be needed.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Scott A. Munro
<vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>Scott A. Munro wrote in message <365f85c4...@news.nextdim.com>...
>>On Wed, 25 Nov 1998 16:44:10 -0800, "Brandon Van Every"
>><vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>The trick is, you cannot passively inform a player that they're "lost and
>>>lonely." They won't care. You have to provide them something they want,
>>>then take it away with the other hand. As they chase the thing they want,
>>>you then have power. You can now shape the player's experience, make him
>>>truly lost and lonely. Or whatever kind of effect you're trying to
>achieve.
>>
>>Or, if you're going for a more literary type of player (or "reader"),
>>provide a bit of backstory, in the form of letters, a diary, whatever;
>>you could do this in an accompanying file to be read before starting.
>>Make it short, well-written and in keeping with the tone of your game,
>>or it will feel tacked-on.
>
>But I think that the danger of such a "letters and diary" backstory is that
>it's boring plowing through such things. Much better to have the backstory
>revealed as the story itself moves forwards. That way, you're accomplishing
>something active. Similarly, it is better to define character in the course
>of their actions, than to spend a long time setting up the character of the
>characters.
The only problem with that is that if you don't know who you are, you
don't know why you should care. This is the problem I had with Myst
(which I was given as a gift). Without a character to play, I am
simply playing me, and _I_ frankly don't care if Professor
What's-his-name rots. I have better things to do than solve a lot of
annoying puzzles. Someone else might not have better things to do, but
he ain't here.
And if you write well enough, it won't be boring, as long as you don't
go overboard (as I said, keep it brief).
Also, the problem with delayed exposition in a second-person format is
that you should know all this stuff when you start. Unless, of course,
there is some contrived reason why you've forgotten, and then you're
flirting with the "why should I care?" reaction.
>>Once the player understands the character's
>>motivations, he'll be willing to play along, just as he would with a
>>piece of straight fiction.
>
>No this does not follow. The player may not like your characters, or their
>motivations. You have to give the PLAYER something that they want. Not
>simply say "ok I explained everything about these characters to you, now act
>them out consistently." And finally, even if the player wants to go along
>with your agenda, they may act inconsistently for lack of skill. So you
>should incorporate the PLAYER's desires as a method of enforcing
>consistency. It's easier than expecting the player to have skill. Lead to
>where the player would probably go anyways.
The player may dislike the protagonist in a piece of straight fiction,
too. You writes your story and you takes your chances.
As far as acting consistently: there is plenty of scope for the
player's own personality to come into play, even within the bounds set
by the goal of the character. Of course, some players' personalities
will lead them to say "Who cares?" and delete the game.
>>I'm not saying that this is a commercially viable strategy, but if you
>>wanted to get rich, you wouldn't be writing IF, would you? I do think
>>it has the potential to attract a small but feisty group of
>>supporters.
>
>Why does the IF crowd think so small? Get over the text stuff. There's a
>whole genre of games like Grim Fandango emerging, master it and make money.
>All your IF literary skill is still required.
>
>>The first piece I'm planning (for some unspecified time in the future,
>>since I've just started learning Inform) will have no such concepts as
>>"winning" and "losing." Either you get to the end, or you don't. Along
>>the way, you don't so much solve puzzles as make choices, some of
>>which are extremely unpleasant. Often, you will have to make the worse
>>choice in order to advance the story. Of course, the choices will get
>>harder as the game proceeds. The final choice will invove doing
>>something horrible in order to accomplish your goal, or refusing to do
>>it and letting the goal slip away. Which one the player chooses (the
>>first time, that is) will depend on both his own personality, and on
>>the personality of the character (assuming the player is sensitive to
>>the personality of the character).
>
>Interesting framework, would love to see it. Reminds me in many ways of the
>stated intents of The Game Of Immortals, if not the results we've seen so
>far. Your plan will definitely depend on leading players to goals they
>actually care about. This is why Photopia worked for most people. (See my
>tongue-in-cheek post about the demographics it *doesn't* work for. :-)
>
>>The point, as in straight fiction, is not to award someone a certain
>>number of points and say "Congratulations, you've reached the level of
>>Apprentice Wizard Third Class" but to excite certain emotions and
>>trains of thought.
>
>
>Yep and to do this you must secure the audience's buy-in somehow.
And the trick here is to train the audience to play along, just as
they've been trained to play along in straight fiction. Is there any
_real_ reason to care whether good defeats evil in _The Stand_, or
whether Winston Smith survives (in any meaningful way) in _1984_, or
whether Jeeves can pull Bertie Wooster out of the clutches of Honoria
Glossop? Of course not. And some people never do; they're the ones who
watch Friday the 13th movies instead of reading novels.
Keep in mind that this is just a theory; I have no real confidence
that it will work in the real world, with its government educational
policies apparently designed to stupidify whole generations.
Lelah Conrad
(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>If I find that I have to make the worse choice in order to advance
>the story, generally speaking I feel nothing akin to tragedy: I
>feel bullied by the author. The emotions engaged here aren't
>character identification, but my desire as a player to make the
>game progress. My usual experience with "if you don't do what I
>need you to do, the game stops progressing" moral choices is that
>they destroy my identification with the character: he's not making
>a bad moral choice, I'm overriding him out of my player-selfish
>desire to continue.
