Forum Question.
Harvey
Just a quick question as I have done a search on the internet and been
unable to find a forum that is dedicated to Adventure / Interactive
Fiction games from playing to writing.
I have an unused vBulletin license, if I was to setup a forum for the
purpose of pimping new games, old games, technical help and generally
anything related to this style of game, would it be any use?
Any feedback or suggestions are welcome.
Thanks.
Jim Aikin
about it, but who are a bit intimidated by newsgroups (even via Google). A
forum, if it were well publicized (i.e., on a well trafficked site -- I
notice you didn't say what site you were thinking of putting the forum on),
might bring in a few new people, which would be good.
Con: The IF community is small, and already has a pair of fully functioning
newsgroup fora. Who has time to log on to multiple online discussions in
order to stay current? I sure don't.
Con: A web forum will continue to exist only as long as someone is paying
for the server space. It could even be hijacked by a webzilla that uses
pop-up ads. Ungood.
> Just a quick question as I have done a search on the internet and been
> unable to find a forum that is dedicated to Adventure / Interactive
> Fiction games from playing to writing.
Why would we need to have one forum that would cover both? If you're
interestd in both, r.g.i-f and r.a.i-f are just one click apart. Or you can
cross-post, as you did.
--JA
Harvey
darn_those_spammers@fake_address.org says...
> Pro: I'm sure there are people who would be interested in IF if they knew
> about it, but who are a bit intimidated by newsgroups (even via Google). A
> forum, if it were well publicized (i.e., on a well trafficked site -- I
> notice you didn't say what site you were thinking of putting the forum on),
> might bring in a few new people, which would be good.
>
others, all non-commericial. I do not intend to give any more details at
this stage a I don't want to "spam" and promote other forums. That would
make it look like I am here for totally the wrong reasons.
> Con: The IF community is small, and already has a pair of fully functioning
> newsgroup fora. Who has time to log on to multiple online discussions in
> order to stay current? I sure don't.
>
Depends. Some people like newsgroups, other like forums, others like
both. Forums offer things that newsgroups don't. The idea is to
complement the forums, that is all.
> Con: A web forum will continue to exist only as long as someone is paying
> for the server space. It could even be hijacked by a webzilla that uses
> pop-up ads. Ungood.
>
Won't happen, you need to have a little faith in some people. The site
could not be hijacked as it'd have it's own top level domain name and
it's own webspace backed by a MySQL database. Pop-ups are something that
I have with a vengence, they would not happen in any form.
Another thing that made me think about this was history as well. So it
could be used as a reference for other newbies as the messages in a
forum would not expire.
It would also be a forum for the memebers, if they wanted something then
it could appear. If other areas were not working then then could be
archived within the forums until needed and reactived or left as read
only.
Myself, I have been into adventure games since what feels like the dawn
of time. Often enjoyed the Level 9 adventures, even did some testing for
them once. The Magnetic Scroll games were good as well, but unfortunatly
all the magic of the old games seems to be lost these days. I am just
trying to capture part of it back.
James Marshall
>Pro: I'm sure there are people who would be interested in IF if they knew
>about it, but who are a bit intimidated by newsgroups (even via Google). A
>forum, if it were well publicized (i.e., on a well trafficked site -- I
>notice you didn't say what site you were thinking of putting the forum on),
>might bring in a few new people, which would be good.
True and another pro is that I think nowadays more people are familiar with
web boards than Usenet newsgroups. I'm sure some people don't even know
about Usenet. A while back I was talking to someone about anime and stuff
I read on the anime newsgroups and he asked me how he could get to them --
he didn't know about Usenet or how to access the newsgroups. So I think
there is a definite benefit to getting up a web board.
>Con: The IF community is small, and already has a pair of fully functioning
>newsgroup fora. Who has time to log on to multiple online discussions in
>order to stay current? I sure don't.
*shrug* It's tough and for a few topics I do visit multiple places, Usenet
and web. But consider this -- chances are the most important stuff will
appear in all the places talking about the subject. You won't have to
read everything to find that out if you don't want to. You might like to
though. I've generally found that different newsgroups and web boards
have different people at them. Things that are talked about in one place
aren't always discussed in another. I visit multiple places for one topic
because of that -- some things I talk about in one place, some at others.
So I don't think this is necessarily a real drawback. A web board should
have some different discussion, but not necessarily anything that you
couldn't or wouldn't get here on Usenet.
>Con: A web forum will continue to exist only as long as someone is paying
>for the server space. It could even be hijacked by a webzilla that uses
>pop-up ads. Ungood.
