Where Have All the Authors Gone?
Jim Aikin
a free presentation that will introduce people to IF -- playing it,
but more especially writing their own. At some point, doubt crept in.
I started thinking, if writing IF is such a cool thing to turn people
on to, why aren't more of the people who try it sticking with it and
going on to greater and greater heights of accomplishment?
To find out whether my perspective was, perhaps, even more jaundiced
than it usually is, I did a little informal survey (see
http://midiguru.wordpress.com/author-author/). The short version of
the results: I was able to identify only three well-respected authors
(Emily Short, Jon Ingold, Eric Eve) who have continued to release new
work with any kind of regularity.
The fact that so many authors who have done good work in IF seem
subsequently to have lost interest in the medium is perplexing. I'd be
interested to read speculations (either here or on the blog page)
about why -- or whether -- this is the case.
--Jim Aikin
Andrew Plotkin
>
> To find out whether my perspective was, perhaps, even more jaundiced
> than it usually is, I did a little informal survey (see
> http://midiguru.wordpress.com/author-author/). The short version of
> the results: I was able to identify only three well-respected authors
> (Emily Short, Jon Ingold, Eric Eve) who have continued to release new
> work with any kind of regularity.
>
> The fact that so many authors who have done good work in IF seem
> subsequently to have lost interest in the medium is perplexing.
Hm. I have a theory.
No, wait, you covered it in your blog post. You're looking for people
who work on one form steadily for more than five years for no money.
Turns out there aren't that many! Okay, next question.
Or you could ask people what they've been working on instead of IF.
Graham Nelson? Some project or other. Me? A few things -- I like
variety.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Jim Aikin
>
> > The fact that so many authors who have done good work in IF seem
> > subsequently to have lost interest in the medium is perplexing.
>
> Hm. I have a theory.
>
> No, wait, you covered it in your blog post. You're looking for people
> who work on one form steadily for more than five years for no money.
> Turns out there aren't that many! Okay, next question.
>
> Or you could ask people what they've been working on instead of IF.
> Graham Nelson? Some project or other. Me? A few things -- I like
> variety.
I certainly wasn't trying to imply that you or anyone else is a
slacker! Reading between the lines, it seems possible you were
interpreting what I wrote in that manner, so quite likely I wasn't
clear enough.
Rather, what I'm pondering is why (or whether) I ought to be
recommending IF authorship as a hobby to anybody, when so many of
those who have explored this hobby subsequently seem to lose interest
in it.
--JA
S. John Ross
> Rather, what I'm pondering is why (or whether) I ought to be
> recommending IF authorship as a hobby to anybody, when so many of
> those who have explored this hobby subsequently seem to lose interest
> in it.
Same as with many hobbies, though, really. Hobbies, unlike passive
entertainments, take effort, and it's often the case that the effort
is larger than it seems at first ... I think a lot of IF writers plow
through their first project, and then look back and go "wow, I'm not
sure I would have actually done that had I known how much work it
really is, but I'm glad I did it ... once." :)
One question: why did you concern yourself with (in your own words)
"well-respected authors?" If your goal is to offer people an
introduction to a hobby they might enjoy, why would it matter if
they're any good at it? If you broaden your net to just people who
enjoy writing IF (respected or not) you'll find more people sticking
with it. How is respect relevant?
Jim Aikin
>
> One question: why did you concern yourself with (in your own words)
> "well-respected authors?" If your goal is to offer people an
> introduction to a hobby they might enjoy, why would it matter if
> they're any good at it? If you broaden your net to just people who
> enjoy writing IF (respected or not) you'll find more people sticking
> with it. How is respect relevant?
Ultimately, I suppose, it's not relevant. I haven't sat down and done
a complete statistical analysis of IF authors' output. That would be
too much like work. I was just cherry-picking.
But if someone has really done a fine job mastering the techniques,
and then drifts away, that may be slightly more discouraging than when
someone who has never mastered the techniques drifts away.
To use an analogy that is, no doubt, deeply flawed, if someone has
scrimped and saved for five years to take a vacation in Tahiti and
then comes back and says, "Tahiti was sticky-humid and dull and I'm
never going there again," that may tell you more about the enduring
pleasures of Tahiti than if you ask someone who has been collecting
travel brochures and they say, "Wow, Tahiti! I want to go there
someday!"
It's the "been there, done that, what's next?" syndrome, that's what
I'm getting at, I guess. Hobbies ... we'd have to do a statistical
analysis of people who have 20 different hobbies to know for sure, but
I have a sense that people who are into bass fishing quite often
<i>stay</i> interested in bass fishing for years on end. Or collecting
ormolu clocks, or whatever.
--JA
jeremyfreese
> through their first project, and then look back and go "wow, I'm not
> sure I would have actually done that had I known how much work it
> really is, but I'm glad I did it ... once." :)
I wrote a game last year, and this was exactly my experience. I do
still aspire to do a second one eventually, although I'm not sure how
realistic that is. I certainly have no aspiration to write five or
ten (more power and kudos, of course, to those that do).
Even so, writing a game was incredibly fun, and I'm grateful for the
experience. It wasn't the case that I'd gotten the idea to write a
game from a library presentation, but if I had, I'd be very grateful
to that person.
For me, so much of the fun of writing a game was learning new things
about I7 along the way. I wouldn't myself enjoy the prospect of just
being an "author" who was working within what I already knew about the
authoring system to push myself further with writing. If my passion
was that, I'm not sure I'd have been as attracted to IF in the first
place. Instead, I would want to push myself with the design and
programming aspects of IF. (For instance, maybe if I wrote another
game, it could have _more than one room_.). In this respect, it
doesn't surprising me that some of the people who've had the most
sustained creative interest in IF have been doing work on both sides
of the author/authoring-system distinction on which your post is
based.
--Jeremy
Kenji Yamada
to write that one good IF piece that they have in them, and then they
can quit if they want. :-)
} kenji
Conrad
How many people have an IF authoring system on their hard-drive, in
proportion to how many people regularly produce IF works?
and
How many people have a guitar at home, in proportion to how many
people regularly play gigs?
These are difficult questions to answer, but you could probably look
at downloads and number of guitar sales. I think the proportions will
be in about the same ballpark.
You'll see more absolute numbers with the guitar, of course, because
IF is relatively obscure. Sort of the accordian of game programming.
But that's not a reason not to present a free workship -- you may have
the next Antonia Begonia among your students!
Conrad.
ps - If people stop talking about IF because nobody knows about it,
we're really screwed.
BTW, I wish I'd gone to such a workshop five or ten years ago, even
considering that writing IF was far more technical then.
C.
Jeff Nyman
> At some point, doubt crept in.
> I started thinking, if writing IF is such a cool thing to turn people
> on to, why aren't more of the people who try it sticking with it and
> going on to greater and greater heights of accomplishment?
I can only tell you that my experience has been trying to introduce
authors (established and otherwise) to the concept of textual IF. So
in my case it hasn't been a question of getting people to stick with
it, so much as it's been getting people to start it in the first
place. It's usually an uphill battle and, to be quite frank, it's
usually because people are singularly unimpressed with how the concept
has "evolved" over the course of time, once they start to understand
that evolution. Below are two specific points of what I mean by that
but you have to realize that I'm presenting a distillation of
viewpoints that have been presented to me. That's an important point
for me because while I agree with some points my groups have brought
up, I don't agree with all of them or at least not in reference to the
same details.
* They see a community that's relegated largely to a newsgroup. I know
in the developer communities and in other contexts, that's not so bad.
But to many people who are used to other venues online, a newsgroup
seems a bit dated and certainly not conducive to effective discussion.
This was very clear to me when I tried to get people who participate
in NaNoWriMo over to textual IF, particularly when I considered the
fact that NaNoWriMo uses a bulletin-board/forum based structure. Game
programmers who wrote games in AGS expressed similar discontent at the
primary "home" of textual IF discussion.
* They see a community that -- in their eyes -- is not really well
informed about the wider discipline of writing and how that can be
made entertaining in a different format. The viewpoint that's often
been presented to me is that much of textual IF seems either "too
academic" or "too much like a toy." On that latter point, what was
often pointed out to me centered around how textual IF has chosen to
"brand" itself in some ways. For example, "TADS" still refers to "Text
Adventure." Inform uses "silly" names like Glulx, Glk and so on. On
the former point, many authors felt that any discussion of writing
techniques as applied to textual IF were either non-existent or were
not focused. Examples cited were how the development of tools for this
format apparently was done without more effective consideration of
design for the market being catered to.
Beyond those community-level points, I would say that just about every
author I worked with felt that textual IF had to evolve more into a
story-telling discipline than a game-writing discipline to get any
sort of acceptance beyond the small community that existed for it. If
that didn't happen, the perception was that textual IF would be
relegated to a few newsgroups, with a relatively small group of people
--- and in that case: why bother with it? Authors would then rather
spend their time writing (and teaching) story-telling in the
"traditional" format. What was the value-add to showcasing textual IF
as another story-telling medium? Why devote a curriculum to this,
unless it was just some "one-off" thing that students could use to get
a few credit hours? Could writing textual IF become a serious
discipline? Did its existing community of supporters treat it
seriously enough in that venue or with that vision? If the focus was
on creating games, what was the strategy for competing with a wider
existing game market? What was the value-add? (The sentiment, of
course, was that the value-add was that you has a reading experience
that was interactive -- but that goes back to being more like story-
telling than game-writing.)
Probably one of the biggest questions I often had to "answer" (or at
least provide evidence around) was: Is textual IF just something that
people do when they can't write novels or can't program games? In both
cases, the implication there is that there are accepted conventions
for writing novels (and novellas, short stories, etc) and writing
games. The popular arena for these is well-established along with well-
established audiences. I can tell you that after initial introductions
of the concept, textual IF was often perceived as a sort of middle-
ground that people went to when they couldn't operate in either of the
other arenas effectively. Textual IF was often seen as a hobbyist
format wherein the bar was set pretty low, so the sense of
accomplishment was easy to achieve. After all, you didn't have to
learn to be a "good writer" and you didn't have to become technically
proficient in all the ways that popular game mechanics required.
Whatever you produced was going to be relegated to a very small
segment of peer review and thus there could be a "feel good" of
accomplishment without the fear of too much "rejection." As such, it
was felt the skills (in both game and story) were blunted and short-
circuited.
As you know, one of my personal goals had been to see to what extent
authors could be encouraged to use textual IF as an effective story-
telling medium and then to what extent the resulting works would be
found palatable by an already wide public market that devoured
"traditional" story-telling format, such as novels. Clearly part of
this focus has to do with the tools that are used. (Having worked with
many screewriting and authoring tools -- and participated in
discussions around such -- I can tell you that the "language wars"
between Inform 7 and TADS 3 are tame things by comparison.) So authors
do look at what tools a community rallys around in order to create
their work and that has a huge impact on how effective the discipline
as a whole is seen. That is also seen as part of what may limit
authors from going to, as you put it, "greater and greater heights of
accomplishment."
- Jeff
Kevin
> Next week I'm going to be pitching the local library on letting me do
> a free presentation that will introduce people to IF -- playing it,
> but more especially writing their own. At some point, doubt crept in.
> I started thinking, if writing IF is such a cool thing to turn people
> on to, why aren't more of the people who try it sticking with it and
> going on to greater and greater heights of accomplishment?
>
I wonder if part of the issue is not having much (any) face-to-face
interaction with other people doing the same thing. I don't know
enough about the community to be sure about this speculation, but I
doubt that many IF authors have a lot of in-person contact with other
IF authors on a regular basis. Maybe with something like your
workshop, the people taking it would form a kind of small local
community, kind of like a writing group, where they can meet to talk
about their work. This might encourage them to stick with it slightly
longer.
We've had the Boston IF Meetup going for 6 months now, and while we
haven't had any IF come out of it yet (to be fair, we're not a writing
group, more of a discussion group), our next meeting has me showing
off my first comp entry and Zarf bringing out a half-written work that
has been sitting for a while. Ask me in another 6 months if this kind
of in-person interaction can help generate more IF.
Kevin
Poster
<bfaa56bf-2242-448c...@e4g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,
Jim Aikin <midig...@gmail.com> wrote:
There are many reasons why people stop writing IF. One of them HAS to be
the silent fear that rules the community; everyone must respect the Old
Ones and none may dare criticize or torrents of abuse will be handed out
by their legions of groupies.
Another one is that many of the major projects are stuck in the stone
ages and resist any attempts to modernize -- consider the lack of
searchable R*IF archives outside of Google, the lack of search for the
IF archive itself, maintenance of various websites. There's a real lack
of concern for upkeep. And when things change, guess what? Everyone
else's opinion except the Old Ones' doesn't count -- the decisions are
constantly made around you. It's like living in the ghetto. If you've
ever lived there, then you know what a dispiriting experience it is.
Another is the nature of the feedback that reaches the author. Whether
it's on the ifdb, in R*IF, or in personal emails, a lot of feedback
tends to be overly negative. If you look back through the R*IF archives,
you'll see plenty of cases where people gave up on IF due to the
"helpful" attitudes of their persecutors here.
That's another thing. Very few people actually want to help others. The
few attempts I've seen at this descended into the usual flogging
administered by the leader.
All of these things taken as a whole make IF writing a very lonely
endeavor.
--
Poster
www.intaligo.com I6 libraries, doom metal, Building
sturmdrangif.wordpress.com Game development blog / IF commentary
Seasons: fall '09 -- One-man projects are prone to delays.
Conrad
> Another is the nature of the feedback that reaches the author. Whether
> it's on the ifdb, in R*IF, or in personal emails, a lot of feedback
> tends to be overly negative.
Frankly, I find that surprising, coming from you.
Conrad.
Andrew Plotkin
>
> I wonder if part of the issue is not having much (any) face-to-face
> interaction with other people doing the same thing.
Yeah -- we haven't been mentioning it regularly on the newsgroup, but
I'm excited to be part of a monthly in-person IF event. One of my
secret goals is to poke my own enthusiasm level back up. (Thus my even
more secret plan to show off a stalled work-in-progress this month.)
Andrew Plotkin
> On that latter point, what was often pointed out to me centered
> around how textual IF has chosen to "brand" itself in some ways. For
> example, "TADS" still refers to "Text Adventure." Inform uses
> "silly" names like Glulx, Glk and so on.
Just on this specific point -- you've mentioned this before. You
really need to tell those students to get out of IF and back to
serious programming, in systems with serious names, like Python, Java,
SQL, COBOL... or *Linux* or *Macintosh*.
There's no "branding" that won't seem like it's *either* too academic
or too game-y, and I don't intend to spend my IF time chasing better
labels.
