It's taken me a while to respond to the main point of this thread, and
the thread itself has evolved a bit since I started thinking through
my response; but in the hopes that it is still useful to someone:

I have to admit, to start with, that the construction of the original
argument does not convince me. Jim offers an example of his own prose
which he then indicts for lack of interesting content, and he claims
that this proves something about the state of the IF field in general.
That's a large leap to make. Maybe his beta-testers didn't complain
about his choice of text, but that doesn't mean that text is
representative of the best that's currently out there; there are
plenty of counter-examples available.

Jim takes some input from a single novice beta-tester and interprets
it in a way that does not at all agree with what I understood the beta-
tester to be saying: she didn't say that the description is boring
(though I agree that it is, a bit) but that she doesn't like visual
puzzles; this seems to suggest that she thinks she is supposed to
envision or perhaps even sketch the relative locations of the major
objects because the structure of the room layout will be important
somehow. An experienced player instead immediately understands that
directions are being provided in order to ease navigation and that
there is probably no more puzzle significance to the description than
that.

This is an interpretive difference, and Jim knows his ex-wife and had
access to further comments which he didn't quote, so perhaps he's
reading her correctly. But on the basis of what he did pass on, I
don't agree that the tester was complaining of the description being
boring or unlike conventional fiction.

Next, Jim claims that dullness of description arises from an absence
of visual detail and, implicitly, that visual detail is generally
lacking in IF descriptions (which would need to be proven by a greater
survey of the evidence). If all he means is that people should write
better room descriptions than just a list of furniture and walls found
in each direction, I agree with him whole-heartedly -- but that hardly
represents the current state of the art.

Finally, Jim argues that visual specificity is typical of good fiction
writing. He also, somewhat confusingly, equates good prose style with
that quality which sells a lot of copies of something: the relative
sales figures of J. K. Rowling and are proof to the contrary.

I think there are several really valuable points arising from all of
this, but that they've mostly been mischaracterized so far in this
thread.

Point the first: Look at the Feedback We Actually Get

On Jan 8, 1:35 am, Jim Aikin <midigur...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

And I would suggest that the primary draw for outsiders is not
similarity to static fictional prose (whomever you pick as your
exemplar -- prose style is the trait of Rowling's least worth
emulating). On the contrary, it sounds to me from the original
complaint that the criticism was not so much "this doesn't read like a
novel" but "I have a hard time imagining the scenario in such a way
that I can interact with it" or "I am being deluged with details but
cannot figure out which are important." Experienced players have more
practice imagining things and recognizing what pieces they are allowed
to manipulate, by IF convention, so they may be more tolerant about
descriptions that feel opaque to the novice.

A major issue seems to be the work's interactive accessibility, by
which I mean how well the game communicates what the player can do,
and how completely it responds to commands both serious and frivolous.
I have found it both telling and amusing to read Victor Gijsbers'
indifferent interview of Suveh Nux on IFDB, here:

http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=xkai23ry99qdxce3

together with the strongly positive response the game has gotten from
semi-outsiders who came to the work through the casual games site
JayIsGames:

http://jayisgames.com/archives/2008/01/suveh_nux.php#comments

where some commenters clearly follow IF but many just as clearly do
not. Of the two, it's pretty obvious (at least to me) that the
outsiders are the ones less concerned with questions of text
aesthetics or story, and more concerned with clarity and operability.
Clarity is rarely produced by technically incompetent prose, but
competent or even inspired prose is not guaranteed to be easy to
interact with.

By contrast, negative points made about IF in the wider world (and
here I draw from threads on SlashDot about the yearly comp, and
discussions on various gaming boards) often focus on the parser, not
the writing, as the critical weakness of IF. It is the refusal to
recognize nouns mentioned in the text, the insistence on very
particular player behavior, the guess-the-verb nonsense, that turns
off the most people, as I observe it. Remedying this might partly be
about smartening up the parser, and I think Aaron Reed is doing good
work in this direction. But some improvements can also be made by
extensive polish, anticipating and responding to a larger than usual
range of experimental behavior. People on JayIsGames specifically
commented that Suveh Nux was more playable than average because of
this richness of response; I've gotten similar feedback from non-
regulars of IF to the effect that they liked Floatpoint, despite a
general dislike of the genre, in part because it seemed better than
average at understanding what they wanted to type.

I don't claim to have a complete lock on what people outside the
community do and do not like about IF, of course, and objections vary
from person to person as well.

Clearly, artificiality *is* an issue, since newcomers do raise the
"but why compass directions?" semi-frequently. This is a genre
convention. It's one I've defended because I think it genuinely
contributes something in some games, enough to make it worth learning
to deal with directions. To my mind this is no more ridiculous than
asking musical-goers to learn and accept that a song sung at top
volume can nonetheless represent the singer's inner monologue and be
completely unnoticed by the other characters standing around.

All the same, I hear the issue of playability cited much more often
than the question of literary competence; and even criticism from
authors of literary hypertext has tended to be more about why IF's
world models and structure are unproductive of rich characters and
narrative than about problems in the readability of the output.

Point the second: Prose Style in IF

This is not at all an argument that prose style should be neglected.
On the contrary, there's much art to writing prose for IF, which
involves constantly giving the player hints and directions without
seeming to do so, building mood through specific physical detail,
measuring the amount of exposition out into manageable pieces, and
avoiding any commitments in prose that you're not willing to honor in
the world model.