Yes, I agree with you. Bullies and control freaks want you to feel as
though something has been done to you akin to what has been done to
them to make them bullies in the first place. But with IF this
doesn't work. We either "hold our noses" and go on (not being touched
by the rest of the story, since mimesis, our identification with the
character, has been broken) just to see how it turns out, or, if we
are really offended we'll just quit the game right there.
In other words violence (which is how I would define forcing
the player's hand) doesn't work as effectively in fiction (as
indelibly, shall we say) as it does in real life, where we often can't
choose to avoid it. A good IF craftsperson will not force our hand
(for then, we are violated, we stop identifying, and we cannot be
further touched) but will instead entice us along. Authors who can
sustain the player's involvement at the balancing point between
complicity and empathy are the master tragedians.
Lelah
Scott A. Munro
(Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
>Scott A. Munro <smu...@nextdim.com> wrote:
>
>>The first piece I'm planning (for some unspecified time in the future,
>>since I've just started learning Inform) will have no such concepts as
>>"winning" and "losing." Either you get to the end, or you don't. Along
>>the way, you don't so much solve puzzles as make choices, some of
>>which are extremely unpleasant. Often, you will have to make the worse
>>choice in order to advance the story.
>
>I think that last line is the sticking point, the thing you'll
>need to have a brilliant solution to or your game will bomb for
>many players.
>
>If I find that I have to make the worse choice in order to advance
>the story, generally speaking I feel nothing akin to tragedy: I
>feel bullied by the author. The emotions engaged here aren't
>character identification, but my desire as a player to make the
>game progress. My usual experience with "if you don't do what I
>need you to do, the game stops progressing" moral choices is that
>they destroy my identification with the character: he's not making
>a bad moral choice, I'm overriding him out of my player-selfish
>desire to continue.
This occurred to me after my last post: The problem is the difference
between the gamer and the reader. To the gamer, the desire to win the
game is paramount, and if you are looking at a piece of IF as a game,
I can quite understand the reaction you describe above.
However, if the IF is not so much a game as a _story_, then you will
realize that people _are_ sometimes confronted with bad choices. The
point is that you _become_ the character (call it "method reading"),
but also that the character becomes you.
You have to make the choice. Do you/the character make the morally
comfortable (perhaps even morally right) decision and sacrifice your
chance to accomplish your goal, or do you/the character push
obsessively onward and damn the consequences? That's rather the whole
point of the sort of IF I'm talking about. The character has a goal,
and even a certain personality, at the beginning; but that personality
will be shaped by the player as the story progresses. Your choices do
not "override" the character's choices. They _are_ the character's
choices.
Of course, there has to be restraint. I don't think it would work if
the player has to do something which is clearly evil in order to
continue.
E.g., I would never write a scene (and yes, I think in scenes) in
which a baby has swallowed a key that the player needs *right now*,
then put the player and the baby alone in a room with a rusty knife.
Well, I might, but I would never make cutting the baby open the
"right" decision in terms of advancing the story.
I'm thinking more in these terms:
Do you save from drowning the nasty old man who knows the combination
to the safe (which you must open), or do you save his sweet young ward
who has never done harm to anyone?
You need the old man, but the ward seems more deserving of being
saved.
On the other hand, who are you to decide whose life is more valuable?
The old man employs dozens of people who will lose their jobs if he
dies. The ward has no dependents.
You've got to play God, and worse, you've got a vested interest in who
survives.
If you read a piece of straight fiction in which the character had to
make such a choice, I doubt you'd complain. But in this case, it's
_you_ who have to make the decision, which should (if the author does
his job right) make you squirm on a much more personal level, if you
are looking at the IF as a story rather than a game.
If the choice were _too_ bad, I would probably offer an alternative
path. The player could make the decision which was morally better, and
suffer inconvenience rather than utter failure.
Of course, whether or not it works would depend very much on the
writing.
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> Huh. I bought 1/2 of an Atari 800 computer with saved-up allowance money
> for $600. (I had been saving a long time.) My parents threw in the other
> $600. I was 11 years old.
I had an allowance once. For three months. I never spent any of the
money so they quit giving it to me.
First time I ever saw $600 in one place...
I guess that would have been in tenth grade after I got a paper
route. It would have been almost a year's savings...
I got my first computer a year or two later for $400 -- a
ten-year-old ITT XTRA, which I still have (although I use it
somewhat less than regularly now...)
- jonadab
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> An 11 year old kid spending $600 of his money that he saved up for a very
> long time by doing chores and etc. is "rich?" That's not rich, that's
> Protestant Work Ethic.
We didn't generally get paid for helping out around the house, unless
you count room and board. It was just expected. That's called
Anabaptist Work Ethic.
Even if I had never spent a dime on anything else my entire life, I
would have been [stops to calculate Christmas and birthday moneys]
well, I never would have accumulated a total of $600 from that. It
would have been after I got the paper route in tenth grade.
> I bought an Atari 2600 when I was 8 years old for $150, entirely with money
> saved up from washing cars. And it took awhile to save up.
*That* counts as Work Ethic. The other is "rich".
- jonadab
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> >Let me clarify what I think he's saying, and he can correct me if
> >I'm missing it. But I think he's not saying that a work without
> >characters would be effective; rather, he's saying that the Tragedy
> >is in the plot more than in the characters.