Ben Collins-Sussman
the hobby is just "IF in general". I enjoy writing games (on my 2nd
attempt now), but I also enjoy writing interpreters (working on two at
once!). I also love playing the yearly comp entries and being
amazed. I love advocating certain games to my friends. I love
keeping up on the latest state-of-the-art news regarding Inform,
various interpreters, etc.
In other words, I think a lot of us are actively engaged in IF on many
levels; few of us think of ourselves as Writers who are continually
trying to improve our writing.
Jim Aikin
Jeff Nyman wrote:
>
> * They see a community that's relegated largely to a newsgroup. I know
> in the developer communities and in other contexts, that's not so bad.
> But to many people who are used to other venues online, a newsgroup
> seems a bit dated and certainly not conducive to effective discussion.
Good point. The intfiction.org forum has been on my home-page tab set
for months ... but most of the time, nobody is posting anything there.
Getting folks to switch to a forum-based community would be like herding
cats, so I don't expect it to happen. But the fact that this is a
newsgroup DOES contribute, I'm sure, to the perception that IF is a
fringe discipline that's stuck in the '80s. Plus, setting up your
computer for newsgroup access and finding a reliable free news feed
takes a bit of effort. If newcomers with only basic computer skills (and
there are MILLIONS of people in that category, sneer at them though you
may) are already tasking themselves to learn an entire programming
language, the very last thing they're likely to want to do is a bunch of
computer setup chores.
> * They see a community that -- in their eyes -- is not really well
> informed about the wider discipline of writing and how that can be
> made entertaining in a different format.
I've ranted about this before. I'll give a quick example of what I think
you're talking about. "King of Shreds & Patches" is a fine game, but ...
Cthulhu??? As a conventional novel, this script would be rejected out of
hand by any mainstream book publisher. It doesn't have the fresh vision
they're looking for, it just grabs a very shopworn fantasy device off
the shelf. Granted, that device is used in a fresh setting, but a book
publisher would want to see a LOT more done to make the fantasy/demon
premise fresh.
I've seen IF that recycled dreadful '50s cliches about detective
fiction. This sort of thing is accepted by the r.*.i-f community without
a murmur, but Michael Connelly has nothing to worry about.
> On that latter point, what was
> often pointed out to me centered around how textual IF has chosen to
> "brand" itself in some ways. For example, "TADS" still refers to "Text
> Adventure." Inform uses "silly" names like Glulx, Glk and so on.
And Frotz. And the Z-machine. If TADS were rebranded as iStory, it would
SEEM different, and probably less intimidating.
Inform is a beautiful name, as is Zoom.
> On
> the former point, many authors felt that any discussion of writing
> techniques as applied to textual IF were either non-existent or were
> not focused. Examples cited were how the development of tools for this
> format apparently was done without more effective consideration of
> design for the market being catered to.
Quick example of the latter: Last night I was trying to figure out how
to get I7 to respond to the command 'pick up seven coins' without
listing the coins separately. That type of listing is an ugly artifact
of the 1980s. Turns out there's an extension for this, which I'll be
exploring this weekend. But the fact that it's an extension (and not, I
believe, mentioned in p. 6.15 of the Recipe Book, which is where I was
looking in order to try to grasp this technique) is precisely, though in
miniature, "tools for this format [being developed] without more
effective consideration of design for the market being catered to."
> Beyond those community-level points, I would say that just about every
> author I worked with felt that textual IF had to evolve more into a
> story-telling discipline than a game-writing discipline to get any
> sort of acceptance beyond the small community that existed for it.
I think the tools we have now can tell stories very effectively. It's a
lot of work, that's all.
> If
> that didn't happen, the perception was that textual IF would be
> relegated to a few newsgroups, with a relatively small group of people
> --- and in that case: why bother with it? Authors would then rather
> spend their time writing (and teaching) story-telling in the
> "traditional" format. What was the value-add to showcasing textual IF
> as another story-telling medium?
Very good point. What IS the value-add? Non-IF authors that I've talked
to often mention alternate endings as something that makes immediate
sense to them. Of course, writing a story with five satisfying endings
(knowing that the typical reader is only going to encounter one or two)
is a Sisyphean task.
I'm interested in the fact that you can converse with NPCs about all
sorts of things and get to know them, if you choose to. That strikes me
as a true value-add, and much easier than writing branching endings.
> Probably one of the biggest questions I often had to "answer" (or at
> least provide evidence around) was: Is textual IF just something that
> people do when they can't write novels or can't program games?
You could make a case for that, I'm afraid. On the other hand, there's
something to be said for a game-programming format that you can use
without a multi-million dollar budget and without having the ability to
create animated 3D graphics (or any sort of graphics at all). Considered
purely as a game development system (forget the story values for a
moment), IF sits squarely in the middle of the whole DIY software arena,
which is very active and leads to some cool works of art.
More later, I'm sure.
--JA
Jim Aikin
>
>> On that latter point, what was often pointed out to me centered
>> around how textual IF has chosen to "brand" itself in some ways. For
>> example, "TADS" still refers to "Text Adventure." Inform uses
>> "silly" names like Glulx, Glk and so on.
>
> Just on this specific point -- you've mentioned this before. You
> really need to tell those students to get out of IF and back to
> serious programming, in systems with serious names, like Python, Java,
> SQL, COBOL... or *Linux* or *Macintosh*.
>
> There's no "branding" that won't seem like it's *either* too academic
> or too game-y, and I don't intend to spend my IF time chasing better
> labels.
I don't think I agree, Andrew. You're coming at this from the
perspective of someone who knows what Python, Java, SQL, and COBOL are.
That puts you well outside the framework of the user group that Jeff is
talking about.
Think of all the effort Apple has gone to (starting with the word
"Apple") to address ordinary people in their own language. iMovie.
iTunes. GarageBand.
Also in the music arena -- by far the biggest brand name in music
production is called Pro Tools.
Next question?
--JA
James Jolley
I have to agree with this. I haven't actually published any games but
do love messing around with Inform 7 especially. I think people enjoy
IF for various reasons, not just for the writing.
James Jolley
Good point Jim. Other music applications follow the same sort of lead,
Sibelius for us classical folks is a great example and markets itself
because of the natural connections.
Best
-James-
S. John Ross
> I've ranted about this before.
And your ignorance glows whenever you do.
S. John Ross
> That's another thing. Very few people actually want to help others.
I can never tell if you're laughing your ass off or adjusting your
tinfoil hat :/
Hannes
Jim Aikin <midig...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've ranted about this before. I'll give a quick example of what I
> think you're talking about. "King of Shreds & Patches" is a fine
> game, but ... Cthulhu??? As a conventional novel, this script would
> be rejected out of hand by any mainstream book publisher. It doesn't
> have the fresh vision they're looking for, it just grabs a very
> shopworn fantasy device off the shelf. Granted, that device is used
> in a fresh setting, but a book publisher would want to see a LOT more
> done to make the fantasy/demon premise fresh.
>
> I've seen IF that recycled dreadful '50s cliches about detective
> fiction. This sort of thing is accepted by the r.*.i-f community
> without a murmur, but Michael Connelly has nothing to worry about.
Are you suggesting such games which use a premise which is not 'fresh'
should be 'rejected' by the community (whatever that rejection might
entail)? Have you ever considered the possibility that there may be
people who LIKE playing such games / reading such stories?
Hannes
jeremyfreese
OK, to be honest: I find this whole thread ironic because, well, I
find your own posts to be a nontrivial net drain on enthusiasm for
writing IF.
I mean, look over your post. You run through award-winning games over
a long period, and yet the only praise games get is phrased vaguely--
that Emily Short, she's a "decent writer"--whereas it feels like your
enjoying writing most is how you are above "deeply flawed" Floatpoint
and "snoozer" Toresal. If you actually liked KoS&P, "fine game, but
NEGATIVE NEGATIVE" doesn't make that apparent. You're dismissive of
Narcolepsy and Alabaster in your post because of the way the authors
involved other people, even though it's pretty obvious that Cadre and
Short did an overwhelming share of the work. You dismiss Delightful
Wallpaper as a technical experiment. Blue Lacuna was as ambitious as
anything anybody's tried with IF, and yet you don't even mention it.
You make this broad assertion about how the medium has tremendous
promise or whatever-whatever, but the only game that it's unambiguous
from your post/thread that has brought you positive enthusiasm for the
medium is Lydia's Heart. It gets tedious. I mean, it's fine if you
want to style yourself as someone with high standards and is hard to
please, but it's a bit much to have to endure simultaneously (1) how
it's not clear if you've found enjoyment in any game not written by
yourself in the past ten years and (2) how it is a mystery to you why
there aren't more people eager to devote themselves to crafting game
after game for you to not enjoy.
--Jeremy
Jeff Nyman
> Just on this specific point -- you've mentioned this before. You
> really need to tell those students to get out of IF and back to
> serious programming, in systems with serious names, like Python, Java,
> SQL, COBOL... or *Linux* or *Macintosh*.
>
> There's no "branding" that won't seem like it's *either* too academic
> or too game-y, and I don't intend to spend my IF time chasing better
> labels.
I think part of it is just expectation. Inform has a slick interface
and a good name for "branding," as it were. But then what happens is
people get exposed to the implementation model in that they hear about
"z-machines," "Glulx", "Glk calls" "I6", etc. In some cases these
concepts end up mattering to them, in other cases not. But since those
concepts are forward-facing, it sets up a disconnect with
expectations. Couple this with that some of the material on the Inform
Web site -- and even in the "Writing with Inform" manual -- seems to
suggest a certain metaphor and a certain design philosophy to "bring
the writer in." While I do agree with what I think your underlying
point is -- i.e., does it really matter??! -- this does speak to the
exact issue of capturing mindshare. That's been a challenge for
textual IF for a long time. Jim is further arguing that perhaps once
that mindshare is captured, it's not retained. Regardless of that, my
point was really that these terms may not matter. But when they make
up the implementation model *and* when that model by necessity must be
presented to the author/writer -- well, then perhaps consideration
should be taken of what things are called. (Or, alternatively, design
such that the implementation does not need to be exposed.)
Mind, lest it be thought I was being overly critical, I generally
don't share these same concerns with many of my students but that's
also because most of my career has been in the software industry, so
I'm used to dealing with tools created with names that were thought to
be clever. But that's me. I can completely see how those things are
hard to "sell" in some cases. Example from my career: Try selling the
need for acceptance-driven design and development as a business
strategy. And then say the linchpin of your strategy is this tool
called .... Cucumber. Then, with that, bring up that you're going to
promote the company's UI-driven automated testing with another tool.
Called Squish.
The tools may be greatly effective at what they do. But there's a
certain level of trust that people like to have in a "brand,"
particularly when they are going to devote potentially much time and
energy into it. Even the focus of the branding sometimes shifts by
necessity. Many people have an easier time dealing with the Python
language when they think it's named for a type of snake rather than
for a British comedy show. To that extent, the origin of Python's name
choice has been marginalized to quite an extent.
As another example, as you bring up: you've got Linux and Macintosh.
The latter, however, is a word that a good branding strategy has been
built up around because it's a real world and it has connotations.
Further, the implementation of what "Macintosh" is has built up a set
of expectations, particularly around user interface. The same has not
been the case for the term (and implementation) "Linux." Yes, Linux is
very popular in the server world and lots of developers like to work
on it. In terms of reaching the vast home market, however ---- well,
it's got a ways to go. There are parallels there with textual IF and
other concepts, I would argue.
- Jeff
James Jolley
>
> You make this broad assertion about how the medium has tremendous
> promise or whatever-whatever, but the only game that it's unambiguous
> from your post/thread that has brought you positive enthusiasm for the
> medium is Lydia's Heart. It gets tedious. I mean, it's fine if you
> want to style yourself as someone with high standards and is hard to
> please, but it's a bit much to have to endure simultaneously (1) how
> it's not clear if you've found enjoyment in any game not written by
> yourself in the past ten years and (2) how it is a mystery to you why
> there aren't more people eager to devote themselves to crafting game
> after game for you to not enjoy.
I'm not sure he's being nasty as such, i'm not even sure it's fair to
judge. It seems that Jim's only making the point that many authors
won't write IF because of a lack of insentive, i'm sure he'll correct
me if i'm going off the beaten track.
Best
-James-
Bert Byfield
> to be the silent fear that rules the community; everyone must
> respect the Old Ones and none may dare criticize or torrents of
> abuse will be handed out by their legions of groupies.
I once caused a riot and the formation of a lynch mob when I inquired
as to whether or not the contests were generally won by the adolescents
in the MUD's inner circle, i.e. rigged. Oh, yes, and an earlier one
when I attempted to speak to Emily in the MUD. It was truly amazing to
me to get such a response in what I had considered to be a
sophisticated area of cyberspace. ;-)
Bert Byfield
> I can never tell if you're laughing your ass off or adjusting your
> tinfoil hat :/
You are illustrating his point about the rudeness dished out to
dissenters in here.
Bert Byfield
> And your ignorance glows whenever you do.
Yet another illustration of his point about the abusing of any
dissenting voice.
James Jolley
Many here are like that, arrogant. People can't have views of there own
unless it fits in with everyone elses. Take the Glulxe v ZCode thread,
complete waste of time because I got shot down for having a viewpoint.
S John was also there with his little groupies showing off as usual.
Why do you think I never contribute much now? Because generally the
community is a waste of time. The tools are great, the sense of
community has long gone.
Best
-James-
Jim Aikin
>> I've ranted about this before.
>
> And your ignorance glows whenever you do.
I prefer to think of it as the strontium 90 in my aura.
Andrew Plotkin
> Andrew Plotkin wrote:
> >
> >> On that latter point, what was often pointed out to me centered
> >> around how textual IF has chosen to "brand" itself in some ways. For
> >> example, "TADS" still refers to "Text Adventure." Inform uses
> >> "silly" names like Glulx, Glk and so on.
> >
> > Just on this specific point -- you've mentioned this before. You
> > really need to tell those students to get out of IF and back to
> > serious programming, in systems with serious names, like Python, Java,
> > SQL, COBOL... or *Linux* or *Macintosh*.
> >
> > There's no "branding" that won't seem like it's *either* too academic
> > or too game-y, and I don't intend to spend my IF time chasing better
> > labels.
>
> I don't think I agree, Andrew. You're coming at this from the
> perspective of someone who knows what Python, Java, SQL, and COBOL are.
> That puts you well outside the framework of the user group that Jeff is
> talking about.
Those names were the same when anyone saw them for the first time. The
world is full of silly technological names. I do not see a general
criticism of the practice.
