Spring Thing Votes
Sarah...@gmail.com
IF game before and I'm curious to see your reasoning behind how you
rate each game.
Jim Aikin
I more or less decided not to vote. I would have had to give each of the
games a 4.5 (for very different reasons), so my votes would have
cancelled one another out.
--JA
Sarah...@gmail.com
Jim Aikin
By now it has been a couple of weeks, so I'd have to recapture my
thinking, and might easily miss or misstate something. That said....
Blue Lacuna is described by its own author as incomplete and unfinished.
To my way of thinking, an unfinished game has no business being entered
into a comp at all. I also felt that the first section (which was all I
read) was long on narrative and lacking in interest. I think the
premise, which requires that the protagonist can never go back, deprives
the story of emotional force, because the protagonist is rootless. The
meandering quality of the protagonist's life mirrors the meandering
prose and the meandering navigation system; taken together, the three
elements left me uninvolved.
Pascal's Wager is the most interesting and best developed of the three,
but as I played it I found that I was stuck in an infinite loop, forced
to replay the three chapters over and over. I found that structure very
annoying. I want to get somewhere in a game; I don't want to have to go
back to the beginning and do the same things over and over again because
the author has decreed that I have failed to follow his arcane logic on
some point of doctrine that I don't even care about.
Without a Clue has the best story -- as far as I went with it, anyhow --
and it's amusing, but some of the puzzles are borderline unfair and the
hint system fails to provide essential information, preferring instead
to sneer at the player for being too dumb to get it. The hint system's
failure fits the tone of the game pretty well, but that's not a saving
grace.
As always, your mileage may vary wildly.
--JA
Sarah...@gmail.com
Thanks for replying. It's interesting to see how someone else views a
game. I only completed Without a Clue because someone e-mailed me the
walkthrough. In the other two games I got a certain way through them
using the hints, but I ended up just quitting. I'm not very good at
these games. I play them more for the stories. All three games are
clever. I'm not sure how to go about rating them. I'm a teacher, so
I'm thinking of like making a grading rubric. 10 is excellent, 9 is
excellent with one mistake, 8 is excellent with two mistakes, etc.
(I'm kidding.)
David Fisher
<794c31fa-6965-46e5...@l42g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
What kinds of stories do you think are possible / work well as IF?
What would you want to be able to do in a story, ie. what kinds of interactivity would you want to have?
(There have sometimes been complaints about games where the actual activity seems unrelated to the story bits).
David Fisher
Sarah...@gmail.com
> >>> On 18/04/2008 at 11:50 am, in message
>
>
> <Sarahkay...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm not very good at these games. I play them more for the stories.
>
> What kinds of stories do you think are possible / work well as IF?
>
> What would you want to be able to do in a story, ie. what kinds of interactivity would you want to have?
>
> (There have sometimes been complaints about games where the actual activity seems unrelated to the story bits).
>
> David Fisher
I think someone else would be better at answering your questions. I
think I like good stories, and I'm not sure if it matters to me what
kind of story it is. For me personally I don't like playing IF that
makes me into a character I don't like. I like to imagine I really am
the person, and if it is someone that I really hate I feel like I'm
being hateful or I detach from the game and don't enjoy it as much.
I've noticed that a lot of my favorite IF games have a female
protagonist. I don't think I like surreal games very much because most
often I don't understand them, and I'm left feeling frustrated. I
don't like it when games get very technical or scientific, for example
science fiction games that go on and on about the discismaximus is
attached to the machine and needs a sercemferaxtics, blah, blah. I
like fairy tales. I like it when the game makes me laugh. I don't like
an unhappy ending. I think I also like a lot of characters that I can
talk to. I like David Whyld's games where there are a ton of kooky
characters that I can talk to. Emily Short games have a lot of
characters too. I also like when the plot is dependent on my choices.
It makes me feel like I'm the one who is actually saving the day or
solving the mystery or finding the treasure.
David Fisher
>>> On 18/04/2008 at 2:45 pm, in message
<1afd0df0-f08f-4b16...@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
<Sarah...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 17, 7:06 pm, "David Fisher" <David.Fis...@efs.mq.edu.au> wrote:
>>
>> What kinds of stories do you think are possible / work well as IF?
>>
>> What would you want to be able to do in a story, ie. what kinds of
> interactivity would you want to have?
>
> I think someone else would be better at answering your questions.
Could have fooled me!
> I think I like good stories, and I'm not sure if it matters to me what
> kind of story it is. For me personally I don't like playing IF that
> makes me into a character I don't like. I like to imagine I really am
> the person, and if it is someone that I really hate I feel like I'm
> being hateful or I detach from the game and don't enjoy it as much.
Do you prefer games where the PC is "generic", or ones with a well
defined main character? Is it easier to imagine you really are the
person if you can identify with personality of the PC, or if she is
a "blank slate"?
> I also like when the plot is dependent on my choices.
> It makes me feel like I'm the one who is actually saving the day or
> solving the mystery or finding the treasure.
Do you mean games that have major plot branches along the way
(almost like two different stories, depending what choice you make
half way through the game), or not quite as extreme as that?
Could you give an example of being able to affect the plot this way?
David Fisher
Sarah...@gmail.com
> Do you prefer games where the PC is "generic", or ones with a well
> defined main character? Is it easier to imagine you really are the
> person if you can identify with personality of the PC, or if she is
> a "blank slate"?
good story, and it adds to the imagination. If it is a blank slate,
like if the game says "You are a girl." "You move north." "You pick up
a stick." That bores me. It doesn't have to be like me. I don't know
if I've played a game where the character was like me. It could be
some weird, old man, that smells bad and has issues, but because the
writing is so good I can imagine I am him. So what I'm trying to say
is the PC can be different than me, but I don't want him/her to be a
"bad guy."
> Do you mean games that have major plot branches along the way
> (almost like two different stories, depending what choice you make
> half way through the game), or not quite as extreme as that?
No, it doesn't have to be two different plots. It could be just one,
but at the end of the game I feel as though I had a hand in making the
good ending. Like I'm the hero or something. I'm the brilliant
detective. Maybe that's why I like the happy endings. It's like an
imaginary self-esteem booster?
>
> Could you give an example of being able to affect the plot this way?
It's just a normal game where because I played the game "correctly" I
get the good, happy ending. I win the game. It makes me feel
special. ;-)
>