[Comp98] More praise for the good stuff (1 of 2)
Michael Straight
Looking over the competition reviews so far, I don't think I have much in
the way of criticism to add (besides a few details that I e-mailed to
the authors), but I have some words of appreciation for some things I
haven't seen anyone mention yet.
This post contains blatant spoilers for Arrival, and Photopia.
ARRIVAL
I thought Arrival was a great example of the right way to use graphics in
a work of IF. Someone else expressed disappointment that the graphics
were not "needed" to play the game and went on to wonder why they were
there in the first place.
Well, first and foremost, they were fun. The crayon drawings, the pie-pan
spaceship, the play-doh aliens, the webpage (did you catch that the
reason for the "webpage" was that was what the computer thought was the
most appropriate way to translate information for an eight-year-old?), all
were well-produced, fun to look at, and fit the context of the game. The
weird juxtaposition of "computer graphics" that were crayon drawings was
entertaining all by itself.
But more importantly, the graphics were the sort of pictures that could
not have easily been replaced with text. I can't think of how you could
have written a description of the spaceship that would have captured how
the kid saw (imagined?) it while at the same time saying to the player,
"It's really just a pie-pan." (Camelot, anyone?) The pictures not only
evoked B-movie special effects, but also the Calvin and Hobbes trick where
the boy sees spaceships and aliens but the parents see pie-pans and
play-doh.
Finally, I can't think of any work of IF that has made me laugh so much.
I guess this is much more subjective, but I thought the antics of the
aliens, especially their comments about the atlas and their attempts to
open the pill bottle, were hilarious. And there were tons of little jokes
everywhere. The response when you try to take the alien's pills still
makes me laugh. I feel like after watching a really funny movie and you
keep saying to your friends, "Remember this? Remember that? Bwahahah!"
PHOTOPIA
Several people have mentioned Adam's great use of "guiding" you in
situations that appear open-ended, but I don't think anyone's yet
commented on the one that really freaked me out.
I was driving Alley home and talking to her about how much my daughter
liked her, when suddenly, in the middle of the conversation, I realized,
"Oh no, we're going to crash! Maybe I have the opportunity to change what
will happen!" I typed "STOP" and instantly was hit by the other car. I
had this awful feeling of being just barely too late.
Of course I quickly realized that it must have been coded to crash at
whatever intersection I tried to stop, but for a moment at least it really
seemed like things could have been different, if only I had been paying
more attention. For me, it was the most emotionally charged moment of the
competition.
The dream about the queen was a nifty gimmick too. It's a dream, so you
can't control your actions!
Some people don't seem to have caught that the reason for the definitions
("definitions" means telling you what a word means) is that Alley is
explaining elements of the story to Wendy that she was too young to
understand. When I read them the first time, I took them to have an
ironic, Kurt Vonnegutish tone ("Collateral damage" means we killed
\|/
innocent civilians. The people responsible looked like this: -*- ) and
/|\
enjoyed them that way, and then when I realized what they really were
about, I liked them even more.
IF is the ideal medium for this story. You could theoretically write a
short story in which every page is written from a different point of view,
but I don't think the reader would be able to enter each character's
viewpoint as easily, and that's really the heart of Photopia: getting a
sense of what Alley's loss will mean to all these people.
I thought the ending while sad was also very hopeful. I was grateful for
the chance to hug and kiss baby Alley and just look at her a moment before
turning out the light, because I knew what would happen to her. It really
made me think about what will become of my twin girls when they are born
in February (I hope they won't come too early!) and reminded me not to
ever take them for granted. I know that sounds dreadfully sappy, but it's
true.
(See next post for comments about "Muse")
SMTIRCAHIAGEHLT
Lucian Paul Smith
: I was driving Alley home and talking to her about how much my daughter
: liked her, when suddenly, in the middle of the conversation, I realized,
: "Oh no, we're going to crash! Maybe I have the opportunity to change what
: will happen!" I typed "STOP" and instantly was hit by the other car. I
: had this awful feeling of being just barely too late.
Yes! This is what I was talking about when I mentioned the 'magicians
choice' in my review. Exactly after you exhaust your conversation
options, and maybe examine one or two things, you get the 'enter the
intersection' text. My theory is that unless you really haven't been
paying attention, you will then type 'STOP'. And of course, it won't
work. Suckers, all of us. I loved it.
-Lucian
Michael Straight
Oh, but it's better than that. No matter when you type 'STOP', it's just
barely too late. I was only half-way through the conversation options
with Alley when I suddenly panicked and typed 'STOP'--to no avail.
SMTIRCAHIAGEHLT
ro...@firedrake.avertspam.demon.co.uk
Michael Straight <stra...@email.unc.edu> wrote:
>Oh, but it's better than that. No matter when you type 'STOP', it's just
>barely too late. I was only half-way through the conversation options
>with Alley when I suddenly panicked and typed 'STOP'--to no avail.
And that was the point at which it suddenly stopped working for me.
This was blatant railroading. My feeling is that this piece,
well-written as it undoubtedly is, is not sufficiently interactive
to qualify as IF; hence the low mark I gave it. (If I want non-
interactive fiction, I'll read a book! No disrespect to Adam, but
he isn't as good as (say) Diana Wynne Jones or Tom Holt...)
Something to consider: would it have been a worse game if, say,
typing "stop" early had caused a more minor accident, letting Alley
survive? (That way, most of the hospital scene could work.)
I admit, I prefer some sort of happy ending. I note that several
judges had the same problem I did on my first run-through, that the
ending doesn't _feel_ like an ending; one wonders what one did
wrong to get such an abrupt finish. A real ending would _end_
something...
As for the "Priest plot", I was turned off these by the novels of
Iain Banks, in each of which he seems to feel a need to invent a
new sequence of events: backwards, from both ends towards the
middle, from A to B interspersed with B to C... it gets old very
quickly.
I enjoyed Photopia the first time I went through it. I didn't
enjoy it the second time. I doubt very much I'll do it again.
The potential for repeated enjoyment, for me, is something that
marks out good (books, IF, films, whatever) from the merely
adequate.
Roger (dissociated ramblings R us...)
--
Roger Burton West
Frontline Administrator, Demon Internet Ltd
Home: ro...@firedrake.demon.co.uk
Web: http://www.firedrake.demon.co.uk
Andrew Plotkin
> Something to consider: would it have been a worse game if, say,
> typing "stop" early had caused a more minor accident, letting Alley
> survive?
Yes.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Aris Katsaris
ro...@firedrake.avertspam.demon.co.uk wrote in message
<981119...@firedrake.demon.co.uk>...
>In article <Pine.A41.3.95L.98111...@login5.isis.unc.edu>,
>Michael Straight <stra...@email.unc.edu> wrote:
>
>>Oh, but it's better than that. No matter when you type 'STOP', it's just
>>barely too late. I was only half-way through the conversation options
>>with Alley when I suddenly panicked and typed 'STOP'--to no avail.
>
>And that was the point at which it suddenly stopped working for me.
>This was blatant railroading.
No. Blatant railroading is "You are stuck in a room. To get out of it, you
have to solve the first puzzle. Then you have to solve the second. Then you
have to solve the third. Then you'll be able to get out of it so as to solve
the fourth."
>My feeling is that this piece,
>well-written as it undoubtedly is, is not sufficiently interactive
>to qualify as IF; hence the low mark I gave it. (If I want non-
>interactive fiction, I'll read a book! No disrespect to Adam, but
>he isn't as good as (say) Diana Wynne Jones or Tom Holt...)
Other than Little Blue Men and Muse, which other game in this competition
would you consider interactive? Almost none offer different endings, almost
none offer alternate pathways.
>Something to consider: would it have been a worse game if, say,
>typing "stop" early had caused a more minor accident, letting Alley
>survive?
Yes. Irrefutably so.
>I admit, I prefer some sort of happy ending. I note that several
>judges had the same problem I did on my first run-through, that the
>ending doesn't _feel_ like an ending; one wonders what one did
>wrong to get such an abrupt finish. A real ending would _end_
>something...
It ended Alley's life. It ended far more than any other work of interactive
fiction ever.
Aris Katsaris
Aris Katsaris
Doeadeer3
In article <731nnk$ljf$1...@ns1.otenet.gr>, "Aris Katsaris" <kats...@otenet.gr>
writes:
>>My feeling is that this piece,
>>well-written as it undoubtedly is, is not sufficiently interactive
>>to qualify as IF; hence the low mark I gave it. (If I want non-
>>interactive fiction, I'll read a book! No disrespect to Adam, but
I feel the same, but we are in a minority.
Doe :-)
Doe doea...@aol.com (formerly known as FemaleDeer)
****************************************************************************
"In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane." Mark Twain
Emerick Rogul
: And that was the point at which it suddenly stopped working for me.
: This was blatant railroading. My feeling is that this piece,
: well-written as it undoubtedly is, is not sufficiently interactive
: to qualify as IF; hence the low mark I gave it. (If I want non-
: interactive fiction, I'll read a book! No disrespect to Adam, but
: he isn't as good as (say) Diana Wynne Jones or Tom Holt...)
But there are different levels of "interacting." No, you couldn't
_change_ the plot, but you could interact with it and the people
involved in it. I thought this was a very unique way of telling the
story. Obviously, I think this piece falls more on the fiction side
than the interactive side, but there's nothing wrong with that. We
need more people testing the boundaries, as far as I'm concerned.
: Something to consider: would it have been a worse game if, say,
: typing "stop" early had caused a more minor accident, letting Alley
: survive? (That way, most of the hospital scene could work.)
Most definitely. This is a very structured work; a change like that
would have been devastating.
: As for the "Priest plot", I was turned off these by the novels of
: Iain Banks, in each of which he seems to feel a need to invent a
: new sequence of events: backwards, from both ends towards the
: middle, from A to B interspersed with B to C... it gets old very
: quickly.
Well, as Adam suggested, for a good example of this structure watch
Atom Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter." Much like Photopia, it's
difficult to imagine that story being told any other way.
: The potential for repeated enjoyment, for me, is something that
: marks out good (books, IF, films, whatever) from the merely
: adequate.
I'm not sure I count this for much; unless I've completely forgotten
a piece of IF, I rarely go back to it again (definitely not all the
way through).
-Emerick
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emerick Rogul /\/ "...i saw your girlfriend and she's eating her
eme...@cs.bu.edu /\/ fingers like they're just another meal."
------------------------------------------------- 'summer babe', pavement
ro...@firedrake.avertspam.demon.co.uk
Aris Katsaris <kats...@otenet.gr> wrote:
>ro...@firedrake.avertspam.demon.co.uk wrote in message
><981119...@firedrake.demon.co.uk>...
>>And that was the point at which it suddenly stopped working for me.
>>This was blatant railroading.
>No. Blatant railroading is "You are stuck in a room. To get out of it, you
>have to solve the first puzzle. Then you have to solve the second. Then you
>have to solve the third. Then you'll be able to get out of it so as to solve
>the fourth."
Well, we clearly disagree on terminology.
>>My feeling is that this piece,
>>well-written as it undoubtedly is, is not sufficiently interactive
>>to qualify as IF; hence the low mark I gave it.
>>[...]
>Other than Little Blue Men and Muse, which other game in this competition
>would you consider interactive? Almost none offer different endings, almost
>none offer alternate pathways.
I can solve the puzzle or not solve it. When I come out at the end of
the game, I feel that I, the player, have had some input, rather than
just being taken for a ride by the author. It's a very pretty ride,
but it's not something to which I felt I had any noticeable input.
I don't necessarily demand alternative endings. I do want to feel at
the end of the game that I've _done_ something - even if it's just
a matter of testing my ingenuity against the author's.
I do realise I'm in a minority here. I'm not claiming Photopia is
in some absolute way "bad"; I'm saying that it didn't work, _for me_,
as a piece of interactive fiction. It felt like a short story, so much
so that I couldn't help comparing it with real short stories, against
which it falls short. Would I rather play Enlightenment again or reread
a story I know? I don't know; either could be fun, depending on my mood.
Would I rather play Photopia again or reread a story I know? The story,
easily.
>>I note that several
>>judges had the same problem I did on my first run-through, that the
>>ending doesn't _feel_ like an ending; one wonders what one did
>>wrong to get such an abrupt finish. A real ending would _end_
>>something...
>It ended Alley's life.
That's not what I'm talking about. That "ending" happens, what,
two-thirds of the way through the game? I'm talking about the _end_
of the game... the lights go out and all of a sudden it's all over.
In a short story, that's fine; it's a slightly hackneyed device, but
it's reasonable. It doesn't work, for me, in a piece of IF.
>It ended far more than any other work of interactive
>fiction ever.
I'm afraid I don't understand this sentence at all.
Roger
Suzanne Skinner
: In article <731nnk$ljf$1...@ns1.otenet.gr>, "Aris Katsaris" <kats...@otenet.gr>
: writes:
: >>My feeling is that this piece,
: >>well-written as it undoubtedly is, is not sufficiently interactive
: >>to qualify as IF; hence the low mark I gave it. (If I want non-
: >>interactive fiction, I'll read a book! No disrespect to Adam, but
I think you've got the wrong attribution here. I seem to recall Aris raving
about the game.
: I feel the same, but we are in a minority.
Well, it's ultimately a matter of your personal preferences, right? And
there's nothing "right" or "wrong" about those. But I'm going to indulge
in a defense of Photopia's interactivity.