> Think of all the effort Apple has gone to (starting with the word
> "Apple") to address ordinary people in their own language. iMovie.
> iTunes. GarageBand.
Xcode? Cocoa? Their newest compiler technology is called "Clang".
> Next question?
Do you think that terminology is a serious impediment to the way
people learn IF? Or is it something that they comment on after they've
decided what they think of it?
Jim Aikin
> OK, to be honest: I find this whole thread ironic because, well, I
> find your own posts to be a nontrivial net drain on enthusiasm for
> writing IF.
It would be shocking if I had that kind of power. I don't. Thanks for
the compliment, though.
> I mean, look over your post. You run through award-winning games over
> a long period, and yet the only praise games get is phrased vaguely--
> that Emily Short, she's a "decent writer"--whereas it feels like your
> enjoying writing most is how you are above "deeply flawed" Floatpoint
> and "snoozer" Toresal. If you actually liked KoS&P, "fine game, but
> NEGATIVE NEGATIVE" doesn't make that apparent. You're dismissive of
> Narcolepsy and Alabaster in your post because of the way the authors
> involved other people, even though it's pretty obvious that Cadre and
> Short did an overwhelming share of the work.
I haven't played Narcolepsy or Alabaster, so I can't comment on them.
Nor did I intend to criticize or dismiss collaborations per se. (Having
written a collaborative game with Eric Eve, I'm hardly in a position to
have done so -- and I have to say, I found that working with Eric was
both easy and rewarding.) I was simply pointing out that these games
weren't solely produced by the authors involved.
I was doing a quick-and-dirty survey of work released by high-profile
authors. Were there any errors in my survey, or are you just hunting
like mad for stuff to whine about?
You dismiss Delightful
> Wallpaper as a technical experiment. Blue Lacuna was as ambitious as
> anything anybody's tried with IF, and yet you don't even mention it.
I haven't played Delightful Wallpaper. I carefully qualified what I said
about it by indicating that I had skim-read a couple of reviews. Is that
a problem for you? Am I not entitled to mention a game unless I've
played it?
I just forgot about Blue Lacuna. Entirely accidental. And again, I
framed the essay very carefully by noting that I had probably forgotten
some good games. Why is this a problem for you?
> You make this broad assertion about how the medium has tremendous
> promise or whatever-whatever, but the only game that it's unambiguous
> from your post/thread that has brought you positive enthusiasm for the
> medium is Lydia's Heart. It gets tedious.
I would like to point out, for the record, that I did not use the word
"positive" or the word "enthusiasm" in listing my own game. I started by
saying, "Not to give myself airs, but for the record...." I then went on
to say, "I feel [Lydia's Heart] compares adequately with novellas
published in respected science fiction/fantasy magazines."
Since I've had about a dozen stories published in such magazines over
the years, would it be too difficult for you to concede that I might
actually have some idea what I'm talking about?
I then went on to dismiss three of my own games as "lightweight" and as
"throw-aways." Is that boasting? I don't see it. In essence, I was
saying, "None of these games would have made the cut at a magazine."
> I mean, it's fine if you
> want to style yourself as someone with high standards and is hard to
> please, but it's a bit much to have to endure simultaneously (1) how
> it's not clear if you've found enjoyment in any game not written by
> yourself in the past ten years and (2) how it is a mystery to you why
> there aren't more people eager to devote themselves to crafting game
> after game for you to not enjoy.
Hunh? Am I required to slather my essay with plaudits in order to avoid
giving you a misapprehension about what I'm saying? And what does that
have to do with the mystery of why there aren't more people writing more
great games?
Again, it seems you're giving me waaaay too much power here. I'm not
discouraging these hypothetical uninterested authors. If anything, the
fact that there's no money in writing IF is probably what's discouraging
them. I said as much in the essay. If you feel that my negative attitude
is what's driving people away ... dude, all I can say is, you need to
check your research data.
--JA
Jim Aikin
>
> Are you suggesting such games which use a premise which is not 'fresh'
> should be 'rejected' by the community (whatever that rejection might
> entail)? Have you ever considered the possibility that there may be
> people who LIKE playing such games / reading such stories?
I'm not in a position to suggest what the community (which is, in any
case, not entirely monolithic, whatever some people may think) should or
shouldn't do. What I was suggesting, in my usual connect-the-dots
fashion, was that the literary standards of the IF community tend to be
somewhat relaxed.
What I mean by that is that stories are sometimes accepted and praised
within the IF community that would not, if they were cast in the form of
conventional fiction, be purchased and published, not even by the genre
magazines. (We're not talking Harper's and The New Yorker here.)
People like all sorts of things. A lot of people like reading vampire
romance novels, for instance. But that doesn't mean that vampire
romances are felt (by writers, agents, and editors) to display much in
the way of literary excellence. Quite the contrary; by and large, and
possibly with the odd exception here or there, they're a thoroughly
degraded form of literature.
The point I was making was this:
If you were to write a stock 1950s private-eye story -- the detective
with the bottle of bourbon in his office drawer, the blonde bombshell
coming in to flirt with him and then hire him, the big dumb Mob hit man,
all that stuff -- you would not be guilty of even a shred of
originality. You would just be regurgitating stock materials from pop
culture.
You would not have much luck interesting a publisher of conventional
fiction in that sort of story, not unless you put some major spin on it.
Within the IF community, you don't have to worry about publisher
rejections, so you're entirely free to use stock materials by the yard
if it pleases you. And indeed, some IF readers won't mind. Some of them
will even think you're being clever.
To the extent, however, that the IF catalog includes material of this
sort, writers who aspire to some sort of quality in their own work are
likely, when they discover said material, to shy away from writing IF.
Likewise, potential readers of IF who are in search of some sort of
quality are likely, when they discover said materials, to lose interest
in exploring the IF catalog. That's the point.
But it was a very minor point in any case. You asked for clarification;
there it is. It's not the main point I've been looking at, and I hope it
won't be conflated with that point. What I'm mainly curious about is why
accomplished IF authors (of whom there's a pretty good supply) don't
continue to produce work on a more frequent basis, the way accomplished
novelists so often do.
--JA
Jim Aikin
> Do you think that terminology is a serious impediment to the way
> people learn IF? Or is it something that they comment on after they've
> decided what they think of it?
Jeff raised this point initially, not I. I was just fleshing out his
observation (which in any case he qualified as having originated among
his students).
With the possible exception of Glulx, blorb, and Frotz, which are a bit
on the arcane side, I wouldn't guess that the intimidation factor of
bizarre terminology is an issue at all. TADS sounds like a small piece
of candy. "Would you like some TADS?"
My guess is that the main reason more people aren't interested in IF
(either playing games or writing them) is because mainstream culture is
so jam-packed with other stuff to do! Why would you spend months writing
a game when you could rent a movie, go camping, take your kids to soccer
practice, buy tickets for a Talking Heads reunion concert, hang out on
Facebook, hang out on Second Life, or just get drunk and mow the lawn?
--JA
Jeff Nyman
On Sep 5, 3:31 pm, Andrew Plotkin <erkyr...@eblong.com> wrote:
> Xcode? Cocoa? Their newest compiler technology is called "Clang".
And for developers -- the audience being sought for those things --
that's not such a bad thing. But if those were general-user facing
tools, those names may in fact matter more and may impact positively
or negatively. This is really what I was talking about regarding the
expectations set with how tools are presented. TADS 3, for example,
clearly sets itself as a programmatic tool and as a game tool in that
"Text Adventure" is in the title. Inform 7, on the other hand, clearly
sets a different expectation -- or can be construed as doing so.
As I've said in other threads around these parts, the audience you are
catering to will (hopefully) drive some design ideas *and* the
presentation of those ideas, including the naming of concepts and/or
tools. Certain audiences won't care what those concepts/tools are
called. Others may. In many cases their level of caring may depend on
to what extent they have to deal with those things, so that leads to:
> Do you think that terminology is a serious impediment to the way
> people learn IF? Or is it something that they comment on after they've
> decided what they think of it?
Terminology can be a serious impediment in many learning situations,
not just with textual IF. This is particularly the case if the
terminology can't be mapped to concepts that your audience considers
intuitive. (So, again, the audience needs to be considered. And if
your audience is diverse, you need to make even more considerations.)
What also matters is what experiences people have with the things so
named. For example, I can tell you that when I had to show people how
"styles" worked in Inform (compared with how the HTML markup worked in
TADS), there was a large disconnect. Now later on those same people
were shown how the concepts could be "wrapped" in more "friendly"
author-facing contexts and so the notion of what "Glk" even means
would not have to come up. And, yet, inevitably it did: people would
dig in a little bit and find these things and the whole experience was
found to be less than palatable. And that's mainly because of the
cognitive friction that has already resulted, wrapped around a name
that made little sense. Had that cognitive friction not occurred, it's
very possible the name wouldn't matter at all.
I can give examples of screenwriting tools that often flopped because
they were essentially written by developers for developers. Oh, to be
sure they weren't *really* written for developers. They were written
for screenwriters. And yet the tools exposed so much of the underlying
implementation model -- and its terminology -- that they may as well
have been written for developers. They certainly weren't written with
the feedback of the intended audience and so the terminology was off.
I can point to other tools, however, that were designed with exactly
such feedback. And, in those cases, the cognitive friction was less,
acceptance was higher, and the retention rate was steady. Further, new
screenwriters were brought into the fold because the concepts of the
tool readily mapped to the concept of the domain that the audience
responded to. Fiction writing software is even more diverse than
screenwriting software in that regard. Notice one of my key qualifiers
there, however: "the feedback of the *intended audience.*" I have
argued that intended audience for textual IF has been self-limiting,
to a certain extent, by how the tools of textual IF have been crafted.
So to respond to your questions directly, based on my experiences, the
terminology *can* be an impediment to learning. (How much or how
little is often based on the cognitive friction I mentioned. It's not
a fait accompli.) With that, in my experiences, it's not the case that
people only comment on this after they have decided what they think of
textual IF as a whole. Rather, the terminology aspects in part
determine what they think about textual IF as a whole, at least from
the authoring side.
- Jeff
Jeff Nyman
> My guess is that the main reason more people aren't interested in IF
> (either playing games or writing them) is because mainstream culture is
> so jam-packed with other stuff to do! Why would you spend months writing
> a game when you could rent a movie, go camping, take your kids to soccer
> practice, buy tickets for a Talking Heads reunion concert, hang out on
> Facebook, hang out on Second Life, or just get drunk and mow the lawn?
To add to this, thought ... for the people I've worked with and
studied with over the course of a couple of years, it really boils
down to an even more granular focus:
Why would I want to write a "story" in textual IF format if I can just
write a novel? (After all, who's interested in this "interactive
fiction" thing?)
Why would I want to write a "game" in textual IF format if I can write
a graphical game? (After all, who's interested solely in text-based
games these days?)
In answer to the latter, the value-add is usually that it's a game
that places emphasis on reading and good story. So the "built-in"
audience for such a thing might be the vast legion of readers out
there. Okay, but why would those readers choose to read my textual IF
rather than a regular old novel? Is it because of the "interactive"
thing? Okay, then how do I combine the techniques of writing effective
fiction -- which I know already are valuable, given the reading
audience out there -- with this notion of "interactive" fiction? Now,
as an author, I'm starting to get an idea of how I might answer that
first question. Okay, so what tools exist to support me in this
effort? And, now with a bit of exploration, how much do I trust those
tools to carry out the vision I have? What confidence do I have, as an
author, that I'm not wasting my time on this when I could just be
writing a novel?
The above is sort of an encapsulated view of what I think goes on in
the heads of many people who don't just want to pursue textual IF as a
lone hobby, but rather want to determine if textual IF is a viable
route for their creativity.
- Jeff
jeremyfreese
RAIF is pretty central to the IF community; I don't have a word count
of who's posted the most of RAIF in the last couple years, but you
seem pretty central to it. It's hard to for me to imagine somebody
coming to IF as a community and not finding RAIF and thus not finding
many posts by Jim Aikin.
Personally, it's difficult for me to imagine somebody reading your
posts and being more enthusiastic about writing IF, and fairly easy to
imagine somebody reading them and being less. I don't even mean that
as flame-y as it sounds, and it's just my opinion. I think it's great
that you want to do presentations and other work to promote IF to
others, but it does make the bleakness-toward-existing-IF vibe I get
from your posts more puzzling.
You post a survey of a decade of the award winning games and the most
positive thing you have say about anything since "Varicella" is about
your own game. The praise you do have for other stuff is quite
faint. And, just now, you suggest that you feel like being more
positive would have been to "slather your essay with plaudits", but
you do have no trouble finding the energy for negative asides about
Floatpoint and Jack Toresal and KoS&P. Again, I only know you from
your writing, but it makes it seem like you have fondness for a medium
without much for any of the actual work done in that medium (besides
one--and, eek, apparently only one--work of your own), and that seems
a hard combination to me for contributing positively to generating
enthusiasm for others to write or play IF.
To be clear, it's not like I think "your negative attitude is what's
driving people away." I think there are many causes, although I
wouldn't put the same emphasis on the money part since there are many
artistic hobbies with large communities that have no expectation of
money for doing work. But it's hard for me to read posts and threads
like the above and not think it's probably red ink on the ledger.
--Jeremy
Emily Short
> Next week I'm going to be pitching the local library on letting me do
> a free presentation that will introduce people to IF -- playing it,
> but more especially writing their own. At some point, doubt crept in.
> I started thinking, if writing IF is such a cool thing to turn people
> on to, why aren't more of the people who try it sticking with it and
> going on to greater and greater heights of accomplishment?
I know this isn't what you were asking about, but to pop the stack: I
don't think this consideration means much. I mean, lots of people
presumably start the cello but don't get far with it; I know a lot of
my Greek students don't go beyond a year or two of study. Some of them
learn enough to piece out a little Plato or a bit of the New Testament
and then stop. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth doing for as far as
they got, and it doesn't mean I'm peddling snake oil. *I* care about
the material, I think it's of value, and as far as I can tell the
majority of my students are glad that they put in however much time
they do put in, whether they quit after a year or go on to a graduate
program in Classics.
In the end all you can communicate is your own enthusiasm for the
subject. If you don't have that, you shouldn't be teaching; if you do,
you've fulfilled your moral obligations. I mean, you shouldn't make
false claims to the effect that writing IF will make them *rich* or
anything like that; but you can say honestly and honorably that it's
something you enjoy, the enjoyment of which you'd like to share with
anyone who's interested.
I also don't think 5-10 years is a poor run for a hobby! Most
interests that aren't careers are also nonpermanent.
