Irony
Alan Trewartha
Here's something that's been nagging at me over the last few dozen lines
of code. Plot and character information flows from text to reader in
ordinary fiction, whereas the player can feed this information back in
interactive fiction because of its interaction. Well 'duh' so far!
What this seems, at first blush, to eliminate is the possibility for much
literary, theatrical, or any brand of irony. The 'oh my god, but X doesn't
realise that Y has put a Z in the box' sort of feeling.
More generally, if IF switches character, just as plain fiction does at the
drop of a hat (or chapter heading), then the player can act on information
that the Player Character doesn't know. Role-Play-Game types refer to this as
the problem of player information. In RPGs the player is expected to act in
ignorance of all but the characters information. The gamesmaster may even
remind the player that they don't know something.
(This also bears on the 'players bill of rights' idea about information
gathered from prior playing of a game, e.g. combination numbers locked in a
combinations stop this)
I would say, uncontroversially I hope, that irony is the nuts and bolts of
decent modern fiction. It probably holds the same intellectual hook for the
reader that 'realising the solution to a problem' holds for an IF player.
However this shouldn't mean that one experience is replaced with another: IF
should be building on and adapting the successes of non-IF and not dumping
its main .
So what are the solutions. The 'Spider & Web' style italicised messages
saying 'that's not important' are vaguely equivalent to the gamesmasters
gentle reminders (yes I realise that they have a different functional role,
but I'm short of good examples here). I hope that my own game (as it stands
in half-built half-designed stage) will switch characters but in such away
that they are unable to alter what has happened before, e.g. because the
narrative switch jumps back in time and is within a limited geography.
OK. I'm beginning to falter. Any takers on this? I haven't played all that
many games all the way through, so I'm prepared to be counter exampled, and
would love to see it.
Ta ta for now.
--
Mail to alant instead of no.spam
Joe Mason
Alan Trewartha wrote:
>
> What this seems, at first blush, to eliminate is the possibility for much
> literary, theatrical, or any brand of irony. The 'oh my god, but X doesn't
> realise that Y has put a Z in the box' sort of feeling.
>
> More generally, if IF switches character, just as plain fiction does at the
> drop of a hat (or chapter heading), then the player can act on information
> that the Player Character doesn't know. Role-Play-Game types refer to this as
> the problem of player information. In RPGs the player is expected to act in
> ignorance of all but the characters information. The gamesmaster may even
> remind the player that they don't know something.
There's the possibility of revealing information that WASN'T known. For
instance, after the successful (or seemingly successful) conclusion of a
segment, the player finds out that something they thought was true is
not. If you replayed the chapter, you could attempt to use this
knowledge, but the writer can avoid this by waking the chapter
impossible to complete without it.
The problem with that approach is that, if the revelation is something
bad, there's a temptation to go restore the game and put it right. If
the player can't progress without doing something they know (OOC) is for
the worse, they're going to feel shepherded.
The optimal way to do it would be to make it possible to avoid the
"mistake" (or whatever) but have the story develop completely (and
obviously) differently from that point. That way the player COULD go
back and do things flawlessly the first time through, thus ruining your
dramatic fall-and-redemption arc, but they would have a motivation to
play the other path as well.
An example:
*** MAJOR SPOILERS: Zork Nemesis ***
This space intentionally left blank.
^
Does this phrase actually appear anywhere except the door
in Zork?
At the end of ZN, you discover that the 4 Alchemists that you've been
trying to rescue from the Nemesis are Sick n' Twisted, and that the
Nemesis is actually a pretty nice guy who's just been driven insane by
grief. o the final plot, after you've brought them back to life by
gathering the four metals, is a race to stop them from actually USING
the metals and finishing their ceremony.
The problem is that this is actuallp fairly easy to deduce, once you
start exploring their homes. These are obviously evil people. But the
game just can't progress unless you bring them their metals. No other
options.
There is an out, though. You also need the metals to bring Alexandria
back to life, so you can just say that that's the reason you're doing
it. But the alchemists treat you as if you're doing it for them, the
Nemesis treats you as if you're doing it for them, and you have no way
to communicate the fact that you're not...
Joe
Matt Kimball
Alan Trewartha <al...@no.spam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
: Here's something that's been nagging at me over the last few dozen lines
: of code. Plot and character information flows from text to reader in
: ordinary fiction, whereas the player can feed this information back in
: interactive fiction because of its interaction. Well 'duh' so far!
: What this seems, at first blush, to eliminate is the possibility for much
: literary, theatrical, or any brand of irony. The 'oh my god, but X doesn't
: realise that Y has put a Z in the box' sort of feeling.
I don't know if this eliminates the possibility of irony. The author
can always simply prevent the player character from acting on
player-only information.
For instance, suppose the villain in our story has planted a nuclear
bomb in the sewers of the city where our hero lives. One could have a
non-interactive scene where the villain explains his plans, but after
the scene the hero simply has no way of entering the sewers and "tell
police about bomb" results in "You don't know anything about that."
(Or maybe, "You don't have any evidence of that.")
Another possibility is to have non-player characters not have
information which the player character has. This can be done without
any of the heavy-handedness from the author of the previous example.
You are right that we don't have many examples of it in existing IF.
I'm not sure why this is.
--
Matt Kimball
mkim...@xmission.com
Paul A Krueger
Examples of Irony
(spoilers below)
You are helping some people defeat an evil being, but when you do the last
thing they ask, they try to kill you.
You are trying to save Fenshire, and in so doing, you rerelease the grues.
You want to get into a house, but it won't even let the *owner* in.
A scientist is sending you and 2 buddies back to yesterday and brags "And
they said imitation diamond wasn't *good* enough". Just then the diamond
disintigrates into a million pieces.
You're playing a LucasArts game and you *have* to die. TWICE!