That's true. All web based stuff is like that though, I guess. There isn't
much way around it. The ad thing, well, you'd have to be careful about it
I suppose. Personally, I don't mind banner ads so much, but pop-ups I hate
so I run a pop-up killer at home to take care of them.
>> Just a quick question as I have done a search on the internet and been
>> unable to find a forum that is dedicated to Adventure / Interactive
>> Fiction games from playing to writing.
>Why would we need to have one forum that would cover both? If you're
>interestd in both, r.g.i-f and r.a.i-f are just one click apart. Or you can
>cross-post, as you did.
Yup. Rec.games.int-fiction tends to cover the playing side of IF while
rec.arts.int-fiction tends to cover the writing side. They are two rather
distinct topics and not everyone is interested in both. Maybe it's just
because I'm used to our Usenet split, but I think it works pretty well
this way, as two separate newsgroups. Talk about the writing in one and
when you're ready to announce its release and talk about playing it go to
the other one. It also means that people who are only interested in one
area or the other (typically players, I'd guess, who don't care much for
the details behind writing) don't have to sort through a whole lot of
messages they aren't going to read.
--
. . . . -- James Marshall (CAS) . .
,. -- )-- , , . -- )-- , mars...@astro.umd.edu ., .
' ' http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall
"Equations are living things." .
Jennifer Maddox
> > Pro: I'm sure there are people who would be interested in IF if they knew
> > about it, but who are a bit intimidated by newsgroups (even via Google).
I'm a 'newbie', one that started playing these games a few years ago,
and only in the last few months have been reading the messages posted
here. A web forum almost certainly would have lured me into this
community earlier, but if there are too many meeting places then the
community might be spread thin. I do like the idea, as I'm still
trying to grasp how these newgroups work, and perhaps the community
would welcome a web forum.
> Harvey <egg...@retrochat.com> wrote in message
> all the magic of the old games seems to be lost these days. I am just
> trying to capture part of it back.
Then perhaps we should address the magic, not the forum. What is it
about those other games that's been lost? Bringing in new members and
new writers wouldn't improve the quality of the games; the quality of
the writer determines that. Would you have new writers improve their
work technically? Aesthetically? Do you want to see more imagination
in these games? More intricate puzzles? (If you can't tell, I'm
writing a game myself and wonder what those things were that
captivated the early gamers.)
-jennifer
Terry van Ettinger
I know I don't post here much, but was reading this thread and thinking
about the matter. What about something along the lines of Yahoo, which has
a web- as well as an e-mail-based system? Something like that would allow
also for a place, say, to put up a faq in a files area. Not trying to steal
the newsgroup's thunder, but just throwing other ideas out there that might
help us to spread the word and perhaps make IF more accessible and
recognized.
Terry
Jim Aikin
"Terry van Ettinger" <gan...@softhome.net> wrote in message
news:bkqqc0$4q6kt$1...@ID-152682.news.uni-berlin.de...
> Hey all,
> I know I don't post here much, but was reading this thread and
thinking
> about the matter. What about something along the lines of Yahoo, which
has
> a web- as well as an e-mail-based system?
Yahoo sucks.
--JA
Kevin Forchione
news:ee85d1d1.03092...@posting.google.com...
> > Harvey <egg...@retrochat.com> wrote in message
> > all the magic of the old games seems to be lost these days. I am just
> > trying to capture part of it back.
>
> Then perhaps we should address the magic, not the forum.
I think you're right. One could pose the question, if a potential
writer/player of IF can't find her way around Usenet, why should we assume
they'll be able to program a decent game?
>What is it
> about those other games that's been lost?
A good question. One that deserves an answer, but which will probably elude
us. As a community no one can argue that a number of today's games are
highly enjoyable and even _magical_. What has been lost? Perhaps to answer
this, we should first ask, would a newbie today, playing those old Infocom
games, find them magical? If not, why? In other words, is the magic that
we're after trapped in nostalgia? Or is there something else that these
games, on the whole, possessed that is lacking in today's games?
>Bringing in new members and
> new writers wouldn't improve the quality of the games; the quality of
> the writer determines that.
>Would you have new writers improve their
> work technically? Aesthetically? Do you want to see more imagination
> in these games? More intricate puzzles? (If you can't tell, I'm
> writing a game myself and wonder what those things were that
> captivated the early gamers.)
One wonders if the mass captivation wasn't because at a certain point in
time IF was _it_. At one point in time, Rubick's Cube was a craze and
millions of the little cubes twisted their way into people's homes and
offices. Books were written, and minor celebrities created from the few
obsessive-compulsives who could solve the puzzle in seconds. But here the
comparison falls short. Their was no drive for home-brewed cubes, and the
media is too static to offer much in the way of artistic expression.