That said, I think there are a lot of reasons why IF authors tend not
to write a game a year and stick to that in perpetuity.
Some people have indeed peeled off. Some of that is to do with the
reward issue; some people who left certainly said that they did so
because the feedback they got, especially on a big project, wasn't
what they were hoping for. But there are a lot of other reasons, and I
heard that particular reason mentioned more often 5-10 years ago than
I have recently. If anything, I think things have improved when it
comes to providing feedback to authors new or established: ClubFloyd
has been running for a while and tends to play most new games that
come out that are remotely floyd-compatible; IFDB encourages people to
produce more, and more frequent, reviews, while the lists and polls
draw attention to games that might otherwise go unnoticed; attention
to IF from outside the newsgroups has increased.
I suspect a more significant issue is simple demographics. I know a
lot of the people who were heavily involved with IF in the late 90s
are now at a different place in their lives; they were once students
but are now employed full time and have families, say, and the time to
devote to hobbies is just not what it was. Some others now work in the
gaming industry full-time and don't necessarily want to come home and
write more games.
But there are also people who stick around but don't produce yearly,
and that doesn't surprise me at all. Big ambitious IF can take more
than a year to write if you're doing it in your spare time around a
job and/or family, and people who have already produced a comp-sized
game or two are more likely to want to do something larger next. I
also find, for myself, that IF actually gets harder to produce rather
than easier. That's partly because I have more life responsibilities
than I did back in 1999 or so, but also because my projects get harder
as I go along. In this respect I think the Stephen King et al. analogy
is seriously flawed, and not just because Mr. King is able to make a
handsome income on his work. The form of the novel is relatively well
understood. The form of the IF game/story, not so much -- though IF is
older and in some respects more mature than the average game, in terms
of exploring narrative possibility. But there is just so *much* left
to discover. Even if you know your language of choice backward and
forward, even if you've written enough games to have a fair grasp of
design and testing, you may still find that the emotion, the theme,
the plot structure, or the style of NPC interaction you want to
explore lies off in totally uncharted waters. Then you have to figure
out from scratch how to handle it, and there's a real risk that you'll
get half-done and have to start over. That's what I find fun,
personally, but it's not a fast or well-defined process and there is
never the sense that you can sit down at the keyboard, crack your
knuckles, and knock out another best-seller, if you see what I mean.
Finally, I think you're dismissing some projects that deserve more
serious consideration. Narcolepsy was a "collaboration" only in the
sense that the dream sequences were small inset jewels of surrealism
in a larger plot. The main game was all Adam, and I can't imagine that
the collaboration made it *less* work overall. Editing and compiling
other people's code into your own is a nontrivial thing in itself. I
didn't like it as a piece of design, but that's a different issue --
it was a big and serious project. Similarly, Delightful Wallpaper is a
wonderfully inventive game -- perhaps structurally a little odd
because it has two distinct and dissimilar major puzzles, but both
halves are engaging, novel, and well-coded. For that matter I rather
liked Dreamhold. It may have had a tutorial content, but it also had a
lot of good puzzles and some really beautiful imagery. The story was
not Zarf's best, but it was a solid game plus extra armature to help
the tutee, not a triviality.
> To find out whether my perspective was, perhaps, even more jaundiced
> than it usually is, I did a little informal survey (seehttp://midiguru.wordpress.com/author-author/). The short version of
> the results: I was able to identify only three well-respected authors
> (Emily Short, Jon Ingold, Eric Eve) who have continued to release new
> work with any kind of regularity.
Someone else has already mentioned Aaron Reed. How about Stephen
Granade? Robb Sherwin? Their last games were perhaps a little while
back, but they have produced numerous games over a long time, and I
know Robb at least is working on something else fairly sizable. And
what about Paul O'Brian and Ian Finley, who are now working on
something for Textfyre but both have a fair back catalog? For that
matter, why are you gluing "well-respected" onto this criterion at
all? If what you're interested in is people's enjoyment of a hobby,
then shouldn't the less-successful also count? Because there are
certainly some people who have written games for numerous
competitions, placed moderately, and kept at it year after year,
plainly out of some personal enjoyment they're getting from it.
S. John Ross
> > And your ignorance glows whenever you do.
>
> I prefer to think of it as the strontium 90 in my aura.
I like that; it's suitably romantic. Either way, it's enough to read
by, and that's a lovely irony if you think about it :)
S. John Ross
> complete waste of time because I got shot down for having a viewpoint.
You had been making personal attacks, characterizing the deficiencies
of others for not sharing your tastes. Had you simply expressed your
own preferences (which you later claimed, under a cloak of martyrdom,
to have been your intention all along) then you'd have no reason to
feel put-upon.
S. John Ross
> [...] they were once students
> but are now employed full time and have families, say, and the time to
> devote to hobbies is just not what it was.
Yeah, that cropped up a bit in the "one hit wonders" thread too,
IIRC ... the vast difference in available hobby-time available to
student lifestyle vs. out-earning-a-living lifestyle ...
Emily Short
> * They see a community that's relegated largely to a newsgroup. I know
> in the developer communities and in other contexts, that's not so bad.
> But to many people who are used to other venues online, a newsgroup
> seems a bit dated and certainly not conducive to effective discussion.
> This was very clear to me when I tried to get people who participate
> in NaNoWriMo over to textual IF, particularly when I considered the
> fact that NaNoWriMo uses a bulletin-board/forum based structure. Game
> programmers who wrote games in AGS expressed similar discontent at the
> primary "home" of textual IF discussion.
Yeeahbut. The thing is, RAIF is decreasingly the "primary home" of IF
discussion. It's the primary source of tech support, but a non-trivial
amount of the theoretical discussion has moved -- some to forums and
the revised-format article-friendly SPAG, a lot to dispersed blogs and
websites. Planet-IF has helped crystallize this a bit, but it was
already happening before that, I think.
> * They see a community that -- in their eyes -- is not really well
> informed about the wider discipline of writing and how that can be
> made entertaining in a different format.
I know I didn't answer your long post a few months ago re. I7
development and the indifference of the IF community to reaching the
writers you're working with. It came at a time when I was working
pretty intensely on an academic project and didn't have energy to
respond meaningfully -- but I have been thinking a lot about it since.
I have the sense that you're frustrated, and I empathize with your
frustration. I know Graham would be interested in email from your
students (though also that you've said your students do not wish to
email); but you're right that there's a vision behind I7 that is not
so much "cater to group X" and more "explore concept Y". That's what
Graham wanted to do, and what he's doing. It doesn't preclude someone
else doing something else.
That doesn't at all mean, however, that the IF community (whatever
that is) is indifferent to reaching a larger audience. The evidence is
clearly against that, in that many people are in various ways working
on expanding the audience; it's just that different people have
different ideas about how that might be achieved, and what it might
mean.
I can only speak for myself, really, but my own interest *is* in
interactive storytelling; I just think that once you involve player
agency, the author needs to understand some techniques that are
traditionally thought to belong to the territory of "game design",
even if the resulting work is not really goal-oriented or concerned
with score or traditional gamist rewards. I think IF has accomplished
a number of advances in interactive narrative, and some of those are
things the wider gaming community could benefit from (and some of us
are working on bringing the best of IF's achievements to their
attention). IF has a lot in common with indie and art games, and it's
not entirely surprising that the communities devoted to those topics
have been more receptive than most to new IF.
I'm not nearly so focused on addressing conventional writers because
-- and again, this is my personal set of views, not Graham's
necessarily, and not particularly to do with I7 development as such --
I think writing for interaction is not that similar to writing
conventional stories. There are some overlapping skills, to be sure: I
admire good prose where I find it, and it's rarer than I would like in
both media. The same applies to good observation. And I do think that
many things about IF might be understood partly by analogy with
conventional fiction writing, and things that IF could learn *from*
conventional writing. But the ways of developing characterization and
plot are -- *have to be* -- different in an interactive medium.
I don't think that means IF has Arrived or has a fully developed set
of techniques for such things. I think we're still working on it; that
the relative age of IF and its relative freedom from market
considerations means we've discovered a few things that commercial
games haven't explored much; that the relative poverty of the IF
community and its relative lack of resources means we also have failed
to explore some things we might have done with more money and more
attention. I think the text parser is both a) of great value and b)
our most serious liability in reaching new players, many of whom find
it cumbersome.
But what is there to do about all that? My own approach: explore more
deeply the stuff I'm interested in; publish my findings; stay in
communication with the IF community but also with the worlds of
academic new media and of indie and commercial gaming; and brush up my
conventional writing skills as well, where I can; contribute as I can
to the development of interactive storytelling beyond just the
textual.
I guess my point is that I think there are worthwhile directions to go
with this work, but it's much more important to me to *go there* than
to spend my time trying to rebrand or win over unsympathetic audiences
in the meantime. If you think there's valuable work to be done in the
rebranding arena, I wish you luck, but I don't think we all have to
share your vision in order for you to pursue it in your own ways. (And
evidently you are indeed pursuing it, so good on that.)
Emily Short
> I once caused a riot and the formation of a lynch mob when I inquired
> as to whether or not the contests were generally won by the adolescents
> in the MUD's inner circle, i.e. rigged. Oh, yes, and an earlier one
> when I attempted to speak to Emily in the MUD. It was truly amazing to
> me to get such a response in what I had considered to be a
> sophisticated area of cyberspace. ;-)
Erm. I'm sorry your feelings were hurt and that evidently you're still
bothered by it, but: you showed up as a total stranger, you asked me
to meet you for a date in front of a (virtual) roomful of people, and
you didn't drop the topic when I told you I was uncomfortable and
asked you to stop. I think that's something that would have gotten
negative feedback in real life as well as in many quadrants of
cyberspace, sophisticated or otherwise.
David Tanguay
> Why would I want to write a "story" in textual IF format if I can just
> write a novel? (After all, who's interested in this "interactive
> fiction" thing?)
Why indeed. I think the interactive form can add value to a story, but
I am sceptical that the added value is worth the large cost of the
interactive implementation. For an author whose interest is only (or
primarily) to tell a story, IF adds a lot of work for an apparently
small gain in story impact. More fun to just write a regular story
relatively quickly, and then move on to the next story, rather than
stay stuck on the one interactive story dealing with all the extra
housekeeping.
> Why would I want to write a "game" in textual IF format if I can write
> a graphical game? (After all, who's interested solely in text-based
> games these days?)
>
> In answer to the latter, the value-add is usually that it's a game
> that places emphasis on reading and good story.
Only if your interest is primarily story. For me (as player-only), the
value-add of IF for games is the flexibility of a parser, and the relatively
low cost of building a rich game world (words versus pix and dealing with
graphic systems).
--
David Tanguay Brantford, Ontario
Jim Aikin
>
> I know this isn't what you were asking about, but to pop the stack: I
> don't think this consideration means much. I mean, lots of people
> presumably start the cello but don't get far with it; I know a lot of
> my Greek students don't go beyond a year or two of study.
An excellent point. (Although, to be strictly honest, I do occasionally
look at a student who has struggled for several years and isn't getting
anywhere and say to myself, "Why bother?" If they're enjoying music,
maybe that's all that matters ... but given the sounds they're
producing, I find it hard to imagine that they're really enjoying music.)
> But there is just so *much* left
> to discover. Even if you know your language of choice backward and
> forward, even if you've written enough games to have a fair grasp of
> design and testing, you may still find that the emotion, the theme,
> the plot structure, or the style of NPC interaction you want to
> explore lies off in totally uncharted waters. Then you have to figure
> out from scratch how to handle it, and there's a real risk that you'll
> get half-done and have to start over. That's what I find fun,
> personally, but it's not a fast or well-defined process and there is
> never the sense that you can sit down at the keyboard, crack your
> knuckles, and knock out another best-seller, if you see what I mean.
I think this may be a key point. It resonates with my own experience,
anyway. I have several ideas for games that I take out and look at now
and again, and it's not at all clear how to turn any of them into
well-structured, satisfying games. Conversely, if I were to try to
structure any of them as conventional fiction (or as a screenplay, for
that matter), the process would be, if not cut-and-dried, at least not
terra incognita either.
> Someone else has already mentioned Aaron Reed. How about Stephen
> Granade? Robb Sherwin? Their last games were perhaps a little while
> back, but they have produced numerous games over a long time, and I
> know Robb at least is working on something else fairly sizable. And
> what about Paul O'Brian and Ian Finley, who are now working on
> something for Textfyre but both have a fair back catalog? For that
> matter, why are you gluing "well-respected" onto this criterion at
> all?
Mainly to make the survey manageable with only an hour or so of work.
Certainly not to disrespect Paul, Ian, Aaron, or anyone else.
> If what you're interested in is people's enjoyment of a hobby,
> then shouldn't the less-successful also count? Because there are
> certainly some people who have written games for numerous
> competitions, placed moderately, and kept at it year after year,
> plainly out of some personal enjoyment they're getting from it.
Again, this is a good point, and broadens my horizons as I muse about
what to tell prospective students. Thanks!
--JA
Bert Byfield
>> inquired as to whether or not the contests were generally won by
>> the adolescents in the MUD's inner circle, i.e. rigged. Oh, yes,
>> and an earlier one when I attempted to speak to Emily in the MUD.
>> It was truly amazing to me to get such a response in what I had
>> considered to be a sophisticated area of cyberspace. � ;-)
> Erm. I'm sorry your feelings were hurt and that evidently you're
> still bothered by it, but: you showed up as a total stranger, you
> asked me to meet you for a date in front of a (virtual) roomful of
> people, and you didn't drop the topic when I told you I was
> uncomfortable and asked you to stop.
I don't think your memory of the incident is accurate. As I remember
it, yes I was flirting with you but certainly did not ask you to meet
me anywhere specific. I asked if you were in my age range. Certainly
if you had said you were uncomfortable and asked me to stop, I would
have, as a matter of course. But instead I was attacked by the
minions, kicked out of the MUD a few times, and generally badgered by
your fan club in terms of outrage, and ignored by you altogether.
This rudeness of minions is as described by the recent poster who was
complaining about the enthusiastic bad manners of people in RAIF who
defend the Elders. I'm not "bothered" by your "refusal" -- you could
be thirty years younger or older than I am as far as I know, so it
didn't get far enough for me to feel personally rejected, but my
opinion of the IF community suffered for this experience, and that
was my disappointment. I had thought I was an adult among adults, who
were sophisticated enough to handle a bit of flirtation. Seems not.
> I think that's something that
> would have gotten negative feedback in real life as well as in
> many quadrants of cyberspace, sophisticated or otherwise.