>
> No, he is saying very strongly that the Tragedy is in the plot. Not the
> characters. He makes a five point argument about why this is so. I need to
> find an online version of the Poetics, I'm tired of typing stuff out! :-)
Okay. That's pretty close to what I said, I think.
I was fearing someone would think you were saying that plot
is of intrinsic literary value and characters are not, which
would be... subjective at best. But yes, the tragedy lies
in the plot (although it affects and may be affected by...
well, that's true of most anything.)
> >You realise, of course, that we've now switched to the modern
> >definition of comedy,
> Pity Aristotle didn't finish the parts about comedy in the Poetics, or at
> least they are lost to us. Must have been that evil finger-dipping monk
> from The Name Of The Rose. :-) Anyways, please enlighten us as to the
> difference of definitions? Aristotle does mention that comedy is an error
> or disgrace that does not involve pain or destruction. Such as a comic
> mask: the face is distorted, but not from pain.
Breifly:
Modern definition of comedy: makes me laugh. Has jokes.
(Some tragedies fit into this category)
Older definition of comedy: not a tragedy. (Or something similar
or related to that.) It is very possible for such a work
to fail to be funny. Cinderella is a comedy in this sense;
it is not funny. (Its literary value or lack thereof is a
separate discussion.)
Perhaps you did mean to say that that game became a comedy
according to the older definition, but you said something
that made me think you had switched to the modern definition.
I don't remember what it was, I'm afraid.
> Is Aristotle merely off-base? Maybe not. One way to read it, is to say
> that the complexity of the plot is paramount. We're not talking about
> Gandalf dying heroically, that's a simple plot. We're talking about Gandalf
> going through suffering after suffering after suffering.
Ah. So you weren't saying that *any* tragedy is restricted to
"just a regular guy" characters, but that this particular
type of tragedy (admittedly a very effective type) should be.
> Each one worse and
> worse and worse. Indeed, this is perhaps disgusting. He's a good man, why
> should he suffer so?
Perhaps that would be the tragedy of it?
[Stops to try to think of an example...]
What about Job? Granted, Job ultimately is a comedy
at the end, but the majority of the story reads as a tragedy.
Granted, the question why he should suffer so is answered,
and it is the point, which is made finally near the end.
> We do not feel fear, or pity, rather we feel righteous
> indignation (disgust). What mean, cruel Fate torments Man? Does this sound
> like the story of Job in the Bible? I've not read the whole thing....
Do so some time. It makes an excellent type at the very least,
in spite of the fact that it was not written as literature.
Actually, the majority of the book consists of discussion on the
part of Job's three friends, who all happen to be wrong about
what is going on (which is clear from the start, although it isn't
explained to Job even at the end). But what we feel is not
righteous indignation, for this very reason: while Job is
righteous, it is for a righteous reason that he suffers. (His
friends have also assumed this, but make false assumptions
about the nature of that righteous reason. All of them
maintain a worldview throughout to the effect that God
is just.) What Job feels evolves as the story progresses,
but I don't think it ever reaches the point of indignation --
which only adds to the assertion that Job is righteous.
However, as I said, Job turns out to be a comedy
at the end, which mitigates the earlier tragedy.
(However, this is almost like an epilogue. The
entire point of the story has already been made
before the comic ending. It seems likely that the
comic ending is only even written down in order
to forestall incorrect conclusions to the effect that
God was somehow acting unjustly.
> With Gandalf, there is indeed a reversal, but it's not a Tragic reversal.
No, the reversal isn't tragic. The earlier scene is, however,
arguably tragic, but not in the sense of "bad to worse" as much
as just "unexpected bad". Then again, the very appearance
of the evil forces there was bad; then it was discovered that
they had brought Durin's Bane with them; then Galdalf dies.
So in one sense the fortune does go from bad to worse, although
the earlier "bad" centers not on Gandalf in particular but on
the group as a whole.
> The reversal is that fortune swings to Good again, he's alive. That's not a
> Tragedy.
True. That's comic (old sense).
- jonadab
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> Tragedy is complete by virtue of having a Beginning, a Middle, and an End.
> Not by virtue of the protagonist dying. Selecting one form of Tragedy as a
> matter of authorial preference does not make it more complete than any of
> the other forms.
Perhaps "complete tragedy" was a mischoice of phrases; I meant
"work which is utterly tragic in every way" or somesuch. Also note
that "ultimately defeated" does not necessarily mean "killed",
although death certainly can qualify as defeat if it is written that
way (although death can also occur in a triumphant ending...)
- jonadab
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> >And it's that story that defines whether you meet the classical,
> >Aristotelean criteria for Comedy.
> Do you have a well-centralized reference for this Aristotelean criteria?
I don't know whether it's Aristotelean or not, but I thought it was
common knowledge. Ask any English professor about the
older non-humorous defintion of comedy, and they'll all (in
my experience, at least) tell you essentially the same thing.
It's the reverse of a tragedy. The protagonist ultimately
triumphs. Everything works out okay. Or somesuch.
If we were looking at parts of the middles of works rather
than the end then you can say merely "the protagonist
experienes triumph", removing the sense of the ultimate.
> But still, men slay and are slain.
The men slain either aren't major characters or are
opposing the protagonist(s).
