I'd like to go over why I say that and I'd like to solicit any and all
opinions if people have time.

= = = = =

The idea of interaction+story is what Emily and I had been chatting
about. Now, to me, the level of interaction allowed by an author, in
one sense, means that the author has to create a protagonist that the
reader/player can identify with and see as distinct.

Logic creates believable motivation. Understandable motivation creates
symphathetic emotion. Bam. You have a protagonist that a player/reader
can care about. Understanding a character is how we identify with
them; not by being told we *are* them, but by showing us how they have
some similar feelings to ourselves and how they show those feelings by
what they do or how they react.

However, when you say that the reader *is* the protagonist (second-
person), you can't really do that. In fact, to me second-person is
more mimesis-breaking than first- or third-person because I'm
constantly reminded that "you" (meaning "I") feel a certain way or see
a certain thing or won't do a certain thing. Well, maybe that's not
true. Maybe that protagonist is nothing like me. Yeah, actually, *I*
would do that, but clearly my *protagonist* won't. Okay, so I'm in
dialogue with my protagonist. *That* to me is the key point of the
interaction that text-based IF allows.

Instead of just vicariously stepping into the shoes of a protagonist
and reading about their adventures, you get to more actively
participate in helping them through those adventures. However, as in
all good stories, conflict arises: the protagonist may have some
tension with what you want to do. After all, they're not you. You're
not them. So you can't expect everything to go just as you say. You
have to explore the world with your protagonist; find not only the
boundaries of your world, but the boundaries of your protagonist and
what they can do, what they can't do, and what you might have to coax
them to do (against their better wishes).

(It's sort of like "The Sixth Sense" for me. Cole knew what the
situation with Malcolm was. Malcolm couldn't see it. Cole knew he had
to direct Malcolm to the truth but he had to do so in a way that was
consonant with how Malcolm thought and behaved, otherwise Malcolm
would just never get there. Likewise, Malcolm had to do something
similar for Cole. They were both each other's protagonist in a story
that was being told and both, ultimately, had the same end goal. It's
a masterful bit of storytelling, if you ask me.)

My belief is that the use of second-person has held up the development
of works of text-based IF because of a failure to recognize that the
"player-character" is just another character. To that end, character
development doesn't get considered because, after all, you can't
change the real player; they can't necessarily evolve in their
thinking (or, at least, you as an author have no way of knowing if
they did so). But you *can* evolve the protagonist, and take the
player along for the ride as they come to interact with the
protagonist and learn how to get the protagonist to do what *the
player wants* and what the *protagonist needs to do* in order to get
through the adventure, to reach the final goal. Likewise, the
protagonist can help the player along by telling them what does and
doesn't work; what will and will not be attempted; etc.

*That* sort of dialogue, to me, increases tension. Further, *that*
sort of dual relationship is where text-based IF can be powerful
medium for telling stories because you take the inherent interaction
of a reader of a story and you ramp it up by allowing the reader to
more thoroughly participate in the actions and reactions of the
protagonist.

= = = = =

So, with that bit out of the way, I'd like to solicit opinions and
thoughts.

(1) Do you feel second-person is more effective than first- or third-
in text-based IF?

(2) If the answer to (1) above was "yes", why is that?

(3) Do you feel that first- or third- person is *not* effective in
text-based IF?

(4) If the answer to (3) above was "yes", why is that?

What I'm really trying to find out is what interaction possibilities
people feel second-person affords that other viewpoints do not. (Or,
perhaps, what interaction possibilities do people feel that first- and
third- person remove, making second-person the more viable choice.)

On Jun 13, 8:49 am, alex.be...@gmail.com wrote:

Your comment, however, is interesting to me and it may be the area
that I'm having my own conceptual trouble with. I don't mind when a
game tells me what a player-character is feeling; I don't like it when
a game tells me what *I'm* feeling. The game doesn't know. Neither
does the author. And when the author assumes they do know, for me the
mood is shattered. (I want to be *shown* why I should be scared on
behalf of the protagonist; not told that I am scared.) That's where
the conflation of the player-character and the player to me somehow
rings hollow. To me, that's more distancing because it calls out the
distance every time.