Okay, maybe it's not IF as we're accustomed to thinking about it. But
there were definitely some techniques used in Photopia that could not
possibly have been pulled off in a book. Example:
[Warning: major Photopia spoilers ahead]
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
... when you are wandering around the crystal labyrinth, and you take your
spacesuit off, and a few turns later, the game casually mentions something
about your wings.
My reaction: Whaa--I have--but if I--then I can.....
> fly
Wooooohooooo!
This was, I think, my absolute favorite part of the game. There was something
magical about that revelation, and acting on it, and then seeing the maze as
a mandala from high above. In that moment, I felt utterly immersed. I was no
longer the player; I *was* Wendy.
I can't always put my finger on all the little tricks Adam used to immerse
me in the experience, I just know it worked. Yes, the game is ultimately
very linear, and yes, you don't have much control over the flow of events.
Yet it *is* interactive in some pretty innovative ways. And, all that aside,
I really, really liked the story.
....But I don't think those who didn't care for it are necessarily "missing"
something. They just don't have the same triggers I do, I guess.
-Suzanne
--
http://www.igs.net/~tril/
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Aris Katsaris
>Aris Katsaris <kats...@otenet.gr> wrote:
>
>That's not what I'm talking about. That "ending" happens, what,
>two-thirds of the way through the game? I'm talking about the _end_
>of the game... the lights go out and all of a sudden it's all over.
>In a short story, that's fine; it's a slightly hackneyed device, but
>it's reasonable. It doesn't work, for me, in a piece of IF.
Well, one could say that the ending happens at the very beginning. Adam
Cadre simply has the newborn Alley at the end, changing thus the usual order
of a biography.
>>It ended far more than any other work of interactive
>>fiction ever.
>
>I'm afraid I don't understand this sentence at all.
Let me rephrase: "It ended something far more precious than any other work
of IF has ever done. It had a greater sense of tragic finality that any work
of IF I've seen."
I'm not trying to force on you my opinion. I understood far before the
competition had ended was over that there were some people that this story
wasn't going to appeal to. I was glad that most people liked it as much as I
did. I hope I have not been overly aggressive in supporting my opinion
concerning it. I just think that the puzzleless IF is something that can be
developed and create masterpieces.
This particular game wasn't very interactive (though I believe more
interaction could have hurt it my removing the sense of inevitable tragedy)
But it was certainly fiction. Most IF games (certainly the puzzle-oriented
ones) couldn possibly be considered fiction the same way a book can, but I
don't see many people complaining about this.
Aris Katsars
Magnus Olsson
In article <erkyrathF...@netcom.com>,
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@netcom.com> wrote:
>ro...@firedrake.avertspam.demon.co.uk wrote:
>
>> Something to consider: would it have been a worse game if, say,
>> typing "stop" early had caused a more minor accident, letting Alley
>> survive?
>
Well, I'm not sure it would have been a worse *game*. It is possible
that a game, with the object of saving Alley's life, would be better
for some people.
It would have made an immensely worse *story*, however, and Adam is
out to tell a story, not to entertain you with puzzles. I think adding
any more interaction to "Photopia" would risk ruining the story, or at
least diluting it. To me, a substantial part of Photopia's impact is
knowing - or guessing - what's going to happen, yet not being able to
stop it. Sort of like a classic tragedy, where everybody but the
protagonist realize what's happening and how impossible it is to stop
it from happening. What would "Oedipus", or "Hamlet", be with happy
endings?
Which leads me to the following though (which is 100% serious and not
at all intended as sarcasm):
Suppose I was toying with the idea of making a game of a classic
tragedy, such as Hamlet. Would such a game be made better *as
a game* by changing the ending, so that (supposing Hamlet was the
PC) it would be possible to avert everybody's getting killed at
the end?
Would it even be possible to make "traditional" IF out of a classical
tragedy? To achieve maximum impact, the audience should realize where
the protagonist is heading long before he or she does. But in IF, the
protagonist *is* the audience.
I don't have an answer to this, but I'd be interested in hearing your
thoughts.
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se, zeb...@pobox.com)
------ http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon ------
Andrew Plotkin
> I do realise I'm in a minority here. I'm not claiming Photopia is
> in some absolute way "bad"; I'm saying that it didn't work, _for me_,
> as a piece of interactive fiction.
And the player is always right. :)
> It felt like a short story, so much
> so that I couldn't help comparing it with real short stories, against
> which it falls short. Would I rather play Enlightenment again or reread
> a story I know? I don't know; either could be fun, depending on my mood.
> Would I rather play Photopia again or reread a story I know? The story,
> easily.
This is an interesting point. Enlightenment isn't the sort of game I'd
play again (at least not for several years). All the fun is figuring out
puzzles, and I now know the solutions.
I'd definitely play Photopia again -- in fact, I did play it again after I
finished it. Because it *is* a story, I like it for the same reason I like
good stories, and knowing how it's going to go doesn't spoil the important
parts.
BTW, another point that I don't think has been mentioned: Because of the
hand-holding, or railroading if you prefer, Photopia is damn near ideal
for introducing newbies to modern IF.
Lucian Paul Smith
: This particular game wasn't very interactive (though I believe more
: interaction could have hurt it my removing the sense of inevitable tragedy)
: But it was certainly fiction. Most IF games (certainly the puzzle-oriented
: ones) couldn possibly be considered fiction the same way a book can, but I
: don't see many people complaining about this.
You know, I would have agreed with you a few days ago, but I've been
thinking, and I've changed my mind. Photopia *is* interactive. It just
isn't interactive in the way we normally think of games being interactive.
Nothing you do makes a difference on the final *event* of the piece. But
it *does* make a difference on your own personal perception of the event.
<blatant spoilers follow>
I'll take two examples: the scene with Jonathan, and the scene with
Alley's dad. There are completely different things you can do in each.
*Very* different things. With Jonathan, you can chicken out, and not ask
Alley to the dance. With the dad, you can neglect to spend time chatting
with Alley, and just call her inside. With the drunk fratboy at the
beginning (OK, so I lied about two examples) you can get your friend to
drop you off at the side of the road, somewhat absolving yourself of
guilt.
The game won't comment on these changes (and actually, I wish it would
more, but anyway), but it makes a difference anyway. To *you*. It's
almost like the rather ambiguous ending of Spider and Web--that game only
tells you if you've made a difference or not, not whether the difference
was good or bad. Here, you can have a better or worse relationship with
your kid, or can tell Alley or not that you liked her, or can tell the
drunk friend or not that he's an idiot. The tragedy still takes place.
But how did you behave toward the victim? That's what I think Photopia is
ultimately about, and that's why I think it's interactive.
-Lucian
ro...@firedrake.avertspam.demon.co.uk
Aris Katsaris <kats...@otenet.gr> wrote:
>Let me rephrase: "It ended something far more precious than any other work
>of IF has ever done. It had a greater sense of tragic finality that any work
>of IF I've seen."
Oh, OK. In that case, I agree with you.
>I'm not trying to force on you my opinion.
Understood, no problem here. :-)
>I just think that the puzzleless IF is something that can be
>developed and create masterpieces.
I agree with you here as well. My question is, what can be put into
puzzleless IF in order to retain a sense of interactivity even though
one isn't locking wits with the author?
>This particular game wasn't very interactive (though I believe more
>interaction could have hurt it my removing the sense of inevitable tragedy)
Hmm... I'm afraid I'm not convinced. My feeling was very much "what's
the point" - if the events are going to happen anyway, why bother to
take time to try to work out how best to influence them?
I suspect the reason Photopia disappointed me was in part that it
_was_ so well-written; it raised expectations which have not been
satisfied by any IF I've played so far.
>But it was certainly fiction. Most IF games (certainly the puzzle-oriented
>ones) couldn possibly be considered fiction the same way a book can, but I
>don't see many people complaining about this.
If I'd played Enlightenment before I played Dilly, I suspect I'd have
complained about Dilly. (I found it very interesting that, of the
reviews I've seen so far, everyone who played Dilly before Enlightenment
seemed to enjoy it; everyone who played Enlightenment first didn't.)
What saved Dilly, for me, was the bookshelf, and the general
feeling of presence-of-the-narrator.
Stacy the Procrastinating
> Something to consider: would it have been a worse game if, say,
> typing "stop" early had caused a more minor accident, letting Alley
> survive? (That way, most of the hospital scene could work.)
>
> I admit, I prefer some sort of happy ending. I note that several
> judges had the same problem I did on my first run-through, that the
> ending doesn't _feel_ like an ending; one wonders what one did
> wrong to get such an abrupt finish. A real ending would _end_
> something...
But that's what's so wonderful (to me) about Photopia's ending--it *fits*.
When I turned off the light switch, I knew that was it. I love that
someone was finally able to use IF to create a story instead of a game
(AMFV came close to doing this). I think the ending is also more literary
than most IF endings--since there was no "game," it wouldn't have worked
to have some big "congratulations, adventurer! here is your reward for
overcoming obstacles and solving puzzles!" ending. (although, the Purple
scene is that in a way--it's certainly the climax).
Not that I'd want to see games disappear or anything, but there's room in
the genre for both game IF and story IF. No choices doesn't mean no
interactivity. Hopefully this will unlock all sorts of creativity in the
genre...I'd love to see more of this sort of thing. (Of course, this is
probably because I'm so abysmally bad at puzzles--Photopia is the first
game ever I didn't get stuck in. No wonder I love it <g>.)
-stacy
Stacy the Procrastinating
> roger writes:
> : Something to consider: would it have been a worse game if, say,
> : typing "stop" early had caused a more minor accident, letting Alley
> : survive? (That way, most of the hospital scene could work.)
>
> Most definitely. This is a very structured work; a change like that
> would have been devastating.
Agreed. Because then it would have been "save Alley!" and her death would
be meaningless--after all, you could just play again and avoid it. (Has
anyone ever been emotionally affected by the character's death in Trinity?
Nope, because you just open a saved game and resurrect him.) This way,
the story became about the meaning of her death, and it haunts the
audience.
-stacy
Stacy the Procrastinating
> BTW, another point that I don't think has been mentioned: Because of the
> hand-holding, or railroading if you prefer, Photopia is damn near ideal
> for introducing newbies to modern IF.
...which I've been using it for left and right ;-). I love it that I
finally have an IF work I can pass on to people without worrying that
they'll get stuck on guess the verb or the first puzzle and abandon the
genre forever. It's definetly not representative of the way IF usually
works, but its a great start.
-stacy
Adam Cadre
Nah. The last time I did that, some jerk rammed the back of my car and
drove away.
-----
Adam Cadre, Anaheim, CA
http://www.retina.net/~grignr
Mary K. Kuhner
<ro...@firedrake.avertspam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>If I'd played Enlightenment before I played Dilly, I suspect I'd have
>complained about Dilly. (I found it very interesting that, of the
>reviews I've seen so far, everyone who played Dilly before Enlightenment
>seemed to enjoy it; everyone who played Enlightenment first didn't.)
I played them in the order Enlightenment-Dilly, back to back, and
liked Dilly about one rating point better. The massive onslaught
of objects at the beginning of Enlightenment demoralized me, whereas
for some reason I didn't have that reaction to Dilly (though I know
Doe and others did). I felt as though I could *explore* Dilly, even
though it was one room: I poked around near the couch for a while,
then worked my way methodically around the room, always finding new
stuff.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Mary K. Kuhner
>It would have made an immensely worse *story*, however, and Adam is
>out to tell a story, not to entertain you with puzzles. I think adding
>any more interaction to "Photopia" would risk ruining the story, or at
>least diluting it. To me, a substantial part of Photopia's impact is
>knowing - or guessing - what's going to happen, yet not being able to
>stop it.
I'm inclined to agree about the interaction, with the single exception
of the dream sequence. If I can't be Alley having a dream, I would
rather be Wendy (or someone) interacting with Alley's dream in some
way. Having to hit <return> over and over broke the spell of the
game for me, and was the only part that really did.
I thought it attained complicity even when it wasn't all that
interactive, as in the drowning scene. I actually went back and
replayed as far as that scene just so I could move *faster*,
a choice which the game did accomodate: I felt guilty about being
a bad parent.
As for the tragedy question, I can only say that after I finished
_Photopia_ I thought about going back and replaying it to see if
there was, in fact, some way to save Alley--and I felt rather ill.
If I had found one, that would have meant my whole approach to the
"game" was misguided--I should have been trying to solve the problem
rather than experience it--and I liked the experience that I'd
had. I also think that the conversations, which worked well for
me, would have been spoiled if I'd replayed them over and over
looking for the "right solution", which a more game-like approach
would almost have required.
I'd like to say, though, that I don't think all stories make the
kinds of interaction verus storytelling tradeoffs necessary that
this particular one does. I don't think a _Photopia_ style game
with multiple endings would necessarily be a bad thing: just not
_Photopia_ itself.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Lelah Conrad
wrote:
>[Warning: major Photopia spoilers ahead]
>
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>... when you are wandering around the crystal labyrinth, and you take your
>spacesuit off, and a few turns later, the game casually mentions something
>about your wings.
>
>My reaction: Whaa--I have--but if I--then I can.....
>
>> fly
>
>Wooooohooooo!
>
>This was, I think, my absolute favorite part of the game...
My favorite parts were the transitions from scene to scene.
For example, right after you fly around, the story cuts to Jonathan in
the school gym saying, "She's an angel." That took my breath away. I
replayed the game just to experience that moment again.
Another transition I especially liked was the splashdown of
Wendy on the planet turning into the splash of Alley falling into the
swimming pool.