Perhaps one can find a parallel in the graphics gaming community?
--Kevin
Harry
<ke...@lysseus.com> made the world a better place by saying:
>>What is it
>> about those other games that's been lost?
>
>A good question. One that deserves an answer, but which will probably elude
>us. As a community no one can argue that a number of today's games are
>highly enjoyable and even _magical_. What has been lost? Perhaps to answer
>this, we should first ask, would a newbie today, playing those old Infocom
>games, find them magical? If not, why? In other words, is the magic that
>we're after trapped in nostalgia? Or is there something else that these
>games, on the whole, possessed that is lacking in today's games?
>
I think it is 80% nostalgia. But twenty percent is the fact that these
games were made by professionals targeting a large audience. They
weren't making art. They were trying to create a fun experience. I
think today there is a tendency to forget about 'fun for fun's sake'
when it comes to designing. I'm all for a well written game, but if I
have to choose between 'literary IF' and a game which makes me go
'ooow cool! Another magical thingy to play with!' I'll go for the
latter.
Harry
-------------------------------------
"Nostalgia isn't what it used to be."
http://www.haha.demon.nl
(To send e-mail, remove SPAMBLOCK from address)
Adrien Beau
> is by Kevin Forchione
>> What is it about those other games that's been lost?
>
> As a community no one can argue that a number of today's games
> are highly enjoyable and even _magical_.
Worlds Apart is _magical_ to me. I _highly_ _enjoyed_ many other
of today's games; this includes at least Photopia, Anchorhead,
Spider and Web, Little Blue Men and Photograph.
> is the magic that we're after trapped in nostalgia?
I think so. You were young, the genre was young, the genre was
popular. The combination of these three factors is mostly what
creates the magic.
> At one point in time, Rubick's Cube was a craze and
> millions of the little cubes twisted their way into people's
> homes and offices. Books were written, and minor celebrities
> created from the few obsessive-compulsives who could solve the
> puzzle in seconds.
As an aside: said minor celebrities still exist, I heard about a
world championship a mere couple of weeks ago.
--
spam....@free.fr
You have my name and my hostname: you can mail me.
(Put a period between my first and last names).
Rikard Peterson
news:MPG.19d8438a4...@news-50.giganews.com:
> Just a quick question as I have done a search on the internet and
> been unable to find a forum that is dedicated to Adventure /
> Interactive Fiction games from playing to writing.
But by simply creating a forum, all you are likely to get is an empty
forum. I've seen it happen before with other subjects. You still need
to find the people and get them interested. I doubt that a web based
forum would do much difference there. When marketing IF, you could just
as well point to the existing web pages and these groups here. Include
a quick description on how to use Usenet - it's not as if it's
difficult.
I much prefer usenet anyway, primarily beacuse of the possibility to
read off-line. That's important when you pay by the minute for your
internet connection.
Rikard
Enforced Exile
> Just a quick question as I have done a search on the internet and been
> unable to find a forum that is dedicated to Adventure / Interactive
> Fiction games from playing to writing.
Here's one: http://www.justadventure.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=IF
I don't use it personally - the hub is here. The only thing I hate
about Usenet is having to wait "3 to 9 hours" for a post to appear. I
like the immediacy of forums. I don't, however, foresee any migration.
Richard Bos
> Harvey <egg...@retrochat.com> wrote in message news:<MPG.19d8438a4...@news-50.giganews.com>...
>
> > Just a quick question as I have done a search on the internet and been
> > unable to find a forum that is dedicated to Adventure / Interactive
> > Fiction games from playing to writing.
>
> Here's one: http://www.justadventure.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=IF
>
> I don't use it personally - the hub is here. The only thing I hate
> about Usenet is having to wait "3 to 9 hours" for a post to appear.
If you have to wait hours, or even more than about five minutes, for
your post to appear, find yourself a real news server. That kind of
delay is not acceptable.
Richard
Default User
> I don't use it personally - the hub is here. The only thing I hate
> about Usenet is having to wait "3 to 9 hours" for a post to appear. I
> like the immediacy of forums. I don't, however, foresee any migration.
While I appreciate that the Google folks saved the archives when Deja
was going down for the count, the fact is that groups.google just plain
blows as a news reading service. I'd recommend
http://news.individual.net/ for your news feed. While located in
Germany, it is free (requires registration) and does an acceptable job.
Brian Rodenborn
J. J. Guest
> I think it is 80% nostalgia. But twenty percent is the fact that these
> games were made by professionals targeting a large audience. They
> weren't making art.