So that's interesting: we both come to one conclusion (distancing) but
for different reasons based on the point-of-view of the narration.

2nd person puts the player, at least tenuously, within the game world.

I would respectfully suggest that your problem with games telling you
how you feel is at least partially a personal issue. I don't find this
type of input intrusive at all, because I have no trouble understanding
that the "you" being discussed isn't _me_, it's the character I'm playing.

I may or may not agree with the author that that's how the character
would be feeling at that moment, but that's a very different issue.

What I find more difficult is when I am told I can't do something
because the character doesn't want to for varies reasons. e.g. ">get
the china cup" and the response is "Mrs. Jenkins would not appreciate
you interfering with her prized china collection!". This can be quite
annoying, because I personally might not care that much about Mrs.
Jenkins possessions (depending on the circumstances of course). But in
these kinds of situations I tend to put it more down to the boundaries
of the game. It does feel like a chastisement -- and I do feel like I
am braver than the protagonist. But I realise I just have to be
patient and use the situation as a way to better understand him.

On Jun 13, 10:57 am, Jim Aikin <midigur...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

So I just go through the motions: pick up everything I can (because it
might be useful), roam around, try a few standard ask/tell/show
commands for any NPC that wanders my way, etc.

You might very well be right: the personal issue may be that I've come
to a point where I appreciate writing (and storytelling) in such a way
that I really can't enjoy text-based IF. And I don't say that in some
sense where I'm right and others are wrong. I just mean it for what it
is: maybe it's just not my cup of tea, as it were.

Everything seems to focus on the NPCs while, to me, one of the most
interesting characters could be the protagonist.

On Jun 13, 11:14 am, travel2light <everything2li...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

Now, I know: the player, as a smart human being, knows they are not
*actually* the player character and knows that they don't *actually*
feel that way. I get that.

But, what I'm talking about is how the story is told, which is what
you suggest when you say:

I don't think that's an inherent problem with second-person
necessarily because I agree that better writing could draw you in,
regardless of the point-of-view. That said, I think the reliance on a
second-person point-of-view tends to make many authors give very
little consideration to the protagonist of the story. Player = Player-
Character rather than Player-Character = Blake (a guy who fears
settling down to anything because he always thinks the next best thing
is over the horizon; this leads him to make impulsive decisions but
also arbitrary ones). With that, now if Blake refuses to do something
in the game world, I can at least understand that it's a result of who
he is and what makes him tick. Can that be done with second-person?
Perhaps. I haven't really seen it but maybe I'm not getting it or not
looking at the right works.

First person: "I found myself back in my office. I can't tell you how
many times I've sat behind that very desk, feeling as if life was
passing me by. You ever get that? Where you feel you have to run full
speed just to keep up? Well, that's how I felt in that office."

Third person: "Blake found himself back in the office. He often found
himself here, sitting behind this very desk, with the sinking feeling
that life was passing him by. If he sat here too long, he'd literally
have to forced to take any sort of action at all."

For me, I can start getting more into a relationship with the
protagonist in those two cases than with the second-person.

Clearly I'm in the minority, perhaps because of what you say here:

Now, again, I don't think that's inherent in the use of second-person;
but I think the almost sole usage of second-person is what has
constrained authors from thinking of the player-character as a more
well-rounded character, one that might require just as much exploring
as the game world.

For example, let's use what you just said. Say the protagonist is a
guy who really wants to be liked my Mrs. Jenkins but, beyond that,
needs information from her. So:

or ...

I could do that in second-person, of course:

I guess, for me, I just feel more connection with the "I" in first-
person (if the story gradually indicates who this person is) or with
"Blake" in third-person. Because in those cases, it doesn't matter
what *I* feel per se. I know what I wanted the character to do, and
they chose not to do it. So now I have to figure out what I know about
this character in order to determine how best to get them to do what I
believe they need to do. I'm working with the protagonist but, in one
sense, I'm also in some cases working against them. That, I think,
adds a bit more complexity to the game.