In fact, it was probably the poignancy of all the transitions
that was the most captivating thing to me -- everything seemed to just
fit together perfectly.
Lelah
You know, I just had another thought. Photopia was more like a movie
(a good one) than an IF game. Adam, maybe you ought to head for
Hollywood.
David Glasser
Aris Katsaris <kats...@otenet.gr> wrote:
> ro...@firedrake.avertspam.demon.co.uk wrote in message
> <981119...@firedrake.demon.co.uk>...
> >In article <Pine.A41.3.95L.98111...@login5.isis.unc.edu>,
> >Michael Straight <stra...@email.unc.edu> wrote:
> >
> >>Oh, but it's better than that. No matter when you type 'STOP', it's just
> >>barely too late. I was only half-way through the conversation options
> >>with Alley when I suddenly panicked and typed 'STOP'--to no avail.
> >
> >And that was the point at which it suddenly stopped working for me.
> >This was blatant railroading.
>
> No. Blatant railroading is "You are stuck in a room. To get out of it, you
> have to solve the first puzzle. Then you have to solve the second. Then you
> have to solve the third. Then you'll be able to get out of it so as to solve
> the fourth."
As opposed to "You are stuck in a fratboy's body. Wait two turns. You
are stuck on a red planet. Find a seedpod and leave. You are stuck in
X's body. Wait and do obvious things."?
HOWEVER
the fact that Photopia boils down to that does *nothing*, and I repeat,
*nothing*, to make me like it less.
I don't know. Maybe I like blatant railroading. Hell, it made me sad.
(I'm probably the only person who played it that didn't type STOP. I
did realize what was going on, but somehow managed not to.)
--
David Glasser gla...@NOSPAMuscom.com http://onramp.uscom.com/~glasser
DGlasser @ ifMUD : fovea.retina.net 4000 (webpage fovea.retina.net:4001)
Sadie Hawkins, official band of David Glasser: http://sadie.retina.net
"We take our icons very seriously in this class."
Doeadeer3
>Let me rephrase: "It ended something far more precious than any other work
>of IF has ever done. It had a greater sense of tragic finality that any work
>of IF I've seen."
Okay, I am going to be jumped on but...
I felt no sense of tragedy, because I wasn't involved. I was reading the story
not being a part of it.
When Floyd died in Planetfall I felt sorry, because he and I (me being the PC)
had built up a relationship during the course of the game.
With Ally, well, I read about her but I never built-up a relationship with her.
Very quickly I was different characters in her life, but that did not establish
a relationship.
I think most people are very, impressed by the writing, it still did not, for
me, make an interactive experience in which *I* was involved.
I can see tragic movies or read tragic books. The ones that get me are the ones
where there is enough time to build up a feeling for the character (1). And/or
the character is well-protrayed (2). Or, like with Planetfall, where I actually
feel I have interacted with the character (3).
3. What could I do with Ally? Talk to her and listen to her. Zip. In set scenes
where even what I said was scripted by the author. So it DEFINITELY was not ME
talking her. It was Adam talking to her.
2. What did I know about her? She told a story to Wendy, she was going to a
high school dance, hmmm, boy thought she was a goddess, hmmm, she knew
definitions.
1. The story was short. Too short with too many switching characters for me to
feel a consistent relationship with her.
All I know is when I see a tragedy on TV, tons killed in an earthquake, I am
vaguely sad, but, hey, I didn't know those people.
But when Floyd died, boy, hey, I really hated that, he was my bud who had been
tagging after me all through the game.
Or when a friend dies or a friend of friend dies, I am devasted or very, very
sad.
To me there is a qualitative difference. I had no relationship with Ally
because I didn't interact with her.
Doe :-) Like I said, great writing, poor game.
Suzanne Skinner
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Doeadeer3 (doea...@aol.com) wrote:
: Okay, I am going to be jumped on but...
Nope.
Look, guys. It's okay if you don't like Photopia! I don't exactly see some
marauding cadre of Photopia-lovers thumping on dissidents, which is what
a few of you are making it sound like... :-/
: I felt no sense of tragedy, because I wasn't involved. I was reading the
: story not being a part of it.
As I said in my last response, this is very much a personal thing--a matter
of what triggers work on you. I had exactly the opposite experience--by the
end of this game, I felt that I knew and was connected with Alley, through the
various people who had known her....in a way I've rarely felt, either in
int-fiction or regular fiction. Yes, the story and the conversation were
scripted, yes it wasn't very interactive by the usual meaning of the word
here in r.[g,a].i.f.....but dammit, it worked somehow. For me. And I can't
point to any one thing that made it work.
I felt I knew her through her father, through Wendy, through that boy...and
then there was that overarching narrator voice in the "fantasy" scenes that
I learned was Alley also. That was also a part of coming to know her--
experiencing the creations of her imagination.
Again, this is a personal thing. If this didn't work for you, you aren't
any less "right" than those for whom it did work!
: Doe :-) Like I said, great writing, poor game.
I don't think I'd even say that Photopia is a game at all. It's a form of
fiction I'm not sure we have the right word for. It's about being a part
of the story, but not controlling it.
And that's about as clearly as I can put it.
Doeadeer3
In article <3654cc3b...@news.nu-world.com>, l...@nu-world.com (Lelah
Conrad) writes:
>You know, I just had another thought. Photopia was more like a movie
>(a good one) than an IF game. Adam, maybe you ought to head for
>Hollywood.
Exactly, my particpation as the player was not required. If somehow my computer
could have been set in "run" mode, it could have played itself (assuming Wendy
went straight to the takeble objects, which wouldn't be hard because they were
easy to find and that all the menu conversation topics were chosen as well.)
*I*, as player, was totally superfluous to the story. Not to say it wasn't a
good story, just not an interactive one.
I said my piece, I'm done.
Doe :-)
Andrew Plotkin
> I don't think I'd even say that Photopia is a game at all. It's a form of
> fiction I'm not sure we have the right word for. It's about being a part
> of the story, but not controlling it.
>
> And that's about as clearly as I can put it.
I'll be happy to fuzz it up for you. :)
Is it "letting the author control the story" if it never actually happens?
If you are an active player, find solutions to obstacles, and get to the
end feeling like you've "solved it"?
Is the distinction you're trying to make even meaningful if you only play
"Photopia" once?
Doeadeer3
In article <erkyrathF...@netcom.com>, erky...@netcom.com (Andrew
Plotkin) writes:
>s the distinction you're trying to make even meaningful if you only play
>"Photopia" once?
>
>--Z
Aha. So you are not going to partake in discussions over reasons of why you
like things and/or don't? ;-)
Photopia reminds me most of an oral story, only one told with text. Your mother
reading to you when you were a kid. Someone telling you a story around the
campfire. A cassette of a book, a radio show, etc. Turned into text.
Doe
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <erkyrathF...@netcom.com>, erky...@netcom.com (Andrew
> Plotkin) writes:
> >s the distinction you're trying to make even meaningful if you only play
> >"Photopia" once?
> Aha. So you are not going to partake in discussions over reasons of why you
> like things and/or don't? ;-)
Do I contradict myself? Very well; I contradict myself. I am large,
I contain rhinoceroses.
> Photopia reminds me most of an oral story, only one told with text. Your mother
> reading to you when you were a kid. Someone telling you a story around the
> campfire. A cassette of a book, a radio show, etc. Turned into text.
People have *got* to read William J. Brooke.
Doeadeer3
>People have *got* to read William J. Brooke.
>
>--Z
<Sigh> Okay, I'll bite, what did he write about?
You knew someone would ask, right?
Doe :-)
Magnus Olsson
>Aris Katsaris <kats...@otenet.gr> wrote:
>>This particular game wasn't very interactive (though I believe more
>>interaction could have hurt it my removing the sense of inevitable tragedy)
>
>Hmm... I'm afraid I'm not convinced. My feeling was very much "what's
>the point" - if the events are going to happen anyway, why bother to
>take time to try to work out how best to influence them?
I think Lucian hit the head of the nail in his post. Let me expand a
little on his view (as I perceive it):
The events are happening anyway. The tragedy is that you can't stop
them. The beauty of "Photopia" - which would be very different to
reproduce in a non-interactive medium - is that while you can't affect
what happens to Alley, you can affect what happens to *you* (i.e. to
the people around her).
Come to think of it, this is reminiscent of some aspects of "I-0"
(which is of course an utterly different work): within at least some
of the plot branches, you can't affect what happens very much, but you
can choose different ways that Tracy interacts with the world, even if
the end results are more or less the same (e.g. you can choose to
persuade a man to do something by seducing him or by crying - the
result in terms of what actually happens is very similar, but the
implications are quite different).
bo...@i.am
l...@nu-world.com (Lelah Conrad) wrote:
>
> You know, I just had another thought. Photopia was more like a movie
> (a good one) than an IF game. Adam, maybe you ought to head for
> Hollywood.
Photopia would not be as effective (or affective, for that matter) in another
medium. The great thing about it, one of Adam's triumphs, is the immediacy you
feel in each scene. I was not *watching* at Alley's father tell her about the
stars, I was *doing* it. I did not stand by as Alley's mother resuscitated her
drowning daughter, *I* was the one doing CPR.
An experiment: Run through a scene with scripting on. Print out the script and
read it. Which has more impact on you, playing the game or reading the script?
A movie would be the same. It's a passive activity, like reading. We do not
need another discussion of hot and cold McLuhan media theory, but I think
that the difference is central to why Photopia works so well.
Spread-out flat, in a glossy magazine, Photopia would be a decent, but not
great, short story (IMHO, of course). As a piece of IF, its amazing power
comes from the very careful use of the immediacy of the player character. You
*are* the direct cause of Alley's death, a worshipful girl, her loving
parents.
Kind Regards,
Bruce
bones (at) i.am
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
bo...@i.am
Magnus Olsson <m...@bartlet.df.lth.se> wrote:
>Warning: spoilers for "Photopia" follow:
>
>It would have made an immensely worse *story*, however, and Adam is
>out to tell a story, not to entertain you with puzzles. I think adding
>any more interaction to "Photopia" would risk ruining the story, or at
>least diluting it. To me, a substantial part of Photopia's impact is
>knowing - or guessing - what's going to happen, yet not being able to
>stop it.
This comes to the heart of the debate that "Photopia just isn't interactive
enough". For me, it was enough to be told a story through the eyes and hands
of the characters, ever moving towards an inevitable climax. Other appear to
want to be able to influence the plot, change the ending.
It strikes me that much of this is a reaction against tragedy rather than any
real desire for more interactivity. Many of the other competition games were
nearly as linear (The Plant, for example). If Photopia were a puzzle, you
could fix things, make it all better. Many of the comments about this game
are reminiscent of those in 1996 about "Tapestry" and for the same reasons, I
suspect.
Den of Iniquity
>Warning: spoilers for "Photopia" follow:
(sorry, can't do ^L's and anyway, not everyone's newsreader copes with
them)
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.
>>> Something to consider: would it have been a worse game if, say,
>>> typing "stop" early had caused a more minor accident, letting Alley
>>> survive?
>
>Well, I'm not sure it would have been a worse *game*. It is possible
>that a game, with the object of saving Alley's life, would be better
>for some people.
Hell, no. Well, not in the manner that some have suggested - using
knowledge which the character in question couldn't have known to avert the
situation would ruin such a story for me.
--
Den
Aris Katsaris
Lucian Paul Smith wrote in message <732862$a76$1...@joe.rice.edu>...
>Aris Katsaris (kats...@otenet.gr) wrote:
>
>: This particular game wasn't very interactive (though I believe more
>: interaction could have hurt it my removing the sense of inevitable
tragedy)
puzzle-oriented
>: ones) couldn possibly be considered fiction the same way a book can, but
I
>: don't see many people complaining about this.
>
>thinking, and I've changed my mind. Photopia *is* interactive. It just
>isn't interactive in the way we normally think of games being interactive.
>
>Nothing you do makes a difference on the final *event* of the piece. But
>it *does* make a difference on your own personal perception of the event.
>
><blatant spoilers follow>
>
>
>
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>
>
>*Very* different things. With Jonathan, you can chicken out, and not ask
>Alley to the dance.
There's an other alternative path you mustn't have noticed (nor did I, until
about the fourth time I played Photopia).
You can behave like such an idiot that Alley will not want to go out with
you. I'll let you find out by yourself how to accomplish this...
Aris Katsaris
Aris Katsaris
David Glasser wrote in message
<1dir755.1p0...@usol-209-186-16-202.uscom.com>...
>Magic shiny spoilers!
>
>
>Aris Katsaris <kats...@otenet.gr> wrote:
>
>> ro...@firedrake.avertspam.demon.co.uk wrote in message
>> <981119...@firedrake.demon.co.uk>...
>> >In article
<Pine.A41.3.95L.98111...@login5.isis.unc.edu>,
>> >Michael Straight <stra...@email.unc.edu> wrote:
>> >
>> >>Oh, but it's better than that. No matter when you type 'STOP', it's
just
>> >>barely too late. I was only half-way through the conversation options
>> >>with Alley when I suddenly panicked and typed 'STOP'--to no avail.
>> >
>> >And that was the point at which it suddenly stopped working for me.
>> >This was blatant railroading.
>>
>> No. Blatant railroading is "You are stuck in a room. To get out of it,
you
>> have to solve the first puzzle. Then you have to solve the second. Then
you
>> have to solve the third. Then you'll be able to get out of it so as to
solve
>> the fourth."
