XYZZY Awards: Best Game/Best Story Differences
Al
one and the same. If not then why?
Rikard Peterson
"Al" wrote in news:1142968569.597856.293360
@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:
> What is the difference between the two. Aren't the game and
> the story one and the same. If not then why?
The story is only part of the game. A game can be great even if it has
a weak story, if it has inventive and fun puzzles, or an exciting
setting.
Quintin Stone
> What is the difference between the two. Aren't the game and the story
> one and the same. If not then why?
A story is just one part of the game. There's also puzzles (if any),
implementation, immersion, player involvement, and technical expertise,
among others. For instance, a game might have a great story, with nice
dialogue and plot twists, but if players find it too linear and
restricting, they may consider another choice to be the overall better
game.
==--- --=--=-- ---==
Quintin Stone "You speak of necessary evil? One of those necessities
st...@rps.net is that if innocents must suffer, the guilty must suffer
www.rps.net more." - Mackenzie Calhoun, "Once Burned" by Peter David
Jacek Pudlo
news:1142968569.5...@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> What is the difference between the two. Aren't the game and the story
> one and the same. If not then why?
Very good question, Radical Al. The answer is that many games don't have
anything that could be meaningfully called a story. If by story you mean
stuff like plot, character development, narrative arc and consistent themes,
then relatively few games fulfill the conditions. Devlin, Cadre and Ingold
are authors who try to tell stories, and would fulfill most of the
requirements. Plotkin and Short only pretend to tell stories. Plotkin tries
to hide his storylessness behind empty symbols while Short has never really
been interested in storytelling in the first place. Her stories, if there
are any, are just thinly disguised pretexts for some puzzle design scheme or
a new approach to game mechanics. No one would seriously say that
_Metamorphoses_ has three-dimensional character development or that
_Galatea_ conveys an interesting story.
I think much of the confusion stems from the name of the medium. "Fiction"
to most people implies some kind of meaningful narrative, whereas to Plotkin
and Short "fiction" is just the opposite of "fact". Talking statues and
faceless wizards are non-factual, thus they constitute "fiction". No need
for plot or character development. This is the reason, I think, why Plotkin
and Short rarely depart from the fantasy/surrealism genre. Since there's no
narrative to speak of, the strangeness inherent in fantasy and surrealism is
their only way of saying "This is fiction!" Compare this to Devlin, Cadre
and Ingold who usually avoid these genres.
rpresser
Jacek Pudlo wrote:
> Plotkin and Short only pretend to tell stories. Plotkin tries
> to hide his storylessness behind empty symbols while Short has never really
> been interested in storytelling in the first place.
And Pudlo never tells stories OR writes games; he just rants and raves
about Plotkin and Short.
Jacek Pudlo
news:1143043529.1...@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
(So only IF authors have the moral right to critisize IF authors? That's
like saying that only film directors have the moral right to review films.)
I'm not so much raving about Plotkin and Short, as about the fact that they
persist in calling their games "fiction". Text adventures is a more accurate
description of what they are doing. The term "fiction" should be reserved
for authors who at least have the ambition to tell a meaningful story. It's
more than just a question of nomenclature. It's a question of basic honesty.
If I spend hours on a product that calls itself fiction, I expect something
more than fixing toasters and casting silly spells.
Anyway, you're welcome to prove me wrong. Just give us an example of a
Plotkin or Short game that you think has a strong story. Here's a check-list
to help on your way.
a) meaningful plot
b) character development
c) non-trivial setting
d) theme
Anyone?
rpresser
Jacek Pudlo wrote:
> "rpresser" <rpre...@gmail.com> skrev i meddelandet
> news:1143043529.1...@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
> > And Pudlo never tells stories OR writes games; he just rants and raves
> > about Plotkin and Short.
>
> (So only IF authors have the moral right to critisize IF authors? That's
> like saying that only film directors have the moral right to review films.)
I should have written, "And Pudlo never tells stories, writes games, or
does anything else at all but rant and rave about Plotkin and Short."
Jacek Pudlo
You're starting to sound like a broken record. :)
Ad hominem attacks are usually counterproductive to one's argument. Most
people see them for what they are -- an inability to present substantive
insights.
My proposition still stands. Mention *one* game by either Short or Plotkin
that has a strong story or interesting characters.
And while rpresser (Erpresser?) is frantically looking for that one title,
the rest of us can enjoy some of Short's more daring fan-fiction.
Mulder chooses God over mindblowing sex with Scully:
This time Scully gives way and "tangles" with Mulder:
This one is about self-pity and unrequited love:
doc...@chaiyo.com
> > I should have written, "And Pudlo never tells stories, writes games, or
> > does anything else at all but rant and rave about Plotkin and Short."
Although I tend to still think of them as 'text adventures' instead of
'interactive fiction', the line got blurred when we started adding
graphics. 'Interactive fiction' is a good catch-all phrase. No one
seems to argues about the 'interactive' part. But the 'fiction' part
is still up for debate. I was just thinking of this the other day while
playing "Adventures in NMR" (1989). It is a fictional story, yes. But
it seems that the intent of the author (Douglas P Burum) was to give us
a rudimentary knowledge of nuclear magnetic resonance, which is a hard
science and therefore non-fiction. So I am wondering if maybe there's
a future in 'interactive non-fiction'. Of course many find science to
be boring, so we wrap up a fictional story around the boring science.
The TV show "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" does this a lot. And it
has become very popular, for sure.
But why does fiction trump over non-fiction? That's what I'd like to
know.
Jacek skrev:
> Mention *one* game by either Short or Plotkin that has a strong story or interesting characters.
Out of respect for their contributions to the genre, I will not
entertain such a challenge.
Mark J. Tilford
Rexx Magnus
>> I should have written, "And Pudlo never tells stories, writes games, or
>> does anything else at all but rant and rave about Plotkin and Short."
>>
>
> What about Gamlet?
>
I might even suspect that he's written more than that, under a different
name - but is one of those who has to post with an alternate identity just
to dig at the foundations of the very art he supports. :)
I've known of a few posters like that in different groups over the years
(and in person, too).
--
http://www.rexx.co.uk
To email me, visit the site.
http://www.rexx.co.uk/runes/ - personal online rune readings
Adam Thornton
rpresser <rpre...@gmail.com> wrote:
>And Pudlo never tells stories OR writes games; he just rants and raves
>about Plotkin and Short.
Give the devil his due: _Gamlet_ was both a story and a game.
Adam
Jacek Pudlo
news:1143130452.4...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Jacek skrev:
>> Mention *one* game by either Short or Plotkin that has a strong story or
>> interesting characters.
> Out of respect for their contributions to the genre, I will not
> entertain such a challenge.
First, a pedantic note. IF is a medium, not a genre.
Second, silence is never a respectful way of treating an author.
Third, not accepting the challenge was tactically a wise decision. There is
no way you could have found a game by Plotkin or Short that has a strong
story or interesting characters because no such game exists.
_Galatea_? You'd think a conversation would be a great medium for
storytelling, ideally suited to IF. The thing is that no matter how long you
talk to her, no coherent or halfway interesting story ever emerges.
_Galatea_ is a failure on two fronts. It's a failed attempt at storytelling,
*and* it's a failed text adventure. I suppose finding the right sequence of
ASK/TELL and thereby reaching one of the endings could be seen as a puzzle
of sorts, but I somehow doubt that typing ASK ABOUT X a hundred times and
getting the same kind of vague and noncommital answer over and over again is
much fun by any measure.
The tragedy, I suppose, is that _Galatea_ has become the flagship of IF.
Every time IF is mentioned outside the community, so is Emily Short and her
talking statue, which is presented as *the* canonical, groundbreaking work
of post-commercial IF. I can only imagine the thousands of hopeful would-be
IF players who fire up the game anticipating a brilliant interactive story,
or a very good text adventure (or perhaps both) and instead are treated to a
game-like product that is intentionally vague, dull, directionless and
slightly pretentious.
jameshcu...@gmail.com
> I might even suspect that he's written more than that, under a different
> name - but is one of those who has to post with an alternate identity just
> to dig at the foundations of the very art he supports. :)
That rather makes me laugh. More than once the thought has entered my
head: Wouldn't it be funny if Jacek turned out to be Andrew Plotkin?
Preposterous! And yet, in some way it would *just* *be* *right*.
Sands...@yahoo.com
<< I'm not so much raving about Plotkin and Short, as about the fact
that they persist in calling their games "fiction". Text adventures is
a more accurate description of what they are doing. >>
I think it's this community in general, rather than just those two
people in paticular, that are using the term interactive fiction. And
both "interactive fiction" and "adventure game" are a little
misleading. One fails to mention the game-like aspects that make these
programs interactive in an interesting way and the other fails to
mention the storytelling aspects that make the games similar to
fiction.
<< Ad hominem attacks are usually counterproductive to one's argument.
Most people see them for what they are -- an inability to present
substantive insights. >>
True enough. And, to be fair, you do present some insights around here
on occasion, but let's not kid ourselves, you also make a startling
number of personal attacks on Plotkin and Short, which, as you say,
tend to be counterproductive to your arguments. In fact, it's often a
little tough to see what your arguments are, inbetween all the Plotkin
and Short bashing.
<< My proposition still stands. Mention *one* game by either Short or
Plotkin that has a strong story or interesting characters. >>
I'm still not sure how this is related to the question of whether
"interactive fiction" is an honest name for these sort of computer
programs.Or, maybe you're saying that these two authors, in paticular,
out of all the other people who have written these things, have never
mixed storytelling and gameplay in any significant way.
I see no reason to single them out for this and suspect that you are
mistaken. One game each?
"Spider and Web," by Plotkin, has an interesting character, the NPC,
and a story about a captured saboteur who is attempting to resist an
unusual interrogation.
"A Day for Fresh Sushi," by Short, has an interesting character, the
fish, and a story about the PC trying to take care of it while it
antagonizes him.
<< First, a pedantic note. IF is a medium, not a genre. >>
Well, that depends on whether you think of it as a storytelling medium
or a genre of computer game. If you think of it as both, then there's
no reason to insist on one term instead of the other.
Jacek Pudlo
> fish, and a story about the PC trying to take care of it while it
> antagonizes him.
*This* is the crowning achievement of almost a decade of creative writing?
Not Galatea, not the Moon Minister in _Pytho's Mask_, not Grant in _Best of
Three_, but a sassy gold fish in a SpeedIF entry? [Jacek throws his head
back and laugs theatrically.] Do you realise, Walt, that instead of
extending a compliment you've just slapped the poor woman across her face?
Because unintentionally you've said the same thing I've been saying all this
time: fiction-wise, Short's fiction sucks.
What are _Galatea_ and _Best of Three_ if not character studies? There's
precious little plot and no puzzles in any meaningful sense of the word. And
they are definitely not "novels of ideas". And yet the characters --
presumably the games's only strength -- are dull, shallow, instantly
forgettable. Much like the mind that created them, they lack direction and
imagination.
Did you know that Short attempted to remove _Best of Three_ from the
Archive? Imagine a writer attempting to destroy all the copies of her newly
published novel. Can you fathom the insecurity, the shame that prompts such
an action? Even she lacks faith in her own fiction.
[Jacek pauses to whipe the foam off the corners of his mouth with a
two-finger pinching motion.]
I'm not saying that Short's fiction is bad. What I'm saying is that it's
*beyond* good and bad. Let me illustrate my point with an example. Remember
_Kallisti_, the 2001 comp entry Short hated so much she regretted she
couldn't vote, because if she could she "would have had the pleasure of
voting this a 1"? Despite its considerable shortcomings, _Kallisti_ has a
story. A simple one -- a seduction swiftly followed by a consummation -- but
a story nonetheless. It has two characters, crude and stereotypical, but not
entirely uninteresting. It has direction: the PC intends to bed the female
character. This is clearly spelled out. It even has a theme that could be
phrased as "Women are objects to be used, cleaned out, and re-used." The
writing isn't good, but it does manage to convey theme and direction.
We can all agree that as far as fiction goes, _Kallisti_ is not a
particularly succesful piece. But we can do that only because it *has a
story*. We can -- and perhaps should -- object to the way it portrays women
and the way it debases sex by reducing it to a one-sided conquest. But we
can do all those things *because* _Kallisti_ has a meaningful story. In this
very important respect, _Kallisti_ is a success where _Galatea_, _Best of
Three_, _So Far_ and _The Dreamhold_ are failures. Since they lack
meaningful stories, they do not yield to literary analysis. And this is
paradoxically their main strength. Because they are impervious to analysis,
they cannot be critsised, only blindly admired.
Jacek Pudlo
> fish, and a story about the PC trying to take care of it while it
> antagonizes him.
*This* is the crowning achievement of almost a decade of creative writing?
Adam Thornton
Jacek Pudlo <ja...@jacek.jacek> wrote:
>But we
>can do all those things *because* _Kallisti_ has a meaningful story. In this
>very important respect, _Kallisti_ is a success where _Galatea_, _Best of
>Three_, _So Far_ and _The Dreamhold_ are failures. Since they lack
>meaningful stories, they do not yield to literary analysis. And this is
>paradoxically their main strength. Because they are impervious to analysis,
>they cannot be critsised, only blindly admired.
Time out, pilgrim.
Does _Gravity's Rainbow_ have "a meaningful story" ?
I myself think that the answer is "no." It either does not have a
meaningful story, or it has *lots* of meaningful stories, but it surely
doesn't have *one* meaningful story. Although _GR_ is notoriously
resistant to critical analysis, it most certainly *can* be analyzed and
criticized. So your model is broken.
Adam
Jacek Pudlo
news:e0uj02$l22$1...@fileserver.fsf.net...
I haven't read _Gravity's Rainbow_, but from what you describe it sounds a
lot like _Infinite Jest_, which has "*lots* of meaningful stories" and very
little to hold them together. I'm not sure how this breaks the model though,
since I never said *one* story. And although the plot that holds the stories
together in _Infinite Jest_ is absurdly thin, it's a coherent plot
nonetheless. So yes, _Gravity's Rainbow_ (if it's anything like _Infinite
Jest_), has a meaningful story. Another thing that must be taken into
consideration is that a meaningful story can arise not only from a plot, but
also from recurring themes and characters, as in _In Our Time_.
Does _The Dreamhold_ have a meaningful story?