(First Person)

(Third Person)

(Second Person)

To me, I can start relating to the first- and third-person examples a
lot more than the second-person. To me, the second-person definitely
makes it sound like I'm playing a game ... and, granted, I am. But, in
my mind, with text-based IF, I'm also reading and participating in a
story.

Caveat: There is a danger here that I'm caricaturing the second-person
viewpoint and I'm trying not to do that. So if it seems I'm being
unfair with the examples, let me know.

A similar case holds for many other second-person IF works. In fact,
it's almost the norm in current games to assume that the player and
PC are different entities. (The "Best PC" award has been running
since, what, 1997?) Any game that assumes the opposite is
probably being deliberately old-school.

I don't object to your making these observations -- maybe not
everyone is aware of them, and they might lead to an interesting
discussion -- but presenting them as a major personal discovery
that the community has "failed to recognise", when that is
patently not the case, is rather tiresome.

It's certainly easier to do a more strongly-characterised PC in
first-person, especially if you want to give the PC strong emotions
right from the off without having to evoke them in the player. It's
not impossible in second-person though. I've seen good examples
of both.

I've yet to see third-person IF that convinced me. But I wouldn't
prescriptively rule it out, and I don't think anyone could.

I'll grant you that much IF uses second person because that's what the
authors see everyone else using; I have difficulty ascribing such a
sheeplike attitude to Emily Short, say, or Zarf, people who evidently do
*think* about what they're doing.

A narrative in second person demands a somewhat different skillset of
the player than first or third. Second person demands a roleplayer on
the other side of the keyboard, a method actor; someone *very*
comfortable with static fiction, either as a reader or writer, may have
more difficulty identifying with the PC than a novice or an experienced
IF-er, because more is being demanded of them.

First person asks you to identify *with* the protagonist. Second asks
you to identify yourself *as* the protagonist. This is not a function
that audience members find themselves carrying out while experiencing
any mainstream medium.

(This brings to mind the fact that Second Person - the book - has many
essays devoted to "tabletop roleplaying" - Dungeons & Dragons and the
like. Which are not a mainstream form of entertainment, either; am I the
only one wondering if this (grokking second-person media) is a
minority-personality-type thing?)

I'm not saying second-person is wrong, per se, but it's a curious
thing to me.

When I started playing around by converting some scenes from text-
based games to first- and third-person, the possibilities seemed
richer to me. When I converted scenes from other games (non-text-based
IF) to second-person, the effect seemed as artificial as converting a
chapter from a novel to second person seemed.

That said, you are correct in that my wording above does indicate
exactly what you said. I said this: "My belief is that the use of
second-person has held up the development of works of text-based IF
because of a failure to recognize that the "player-character" is just
another character." What I should have perhaps said is:

My belief is that the use of second-person has led to works of text-
based IF that do not treat the 'player-character' as just another
character, and thus don't develop that character with internal
motivations or as characters that I feel I can relate to and watch
develop as part of the enfolding story.

Whether that's a largely irrelevant point or not is what I'm trying to
determine. Here is sort of how my thinking started to evolve: since
text-based IF is largely alone in its reliance on second-person and
since it's a format that survives solely via a relatively small
worldwide community and since, as others have indicated numerous
times, it's hard to get people interested in text-based IF if they
aren't already, .... well, that's when I started looking at why that
might be. Is it solely because people prefer graphics? Personally, I
don't think so. Is it solely because text-based IF isn't promoted in
any way? Perhaps. I don't know. Or is it, possibly, because of the
kind of games that people have seen and come to associate with text-
based IF (at least as a general rule)?

