I have a great group of students (about 12) -- most are English majors,
but there are a few from other humanities disciplines.  I have some
serious writers in the class, a few gifted hackers, and at least six
die-hard game fanatics.  Most had played IF before, but none of them
very extensively.

The first few weeks of class were mostly taken up with playing games and
discussing them in class.  Over the past few weeks we've played
Adventure, Anchorhead, A Change in the Weather, Photopia, and Jigsaw --
none of them very deeply, of course, but enough to get a sense for
what's going on (they have to pick one to play through so they can write
a game critique due around Thanksgiving).

Our discussions have been wide-ranging and very interesting.  Here are a
few issues that seem particularly persistent:

1.  I suggested to them that the formal constraints of, say, a sonnet or
a novel, ironically seem to enable artistry.  We've tried to ask
ourselves to what degree the formal constraints in IF do the same.

2.  We've played some very puzzle-intensive games (A Change in the
Weather) and some games with virtually no puzzles (Photopia).  We've
talked a lot about whether puzzles and "conventional narrative" are in
conflict with one another.  Is it possible to achieve the same level of
pathos one experiences in Photopia with a game like Weather?

3.  Several of my students have wondered whether Andrew Plotkin is a
sadist.  I, of course, wanted to talk about the degree to which the
author figures as a presence in these games (or what sort of situations
make us feel that presence or not).

4.  We've spent a lot of time talking about immersion.  Most students
found themselves feeling very much "in the world" in some situations,
but that other situations forced them out of that mode.  We've talked a
great deal about what gives rise to these different impressions.

5.  One can't go anywhere on pleases in IF, say anything one likes to an
NPC, touch everything in a room, examine all objects in complete detail,
and so forth.  We've spent a lot of time (and here we're moving in to
game development a bit) talking about how authors "hide the seams" in
the game world -- and what "hiding the seams" means in the context of
art more generally.

Of course, I'm deeply indebted to this community for having raised these
issues many times on this list.  My students seem to find them just as
provocative as you do.

My students have now started studying Inform and have been brainstorming
game ideas.  I'm actually quite pleased at how quickly they're picking
it up -- a couple managed to write complete (though necessarily small)
games before we even started.  One particularly bright student figured
out how to write a routine that lets you glue objects together!

We have a long way to go in Inform in the next several weeks, so we'll
see how it goes.  If people are interested, I'll continue to post
updates.

Hope all is well,

Steve

--
Stephen Ramsay
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Georgia

You are aware, are you not, that my original "software company" -- the
label I used on my work when I was in high school -- was "Sadistic
Software"? It's still visible on the version info in my _Inhumane_.

I trust you gave them some notice that I've changed my approach since
_A Change in the Weather_. Well, somewhat. I hope.

--Z

"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.

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I realise that if you're now into programming Inform in the class, your
students are probably pretty busy, but I have to ask what may be questions
with obvious "Well of course!" answers....

a) have they been made aware of the existence of r.a.i-f and r.g.i-f?
b) are they aware of the IF Comp?
c) do you have any IF Comp-related activities planned for the class?  e.g.
playing or judging some of the games?  Maybe a useful assignment would be
submitting reviews of a few games, or even beta-style reports.
d) have they been told about the cabal?

Naturally, the answer to d) should be "They have been told that it
doesn't exist."

--
coyneATmbDOTsympaticoDOTca
What do you mean, I need a signature?

Wow, that sounds very cool.  I'm surprised only 12 people signed up.
Was it pitched as a programming class or a literature class?  In
other words, which department of the university is it under: English
or Comp Sci (or something else)?

: I have a great group of students (about 12) -- most are English majors,
: but there are a few from other humanities disciplines.  I have some
: serious writers in the class, a few gifted hackers, and at least six
: die-hard game fanatics.  Most had played IF before, but none of them
: very extensively.

: The first few weeks of class were mostly taken up with playing games and
: discussing them in class.  Over the past few weeks we've played
: Adventure, Anchorhead, A Change in the Weather, Photopia, and Jigsaw --
: none of them very deeply, of course, but enough to get a sense for
: what's going on (they have to pick one to play through so they can write
: a game critique due around Thanksgiving).

Does this mean that they have to solve the game to be able to
write the paper and pass the class?  That could make some of
those annoying puzzles *really* annoying if they come across
any of them:
  "Hey, Bill, how did you do in that weird class.  You know,
that one Ramsay tought?"
  "*Sigh*, I didn't pass.  I couldn't guess the verb."
  "Huh?"

: Our discussions have been wide-ranging and very interesting.  Here are a
: few issues that seem particularly persistent:

: 1.  I suggested to them that the formal constraints of, say, a sonnet or
: a novel, ironically seem to enable artistry.  We've tried to ask
: ourselves to what degree the formal constraints in IF do the same.

My response to this would be that it's not the constraint, its
the control.  A novel author is no more constrained by the medium
than an interactive fiction author.  But the novel author has total
control over what happens in his story, and the interactive fiction
writer does not.  That is what makes the novel writer more enabled
to be artistic - control over what the final outcome looks like.
With interactive fiction, the final work of "art" is actually
designed by a comittee of two people - the writer and the player
of the game.  (And in that regard, two different transcripts, of
the same game played by different people doing different commands,
can be thought of as two different works of art.)

Phrased that way, it really isn't the slightest bit ironic that
the novel writer is more enabled to be artistic.  IF is really
art by comittee, and it's a committee of two people, the programmer
and the player, who don't know what each others' goals actually are.
The same problem would occur if two authors agreed to write a
novel together where they trade off every other paragraph, but
then they never tell each other where they want the story to go.

The art comes from the author's control over it, not the constraint
of the medium (which is really the medium's control over the author).

It is also, I think, not entirely accurate to say that a novelist has
"total control" over what happens in a story.  There is also a reader in
this equation who will elaborate, misconstrue, surmise, interpret, and
judge.  Authors attempt to control such reactions (this is perhaps the
essence of what "rhetoric" means), but that control is necessarily
partial.  It strikes me that what you are claiming for interactive
fiction is actually an inherent part of all artistic interactions, and
that we are speaking not of kind but of degree.

Steve

--
Stephen Ramsay
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Georgia
email: sram...@uga.edu
web: http://cantor.english.uga.edu/
PGP Public Key ID: 0xA38D7B11

 > I have a great group of students (about 12) -- most are English
 > majors, but there are a few from other humanities disciplines.  I have
 > some serious writers in the class, a few gifted hackers, and at least
 > six die-hard game fanatics.  Most had played IF before, but none of
 > them very extensively.

[reposting this because it seems to have been cancelled by Pan]

Steve, sounds like you've got a really interesting course going there,
and I second Zarf's request for any tidbits that you can dole out to us.

I realise that if you're now into programming Inform in the class, your
students are probably pretty busy, but I have to ask what may be
questions with obvious "Well of course!" answers....

a) have they been made aware of the existence of r.a.i-f and r.g.i-f?
b) are they aware of the IF Comp?
c) do you have any IF Comp-related activities planned for the class?
e.g. playing or judging some of the games?  Maybe a useful assignment
would be submitting reviews of a few games, or even beta-style reports.
d) have they been told about the cabal?

Naturally, the answer to d) should be "They have been told that it
doesn't exist."  Because it doesn't.

--
coyneATmtsDOTnet
What do you mean, I need a signature?