Adam Thornton
Jacek Pudlo <ja...@jacek.jacek> wrote:
>I haven't read _Gravity's Rainbow_, but from what you describe it sounds a
>lot like _Infinite Jest_, which has "*lots* of meaningful stories" and very
>little to hold them together. I'm not sure how this breaks the model though,
>since I never said *one* story. And although the plot that holds the stories
>together in _Infinite Jest_ is absurdly thin, it's a coherent plot
>nonetheless.
Oh, _GR_ is way, WAY better than _IJ_. I mean, I like David Foster
Wallace and all--went to one of his readings once in NYC, which was
really quite entertaining, and I fantasized that the skinny old guy
there in the Mets cap was Pynchon--but in _IJ_ you can tell that he's
trying too hard.
>So yes, _Gravity's Rainbow_ (if it's anything like _Infinite
>Jest_), has a meaningful story.
Well, if you want to reduce the narrative thread in _GR_ to the same
sort of level I think you have just done with _IJ_ then, sure: Boy meets
rocket, boy loses rocket, boy loses boy, rocket gets everybody. (It's
sort of kinky.)
That's *not the point* of _GR_, though. And at that level even the
stories you vilify from Plotkin and Short have meaningful stories.
>Another thing that must be taken into
>consideration is that a meaningful story can arise not only from a plot, but
>also from recurring themes and characters, as in _In Our Time_.
Yeah, yeah, tell it to Chris Crawford. We don't have anywhere near
enough of the right sort of technology to do it with characters in IF.
As for themes, well, how about _So Far_: the recurrent theme is "Miss,
near."
>Does _The Dreamhold_ have a meaningful story?
In the trivial sense you reference above, sure: Dude with amnesia
remembers his past.
Adam
The_Asy...@yahoo.com
> I'm not so much raving about Plotkin and Short, as about the fact that they
> persist in calling their games "fiction". Text adventures is a more accurate
> description of what they are doing. The term "fiction" should be reserved
> for authors who at least have the ambition to tell a meaningful story. It's
> more than just a question of nomenclature. It's a question of basic honesty.
> If I spend hours on a product that calls itself fiction, I expect something
> more than fixing toasters and casting silly spells.
I cannot speak for all Short games, but I find it difficult to believe
"text adventure" is a more accurate description of Galatea than
"interactive fiction". "Adventure" is even narrower a term than
"fiction". Earlier, you define the latter term as a synonym for
narrative. Accepting that, then certainly there is more narrative than
adventure in Galatea. Its narrative is subtle and Protean, admittedly,
but its adventure is nonexistent.
Galatea is not traditional IF; it is certainly not a game as Zork or
Monopoly are games. It was an entry in the IF Art Show, after all, and
not the annual IF Competition. Perhaps "Interactive Art" would suit you
better to describe this and other notable works first presented there,
"Ribbons" for instance. But to say Galatea has no story is inaccurate.
What it has, unlike Cadre's "Photopia", Ingold's "Fail-Safe", or
Devlin's "Vespers" to mention works by the author's you name, is not a
"set" story, but an authentically "open" story. (Fail-Safe and Vespers
may be called variable as they have three endings each, if I count
correctly, but these do not change the essential story, i.e. the nature
of Vespers' Cecilia and Fail-Safe's Survivor do not change. Ostensibly,
only the close of the narrative is altered. This does not necessarily
diminish or enhance the works. The fact that Photopia is unalterable is
what gives it its power.)
Galatea has, as you and Adam put it, "*lots* of meaningful stories".
Every playthrough is a different story. This is said of all games, I
know, but but typing EXAMINE BOOK before TAKE BOOK, while literally
different from taking the book then examing it, is aethestically
ridiculous and banal. Zork, for instance, is ostensibly different
depending on the order the treasures are collected and the underground
is traversed, but the experiences are essentially identical. This is
not so with Galatea. In one playthrough I did recently, the reviewer
finds himself inexplicably having feelings for what he is told is a
machine and ends up leaving with her hand in hand; in another, the
reviewer coldly and somewhat cruely reveals to her the nature of the
exhibit and then brusquely tells her that her creator has killed
himself before interrogating her on the subject, only to be ordered out
by the understandably upset Galatea.
I am hard pressed to think of another work of IF where this is so true.
Most are only superficially interactive; some, as Photopia and Rameses,
celebrate their non-interactivity. More on this later, though. First:
>Did you know that Short attempted to remove _Best of Three_ from the
>Archive? Imagine a writer attempting to destroy all the copies of her newly
>published novel. Can you fathom the insecurity, the shame that prompts such
>an action? Even she lacks faith in her own fiction.
Off topic a bit, but I am baffled by this observation. Perhaps it does
prove she lacks faith in her fiction, but so many authors destroy their
early work nowadays, and simply because she does not feel her fiction
is the best she is capable of does not mean it is not already
exceptional. Franz Kafka, probably the most famous author of the 20th
Century (if not one of the best), ordered on his deathbed that all his
unpublished writings be destroyed. His friend disobeyed him and those
writings were published, including the Castle and the Trial, the very
works that have made his name. But you compare this to an author
destorying an already published work. Kafka essentially ordered this as
well, that no more of his previously published books be printed, books
including his other famous stories, The Metamorphosis, A Hunger Artist,
and In The Penal Colony. All that stopped him from ordering all
existing copies to be destroyed is that this would require taking books
from people who had bought them legally, and Kafka didn't want to go
that far. (And really, this is identical to what Short would have done
by removing the work. She would not have forced anyone already with a
copy to delete it, but denied anyone else from downloading.) Does this
mean Kafka's work is incapable of being great? If so, the entire world
is mad.
Now back to Galatea.
>
> Anyway, you're welcome to prove me wrong. Just give us an example of a
> Plotkin or Short game that you think has a strong story. Here's a check-list
> to help on your way.
>
> a) meaningful plot
> b) character development
> c) non-trivial setting
> d) theme
>
> Anyone?
This is an interesting set of qualifications. Adam already questions if
Gravity's Rainbow would succeed under these standards. Though I own
that Pynchon novel (as well as the Crying of Lot 49), I have yet to
actually get around to reading it, so I'll have to abstain from that
discussion. I have prepared, though, an assortment of works by varied
authors. I will leave out poems, obviously, as few, except for Dante or
Milton or Homer's epics, even attempt at the first three qualities, but
I still have plays, novels, and short stories by an Englishman, an
Irishman who writes in French, an Italian, a Canadian, an Argentinean,
a Frenchman, and a German--- a diverse lot, certainly.
Tristram Shandy: A novel by Laurence Sterne
a) The plot is that there is no plot. Shandy begins to write an
autobiography and is not even born until the fourth volume. He
digresses from point to point.
b) See point a.
c) Sometimes a digression might have a setting such as the death of
Yorick, sometimes it's simply Shandy discussing a point
d) Definitely has a theme. Perhaps how digressions are more true to
actual thought patterns and real life than a novelistic plot.
Waiting For Godot: a play by Samuel Beckett
a) Day One: Two guys wait for Godot. Godot doesn't show up. They decide
to leave. End Day One. Day Two: See Day One.
b) On Day One two minor characters are fine. On Day Two, one is deaf
and the other dumb. Otherwise, no.
c) A tree. That's the setting.
d) Many themes have been suggested. The absence of God. The absurdity
of life. Etc.
Invisible Cities: a novel by Italo Calvino
a) Gore Vidal says describing the contents of this book is irrelevant.
Who am I to disagree? Let us just say that Marco Polo tells Kubla Khan
about a lot of cities
b) After a while Kubla Khan decides its easier to make up cities and
ask Marco Polo if they exist. I don't know if that counts as character
development.
c) The Court of Kubla Khan, a very specific setting. But since Marco
Polo could tell Kubla Khan about cities pretty much anywhere, perhaps
that is trivial. Maybe all the cities count as settings, even if they
don't have characters or plots.
d) I don't know that I can give it a simple moral, but it certainly has
a theme, or else why does it intrigue me so much with so little of the
first three qualities?
Happy Endings: a short story by Margaret Atwood
a) "John and Mary meet. What happens next?" That is both the plot and
the first two sentences. There are six answers provided to that
question.
b) Some, though in different versions the development to each character
is different. And all of the plots end with someone living happily
until they die. In fact, all the plots end with John and Mary dead. Is
death character development?
c) The phrase "a charming house" appears a couple times, and in one
version, a tidal wave crashes into. Mostly, though, the setting is
rather purposely generic.
d) To quote the final lines, that plots are "just one thing after
another, a what and a what and a what." Or that lives are not defined
purely by their plots. Or that death awaits or that "all is vanity".
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote: a short story by Jorge Luis
Borges
a) Pierre Menard decides to write Don Quixote. THE Don Quixote, word
for word the same as the Cervantes novel, not by copying, but straight
from his head. Except for about two pages, he failed. The story itself
takes place after this fact and really is nothing more than a critical
analysis of Menard's work, comparing, for instance, the Cervantes text
with the Menard text and finding Menard's to be superior (the passages
are identical, if you're confused)
b) Borges lists Menard's entire literary ouvre, which supposedly
chronicles his mental health. But no one seems to pick up on this until
they read the Borges quote that points it out, so we'll say no.
c) No setting is ever mentioned, though date is a part of setting too
and Menard is clearly from the early 1900s while Cervantes lived in the
1600s.
d) Many themes. This work essentially suggests the reader-response
theory of criticism years before hand, which, incidentally, is one of
the most applicable literary theories to interactive fiction.
Exercises in Style: a novel by Raymond Queneau
a) The narrator bumps into a man with a long neck on a bus, then later
sees him again while on a different bus, this time addressing his
friend who is missing a button on his shirt. This is literally the
entire plot, except that it is told 99 different ways.
b) There is deliberately no character development, though the character
of the narrator seems to change slighty each time the story is told
simply by the style he/she speaks with.
c) A bus. In France. Again, intentionally trivial.
d) The theme could be said to be how language alters perceptions of
reality.
The Great Wall of China: a short story by Franz Kafka
a) The narrator takes part in the building of the Great Wall of China.
He muses about its reason for being built, whether the Emperor who
ordered it built is still alive, and ends up deciding not to talk about
it anymore. More of a train of thought than a plot, but a meaningful
train of thought, certainly.
b) If deciding not to talk about something anymore can be considered
development, then yes. Otherwise, no.
c) The narrator isn't actually building during the time he speaks the
story, so the setting is somewhere in China, not necessarily the wall.
d) Harold Bloom says it is a parody of the modern Jewish faith. I must
take his word for this for he is both an expert on religions and
Jewish, and I am neither. In general, Kafka is said to be about
alienation in a modern world. I would say, he simply relates the
essence of life in its purest, silliest, and most frightning forms. At
once.
Obviously, my list is not a random sampling, rather a list of famed
and/or great works that fit poorly into your model, but it is, as I
promised, diverse, and, really, off the top of my head, I could still
include several other famous Borges and Kafka stories, Vladimir
Nabakov's Pale Fire, and the problem of whether a satirical essay such
as Jonathon Swift's A Modest Proposal is Fiction or Nonfiction. The
only inescapable element, really, seems to be theme.
So, how do these apply to Galatea?
Plotwise, as I said, Galatea is a myriad of possible plots, determined
by the will and whim of the player, and, as such, is one of the
farthest developed IF works yet to date in approaching true
interactivity, the ultimate work of reader-response. Whether they are
meaningful or not I will address in the topic of theme.
Character-wise, Galatea is not Hamlet, I admit (I refer to the
characters, not the works bearing those titles, though it is true in
both senses). Hamlet is more rich than Galatea (some would say no
character is more rich than Hamlet), but Galatea has an advantage over
Hamlet in that we may question her and interact with her, while we only
wish that we could question Hamlet. In such a brief work as Galatea,
though, I would be wary of anything called character development.
Character does not change in minutes, and if it does, it denotes a
weakness of character rather than a strength, and most likely an overly
sentimental work. She does, however, have a range of emotion, as my
above mentioned playthroughs indicate. In one, she grows from
stand-offish to great warmth; in another, she turns hurt and angry. It
is not epic change, but this is not an epic.
Turning to setting, having mentioned Hamlet above, I should note that
setting in Shakespeare, being designed for stage, is generally
pointless or nonexistant. This is why he adapts so well to different
eras in various film interpretations. I understand why you would wish
to emphasize it in an IF work for IF is, in a sense, a simulation of a
world. The world of Galatea is fully implemented, though, so I do not
know what more could be required than that. If Shakespeare supports
minimalism, who would dare argue against him?
As for themes, I first must mention the difference between theme and
moral. Your phrasing of the theme from _Kallisti_ (which I have not
played so I will take your word upon) as "Women are objects to be used,
cleaned out, and re-used." is more of a moral. Themes are broad topics,
while morals are neat little sentences. "Objectification of women"
would be how to express your observed theme of _Kallisit_ to avoid
limiting it unnecessarily. I say this not to be anal; phrasing themes
as morals is how we are often taught in school and generally perfectly
acceptable. But the fact that you cannot think of a single sentence to
describe a work (i.e. a moral to it) does not mean it does not have a
theme. Many works, in fact, have multiple themes. Galatea, I am
certain, has at least one.
Though I have read many, perhaps there are some reviews and critiques
of Short's most famous piece I have yet to encounter, but I am
surprised no one has yet pointed out that Galatea's textual premise of
a critic evaluating a piece of Artificial Intelligence is essentially
identical to the player's actual experience at playing the game.
Examine the following response from telling Galatea the nature of the
exhibit then asking her about it:
> "So now that you know what kind of exhibit this is," you say -- and then break off, not sure how to frame
> the question.
>
> She rescues you. "Do I have a new perspective on myself? Do I realize that I'm not real? Do I discover
> that all my memories are a cleverly designed trick?"
>
> You're forced to nod, though you wouldn't have put it to her in those terms.
>
> "In a word -- no. And you'd probably get better results from my program if you played along with me."
>
> (A classic question, of course: is it better, as a critic, to look for the weaknesses in a piece, or to seek its
> strengths? Any program can, sooner or later, be broken; and looking too eagerly for the stress points often
> means missing the virtues.)
The text in parentheses refers to the textual critic questioning the
animate, but it refers also to the player typing in commands to the
game. There are two Galateas: Galatea the character and Galatea the
game. Likewise, there are two reviewed: the character of the reviewer
and the player. How the player sees the game is how the reviewer sees
Galatea.