If that latter is the case (for the sake of argument), why might that
be? What have people been presented with that might explain the lack
of popularity or interest? Well, speaking only for me, the answer is
I'm presented with a medium that looks a lot like a book (meaning,
mostly or solely text) that has a character meeting other characters
and doing things. So some expectation is set up there. The major
difference is I can interact with the game more than I can with a
book. But I can interact with a graphical adventure as well. So it's
not just the interaction for me; it's the way the story is presented
to me via that interaction. And a lot of that presentation concerns
the point-of-view. And thus here I am and that's largely the reason
for this thread.

Granted, nothing at all says that text-based IF should do this or must
do this.

And your point (regarding comfort with static fiction) may be quite
valid in that of my two classes (admittedly a small subset), the
writers in the group didn't like second-person; the non-writer-
programmers didn't really care one way or the other. (However, I will
say that my specific game programmers - and unfortunately I didn't
have that many in the class - didn't like second person, but they were
used to writing graphical-based adventures that don't rely on second
person.)

Useless in exactly the sense that asking whether it's better to write a
novel in first or third person is useless. The only meaningful answer
begins "Well, it depends what novel you're trying to write...."

When you say less is being demanded of the player, I think you're
talking about less in terms of reading-for-meaning; I'm saying that to
engage with a work in second person, *in addition to* exercising  ones'
reading-for-meaning and other reading skills, one must *also* take on a
role. Be an actor, in effect, as well as a reader.

"Player" is not really a good word for talking about the interactors of
interactive fiction; but I avoid the word "reader" deliberately. Reading
is a *subset* of the things you have to do.

 > I don't have to really care about their

If you're saying that most IF doesn't support reading much beyond
surface meaning - that sounds more like a reader-expectation problem
than an IF one. The writing in most IF parallels that in mass-market
genre fiction. No, there is no depth. No, it's not literature. No,
that's not because there's something intrinsically wrong with it.

No, that's not the way it *has* to be, there's room for Serious Lit IF
as well. But be honest - when there are so few people interested in
either producing or consuming the IF equivalent of paperback trash, the
number of people interested in actually producing or consuming Serious
Lit IF has got to be pretty damn small.

I'd suggest that's why you're having trouble finding any.

Neither of these characters is "you," but they both have a range of
emotional responses, which are described as "your" responses. In neither
case would I expect the player to necessarily subscribe to or feel the
emotions as his or her own.

The key concept here, I think, is empathy. As in, "Walk a mile in my
shoes." Normal human beings have the ability to empathize with others --
to imagine (briefly and shallowly or in gut-wrenching, insomnia-inducing
detail) what others are thinking and feeling.

When the PC is a real character, as opposed to an anonymous
cave-crawler, the player is invited to have some empathy with the PC. I
guess I don't see what's complicated about that. They're just pronouns,
after all.

I ask this because while you may not "take on a role", per se, I do
see you as having to engage with the character. To the extent that you
can do so, you are sort of taking on their role, I suppose. You are
taking on the role of someone that the game presents to you. Now,
granted, someone could say that you are not in fact doing so, but it
seems to me a bit of a case where you could argue either way.

So, again, the question here is: for those third-person or first-
person games (where, as you feel, you're not taking on a role): what
are you doing?

I'm comfortable with second person.  It's conventional, it makes
sense, it works.  I don't know how a newcomer to IF would react to it,
though.

First person also works well, and in some cases it works even better
than second-person ... it can bend the "fourth wall" in interesting
ways.  But to pull it off, the story has to make sense and be really
involving.

So maybe the issue for me is that no text-based IF I've seen really
allows me to suspend my disbelief enough to forget that I keep getting
told what "you" feel. It's not that I have trouble rememebering it's
not me. (I hope that much is obvious.) Rather, it's just that the very
nature of second-person -- *at least as I've seen it implemented* --
doesn't seem to encourage a writing style where you can effectively do
many of the things that other storytelling media (including other game
formats) do.

Maybe that's just me. (Clearly, in this community, it is.)

The argument many seem to be going for is that second-person is more
natural for the storytelling medium, at least with text-based IF. I'm
trying to see upon what basis that claim is made.