I don't think so. A simple reply would have been the cool way to
proceed. During my single periods I have been refused or accepted in
my flirtations, without all the riot and rage of bystanders that
ensuded on the MUD. I've been married three times, and know how to
play the game. I was single back then, and you could have (should
have) taken it as a compliment that I would have driven seven hours
(each way) to take you to lunch, if the negotiations had worked out.
On match.com I won't travel more than 25 miles as a rule. But the
idea of meeting the First Lady of IF -- if she were to be in my age
range and such -- had fascinated me. ;-)
Yoon Ha Lee
> I think "writing IF" is too narrow a way to define the hobby. For me,
> the hobby is just "IF in general". I enjoy writing games (on my 2nd
> attempt now), but I also enjoy writing interpreters (working on two at
> once!). I also love playing the yearly comp entries and being
> amazed. I love advocating certain games to my friends. I love
> keeping up on the latest state-of-the-art news regarding Inform,
> various interpreters, etc.
One of the draws of IF for me is that it's the only chance I get at
coding. I could go back to learning Scheme or take another stab at
Ruby or, God knows, try C. But while I wasn't any good at it, I did
enjoy the experience of coding when I was briefly a comp sci major,
and coding IF both lets me revisit the rush of "OMG it compiled!" with
*motivation* in the form of a world experience I want to convey. And
generally so far the things I've wanted to be able to code are fairly
tractable, and this newsgroup has been extremely friendly to me in
answering my n00b questions. I'm not concerned with revolutionizing
storytelling; I'm going to have better luck with that sort of
experiment in static fiction. I'm just here to have fun, because *OMG
making a game* is incredibly cool.
And God knows, even as a dabbler, my output is tiny, but real life
happens to people. In my case it was birth of a daughter and then
some significant health issues. I do mean to make a (non-fanfic) game
again someday, when I've caught my breath.
Shorter version of: yes! What you said! Let there be many ways to
enjoy the hobby!
YHL
Jerome West
> Also in the music arena -- by far the biggest brand name in music
> production is called Pro Tools.
Cakewalk, Sonar, Cubase, Reason, Reaktor.
There are oddly named applications in any field. Spend long enough in
the field, and they begin to appear normal.
Except for Glulx. :)
Emily Short
> I don't think your memory of the incident is accurate. As I remember
> it, yes I was flirting with you but certainly did not ask you to meet
> me anywhere specific. I asked if you were in my age range. Certainly
> if you had said you were uncomfortable and asked me to stop, I would
> have, as a matter of course. But instead I was attacked by the
> minions, kicked out of the MUD a few times, and generally badgered by
> your fan club in terms of outrage, and ignored by you altogether.
Odd how perceptions diverge, I suppose. My recollection is that I said
I found your questions and requests uncomfortable and then stopped
answering when you wouldn't drop them, since the only reply that
apparently would satisfy you was personal information I was
disinclined to share. That may seem paranoid, but I *am* cautious when
e.g. a complete stranger turns up and insistently offers to drive
seven hours to meet me. It may be flattering in a way, but it's also
based on an illusory idea of who I am, and suggests that the other
person has unrealistic hopes and expectations.
Anyway, I didn't mean to imply that you were still bothered by my
reaction -- only that you seem still to be bothered by other people's.
But I suspect the reaction of other people was based on a similar
perception of events to mine, that what you were doing wasn't
flirtation. Either way, I think it's a fairly serious outlier in any
"experiences with the IF community" survey.
Victor Gijsbers
Hash: SHA1
Jeff Nyman wrote:
> Why would I want to write a "story" in textual IF format if I can just
> write a novel? (After all, who's interested in this "interactive
> fiction" thing?)
> Why would I want to write a "game" in textual IF format if I can write
> a graphical game? (After all, who's interested solely in text-based
> games these days?)
When the questions are asked this way, a right answer has already become
impossible.
Interactive fiction is not a novel with game elements added to it, any
more than it is a game with story-elements tagged on.
Interactive fiction is not "games for people who like to read".
Interactive fiction is not "books for people who like to game".
In interactive fiction, in _good_ interactive fiction, the division
between game and story must not exist. Like in a good pen & paper
roleplaying game (My Life with Master, for instance), the game mechanics
and the story mechanics must fuse into a whole, they must be identical.
Perhaps we rarely achieve this, but it is certainly the goal. And if one
is not interested in this goal, if one's heart does not leap with joy at
the idea of merging theme and action, meaning and play, one ought not to
write interactive fiction. Which is of course a perfectly acceptable choice!
Regards,
Victor
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Emily Short
> Emily Short wrote:
>
> > I know this isn't what you were asking about, but to pop the stack: I
> > don't think this consideration means much. I mean, lots of people
> > presumably start the cello but don't get far with it; I know a lot of
> > my Greek students don't go beyond a year or two of study.
>
> An excellent point. (Although, to be strictly honest, I do occasionally
> look at a student who has struggled for several years and isn't getting
> anywhere and say to myself, "Why bother?" If they're enjoying music,
> maybe that's all that matters ... but given the sounds they're
> producing, I find it hard to imagine that they're really enjoying music.)
Well, sure. But that isn't any kind of reflection on music or cello-
playing in general.
Victor Gijsbers
Hash: SHA1
Jim Aikin wrote:
> I've seen IF that recycled dreadful '50s cliches about detective
> fiction. This sort of thing is accepted by the r.*.i-f community without
> a murmur, but Michael Connelly has nothing to worry about.
Although I loathe generic fiction, and thus agree with your general
point here, I do want to say two things in defense of using cliches from
static fiction in a work of IF.
1. The hardest task in writing IF is to get the player into a position
where she understands what kind of thing she can try to type: what kind
of actions are open to her and how does she have to formulate them? Now
the traditional solution is to give the player a small set of standard
verbs; but, of course, we often want the player to be engaged in other
things than taking, hitting and putting stuff on things. Another
solution, and one of the reasons that genre-IF is popular, is to take a
pre-existing set of expectations that the player has about a certain
genre, and use _that_ as the background for your game by putting it
squarely within this genre. "A detective game! I must look under
everything and smell and taste the ashes in the ashtray." "A noir
detective game! I must drink whisky when the solution eludes me and let
myself be seduced by the most obvious femme fatale." "A heroic fantasy!
I must bravely set forth to kill all enemies with my huge sword." It is
in the end a solution that may do more harm than good, but one can
understand why it has been chosen very often.
2. What are cliches of '50s detective novels might give rise to
something new and unexpected when transported to the medium of
interactive fiction. Only in the hands of a skilled author of course,
but a new medium offers fresh opportunities.
Of course, there is also the possibility of taking cliches and
subverting or recontextualising them, for satire, deconstruction, or
whatever other artistic purpose one might have. (One of my own games
starts with a knight in shining armour confronting a dragon--but it
turns out to be something not even akin to heroic fantasy.)
Regards,
Victor
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Katzy
Jim Aikin wrote in message ...
>Hannes wrote:
>If you were to write a stock 1950s private-eye story -- the detective
>with the bottle of bourbon in his office drawer, the blonde bombshell
>coming in to flirt with him and then hire him, the big dumb Mob hit man,
>all that stuff -- you would not be guilty of even a shred of
>originality. You would just be regurgitating stock materials from pop
>culture.
I tested such a story some months ago and I did very much like it, even
better, I wanted more... ;)
Bye, Katzy.
Conrad
>
> I've ranted about this before. I'll give a quick example of what I think
> you're talking about. "King of Shreds & Patches" is a fine game, but ...
> Cthulhu??? As a conventional novel, this script would be rejected out of
> hand by any mainstream book publisher. It doesn't have the fresh vision
> they're looking for, it just grabs a very shopworn fantasy device off
> the shelf. Granted, that device is used in a fresh setting, but a book
> publisher would want to see a LOT more done to make the fantasy/demon
> premise fresh.
If I can just say.. I see this kind of comment a lot. In my opinion,
there's nothing to it. This is the kind of thinking that brought us
Next-Gen technobabble. The "fresh premise" critical view of sci-fi /
fantasy is a terribly, terribly shallow way of looking at the genre.
It brings us stuff like, "Okay, we have vampires, but they're space
vampires, see, because vampirism is really--"
Ah, no. Traditional vampire stories are fine. Traditional Cthulhu is
fine. Traditional space opera is fine. --If there's a good story.
Rewriting the rules is fine, too -- *if* you're Larry Niven. If
you're Greg Bear, it's ponderous look-how-clever bloated non-story
crap.
Admittedly, Greg Bear sells -- to editors. But I notice that sci-fi
isn't doing so well these last few decades, since editors adopted this
shallow way of filtering for marketable fiction.
> I've seen IF that recycled dreadful '50s cliches about detective
> fiction. This sort of thing is accepted by the r.*.i-f community without
> a murmur, but Michael Connelly has nothing to worry about.
Well, Jim, not all of us are published authors like you. You are soo
cool. --Can we move on?
Conrad.
Conrad
> Jim:
>
> OK, to be honest: I find this whole thread ironic because, well, I
> find your own posts to be a nontrivial net drain on enthusiasm for
> writing IF.
I agree. You're a bit of a nattering nabob, Jim.
Conrad.
James Jolley
Funny coming from you i'd expect, this is the same guy who tries to act
big in front of the groupies.
Conrad
> jeremyfreese wrote:
>
> > OK, to be honest: I find this whole thread ironic because, well, I
> > find your own posts to be a nontrivial net drain on enthusiasm for
> > writing IF.
>
> It would be shocking if I had that kind of power. I don't. Thanks for
> the compliment, though.
>
> ...
>
> Again, it seems you're giving me waaaay too much power here. I'm not
> discouraging these hypothetical uninterested authors. If anything, the
> fact that there's no money in writing IF is probably what's discouraging
> them. I said as much in the essay. If you feel that my negative attitude
> is what's driving people away ... dude, all I can say is, you need to
> check your research data.
Jim, that's a dodge. I'm running on my third-in-a-row hey-Jim-you're-
being-a-dick post here, and I *do* consider you an online friend; so I
want to be clear that I value your many contributions to IF --
But you must see that writing influences people's emotions; emotions
in the broadest sense, including motivation and fascination. And you
pride yourself on your ability to write compellingly. Why then is it
so hard to understand that when you persistently dump on IF as a
movement ("Why does the IF movement suck so bad?" -- "Hey, I'm just
asking a question. I wish it *DIDN'T* suck so bad. I *LIKE* IF!")
and on individual games ("such-and-so was a great game, but it just
really sucked here and there, and overall it sucked, and it wasn't
professional and it's too bad it sucked so much") -- it has an effect
on people?
Feelings are contagious. People respond very easily to feelings.
I mean, what is it? Pre-emptive angst that your library seminar will
go badly? C'mon, man.
Conrad.
Conrad
>
> Funny coming from you i'd expect, this is the same guy who tries to act
> big in front of the groupies.
Who does -- Me, Jeremey Freese, or Jim Aikin?
Anyway, what are groupies for, if not to act big in front of?
C.
James Jolley
You. Remember all that fuss about examine a while back? We've all got
strong views here but some are more arrogant than others. Jim's just
Jim, he has his ideals, we have ours.
Conrad
>
> You. Remember all that fuss about examine a while back? We've all got
> strong views here but some are more arrogant than others. Jim's just
> Jim, he has his ideals, we have ours.
Oh, my thing about bullshit detail. Yeah, I stand by that. And in
general, I have a problem with the kind of "professional" writing that
editors often demand. Jim doesn't share my view on it, and he's
worked hard and successfully to produce "professional" -- slick --
writing.
In my view, such slick / professional writing often isn't good
writing; and I find it hard to read a great deal of modern writing as
a result of that. I'm frankly impressed that Jim has been published
by F&SF. It was kind of cool to see him there. But that doesn't mean
that "Shiny and new, it looks like it's never been used" isn't
bullshit detail.
But that conversatiion wasn't me acting big in front of the groupies.
I had a substantial and particular difference of opinion, and I
represented that difference clearly and with technical precision. For
more on that use of the word "bullshit," see _The Philosophy of
Bullshit_, by Harry Frankfurt.
Conrad.
ps - If I were to act big in front of the groupies, be sure the
groupies would fling themselves at me.
James Jolley
Well that's cleared up then. You've stated your case and that's fine. I
partly agree, but access to literature is harder for the blind
generally as you'll appreciate. I've got less to go on, I have to take
what's offered.
Best
-James-
Hannes
Jim Aikin <midig...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What I mean by that is that stories are sometimes accepted and
> praised within the IF community that would not, if they were cast in
> the form of conventional fiction, be purchased and published, not
> even by the genre magazines. (We're not talking Harper's and The New
> Yorker here.)
While your observation is probably correct, the analogy is off. Pretty
much all IF (including all the games and authors you listed in your
rant) is self-published (as you pointed out) without any commercial
purposes. So if you want an analogy with non-interactive storytelling,
the legions of people writing fanfiction and people doodling with
SF (or whatever genre), publishing on their own websites, would probably
be more appropriate. Compared to those, IF looks pretty good in literary
terms.
> People like all sorts of things. A lot of people like reading vampire
> romance novels, for instance. But that doesn't mean that vampire
> romances are felt (by writers, agents, and editors) to display much
> in the way of literary excellence. Quite the contrary; by and large,
> and possibly with the odd exception here or there, they're a
> thoroughly degraded form of literature.
Exactly. Stephen King and Dean Koontz (since you mentioned those two
elsewhere in the thread) aren't considered highlights of literature,
either, by the way. They're popular bestseller authors, not hot
candidates for the nobel prize.
> To the extent, however, that the IF catalog includes material of this
> sort, writers who aspire to some sort of quality in their own work
> are likely, when they discover said material, to shy away from
> writing IF. Likewise, potential readers of IF who are in search of
> some sort of quality are likely, when they discover said materials,
> to lose interest in exploring the IF catalog. That's the point.
Alright, it may be *a* point, but it's not a very good one, because your
assumption is based on people who have never heard of (or experienced)
Sturgeon's Law. Which, considering (I assume) adult status of IF's
target audience, a very unlikely case.
It's like saying aspiring 'conventional' authors will drop the idea of
writing a great novel, because they accidently picked up one of these
sappy romance 'novels' sold at train stations.
> But it was a very minor point in any case. You asked for
> clarification; there it is. It's not the main point I've been looking
> at, and I hope it won't be conflated with that point. What I'm mainly
> curious about is why accomplished IF authors (of whom there's a
> pretty good supply) don't continue to produce work on a more frequent
> basis, the way accomplished novelists so often do.