The resulting plot is, then, entirely relevant on how the player
approaches the work. The player treats Galatea as a human only when he,
in some sense, begins to think of her as a human, forgets, like the
reviewer, that she is a machine. If he treats her coldly, she reacts
coldly, the experience is cold. If he treats Galatea purely as game, as
a program to break, she is broken and the story naturally is
unfulfilling. Perhaps this is why you do not think it has a meaningful
plot. You have, like the reviewer in this text from the game, looked
"too eagerly for the stress points", while "missing the virtues". Open
works are difficult; they ask much of the reader, but the reward is
greater.
The theme, then, could be said to be IF itself, the ways in which we as
humans interact with it and are humanized by this interaction or
dehumanized by it. Do we look past her bytes of code to be touched by
her strange impression of humanity, or do we treat her as a toy and
break her as we please?
Broadening the scope, the theme is conversation itself, how mediums
alter it, lessen our civility, subvert or enhance our basic humanity.
This medium of usenet, for instance. I find your attacks of Short
misguided, but you are not uncivil in your manner. Others, losing sight
that humans lie underneath these words, would flame. I hope my own
opinions are taken likewise to be as civil as they are intended.
How meaningful this theme is may be personal debate, but I find it
relevant to anyone interested in IF for more than purely
entertainment's sake, thus explaining its eminence in the IF canon.
(As for Plotkin, I cannot bring myself to be interested enough to get
past the first scene of any of his work I have played with the
exception of Spider and Web and Hunter, In Darkness. Of these two,
individual moments approach greatness, but as a whole they have
problems--- though how many works can this not be said of? In a way,
then, I agree with some points you make about him, though I would not
express them quite as you do.)
Jacek Pudlo
> In article <yZAYf.51101$d5.2...@newsb.telia.net>,
> Jacek Pudlo <ja...@jacek.jacek> wrote:
>>I haven't read _Gravity's Rainbow_, but from what you describe it sounds a
>>lot like _Infinite Jest_, which has "*lots* of meaningful stories" and
>>very
>>little to hold them together. I'm not sure how this breaks the model
>>though,
>>since I never said *one* story. And although the plot that holds the
>>stories
>>together in _Infinite Jest_ is absurdly thin, it's a coherent plot
>>nonetheless.
>
> Oh, _GR_ is way, WAY better than _IJ_. I mean, I like David Foster
> Wallace and all--went to one of his readings once in NYC, which was
> really quite entertaining, and I fantasized that the skinny old guy
> there in the Mets cap was Pynchon--but in _IJ_ you can tell that he's
> trying too hard.
Trying too hard to do what, exactly? The writing is excellent, the tone
consistent, the anecdotes hilarious, what's there not to like?
>>So yes, _Gravity's Rainbow_ (if it's anything like _Infinite
>>Jest_), has a meaningful story.
>
> Well, if you want to reduce the narrative thread in _GR_ to the same
> sort of level I think you have just done with _IJ_ then, sure: Boy meets
> rocket, boy loses rocket, boy loses boy, rocket gets everybody. (It's
> sort of kinky.)
>
> That's *not the point* of _GR_, though. And at that level even the
> stories you vilify from Plotkin and Short have meaningful stories.
If you generalise a plot to a high-enough level of abstraction, just about
anything becomes trivial. Still, I think the überplot of _Infinite Jest_,
even when generalised the way you do above with _Gravity's Rainbow_, is
non-trivial. Protagonist's daddy makes film that is so lethally entertaining
audiences die of dehydration after days of non-stop watching. Québécois
terrorists attempt to get hold of film to wreak havoc upon ONAN,
Organisation of North American Nations. *Lots* of interesting stuff happens
in between. The last part, the one about lots of stuff happening, is what
literary critics call "narrative richness." Narrative richness is an amalgam
of many things, such as plot, subplot, characterisation, character
development, themes, anecdotes, etc. It is by itself not sufficient to
guarantee a meaningful story. There must be a cohesive element of some kind.
In _Infinite Jest_ it's the titular film that brings the pieces together.
It's not much, but it's enough. In _Blue Chairs_ there's a fair ammount of
narrative richness but, as Emily Short pointed out, very little cohesion.
Stuff just happens, and it happens for no obvious reason. _So Far_ is
neither narratively rich nor cohesive. _Photopia_ is both narratively rich
and cohesive, which is why we can critisise it and say that it's emotionally
manipulative. You can't say that about _Galatea_ or _The Dreamhold_.
So no, Plotkin's and Short's stories are not meaningful. I'm not sure to
what extent this is a valid critique of Short's IF. She appears genuinly
uninterested in storytelling. In this respect she bares a striking
resemblance to Galatea. Plotkin pretends to tell stories and hides his
storylessness behind vague symbols that seldom point to anything tangible
and innuendos of narrative elements that never materialise. As to the charge
of vilifying their work, I have this to say to you, Adam. The IF community
is a little rose garden. Protected from cold winds by high hedges and from
parasites by the loving care of gardeners, pretty, banal flowers thrive. But
times are changing. Ugly, horrible weeds appear and threaten the pretty
flowers. The gardeners are helpless. They yell "Weeds! Weeds!" and point
their fingers accusatorily at the culprits, but to no avail. Prettiness and
banality are no longer sufficient to sustain life. You think that's unfair,
Adam? Imagine this, then. _The New Yorker_ reviews _The Dreamhold_ treating
is as a work of fiction, which it purports to be. What would their verdict
be, do you think?
>>Another thing that must be taken into
>>consideration is that a meaningful story can arise not only from a plot,
>>but
>>also from recurring themes and characters, as in _In Our Time_.
>
> Yeah, yeah, tell it to Chris Crawford. We don't have anywhere near
> enough of the right sort of technology to do it with characters in IF.
> As for themes, well, how about _So Far_: the recurrent theme is "Miss,
> near."
A theme, to be meaningful, must be phrased in the form of a statement,
preferably with subject, verb and object, so that we know *what* is being
nearly missed. Love? If I were spiteful, I suppose I would suggest "story,"
"characterisation" or "meaning."
>>Does _The Dreamhold_ have a meaningful story?
>
> In the trivial sense you reference above, sure: Dude with amnesia
> remembers his past.
That's not a summary of the plot. That's a description of the character, and
it's not even an accurate description, since we have no way of telling if
the PC is a dude or not. "Unisex Wizard tries on some masks" is more
accurate.
crow...@gmail.com
whether Short's work (or even Plotkin's, who you seem to also have a
problem with) would work as a standalone short story when submitted to
the New Yorker or similar? Interactive fiction is interactive fiction,
a medium unto itself and should not be judged by the same standards
that we would try to judge short prose by. What would be better to look
at is: Is Short's work enjoyable? Is it interesting? Certainly.
Galatea, I'll agree was more of a programming masterpiece and
interesting towards that end, but what about Savoir-Faire? Sure, it
might not be great and grand story, but certainly enjoyable interactive
fiction. Plotkin's stuff? Also very interesting, both conceptually and
in regards to the writing. Both of these are excellent writers, who
manage to keep even the most mundane actions interesting, particularly
Short. Are they Great Grand Literature? Maybe not, but are they really
expected to be? Is that the new standard these days?
Also, who declares what makes a 'good story'? I view a good story as
one I'm interested and pleased to read. It doesn't need to have epic
themes to be good-and that applies even among the greats of Real
Literature. Short's writing is a little like Maupassant-it tells
stories that, in the end, may not have grand and sweeping premises, and
don't show us everything behind the curtain, but give us glimpses into
the ordinary lives of people with compassion and humor. And that is
what Short does-for whatever the perceived depth of her characters, it
is clear that she holds a sort of understanding of them, a tenderness
with which she treats them all. They are all, for better or worse,
given their due.
PJ
Jacek Pudlo wrote:
> So no, Plotkin's and Short's stories are not meaningful.
Jacek, if you would shorten your posts down to, "I hate Andrew and
Emily, who agrees with me?" you would save yourself a lot of time and
energy. It's easy enough to develop dislike on this group for Emily's
school-marmish, know-it-all-ism and Andrew's quick-on-the-trigger,
tit-for-tat defensiveness about his games. But pursuing a vendetta
against them under the guise of critical analysis of their games really
isn't that subtle. Even if everyone on this site were to agree that
their games aren't all that they are cracked up to be, the truth is
virtually no IF games rise to the level of a good short story in the
New Yorker -- as a short story, that is. Whether an IF game should
have that as a goal or not is infinitely debatable, but that's not
really your issue. Your issue is to get people to "feel the hate"
against Short & Plotkin. Instead, the hate is turned on you, because
of the pointlessness of the ad hominem attacks you have made on them
over the years. Of course, that is probably the real validation you
seek -- I must be somebody if eveyone on a group of several hundred
folks around the world truly dislikes me. Given the relative degree of
contribution to the medium of IF that Short & Plotkin have made vs.
that of you and your many sock puppet identities, it's a validation
that you can be sure you will continue to receive.
PJ
Quintin Stone
> Honestly, the thing I wonder about: is it really relevant to ponder
> whether Short's work (or even Plotkin's, who you seem to also have a
> problem with) would work as a standalone short story when submitted to
> the New Yorker or similar?
Honestly, the thing I wonder about: why do people still try to have a
rational discourse with Jacek on this subject? He's proven time and time
again that he's incapable of lucid thinking when it comes to the subjects
of his twisted obsessions. Please, all, just let the matter drop. Don't
feed the trolls.
rpresser
> a) Day One: Two guys wait for Godot. Godot doesn't show up. They decide
> to leave. End Day One. Day Two: See Day One.
> b) On Day One two minor characters are fine. On Day Two, one is deaf
> and the other dumb. Otherwise, no.
Minor correction: On Day Two, one is *blind* and the other dumb.
rpresser
PJ wrote:
> Jacek Pudlo wrote:
> > So no, Plotkin's and Short's stories are not meaningful.
>
> Jacek, if you would shorten your posts down to, "I hate Andrew and
> Emily, who agrees with me?" you would save yourself a lot of time and
> energy.
Jacek has no interest in saving time and energy. Like many trolls, he
gets enjoyment from infuriating others. Jacek's particular quirk (one
shared by Jim Bowery aka Baldrson, on Kuro5hin.org) is his apparent
earnestness and persistence in putting forward the same infuriating
notions over and over.
doc...@chaiyo.com
new thread.
Then days went by and nobody responded.
I didn't even feel the need to respond. He quoted from me in the prior
thread.
I maintain that my use of the word genre was right on.
Dictionary.com says that genre means:
"1 a kind of literary or artistic work
2: a style of expressing yourself in writing"
But when Jacek retorted that the correct word should be medium:
2 An intervening substance through which something else is
transmitted or carried on.
To me, Jacek wants to convey a message more than anyone else.
Nevertheless, I didn't respond. Feeding the trolls is dumb.
So after several days of quiet, Jacek added more fuel. Notice that he
made the first three postings. I think PJ was right on. As were the
other respondents.
Peace and Love Incorporated.
Sands...@yahoo.com
The_Asy...@yahoo.com wrote:
<< "Adventure" is even narrower a term than "fiction". [...] there is
more narrative than adventure in Galatea. Its narrative is subtle and
Protean, admittedly, but its adventure is nonexistent. >>
I believe the word "adventure" in the term "adventure game" is a
reference to the computer program "Adventure" by Crowther and
Woods. It only means that a computer program is more similar to
that program than to any other sort of software.
Jacek Pudlo wrote:
<< Imagine this, then. _The New Yorker_ reviews _The Dreamhold_
treating is as a work of fiction, which it purports to be. What would
their verdict be, do you think? >>
I'm pretty sure that "interactive fiction" was a marketing term
designed
to make adventure games sound more sophisticated, and wasn't really
meant to be taken literally.
It's fine to say that some of these games might be better if they
employed
more elements from literary fiction, and it's just as reasonable to say
that
some of them might be better if they didn't try so hard to ape literary
fiction,
but I'm not sure how sound it is to insist that the terms "adventure
game"
and "interactive fiction" be taken literally.
Jacek Pudlo
news:1144244011.1...@t31g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
People hate me because I have the audacity to criticise Empress Em and Uncle
Zarfie, despite having contributed less than them to the medium. So who
*does* have the right to criticise them? Graham Nelson? Dearly deceased
Douglas Adams? You call Empress Em "school-marmish" and practically imply
that Uncle Zarfie is a testy twit, and *then* you present this crazy
argument from authority that pretty much precludes any criticism of the two.
You're a funny guy, Pete.
Will you do me a favour and answer two simple question? Truthfully, please?
1) Your review of _The Dreamhold_ has been removed from Google's archive.
How come?
2) Do you think it's appropriate for a reviewer to refer to the author of
the game he is reviewing by his nickname?
Derek Ray
Hash: SHA1
Jacek Pudlo wrote:
> "PJ" <pete_...@hotmail.com> skrev i meddelandet
> news:1144244011.1...@t31g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>> Jacek, if you would shorten your posts down to, "I hate Andrew and
>> Emily, who agrees with me?" you would save yourself a lot of time and
>> energy.
>
> People hate me because I have the audacity to criticise Empress Em and Uncle
> Zarfie, despite having contributed less than them to the medium.
No, I think people hate you because the only thing you ever seem to
actually say is "Andrew and Emily suck", camouflaged behind the
pretense-of-the-moment.
We get the picture. Some will agree with you. Some won't. Move on.
- --
Derek
insert clever quotation here
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PJ
> Will you do me a favour and answer two simple question? Truthfully, please?
>
> 1) Your review of _The Dreamhold_ has been removed from Google's archive.
> How come?
Very simple. Google Groups has the option of letting the author remove
his/her own posts. In the initial exchange around the Dreamhold
review, as well as some other posts, I became angry at both Plotkin's
and Short's condescending responses to some things I had
written/suggested. This was shortly after I started posting frequently
on this group, though I had followed the threads for many years. I
decided that I would resume lurking and removed all of my recent posts
to that point -- not just the Dreamhold one. Subsequently, I decided
that I would continue posting anyway, despite some of the negative and
irritating things I encountered (including you). Mystery solved -- but
please don't attribute some dark and evil influence to it.
> 2) Do you think it's appropriate for a reviewer to refer to the author of
> the game he is reviewing by his nickname?