However, it is possible for a good work to mingle
comedy and tragedy (by way of using more than
one major character or by way of having events
turn around multiple times) to good effect.
TOS is pretty much pure comedy, though.
- jonadab
Mary K. Kuhner
>This occurred to me after my last post: The problem is the difference
>between the gamer and the reader. To the gamer, the desire to win the
>game is paramount, and if you are looking at a piece of IF as a game,
>I can quite understand the reaction you describe above.
I don't think this is a complete (or, to be honest, entirely
fair) summary of the problem.
Suppose I *am* responding to the work of IF as story, and working
out for myself a characterization of the main character. Then
I make a moral choice, a hard engaging one--and the game ends
immediately, with some clear feedback that there's a lot more to
it that I haven't seen. I don't think I'm to blame for feeling
some pressure to go back and make the decision the "right" way.
In IF, which is necessarily scripted, it's hard to present a
really cutting moral choice unless you're prepared to code up
both branches in detail, or unless you have some *really* good
magician's force available.
It's not a matter of winning. In a linear story, no matter what
the character's choice, you get to see all the story the author
wrote, and gain whatever enjoyment's to be gained. In IF, if you
make choices that close the story off instantly, you've got to be
limiting your enjoyment greatly. All that lovely text you'll never
be able to read. So you go back and "undo"...but phooey, there
goes character identification.
>However, if the IF is not so much a game as a _story_, then you will
>realize that people _are_ sometimes confronted with bad choices. The
>point is that you _become_ the character (call it "method reading"),
>but also that the character becomes you.
Sure. But if my reading conflicts with the author's, and the author
then uses force ("do what I want or the game is over!") to make
me re-choose, I lose that form of engagement. Having the game end
is more than "failing to accomplish the goal": it ends my
engagement with the character too, since there is no more opportunity
to practice it.
>If you read a piece of straight fiction in which the character had to
>make such a choice, I doubt you'd complain. But in this case, it's
>_you_ who have to make the decision, which should (if the author does
>his job right) make you squirm on a much more personal level, if you
>are looking at the IF as a story rather than a game.
Would you, as author, feel satisfied with a play-through of _Jigsaw_
which ended after scene two, the player having made a "wrong" choice
and thus never gotten to see the rest of the very large game? I
know that I, as audience, would not. There are a lot of things in
there I would be *very* sorry not to have seen.
_Jigsaw_ more or less pulled off what we're talking about, for me:
while I had some doubts about the rightness of what my character was
doing, I was willing to go with him on it. But it was fragile, and
one or two scenes really strained identification. If you go for
something more awful than _Jigsaw_'s goals, I think you'd lose me.
Not because I'm "only out to win" but because a reading of
_Jigsaw_ which ends at scene 2, and one which involves "undo" of
a major characterization decision, are both too flawed to be
really satisfying.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Adam Cadre
> >Some works are better suited to text than to visual media. Why am I
> >suddenly picturing you cornering someone like JD Salinger and demanding,
> >"Hey, why'n'cha go to Hollywood, huh? That's where the MONEY is, man!"
Brandon Van Every replied:
> No, more like why don't you make an (independent) movie?
You really think this is somehow better?
> You conveniently eliminated the context of the original poster, who claimed
> it was a glory to remain poor and little known in the name of IF. Bollocks
> to that! There is no necessity in it. You just have to be willing to think
> in terms of a career and not a hobby.
I don't need another career. I *like* having IF as a hobby. Hobbies are
fun.
I wrote:
> >My college roommate was the lead programmer on Grim Fandango. You have
> >no idea what is entailed in the process you sweepingly refer to as
> >"mastering it and making money."
BVE replied:
> Give me a friggin' break. What are *your* 3D graphics credentials?
I'm not trying to play Dueling Resumes with you. The point is, I lived
with Bret while he was in the process of "mastering" the skills that
eventually led to the production of the game you mentioned. I would not
have traded lives with him for a second. Now, perhaps I shouldn't have
said that you "have no idea." Perhaps you have a very good idea, and yet
still think that the process is easy and/or worth my effort to learn.
You would be wrong.
You might also argue that you've undergone the exact same process as Bret
and that it wasn't as grueling as all that. But then, if you'd undergone
the *exact* same process, it'd be your name in the credits instead of his.
BVE wrote:
> > > This is why Photopia worked for most people.
I replied:
> >Please don't presume that you know why this is so.
BVE retorted:
> Let's play it your way. I'm an egomaniac. I have the golden answer for why
> your game worked, it's a real kick in the teeth, an abuse to all your
> authorial perogatives. BECAUSE PEOPLE WANTED TO SAVE THE CHILD. Now,
> refute it. Prove me wrong.
Dave G didn't want to save the child. QED.
Some people probably did want to save her, sure. The point is, there is
no single answer. There are as many reasons why people liked Photopia as
there are people who liked it. People are different. To find out why
people liked it, don't speculate. Ask them.
Of course, making pronouncements based on one's own reflections on
something without benefit of research was one of Aristotle's trademarks:
famously, he declared that women had fewer teeth than men, without
actually bothering to look in some women's mouths to count them. Now,
you may claim that you're equipped to declaim upon the subject of
tragedy, having done your research by reading the Poetics. But as you've
proven over the course of the last week, a little knowledge is a
dangerous thing. Those who have read a whole bunch of different books
on a subject eventually recognize that there are a number of different
viewpoints on a topic; those who have read none are at least aware of
their own ignorance. But people who have read a grand total of one book,
well, those are the ones to watch out for: all too often, they fall under
the impression that (a) there is one Answer, and (b) having read the
book, they know it.