Ok, I'll try to add one more idea in addition to all the good ones
mentioned in the thread already:
How many good ideas does a professional author have in his life? And
I'm talking about *really* good ideas here. Not the interesting, but
ultimately flawed idea. Not slightly modified re-hashes of the author's
own older ideas.
If you look at those popular authors which you've mentioned before -
let's be honest - they're writing the same story again and again, with
the same basic characters in a slightly different setting each time.
If you look at nobel-prize-material authors, they mostly actually also
only have one or two *really* great books on their list. In most cases
one from their early years and since then, they're just living off that
past fame.
I'm not trying to belittle any of these groups of authors. I think both
phenomenons are perfectly normal! Even producing ONE great story is
hard enough - most people on world never even come close. So that's a
great accomplishment already.
However, those two groups of authors have got a good reason to still go
on: they're professionals. Stephen King knows anything he'll write will
sell just because of his name alone. He knows what his followers want
to read, even if it's the same few elements again and again in slightly
different combinations.
IF authors are basically the same. They might have a few good stories
in them, but it gets harder with each new one.
At the same time, there is the problem of expectations. If one of the
well-respected IF authors publishes a new game, everybody expects it to
be the next Spider and Web, Anchorhead or whatever in that league. How
could anyone possibly keep that level of writing up (no offense
intended to the authors of those games - if you CAN keep it up, you
deserve even more respect)?
I have written games from 1996 to 2002 pretty regularly (don't bother
searching for those games - none of them are any good). After the last
one, I decided I didn't want to write games anymore unless I had a
good idea for it. *Even though* nobody expected anything great from me.
I can only vaguely imagine how great the pressure to be good must be on
popular IF authors.
Hannes
Ben
getting people interested in writing IF. I think the focus should be
getting people to play and enjoy IF. That's what happened to me: I
had played IF for a while, I was interested, I heard about Inform,
wasn't interested at first, finally thought it might be fun to try,
and started dabbling a little bit. I made a one room game that was
pretty simple. Nothing worthy of releasing, but it was fun. I may do
more in the future. The hook, however, was that IF itself was fun,
and not just that playing it or writing it was fun.
I think another consideration is how many games have been completed
but not released? I'm sure there are at least a few folks who make IF
and only share them with their friends, and don't release anything to
the community at large.
As for this (From Jim Aikin):
> An excellent point. (Although, to be strictly honest, I do occasionally
> look at a student who has struggled for several years and isn't getting
> anywhere and say to myself, "Why bother?" If they're enjoying music,
> maybe that's all that matters ... but given the sounds they're
> producing, I find it hard to imagine that they're really enjoying music.)
Sometimes it's the action, and not the end product of the action, that
gives the enjoyment. I know a few people who like to sing, but sing
terribly, as well as a few who play instruments and enjoy it a lot,
but who should really play them away from people. This may be applied
to IF as well: some people love to write it, but the things they come
up with may be utterly unplayable. For them, however, it was a good
experience, and that's all that really ought to matter.
Jeff Nyman
> When the questions are asked this way, a right answer has already become
> impossible.
If you mean a "right answer that applies to everyone in the same way",
I would agree. But certainly people can reach a "right answer" for
themselves and what they want to devote time to. That's not impossible
at all; it's in fact how we often determine what to spend our limited
time and energy on.
> In interactive fiction, in _good_ interactive fiction, the division
> between game and story must not exist.
That's an opinion and a valid one. It doesn't mean everyone shares it,
however. Personally I agree with you only in the sense that the
division would be fluid. I don't think you can totally remove game
mechanics -- since "game" is, in reality, a very broad term -- but it
might be easier to remove all story "mechanics." Further, it depends
on what you mean by "good" interactive fiction. What you define as
"good" and what others define as "good" may not be the same thing.
Certainly people have gradations of what is "good" and "bad" when it
comes to any form of media, whether that be novels, film, plays,
computer games, etc.
> Perhaps we rarely achieve this, but it is certainly the goal.
Perhaps that's the goal for *you.* I don't know if that's the goal for
everyone and even if some people share that goal, it may be *a* goal
rather than *the* goal. I hope you'll accept my bluntess in saying so,
but you come across a bit too dogmatic for me, as if your viewpoint is
the only one possible and the only one that makes sense. I'm not sure
how that furthers any sort of discussion so there's not much else I
can really say.
- Jeff
Jim Aikin
I'm usually happy to stroll along with a knight attacking a dragon, at
least for an hour or so just to see what's up. I find the '50s detective
cliches a bit harder to take, but that's just me.
I was never into Lovecraftian horror to begin with, so Cthulhu does not
set my pulse pounding, but I can see that there may still be good
stories to be told within that framework. I would have no trouble with a
good, new Sherlock Holmes story, for instance -- so again, it's my
personal taste, which I was inappropriately generalizing into a
universal principle.
That said, fresh is always good.
--JA
Jim Aikin
thoughtful comments in this thread.
Y'all have given me a lot to think about. Thanks!
--JA
Jeff Nyman
> Yeeahbut. The thing is, RAIF is decreasingly the "primary home" of IF
> discussion. It's the primary source of tech support, but a non-trivial
> amount of the theoretical discussion has moved ...
That's a great point, Emily. I have to be honest with you: I didn't
really know all that. I didn't even know of "Planet IF" until you
mentioned it. I'm sure it's come up in various threads but if I didn't
happen to read those threads, I clearly missed it. And I actually
follow this stuff. So for people who don't, I can imagine sorting out
the various places where "theoretical discussion" takes place can be
tricky. Along with that, I did check out "Planet IF" and I see it's
pretty nice, but comments to blog posts are not always the easiest
things to reference for theoretical discussion so my guess is some
objections would still remain.
That said, who knows? I appreciate you pointing me in different
directions.
> That doesn't at all mean, however, that the IF community (whatever
> that is) is indifferent to reaching a larger audience. The evidence is
> clearly against that, in that many people are in various ways working
> on expanding the audience; it's just that different people have
> different ideas about how that might be achieved, and what it might
> mean.
Absolutely agreed. I don't think I've ever said my ideas and/or
conception should be "the way it is." If I have, I was wrong to do so.
I usually caveat a lot of my posts with my disclaimer that I'm trying
to reach not just a different audience for writing but a different
audience for playing as well.
> I can only speak for myself, really, but my own interest *is* in
> interactive storytelling; I just think that once you involve player
> agency, the author needs to understand some techniques that are
> traditionally thought to belong to the territory of "game design",
> even if the resulting work is not really goal-oriented or concerned
> with score or traditional gamist rewards.
Completely agreed on this. That being said, having done quality
assurance for game design companies and participated in the concepts
that go into making a game, the game design mechanics are much easier
to get across to people than effective storytelling practices. Now,
granted, that's a huge generalization on my part -- but it's also
based on the fact that "game design" in general is often done by many
people, even in such "simple" things as 2D games. The proliferation of
game engines, like Torque, Pygame, Panda, AGS, etc., have led a lot of
people to craft games of various sorts. There are no "writer engines,"
however, that churn out effective plots, dialogue, etc. That's
something the person brings to the table pretty much exclusively.
But I definitely agree that a rich area of exploration is how
effective game design -- in terms of agency -- can be accommodated
within a storytelling format.
> I think IF has accomplished
> a number of advances in interactive narrative, and some of those are
> things the wider gaming community could benefit from (and some of us
> are working on bringing the best of IF's achievements to their
> attention).
For my own edification, what are these advances in interactive
narrative? (I'm not asking to just "shoot down" any answer. I'm
genuinely interested in broadening the scope of my investigation
here.)
> IF has a lot in common with indie and art games, and it's
> not entirely surprising that the communities devoted to those topics
> have been more receptive than most to new IF.
Do we have evidence of this receptivity? When we have such, does that
receptivity lead to an uptick in people wanting to author textual IF?
Play textual IF? These sound like good data points but I've had
trouble isolating a lot of this stuff, to be honest. It's probably
largely because I'm not looking in the right places or talking to the
right people.
> But the ways of developing characterization and
> plot are -- *have to be* -- different in an interactive medium.
To a certain extent, yes, I would agree. It's the nature of the "have
to be" that I want to explore. Many people I have worked with have
said that certain works, like "Photopia", show that characterization
and plot do not "have to be" entirely different in terms of textual
IF. Yet, those same people, often did not find "Photopia" very
rewarding. So there was agreement that there is .... more. There
is .... something different. It's the nature of those differences, and
how the techniques reinforce and complement each other that is
interesting to me. That "interesting to me" is important because of:
> ... but I don't think we all have to
> share your vision in order for you to pursue it in your own ways.
Most certainly agreed. Most often I try to present my own findings in
a way that makes it very clear that I'm cognizant of the different
audiences I'm trying to reach and the different approaches I take.
Those often seem to be at odds with how the majority of people here
would approach things. But, as you say, that's certainly fine. There's
room for lots of exploration. But I think there's also room for people
to express their own findings, even if those findings seem to go
against the grain of what people are willing to accept or are willing
to agree with, even in principle.
Good discussion, as always. Much appreciated.
- Jeff
S. John Ross
> [...] if one's heart does not leap with joy at
> the idea of merging theme and action, meaning and play, one ought not to
> write interactive fiction.
Yeah? Well try and stop me ;)
S. John Ross
> Another
> solution, and one of the reasons that genre-IF is popular, is to take a
> pre-existing set of expectations that the player has about a certain
> genre, and use _that_ as the background for your game by putting it
The simplest way I know to express this (and I try to hammer this into
new writers under my care) is that there is cliche used as _language_
and there is cliche passed off as _substance._ The former is a
powerful tool, the latter is lazy hackwork.
Put another way: if cliche _is_ the story, that's crap, but if cliche
_tells_ the story, anything goes (it may still be crap, but it isn't
cliche's fault ...)
Timid writers often demonize cliche because they conflate novelty with
originality (many simultaneously conflate specific anointed
establishments with quality, and lets just stop to smell _that_
irony).
Bottom line, AFAIC is: Bold writers wield cliche as one more set of
colors in their paintbox.
OKB (not okblacke)
> Here, Jeff Nyman <jeff...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On that latter point, what was often pointed out to me centered
>> around how textual IF has chosen to "brand" itself in some ways. For
>> example, "TADS" still refers to "Text Adventure." Inform uses "silly"
>> names like Glulx, Glk and so on.
>
> Just on this specific point -- you've mentioned this before. You
> really need to tell those students to get out of IF and back to
> serious programming, in systems with serious names, like Python, Java,
> SQL, COBOL... or *Linux* or *Macintosh*.
It seemed clear from Jeff's post that he was aimed at trying to get
WRITERS interested in IF, not programmers.
I do have to wonder how differently people would react if it were
GLK (pronounced "gee ell kay") instead of Glk (pronounced. . .).
--
--OKB (not okblacke)
Brendan Barnwell
"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is
no path, and leave a trail."
--author unknown
Victor Gijsbers
Hash: SHA1
Jeff Nyman wrote:
> On Sep 6, 5:15 am, Victor Gijsbers <vic...@lilith.gotdns.org> wrote:
>
>> When the questions are asked this way, a right answer has already become
>> impossible.
>
> If you mean a "right answer that applies to everyone in the same way",
> I would agree. But certainly people can reach a "right answer" for
> themselves and what they want to devote time to. That's not impossible
> at all; it's in fact how we often determine what to spend our limited
> time and energy on.
Oh no, I mean a right answer in general. The question sets up a false
dichotomy between story and game. Once the question as asked here is
accepted, no good answer will be forthcoming.
>> In interactive fiction, in _good_ interactive fiction, the division
>> between game and story must not exist.
>
> That's an opinion and a valid one. It doesn't mean everyone shares it,
> however. Personally I agree with you only in the sense that the
> division would be fluid. I don't think you can totally remove game
> mechanics -- since "game" is, in reality, a very broad term -- but it
> might be easier to remove all story "mechanics." Further, it depends
> on what you mean by "good" interactive fiction. What you define as
> "good" and what others define as "good" may not be the same thing.
> Certainly people have gradations of what is "good" and "bad" when it
> comes to any form of media, whether that be novels, film, plays,
> computer games, etc.
In fact, I think it is not really a matter of opinion. At least, if you
accept the idea that a work of art is a unity, my "opinion" necessarily
follows. Unless you achieve an intimate welding of fiction and
interactivity, of story and game, you will have a disunified work, a
story with gamelike aspect pasted onto it, or a game on which a story
has been painted.
When your students ask the question: "Why would I want to write a
"story" in textual IF format if I can just write a novel?", they
apparently have not been convinced that the interactivity of IF can
fruitfully influence the story. They might even share my opinion; they
just have not been convinced that the unity between story and game can
be achieved. :)
>> Perhaps we rarely achieve this, but it is certainly the goal.
>
> Perhaps that's the goal for *you.* I don't know if that's the goal for
> everyone and even if some people share that goal, it may be *a* goal
> rather than *the* goal. I hope you'll accept my bluntess in saying so,
> but you come across a bit too dogmatic for me, as if your viewpoint is
> the only one possible and the only one that makes sense. I'm not sure
> how that furthers any sort of discussion so there's not much else I
> can really say.
So tell me--what is your goal? (Within the context created by your
original post, of course. We were asking the question of IF vs novels,
we were talking about artistic merit, and so on. There are of course
viable goals outside that context.) I have some trouble imagining that
anyone has the artistic goal to keep story and game _apart_ in his
interactive fiction, but it might well be my imagination that is at fault!
In sum, I didn't think (and don't think) that I'm stating anything
particularly controversial here. I'm merely objecting to a kind of
theorising that treats IF as if you can take any work apart into a story
and a game, look at them separately, and lose nothing by doing so!
Again, I have a hard time imagining that we do not agree about that (and
again it may be my imagination may be at fault). I have perhaps merely
stated my point in a confusing or too-brief manner?
Regards,
Victor
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Victor Gijsbers
Hash: SHA1
Well, I was talking about people who are wondering whether to write a
novel or a piece of IF, and are worried about IF's artistic potential.
Not sure you fall into that category!
Even so, take ToaSK. Surely it achieves, in its own unassuming way, a
unity of story and gameplay? The gameplay is about kicking stuff until
it stops moving, and what I saw of the story was also about kicking
stuff until it stops moving. :)
Regards,
Victor
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Jim Aikin
>
>> Why would I want to write a "story" in textual IF format if I can just
>> write a novel? (After all, who's interested in this "interactive
>> fiction" thing?)
>> Why would I want to write a "game" in textual IF format if I can write
>> a graphical game? (After all, who's interested solely in text-based
>> games these days?)
>
> When the questions are asked this way, a right answer has already become
> impossible.