Why not? That review wasn't published in a formal article. Plotkin
goes by Zarf on this group, so that's the name I happened to use. You
obviously missed the fact that, in many ways, I was poking fun at
Dreamhold for being too obviously an effort by Andrew to show how he
could outdo other "traditional" adventure game authors. While I
enjoyed the game, I actually agree with many of your criticisms about
the writing. The point I was trying to make (without the use of
emoticons to signal joking/irony, which I deplore) is that I believed
Plotkin was going too far in intentionally parading his "superior"
talent at this genre, if you call it that, while pretending to just be
writing a game for newbies. That's why I used a lot of hyperbole and
florid metaphors praising the game. If you followed out some of the
arguments in the thread, you would see one exchange that clearly
highlights that fact. At any rate, I'm not going to repost it -- I
don't have it anymore. If you do, or if someone else maintained the
original post in their e-mail account, feel free to repost it and
resume critiquing it. You seem to think that one review puts me in the
position of trying to run interference for him and Emily. Quite to the
contrary, if you asked them or read any of our exchanges since, you
would see a large number of irritable and irritating exchanges between
me and them, to the point where they mostly don't respond to anything I
post and vice versa. So you can scratch me off your list of
conspirators. I am not *defending* Andrew/Emily for some nefarious
reason. I am attacking you because of your boring, repetitive, and
obsessive trolling of even the most innocuous of threads.
PJ
ems...@mindspring.com
PJ wrote:
> Jacek Pudlo wrote:
>
> > Will you do me a favour and answer two simple question? Truthfully, please?
> >
> > 1) Your review of _The Dreamhold_ has been removed from Google's archive.
> > How come?
>
> Very simple. Google Groups has the option of letting the author remove
> his/her own posts. In the initial exchange around the Dreamhold
> review, as well as some other posts, I became angry at both Plotkin's
> and Short's condescending responses to some things I had
> written/suggested.
It may be a bit late now, but for the record, I'm sorry I put you off
to that degree. I found quite a lot of what you said interesting, and I
also found a lot that I wanted to argue with; as I recall, I mostly
thought that you had a number of good points that you pushed to their
most extreme expression, and that the exaggeration undermined your
arguments.
Anyway, I realize there is not a lot that can be said: if I come off as
a condescending jerk, that's something for me to work on privately, I
suppose, and the fact that I didn't intend to is pretty much
irrelevant. But I apologize.
Adam Thornton
Jacek Pudlo <ja...@jacek.jacek> wrote:
>Trying too hard to do what, exactly? The writing is excellent, the tone
>consistent, the anecdotes hilarious, what's there not to like?
DFW is trying too hard to be clever. You can see he's straining
sometimes. I think this is exactly what irritates you about Graham's
work. Give _GR_ a whirl, to see how it's done *right*.
Note that I'm not saying _IJ_ isn't good. I enjoyed it enough to read
it twice, and bits of it--especially the Conservation of
Addiction--still resonate with me. But it ain't no _GR_. Then again,
what is?
>There must be a cohesive element of some kind.
>In _Infinite Jest_ it's the titular film that brings the pieces together.
>It's not much, but it's enough.
Oh. Well in that case in _GR_ it's obviously the Rocket. Although a
strong case could be made for the parabola (perhaps: parable), or even
the letter "P."
>> As for themes, well, how about _So Far_: the recurrent theme is "Miss,
>> near."
>A theme, to be meaningful, must be phrased in the form of a statement,
>preferably with subject, verb and object, so that we know *what* is being
>nearly missed.
Wait, wait: when did this new constraint on meaningfulness arise, Mister
Dumpty?
That was another of my clever puns. Pearls and swine again. Is the
miss a non-connection, or a young lady?
>> In the trivial sense you reference above, sure: Dude with amnesia
>> remembers his past.
>
>That's not a summary of the plot. That's a description of the character, and
>it's not even an accurate description, since we have no way of telling if
>the PC is a dude or not. "Unisex Wizard tries on some masks" is more
>accurate.
You mean you didn't try "look inside undies" ? Well, OK, it doesn't
actually work. But it should. Still, I'm going to go with "Amnesiac
recovers memory" as the ostensible plot (I actually thought it was quite
clever to have a second hidden game inside _Dreamhold_ with a rather
more ambitious character goal).
Adam
Jacek Pudlo
> Jacek Pudlo wrote:
>> 2) Do you think it's appropriate for a reviewer to refer to the author of
>> the game he is reviewing by his nickname?
>
> Why not? That review wasn't published in a formal article. Plotkin
> goes by Zarf on this group
Among his chummy friends, yes. A reviewer, on the other hand, should
maintain at least the pretense of objectivity. But there's a bigger issue at
stake here. It's the implicit presumption that IF doesn't deserve the
respect other media are naturally entitled to. It has nothing to do with
your review not being published in a formal article, because no IF review is
ever published in a formal article. It has everything to do with the false
chumminess, the ingratiating familiarity that pervades the ethos within the
Inner Circle. Oh, don't get me wrong, Short and others are quite capable of
being devastatingly perspicacious in their reviews, but only if the author
doesn't belong to the Inner Circle. If he does, a different set of standards
is employed and perspicacity is swiftly replaced by ingratiating admiration.
Short has recently said she dislikes "drastic narrative twists that don't
make much sense" and pointed to _Blue Chairs_ as an example. Compare this to
her review of _So Far_ (where she also mentions _Curses_). Do you see *any*
mention there of _So Far_ or _Curses_ lacking a coherent plot, or their
nonsensical narrative twists? Klimas doesn't belong to the Inner Circle.
Plotkin and Nelson do.
Many people here think I'm a troll, a destructive presence, someone who
doesn't care about IF. But if truth is to be told no one cares more about IF
than I do. I'm the demanding mother who disciplines her son not because she
hates him, but because she loves him. I'm "trolling" you people not because
I hate you, but because I love and respect interactive fiction.
PJ
> "PJ" <pete_...@hotmail.com> skrev i meddelandet
> news:1144284080.3...@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> > Jacek Pudlo wrote:
> >> 2) Do you think it's appropriate for a reviewer to refer to the author of
> >> the game he is reviewing by his nickname?
> >
> > Why not? That review wasn't published in a formal article. Plotkin
> > goes by Zarf on this group
>
> Among his chummy friends, yes.
Wrong. Plotkin signs virtually every post on this group, to anybody,
"Inner Circle" or not, with "Z." And I've never met the man, am
definitely not a chummy friend, don't idolize him (despite what you
think), don't hang out on ifMUD, etc. etc.
> A reviewer, on the other hand, should maintain at least the pretense of objectivity.
I wasn't trying to be objective. I was trying to be subtly ironic by
being overly fulsome within what appeared otherwise to be the bounds of
a straight-up review. Obviously, it didn't work for you.
> But there's a bigger issue at
> stake here. It's the implicit presumption that IF doesn't deserve the
> respect other media are naturally entitled to.
It probably doesn't -- name any game medium that gets as much respect
as "other media," however you define it. As much respect as a TV
sitcom? As much respect as "World of Warcraft"? As much respect as
Ulysses? How much respect, precisely, does IF deserve?
> It has everything to do with the false
> chumminess, the ingratiating familiarity that pervades the ethos within the
> Inner Circle.
You forget. I'm not in the Inner Circle. I've never published a game.
On that scale, you are far closer to the Inner Circle than I am. I
was schooled on that quite thoroughly when I began posting here.
> Klimas doesn't belong to the Inner Circle. Plotkin and Nelson do.
After winning the XYZZYs so thoroughly last year, Klimas is probably
now the head honcho of the Inner Circle.
> I'm "trolling" you people not because
> I hate you, but because I love and respect interactive fiction.
Actually, Jacek, I believe you are trolling this group because you hate
yourself, and you want validation from the rest of us that you are
truly worth hating. Why don't you take it up with your therapist or a
good S&M club instead of polluting this group? A bracing course of
either electroshock therapy or the bastinado might just cure what ails
you. Or possibly a lobotomy. Anyway, I'm done with this thread. Got
you last! Don't you just *hate it* when that happens?
PJ
Jacek Pudlo
> Jacek Pudlo wrote:
>> But there's a bigger issue at
>> stake here. It's the implicit presumption that IF doesn't deserve the
>> respect other media are naturally entitled to.
>
> It probably doesn't -- name any game medium that gets as much respect
> as "other media," however you define it. As much respect as a TV
> sitcom? As much respect as "World of Warcraft"? As much respect as
> Ulysses? How much respect, precisely, does IF deserve?
I see IF as a form of sophisticated semi-literary entertainment, with the
emphasis on entertainment. Sophisticated because there's nothing in the
gaming world that comes even close to IF's ability to convey stories and
concepts. Entertainment because IF is played rather than read. Does it
deserve the same respect as RPG? I would say more. More than sitcoms too,
because sitcoms are limited by commercial and economic considerations. The
same as literature? Probably not, not the way things look today.
I think a reasonable ambition for an IF author is to reach the level of a
good historical or sci fi novel. Not profound and complex like _Ulysses_ or
_Der Zauberberg_, but certainly thought provoking, and first and foremost
fun and witty and entertaining. I think Devlin, Cadre and Ingold have that
ambition and come pretty close to fulfilling it. I don't think _Shade_ or
_The Dreamhold_ were written with the ambition to entertain.
jameshcu...@gmail.com
> I think a reasonable ambition for an IF author is to reach the level of a
> good historical or sci fi novel. Not profound and complex like _Ulysses_ or
> _Der Zauberberg_, but certainly thought provoking, and first and foremost
> fun and witty and entertaining. I think Devlin, Cadre and Ingold have that
> ambition and come pretty close to fulfilling it. I don't think _Shade_ or
> _The Dreamhold_ were written with the ambition to entertain.
And Ulysses *was*? Let's not fear the calling out of spades: Ulysses
was James Joyce's joke on the world, penned in excrement, a corpse kept
alive not by the *entertained* but by the massively pretentious.
While we're on the subject of spades and their names, I should note,
PJ, that you are incorrect on the subject of Jacek's purpose here. He
is here because a burning love, unrequited, eventually turns to rage.
The man wet dreams to the thought of his lips brushing against
Andrew's, and he hates himself for it; he takes what revenge a small
mind is able to concoct. Let us pity him even as we denounce him.
Jacek Pudlo
news:1144342706.7...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Jacek Pudlo wrote:
>
>> I think a reasonable ambition for an IF author is to reach the level of a
>> good historical or sci fi novel. Not profound and complex like _Ulysses_
>> or
>> _Der Zauberberg_, but certainly thought provoking, and first and foremost
>> fun and witty and entertaining. I think Devlin, Cadre and Ingold have
>> that
>> ambition and come pretty close to fulfilling it. I don't think _Shade_ or
>> _The Dreamhold_ were written with the ambition to entertain.
>
> And Ulysses *was*? Let's not fear the calling out of spades: Ulysses
> was James Joyce's joke on the world, penned in excrement, a corpse kept
> alive not by the *entertained* but by the massively pretentious.
In case your erection sapped all the blood from your brain, let me
recapitulate. _Ulysses_ and _Der Zauberberg_ were meant first and foremost
to be Great Literature. I don't think works of IF should aspire to that
level of complexity. IF should aspire to be entertaining. It's really a
banal point, but it's a banal point worth stating, because of the prevalence
of games like _The Dreamhold_ and _Galatea_ that don't even *pretend* to
entertain. Having said that, I disagree with your assessment of _Ulysses_.
It's a work of immense narrative richness, humour, and, on top of that,
thematic cohesion, which is the reason why you hate it. If it were
meaningless, if it were pretentious crap as you suggest, you would love it,
as you presumably love Plotkin's games.
> While we're on the subject of spades and their names, I should note,
> PJ, that you are incorrect on the subject of Jacek's purpose here. He
> is here because a burning love, unrequited, eventually turns to rage.
> The man wet dreams to the thought of his lips brushing against
> Andrew's, and he hates himself for it; he takes what revenge a small
> mind is able to concoct. Let us pity him even as we denounce him.
Seems that kissing men's lips is on your mind a lot, James. :)
Jacek Pudlo
news:1144229219....@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
Here's what I expected when I played _Galatea_ the first time. I thought the
conversation was a means of establishing the background story, namely her
relationship to Pygmalion. The background story would be ostensibly static,
but would in fact change depending on the exact sequence of ASK and TELL.
Once I reached the "food" ending, where Galatea steps down from her pedestal
and starts eating, I realised my presumption was wrong. Up that point,
however, there was nothing that indicated that this was not the correct way
of playing her. Once I understood that _Galatea_ was about manipulation
rather than storytelling, my interest waned. My feeling was that the means
of manipulation -- mainly ASK and TELL -- were poorly clued in leading to
arbitrary results. The "food" ending surprised me; I did ask her about food,
but why she reacted the way she did was a mystery. It felt like trying to
retrieve a snack bar from a broken vending machine; even when you succeed,
it's never clear exactly *why*.
I never did reach any of the endings you mention, so perhaps I should have
kept my mouth shut, as should any film critic who hasn't seen the full
movie. My defence is that IF is different from film in that you can get
stuck, and when you do it's often the author's fault. Had the dialogue been
more engaging and had there been a promise of a story materialising at the
end, I might have persevered. The things Galatea has to say are neither
witty, nor insightful nor informative. You would, for instance, expect an
animated statue to have *something* interesting to say about art. Or God, or
love. Galatea's answers are bland and evasive. I expected flair and wit, and
was instead treated to a character that was deliberately dull and
pedestrian. She is simply a very poor conversationalist, which may hold true
of all statues, but it makes her a poor choice for an NPC in a
conversationalist piece.
My impression was that _Galatea_ was not an entertaining work of fiction,
nor were the few "stories" I managed to squeeze out her meaningful.
Shame on me, because I haven't read a single one of the books you mention.
So I can't really comment, except to point out that setting doesn't
necessarily refer to the physical world. In static fiction, the important,
non-trivial setting is more often than not the social one.
[snip]
> Plotwise, as I said, Galatea is a myriad of possible plots, determined
> by the will and whim of the player, and, as such, is one of the
> farthest developed IF works yet to date in approaching true
> interactivity, the ultimate work of reader-response. Whether they are
> meaningful or not I will address in the topic of theme.
The "plot" I remember most clearly is the "food" ending. It did not strike
me as meaningful. I asked her about food a couple of times, she stepped down
and began to eat. Then the game ended. My reaction was, Is this it? So what?
I suppose one interpretation would be that the statue chose to become mortal
by enjoying the pleasures of mortal life. And?