The Rogue
> Why does the IF crowd think so small? Get over the text stuff.
> There's a
> whole genre of games like Grim Fandango emerging, master it and make
> money.
> All your IF literary skill is still required.
Ah. Now I see. The corporate mindset takes hold here. Do it fancy, and
throw in some bells and whistles, and make money off it. Some folks do
still do things purely for love of their craft, be it IF, writing,
sculpture, or whatsoever the case at hand may be. Seems to me doing
something purely for the money involved is thinking small. Get over the
materialistic impulse. There's a whole genre of games like Photopia
extant. Master it and express something profound. Or something mundane.
But express yourself.
<Snipped>
<Then Scott A. Munro said:>
> >The point, as in straight fiction, is not to award someone a certain
> >number of points and say "Congratulations, you've reached the level
> of
> >Apprentice Wizard Third Class" but to excite certain emotions and
> >trains of thought.
>
> Yep and to do this you must secure the audience's buy-in somehow.
Yeah, but...
We're talking an emotional, philosophical or mental buy-in, to the
story..
Not cash.
I realize, of course, I could well be mistaking the intent of this final
statement, but since you didn't expound any further on it... that's what
I got from it.
The Rogue
ro...@coastalweb.net
http://www.coastalweb.net/rogue/
"Where is that savior of the sidewalk life
And the road that takes us to the crusades?
I've seen those shadows as they're moving in my sleep
Leading the blind poet to his grave..."
Alice Cooper, Long Way To Go
Brandon Van Every
Dave G wrote in message <366014...@bigfoot.com>...
>(spoilers for Photopia)
>
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>I can certainly understand the (perfectly reasonable) opposing viewpoint
>-- the fact that this is interactive fiction could easily fool someone
>into thinking they could have done something to change the ending. But
>approaching the game in that way is not necessary to enjoying it -- as
>proof, my personal experience. I believe rgif discussions have shown
>several people to have experienced (and loved) the game "my way", and
>several "your way". Obviously both are entirely valid.
What, then, drove your desire to complete the story?
Brandon Van Every
Scott A. Munro wrote in message <366025bb...@news.nextdim.com>...
>
>The only problem with that is that if you don't know who you are, you
>don't know why you should care. This is the problem I had with Myst
>(which I was given as a gift). Without a character to play, I am
>simply playing me, and _I_ frankly don't care if Professor
>What's-his-name rots. I have better things to do than solve a lot of
>annoying puzzles. Someone else might not have better things to do, but
>he ain't here.
That's a good point. Backstory won't SOLVE the problem of player desire,
but it can certainly help the author's cause.
>Also, the problem with delayed exposition in a second-person format is
>that you should know all this stuff when you start. Unless, of course,
>there is some contrived reason why you've forgotten, and then you're
>flirting with the "why should I care?" reaction.
Well no, whether you know or not should be a matter of plot design and
reversals. If you reveal everything up front, you may lose profound
potentials for reversal, and reversals are pretty cool.
For instance, in the game I'm just beginning to formulate, I will probably
address the player's question "WHY should I care?" as a matter of his
fundamental disposition. It's an Existentialist conundrum. The player will
experience frustration about caring for anything. This, actually, is my
autobiographical insertion. We are alive, we eat, we go to work. Why DO we
care about anything else? How do we construct for ourselves a higher
meaning, so as not to go insane? How do we look upon the stars and the
landscape without hating it? How do they love it? And do most people (such
as your audience) even care about constructing meaning? Should they? Must
they?
>The player may dislike the protagonist in a piece of straight fiction,
>too. You writes your story and you takes your chances.
Yep that's what I'm trying to point out. The mechanism of backstory doesn't
itself solve the problem. There's still the matter of agreement between
author and audience. Do the two share enough conventions that one's message
is meaningful and compelling to the other?
>>Yep and to do this you must secure the audience's buy-in somehow.
>
>And the trick here is to train the audience to play along, just as
>they've been trained to play along in straight fiction. Is there any
>_real_ reason to care whether good defeats evil in _The Stand_, or
>whether Winston Smith survives (in any meaningful way) in _1984_, or
>whether Jeeves can pull Bertie Wooster out of the clutches of Honoria
>Glossop? Of course not.
Hmm I think "of course not" is a bit of a reductive analysis. Rather, I
would posit that the vast majority of people have "moral training." And if
you have never unravelled the inner recesses of your brain, you will react
to morality plays in the expected way. To say that most leave their brains
alone may sound egotistical, but frankly, it is not: the human tendency is
to rationalize and self-deceive, for self-protection.
And indeed, the non-introspective are often happier for it. They have a
better evolutionary survival mechanism. Has anyone ever told you "You think
too much?" Well, they were right. If you chase yourself into the darkest
corners of your mind, you will lose the very fabric of your existence and
destroy yourself. Like a computer that self-modified its error-handling
code.
With wisdom, one learns not to chase down every dark path.
SO, what kind of audience are you writing for? The masses? Or the
introspectors? Different toolboxes for each, and Hollywood generally writes
for the masses.