I could more see the contention that the level of interactivity
doesn't allow, as easily, for third- and first-person. But then,
again, why is text-based IF one of the only forms of game format (that
I'm aware of) that does this?

Can you point me to a game where the player-character was complex
enough that you could truly empathize? What I mean is a game where
their motivations were supported by a backstory that indicated why
they held the emotions they did and thus why that dictated what they
would and would not allow to happen? My thinking is that you can't
empathize if you don't understand; you can't understand if there isn't
a background logic to why someone acts as they do. (You may not agree
with how they act; you may feel you would do differently; but at least
you can understand why they do what they do and how it's consistent
with who they are.)

I personally have yet to see too many games of the text-based variety
where I could empathize with the lead character in a way that I can
with other forms of storytelling, including, as I've said, other game
formats. (One I can say that did work for me is the lead character in
"A Crimson Spring" because I could get behind his desire for revenge.
The other was the lead character in "Rameses", not because I'm that
way -- but because I know people who are *exactly* that way.)

<example>

Third person: "Blake walked into the office and sat down behind his
old desk. He often found himself sitting here, with the sinking
feeling that life was passing him by. If he sat here too long he'd
literally have to force himself to take any sort of action at all."

</example>

Sorry about the poor writing (I'm pretty new to this) but I think this
gets across my idea. This moves away from the traditional "person in a
restricted environment" model for creating IF. For example with the
usual 2nd person it would be something like:

<example>

</example>

Thinking about it though, the 3rd person example switches to present
tense when he was expressing his thoughts, so it could be that it
would be better to stick to the present tense from the start. It's not
a huge change to the actual text -- but it gives more of a sense of
things currently happening:

<example>

Third person: "Blake walks into the office and sits down behind his
old desk. He often finds himself sitting here, with the sinking
feeling that life is passing him by. If he sits here too long he'll
literally have to force himself to take any sort of action at all."

</example>

Another possibility is to use a more trivial style where the character
is being described as something completely isolated -- and without
attempting to get inside his head at all. Maybe this would work with a
very comic and not very serious type game; or more of a traditional
action or puzzle based type of game:

<example>

Blake is sitting at his desk with his head in his hands whilest
annoyingly rotating his chair one way and then the other.

what now>

</example>

For example, do you find graphical adventures uncomfortable and
dissonant (which often have you playing the major character but being
referred to in the third person)?

The assumption here that everyone is going on is that because you are
controlling the actions of a character, you must *be* that character.
However, watching a film doesn't mean you have to *be* the lead actor.
Reading a book doesn't mean you have to *be* the protagonist. And
playing some other game formats doesn't require you to *be* the lead
character.

So I'm curious if this conflation of "being" and "playing" (which is
what others were telling me I was doing too much of) is in fact what
the issue is. To wit, people said they felt I was clearly taking the
"you" too seriously; it's not "you" -- it's the other guy. You're just
playing him. But what you say here ("involves me as a major
character") does in fact more seem to match what people think (if not
what they say).

Part of all my looking into this stuff was a direct result of the
talks we had on this newsgroup regarding simulationism and narration.
I came to the provisional conclusion that a lot of the theory that was
put out there really seemed to be speaking to just a few simple
aspects of how text-based IF is currently produced (at least as a
standard) and the one key thing was point-of-view.

Granted, the argument could be made that second-person can handle this
kind of narration. That may be. I haven't really seen it. The argument
could be made that this kind of narration isn't fun for players of
text-based IF. That could be, but I don't know if anyone knows that
for sure.

"You get only as far as putting your hand on the door knob. Somewhere
in there that *thing* is still scuttling around: all those legs, and
the peat-brown carapace, and the not-having-any-head."

Reflections -- opinions about people and things, memories about past
events, on-the-moment feelings -- can all be woven into descriptions.

As for flashbacks, there's no reason not to do them and make them
interactive flashbacks. It's not incredibly common, but I've seen it
more than once. (All Hope Abandon comes to mind, but is not the only
one.) Similarly dream sequences and character day-dreams, where those
things are useful.