> Character-wise, Galatea is not Hamlet, I admit (I refer to the
> characters, not the works bearing those titles, though it is true in
> both senses). Hamlet is more rich than Galatea (some would say no
> character is more rich than Hamlet), but Galatea has an advantage over
> Hamlet in that we may question her and interact with her, while we only
> wish that we could question Hamlet. In such a brief work as Galatea,
> though, I would be wary of anything called character development.
> Character does not change in minutes, and if it does, it denotes a
> weakness of character rather than a strength, and most likely an overly
> sentimental work. She does, however, have a range of emotion, as my
> above mentioned playthroughs indicate. In one, she grows from
> stand-offish to great warmth; in another, she turns hurt and angry. It
> is not epic change, but this is not an epic.
>
> Turning to setting, having mentioned Hamlet above, I should note that
> setting in Shakespeare, being designed for stage, is generally
> pointless or nonexistant. This is why he adapts so well to different
> eras in various film interpretations. I understand why you would wish
> to emphasize it in an IF work for IF is, in a sense, a simulation of a
> world. The world of Galatea is fully implemented, though, so I do not
> know what more could be required than that. If Shakespeare supports
> minimalism, who would dare argue against him?
The *physical* setting in Hamlet may be minimalist, but the social,
psychological (Hamlet's relationship to his mother, for instance, which
Freudian critics have made a big deal of) and historical are not. And these
are the important ones.
So it's all about what the player is able to bring with him to the game, and
not vice versa? So if you're one of those hopelessly literal-minded people
who, like me, expect a literary work to have some kind of objective
existence independent of a particular subjective reading, then _Galatea_ is
bound to disappoint you? _Galatea_ is, basically, whatever you want it to
be. Is that what you're saying? Because if it is, we're in perfect
agreement.
> The theme, then, could be said to be IF itself, the ways in which we as
> humans interact with it and are humanized by this interaction or
> dehumanized by it. Do we look past her bytes of code to be touched by
> her strange impression of humanity, or do we treat her as a toy and
> break her as we please?
What *is* her impression of humanity? (just curious)
Adam Thornton
Jacek Pudlo <ja...@jacek.jacek> wrote:
>I think a reasonable ambition for an IF author is to reach the level of a
>good historical or sci fi novel.
Ooooh, check it out, the ghettoization of the genre.
Jacek: seriously, read Samuel Delany's _About Writing_. It's
entertaining, a professional writer friend of my acquaintance swears
that the advice within is sound, and one of the things it's great at is
asking why we do (and whether we should) judge genre fiction by lower--or
different--standards than mainstream fiction.
Some day I hope to sit down with Delany and briefly demo some IF and
have that discussion, with "IF" standing in for "genre fiction". He
also reads comics, so he is able to recognize that the storytelling
conventions and structures within IF are not necessarily those of the
short fiction piece.
I'm not sure, though, what you mean by reaching that level.
_Anchorhead_ was as entertaining to me as much of Stephen King (OK, it
didn't entertain me as much as _The Shining_ or _Salem's Lot_, but it
was easily as entertaining as plenty of non-sucky King, and much more
entertaining than, say, _The Tommyknockers_). But then, _Zork_ was a
lot more entertaining to me than the Joyce Carol Oates I've read.
Despite that, I'm pretty sure you're going to claim that _Zork_ does not
reach the level of Oates. Well, maybe John Oates.
Adam
Adam Thornton
jameshcu...@gmail.com <jameshcu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Jacek Pudlo wrote:
>> I think a reasonable ambition for an IF author is to reach the level of a
>> good historical or sci fi novel. Not profound and complex like _Ulysses_ or
>> _Der Zauberberg_, but certainly thought provoking, and first and foremost
>> fun and witty and entertaining. I think Devlin, Cadre and Ingold have that
>> ambition and come pretty close to fulfilling it. I don't think _Shade_ or
>> _The Dreamhold_ were written with the ambition to entertain.
>And Ulysses *was*? Let's not fear the calling out of spades: Ulysses
>was James Joyce's joke on the world, penned in excrement, a corpse kept
>alive not by the *entertained* but by the massively pretentious.
Whoa. Harsh. If that's how you feel about _Ulysses_....what are your
thoughts on the _Wake_ ?
I will not speculate about your psychoanalysis of The Pudster.
Adam
Adam Thornton
Jacek Pudlo <ja...@jacek.jacek> wrote:
>Many people here think I'm a troll, a destructive presence, someone who
>doesn't care about IF.
In the words of the inestimable Mr. Loaf, "Two outta three ain't bad."
>But if truth is to be told no one cares more about IF than I do.
No one? Tall order, that. How do you intend to prove this statement?
Adam
Jon Ingold
IF is young. It's new. No-one knows how it works, what it's good for,
what's worth doing and what's not. All the games written here are
experiments: certainly all of mine were. Each one a proof of concept or
a reaction to something I saw. A game did something cool - I nicked it,
built on it, tried to make it better.
We don't need to destroy IF, to criticise it or take it down. It's too
easy. We all
know that it's rubbish when it's rubbish. We all know compasses are
clunky, author's minds cannot be read, text is repetitive and
interaction visibly limited. But if this thing is ever going to survive
we've got to find out what works. And *that's* why Nelson, Plotkin,
Short are important. They're building stuff. I've never whole-heartedly
liked anyone's games, but So Far made My Angel, Galatea made Insight,
Curses made Mulldoon, 9:05 made FailSafe ... my personal list goes on.
Without these people I'd have never written anything. I don't write
anything any more because I can't find anything worth reacting to. And
if this is it: if the current crop of memorable works is the best
there'll ever be then criticising it is like discussing England
strategy after they've been knocked out.
If you love IF, encourage it. Make people write games. Flair their
imagination, their desire to match, or better, the best we've got.
Point out what's excellent. But the state we're in, any experiment is
worthwhile and we should be grateful there are people who put that time
in to it. If they didn't, this would all be blank space and Adventure
550. Perhaps in a few years that's all there will be.
Jon Ingold
Matthew Russotto
Adam Thornton <ad...@fsf.net> wrote:
>
>Jacek: seriously, read Samuel Delany's _About Writing_. It's
>entertaining, a professional writer friend of my acquaintance swears
>that the advice within is sound, and one of the things it's great at is
>asking why we do (and whether we should) judge genre fiction by lower--or
>different--standards than mainstream fiction.
Well, for one thing, we expect genre fiction to be entertaining,
whereas we expect mainstream fiction to be usable as a means of
torturing high school English students. Totally different worlds.
--
There's no such thing as a free lunch, but certain accounting practices can
result in a fully-depreciated one.
jameshcu...@gmail.com
Jacek Pudlo wrote:
> In case your erection sapped all the blood from your brain, let me
> recapitulate. _Ulysses_ and _Der Zauberberg_ were meant first and foremost
> to be Great Literature. I don't think works of IF should aspire to that
> level of complexity. IF should aspire to be entertaining. It's really a
> banal point, but it's a banal point worth stating, because of the prevalence
> of games like _The Dreamhold_ and _Galatea_ that don't even *pretend* to
> entertain.
For what values of "entertain"? Do you like Mah Jong? I hate it.
It's not literature, either, but it strives to entertain some lunatic
somewhere (You? Does the name "James Harris" mean anything to you?
That's just an aside; I should like to know whether usenet crazies have
a social network). Lest we forget: "text adventure" came before
"interactive fiction".
> Having said that, I disagree with your assessment of _Ulysses_.
> It's a work of immense narrative richness, humour, and, on top of that,
> thematic cohesion, which is the reason why you hate it. If it were
> meaningless, if it were pretentious crap as you suggest, you would love it,
> as you presumably love Plotkin's games.
Oh, my, no. I hate puzzles more difficult than shoe-tying in the
incoherence of early morning. "So Far" would be like unanesthetized
root canal work. In fact, I hate Ulysses for much the same reason I
can't play most of Andrew's games: mere puzzles do nothing but
celebrate their own cleverness and that of persons smart enough to
solve them. Not my bag, yo.
(Though I will admit a certain fondness for Shade, in much the same way
I liked "Blue Chairs" or "Memento". Sue me.)
> Seems that kissing men's lips is on your mind a lot, James. :)
Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Keep your eye on the prize!
It's not *my* lips you want; it's those of your father, manifested in
Andrew. I recommend spiritual, therapeutic, and psychiatric attention,
benzodiazepine treatment for bouts of mania, and years of psychodynamic
counselling.
The_Asy...@yahoo.com
> I never did reach any of the endings you mention, so perhaps I should have
> kept my mouth shut, as should any film critic who hasn't seen the full
> movie. My defence is that IF is different from film in that you can get
> stuck, and when you do it's often the author's fault. Had the dialogue been
> more engaging and had there been a promise of a story materialising at the
> end, I might have persevered. The things Galatea has to say are neither
> witty, nor insightful nor informative. You would, for instance, expect an
> animated statue to have *something* interesting to say about art. Or God, or
> love. Galatea's answers are bland and evasive. I expected flair and wit, and
> was instead treated to a character that was deliberately dull and
> pedestrian. She is simply a very poor conversationalist, which may hold true
> of all statues, but it makes her a poor choice for an NPC in a
> conversationalist piece.
>
> My impression was that _Galatea_ was not an entertaining work of fiction,
> nor were the few "stories" I managed to squeeze out her meaningful.
>
Entertaining or not is a personal preference. If you get stuck in IF
because of technical problems, it is the author's fault. If you get
stuck because you are not interested in going further, because you find
it boring, that's not necessarily anyone's fault. The author may simply
not be your taste. I saw a story on 20/20 this year about a group
called asexuals who find sex boring. They are, perhaps, not wrong that
sex is boring to them, but I would be loathe to conclude from their
testimony alone that sex is boring.
I am not one of those who would suggest you simply say, "Well, I didn't
like this game," and move on. You are right in trying to determine
_why_ you find it boring, especially given that so many people find
Galatea a great work. Answering that question is a great service to any
literary field or any medium. I don't doubt that you did not like
Galatea, but many of these reasons you suggest for why that is fail to
convince me. It may simply be my failure in understanding the concept
you are referring to, seeing the words but not the meaning behind them.
Your use of "meaningful", for instance.
>
> The "plot" I remember most clearly is the "food" ending. It did not strike
> me as meaningful. I asked her about food a couple of times, she stepped down
> and began to eat. Then the game ended. My reaction was, Is this it? So what?
> I suppose one interpretation would be that the statue chose to become mortal
> by enjoying the pleasures of mortal life. And?
>
You say the stories you encountered were "not meaningful." This can
mean that they are nonsensical (which is what I believe you suggest
Plotkin's more surreal works are). This cannot be said to be the case.
You mentioned you ask her a line of questions regarding food and she
decided to go eat some, thus ending that particular playthrough. This
is somewhat coherent, you must admit, in that asking her about food
makes her want to eat some, so I don't think nonsensical is what you
mean.
"Meaningful" can then imply having value or impact on the reader. This
seems possible from your attempt to interpret your "food" playthrough.
I cannot tell, though, from just the ending if your playthrough was
meaningful in this sense (though obviously, in the subjective sense,
you feeling this is not the case is proof that it wasnt) or if I would
agree with your intepretation. I would have to see an entire script of
the playthrough. What I was trying to emphasive before when contrasting
Galatea to Adventure is that in Galatea, unlike Adventure, every player
input is relevant to the narrative, every player input affects the
plot. Galatea is a narrative that takes notice how you read. Adventure
is less a narrative than a pure simulation of a world. There are only
two possible plots. The adventurer gets all the treasure, or the
adventure dies, with many variations on the second. Galatea's narrative
changes with every action taken. Given the following quote, I don't
think you understood what I meant by that.
> > Open
> > works are difficult; they ask much of the reader, but the reward is
> > greater.
>
> So it's all about what the player is able to bring with him to the game, and
> not vice versa? So if you're one of those hopelessly literal-minded people
> who, like me, expect a literary work to have some kind of objective
> existence independent of a particular subjective reading, then _Galatea_ is
> bound to disappoint you? _Galatea_ is, basically, whatever you want it to
> be. Is that what you're saying? Because if it is, we're in perfect
> agreement.
When you say "_Galatea_ is, basically, whatever you want it to be" you
go to a deeper level then I intend. I mentioned reader-response theory,
which I am not sure if you are familiar with, but some of it suggests
that all works, from Moby Dick to Superman, are "whatever you want it
to be"---that is, one person reads Superman as a Christ-like figure and
another as Nietzche's Anti-Christ and another as pure escapism and all
are correct. This is a much broader statement than what I imply in
calling Galatea an "open work".
Galatea does not work _only_ subjectively, appreciated as a painting is
appreciated, but it does _recognize_ the reader's subjective
personality and respond to it.
An open work, in the sense I refer to it, is like a CYOA book. In a
perfect CYOA book (and I have never seen one) every choice would be
meaningful, by which I mean it would alter the plot significantly so
that the book contains not one single story but a different story for
every possible combination of choices. The story the reader discovers
relies on their choice at each divergence, their "subjective reading",
or what they "bring to the game". The "objective existence" is obvious
in a CYOA, you must admit, yet it can only be approached subjectively.
Reading it in the order of the pages (the only way to approach it
without subjective thought) will have no meaning. The reader must
subjectively choose a path, choose the correct reading for him or
herself. The story is not the sum of all sections written by the
author; the story is not every page in the book. The story is defined
by the reader.
Galatea, as opposed to Adventure or a similar work of IF, is like a
CYOA book. The only difference is the author provides smaller static
texts between each divergence so that the effects of each choice are
subtler. Also, the number of choices available at every given
divergence are exponentially greater. You could call this CYOA to the
power of Freedom as the author gives more control to the reader. But
the author maintains her say of that "objective existence". The author
decides what these choices result in. The narrative is shaped according
to this give-and-take. The story, then, is not the ending; it is the
path you take to get to that ending.
In describing my two most recent playthroughs, I summarized the plot
according to every action I took. If I simply stated the ending, they
would seem as strange and un-plotlike as your "food ending". My endings
were: the reviewer takes Galatea's hand and leaves, and Galatea tells
the reviewer to go away. It is the choices I made at each moment that
allows these to make sense.