>And some people never do; they're the ones who
>watch Friday the 13th movies instead of reading novels.
Bingo.
Brandon Van Every
The Rogue wrote in message <36609337...@REMOVEME.coastalweb.net>...
>Brandon Van Every wrote:
>
>> Why does the IF crowd think so small? Get over the text stuff.
>> There's a
>> whole genre of games like Grim Fandango emerging, master it and make
>> money.
>> All your IF literary skill is still required.
>
>Ah. Now I see. The corporate mindset takes hold here. Do it fancy, and
>throw in some bells and whistles, and make money off it.
No, it's more like to play baseball in the major leagues, first you have to
step up to the plate. You can still play a smashing, integral, morally
respectable game of baseball, and indeed it is HARD WORK to do so. Work
that will make you proud for the rest of your life, and by which future
generations will honor you.
Of course in the major leagues you can also pitch with mediocrity and take
home a paycheck. Your choice.
>Some folks do
>still do things purely for love of their craft, be it IF, writing,
>sculpture, or whatsoever the case at hand may be.
Nothing wrong with that, but nobody has to be poor for loving their craft.
Indeed, one can be quite rich for loving one's craft. But first, you have
to get over this "I won't get paid" mentality. Say to yourself "I love my
craft. I DESERVE to be paid highly for it." And then target your career
according to whatever needs to be done.
It is a hard road. Most people do not undertake it. It takes more energy
than simply producing good work. Also, the art of compromise has to be
reckoned with at some point in your career, no way around it. You might get
to the point of writing exactly what you want for a zillionbucks someday,
but that day will be built upon many compromises preceeding it.
>Seems to me doing
>something purely for the money involved is thinking small. Get over the
>materialistic impulse.
Who said anything about purity, or materialism? I'm talking about wasting
40 hours of your life a week on stuff you don't really give a shit about.
Why should you spend your life that way? GET PAID. Do what it takes to get
paid.
Brandon Van Every
Adam Cadre wrote in message ...
>> >Some works are better suited to text than to visual media. Why am I
>> >suddenly picturing you cornering someone like JD Salinger and demanding,
>> >"Hey, why'n'cha go to Hollywood, huh? That's where the MONEY is, man!"
>
>Brandon Van Every replied:
>> No, more like why don't you make an (independent) movie?
>
>You really think this is somehow better?
Damn straight and I stake my career on it. If an author of JD Salinger's
talent was feeling down in the dumps about his finances, there's nothing
stopping him from making a highly successful movie. If putting bread on the
table is an issue, then whining about how nobody reads enough obscure books
is just whining.
>I don't need another career. I *like* having IF as a hobby. Hobbies are
>fun.
Ok good if you're happy, you're happy. Me, I can't tolerate working 40
hours a week for something I don't enjoy, so I build towards working
full-time at very high pay on what I do enjoy. To be sure, there are
tradeoffs. It's just that my personality is such, that one course is
easier/more tolerable for me than another. We all bear different pains
differently.
>I'm not trying to play Dueling Resumes with you. The point is, I lived
>with Bret while he was in the process of "mastering" the skills that
>eventually led to the production of the game you mentioned.
If you'd be interested in turning the conversation to a more constructive
direction: what about his course was the most frightening to you? I do not
offer to berate you for it. Rather, there are real dangers that we all
grapple with, to greater and lesser degrees of success. It's worth sharing
them, so as to overcome them.
>I would not
>have traded lives with him for a second. Now, perhaps I shouldn't have
>said that you "have no idea." Perhaps you have a very good idea, and yet
>still think that the process is easy and/or worth my effort to learn.
>You would be wrong.
On the other hand, maybe you just completely invented the entire concept of
what I may or may not have ideas about? Why bother to do that? I'm
perfectly willing to tell you what I have or don't have ideas about, if you
merely ask. We called forth an entire comp.games.development.* hierarchy so
that we might exchange upon "the idea" of creating games. I take this stuff
so seriously, and have so much put my money and energy on the table where my
mouth is, for all to witness and hold up to scrutiny, that I can only say
your comment was seriously off-base.
>Dave G didn't want to save the child. QED.
A sound and uncounterable point, but it's not quite over. We await Dave's
words about why he *did* want to continue the game.
>Some people probably did want to save her, sure. The point is, there is
>no single answer. There are as many reasons why people liked Photopia as
>there are people who liked it. People are different. To find out why
>people liked it, don't speculate. Ask them.
You wanna do the poll? I've been tracking every single Photopia post since
I played the game, and there's been a considerable number of them. My
energies are all but spent, now. It's not like I spoke without having heard
MANY opinions.
>But as you've
>proven over the course of the last week, a little knowledge is a
>dangerous thing.
And how have I proven this to your satisfaction? Rather, I feel I have
proven to many other people's satisfaction that reading the Poetics is
useful, for all the positive discussion it stimulates.
>Those who have read a whole bunch of different books
>on a subject eventually recognize that there are a number of different
>viewpoints on a topic; those who have read none are at least aware of
>their own ignorance.
Uuuh, no, that's a fallacy. Many ignorant people believe themselves correct
about whatever their ego dictates.
>But people who have read a grand total of one book,
>well, those are the ones to watch out for: all too often, they fall under
>the impression that (a) there is one Answer, and (b) having read the
>book, they know it.