Funny you should say that, because back in the 80s many of the
adventures that captivated me the most were made by enthusiastic
amateurs at home using something like The Quill or GAC and were
available only through mail order, the cassettes arriving in padded
envelopes and with a wonderfully naive drawing photocopied onto the
cover. What I liked about them was the sheer *oddity* of the games. I
clearly remember one called 'Inner Space', set in a desolate abandoned
city full of delapidated terrace houses and ruined factories, which
was actually the mental landscape of a car crash victim. Scattered
around this strange landscape were such incongruous items as a
twelve-armed genie and a full-sized statue of Tom and Jerry in mid
chase. Such games often came four on a tape and you never knew quite
what you were going to get. They weren't all as good as 'Inner Space',
admittedly.
> They were trying to create a fun experience. I
> think today there is a tendency to forget about 'fun for fun's sake'
> when it comes to designing. I'm all for a well written game, but if I
> have to choose between 'literary IF' and a game which makes me go
> 'ooow cool! Another magical thingy to play with!' I'll go for the
> latter.
Me too.
Linards Ticmanis
I can understand that some people might not want to mess with a real
newsreader, but what's wrong with the Google Groups interface? It's
about as "Web" as it gets.
--
Linards Ticmanis
The Master said, "The business of laying on the colors follows the
preparation of the plain ground."
SteveG
wrote:
I would prefer that the discussion of interactive fiction is not
splintered further than it is already. So I would not like to see
another successful IF-related Web forum develop. I think it would be
good to have your IF-related Web site point to the Usenet groups to
encourage discussion. You could link to the Google Groups copy of the
newsgroups or one of the other Web interfaces to Usenet. Then I don't
see a disadvantage for visitors who only understand a web-forum
interface but those visitor will gain the benefit of seeing the IF
discussion already happening on Usenet. And the Usenetters will
benefit from the Websurfers.
There's some successful forums discussing IF other than the two
rec.*.int-fiction Usenet groups. For example, there's the Quest and
Adrift web forums, the IF Mud, various mailing lists (eg: the ALAN
list, the TADS3 list), the 'xtrek' Usenet group. These groups are
great for the people participating in them and I wouldn't like to see
them go away but I do admit that the existence of some of them have
diminished the value of the r.*.i-f groups a little. For example, some
of the witty off-the-cuff banter that was common on r.*.i-f in the
mid-90's seemed to disappear when IF-Mud took off (eg: no more food
threads!.) Another example: there's little mention of ALAN on r.a.i-f,
I think, because people writing with ALAN often ask their questions on
the mailing list. So new readers of r.a.i-f may not consider that
system as a valid authoring system choice. (Similarly Quest and Adrift
where the existing users tend to hang out on their own webforums.)
Some of the other comments on this thread about people using only the
World-Wide-Web on the Internet are interesting. There does seem to be
impression amongst some users that the Internet is limited to just WWW
and email. My own Internet consists of those things plus Usenet, oh,
and 'ftp' I guess. But there's so much more that I don't use either --
eg: Muds, chatrooms, instant messaging, peer-to-peer file-sharing, web
auctions, Internet radio & TV, video-chat stuff. Goodness I'm missing
a lot. The Internet has certainly been a great boon to personal
communication. I just hope the spammers, thieves and big commerce
don't ruin it.
[followups set to just 'raif' (Us old Usenetters don't like to
crosspost! :-) ]
-- SteveG
remove _X_ from my address to send me email
T Raymond
news:as89nvov8886f2jpo...@4ax.com:
> Some of the other comments on this thread about people using only
> the World-Wide-Web on the Internet are interesting. There does
> seem to be impression amongst some users that the Internet is
> limited to just WWW and email. My own Internet consists of those
> things plus Usenet, oh, and 'ftp' I guess. But there's so much
> more that I don't use either -- eg: Muds, chatrooms, instant
> messaging, peer-to-peer file-sharing, web auctions, Internet
> radio & TV, video-chat stuff. Goodness I'm missing a lot. The
> Internet has certainly been a great boon to personal
> communication. I just hope the spammers, thieves and big commerce
> don't ruin it.
Besides on of my first real jobs being done all over the Net, I was
first introduced to the whole idea of chatting by using the Talkers.
Hardly hear those mentioned unless it's by someone who uses them. Oh,
and I remember when you couldn't get a graphic interface for IRC. LOL
Tom
--
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John W Kennedy
2. Pull the trigger.
--
John W Kennedy
If Bill Gates believes in "intelligent design", why can't he apply it
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