>
>As opposed to "You are stuck in a fratboy's body. Wait two turns. You
>are stuck on a red planet. Find a seedpod and leave. You are stuck in
>X's body. Wait and do obvious things."?
Well, I'd say both are blatant railroading. I was mainly objecting to the
fact of calling only one of the two kinds of railroading, blatant, when they
are really both. And as people have said there were a couple of details you
could change. Most IF works don't even give you an slightly alternate path,
but because they are puzzle-centered people tend to not complain.
>HOWEVER
>
>the fact that Photopia boils down to that does *nothing*, and I repeat,
>*nothing*, to make me like it less.
>
>I don't know. Maybe I like blatant railroading. Hell, it made me sad.
The reason is that it gave a sense of inevitability, which is the best kind
of tragedy. I don't believe such 'railroading' could work for anything other
than a tragedy.
It was (literally) watching an accident in slow-mo and being able to do
nothing concerning it.
>(I'm probably the only person who played it that didn't type STOP. I
>did realize what was going on, but somehow managed not to.)
The first time I played the accident happened just as I finished the
conversation topics. The second time I not only typed STOP, but I tried to
stop the car of the very first scene, by attacking or kissing the driver for
example... Sigh... Nothing worked.
Aris Katsaris
Iain Merrick
[...]
> BTW, another point that I don't think has been mentioned: Because of the
> hand-holding, or railroading if you prefer, Photopia is damn near ideal
> for introducing newbies to modern IF.
A couple of weeks ago I made a comment about Photopia (without
mentioning it by name, since the competition wasn't over) which I'm
gonna say again, because no-one seemed to take any notice... :)
'Photopia is the sort of game I might use to get my mother interested in
IF, if it weren't for the swearing in the first scene.'
Of course, this just highlights my typical prudish British relationship
with my parents. Um. Anyway, I _have_ already recommended it to someone
- not my mother - who hasn't played any IF other than old
sub-infocom-standard adventure games.
--
Iain Merrick
Adam J. Thornton
Doeadeer3 <doea...@aol.com> wrote:
>Photopia reminds me most of an oral story, only one told with text. Your mother
>reading to you when you were a kid. Someone telling you a story around the
>campfire. A cassette of a book, a radio show, etc. Turned into text.
How about (we'll call the characters A and W; A is the storyteller, and W
is the listener) this story. It's a bedtime story that A is telling to W
or that they're telling together, depending on how you want to look at it.
***BEDTIME STORY***
(coming in in medias res)
W: OK. I'm gonna move the rug.
A: It's really hard, because the rug is awkward and heavy. Finally, with
great effort, you manage to push the rug to one side of the room,
revealing the dusty cover of a closed trap door.
W: Cool! I write my name in the dust with my finger.
A: OK. Now your finger is all dusty.
W: Now I put a little heart around my name.
A: Sure, whatever. Are you going to open the trap door?
W: Yeah.
A: The hinges are rusty--it seems like no one has used the trap door in a
long time. They squeak as the door reluctantly (reluctantly means it
doesn't want to) opens to reveal a rickety staircase leading down into
darkness.
W: Well, I walk down the stairs!
A: The trap door above you crashes shut, and you hear someone barring it!
W: HEY! WAIT! But...
A: Also, it is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue...
W: Aren't you going to tell me what a grue is?
A: No. All you need to know is that it lives in the dark, and it eats
little adventurers like you for breakfast. And lunch, and dinner.
W: Gee, this is a pretty scary bedtime story.
A: And your sword is glowing with a faint blue glow.
W: Well, then it isn't pitch black, is it?
A: Well, not quite. But there's not much light. The sword is only about
as bright as one of those glow necklaces you can get at the amusement park.
W: Oh. Well, I guess I'll turn on the lantern.
A: OK. You find yourself in a dark and damp cellar with a narrow
passageway leading north, and a crawlway to the south. On the west is the
bottom of a steep metal ramp, which is unclimbable.
W: How come I know which way is north?
A: Uh. I guess you have a compass. Sorry. I didn't, uh, mention...you're
right, that's stupid. OK, how about this: Standing at the bottom of the
stairs--now barred from above, you can see that ahead of you there's a
narrow passageway, and turning around you could crawl through a little
crawlspace. On your left, there's the bottom of a steep metal ramp, like a
slide.
W: I'll crawl up the slide.
A: It's unclimbable. I already said that.
W: Well, I'll take off my shirt so I won't slide, and then I'll inch my way
up on my belly.
A: You try that, but the slide is really cold, and it's uncomfortable, and
looking up it you can see the slide goes a very long way, a couple hundred
feet. So you quit and put your shirt back on.
W: But then it would stick out the top of the house, wouldn't it?
A: Well, no, it runs a long way horizontally, but...
W: But *YOU* said it was *too steep to climb!*
A: Oh. Um. Maybe it's a magic slide?
W: This story sucks.
A: No it doesn't. Just leave the slide alone for now, OK? I don't know
what's at the other end yet.
W: [deep, exasperated sigh] Fine. I'll walk through the passageway ahead
of me.
A: This is a small room with passages to the east...er, behind you and to
the right, and a forbidding (forbidding means it looks like someplace you
really don't want to go) to your left. The salient (salient means most
important) feature of this place is a nasty-looking troll, brandishing a
bloody axe. He jumped out from behind the door as you came in, so you
can't leave the way you came.
W: I run out to the right.
A: The troll fends you off with a menacing gesture.
W: "Mister Troll, Mister Troll, please let me pass!"
A: The troll only grunts. He appears to be trying to figure out how much
meat he can get from your carcass (carcass means dead body). He swings his
axe at you, but he misses.
W: I give him the little troll doll from my backpack.
A: You what?
W: I give him the little troll doll out of my backpack. See [rummages in
backpack, coming up with a little troll doll with pink hair] ? This is
Trollina. She lives in my backpack. Anyway, I pull her out and I give her
to the big scary nasty troll.
A: You're not carrying that!
W: Yes I am. You said I had my backpack way back at the beginning of the
story. And I always carry Trollina in it. You can ask my mom.
A: But...uh...
W: See, I told you this story sucked.
A: Well, the troll takes your little doll, and he sneers, and then he
GOBBLES IT RIGHT UP!
W: [quivers lower lip, starts to tear up]
A: [brief, intensely concentrating pause] No he doesn't. Actually, his
hideous countenance (that means really ugly face) slowly cracks into a
broad smile, which is obviously something he doesn't do often, and he puts
down his axe and starts to play with the doll. He beams at you, which is a
frightening sight in and of itself. He pats the ground next to him,
indicating that you should go sit down and play with him.
(....)
You mean a story kind of like that, Doe? Of course I see your point: you
would rather be W than be reading a story about A and W telling a story.
This is kind of why I left the history of science: I'd rather be writing
code than writing stories about people who wrote code.
I do think one of the neat things about Photopia was that it made me
remember that IF I got to play--instead of just watch--was about
storytelling. But then I've gotten back into roleplaying as well recently.
Which is more fun, as seen above, because the storyteller can make up new
stories to go with unexpected player choices, rather than just saying "you
can't do that."
(Assuming that the storyteller is any good. Plenty of D&D games I've
played have had the DM basically say "you can't do that" when I tried to do
something the module didn't cover.)
Adam
--
ad...@princeton.edu
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman
Lelah Conrad
>You
>*are* the direct cause of Alley's death, a worshipful girl, her loving
>parents.
Hmm. Maybe I missed something, but I never felt as though I was any
of those people. Certainly not the cause of her death. I was playing
along, seeing the world from those people's eyes, but I didn't feel as
though I *was* them. It was more as though, for me, I was watching a
Photopiotic (I coined it!) vision of the life of a person. Maybe this
is why it doesn't exactly feel interactive -- I never had the power
anywhere along the way to influence the outcome. Somehow I picked
this fact up pretty early in the story. I was along for the ride. IF
I'm just along for the ride, IF I have no real choices, I just can't
feel responsible.
That doesn't mean I can't *feel* though.
Lelah
Joe Mason
>
>Look, guys. It's okay if you don't like Photopia! I don't exactly see some
>marauding cadre of Photopia-lovers thumping on dissidents, which is what
Hee hee hee.
Joe
--
I think OO is great... It's no coincidence that "woohoo" contains "oo" twice.
-- GLYPH
Doeadeer3
>It strikes me that much of this is a reaction against tragedy rather than any
>real desire for more interactivity. Many of the other competition games were
>nearly as linear (The Plant, for example). If Photopia were a puzzle, you
>could fix things, make it all better. Many of the comments about this game
>are reminiscent of those in 1996 about "Tapestry" and for the same reasons, I
>suspect.
Nope. For the same reason yes, but not those reasons. I also thought Tapestry
was too linear (although that was "before my time" I have played it since I
showed up.)
BTW - The "tradegy" in Photopia made no dent on me, BECAUSE I didn't interact
with the NPCs. And I cry at movies all the time. But I said all this in another
thread.
Later, Doe :-)
Russell Wallace
> Something to consider: would it have been a worse game if, say,
> typing "stop" early had caused a more minor accident, letting Alley
I seem to be very much in the minority here, but my answer is that it
would have been a far better work of IF if something like this had been
allowed.
I played it once, all the way through, then immediately went back to
that scene and typed 'stop' straight away. Then I went back to the
start and typed 'stop', then I looked for a way to get the driver to
pull over. Then I thought of going to the scene where Alley kisses
Wendy goodnight and trying to delay her departure for the minute or two
that would have been enough to make the difference, but I realized I was
wasting my time, so I just typed 'DEL PHOTOPIA.Z5' instead.
The thing that really bothers me is that this game was otherwise so damn
good. I don't care about the lack of puzzles, I don't care about the
relatively low interactivity of a lot of the scenes (when it comes down
to it I don't think the game is much less interactive than most IF), and
pretty much *everything* else worked perfectly for me. (Well, the
errors in the astronomical explanations bothered me, but that's a
nitpick.) In all other respects I'd have heartily agreed with the 10
out of 10 that so many reviewers seemed to give it, and probably have
played it through two or three more times (which would have made it the
first IF game I'd ever done that with).
What poisoned it for me was to have to watch this stupid, pointless
tragedy and be able to do nothing whatsoever about it. (If you object -
not unreasonably - to the abuse of OOC knowledge in typing 'stop' early
in the driving scene, what about a conversation option in the first
scene: 'LOOK MATE, THIS IS MY CAR. PULL OVER, AND IF YOU WANT TO GO INTO
TOWN YOU CAN BLOODY WELL WALK'.) Would even be very easy to add that
now, though it's pretty obvious the author's not going to do it just
because I ask him to.
I might even be persuaded to agree that if this were a conventional
short story, it would be better the way it is. But as far as I'm
concerned, if there's any purpose whatsoever to making a story
*interactive*, it's so that you can make a difference to the outcome.
So; I guess if I'm tempted to play any of this author's future output,
I'll make sure to read the spoilers first. I'll also add this to anyone
else intending to write something along these lines: by all means do, I
think it's an excellent format. But if you're going to have something
like that happen in it, here's one request to make it possible to change
the ending.
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mano...@iol.ie
Michael Gentry
>short story, it would be better the way it is. But as far as I'm
>concerned, if there's any purpose whatsoever to making a story
>*interactive*, it's so that you can make a difference to the outcome.
According to that criteria, nearly every piece of IF that's ever been
published on or off this newsgroup is a dismal failure.
I interpret the "interactive" part of interactive fiction to mean that it is
fiction you can *participate* in. This can, but does not necessarily,
include the ability to change the outcome.
Photopia is a story about a young girl full of promise, who died. As such,
it is a tragedy. It is effective as tragedy because the tragedy is
unavoidable. It is effective as IF because it allows you to *participate* in
her life, from the perspective of those who affected or were affected by
her.
-M.
================================================
"If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding.
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?"
David Glasser
> Photopia reminds me most of an oral story, only one told with text. Your
> mother reading to you when you were a kid. Someone telling you a story
> around the campfire. A cassette of a book, a radio show, etc. Turned into
> text.
Or of a babysitter telling you stories?
Russell Wallace
>
> >I might even be persuaded to agree that if this were a conventional
> >short story, it would be better the way it is. But as far as I'm
> >concerned, if there's any purpose whatsoever to making a story
> >*interactive*, it's so that you can make a difference to the outcome.
>
> According to that criteria, nearly every piece of IF that's ever been
> published on or off this newsgroup is a dismal failure.
Yes and no.
In Trinity, for example, you can't stop the nuclear war. You can,
however, do as much as can be done to alleviate it.
If all you could do was flit around observing people being wiped out,
I'd have reused the disk on the day I got it. It's because you can do
everything that could be done, that makes it worthwhile.
In Jigsaw, it's debatable whether 'the way history originally worked
out' is so damn sacred - but your mission is to preserve it, and you can
do that.
In Photopia, to the extent that there's *anything* worth doing, it's
saving Alley. And you can't.
If this was 99% of IF games, I wouldn't care. I'd just delete it and
not bother mentioning it. It's because the writing was otherwise so
powerful, that it made such a negative impact on me.
> Photopia is a story about a young girl full of promise, who died. As such,
> it is a tragedy. It is effective as tragedy because the tragedy is
> unavoidable. It is effective as IF because it allows you to *participate* in
> her life, from the perspective of those who affected or were affected by
> her.
So what? You can't affect the one thing that really matters.