You pay the same price for 33 Infocom games that you did for 11 ;)
okbl...@usa.net
In article <357F1B0E...@execulink.com>,
jcm...@uwaterloo.ca wrote:
>
> There's the possibility of revealing information that WASN'T known. For
> instance, after the successful (or seemingly successful) conclusion of a
> segment, the player finds out that something they thought was true is
> not.
Bingo!
> The problem with that approach is that, if the revelation is something
> bad, there's a temptation to go restore the game and put it right. If
> the player can't progress without doing something they know (OOC) is for
> the worse, they're going to feel shepherded.
I didn't read the rest of your note with the spoilers, so forgive me if I
repeat what you said, but why not use the ol' Greek Tragedy method of irony?
In other words, if the player goes back and does something to try to change
the course of the story using knowledge he couldn't possibly have, you allow
him to do so, but make sure the result is *caused* by his use of the
knowledge.
It is only the fact that Oedipus' father sends him away that allows Oedipus to
return unknowing to slay him and sleep with his mother. (Oh, dear, another ad
for a "personal encounter"?)
[ok]
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
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L. Ross Raszewski
> ^
> Does this phrase actually appear anywhere except the door
> in Zork?
I'm not sure if its what you mean, but it's actually a fairly common phrase to
find on chapter separators in printed manuals. it's used to indicate that the
blank page is intentional and not the result of a printing error.
(and since I suspect I've misunderstood the question, I'll keep going :-)
Maxis Software's SimEarth manual is really humorous about this. the first
chapter separator bears the legend "Blank page", the second "Another blank
page", the third "Yet another blank page", and the fourth "Not so blank page"
(it goes on to contain in-jokes and other silliness)
Paul A Krueger
>The optimal way to do it would be to make it possible to avoid the
>"mistake" (or whatever) but have the story develop completely (and
>obviously) differently from that point. That way the player COULD go
>back and do things flawlessly the first time through, thus ruining your
>dramatic fall-and-redemption arc, but they would have a motivation to
>play the other path as well.
That would make the game about twice as big. For ZN, that would mean about
4-6 CDs!
> This space intentionally left blank.
> ^
> Does this phrase actually appear anywhere except the door
>in Zork?
InvisiClue hints books, when the previous clue makes the answer so obvious
that another hint would be redundant.
> you have no way to communicate the fact that you're not...
This isn't a problem for me. If I told Nemesis, he wouldn't believe me
because he thinks I'm doing it just to be rewarded by the alchemists (he
implies this during the FMV between acts 1 and 2). If I told the alchemists,
it would be old "whacked on the head by a shovel" time again.
michael...@ey.com
In article <ant10194...@alant.demon.co.uk>,
Alan Trewartha <al...@no.spam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> What this seems, at first blush, to eliminate is the possibility for much
> literary, theatrical, or any brand of irony. The 'oh my god, but X doesn't
> realise that Y has put a Z in the box' sort of feeling.
I felt that the entire game of _Trinity_ was a singularly ironic twist.
_Spellbreaker_ also had, to my mind, a rather ironic ending.
> I would say, uncontroversially I hope, that irony is the nuts and bolts of
> decent modern fiction.
I would be wary of claiming that any one thing is the "nuts and bolts" of
decent modern fiction (or any kind of fiction, for that matter). Irony is a
literary device, certainly an important device but ultimately one of many,
and it can be important or not depending on what you're trying to accomplish.
>
> So what are the solutions. The 'Spider & Web' style italicised messages
> saying 'that's not important' are vaguely equivalent to the gamesmasters
> gentle reminders (yes I realise that they have a different functional role,
> but I'm short of good examples here).
[[[SPOILER]]]
Yeah, I think that's definitely not a good example. The italicized messages
in SW had an entirely different purpose than to remind the player not to do
something. The messages were the character reminding *himself* not to give
the game away. It was the player's job to *realize* that there was something
he (the player) didn't know, and that it was important.
--M.
rc...@my-dejanews.com
In article <6lolv5$cp2$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
michael...@ey.com wrote:
>
>
> [[[SPOILER]]]
>
> Yeah, I think that's definitely not a good example. The italicized messages
> in SW had an entirely different purpose than to remind the player not to do
> something. The messages were the character reminding *himself* not to give
> the game away. It was the player's job to *realize* that there was something
> he (the player) didn't know, and that it was important.
>
> --M.
>
WHOA! PARADIGM SHIFT ALERT!! I never looked the italicized messages that way!
(Maybe I'm a little slow.) Spider and Web's coolness measure has been nudged
upwards once again. Now I want to re-play it, but I have a full day of work
ahead of me. Dang it!
--Randy
Michael Straight
Very Small Spoiler for Wearing the Claw below.
On 10 Jun 1998, Matt Kimball wrote:
> Another possibility is to have non-player characters not have
> information which the player character has. This can be done without
> any of the heavy-handedness from the author of the previous example.
"Wearing the Claw" uses irony of this sort.
SMTIRCAHIAGEHLT
David Glasser
Matt Kimball <mkim...@xmission.com> wrote:
> You are right that we don't have many examples of it in existing IF.
> I'm not sure why this is.
One possible reason is this:
(Alpha knows all about the evil plans; you've just started as Beta)
> TELL POLICE ABOUT EVIL PLANS
You don't know anything about that.
(Author: Great irony, eh?)
(Player: oh, that stupid writer! Not expecting something as obvious as
this!)
So there might a little fear.
--David Glasser
gla...@NOSPAMuscom.com | dgla...@NOSPAMfcs.pvt.k12.pa.us
http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser | http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/6028
DGlasser @ ifMUD : fovea.retina.net:4000 (webpage fovea.retina.net:4001)
Interactive Fiction! MST3K! David Eddings! Macintosh!