I think Jeff was posing the questions rhetorically. But I also think
they're questions that people may in fact ask themselves. So perhaps
they're worth batting around. There may not be -- indeed, there probably
isn't -- a single "right answer" for all people, or for any one person
at all of the periods in their life. But there may indeed be a right
answer for a given individual at a given time. And the right answer may
indeed tip in favor of IF!
> In interactive fiction, in _good_ interactive fiction, the division
> between game and story must not exist.
I guess I'd be curious to learn about a couple of examples of games in
which you feel that this distinction doesn't exist.
> Perhaps we rarely achieve this, but it is certainly the goal. And if one
> is not interested in this goal, if one's heart does not leap with joy at
> the idea of merging theme and action, meaning and play, one ought not to
> write interactive fiction.
I'm not sure I agree that one ought to be expected to construe one's
goals quite that narrowly. I think there's an important place in the IF
world for games that don't attempt to tell any sort of coherent story.
Such as, oh, Zork, for instance.
I think I might prefer to look at the relationship of theme and action,
of game and story, as a two-way dialog or a dynamically varying
balancing act. The mix may change from moment to moment within a single
game, and I think that's okay. I don't think they need to be fused
inextricably.
--JA
Jim Aikin
> At least, if you
> accept the idea that a work of art is a unity, my "opinion" necessarily
> follows.
You might want to check out the work of the sculptor Joseph Cornell. His
boxes (a few examples are at
http://www.artseditor.com/html/features/0707_cornell.shtml) contained
found objects. They could be relied on to have "unity" only in the sense
that all of the objects in a single box were in a single box -- or
perhaps in the sense that the viewer's thoughts about the contents of
the box would be jostling one another in the viewer's head at more or
less the same time.
By that definition, EVERY work of art has unity. So the term becomes
meaningless.
--JA
Jim Aikin
> Jim Aikin wrote:
>> Also in the music arena -- by far the biggest brand name in music
>> production is called Pro Tools.
>
> Cakewalk, Sonar, Cubase, Reason, Reaktor.
>
> There are oddly named applications in any field. Spend long enough in
> the field, and they begin to appear normal.
>
> Except for Glulx. :)
Right. I've been primarily a Cubase user for 20 years, and the word
means NOTHING. (Which may have something to do with its lack of
pre-eminence. It's a good program.) Sonar is a reasonably good name.
Digital Performer is reasonable. Reason and Logic are catchy but
mystifying. Live is a great name, except that it's too generic -- people
often refer to it as Ableton, for exactly that reason.
Native Instruments' names run the gamut from Reaktor and Massive (good)
to Kontakt (meaningless), FM8 (meaningless except to insiders), Absynth
(cute), and Elektrik Piano (Kafkaesque). From other companies we have
Atmosphere and Stylus RMX (good), AutoTune (good -- very clear), Zebra2
(meaningless), Largo (misleading), Alchemy (evocative but not easy to
pin down).... I'm glad I don't have to name products!
--JA
Ron Newcomb
>* They see a community that -- in their eyes -- is not really well
> informed about the wider discipline of writing and how that can be
> made entertaining in a different format. The viewpoint that's often
> been presented to me is that much of textual IF seems either "too
> academic" or "too much like a toy."
Which famed game designer said that in order to have a good game, you
must first have a good toy? (Costikyan?) The reason being a toy has
interesting behaviors and is fun to manipulate, and a game is merely a
goal laid on top of one or more toys. I feel that your students,
Jeff, are not really well informed about the wider discipline of game
design. I agree with other posters in this thread: I-F can borrow
from its neighboring mediums much like film first borrowed from
theater and painting, but ultimately it is its own thing with its own
craft. When I see questions like, "Why would I want to cast this
particular story (or gameplay, from Gamasutra's students) into I-F
format?", I feel they are putting carts before horses here. Who first
comes up with a story, *then* decides if its medium will be a
screenplay / radio drama / novel? The medium itself decides what
kinds of stories you can and cannot well tell.
And that blindspot isn't unique to your students. Imagine a Gamasutra
reader asking, "Why would I want to cast this particular gameplay into
I-F format?"
Choose the medium first, then choose the story -- or gameplay -- that
fits its constraints.
> Probably one of the biggest questions I often had to "answer"
> (or at least provide evidence around) was: Is textual IF just
> something that people do when they can't write novels or
> can't program games?
This seems to attack novices in both fields for trying to improve
themselves. I'm sure even Shakespeare had to write a lot of crap in
his youth until he could write well.
Re: elsewhere in the thread:
* Jeff's students pitch a catch-22: don't spend time in I-F because
so few people spend time in I-F. I have one of my favorite clichés
ready: "Reasonable men adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable
men expect the world to adapt to them. Therefore, all progress
depends upon the unreasonable man." If Jeff's students are looking
for *reasons* to get into I-F, well...
* I think Ross made a good point about genre tropes being a good tool
in the author's toolbox, when used wisely.
* As a [former] developer, yes we use a lot of acronyms and
abbreviations in our work since it's more expedient when typing Unix
commands all day, and yes, outside the command-line we should use real
words like grownups do, and yes, it frequently infects business and
usability that it touches. I'd prefer the lower-levels of our
authoring tools to not require a name at all, but it likely won't
happen due to the realities of software development. However I was
particularly thrilled when Nick Montfort re-named his in-progress
authoring tool from nn to Curveship.
On Sep 6, 5:20 am, Conrad <conradc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Rewriting the rules is fine, too -- *if* you're Larry Niven. If
> you're Greg Bear, it's ponderous look-how-clever bloated non-story
> crap.
> Admittedly, Greg Bear sells -- to editors.
I'm drifting off-topic here, but this surprised me. In one of those
weird coincidences of the universe, I just this weekend finished
reading my first Greg Bear book _Darwin's Radio_ and I found it one of
the best pieces of speculative fiction I've read in ages. I had
picked it off the shelf in the bookstore, and six chapters later
decided to buy the thing. I plan on reading more by him. Did you
perhaps choose one of his lesser works, or is this just a difference
in taste?
-R
S. John Ross
> Even so, take ToaSK. Surely it achieves, in its own unassuming way, a
> unity of story and gameplay?
I see it more as an explorable and affectionate commentary on several
things, including (though not primarily) those :)
Victor Gijsbers
Hash: SHA1
Jim Aikin wrote:
> I guess I'd be curious to learn about a couple of examples of games in
> which you feel that this distinction doesn't exist.
I think I'd have to argue for it separately for each game, so let me
limit myself to two examples.
Blue Lacuna (in Story Mode, I haven't player Puzzle Mode): play consists
of exploration of the island, interaction with Progue, and decisions
about something I won't talk about lest it would spoil the game. These
three things are also the main ingredients of the story: if you were to
"novelise" Blue Lacuna, you'd spend almost every word on these three things.
Floatpoint: play consists of getting to know a strange culture and
deciding what to do with it; the story is about getting to know a
strange culture and deciding what to do with it.
In contrast, consider Metamorphoses, where play consists of solving
puzzles involving physical metamorphoses, while the story is about a
girl's relation to her master; or my Fate, where _some_ of the gameplay
(the main decisions) coincide with the story, but where are there are
also some puzzles that are very much "tagged on" and far from central to
the storyline.
> I'm not sure I agree that one ought to be expected to construe one's
> goals quite that narrowly. I think there's an important place in the IF
> world for games that don't attempt to tell any sort of coherent story.
> Such as, oh, Zork, for instance.
O yes, most certainly. As I wrote in another post, I was specifically
replying to people who come from static fiction and wonder about the
artistic potential of IF.
> I think I might prefer to look at the relationship of theme and action,
> of game and story, as a two-way dialog or a dynamically varying
> balancing act. The mix may change from moment to moment within a single
> game, and I think that's okay. I don't think they need to be fused
> inextricably.
I'm happy to accept the metaphor of the dialogue as easily as that of
fusing. A dialogue _is_ a fusing: two monologues do not a dialogue make!
I'm less happy with the metaphor of a mix: that sounds as though you
could have some story, then a puzzle, then some more story, then two
puzzles, and so on... but in good IF, the puzzles are part of the story,
the exploration is part of the story, the whatever-the-player-is-doing
is part of the story.
There are certainly different levels of integration, and I myself am
particularly interested in high levels of integration, where game
mechanics become story mechanics. (We can talk about this further if you
like.) But at a somewhat more "normal" level, I believe it is a widely
held opinion in the IF-community that a game is better if this
integration exist. You cannot take a random puzzle from Zork and plug it
into Spider and Web: the game would suffer from disunity.
Regards,
Victor
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Victor Gijsbers
Hash: SHA1
Jim Aikin wrote:
> Victor Gijsbers wrote:
>
>> At least, if you
>> accept the idea that a work of art is a unity, my "opinion" necessarily
>> follows.
>
> You might want to check out the work of the sculptor Joseph Cornell. His
> boxes (a few examples are at
> http://www.artseditor.com/html/features/0707_cornell.shtml) contained
> found objects. They could be relied on to have "unity" only in the sense
> that all of the objects in a single box were in a single box -- or
> perhaps in the sense that the viewer's thoughts about the contents of
> the box would be jostling one another in the viewer's head at more or
> less the same time.
I am absolutely not competent to judge this, but here is a line of
though that suggests itself. If puting random stuff you found together
in a box was enough to make art, everyone could be an artist as good as
Joseph Cornell. But it is not true that everyone can be an artist as
good as Joseph Cornell. He applies a certain kind of judgement when he
creates his boxes, and this judgement, hard to codify as it probably is,
gives his works what we might want to call "unity".
I might be wrong, and anyway, I do not want to suggest that disunity is
not a powerful artistic tool. So, yes, I am willing to say that you
could use a disunity of story and game for artistic purposes--but, I
would add, in the way that you can use the negation of any artistic
norm, as comment, as deconstruction, as what-have-you. Something that
requires one to first grasp and master the thing to be negated.
> By that definition, EVERY work of art has unity. So the term becomes
> meaningless.
If you ask me to give you a definition of unity, I'll promise you I'll
fail. :)
Regards,
Victor
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Emily Short
> That's a great point, Emily. I have to be honest with you: I didn't
> really know all that. I didn't even know of "Planet IF" until you
> mentioned it. I'm sure it's come up in various threads but if I didn't
> happen to read those threads, I clearly missed it. And I actually
> follow this stuff. So for people who don't, I can imagine sorting out
> the various places where "theoretical discussion" takes place can be
> tricky. Along with that, I did check out "Planet IF" and I see it's
> pretty nice, but comments to blog posts are not always the easiest
> things to reference for theoretical discussion so my guess is some
> objections would still remain.
Okay, well: my own sort of impression of the IF world at the moment is
that the best way to watch what's going on from moment to moment is
not just to follow RAIF but also to check out Planet-IF and new games/
reviews on IFDB; the best way to research some specific issue in craft
is to go to ifwiki and seek out discussions on a per-subject basis. It
is quite well-maintained, and often links to interesting blog posts,
SPAG articles, and mentions of IF on non-community sites.
What this lacks in centralized authority, I think it partly makes up
in breadth and robustness: ifwiki can be maintained by multiple
people, and it provides a way of linking to historical materials and
stuff done outside the core community, which a centralized forum/
bulletin board would not.
> I don't think I've ever said my ideas and/or
> conception should be "the way it is." If I have, I was wrong to do so.
> I usually caveat a lot of my posts with my disclaimer that I'm trying
> to reach not just a different audience for writing but a different
> audience for playing as well.
No, you didn't, and I appreciate that.
I did get the sense from some of your posts that you were feeling
dispirited about the possibility of doing what you want to do when the
community seems to be looking elsewhere, and one of the points you
brought up was a lack of the kind of acceptance-driven approach you're
interested in.
> Completely agreed on this. That being said, having done quality
> assurance for game design companies and participated in the concepts
> that go into making a game, the game design mechanics are much easier
> to get across to people than effective storytelling practices. Now,
> granted, that's a huge generalization on my part -- but it's also
> based on the fact that "game design" in general is often done by many
> people, even in such "simple" things as 2D games. The proliferation of
> game engines, like Torque, Pygame, Panda, AGS, etc., have led a lot of
> people to craft games of various sorts. There are no "writer engines,"
> however, that churn out effective plots, dialogue, etc.
I really wouldn't say that Torque, AGS, etc., *churn out* game design.
They help with implementation, sure, but the design is something else.
> > I think IF has accomplished
> > a number of advances in interactive narrative, and some of those are
> > things the wider gaming community could benefit from (and some of us
> > are working on bringing the best of IF's achievements to their
> > attention).
>
> For my own edification, what are these advances in interactive
> narrative? (I'm not asking to just "shoot down" any answer. I'm
> genuinely interested in broadening the scope of my investigation
> here.)
This is something I talk about periodically in my GameSetWatch column,
in the interest of reaching a wider gaming audience. There are some
things I'm still meaning to get around to writing up, but some of my
already-published essays on this are as follow:
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/09/column_homer_in_silicon_the_ro.php
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/06/column_homer_in_silicon_the_ac.php
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/05/column_homer_in_silicon_the_co_1.php
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/02/column_homer_in_silicon_blue.php
http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2008/08/column_homer_in_silicon_betray.php
Incidentally, Mike Rubin is also about to do a panel at the Austin GDC
about IF features that might be of interest to a wider gaming
audience, so you might also be interested in what he's preparing to
say. His blog is one of the ones syndicated on Planet-IF; I had the
impression he's intending to talk a bit more about his presentation
once it's been given.
> > IF has a lot in common with indie and art games, and it's
> > not entirely surprising that the communities devoted to those topics
> > have been more receptive than most to new IF.
>
> Do we have evidence of this receptivity? When we have such, does that
> receptivity lead to an uptick in people wanting to author textual IF?
> Play textual IF? These sound like good data points but I've had
> trouble isolating a lot of this stuff, to be honest. It's probably
> largely because I'm not looking in the right places or talking to the
> right people.
Hm. The only way of measuring I have are things like email, comments
on those threads, and traffic to my blog resulting from them, so I'm
relying on the somewhat touchy-feely observation that there are more
such posts and articles and that new people contact me now and then to
say that they got into IF through one of these venues.
S. John Ross
> If puting [sic] random stuff you found together
> in a box was enough to make art, everyone could be an artist as good as
> Joseph Cornell.
Hm? There's nothing in that equation that guarantees that your junk-
filled box or my junk-filled box will be as evocative/informative/
expressive/whatever-ive as someone else's junk-filled box.
Victor Gijsbers
Hash: SHA1
If the only difference is luck, we are all as good artists.