Doeadeer3
>So; I guess if I'm tempted to play any of this author's future output,
>I'll make sure to read the spoilers first. I'll also add this to anyone
>else intending to write something along these lines: by all means do, I
>think it's an excellent format. But if you're going to have something
>like that happen in it, here's one request to make it possible to change
>the ending.
I have thought of writing something similar (same idea -- limited interactivity
in each scene, multiple PC perspective, no puzzles, but a different story) to
show how it COULD be made more interactive, how one could change the outcome
and still have the story work as a story, a multiple ending story. Already know
how I would do it. Niffty idea if I do say so myself.
Maybe for next year's contest, unless someone else has already done it by then.
Ditto, in other words.
TenthStone
+0000:
>Michael Gentry wrote:
>> Photopia is a story about a young girl full of promise, who died. As such,
>> it is a tragedy. It is effective as tragedy because the tragedy is
>> unavoidable. It is effective as IF because it allows you to *participate* in
>> her life, from the perspective of those who affected or were affected by
>> her.
>
>So what? You can't affect the one thing that really matters.
Thus, a tragedy.
As an example, Shakespeare. In the comedies, chance is allowed to play an
enormous role. Not one of Shakespeare's tragedies truly relies on luck --
very well, so Polonius is killed by accident, sparking his son to revenge.
The only characters affected are those who are not central to the tragedy.
Hamlet knows he has a choice between justice and death, and so he chooses.
An escapeable tragedy is irrelevant, because there can be no cartharsis,
no expatriation of emotion if nothing is changed. The truth is that
change will come, for better or worse.
If Photopia were Zork, it would be a failure. The question here is
whether you think it should be.
Regarding those incapable of experiencing the characters: I pity you.
-----------
The imperturbable TenthStone
tenth...@hotmail.com mcc...@erols.com mcc...@gsgis.k12.va.us
Dan Shiovitz
TenthStone <mcc...@erols.com> wrote:
[..]
>As an example, Shakespeare. In the comedies, chance is allowed to play an
>enormous role. Not one of Shakespeare's tragedies truly relies on luck --
Romeo and Juliet being the notable exception.
>The imperturbable TenthStone
>tenth...@hotmail.com mcc...@erols.com mcc...@gsgis.k12.va.us
--
Dan Shiovitz || d...@cs.wisc.edu || http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~dbs
"...Incensed by some crack he had made about modern enlightened
thought, modern enlightened thought being practically a personal buddy
of hers, Florence gave him the swift heave-ho and--much against my
will, but she seemed to wish it--became betrothed to me." - PGW, J.a.t.F.S.
Jon Petersen
>
> Russell Wallace thus inscribed this day of Sat, 21 Nov 1998 22:39:50
> +0000:
>
> >Michael Gentry wrote:
> >> Photopia is a story about a young girl full of promise, who died. As such,
> >> it is a tragedy.>
>
> Thus, a tragedy.
Well, no. If Alley had a fatal flaw which led to her demise, it'd be a
tragedy. As it is, it's just a bummer.
Jon
(Photopia: An Interactive Bummer)
Graham Nelson
<URL:mailto:d...@cs.wisc.edu> wrote:
> In article <3657c109...@news.erols.com>,
> TenthStone <mcc...@erols.com> wrote:
> [..]
> >As an example, Shakespeare. In the comedies, chance is allowed to play an
> >enormous role. Not one of Shakespeare's tragedies truly relies on luck --
>
> Romeo and Juliet being the notable exception.
Hamlet could easily have ended happily, if the misunderstanding
between H. and Laertes had been resolved about two seconds
earlier. The King would have been deposed, the Queen wouldn't
take the poison and they could have entertained Fortinbras with
hot buttered crumpets.
For almost half its performance history, King Lear was performed
with a rewritten ending, in which Cordelia isn't executed (again,
a matter of chance timing, really), because audiences preferred
it that way. (These rewritings were sometimes amazingly gross.
I looked up a lot of this sort of thing about "The Tempest"
last year, and found that there were versions in which literally
everybody had extra cousins, brothers and sisters around, so as
to flood the stage with women -- this is in Restoration England,
with women at last allowed to act -- and gratuitous amounts
of extra magic, etc.)
And as for Macbeth... have you ever been to Scotland? There's
really a hell of a lot of blasted heath to wander around on,
and the chances of stumbling across three (count them) three
witches can't be all that enormous.
--
Graham Nelson | gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom
J. Robinson Wheeler
>
> Michael Gentry wrote:
> >
> > >I might even be persuaded to agree that if this were a conventional
> > >short story, it would be better the way it is. But as far as I'm
> > >concerned, if there's any purpose whatsoever to making a story
> > >*interactive*, it's so that you can make a difference to the outcome.
> >
> > According to that criteria, nearly every piece of IF that's ever been
> > published on or off this newsgroup is a dismal failure.
>
> Yes and no.
>
Say, do you know you're the first person in all these years to plainly
blurt out and spoil the plot [or, one hopes, sub-plot] of Trinity for me?
Before, all I knew were a couple of the locations. Perhaps this is
something you find out right away if you play, perhaps it isn't. I
was kind of hoping to discover it on my own.
I suppose I should just take the next six months and play every IF yet
written just so this doesn't happen any more. Or stop reading this
newsgroup. Or something.
This is not personal. People need to reference old works to talk about
new ones. I just wish... it weren't so... cavalier or something. I
now I have Masterpieces, and I'm still planning on playing Trinity,
but I haven't yet.
--
J. Robinson Wheeler
whe...@jump.net http://www.jump.net/~wheeler/jrw/home.html
David Glasser
> TenthStone wrote:
> > Thus, a tragedy.
>
> Well, no. If Alley had a fatal flaw which led to her demise, it'd be a
> tragedy. As it is, it's just a bummer.
Oh, I'm sure we can think up a Fatal Flaw for her.
Hmm. The reason she died was that she chose to be with an adoring
little girl half her age over being with a lot of people her age (and
Jon) at a social event. This, coupled with the fact that she stated
that most of her friends were not her age, shows that she is very
antisocial, capable only of feeling good when around young (or old)
people that she has charmed into adoration. Her fear of the dance was
that Jon would not truly adore her (like Wendy, her parents, and so on
do) and leave her for somebody else. This is why she makes sure that
their date is alone.
In fact, Alley is an egomaniac, thriving off others' love without giving
out anything of her own. If she had done the right thing and attended
the social event with people of her own age, instead of telling escapist
stories to a little girl who doesn't know better than to love her, she
would not have died.
Whatever.
Adam J. Thornton
Graham Nelson <gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk> wrote:
[Something about luck and tragedies and stuff...]
>Graham Nelson | gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom
Look, how are we going to speculate about your motives in your absence if
you aren't absent?
Mmm-hmmm, that's what I thought.
Joe Mason
>> >> Photopia is a story about a young girl full of promise, who died. As such,
>> >> it is a tragedy.>
>> >So what? You can't affect the one thing that really matters.
>>
>
>Well, no. If Alley had a fatal flaw which led to her demise, it'd be a
>tragedy. As it is, it's just a bummer.
It'd be a *classical* tragedy. It's not. But it's certainly tragic.
Thus, a tragedy.
I don't believe the "fatal flaw" definition of tragedy really applies much
past Shakespeare. There are certainly other definitions of tragedy used.
Jon Petersen
>
> Jon Petersen <en...@ucla.edu> wrote (not insribed, ok? wrote):
> >> >> Photopia is a story about a young girl full of promise, who died. As such,
> >> >> it is a tragedy.>
> >> >So what? You can't affect the one thing that really matters.
> >>
> >> Thus, a tragedy.
> >
> >Well, no. If Alley had a fatal flaw which led to her demise, it'd be a
> >tragedy. As it is, it's just a bummer.
>
> It'd be a *classical* tragedy. It's not. But it's certainly tragic.
>
> Thus, a tragedy.
Well, no. If Alley had a fatal flaw which led to her demise, it'd be a
tragedy. As it is, it's just a bummer.
Wait a minute.
Jon
Russell Wallace
> Say, do you know you're the first person in all these years to plainly
> blurt out and spoil the plot [or, one hopes, sub-plot] of Trinity for me?
> Before, all I knew were a couple of the locations. Perhaps this is
> something you find out right away if you play, perhaps it isn't. I
> was kind of hoping to discover it on my own.
>
> I suppose I should just take the next six months and play every IF yet
> written just so this doesn't happen any more. Or stop reading this
> newsgroup. Or something.
>
> This is not personal. People need to reference old works to talk about
> new ones. I just wish... it weren't so... cavalier or something. I
> now I have Masterpieces, and I'm still planning on playing Trinity,
> but I haven't yet.
The event I referred to is something that occurs almost at the start of
the game, but you're right, I should remember to insert spoiler
warnings. Mea culpa, and apologies.
Dylan Thurston
> Which leads me to the following though (which is 100% serious and not
> at all intended as sarcasm):
>
> Suppose I was toying with the idea of making a game of a classic
> tragedy, such as Hamlet. Would such a game be made better *as
> a game* by changing the ending, so that (supposing Hamlet was the
> PC) it would be possible to avert everybody's getting killed at
> the end?
>
> Would it even be possible to make "traditional" IF out of a classical
> tragedy? To achieve maximum impact, the audience should realize where
> the protagonist is heading long before he or she does. But in IF, the
> protagonist *is* the audience.
>
> I don't have an answer to this, but I'd be interested in hearing your
> thoughts.
The point of classic tragedy is that the hero's fate is inevitable and
doesn't depend on mistakes the hero makes, right? So perhaps the best
thing would be to allow multiple different endings in which everyone
dies.
For instance, Hamlet might kill his uncle earlier; but then he still
gets in a duel with his uncle's lackeys. (I'm blanking on names.)
Maybe in some endings everyone dies in a war with Norway. And so
forth.
Would that work?
--Dylan Thurston
thur...@math.unige.ch
Joe Mason
>
>The point of classic tragedy is that the hero's fate is inevitable and
>doesn't depend on mistakes the hero makes, right? So perhaps the best
>thing would be to allow multiple different endings in which everyone
>dies.
No, the point of classic tragedy is that the hero's fate can be averted, but
the hero doesn't do it. You could consider it "inevitable" because the
hero's character leads him to make mistakes, and if he'd chosen otherwise
then he'd be a different person. But it definitely depends on the hero's
mistakes - or, more precisely, the hero's character flaw.
>For instance, Hamlet might kill his uncle earlier; but then he still
>gets in a duel with his uncle's lackeys. (I'm blanking on names.)
>Maybe in some endings everyone dies in a war with Norway. And so
>forth.
>
>Would that work?
No, because there's always a point where the hero *could* turn aside. As an
example, an ending where everyone dies in a war with Norway - is it something
Hamlet does to bring this on? If not, then death in a war would be
extraneous to the plot.
It IS possible to have multiple tragic endings. For instance, if Hamlet goes
to war in Norway and gets killed there because he can't stand to be in the
same household as his uncle and vows never to return, then that would be
based on Hamlet's character flaw and it would be a tragic ending. But there
would still be other options which SHOULDN'T be tragic - like sitting down
and having a good long talk with his mother, perhaps.
Avrom Faderman
Certainly in much tragedy (like almost all Shakespearean tragedy), the
tragedy turns on a flaw in the hero. King Lear was too trusting; Hamlet
was indecisive; Othello was easily swept into a rage.
But in some other forms of tragedy, even when there is a tragic flaw, it
takes a back seat to the operation of fate. If Oedipus had been more
patient, would he have met with a better end? Well....mmmmmaybe. But
that's not what the Oracle said. The tragedy in Oedipus Rex is not so much
a hero being brought down by a tragic flaw as the hero being brought down by
forces more powerful than himself, more powerful (or so believed Sophocles)
than any of us.
The difference between tragedy and "a bummer" (and that need not be a bad
thing--Kafka's "Metamorphosis" is a bummer, not a tragedy, and doesn't
suffer for it) is that tragedy has nobility in it. Lear, Hamlet, Othello,
Oedipus, Frankenstein, Gatsby were all great men--although they all had
their flaws. Medea and Lady Macbeth (wow...*that* sure shows how
chauvanistic the canon is; I can only think of two) were both great women,
although they had theirs.
Gregor Samsa was just sad. There's the difference.
Avrom
Michael Gentry
Graham Nelson wrote in message ...
>In article <738kck$8...@spool.cs.wisc.edu>, Dan Shiovitz
><URL:mailto:d...@cs.wisc.edu> wrote:
>> In article <3657c109...@news.erols.com>,
>> TenthStone <mcc...@erols.com> wrote:
>> [..]
>> >As an example, Shakespeare. In the comedies, chance is allowed to play
an
>> >enormous role. Not one of Shakespeare's tragedies truly relies on
luck --
>>
>> Romeo and Juliet being the notable exception.
>
>Hamlet could easily have ended happily, if the misunderstanding
>between H. and Laertes had been resolved about two seconds
>earlier
[some more nice examples snipped]
Yeah, but I think the point is that the audience feels helpless in the face
of these tiny little twists of fate that destroy everyone's lives. The
beauty of King Lear is crippled in the "happy ending" rewrite; it could
hardly be more effective if the audience were allowed to shout "Run faster!
Run faster!" at the messenger, thus "choosing" whether tonight's showing
would be a tragedy or an uplifting tale of familial redemption.
Geoff Bailey
> really a hell of a lot of blasted heath to wander around on,
> and the chances of stumbling across three (count them) three
> witches can't be all that enormous.
Weren't the witches specifically waiting for Macbeth? I got the feeling
that they had an agenda which included making Macbeth want to be king.