In the first playthrough, I began asking questions and I noticed
Galatea had grown less cold and somewhat intrigued by me, so I decided
to see if I could bring out this potential fondness. I touched her
cheek, held her hand, and finally I tried to kiss her and the reviewer
and her left together. The result is a story of two vastly different
people unexpectedly finding something in each other they would like to
explore. Such a story is often told in any medium. The meaning I take
from this, though, is only possible as IF. I chose to "woo" Galatea not
because the game requires it to "win", but because I wanted to woo her.
I felt her interest in me and reacted with affection. I treat her as a
human here because, on some level, I am recognizing her as one even
though she is a program on a computer.
In the other playthrough, I tell Galatea that she is merely a piece of
AI, prod her on that topic, then reveal that who she believes to be her
maker has killed himself, and continue poking at her until she orders
me out, emotionally destroyed. The story here is the reviewer
psychologically tormenting this creature merely to see how she reacts.
Here, when finished, I am amazed by my coldness, the cruelty I am
capable of just because this is a game, just because there are no
consequences. Here is definite "meaning" in the sense of impact on the
player.
In a traditional book, the narrative affects the reader, but no matter
how the reader is affected, the narrative continues ignorant to it.
Here, how the text affects me determines how the story moves. Art
reflects Life reflects Art. To say this is not a narrative is
unjustified; it has beginning, middle, and ending. It is merely
nonlinear in the truest sense of that word.
Galatea will only disappoint you, then, if you want to be "told" a
story as one sits back and watches a movie rather than "be" a story as
one might in a traditional, table-top RPG. I do not pass judgment on
that attitude; many people would rather be "told" a story, maybe even
the majority of people or else role-playing and IF and CYOA would be
far more popular. In this sense, though, I wonder how you can be so
adverse to Galatea yet a fan of IF. Galatea seems the most thorough
advance towards "cooperative" storytelling. Perhaps you approach IF
differently than many of us. Perhaps you are not a fan of the
"cooperative" nature of IF, but some other part entirely. I am curious
to know what it is, then, that draws you to IF, beside "entertainment",
which is already perfectly clear and also easily available in other
medium. Perhaps it has some merit that I am yet to be aware of,
perfectly natural to you and others, but foreign to me.
I must also clarify, I do not believe nor suggest Galatea is a perfect
work, "open" or otherwise. You point out that it is unclear which of
your actions (what choices) caused the "food" ending. This is a genuine
complaint I believe I have heard even Emily Short mention.
A problem I noticed, myself, is that a question that should appear
relevant given the flow of the conversation is treated as though I am
suddenly moving onto a different topic altogether. For instance, in my
"wooing of Galatea" plot, after it is clear that she has grown
interested in the reviewer and I have touched her cheek and held her
hand, I ask her about love, expecting some comment toward her feelings
at this moment, but instead received only "That it makes people behave
like idiots. That it takes more than it gives". If this was the first
thing I asked her, this would be a logical response, but in this
context, it is jarring; she suddenly becomes inhuman. Unlike a CYOA
book, the possibilities are so large, Emily couldn't notice every
logical possibility and, thus, she didn't notice this one nor implement
it.
Are _ALL_ the plots "meaningful" then? I will concede that some of them
may not be as meaningful as others, not as emotional or impactful or
insightful. This is the nature of the beast, though. The author can't
foresee everything, and to be possible is not necessarily to be
important. And of course, garbage in, garbage out; if you treat it
lightly and do stupid things randomly, you will confuse Galatea, both
the character and the game, and not receive a very "meaingful" (if even
coherent) narrative. It may be impossible, without actually sitting
there like Socrates and talking with your audience, to perfect this
"cooperative" style. That said, Galatea is the best I have seen in
_approaching_ a perfectly "open" work.
>
> > The theme, then, could be said to be IF itself, the ways in which we as
> > humans interact with it and are humanized by this interaction or
> > dehumanized by it. Do we look past her bytes of code to be touched by
> > her strange impression of humanity, or do we treat her as a toy and
> > break her as we please?
>
> What *is* her impression of humanity? (just curious)
>
I don't mean "impression" in the sense that she has an idea of what
humanity is, as in "I get the impression of what you are saying". I
mean it in the sense that she is acting human, giving an interpretation
of life, as in the sense of "That famous writer believes he is doing
an impression of God when he creates."
> The *physical* setting in Hamlet may be minimalist, but the social,
> psychological (Hamlet's relationship to his mother, for instance, which
> Freudian critics have made a big deal of) and historical are not. And these
> are the important ones.
>
I have never heard of the concept of social setting before, but it
certainly seems sensible. In this case, Galatea has an even stronger
setting than I first imagined. The player's relationship to Galatea is
that of a reviewer to what may be an android or a statue come to life,
which is both social and psychological in nature. This is certainly
non-trivial in the sense that recognizing it affects the plot and the
dialogue. If Galatea and the player knew each other before hand, what
you observe to be Galatea's lack of interesting responses would be an
obvious defect. A subject in Galatea's position, recognizing herself as
a living creature but placed in an Art Show, would hardly be expected
to be cooperative and chatty with someone who is ostensibly an
interrogator (and all her responses are initially brusque. Ask her
about herself and she says, essentially, "Read the damn sign.") I would
argue, then, that Galatea's "bland and evasive" answers are faithful to
the textual world. (This does not mean you are necessarily wrong in
finding them boring; a game set in a tiny prison cell or a locked
coffin would textually be required to have little for the player to do,
but I doubt anyone would actually argue this made it any more
interesting. Perhaps the very set-up of Galatea is what puts you off,
as I suggest above.)
David Goldfarb
PJ <pete_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Jacek Pudlo wrote:
>> "PJ" <pete_...@hotmail.com> skrev i meddelandet
>> news:1144284080.3...@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
>> > goes by Zarf on this group
>>
>> Among his chummy friends, yes.
>
>Wrong. Plotkin signs virtually every post on this group, to anybody,
>"Inner Circle" or not, with "Z."
In fact he signs everything he posts to any Usenet group that way.
--
David Goldfarb |"In the fifties, people responded well to
gold...@ocf.berkeley.edu | authoritative disembodied voices."
gold...@csua.berkeley.edu | -- MST3K
Jacek Pudlo
news:e15iib$17mb$1...@agate.berkeley.edu...
> In article <1144321254.5...@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
> PJ <pete_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>Jacek Pudlo wrote:
>>> "PJ" <pete_...@hotmail.com> skrev i meddelandet
>>> news:1144284080.3...@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
>>> > Plotkin
>>> > goes by Zarf on this group
>>>
>>> Among his chummy friends, yes.
>>
>>Wrong. Plotkin signs virtually every post on this group, to anybody,
>>"Inner Circle" or not, with "Z."
>
> In fact he signs everything he posts to any Usenet group that way.
So the guy is infantile. Doesn't mean the reviewer has to be.
Jacek Pudlo
<The_Asy...@yahoo.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:1144401144.7...@t31g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
By "meaningful" I mean something that is both coherent and interesting. By
"interesting" I mean anything from insightful to witty and informative.
Striking similes and elegant metaphors are "interesting". Proust is
"interesting" because he has insightful things to say about art, sexual
jealousy and anti-Semitism in early 20th century France. Updike is
"interesting" because he has insightful things to say about marriage, sex
and religion in late 20th century America. Morrison is "interesting" because
she has insightful things to say about the internalization of racism within
the Afro-American community. All three present "interesting" social and
physical settings. These are the things I get out of reading these authors.
What do I get out of playing _Galatea_? I honestly don't know.
The "food" ending in _Galatea_ is only trivially coherent. There is
admittedly a link between the PC's questions and her reaction, but it's not
a particularly strong link. If I'm reading it correctly, Galatea chooses
mortality, which is a drastic and irrevocable decision. She does so, it
seems, prompted by nothing more than a few innocuous questions about food,
which is psychologically unconvincing. Is the "food" ending "interesting"? I
would say no, because I didn't get anything out of it. Is Short saying
something "interesting" about the nature of mortality? I don't think so.
I object to aesthetic subjectivism on two grounds.
1) It's wrong. Objective value judgements *are* possible in art. _Girl with
a Pearl Earring_ *is* a great painting. Whoever says the opposite is simply
wrong.
2) It's not an interesting way of approaching art. If beauty is in the eye
of the beholder, then what's the point of arguing about it? If you say that
_Girl with a Pearl Earring_ is crap, and I say it's not, well, that's the
end of our "discussion."
You seem to be proposing a mild form of subjectivism, so I'm not sure to
what extent these objections apply to your argument.
> An open work, in the sense I refer to it, is like a CYOA book. In a
> perfect CYOA book (and I have never seen one) every choice would be
> meaningful, by which I mean it would alter the plot significantly so
> that the book contains not one single story but a different story for
> every possible combination of choices. The story the reader discovers
> relies on their choice at each divergence, their "subjective reading",
> or what they "bring to the game". The "objective existence" is obvious
> in a CYOA, you must admit, yet it can only be approached subjectively.
> Reading it in the order of the pages (the only way to approach it
> without subjective thought) will have no meaning. The reader must
> subjectively choose a path, choose the correct reading for him or
> herself. The story is not the sum of all sections written by the
> author; the story is not every page in the book. The story is defined
> by the reader.
Surely, in CYOA the story is defined by the author? The player/reader is
choosing a path, a variation of the main story, not defining the story.
Also, choosing a path and choosing a reading is not the same thing. I'm not
sure if this is what you're saying, but if you are, you're wrong.
> Galatea, as opposed to Adventure or a similar work of IF, is like a
> CYOA book. The only difference is the author provides smaller static
> texts between each divergence so that the effects of each choice are
> subtler. Also, the number of choices available at every given
> divergence are exponentially greater. You could call this CYOA to the
> power of Freedom as the author gives more control to the reader. But
> the author maintains her say of that "objective existence". The author
> decides what these choices result in. The narrative is shaped according
> to this give-and-take. The story, then, is not the ending; it is the
> path you take to get to that ending.
Would you say that the path of the "food" ending is non-trivial, then?
> In describing my two most recent playthroughs, I summarized the plot
> according to every action I took. If I simply stated the ending, they
> would seem as strange and un-plotlike as your "food ending". My endings
> were: the reviewer takes Galatea's hand and leaves, and Galatea tells
> the reviewer to go away. It is the choices I made at each moment that
> allows these to make sense.
I believe the "food" ending can be reached within six moves, perhaps less,
but I could be wrong. Not much of a path.
I never learned to appreciate Henry James. The guy bores the hell out of me.
But several authors I respect say the man was a genius. I therefore presume
the failure is mine, not James's. Perhaps Emily Short is like Henry James,
too subtle, ephemeral and sophisticated for my crude tastes. You make
several interesting points about _Galatea_, so this is definitely a
possibility. Having said that, I still don't see a "meaningful" (coherent +
interesting) story emerging from _Galatea_, no matter how I interact with
her. This is not the case with _The Ambassadors_ or _The Turn Of The Screw_.
I didn't particularly enjoy them, but I can see how other, more patient or
sophisticated, readers might. I have a feeling you're reading in too much
into _Galatea_.
As to my vision of IF, I would have to say it's a mixture of puzzle-oriented
exploration and story. I like deep implementation layers. I also like
distinctive non-trivial responses to SMELL, TOUCH and TASTE; I like my games
to have a sensuous feel. I see puzzles as pacing devices subordinate to the
story. The quality of a puzzle depends not on it being fiendishly difficult,
but on how well it is integrated within the setting and how effectively it
propels the story forward. The exploration bit should be a form of tourism.
The world I'm exploring should have an existence of its own. A historically
and culturally accurate setting, depending on how it's presented, could be
fun. Exploring a wealthy, late 19th century Jewish household from the
perspective of a terrified, semi-obese twelve-year-old Jewish boy is
potentially fun, depending on how it's done. Exploring a faceless amnesiac
wizard's memory palace is never going to be fun. The perspective from which
I'm exploring the world should be the subjective angle of the PC, therefore
the PC must be well-defined, someone with a history and a clear agenda.
_Sting Of The Wasp_ is fairly close to the ideal, and so is _All Things
Devours_ and _All Roads_.
Perhaps our different readings of _Galatea_ are based on different
presumptions. I presumed the game was about having a conversation that would
gradually unravel a story. You presumed _Galatea_ was an exercise in complex
manipulation. It would seem your presumption is closer to the truth.
Andy Leighton
Gosh that H.H. Munro, wasn't he infantile too? What was wrong with
Hector or even using his initials. Saki isn't even a proper name.
--
Andy Leighton => an...@azaal.plus.com
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials"
- Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_
Jacek Pudlo
news:slrne3cn62...@azaal.plus.com...
> On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 11:35:44 GMT, Jacek Pudlo <ja...@jacek.jacek> wrote:
>> "David Goldfarb" <gold...@OCF.Berkeley.EDU> skrev i meddelandet
>> news:e15iib$17mb$1...@agate.berkeley.edu...
>>> In article <1144321254.5...@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
>>> PJ <pete_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>Jacek Pudlo wrote:
>>>>> "PJ" <pete_...@hotmail.com> skrev i meddelandet
>>>>> news:1144284080.3...@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
>>>>> > Plotkin
>>>>> > goes by Zarf on this group
>>>>>
>>>>> Among his chummy friends, yes.
>>>>
>>>>Wrong. Plotkin signs virtually every post on this group, to anybody,
>>>>"Inner Circle" or not, with "Z."
>>>
>>> In fact he signs everything he posts to any Usenet group that way.
>>
>> So the guy is infantile. Doesn't mean the reviewer has to be.
>
> Gosh that H.H. Munro, wasn't he infantile too? What was wrong with
> Hector or even using his initials. Saki isn't even a proper name.
How about referring to the author as "Billie" in an essay on _Hamlet_? Okay,
that one could be ironic, but "Zarf" isn't. It's falsely chummy.
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <1144321254.5...@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
> PJ <pete_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >Jacek Pudlo wrote:
> >> "PJ" <pete_...@hotmail.com> skrev i meddelandet
> >> news:1144284080.3...@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> >> > Plotkin
> >> > goes by Zarf on this group
> >>
> >> Among his chummy friends, yes.
> >
> >Wrong. Plotkin signs virtually every post on this group, to anybody,
> >"Inner Circle" or not, with "Z."
>
> In fact he signs everything he posts to any Usenet group that way.
I look in on this thread and find that Jacek is now attacking me
because of how I sign my messages? Good grief. Go back to insulting my
writing style; that at least might make people think you're taking
this stuff seriously.