Boy that's a great argument for quantity vs. quality. Not. Have you
considered that the answer is rather: you are the Author. You don't like
Me. You Fight for your terms of power, as do we all. And that the
materials and ammunition marshalled for the exercise, are but a secondary
consideration.
If you really cared about there being more than one answer, to the point of
having a problem with a single sentence of mine:
"This is why Photopia worked for most people."
then you would have merely inserted a kind word such as:
"Well actually, a number of people (such as Dave G.) told me...
and there would have been no flammage from your quarter.
Brandon Van Every
Scott A. Munro wrote in message <36603bb4...@news.nextdim.com>...
>
>Of course, there has to be restraint. I don't think it would work if
>the player has to do something which is clearly evil in order to
>continue.
How about unclearly evil? Agents either act or not act, either wittingly or
unwittingly.
Poor Oedipus....
>E.g., I would never write a scene (and yes, I think in scenes) in
>which a baby has swallowed a key that the player needs *right now*,
>then put the player and the baby alone in a room with a rusty knife.
And what if it's a time travel game, and the baby is Adolf Hitler? It is
the baby's future which is the "key."
>Do you save from drowning the nasty old man who knows the combination
>to the safe (which you must open), or do you save his sweet young ward
>who has never done harm to anyone?
I have a problem with these moral conundrums, quite apart from the problems
of IF. I am inclined to answer "I endeavor to save both." I refuse to
accept someone's hypothesis that it is impossible. Do you have a
second-by-second simulation of the situation? Can you call it with
certainty? And why should we make moral prejudgements upon such situations?
They are fluid, there is no time to decide. You enter them, and you exit
them.
>If you read a piece of straight fiction in which the character had to
>make such a choice, I doubt you'd complain.
Actually I would, and do. I don't think it's the best vehicle for moving
the reader along, unless your point is to later show the pointlessness of
such dilemmas? i.e. it wouldn't have mattered who you saved.
Brandon Van Every
Mary K. Kuhner wrote in message <73pv1q$v1i$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
>
>Suppose I *am* responding to the work of IF as story, and working
>out for myself a characterization of the main character. Then
>I make a moral choice, a hard engaging one--and the game ends
>immediately, with some clear feedback that there's a lot more to
>it that I haven't seen. I don't think I'm to blame for feeling
>some pressure to go back and make the decision the "right" way.
And so, the presence or absence of verbiage dictates victory, of a sort? We
are not Zen. We expect equal air time, we have no quiet reflection.
When I finished Photopia I did not care to play it again, except for 1 small
test. Not because the game was bad, but because it was good. The
experience was, complete. Why change it?
Now, if the author leaves you by some path a loss of COMPLETION....
>In IF, which is necessarily scripted, it's hard to present a
>really cutting moral choice unless you're prepared to code up
>both branches in detail, or unless you have some *really* good
>magician's force available.
"Both" branches? Why two?
I had an interesting experience at the Game Developer Conference when Brian
Moriarty presented his videotape of Mplayer voice chatters, "Whispering
Pines." At one point in his presentation he said "none of these recordings
were modified, save for two places. They will be obvious." Well, excuse
me, WHY should they be obvious? I thought he was being a bit of a
smart-aleck, how could he possibly presume to tell me what *I* would think
was obvious? I resented his assertion of superior authorship. I am the
audience, *I* decide.
In hindsight it was, indeed, obvious.
The point being, that we all are pretty ornery in theory. You have to
account for what actually occurs in practice. Stories of moral dilemmas can
work just fine, there is no necessity in a backfire, no particular reason
why the choices and transitions are "hard." In hindsight they may, indeed,
be obvious.
People are pretty cranky about their own power stakes and you should not
take them too seriously.
>It's not a matter of winning. In a linear story, no matter what
>the character's choice, you get to see all the story the author
>wrote, and gain whatever enjoyment's to be gained. In IF, if you
>make choices that close the story off instantly, you've got to be
>limiting your enjoyment greatly. All that lovely text you'll never
>be able to read. So you go back and "undo"...but phooey, there
>goes character identification.
Quite a leap of faith, that all the rest of the text was lovely. How do you
know that in combination, you had not already read the most satisfying path?
What, indeed, if the game was DESIGNED to monitor your responses, and lead
you down your most personally satisfying path? Maybe you really wouldn't
have liked the dyke version of the story?
Brandon Van Every
chris wrote in message <3660A1B2...@student.qut.edu.au>...
>
>No the author of a novel doesn't consult you on what the character
>should do, but I thought you were talking about INTERACTIVE fiction. If
>the player/reader is not consulted, how is it any more interactive than
>a book.
Both occur in the brain, that's where all meaningful action takes place.
Except of course for the meaningless actions, the record of pieces shuffled
around on a board as a big wargame.
Brandon Van Every
Scott A. Munro wrote in message <366094fe...@news.nextdim.com>...
>
>There is no "right" decision (and I know I used that word in my last
>message, but I shouldn't have) on whether to save the wicked old man
>(who has information you need) or the sweet young girl. You may think
>that one is preferable to the other on a moral level. So you save the
>little girl. You (not merely as the player, but also as the fictional
>protagonist) have made a moral decision which _shapes_ the
>protagonist's personality. The character becomes what he is partially
>as a result of the choices you make. As intent as he is on his quest,
>he is unwilling to let the little girl die. And the story ends with
>the quest unfulfilled.