Cheers,
Geoff.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Geoff Bailey (Fred the Wonder Worm) | Programmer by trade --
ft...@cs.usyd.edu.au | Gameplayer by vocation.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Russell Wallace
> > at all intended as sarcasm):
> >
> > Suppose I was toying with the idea of making a game of a classic
> > tragedy, such as Hamlet. Would such a game be made better *as
> > a game* by changing the ending, so that (supposing Hamlet was the
> > PC) it would be possible to avert everybody's getting killed at
> > the end?
Well, there've been enough different opinions of what does and doesn't
qualify as tragedy posted here that there's clearly not going to be any
agreement on that; it comes down to a matter of taste in the end.
But as far as I'm concerned, the whole point of putting up a classic
work in an *interactive* medium is so that I can do something about all
the points where I said, while reading it, "why didn't he do X instead
of Y?". If in an author's opinion a story would be genuinely spoiled by
letting the player make a difference to the outcome, then I think the
story would be better left as a work of static fiction.
Den of Iniquity
>And as for Macbeth... have you ever been to Scotland? There's
>really a hell of a lot of blasted heath to wander around on,
>and the chances of stumbling across three (count them) three
>witches can't be all that enormous.
Surely you're not trying to tell us that you've never, nay _never_ walked
across miles and miles of Scottish heath searching for a witch only to
find that three go by all at once?
--
Den
ne...@norwich.edu
"Avrom Faderman" <Avrom_F...@email.msn.com> wrote:
> I think maybe there are just two notions of tragedy kicking around here.
>
> Certainly in much tragedy (like almost all Shakespearean tragedy), the
> tragedy turns on a flaw in the hero. King Lear was too trusting; Hamlet
> was indecisive; Othello was easily swept into a rage.
Those are only character flaws in the context of the events in which the
character takes part. I think it was someone on rec.arts.int-fiction who
mentioned that if Othello and Hamlet could have switched stories, they could
have both ended much better. In no way can I ever think of Hamlet's aversion
to commiting cold-blooded murder a flaw. And as Hamlet shows, sometimes
Othello's murderousness is the best course.
It seems to me creating good tragedy is like building a moving puzzle. You
place
the elements in the correct vectors so that they will come into trajic
conflict.
The more skillfully it is done, the better the tragedy. That is why I like
a good tragedies.
On this footing, Photopia isn't a particularly interesting tragedy. Boy drives
drunk - girl in wrong place at wrong time. There couldn't really be a more
senseless and inane reason for her death.
I perform (sing) at many funerals, and Photopia, to me, was very like the
"rememberance" section of a funeral, where different people stand and tell
their story about the deceased.
The strength of Photopia was that it made me empathise with the loss of the
characters I read about, in the same way that the personal anecdotes of one
who loved the deceased can. Those who she had touched suffer far more than
Alley. It is made clear in the game that Alley is moving on to something else
(just what is left ambiguous), but for the survivors, the ~"light has gone
out".
--
Neil Cerutti
ne...@norwich.edu
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Michael Straight
> ro...@firedrake.avertspam.demon.co.uk wrote:
> > Something to consider: would it have been a worse game if, say,
> > typing "stop" early had caused a more minor accident, letting Alley
> > survive? (That way, most of the hospital scene could work.)
> I played it once, all the way through, then immediately went back to
> that scene and typed 'stop' straight away. Then I went back to the
> start and typed 'stop', then I looked for a way to get the driver to
> pull over. Then I thought of going to the scene where Alley kisses
> Wendy goodnight and trying to delay her departure for the minute or two
> that would have been enough to make the difference, but I realized I was
> wasting my time, so I just typed 'DEL PHOTOPIA.Z5' instead.
I think that's the mistake. This isn't a "game" where if you fail to
rescue the princess, you go back and play it again until you "win". It's
designed to be played through once all the way through. If you play it
again, it's just to appreciate the story.
If you don't save and restore or undo, you would never know that it's not
interactive. Unfortunately, if you tell the player that ahead of time,
it ruins the illusion. Maybe "Phototpia" would benefit from something at
the end that lets the player know he's not supposed to go back and try to
save Alley? Most people seem to have caught that anyway, but some didn't.
> What poisoned it for me was to have to watch this stupid, pointless
> tragedy and be able to do nothing whatsoever about it.
Yeah, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy sucked because you can't save
the earth from being blown up.
> I might even be persuaded to agree that if this were a conventional
> short story, it would be better the way it is. But as far as I'm
> concerned, if there's any purpose whatsoever to making a story
> *interactive*, it's so that you can make a difference to the outcome.
This same "critique" applies to Trinity, Stationfall, Spellbreaker. You
can't save all the things you might want to save. There's really only
one "ending" other than *** YOU HAVE DIED ***.
SMTIRCAHIAGEHLT
Russell Wallace
Michael Straight wrote:
> > What poisoned it for me was to have to watch this stupid, pointless
> > tragedy and be able to do nothing whatsoever about it.
>
> Yeah, and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy sucked because you can't save
> the earth from being blown up.
That was a background event on a far larger scale than the character was
working on; it's not something Arthur Dent could have been expected to
do anything about. In Photopia I was the driver of one of the cars in
the crash and the owner of the other one, for God's sake.
At the end of the day, I suppose it comes down to one's personal
reaction. I've played a total of three IF games that left me with the
sort of lasting emotional impression that some novels and movies have:
Trinity, Jigsaw and Photopia. In the first two cases, I was left with a
combination of wonder and sadness; in the third, disgust. Execution
perfect in every way, and I feel like I've waded through sewage and it
won't wash off.
Obviously, YMMV.
Magnus Olsson
Well, sorry, I was expressing myself badly; I didn't really mean
that we should adapt a well-known tragedy to the IF medium; what I
meant was writing an original work of IF that is a classic tragedy.
(Yes, I realize that that wasn't what I wrote. I must be getting
a bout of premature senility or something).
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se, zeb...@pobox.com)
------ http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon ------
Brandon Van Every
Mary K. Kuhner wrote in message <732c4a$vls$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>...
>
>I also think that the conversations, which worked well for
>me, would have been spoiled if I'd replayed them over and over
>looking for the "right solution", which a more game-like approach
>would almost have required.
I agree, and this is why beyond testing the brakes of the fratboys' car, I
didn't replay it.
Cheers, 3d graphics optimization jock
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
If we are all Gods and we have thrown our toys the mortals away
and we are Immortal What shall we do
and we cannot die to entertain ourselves?
Brandon Van Every
Joe Mason wrote in message ...
>Dylan Thurston <thur...@math.unige.ch> wrote (not insribed, ok? wrote):
>>
>>The point of classic tragedy is that the hero's fate is inevitable and
>>doesn't depend on mistakes the hero makes, right? So perhaps the best
>>thing would be to allow multiple different endings in which everyone
>>dies.
>
>No, the point of classic tragedy is that the hero's fate can be averted,
but
>the hero doesn't do it.
That's incorrect, or rather, you're both right. From the Poetics:
"Besides these there is no other possibility: necessarily the agents must
either act or not act, either knowingly or in ignorance."
Brandon Van Every
Dylan Thurston wrote in message ...
>>
>> Suppose I was toying with the idea of making a game of a classic
>> tragedy, such as Hamlet. Would such a game be made better *as
>> a game* by changing the ending, so that (supposing Hamlet was the
>> PC) it would be possible to avert everybody's getting killed at
>> the end?
Catharsis can still be achieved without everybody dying.
>> Would it even be possible to make "traditional" IF out of a classical
>> tragedy?
Sure.
>> To achieve maximum impact, the audience should realize where
>> the protagonist is heading long before he or she does.
No, there is no necessity in this. The audience can find out at the same
time as the protagonist. Indeed, it is far more shocking that way.
Provided that the groundwork has been laid for it to be a meaningful shock,
a realization. A non-sequitor is neither tragic nor cathartic.
>> But in IF, the protagonist *is* the audience.
So? You make it sound like the experientiality of audience and actors is
somehow unique to IF.
>The point of classic tragedy is that the hero's fate is inevitable and
>doesn't depend on mistakes the hero makes, right?
Nope. A Tragedy is a turn of fortune from good to bad. Check out my long
quote from Aristotle's "Poetics" in rec.ARTS.int-fiction and
comp.games.development.design. Article title is "Tragedy and the adventure
game."
>So perhaps the best
>thing would be to allow multiple different endings in which everyone
>dies.
Nope. In fact in Aristotle's opinion it's not even the most effective form
of Tragedy.
>For instance, Hamlet might kill his uncle earlier; but then he still
>gets in a duel with his uncle's lackeys. (I'm blanking on names.)
>Maybe in some endings everyone dies in a war with Norway. And so
>forth.
>
>Would that work?
Nope. Killing and bloodshed do not make a Tragedy. Read the Poetics. This
writer/screenwriter Lee Sheldon told me to read it, while giving a workshop
at the Game Developer's Conference roadtrip in Seattle. He said if you
haven't read the Poetics, you're not a writer. After reading the Poetics,
I'm starting to think he might have a point? It's a pretty thin book, too.
Not that hard of a read.
Brandon Van Every
Russell Wallace wrote in message <3658BF...@iol.ie>...
>
>Well, there've been enough different opinions of what does and doesn't
>qualify as tragedy posted here that there's clearly not going to be any
>agreement on that; it comes down to a matter of taste in the end.
I think Aristotle's explanations are to be preferred as they unify the
(seemingly) conflicting viewpoints. He does rate them according to whether
they're better or worse tragedies, however. And owing to the deftness of
authorship, this is surely a matter of taste. But for Aristotle, the
construction of plot "in principle" is greater than the execution of plot by
authors. That is to say, the plot stands on its own strength, irrespective
of character development, the performance of the actors, etc. The plot is
the critical thing and he feels that some plots work better than other
plots.
>But as far as I'm concerned, the whole point of putting up a classic
>work in an *interactive* medium is so that I can do something about all
>the points where I said, while reading it, "why didn't he do X instead
>of Y?". If in an author's opinion a story would be genuinely spoiled by
>letting the player make a difference to the outcome, then I think the
>story would be better left as a work of static fiction.
I don't agree that your viewpoint is required.
However, I do agree that your viewpoint exists, and that it's a danger that
an IF author must face when constructing a work.
Brandon Van Every
ne...@norwich.edu wrote in message <73cdue$4tt$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>
>On this footing, Photopia isn't a particularly interesting tragedy. Boy
drives
>drunk - girl in wrong place at wrong time. There couldn't really be a more
>senseless and inane reason for her death.
Tragedies are about suffering. If her death made sense, there would be no
suffering.
>I perform (sing) at many funerals, and Photopia, to me, was very like the
>"rememberance" section of a funeral, where different people stand and tell
>their story about the deceased.
That's an interesting observation, one that I cannot so easily dismiss as
those of many other hardened adventure gamers. Might I ask, at what pace
did you go through Photopia? Myself, I barrelled right through it, taking
no pause to think. I simply flowed from one event to the next. Was your
experience more contemplative and reflective? If so, what made it so? Your
personal disposition? Elements of the plot, or the characters?
>The strength of Photopia was that it made me empathise with the loss of the
>characters I read about, in the same way that the personal anecdotes of one
>who loved the deceased can. Those who she had touched suffer far more than
>Alley. It is made clear in the game that Alley is moving on to something
else
>(just what is left ambiguous), but for the survivors, the ~"light has gone
>out".
Well, let's write a plot summary for Photomania, the anti-climactic saga of
a little girl whose death made perfect sense:
Alley had been slumming it at the frat party. She enjoyed having these two
older dudes fondle her tender young breasts and as they raced recklessly on
the highway, they plowed into a telephone pole. She was the unlucky one,
thrown clear of the wreckage and into a nearby swamp. The phallic symbolism
of a rocket hurtling to catastrophe pummelled her deep into the frigid muck.
As her life passed before her eyes she regretted slapping the shit out of a
little girl named Wendy she had been babysitting only hours earlier. If
only her parents knew what horrible things she did to the child with gold
dust, or the true reasons for her lack of concern with 7th grade school
dances. Flying as a screaming eagle upon the hunger and misery of others,
that frigid bitch Mother Nature herself clipped her wings and shut her trap.
Transforming her into a petrified block of wood, she warmed her in the
mantle of an undersea fireplace for all Eternity. Her mother, wearing a
tight-fitting brassiere and heaving with heavy-chested sobs over a cheap
casket, wailed over and over again "I TOLD YOU SO! I TOLD YOU SO!"
Now, what's wrong with this plotline from the standpoint of Tragedy? Wait
for it...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
One of them 2000 year old answers from the Poetics:
Nor again should a very wicket person fall from good fortune to bad
fortune - that kind of structure would be agreeable, but would not excite
pity or fear, since the one has to do with someone who is suffering
UNDESERVEDLY [emphasis mine], the other with someone who is like ourselves
(I mean, pity has to do with the undeserving sufferer, fear with the person
like us); so what happens will evoke neither pity nor fear.
ne...@norwich.edu
"Brandon Van Every" <vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
[Spoily Spoilers ahead]
> ne...@norwich.edu wrote in message <73cdue$4tt$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> >
> >On this footing, Photopia isn't a particularly interesting tragedy. Boy
> drives
> >drunk - girl in wrong place at wrong time. There couldn't really be a more
> >senseless and inane reason for her death.
>
> Tragedies are about suffering. If her death made sense, there would be no
> suffering.