--Z ("real name is at the top of this post, in case you missed it")
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
If the Bush administration hasn't shipped you to Syria for interrogation, it's
for one reason: they don't feel like it. Not because you're innocent.
steve....@gmail.com
> Jacek is now attacking me
> because of how I sign my messages? Good grief. Go back to insulting my
> writing style; that at least might make people think you're taking
> this stuff seriously.
I like your writing style, Z. Don't let him get you down!
I normally don't like people cultivating their own nicknames, like
Sting or The Edge or Wizard. But somehow Zarf sounds so goofy that I
don't mind. So don't you feel bad about that either!
Jacek Pudlo
news:1144380150....@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> In fact, I hate Ulysses for much the same reason I
> can't play most of Andrew's games: mere puzzles do nothing but
> celebrate their own cleverness and that of persons smart enough to
> solve them. Not my bag, yo.
"Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He
liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices
fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled
mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented
urine."
Don't you see that you hate Joyce because you are Leopold Bloom? You are the
uncouth, uncultured, proud-of-his-ignorance petty bourgeois that Joyce was
writing about. Only Bloom was a Jew living in Ireland -- an Odysseus among
Cyclops. You're not even that.
>> Seems that kissing men's lips is on your mind a lot, James. :)
>
> Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me. Keep your eye on the prize!
> It's not *my* lips you want; it's those of your father, manifested in
> Andrew.
If you gonna talk like a bitch, I'm gonna slap you like a bitch, Mr. Bloom.
ems...@mindspring.com
> For instance, in my
> "wooing of Galatea" plot, after it is clear that she has grown
> interested in the reviewer and I have touched her cheek and held her
> hand, I ask her about love, expecting some comment toward her feelings
> at this moment, but instead received only "That it makes people behave
> like idiots. That it takes more than it gives". If this was the first
> thing I asked her, this would be a logical response, but in this
> context, it is jarring; she suddenly becomes inhuman. Unlike a CYOA
> book, the possibilities are so large, Emily couldn't notice every
> logical possibility and, thus, she didn't notice this one nor implement
> it.
Yes, this is accurate. One of the weaknesses of the piece, on a
structural level, is that it doesn't handle internal representation of
states very well; if the underlying model were better designed, it
would be easier to anticipate the variety of situations that might
arise, and handle them more systematically. There's tracking of certain
mood variables and (more or less orthogonal to that) tracking of
whether or not certain facts have been revealed in the conversation,
but each individual topic comes with a set of nested if statements to
determine which of the snippets of text I wrote is the most appropriate
response under the circumstances. A design for this kind of system that
requires the designer to have thought of every logical possibility is
ipso facto flawed, no matter how diligent the designer tries to be (and
I'm not claiming perfection on that score). I can (now) think of some
better ways to approach this problem, but they hadn't occurred to me at
the time. The modeling flaws also made it harder for me to articulate
back to the player why his actions had the results they did.
A second problem: I was trying both to design for a single experience
and to make the game responsive to things that a player might try on a
second (or third, or tenth) playing, and this made it extra-hard to
guess what the player's intentions might be in any given action. On an
early play-through, it's probably wrong to assume (for instance) that
the player is deliberately trying to overcome Galatea's distrust of
physical pleasure, which arises, at least in one set of readings, from
the discomfort of her creation, the way her creator talked to and
treated her, and her creator's own fairly tortured sexuality. So the
food ending Jacek describes might not make nearly as much sense, or, at
least, not be meaningful in the way I intended, without the additional
background of those other experiences. (Whether it would be any good
then either is another question, but at least it would have the context
it was meant to have.) At the same time, I wanted it to be possible for
the player to detect things about Galatea's personality and return to
the piece to explore these, if he wanted. The problem is that at that
point the intention of the player goes beyond the ability of the
program to detect or react to: it can't know whether this is the first
time you've started the game, or the fiftieth; whether you're pushing
the food issue because you see it as a possible way to break through
this reticence in her character, or because the interface is
frustrating and "food" happens to be the only keyword you can find that
does anything. Lacking other clues, I tended to assume that the
intention was the most interesting one possible, on the grounds that an
overreactive piece would still be more engaging than an underreactive
one. On the other hand, there were also a lot of possible intentions
that I did not imagine or provide for. So this gives you cases where
the piece ends abruptly and inexplicably because it thinks you're
trying something you aren't, and cases where it utterly fails to
respond to a perfectly good plan.
Still, the problem of working out player intention fascinates me. It's
not much of an issue in a game with a single set goal: in Adventure the
player is presumably trying to solve the puzzles and win, end of story.
But any time one wants to introduce a branching narrative, this becomes
a problem, and I can see only a handful of approaches to it, though
there are probably more I haven't considered. One is to narrow the
options and articulate them so clearly that any action has only one
reasonable meaning within the context of the game. "Slouching Towards
Bedlam" did this pretty well, I think, and yet without making it
obvious that that was what was going on.
The second is to present the player with a choice but leave the outcome
of the choice essentially unwritten: at the final move of the game, the
player is asked to do one thing or another; the choice (because of the
previous events) is likely to have some results the player can guess
at; but these results are not written out in full, nor is the player
character's reaction to them described. In this case, there's no chance
of the game misinterpreting the player as such, but the results can
also feel kind of unsatisfying, depending on how good the set-up is and
how prepared the player is to fill in the ambiguous bits. It's a kind
of Lady-and-the-Tiger trick, which works sometimes and not others,
except that I think it slightly more legitimate and less gimmicky when
the question is not "what did the princess decide?" but "how would you
feel about the thing that is going to happen next?" I've played with
this once or twice -- Bronze does something similar in one ending --
and several of zarf's games do it as well. But of the possibilities
it's the one I like least.
The third option is, in essence, to ask the player to clarify what he
intends. There are various ways to do this. (Victor Gijsbers' Spring
Thing work "The Baron" does very interesting things with player
intention on this level -- in rather more depth than anything I've
attempted -- and anyone who cares about this problem should give it a
try.) In conversation, one approach is to force the player to pick a
line of dialogue as well as a topic of conversation. I think there's
some value in this, but that approach also loses some of the fluidity
of interaction because conversation is necessarily slower and more
cumbersome, requiring two stages of input for every snippet of NPC
response; there's less likelihood that you'll wind up with a purely
nonsensical response, but at the same time it's also less likely that
you'll hit those moments of pure magic where the game seems to
understand perfectly what you wanted.
Moreover, even this is only partial, because it asks the player what
exactly he wants to say, but not what it is he's trying to accomplish
by saying it -- and the latter information might affect the way the
player character's reactions are described. A particularly common
objection to "Galatea" is the way she reacts to early questions about
sex, on the grounds that players felt scolded by the game's assumptions
about what they were asking and why. This is a case where I selected
one interpretation of the player (and characterization of the PC) out
of a number of equally valid possibilities because I thought that my
interpretation was the one that had the most relevance to the rest of
the game's content -- but there's no reason that a player should know
that, and quite a few people were surprised or even angered by the
response. Much later it is possible to seduce her, but this requires a
considerable building of trust, first; I don't think there's ever a
point where one can get her to have a not-charged, friendly chat about
sexuality. Whatever she may look like, in experiential terms she's
essentially pubescent, neither comfortable with the idea nor equipped
with any personal context in which to discuss these things; her only
prior experience of sexuality is of some attraction toward her maker,
who, shall we say, did not react in a healthy way. I'm not sure >ASK
EMOTIONALLY ABUSED 10-YEAR-OLD ORPHAN ABOUT SEX would elicit a deep or
healthy response either.
Reframing the whole work in terms of large-scale rather than atomic
actions -- SEDUCE GALATEA, say, or EMBARRASS GALATEA, or CONSOLE
GALATEA -- might be another way to shift interaction into the realm of
intention rather than performance, but it raises a whole other set of
problems, to do with modeling, pacing, providing any challenge or
substance when the player is not required to spell out how he does what
he does, etc. Maybe if one had a syntax like ATTEMPT TO OFFEND GALATEA
BY ASKING ABOUT HER MOLE... but this gets fairly cumbersome, and not
all intentions are open to equally straightforward expression.
Even with all these possibilities considered, I'm not sure how one
handles the case where the player might intend something by a question
on the third playing that he wouldn't intend -- and *couldn't* intend
-- on the first; you don't want to ask, exactly, because that gives the
scenario away, but how do you clarify? Even a system that used a file
to keep a running summary of the player's playthroughs would not handle
the case of someone replaying on a different device, say. The argument
Steve Breslin has offered elsewhere is that it's a mistake to require
the player to replay IF in order to get a sense of his own agency in
the narrative; I can see the virtue of this argument, but I also think
on the other hand that one wants meaningful replay to be possible if
the player does want to try it, and so I am still concerned to cover
possibilities that someone would not think of on the first play, but
might try on subsequent playings in the light of what he had
discovered.
Anyway -- that's more an essay on the underlying issues than it is a
defense of Galatea, which is flawed in a variety of ways. In some cases
because I didn't really know what I was doing and only came to
understand the problems such a work posed after I'd written it, and in
some cases because it could have been more deeply written, and I lacked
the time or the artistic maturity or the talents or whatever to do
better -- there are certainly parts that I wince at now. The process of
writing it was kind of a blur, really; most of the dialogue was written
in the period of a week or two, and at the time (though I certainly had
themes in mind I wanted to draw out) I saw the dialogue-writing partly
as a critical mass problem: is it possible to write *enough* dialogue
for *enough* conversation topics that she will stop seeming like a
ten-entry switch statement (as most NPCs in IF prior to that did, to my
mind) and begin to display something resembling a personality? So even
what mood-modeling and dialogue-state-modeling it has was retrofitted.
I have backed off from writing anything quite that open since, because
the openness of it raises so many problems to which I have only partial
solutions, and have been experimenting more in a middle territory,
where the range of possible outcomes is more restricted but more
thoroughly implemented.
I do also sympathize with the argument that Galatea should not be
touted as flagship IF to outsiders. It's not designed for that purpose,
for starters, but was written for a minicomp for puzzleless, non-linear
work -- and one that tended to get the most attention from people who
were not only not novice players, but also had a theoretical interest
in the boundaries of IF as medium. I'm conscious that my work in
general does get recommended to new IF players more indiscriminately
than I myself think sensible. There's only so much I can do about this,
but it does raise the impulse to suppress, or at least not promote,
works that were chiefly experimental (Best of Three, for instance); are
buggy in ways I now have no way of fixing (City of Secrets, Pytho's
Mask); or were jokes/trivial works/deliberately aimed at a specialized
audience to start with (much of the rest of what I've written). Galatea
at least has the advantage of being, to the best of my knowledge, free
of major bugs, relatively narrow as to command set (and therefore easy
to write instructions for), and not terribly difficult to guide to some
result -- even if, as we have seen, that result is variably effective.
rpresser
> But if truth is to be told no one cares more about IF than I do.
ITYM "If truth is to be told, no one in IF cares more about me (Jacek)
than I (Jacek) do"
passerby
Jacek Pudlo wrote:
> "PJ" <pete_...@hotmail.com> skrev i meddelandet
> news:1144321254.5...@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
> > Jacek Pudlo wrote:
> >> But there's a bigger issue at
> >> stake here.
>
> I think a reasonable ambition for an IF author is to reach the level of a
> good historical or sci fi novel. Not profound and complex like _Ulysses_ or
> _Der Zauberberg_, but certainly thought provoking, and first and foremost
> fun and witty and entertaining. I think Devlin, Cadre and Ingold have that
> ambition and come pretty close to fulfilling it. I don't think _Shade_ or
> _The Dreamhold_ were written with the ambition to entertain.
Haven't played _The Dreamhold_, but in what way does _Shade_ lack "the
ambition to entertain"? Its a great little game with a story that
revolves around a world-shattering twist in the player's concept of
what's happening. It's only failing, really, is that it is by nature,
another example of IF railroading its players.
If you need a comparison from other media, the Futurama episode "The
Sting" uses the same basic concept and is also great. Maybe not great
literature, though it is probably in the top 5 percent of all TV ever
made, but it shows that _Shade_, and therefore IF as a medium, can hold
up against other, more established forms of media.
crow...@gmail.com
>that one could be ironic, but "Zarf" isn't. It's falsely chummy.
I look forward to your next review of Mr. Andrew Plotkin, Esq., Jacek.
Because you don't want to have any false chumminess, and I'd certainly
say he deserves the honorary.
Incidentally, I seem to recall reviews of 'The Bard of Avon'. Clearly,
all those who used the term must have been personal friends of the man,
striving for false chumminess years after their death. Also, all those
who referred to Mr. Christopher Marlowe as 'Kit'. You'd better get
cracking-I'm pretty sure there are an awful lot of reviewers out there
who have used nicknames or nom de plumes in their reviews.
Aris Katsaris
to William Clinton as "Bill Clinton", not in serious essays. Nobody
should *ever* refer to Pelé as Pelé if they wrote a book on the
history of football. It's infantile and "falsely chummy" to use
commonly used nicknames.
I dislike you Jacek Pudlo for constantly trying to do in volume of
argument what you can't do in quality thereof. Simply trying to weary
the opposition out is ungentlemanlike. Even if you win it ends up
meaning nothing other than that people who have wider interests can
only expend in arguing with you a tiny percentage of the time that you
have in waging your jealous and obsessive war against Emily Short and
Andrew Plotkin and pretty much everyone else who has outshined you.
Also dislike you for having lied about me of course.
-Aris Katsaris
Jacek Pudlo
news:1144497519....@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> >How about referring to the author as "Billie" in an essay on _Hamlet_?
> >Okay,
>>that one could be ironic, but "Zarf" isn't. It's falsely chummy.
>
> I look forward to your next review of Mr. Andrew Plotkin, Esq., Jacek.
> Because you don't want to have any false chumminess, and I'd certainly
> say he deserves the honorary.
So why do you people feel the need to justify yourselves? If the points I'm
making are so ridiculous, why ridicule them further? I'll tell you why. It's
because conformity is the worst of all crimes. It's worse than crimes
against God, country and humanity because it is essentially a crime against
yourself. The traitor and the liar can remain true to themselves while lying
to others, even at the scaffold they can retain dignity, but the conformist
must lie to himself. No sane and intelligent person can honestly claim that
Galatea has interesting things to say, or that unraveling the profound
symbolisms of _The Dreamhold_ is intellectually rewarding. If they honestly
say so, then they are lying to themselves. And every time you do that, every
time you lie to yourself, you die a little.