Internal monologue -- well, as I think I suggested elsewhere, it's
possible to do some of this too, either passively (by having the PC's
thoughts interleaved with the action text) or actively (with THINK or
REMEMBER commands that allow the player to explore the PC's feelings
explicitly).

It would get rather hammy to have a character describing an internal
struggle at length in second person; games like "On Optimism" that
tend in this direction are fairly hard to take. But honestly I think
that is not so much due to the second person usage, and more to do
with the fact that long, abstract, struggling-with-self internal
monologues are *usually* awkward and cornball, no matter in what
person.

There are different ways to make this work, depending on medium.
Here's a sweeping statement I just thought up and which may be
completely wrong:

The handling emotive and subjective content differs more from medium
to medium than the handling of objective realities.

But consider: the conventions of plays, musicals, and opera make it
reasonable for the character to be expressing all these thoughts aloud
for the audience to hear, and monologues at intense moments not
infrequently take a stylized, poetic or lyrical form, where the music
or the sheer beauty of the language goes some way to expressing the
emotive power compactly. Movies do montages and voice-overs and
strange games with color balance and focal length. In novels,
characters often think concretely about memories and situations that
are affecting them, or betray their mood to the reader through their
actions or dialogue with other characters. IF can handle this kind of
internal revelation too, but it needs to do it interactively and play
to its own strengths. You *can* do a moment of indecision in IF well
enough: give the player a simple timed puzzle/choice, and interject
thoughts of increasing stress every turn until it's over. Another
common technique, though it needs careful handling, is to show
indecision by rejecting the player's first attempt to resolve a
situation, and requiring him either to repeat the action or try
something else. The parser stands in for the PC's inner voice, just as
it does in Rameses. There are other tricks and methods, but none of
the effective ones consist of presenting the player with a big wodge
of text wherein the player character thinks about himself. Big wodges
of text are usually a bad sign in IF, and it's all the more boring if
it's a big wodge of text in which no dialogue is exchanged and no
action occurs.

The larger point is, in the second person IF, the PC's thoughts and
feelings are expressed in everything he looks at, everything he tries
to do, every action reply; and more explicit explorations of feelings
can be done interactively, if one is careful. Obviously this isn't
working well enough for you to feel the same way about IF as you do
about other story-based art forms, or you're not playing the right IF,
or something. This is worth digging into further.

You have to provide the background for a putative protagonist that the
player can come to learn about, not in some text dump, but in the constant
series of actions that the protagonist does and does not take in response to
player actions. It's not just a dialogue between the player character and an
NPC; it's a dialogue between the player and the protagonist (and by
extension, the author). In fact, text-based IF, due to the nature of its
interaction model, allows this latter kind of dialogue much moreso than
static fiction, at least in my opinion.

What really drove it home for me, like I said before, was that when I
presented the concept to writers (of various pedigrees) they all, to a one,
had a problem with the second person viewpoint. That doesn't mean anything
other than that it started me looking closer at it but, truth be told, I've
had vague feelings about not liking the second person well before these
classes.

Then, when I got a group of programmers, those that were specifically game
programmers (and there weren't that many, admittedly) also didn't like the
second person. (The non-game programmers didn't really care as much one way
or the other, although first person was found to "flow" better -- vague and
subjective as that is.) This just further reinforced in me that while the
second-person concept may seem "natural" to those steeped in text-based IF,
it's not (necessarily) seen that way to others.

I also was doing an informal setting with parents and children and there
again, the second person was not found to be all that amenable, particularly
in the idea of the "let's tell a story together" concept.

What may (or may not) be interesting: the parent/children group preferred
third person. The writers and game programmers preferred first person.

The one commonality to all these people is that they really had no great
exposure to text-based IF. Some had heard of it; some had played various
example of it in the past. None of them had ever used a system like Inform
or TADS or Hugo and none of them had played any of the more "modern"
text-based IF.