Since you took the liberty of deleting my personal definition of a tragedy,
some of what follows doesn't make sense.
> >I perform (sing) at many funerals, and Photopia, to me, was very like the
> >"rememberance" section of a funeral, where different people stand and tell
> >their story about the deceased.
>
> That's an interesting observation, one that I cannot so easily dismiss as
> those of many other hardened adventure gamers.
I think Lelah Conrad made a similar observation.
> Might I ask, at what pace
> did you go through Photopia? Myself, I barrelled right through it, taking
> no pause to think. I simply flowed from one event to the next. Was your
> experience more contemplative and reflective? If so, what made it so? Your
> personal disposition? Elements of the plot, or the characters?
I moved slowly because that is how I like to read: ponderously. I also had
to replay up to the golden beach because I forgot to pick up the shovel. If
there was another way to retrieve the treasure chest I couldn't figure it out.
> >The strength of Photopia was that it made me empathise with the loss of the
> >characters I read about, in the same way that the personal anecdotes of one
> >who loved the deceased can. Those who she had touched suffer far more than
> >Alley. It is made clear in the game that Alley is moving on to something
> else
> >(just what is left ambiguous), but for the survivors, the ~"light has gone
> >out".
I agree that, by the Aristotle definition you are using, Photopia is a
tragedy.
By the definition I like, it isn't a very complex example. For me, the
complexity is what is rewarding about a tragedy, not the fact that they are
sad. I treasure the fun of analyzing a tragedy to find the loopholes, or
turning points in them. The earlier the turning point, the more I like it.
Photopia has erased the turning points and loopholes from the story. You
cannot affect those parts of the narrative that might save Alley from her
fate. So I chose to enjoy it on a different level: trying to understand what
was lost.
At no time did I feel I had the power to save Alley.
The only scene that didn't work for me was the hospital scene, where I
never figured out who I was until long after I had played and read a bunch of
reviews. I thought I was the same frat-boy as in the first scene. It was my
fault entirely. The game warned me to use 'who am I', and I ignored it.
> Well, let's write a plot summary for Photomania, the anti-climactic saga of
> a little girl whose death made perfect sense:
>
> Alley had been slumming it at the frat party. She enjoyed having these two
> older dudes fondle her tender young breasts and as they raced recklessly on
> the highway, they plowed into a telephone pole. She was the unlucky one,
> thrown clear of the wreckage and into a nearby swamp. The phallic symbolism
> of a rocket hurtling to catastrophe pummelled her deep into the frigid muck.
> As her life passed before her eyes she regretted slapping the shit out of a
> little girl named Wendy she had been babysitting only hours earlier. If
> only her parents knew what horrible things she did to the child with gold
> dust, or the true reasons for her lack of concern with 7th grade school
> dances. Flying as a screaming eagle upon the hunger and misery of others,
> that frigid bitch Mother Nature herself clipped her wings and shut her trap.
> Transforming her into a petrified block of wood, she warmed her in the
> mantle of an undersea fireplace for all Eternity. Her mother, wearing a
> tight-fitting brassiere and heaving with heavy-chested sobs over a cheap
> casket, wailed over and over again "I TOLD YOU SO! I TOLD YOU SO!"
You are confusing 'senseless' with 'unjust'. The death of the above Alley is
just as senseless as that of the Photopia Alley. However, the cretin's death
is more justified (after all, she knowingly got in the car with a drunken
bastard, and was generally hateful). I agree that the unjust nature of
Alley's death is a useful element in Photopia.
> Now, what's wrong with this plotline from the standpoint of Tragedy? Wait
> for it...
> .
> .
> .
> .
> .
> .
> .
> .
> .
> .
> .
> .
> .
> One of them 2000 year old answers from the Poetics:
>
> Nor again should a very wicket person fall from good fortune to bad
> fortune - that kind of structure would be agreeable, but would not excite
> pity or fear, since the one has to do with someone who is suffering
> UNDESERVEDLY [emphasis mine], the other with someone who is like ourselves
> (I mean, pity has to do with the undeserving sufferer, fear with the person
> like us); so what happens will evoke neither pity nor fear.
I agree with Aristotle that the story you wrote above is bad by any definition
of tragedy.
p a t c h.net
wrote:
>
>You mean a story kind of like that, Doe? Of course I see your point: you
>would rather be W than be reading a story about A and W telling a story.
>
>This is kind of why I left the history of science: I'd rather be writing
>code than writing stories about people who wrote code.
>
>I do think one of the neat things about Photopia was that it made me
>remember that IF I got to play--instead of just watch--was about
>storytelling. But then I've gotten back into roleplaying as well recently.
>Which is more fun, as seen above, because the storyteller can make up new
>stories to go with unexpected player choices, rather than just saying "you
>can't do that."
There's got to be some give-and-take between a live storyteller and
the one experiencing the story, if they're to tell the story together.
Try getting to the Gold Beach in Photopia without taking the shovel
from the undersea castle. I made that mistake the first time around.
How the missing shovel is handled is nicely done. From the game's
point of view, it's necessary to make sure the player's got the
implement, even if they were much too enthusiastic and left the castle
without remembering to "try to pick up everything you can", avoiding
an impossible game state. From Alley's point of view, she's making a
small concession to Wendy who was obviously much too enthusiastic and
moved ahead without remembering to try and pick up everything she
could, avoiding a quickly-devised alternate plan ("suddenly a bird
drops a shovel out of the sky!")
It was a very nice touch and while it should have broken mimesis if it
were used in any other game, it was a great illustration of Wendy and
Alley telling a story together, using each other's feedback to change
the story. I really liked that.
>(Assuming that the storyteller is any good. Plenty of D&D games I've
>played have had the DM basically say "you can't do that" when I tried to do
>something the module didn't cover.)
Which is why I could never get into D&D unless the DM let my character
blow his nose at any given moment.
--
der spatchel reading, mass 01867
resident cranky fovea.retina.net 4000
spatchCoaster! http://spatch.ne.mediaone.net/coasters/
"Here's how the world will end: Kittens Discover Fire" - J. Kujawa
Adam Cadre
> W: Well, I'll take off my shirt
No, that's my other game.
-----
Adam Cadre, Anaheim, CA
http://www.retina.net/~grignr
Aris Katsaris
ne...@norwich.edu wrote in message <73hkkv$aco$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
Spoilers below
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>I moved slowly because that is how I like to read: ponderously. I also had
>to replay up to the golden beach because I forgot to pick up the shovel. If
>there was another way to retrieve the treasure chest I couldn't figure it
out.
>
You are not stuck.
You do need the shovel.
The shovel is underwater.
The water is east.
GO EAST.
Simple, no?
Brandon Van Every
Joe Mason wrote in message ...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>(Have you tried forgetting to take any gold along? I really like the
>response to that!)
Yeah I didn't think I should have picked up any gold, so I got the comb job.
:-)
Brandon Van Every
>tragedy.
>
>By the definition I like, it isn't a very complex example. For me, the
>complexity is what is rewarding about a tragedy, not the fact that they are
>sad. I treasure the fun of analyzing a tragedy to find the loopholes, or
>turning points in them. The earlier the turning point, the more I like it.
Actually, Aristotle likes complex stuff too. He had a lot to say about that
in the Poetics. I would say of Photopia: the plot is simple. It's the
telling which is complex, and that's a dimension wherein I think the
Postmodernist perspective adds to what Aristotle was talking about.
>Photopia has erased the turning points and loopholes from the story. You
>cannot affect those parts of the narrative that might save Alley from her
>fate. So I chose to enjoy it on a different level: trying to understand
what
>was lost.
>
>At no time did I feel I had the power to save Alley.
I did up until the time I could not slam on the brakes of the car. It took
a measurable amount of time before realizing that I was powerless, and my
Hope is what drove the story for me. So then I experienced the morbidity
until the end of the story, trying to gain something from her little life
before it was snuffed out. Finally, once it was over I railed against Fate.
I thought maybe I could slam on the brakes of the fratboy's car on a replay.
No luck. I gave up and passed through Acceptance, the last stage of coming
to terms with death.
If one didn't personally have Hope, then I think the story wouldn't be much
of a read. It is interesting that Hope occurs for some people and not for
others, I wonder what devices promote/defeat that? For one thing, I read
the story way faster than you did. Breezed through as fast as I could go,
almost at the speed of reading a book. If I had given myself more time to
contemplate, perhaps I would have lost hope?
>The only scene that didn't work for me was the hospital scene, where I
>never figured out who I was until long after I had played and read a bunch
of
>reviews. I thought I was the same frat-boy as in the first scene. It was my
>fault entirely. The game warned me to use 'who am I', and I ignored it.
It was a little unclear in any event, but I enjoyed that as the effect of
being disoriented and/or near death. I've been in a car wreck, I know what
that moment of disorientation is like. You grip the wheel and you can't do
a damn thing. No thought is occurring except the brace for impact. Nothing
flashes before your eyes. Absolutely nothing. You are an animal about to
become a paperweight, that is all.
Joe Mason
ne...@norwich.edu <ne...@norwich.edu> wrote (not insribed, ok? wrote):
>
>I moved slowly because that is how I like to read: ponderously. I also had
>to replay up to the golden beach because I forgot to pick up the shovel. If
>there was another way to retrieve the treasure chest I couldn't figure it out.
When I tried that, to see what would happen if I showed up without the shovel,
it said (paraphrase), "Forget something? Like the shovel from the castle?
Well, we'll just pretend you took it and had it with you all along." Then
it appeared in my inventory.
Come to think of it, this wasn't when I tried to dig it up: it happened
when I walked back into the ocean. I'd suggest the message be given in
both places in the updated version.
(Have you tried forgetting to take any gold along? I really like the
response to that!)
Joe
--
Surely you're not trying to tell us that you've never, nay _never_ walked
across miles and miles of Scottish heath searching for a witch only to
find that three go by all at once? -- Den of Iniquity
Doeadeer3
In article <7349q6$64f$4...@cnn.Princeton.EDU>, ad...@princeton.edu (Adam J.
Thornton) writes:
>In article <19981119235331...@ngol05.aol.com>,
>Doeadeer3 <doea...@aol.com> wrote:
>You mean a story kind of like that, Doe? Of course I see your point: you
>would rather be W than be reading a story about A and W telling a story.
Yes, I'd rather be a Wendy PC with the illusion of free will, than a Wendy
character in Ally's story, just a reflection of Ally, without even the illusion
of free will.
>>Photopia reminds me most of an oral story, only one told with text. Your
>mother
>>reading to you when you were a kid. Someone telling you a story around the
>>campfire. A cassette of a book, a radio show, etc. Turned into text.
Actually when I said this I did not know how to express what I meant, I was
trying to be kind, too. Photopia to me is much more like static fiction than
anything else, but it does have the CADENCE of a told, rather than a read,
story. And I don't base that just on the storytelling within the story. It is
very much like a regular fiction story, except the minimal interactivity
(during Ally's tale) and the conversation menus, let the player set the pace,
so that makes it more like an oral story, with the player LISTENING, than
totally static story that the player just reads.
That is the closest I can come to what I mean. (It still isn't interactive
because the author is always in total control, leaving player in the role of
basically a passive listener, but it is also more than completely static
fiction.)
Doe :-) I guess I am not big on being passive. No matter how good the story.
Doe doea...@aol.com (formerly known as FemaleDeer)
****************************************************************************
"In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane." Mark Twain
Magnus Olsson
>How about (we'll call the characters A and W; A is the storyteller, and W
>is the listener) this story. It's a bedtime story that A is telling to W
>or that they're telling together, depending on how you want to look at it.
>
>***BEDTIME STORY***
>
>(coming in in medias res)
>
>W: OK. I'm gonna move the rug.
>
>A: It's really hard, because the rug is awkward and heavy. Finally, with
>great effort, you manage to push the rug to one side of the room,
>revealing the dusty cover of a closed trap door.
>
>W: Cool! I write my name in the dust with my finger.
>
>A: OK. Now your finger is all dusty.
>
>W: Now I put a little heart around my name.
>
>A: Sure, whatever. Are you going to open the trap door?
>
>W: Yeah.
(and so on...)
Great! You made my day!
And then Adam did it again with his response:
In article <Pine.SOL.3.91.98112...@godzilla1.acpub.duke.edu>,
Adam Cadre <ad...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>Adam Thornton wrote:
>> W: Well, I'll take off my shirt
>
>No, that's my other game.
LOL
Magnus Olsson
Brandon Van Every <vane...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Well, let's write a plot summary for Photomania, the anti-climactic saga of
>a little girl whose death made perfect sense:
>
>Alley had been slumming it at the frat party. She enjoyed having these two
>older dudes fondle her tender young breasts and as they raced recklessly on
>the highway, they plowed into a telephone pole. She was the unlucky one,
>thrown clear of the wreckage and into a nearby swamp. The phallic symbolism
>of a rocket hurtling to catastrophe pummelled her deep into the frigid muck.
>As her life passed before her eyes she regretted slapping the shit out of a
>little girl named Wendy she had been babysitting only hours earlier. If
>only her parents knew what horrible things she did to the child with gold
>dust, or the true reasons for her lack of concern with 7th grade school
>dances.
(conclusion of story snipped)
My initial reaction to this is rather interesting:
I thought "Brandon, you utter bastard, how can you even think of
defaming in this way a poor innocent girl who's just died so
tragically?"
Only then did I remember that Alley was a fictional character.
I think this says a lot about Photopia - it happens that fictional
characters get so "real" for me that I care for their reputation, but
this is the first time it happens for a character in a game...