I'm the fool who yells "The Emperor is naked!" when everybody else is
pretending he's not. That's why you must always belittle me; you must shoot
the messenger before you read the message, because reading it would be too
painful. You say I'm jealous. Tell me *what* I'm jealous of. The witty and
clever dialogue in _Galatea_? The metaphors in _The Dreamhold_?
I wish that some day a respected literary critic would take a look at
_Galatea_ and _The Dreamhold_ and tell us if they are good fiction, which is
after all what they call themselves. He or she would probably use the same
arguments as I do, only then you wouldn't be able to shoot the messenger.
Jason
"Jacek Pudlo" <ja...@jacek.jacek> wrote in message
news:qTRZf.51718$d5.2...@newsb.telia.net...
> I wish that some day a respected literary critic would take a look at
> _Galatea_ and _The Dreamhold_ and tell us if they are good fiction, which
is
> after all what they call themselves. He or she would probably use the same
> arguments as I do, only then you wouldn't be able to shoot the messenger.
I think Jacek raises kind of a neat point here: what would a respected
literary critic think of IF (not Galatea or The Dreamhold specifically. I
haven't played Dreamhold and didn't get very far in Galatea so I really
don't know where I'd stand on the current subject)? We can probably all
agree that IF is pretty different from static fiction in a lot of ways, but
if a professional critic could get past those differences and just look at
the prose, plot, characterization, etc. I wonder what they'd say. I'm
thinking I'd probably put Photopia forward, both because Adam is a
professional writer and because I think it's a pretty amazing piece. Does
anyone know if a professional critic has looked at IF before? Do you think
it would be a good idea if they did?
Jason
Aris Katsaris
>to others,
Perhaps some traitors and liars can, but the vast majority thereof
don't seem able to tell the fictions from the truths anymore.
The conformist lies to himself? If a fish proclaims itself a fish like
all the other fish, that's not a lie, that's a truth. The nonconformist
fish that proclaims itself an owl -- *that's* the fish that lies to
itself
*and* to others.
If a person proclaims that he loves a book because he genuinely
loves it, that's still a truth even if that love was subconsciously
created
by the opinion of others.
I disliked "The Dreamhold", the little I played of it -- I found it
tiresome.
I loved Galatea and found it greatly rewarding. If you can't believe
the
sincerity of that statement, then it's you who are lying to yourself,
not
I.
>I'm the fool who yells "The Emperor is naked!" when everybody else is
>pretending he's not.
No, you're the fool that yells "The emperor is *ugly*" when everybody
else
have different and varied opinions on how beautiful or ugly he is. Then
instead of accepting the possibility of alternate and subjective
estimations
of the beauty (or lack thereof) of the emperor, you become convinced
(by lying to yourself) that a;ll the rest of us are pretending.
One of these days you'll need to learn that though facts like nakedness
are absolute, opinions on the merit of creative works and the talent of
their authors are subjective.
> You say I'm jealous. Tell me *what* I'm jealous of. The witty and
> clever dialogue in _Galatea_? The metaphors in _The Dreamhold_?
Jealous of people's admiration for Emily and Andrew as the creators
of more rewarding and enjoyable works than you've ever written. You
may disagree with their popularity, but nonetheless they have it, and
you
do not.
-Aris Katsaris
Jacek Pudlo
news:1144527901.5...@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> >The traitor and the liar can remain true to themselves while lying
>>to others,
>
> Perhaps some traitors and liars can, but the vast majority thereof
> don't seem able to tell the fictions from the truths anymore.
>
> The conformist lies to himself? If a fish proclaims itself a fish like
> all the other fish, that's not a lie, that's a truth. The nonconformist
> fish that proclaims itself an owl -- *that's* the fish that lies to
> itself
> *and* to others.
The point is that I'm not a fish like all the other little fishes -- I'm a
shark. And I never pretended to be anything else. Plotkin and Short, on the
other hand, are little fishes pretending to be Neptunes.
> If a person proclaims that he loves a book because he genuinely
> loves it, that's still a truth even if that love was subconsciously
> created
> by the opinion of others.
Either you didn't think this through properly, or you're a Natural Born
Conformist; because you've just equated love for a book with peer group
pressure. Is this the case with your love for _Galatea_? Was it
"subconsciously created by the opinions of others"? What if the opinions of
others were in turn subconsciously created by the opinions of others? What
if this whole _Galatea_ thing is one huge avalanche of people brainlessly
repeating other people?
Did the mask slide from your face because you were upset and weren't
thinking properly? Or is your conformity so deeply rooted you don't even see
yourself for what you are?
> I disliked "The Dreamhold", the little I played of it -- I found it
> tiresome.
> I loved Galatea and found it greatly rewarding. If you can't believe
> the
> sincerity of that statement, then it's you who are lying to yourself,
> not
> I.
>
>>I'm the fool who yells "The Emperor is naked!" when everybody else is
>>pretending he's not.
>
> No, you're the fool that yells "The emperor is *ugly*" when everybody
> else
> have different and varied opinions on how beautiful or ugly he is. Then
> instead of accepting the possibility of alternate and subjective
> estimations
> of the beauty (or lack thereof) of the emperor, you become convinced
> (by lying to yourself) that a;ll the rest of us are pretending.
My assumption is that objective aesthetic value judgements are possible. If
they are not, what exactly are we discussing?
> One of these days you'll need to learn that though facts like nakedness
> are absolute, opinions on the merit of creative works and the talent of
> their authors are subjective.
This explains why you love _Galatea_, the ultimate in subjective standards,
the game that is *exactly* whatever you like it to be. You're the second
person in this thread to imply this.
>> You say I'm jealous. Tell me *what* I'm jealous of. The witty and
>> clever dialogue in _Galatea_? The metaphors in _The Dreamhold_?
>
> Jealous of people's admiration for Emily and Andrew as the creators
> of more rewarding and enjoyable works than you've ever written. You
> may disagree with their popularity, but nonetheless they have it, and
> you
> do not.
You are unable to understand what I'm trying to accomplish because you are
judging me by your own standards. You ask yourself, What is the highest
good? and your answer is, To be popular, to be liked by others. Seen through
your eyes, the only rational reason why someone would persevere in
criticising someone else's work is because he is envious of their
popularity. Popularity is your only currency, the only measure by which you
judge others. Not only does your reasoning reflect on the quality of your
own character, but it is also seriously flawed. It is flawed because, as
anyone will tell you, the effect my activities have had on my popularity is
the exact opposite. I have become the most *dis*liked individual in ra*f's
history, and I'm fully aware of that, and, most importantly, I'm doing
absolutely nothing to ammend that.
Aris Katsaris
>shark.
More lying to yourself.
>And I never pretended to be anything else. Plotkin and Short, on the
>other hand, are little fishes pretending to be Neptunes.
I thought you were accusing the *rest of us* of pretending that Plotkin
and Short were Neptunes?
Which came first, their pretense at godhood, or our elevation of them
to that point?
> Is this the case with your love for _Galatea_? Was it
> "subconsciously created by the opinions of others"?
Not to my knowledge, since I played it IIRC before I read any opinions
about it.
> My assumption is that objective aesthetic value judgements are possible. If
> they are not, what exactly are we discussing?
We are discussing the effect of art on people. A work is beautiful for
certain
people if it provides them with the sense of beauty. A work is ugly for
them if
it provides them the sense of ugliness. A work is fun *for* them, if it
amuses
them. Not all works manage to evoke in all people the same emotions to
the same degree.
>You are unable to understand what I'm trying to accomplish because you are
>judging me by your own standards. You ask yourself, What is the highest
>good? and your answer is, To be popular, to be liked by others.
No, Jacek, I've never sought popularity, and I've never felt really
comfortable
whenever I do get acknowledgement by others. So all this argument of
yours
is rot.
>It is flawed because, as
>anyone will tell you, the effect my activities have had on my popularity is
>the exact opposite. I have become the most *dis*liked individual in ra*f's
>history, and I'm fully aware of that, and, most importantly, I'm doing
>absolutely nothing to ammend that.
You have a point there, so I'll correct myself: You aren't seeking
popularity
exactly, you are simply seeking its bastard sibling "fame", whether
good
or bad. Jealous of their fame, not their popularity.
-Aris Katsaris
Gene Wirchenko
[snip]
>Oh, my, no. I hate puzzles more difficult than shoe-tying in the
>incoherence of early morning. "So Far" would be like unanesthetized
Wow! IF's rope problem really gets around.
[snip]
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
Jon Ingold
> ... Is this the case with your love for _Galatea_? Was it
> others were in turn subconsciously created by the opinions of others?
You're suggesting that people don't like Galatea, they just *think* they
do because someone told them to?
No-one wonder you find these discussions frustrating.
jon
Gene Wirchenko
[snip]
>I look in on this thread and find that Jacek is now attacking me
>because of how I sign my messages? Good grief. Go back to insulting my
>writing style; that at least might make people think you're taking
>this stuff seriously.
I have been on the Net for a little over ten years. In one Web
forum, one twit took to atacking me supposedly because of the way that
I sign my posts. Some others joined in, some going so far as to claim
offense for how I sign my posts. Small things for small minds.
>--Z ("real name is at the top of this post, in case you missed it")
Do you get Zarf from Fred Saberhagen's "Empire of the East"? A
more glorious choice is certainly possible.
Zarf was the junior of two wizards serving an evil satrap. He
died of a lightning strike in chapter eleven of book one (of three),
so he obviously could not have been all that important. He had a
toad-like familiar.
You have done better than your analog, but why not drop the
disgusting familiar? If you are going to keep him, at the least, give
the thing a name other than "Pudlo". Perhaps, "Puddles"?
</sarcasm style=dripping>Warning: the following close may be
offensive to some.</sarcasm>
Andrew Plotkin
>
> Do you get Zarf from Fred Saberhagen's "Empire of the East"? A
> more glorious choice is certainly possible.
No, but when I read that book I had to laugh.
> Zarf was the junior of two wizards serving an evil satrap. He
> died of a lightning strike in chapter eleven of book one (of three),
> so he obviously could not have been all that important.
...Or all that bright.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
If the Bush administration hasn't thrown you in military prison without trial,
it's for one reason: they don't feel like it. Not because you're an American.
Ben A L Jemmett
> I have been on the Net for a little over ten years. In one Web
> forum, one twit took to atacking me supposedly because of the way that
> I sign my posts. Some others joined in, some going so far as to claim
> offense for how I sign my posts. Small things for small minds.
Aha! I *knew* your signature looked familiar on that web forum, but
couldn't place where I knew it from...
--
Regards,
Ben A L Jemmett.
(http://www.jemmett-software.co.uk/, http://www.deltasoft.com/)
Jacek Pudlo
> >The point is that I'm not a fish like all the other little fishes -- I'm
> >a
>>shark.
>
> More lying to yourself.
Speaking of honesty in IF:
The difference between _Galatea_ and _Kallisti_ is not the difference
between success and failure, but the difference between a dishonest failure
and an honest one. _Kallisti_ tries to tell a good interactive story and
fails miserably, but we can at least say *why* it fails. It fails mainly
because the plot and characterisation are crude and the moral it conveys is
not worth conveying. _Galatea_, on the other hand, has no plot, precious
little characterisation -- which is amazing, considering how it revolves
around a single NPC -- no discernible moral, and a dialogue that can't be
described otherwise than vacuous. It fails not because it tries and doesn't
succeed, like _Kallisti_, but because it doesn't even try. _Galatea_ is an
excercise in empty manipulation masquerading as IF. The conversation is not
about what the NPC has to say -- because she has virtually nothing
substantive to say -- but about obliquely manipulating her into one of the
endings.
So what is honesty, then? _Photopia_ is an honest attempt at story-driven
IF, _The Muldoon Legacy_ is an honest puzzle romp, and _Sting of the Wasp_
is an honest attempt at a mixture of story and puzzles.
>> My assumption is that objective aesthetic value judgements are possible.
>> If
>> they are not, what exactly are we discussing?
[snip of aesthetic subjectivism]
Do you realise how banal your views on art are? Do you realise that by
saying those things, you are precluding any form of meaningful discussion
about art?
Subjectivism is something people resort to only when they are unable to
rationally defend their views.
Okay, let's bring this down to earth. You said you loved _Galatea_. Why? Did
you find the characterisation interesting? Was the dialogue clever and
witty? Were Galatea's reactions psychologically convincing?
> You have a point there, so I'll correct myself: You aren't seeking
> popularity
> exactly, you are simply seeking its bastard sibling "fame", whether
> good
> or bad. Jealous of their fame, not their popularity.
You sound like a scientologist defending the Great Faith. Smear the critic,
ignore the facts. And anyway, "fame" is kind of pompous in the context of
IF. Try "notoriety" next time.
Aris Katsaris
> little characterisation -- which is amazing, considering how it revolves
> around a single NPC -- no discernible moral, and a dialogue that can't be
> described otherwise than vacuous. It fails not because it tries and doesn't
> succeed, like _Kallisti_, but because it doesn't even try. _Galatea_ is an
> excercise in empty manipulation masquerading as IF. The conversation is not
> about what the NPC has to say -- because she has virtually nothing
> substantive to say -- but about obliquely manipulating her into one of the
> endings.
Or to put it in another way, Galatea is neither a goal-driven game nor
a
specific story, it's an experience of exploration, as are indeed most
of
Emily Short's works.
You seem to think that this makes them inherently inferior, when on the
other hand it's the thing I most like in her works. Which is why
replayability is one of their main characteristics.
Would games like "The Sims" be equally well seen as failures to you?
Indeed all games that lack a specific direction/target to drive the
player
toward, but rather largely depend on the player doing whatever he wants
within the system of the constraints/possibilities they provide?
> Do you realise how banal your views on art are? Do you realise that by
> saying those things, you are precluding any form of meaningful discussion
> about art?
If by "meaningful discussion" you mean qualitative judgments about what
is "good" and what is "bad", it severely weakens such discussions,
yeah.
It doesn't however at all preclude discussion about how best an artist
can convey the emotions an ideas he/she wants to convey to the
largest amount of people possible.
> Okay, let's bring this down to earth. You said you loved _Galatea_.
> Why?
Because of the replayability involved. It satisfied the exploratory
need,
providing more freedom in PC-NPC interaction that we've never seen
before. The idea of exploring a *person* is also far more intriguing to
me than merely exploring a location.
-Aris Katsaris