I don't think this skill can be acquired entirely through practice in
static writing, though such practice does not hurt. But what about the
rest of the skill? Where does it come from and how can we evaluate
examples of it, if we are not evaluating IF prose simply by comparison
with the styles of static authors?

I talked above about responsiveness, and I think that's critical.
There is one aspect of improving responsiveness that *is* about the
writing: namely, that all text in interactive fiction is at least
potentially a direction to the player, and the author's willingness to
direct the player is a critical part of making a game accessible. By
this, I mean that text like

        Something glints at the bottom of the lake.

or

        Through the fragile surface of the glass ball, you make out the wavy
outlines of a key.

or

        The princess is laid out on the antique sleigh-bed, deep in enchanted
sleep. As you look at her, she stirs in her dream and murmurs
something that sounds like your name.

directs the player to examine, to smash, to kiss. (Nick Montfort's
dissertation refers to this as the Suggester role of IF text.)

Sometimes that direction depends on cliché (about how sleeping
princesses should be treated, e.g.); sometimes it just consists of a
willingness to foreground in description the functional aspects of an
object, drawing the player's attention gently toward those features of
something that are most likely to be useful. We can still allow him to
get a fuller sensory description with supplementary commands such as
EXAMINE, READ, TASTE, SMELL, etc., in cases where those commands are
not otherwise prompted by the text.

If we're careful about directing player attention and always make it
clear what items in a room are important and which items are not so
important, I think the frustration of having to examine everything
thoroughly decreases, so that things having a further description is
no more problematic than things having a custom reaction to being
tasted or smelled.

Similarly, we should be prepared -- especially when the game's
direction is very heavy-handed -- to cope with the player's rebellion.
Being directed, or given explicit options, is fun up to a point, and
then it begins to feel like having one's strings pulled; so players
may react by trying just the opposite of what the game seems to be
clueing. A game is more likely to get the player's sympathy and
respect in the long run if it has a response not only for the directed
action but its antithesis.

This may all seem like an upsetting set of claims, since I am saying
that quality in IF prose is slightly different from quality in static
prose. I don't think that's the same as saying that IF prose *cannot*
emulate the lyricism or the evocative power of writing in other media.
It also doesn't mean that IF writing should violate standard rules of
narrative presentation, such as mentioning what is relevant and
omitting what is not. The very important magical jewel of Fozbar
absolutely should catch our attention if we happen to have it in the
pommel of our sword.

Perhaps a given passage of writing in IF will be more work, requiring
more thought and revision, than a similar passage of writing even in
carefully-wrought static fiction. But I think that's fair.

I may also seem to be placing the base functional concerns of the game
over the more ethereal aesthetic claims of the prose. To that
criticism, I can only point out that -- however often we talk this way
-- the game and the text, or the game and the story are not really two
separate creations sutured together. The prose aspects should make the
game easier and more engaging to play, yes, but the interactive
aspects should also enhance the story-telling and lend it strength.
The compensation for the compactness necessary in a room description
is that the very functionality of IF tends to make every object seem
more important than it might on a page. Every thing the player sees is
full of possibilities. There is more weight in our words.

I *am* arguing for a kind of writing that is almost diametrically
opposed to what Jim wants to do. Whereas he argues that adding detail
about non-functional aspects of a room will in itself make the room
description better, I argue that it won't; in fact, it will probably
compound the frustration felt by players like his ex-wife. It's
certainly true that details set tone, reveal background, and reflect
information about the viewpoint character that notices them -- all
good standard writing workshop advice, and IF makes good use of all
those techniques, both through the visual and through other senses and
memory. (Varicella's descriptions rely heavily on memory; Aayela's on
senses other than sight; many of Robb Sherwin's works on viewpoint
character attitude; other examples abound.) But if we have no such
purpose in mind, and the details have no bearing on game play, they
are probably best omitted. This is a medium that rewards restraint.

Point the third: The Surprise Reversal, Where I Agree With Jim After
All

There is one trait of commercially successful prose that I do think we
could use in more IF, and that is confidence. The first page of a
novel that sells presents itself with utter assurance. It knows what
it is going to be about, it sets its tone, and it directs the reader's
attention to something interesting. It does not dither. It does not
ramble. It knows what kind of book it is going to be, and it lets the
reader know as well.

This is true equally of good best-sellers and of bad. The prose can be
leaden, the characters rice-paper thin, but there will still be
something authoritative and fearless about the opening. Sometimes the
author is authoritatively and fearlessly aping the clichés of his
genre, rather than asserting a style or vision of his own, but this
can still impart the impression of professionalism, and it reassures
(say) the devoted romance novel reader that she's about to read just
the sort of book she wants to read.

This kind of contract with the player is just as important in IF, or
even more so. We rely on the player's trust and confidence in the
author; without it, the player won't experiment as much, won't have as
much faith that puzzles are fair and can be solved, won't be as sure
that the game is finishable.

Too many IF games read as though they were written dutifully or from a
checklist, or they project a lack of confidence.

Unfortunately, it's hard to characterize this quality, other than the
censor's dodge: I know it when I see it. But I think that, together
with greater game responsiveness, is the improvement most likely to
catch the attention of a wider audience.