Yes. The story adapts itself to you, as a feedback loop. Once the curtain
is ripped away and the mechanism revealed, people might be angry to have
been manipulated by smoke and mirrors. BUT TOO BAD. Nobody promised a
centrality to your in-game persona.
>Can't you imagine being so obsessed with accomplishing a goal that you
>make a decision which you may regret later?
Indeed, that's a wonderful way to manipulate and subvert a player. Builds
to some BIG moments of recognition/reversal. And the roller coaster is what
most of us want out of fiction, whether we admit it or not.
>But the bottom line, I think, is that the things I want to write are
>not the things you want to read, and that's something it's pointless
>to argue about.
This always disturbs me. Why do people take perfectly good discussions and
start worrying about everyone needing to have exactly the same viewpoints,
or people's feelings will get hurt? Agree to disagree, and keep discussing.
Conversation itself is not so important: EVERYBODY here has enough free time
on their hands that they participate grossly.
Brandon Van Every
Mary K. Kuhner wrote in message <73qi9h$fvu$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>...
>
>No, that is not what I said. I'm a roleplayer by hobby, and I am
>familiar with the concept of playing a character who is not me.
>However, if the character I am imagining makes a choice, and that
>choice instantly closes off the game so that I feel impelled to use
>"undo", I'm under pressure not to think of him as a real character
>with a real personality anymore.
Would you be satisfied with any story in which you died immediately,
completely exiting the game? Under any possible permutation of authorial
devices, not the typical ones which admittedly are boring? What would be
the circumstance of immediate, satisfactory death?
Conversely: do you value the maintenance of your role-playing persona above
all other goals? Do you see that as the purpose for experiencing IF in the
first place?
>Example: if I come to think of White, in Jigsaw, as someone who
>has a passionate personal hatred of a certain political bloc, and
>later in the game he has a chance to destroy it at the cost of
>closing off the game, I'm in a bind: I can follow what the character
>would do and miss some of the best parts of _Jigsaw_, or I can abandon
>what the character would do and have a tepid experience of the rest of
>the game.
Save game, try other path later? What's the problem?
>I will confess, as a player I'll usually go for continuing at the cost
>of characterization, but if you're aiming for intensity I think you
>really want to avoid this.
Now THAT's an interesting observation.
>You can get around this by forcing the character's choice somehow,
>but then you're retreating away from the interactivity of IF. I'm
>not saying it can't be done, but it's tricky. I liked _Jigsaw_ and
>sort-of liked "Persistance of Memory", but I would have liked both
>of them better if I hadn't broken character in order to make the
>game continue.
How does a character grow without breaking?
>The author of straight fiction doesn't ask me what the character
>should do, and that is a huge difference. If the game actually
>provides me enough information that I know what the character must
>do, as in "Muse", I wouldn't have this problem. But presumably you
>don't want to do, say, your old man/little girl scene with a clear
>"This is what the PC would do" cue? Or am I misunderstanding you?
Actually, that might be an interesting way to narrate a story, applied
consistently.
>Sure! I'm not saying I want the PC to always make good choices. I'm
>saying that if a real choice (like your old man/little girl choice) is
>presented, but one option closes off the game immediately, I will
>feel coerced by the author. Not by the PC's personality, but by the
>author--he is using my desire, as a player, to finish the game in order
>to push the character around.
What would you do with an author who TAUNTED your desire to finish the game,
and not so inartfully as making you stuck? But rather, by offering you
propositions that at each turn subvert yourself? A story of the Holocaust?
Do you want to finish this game? Do you want to know that the *author*
finished this game?
Maybe someday I will indeed undertake it. After seeing Stephen King's "Apt
Pupil" on the silver screen, I realize it can be done. But one has to be
VERY careful in handling such a grave subject matter. My Catholic friend
and I talked about the movie afterwards, it became a debate of
Existentialism vs. the doctrine of Original Sin. It is very dangerous to
play with a serious event as a game. In fact, I wonder if the movie was not
more successful in its treatment than the book, judging by what my friend
described of the book (I haven't read the book, I probably should make a
point to do so.) In the book, the boy was an anti-Semitist. But in the
movie, I believe he was not. Rather, he wanted to know what it was to KILL,
not specifically Jews. The boundary, however, is terribly tenuous. And my
Catholic friend argued that he was anti-Semitic, because he was filled with
Original Sin.
Brandon Van Every
chris wrote in message <36609338...@student.qut.edu.au>...
>
>This is the beauty of tragedy in interactive works. The writer (or
>designer) needs to think more in terms of crafting a dynamic environment
>with a plot as opposed to a script. The flow of the story happens
>around the character. The development of that character is revealed
>through the character's interventions and interactions with the story
>flow. At what points does he/she/it attempt to assist the flow, fight
>against it, or merely divert it is what builds our knowledge of this
>persona. Moreover, the idea of tragedy as the fight against fate or the
>guiding hand - is perfect for such an artificially created narrative as
>interactive works.
Hmm this seems to echo what I said about the benefit of Tragedy: it
minimizes branches. The player's free will is not the highest concern,
because Fate is always trampling the player.