The difference must be not (just) one of luck, but also one of judgement.
Regards,
Victor
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S. John Ross
> If the only difference is luck [...]
Then wouldn't it go like this instead? -- "If putting random stuff you
found together in a box was enough to make art, and the quality of
that art were determined entirely by luck, everyone could be an artist
as good as Joseph Cornell." -- or something along those lines, at
least? (and if so, who has asserted as much?)
George Oliver
> Then wouldn't it go like this instead? -- "If putting random stuff you
> found together in a box was enough to make art, and the quality of
> that art were determined entirely by luck, everyone could be an artist
> as good as Joseph Cornell."
Don't you mean, everyone could be an artist as lucky as Joseph
Cornell.
S. John Ross
> > Then wouldn't it go like this instead? -- "If putting random stuff you
> > found together in a box was enough to make art, and the quality of
> > that art were determined entirely by luck, everyone could be an artist
> > as good as Joseph Cornell."
>
> Don't you mean, everyone could be an artist as lucky as Joseph
> Cornell.
I don't mean any of it; it's nonsense as far as I can tell ...
Victor Gijsbers
Hash: SHA1
I don't understand what point you are trying to make. What difference of
opinion do you believe to exist between us?
Regards,
Victor
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Jeff Nyman
> goal laid on top of one or more toys. I feel that your students,
> Jeff, are not really well informed about the wider discipline of game
> design.
In many cases, I can absolutely guarantee you that's true. (That could
also be very true for many people here, I would guess.) But, then
again, their primary focus is not on developing a game, per se. Yes,
they do realize that -- as I think Victor trys to point out -- part of
the essence of interactive fiction is taking game concepts and
marrying them to story concepts. So they first wanted to look at how
to "bring their story over." It quickly became apparent -- as I knew
it would -- that you can't just "port it," so to speak. You now have
to figure out how your story works as a game concept.
As far as "having good toys," the reason for that is often becuase you
want to make sure the "toy" you are using does what you want. Would
you rather spend time with/on a "bad" toy or "good" toy? If people are
just doing this for a hobby, without any hope of wider appeal: I
agree. It probably doesn't make much difference. But for those who are
hoping to reach a wider audience -- both for authoring and for reading/
playing -- the nature of the "toy" can matter.
> from its neighboring mediums much like film first borrowed from
> theater and painting, but ultimately it is its own thing with its own
> craft. When I see questions like, "Why would I want to cast this
> particular story (or gameplay, from Gamasutra's students) into I-F
> format?", I feel they are putting carts before horses here. Who first
> comes up with a story, *then* decides if its medium will be a
> screenplay / radio drama / novel? The medium itself decides what
> kinds of stories you can and cannot well tell.
Certainly I wouuld agree with this. I don't think I've anywhere stated
differently. Although "stories you can can cannot tell well" depends.
If a story can't be told well in *one way* on film, it might work in
book form. And vice versa. Or, if film is really what you want, you
may adapt to tell the story *another way* on film. I've often
participated in classes where you take scenes from novels and write
them as screenplays and then take scenes from a film and write them as
scenes in a novel. It's very rewarding and you learn a lot. Having
been through that, I adopted those practices with my own textual IF
classes. You learn a lot about what it means to say you "can and
cannot tell" and then what it means to add "well" to that statement.
It's these practices, in fact, that build up that flexible toolbox you
mention later on.
What it boils down to is that you have a core "strategy" that you're
not willing to compromise. That's your story and how it needs to be
told to still be *your* story. Around that strategy is a set of "fluid
logistics" that allow you to bring to bear all the techniques (for
your given medium) that will allow you to tell that story in the
format you want. A bit side-topic, this was the same approach I used
when putting quality assurance efforts in place within IT companies:
core strategy used on *every* project, surrounding by fluid logistics
-- guided by skilled heuristics -- that worked on a *per project*
basis. It's a technique that many filmmakers use and novelists as
well. Game designers certainly do likewise, not always in service to
story but in in terms of whether their game should be first person
(shooter) viewpoint, side-scrolling shooter/jumper, and so forth. The
design notes for the later "Monkey Island" games are particularly
interesting for the rationale provided for even how to draw the world
-- and the characters -- so that the story could be told. These are
all elements that I brought into the classes as well, so going back to
a previous point of yours; while my students may not be "really well
informed about the wider discipline of game design," they have been
exposed to it quite a bit. I did game testing for a lot of companies
and I brought much of that material to bear in our discussions.
> Choose the medium first, then choose the story -- or gameplay -- that
> fits its constraints.
Or choose a story and see if the medium can adapt to it or can be
evolved to support it. Again, the exercises I went through -- both
with my own students, and when I was a student -- suggest that your
formula there can be limiting.
> > Probably one of the biggest questions I often had to "answer"
> > (or at least provide evidence around) was: Is textual IF just
> > something that people do when they can't write novels or
> > can't program games?
>
> This seems to attack novices in both fields for trying to improve
> themselves. I'm sure even Shakespeare had to write a lot of crap in
> his youth until he could write well.
I agree; it's a bit of a combative statement. But it's also a
realistic one, in terms of how people sometimes view something where
they may decide to spend a lot of their time. If writers truly want to
write: textual IF may not be the best place for them, particularly if
they actually want a wide audience for what they write. (Or so one
argument can go.) If gamers truly want to write games that a lot of
people will want to spend time on, perhaps textual IF may not be the
best place for them. (Or so one argument can go.)
Like it or not, people often don't want to go to some "middle ground"
that people have staked out just because they can't other options that
are more palatable to a wider audience.
I say all this without putting myself in that camp. I trust it's at
least somewhat obvious that the time I've spent trying to learn
textual IF tools myself and promote them to others means I do take
textual IF *both* as a serious discipline and a lot of fun. I'm hoping
that the audience on both sides -- writing it and playing it -- can be
increased. I realize that's not a goal every member of the textual IF
"community" (amorphous as that is) has.
> * Jeff's students pitch a catch-22: don't spend time in I-F because
> so few people spend time in I-F. I have one of my favorite clichés
> ready: "Reasonable men adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable
> men expect the world to adapt to them. Therefore, all progress
> depends upon the unreasonable man." If Jeff's students are looking
> for *reasons* to get into I-F, well...
Again, I somewhat agree with you on the Catch-22. But it's also not
that hard to understand that people's time in life is taken up with
other tasks. Keep in mind many of my students were writers. So they
want to write. They are willing to give textual IF a chance because it
seems to be a game format that places a heavy emphasis on writing
skills. (Or it least it *can* place a heavy emphasis on writing
skills.) So it's very logical that they would ask: should this be
something I devote my time to? Would I consider pitching my next story
as textual IF? If I do, who will read it? If I do, will the "toys"
give me enough to work with that I can craft my vision as I see fit?
I don't think any of those questions are too hard to understand when
you consider my audience. (And I've always tried to be clear who my
audience is, recognizing that it's largely different in terms of goals
and aspirations.)
- Jeff
Jeff Nyman
Thanks for the further information; much appreciated.
Regarding just one point, for clarification:
> I really wouldn't say that Torque, AGS, etc., *churn out* game design.
> They help with implementation, sure, but the design is something else.
True enough. All I was saying is that people using those tools, by
definition, must start to learn game design. (Whether they become
effective at it is really up to them.)
By contrast, no such tools will do one thing at all to improve your
writing skills: no matter how much you use the tools.
- Jeff
DJ Hastings
> On Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:16:38 -0700
> Jim Aikin <midig...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What I mean by that is that stories are sometimes accepted and
>> praised within the IF community that would not, if they were cast in
>> the form of conventional fiction, be purchased and published, not
>> even by the genre magazines.
>
> While your observation is probably correct, the analogy is off...
> ...if you want an analogy with non-interactive storytelling,
> the legions of people writing fanfiction and people doodling with
> SF (or whatever genre), publishing on their own websites, would probably
> be more appropriate.
I think that was the point.
S. John Ross
> I don't understand what point you are trying to make. What difference of
> opinion do you believe to exist between us?
I'm not sure there is any difference, but the one I've been prodding
at to see if it exists: whether or not Jim Aikin actually suggested,
implied, or said anything that logically reduces to an assertion that
Cornell's work was the result of (only) randomness or luck. It seemed
to me that you were counter-pointing something he never really, er,
pointed to begin with. This puts me in the unusual, uncomfortable,
almost contradictory position of feeling defensive on Jim's behalf, so
I'd like to do away with that as quickly as possible so I can return
to heckling him :) [though I'll always love Tin, Jim, you know
that ... it's our Paris]
Victor Gijsbers
Hash: SHA1
S. John Ross wrote:
>> I don't understand what point you are trying to make. What difference of
>> opinion do you believe to exist between us?
>
> I'm not sure there is any difference, but the one I've been prodding
> at to see if it exists: whether or not Jim Aikin actually suggested,
> implied, or said anything that logically reduces to an assertion that
> Cornell's work was the result of (only) randomness or luck. It seemed
> to me that you were counter-pointing something he never really, er,
> pointed to begin with.
Ah, I see. Yes, I suggested that claiming that Cornell's work only has
unity in the mind of the beholder (which Jim did) implies that no
unifying judgement on the side of the artist was at work (which I doubt
Jim wants to do).
To make it entirely clear, I myself believe that the implication holds,
but that the consequence if false; therefore, there cannot be unity only
in the mind of the beholder.
But this point is not very important for this discussion as a whole. :)
Regards,
Victor
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S. John Ross
> unity in the mind of the beholder (which Jim did) implies that no
> unifying judgement on the side of the artist was at work (which I doubt
> Jim wants to do).
Ah. I read Jim's post as suggesting that to some extent art achieves
unity by the conscious design of the artist, but that it also achieves
unity experientially through the response of the viewer/reader/
listener/fondler/diner/whatever, and that Cornell's work was an
example of art that aims more specifically at that experiential /
ephemeral response by arranging found items in such a way that the
artist's own vision is simply to provide and arrange the foundation
for the experience, emphasizing an aspect of art that is often
secondary, especially in static works (Ironic that I'd read it that
way, since normally I regard Jim's stances as timid and insecure to
the point of control-freakishness, but there you go).
> But this point is not very important for this discussion as a whole. :)
Entirely true; I am tending only to my selfish emotional needs and
don't mean it to be much of a distraction :)
Conrad
"Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards, every one..."
Pretty hostile thread title, now that I think of it.
Conrad.
S. John Ross
When will we ever learn?
Jim Aikin
You're grasping at straws.
--JA
Adam Thornton
Jim Aikin <midig...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Rather, what I'm pondering is why (or whether) I ought to be
>recommending IF authorship as a hobby to anybody, when so many of
>those who have explored this hobby subsequently seem to lose interest
>in it.
I've been working on the same damn game for 5 years, because life keeps
intruding on my writing.
Adam
Adam Thornton
James Jolley <jrjo...@me.com> wrote:
>Many here are like that, arrogant. People can't have views of there own
>unless it fits in with everyone elses. Take the Glulxe v ZCode thread,
>complete waste of time because I got shot down for having a viewpoint.
>S John was also there with his little groupies showing off as usual.
>Why do you think I never contribute much now? Because generally the
>community is a waste of time. The tools are great, the sense of
>community has long gone.
But S. John Ross can't be one of the Old Ones. AFAIK, his first work of
IF was the rather recent ToaSK. So if *he's* become part of the Cabal,
then it must be open to new membership, no?
Adam
Adam Thornton
Conrad <conra...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Sep 6, 8:45�am, James Jolley <jrjol...@me.com> wrote:
>> Funny coming from you i'd expect, this is the same guy who tries to act
>> big in front of the groupies.
>Who does -- Me, Jeremey Freese, or Jim Aikin?
>Anyway, what are groupies for, if not to act big in front of?
Traditionally, having sex with.
Which is odd.
There are many things I've done--some even on Usenet--which have
resulted in my getting to have sex (with another human being, even).
But as far as I can recall, although much of my memory is a
Scotch-scented fog wafting gently over a gin-and-regret bog, none of my
IF has resulted in:
[Your score has gone up by one point.]
Adam
S. John Ross
> But S. John Ross can't be one of the Old Ones. AFAIK, his first work of
> IF was the rather recent ToaSK. So if *he's* become part of the Cabal,
> then it must be open to new membership, no?
My first work (completed in playable form maybe 4 hours after
downloading I7, which is a testament to I7 and to why you should
really spend more than 4 hours writing a game) is "In The House of
Professor Evil: The Ham House," but ToaSK is the first work to really
get juicy bad reviews (Ham House got only one semi-bad review -- from
Victor maybe??? -- and was mostly ignored, probably because there just
isn't much to it). ToaSK has also recieved some contradictory good
reviews, but we can safely put this down to the reviewers contributing
to the prank.
But neither game pays even the least attention to the standards of
modern IF, really ... one is an alternate-universe dumb-parser thing,
and the other is a ... well, it's the kind of game someone completes 4
hours after downloading I7 (that said, it still rawks, all 5 minutes
of it).
I still consider myself kinda-sorta a community outsider (I consider
myself one of the peanut gallery here on Usenet, because I often need
tech help and this is the place where it happens, and I've done a
couple of reviews and things for IFDB ... but I'm not at all
comfortable on the MUD thingy, I don't really share many creative
goals with the community or have much interest in the standards games
tend to be judged by ... and I like Leather Goddesses of Phobos better
than Anchorhead, which I'm pretty sure qualifies me for death by
stoning among real IF circles) ...
And I can't code. I mean, at all. I can't even manage BASIC (well, I
last tried in 5th grade, so maybe ... but I last tried in 5th grade).
I think to qualify as an Old One I'd need to be a programmer of some
kind :)
So maybe I'm just an outsider with groupies. I have groupies? (well,
okay, judging from the people wanting to hug me and requesting that I
drop my pants when I appeared at AKon this year, I DO have groupies,
but none of them mentioned text adventures ...)
Victor Gijsbers
Hash: SHA1
S. John Ross wrote:
> (Ham House got only one semi-bad review -- from
> Victor maybe??? -- and was mostly ignored, probably because there just
> isn't much to it).
Yes, I think I wrote the standard "OMG, someone released a game four
hours after they downloaded Inform 7"-review about it. ;)
> but I'm not at all comfortable on the MUD thingy
I may be wrong, but I think the importance of the MUD to the community
in general is that it hosts the yearly XYZZY-awards. And that's it. I
really never see any posts here or in a blog that mention discussions on
the MUD, so I have to assume such discussions do not take place there.
By which I want to say that your uncomfortableness on the MUD does not
exonerate you from the accusation of being a community insider!
Regards,
Victor
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