>Flying as a screaming eagle upon the hunger and misery of others,
>that frigid bitch Mother Nature herself clipped her wings and shut her trap.
Just BTW: have you ever considered entering the Bulwer-Lytton contest?
Trevor Barrie
>*** SPOILERS: Photopia ***
>
>(Have you tried forgetting to take any gold along? I really like the
>response to that!)
Could you be more specific? It never even occurred to me to try to take
some gold, but when I went back and tried it I didn't find any different
responses. Where is the response you're talking about?
Brandon Van Every
Magnus Olsson wrote in message <73mih5$ume$1...@bartlet.df.lth.se>...
>
>I think this says a lot about Photopia - it happens that fictional
>characters get so "real" for me that I care for their reputation, but
>this is the first time it happens for a character in a game...
Yep it's a sign that Adam done good.
>>Flying as a screaming eagle upon the hunger and misery of others,
>>that frigid bitch Mother Nature herself clipped her wings and shut her
trap.
>
>Just BTW: have you ever considered entering the Bulwer-Lytton contest?
No, and knowing nothing of this contest I can only guess what you're
insinuating. In my defense, in my rewrite Alley was being punished for
having sexuality. There's really no reason whatsoever for a young girl who
likes having her titties rubbed by fratboys to be punished, it is a
stereotype and a double standard. Only her bizzare ritual of Wendy's child
abuse deserves punishment, and it begs questions about how Alley got to be
the way she is, if you can even VAGUELY take my narrative seriously.
Joe Mason
When you talk to the weather salesman, he tells you that buying rain will
cost 1 gold piece, and "That [coin/ring/nugget] you're carrying will do nicely."
I'm pretty sure this is the "preferred" way to do this. If you didn't pick up
the coin, ring or nugget, the salesman says "Oh, you don't have any gold?
Well, you've got enough gold dust in your hair. Just let me comb it out."
The reason I liked that response so much is that it's completely invisible.
People who didn't take any gold along (like you) wouldn't even be aware that
they'd missed out. The shovel, on the other hand, brings the game mechanics
to your attention (which, for this story, is a good thing, but only once).
Brandon Van Every
Joe Mason wrote in message
>Trevor Barrie <tba...@ibm.net> wrote (not insribed, ok? wrote):
>>On Thu, 26 Nov 1998 01:39:02 GMT, Joe Mason <jcm...@uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>>*** SPOILERS: Photopia ***
>>>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>cost 1 gold piece, and "That [coin/ring/nugget] you're carrying will do
nicely."
>I'm pretty sure this is the "preferred" way to do this. If you didn't pick
up
>the coin, ring or nugget, the salesman says "Oh, you don't have any gold?
>Well, you've got enough gold dust in your hair. Just let me comb it out."
>
>The reason I liked that response so much is that it's completely invisible.
>People who didn't take any gold along (like you) wouldn't even be aware
that
>they'd missed out. The shovel, on the other hand, brings the game
mechanics
>to your attention (which, for this story, is a good thing, but only once).
This is a great way to construct puzzleless adventure games that still have
puzzles. Progress is always made and puzzle-solvers are still happy.
Devise one puzzle from start to finish. Then fill in other material that
completely solves the puzzle. Now, what's your reward? Having solved the
puzzle? Or having NOT solved the puzzle? :-)
Craxton
>
> Joe Mason wrote in message
> <9HG72.12605$c8.85...@hme2.newscontent-01.sprint.ca>...
> >Trevor Barrie <tba...@ibm.net> wrote (not insribed, ok? wrote):
> >>On Thu, 26 Nov 1998 01:39:02 GMT, Joe Mason <jcm...@uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> >>>*** SPOILERS: Photopia ***
> >>>
> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >When you talk to the weather salesman, he tells you that buying rain will
> >cost 1 gold piece, and "That [coin/ring/nugget] you're carrying will do
> nicely."
> >I'm pretty sure this is the "preferred" way to do this. If you didn't pick
> up
> >the coin, ring or nugget, the salesman says "Oh, you don't have any gold?
> >Well, you've got enough gold dust in your hair. Just let me comb it out."
> >
> >The reason I liked that response so much is that it's completely invisible.
> >People who didn't take any gold along (like you) wouldn't even be aware
> that
> >they'd missed out. The shovel, on the other hand, brings the game
> mechanics
> >to your attention (which, for this story, is a good thing, but only once).
>
> This is a great way to construct puzzleless adventure games that still have
> puzzles. Progress is always made and puzzle-solvers are still happy.
> Devise one puzzle from start to finish. Then fill in other material that
> completely solves the puzzle. Now, what's your reward? Having solved the
> puzzle? Or having NOT solved the puzzle? :-)
In a puzzleless game, the STORY is the reward, silly. >:===8)
-Craxton
Brandon Van Every
Lelah Conrad wrote in message <365f5a75...@news.nu-world.com>...
>On 27 Nov 1998 17:03:49 +0100, m...@bartlet.df.lth.se (Magnus Olsson)
>wrote about a comment of BVE's:
>
>>Just BTW: have you ever considered entering the Bulwer-Lytton contest?
>
>his authorial talents.
Well now I've used a search engine. You DO realize that my awful awful
story was made to illustrate a point? The notion of a "just Tragedy" is
absurd, as well as grotesque.
Lelah Conrad
wrote about a comment of BVE's:
>Just BTW: have you ever considered entering the Bulwer-Lytton contest?
Thank you, Magnus, for directing this gentleman to a contest worthy of
his authorial talents.
Lelah
Magnus Olsson
>>>that frigid bitch Mother Nature herself clipped her wings and shut her
>trap.
>>
>
>
>insinuating.
Well, I'm actually not insinuating anything, because I assume that your
writing style was *intentionally* a bit over the top? The Bulwer-Lytton
contest is a contest for intentionally overwrought prose.
(In case it wasn't intentional, my apologies for being snide).
> In my defense, in my rewrite Alley was being punished for
>having sexuality. There's really no reason whatsoever for a young girl who
>likes having her titties rubbed by fratboys to be punished, it is a
>stereotype and a double standard.
I was going to write something about this, but you beat me to it: to
me, it's a strange, Victorian notion that a fictional character's
death is (as you write) "motivated" by that character being
promiscuous. The cliche lives on in American horror B movies, it
seems, but I wouldn't expect to see it in IF. (Yes, I did realize that you
were being ironic).
> Only her bizzare ritual of Wendy's child
>abuse deserves punishment, and it begs questions about how Alley got to be
>the way she is, if you can even VAGUELY take my narrative seriously.
No, I didn't really take it seriously. But if we were to take it
seriously: what do you - and everybody else - think about this: a
character who behaves in a very bad way (like beating up little
children) may deserve punishment. But could we say that this
*motivates* their death in an accident? (Unless it's a story about
divine justice, of course).
Brandon Van Every
Magnus Olsson wrote in message <73ok1g$ikg$1...@bartlet.df.lth.se>...
>
>Well, I'm actually not insinuating anything, because I assume that your
>writing style was *intentionally* a bit over the top? The Bulwer-Lytton
>contest is a contest for intentionally overwrought prose.
Ah. Now that I understand the true nature of this contest, YES. :-)
I won! I won!
>(In case it wasn't intentional, my apologies for being snide).
No no no! PLEASE don't apologize! It would make me look worse, er, bad.
I shall wear my victory crown!
>No, I didn't really take it seriously. But if we were to take it
>seriously: what do you - and everybody else - think about this: a
>character who behaves in a very bad way (like beating up little
>children) may deserve punishment. But could we say that this
>*motivates* their death in an accident? (Unless it's a story about
>divine justice, of course).
Fresh hot Albatross, er, Aristotle, comin' right up:
"But again, Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action,
but of events inspiring fear or pity. Such an effect is best produced
when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened
when, at the same time, they follows as cause and effect. The tragic
wonder will then be greater than if they happened of themselves or
by accident; for even coincidences are most striking when they have
an air of design. We may instance the statue of Mitys at Argos, which
fell upon his murderer while he was a spectator at a festival, and
killed him. Such events seem not to be due to mere chance. Plots,
therefore, constructed on these principles are necessarily the best."
So I think the question is how to make it a matter of wonderment? A mean
character simply getting sent off to jail and fried, does not really inspire
wonderment. Better would be a ghost story, all the little children haunt
her. And then she dies because she gets so frightened she trips over a
board in her house and breaks her neck, or something. Killed by her own
mind. Do de do do Do de do do....
TenthStone
>In article <738kck$8...@spool.cs.wisc.edu>, Dan Shiovitz
><URL:mailto:d...@cs.wisc.edu> wrote:
>> In article <3657c109...@news.erols.com>,
>> TenthStone <mcc...@erols.com> wrote:
>> [..]
>> >As an example, Shakespeare. In the comedies, chance is allowed to play an
>> >enormous role. Not one of Shakespeare's tragedies truly relies on luck --
>>
>> Romeo and Juliet being the notable exception.
>
>Hamlet could easily have ended happily, if the misunderstanding
>between H. and Laertes had been resolved about two seconds
>earlier. The King would have been deposed, the Queen wouldn't
>take the poison and they could have entertained Fortinbras with
>hot buttered crumpets.
Yes, and if Hamlet were a fire-breathing dragon there wouldn't be much
of an issue at all. The point is that Laertes was incapable of realising
his own mistake until his treachery had kiled him, and second-guessing
Shakespeare doesn't get us anything but a headache from the argument.
>For almost half its performance history, King Lear was performed
>with a rewritten ending, in which Cordelia isn't executed (again,
>a matter of chance timing, really), because audiences preferred
>it that way. (These rewritings were sometimes amazingly gross.
>I looked up a lot of this sort of thing about "The Tempest"
>last year, and found that there were versions in which literally
>everybody had extra cousins, brothers and sisters around, so as
>to flood the stage with women -- this is in Restoration England,
>with women at last allowed to act -- and gratuitous amounts
>of extra magic, etc.)
Aie.
>And as for Macbeth... have you ever been to Scotland? There's
>really a hell of a lot of blasted heath to wander around on,
>and the chances of stumbling across three (count them) three
>witches can't be all that enormous.
Well, that was intentional. I mean, fate doesn't depend on luck.
That's rather the essence of fate.
-----------
The imperturbable TenthStone
tenth...@hotmail.com mcc...@erols.com mcc...@gsgis.k12.va.us
HarryH
vane...@earthlink.net says...
[spoiler snipped]
>This is a great way to construct puzzleless adventure games that still have
>puzzles. Progress is always made and puzzle-solvers are still happy.
>Devise one puzzle from start to finish. Then fill in other material that
>completely solves the puzzle. Now, what's your reward? Having solved the
>puzzle? Or having NOT solved the puzzle? :-)
Are you kidding!? Puzzle lovers won't be happy not knowing that there is
another puzzle. If there's no punishment, there's no reward. If there's no
stumbling block, there's no puzzle. There's simply a bunch of stories.
Stories? Yes.
Puzzle? What puzzle? There is no puzzle.
-------------------------------------------------------
IFC0.1 --C -P++ --A --r -i++
Brandon Van Every
HarryH wrote in message <73pvv0$o1k$2...@east44.supernews.com>...
>In article <73nea8$9a9$1...@holly.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
>vane...@earthlink.net says...
>[spoiler snipped]
>>This is a great way to construct puzzleless adventure games that still
have
>>puzzles. Progress is always made and puzzle-solvers are still happy.
>>Devise one puzzle from start to finish. Then fill in other material that
>>completely solves the puzzle. Now, what's your reward? Having solved the
>>puzzle? Or having NOT solved the puzzle? :-)
>
>Are you kidding!? Puzzle lovers won't be happy not knowing that there is
>another puzzle. If there's no punishment, there's no reward. If there's no
>stumbling block, there's no puzzle. There's simply a bunch of stories.
No, the puzzle is that you CORRECTLY guessed A PARTICULAR twist of the
author's mind. You solved a puzzle that for others didn't even have to be
there. And your reward is your wink wink between author and puzzle solver.
It's like being a smartass in class. The teacher asks you to solve 2+2=4.
You differentiate the equation to find the answer, showing how clever you
were. It wasn't necessary but your math teacher is impressed.
Your teacher then begins to throw you other conundrums of the form 3+3=6,
seeing if you are astute enough to find the differential equation when none
is needed.
You could get POINTS for your solutions to these puzzles. Analogous to
collecting Easter Eggs. They don't impede the game but a score is kept of
how well you did.
The New Generation Puzzle: WHERE is the puzzle?
Brandon Van Every
TenthStone wrote in message <36606808...@news.erols.com>...
>
>Well, that was intentional. I mean, fate doesn't depend on luck.
>That's rather the essence of fate.
That's an interesting assertion. What of the fortune cookie?
HarryH
says...
>You could get POINTS for your solutions to these puzzles. Analogous to
>collecting Easter Eggs. They don't impede the game but a score is kept of
>how well you did.
>
>The New Generation Puzzle: WHERE is the puzzle?
AFAIK, HRS fails miserably with this very point.
TenthStone
-0800:
>
>TenthStone wrote in message <36606808...@news.erols.com>...
>>
>>Well, that was intentional. I mean, fate doesn't depend on luck.
>>That's rather the essence of fate.
>
>That's an interesting assertion. What of the fortune cookie?
All I know is that it's not Chinese.
If I believe in fate, then to a non-believer it will appear as if luck
dominates my life. Yet to me, it is all fate.