What is IF really?
Adam Myrow
thinking of something. Has there ever been a formal definition of
Interactive Fiction that most of us could agree on? I find myself
confused on what makes Interactive Fiction and what makes, for example,
RPG. To me, Westfront PC is pure RPG, but Beyond Zork is IF with RPG
added to it. I feel this way because Westfront PC has no developing plot
nor any interactive characters. However, where does Zork I fall in?
Infocom called it IF, but I am not sure. Like Westfront PC, it is lacking
in actual plot and has a limited amount of combat. Westfront PC is almost
strictly combat. Zork I, however, does have its sequels which
increasingly move towards what I consider IF. Deadline is obviously IF
and so is Enchanter. So, here is what I consider to be IF for sure. It
must have a plot. It must have actions that the player must perform to
move the story along. It must be primarily text-based. So, is there
anything else that you all feel is mandatory for it to be IF? For that
matter, what is an "adventure game?" Is it an Adventure-like text-based
game involving treasure hunting? Can IF be an adventure game? Which
would First Things First be? I would say that it is IF, but the author
calls it an adventure game. Maybe adventure game is a broader category
than IF.
Sorry if this starts a flame war, but I am interested in seeing how the
newsgroup feels on this. Has it ever been hammered out before?
Grant D. Watson
>game involving treasure hunting? Can IF be an adventure game? Which
>would First Things First be? I would say that it is IF, but the author
>calls it an adventure game. Maybe adventure game is a broader category
>than IF.
Well, since adventure games can be graphical, I'd throw out the text-based
requirements for them (but, of course, leave them in for IF).
I think it's pretty well understood that most (or at least, most puzzleful)
pieces of IF qualify as adventure games also, with the exceptions of
puzzle-less IF and other avant-guardish things. ;-)
Grant D. Watson
grwa...@georgefox.edu
VBas...@aol.com
Dan Shiovitz
>Mr. Panks's now infamous article on adventure game design started me
>thinking of something. Has there ever been a formal definition of
>Interactive Fiction that most of us could agree on? I find myself
>Sorry if this starts a flame war, but I am interested in seeing how the
>newsgroup feels on this. Has it ever been hammered out before?
Nick Montfort did a reasonable first pass at a theoretical analysis of
IF which included some definitions as a necessary first step. There
was a thread about it on the newsgroup a few months ago; the essay
itself is here:
http://nickm.com/if/toward.html
--
Dan Shiovitz :: d...@cs.wisc.edu :: http://www.drizzle.com/~dans
"He settled down to dictate a letter to the Consolidated Nailfile and
Eyebrow Tweezer Corporation of Scranton, Pa., which would make them
realize that life is stern and earnest and Nailfile and Eyebrow Tweezer
Corporations are not put in this world for pleasure alone." -PGW
Aris Katsaris
"Adam Myrow" <my...@eskimo.com> wrote in message news:5ffoea.lv.ln@localhost...
>
> So, here is what I consider to be IF for sure. It
> must have a plot. It must have actions that the player must perform to
> move the story along. It must be primarily text-based.
I disagree with this. I find no reason to add a "primarily text-based"
criterion to our definition of interactive fiction... "Grim Fandango" was
wholly graphical, and nonetheless I'd certainly call it interactive fiction..
As for "actions that the player must perform to move the story along"
that's a bit too vague I think... The player ought to be able not just
to move the narrative along, but to *affect* it, even infinitesmally
so. Or else would simply pressing the spacebar be possibly considered
such a action that the player must perform?
> So, is there
> anything else that you all feel is mandatory for it to be IF?
IMO, Interactive Fiction ought to be *above all else* a story (or narrative
if you will), the progression of which can be affected by the player. Needn't
be text-based.
The "above all else" phrase, removes from that category those (e.g.) RPG
games which are mostly combat, instead of narrative...
Aris Katsaris
Paul Drallos
too literally. One could certainly organize different types of IF into
different catagories. However, I think, the phrase Interactive Fiction
really means Interactive Text, because it really doesn't even have to be
fiction.
It seems that your question is really asking, 'What are the
characteristics of Literary-IF?'
The cool thing about IF is that it is virtually unlimited in what it can
be and what it doesn't have to be.
Paul Drallos
Aris Katsaris
"Paul Drallos" <pdra...@tir.com> wrote in message
news:3D0FFB20...@tir.com...
> I think it is not a good idea to take the phrase 'Interactive Fiction'
> too literally. One could certainly organize different types of IF into
> different catagories. However, I think, the phrase Interactive Fiction
> really means Interactive Text, because it really doesn't even have to be
> fiction.
And you feel that the "text" criterion is more important than the "fiction"
criterion?
Aris Katsaris
Paul Drallos
> And you feel that the "text" criterion is more important than the
"fiction"
> criterion?
>
Well, yes. Text is essential, otherwise we are including graphic
adventures
like the Myst series. Myst is Interactive and it is Fiction, but I don't
think most posters here consider it IF.
Meanwhile, many interactive text works are accepted as IF even if they have
no plot, or or aren't even fiction. For instance, 'Galatea' (one of my
favorites), Schroedenger's Cat', 'School' (an Inform tutorial), 'Tokyo'
(or some such name is a tour of downtown Tokyo).
My point is that fiction and plot are not necessary for a work to be
accepted as IF. But take away the text and people will strongly argue
against it.
Personally, I like graphic adventures too, but I don't consider them
interactive
fiction. I always called what we now call Interactive Fiction, Text
Adventures.
Paul Drallos
Andrew Plotkin
> Aris Katsaris wrote:
> > And you feel that the "text" criterion is more important than the
> "fiction"
> > criterion?
> >
> Well, yes. Text is essential, otherwise we are including graphic
> adventures
> like the Myst series. Myst is Interactive and it is Fiction, but I don't
> think most posters here consider it IF.
I do.
But that's a pretty trivial point. We can easily factor text/graphics
out of the discussion, and talk about what IF is otherwise. If,
afterwards, half of us wind up saying "text IF and graphical IF" and
the other half say "IF and graphical adventures", that's a minor
terminological split.
> Meanwhile, many interactive text works are accepted as IF even if they have
> no plot, or or aren't even fiction. For instance, 'Galatea' (one of my
> favorites), Schroedenger's Cat', 'School' (an Inform tutorial), 'Tokyo'
> (or some such name is a tour of downtown Tokyo).
_Galatea_ is certainly fiction -- science fiction at that. Same for
_Downtown Tokyo Present Day_, if that's the game you're thinking of.
_Informatory_ has a frame of fiction, even if it's thin. And
_Schroedinger's Cat_ is fiction even though the actual fictional world
is entirely implicit -- it still has the form of "here is something
that didn't really happen."
_Informatory_ is a borderline case, but that's because it's borderline
fiction. _Schroedinger's Cat_ is another kind of borderline case, but
in the same sense that "The last man on Earth sat in a room" is.
Surely this implies that the "fiction" is integral to "interactive
fiction" -- the two cases vary in the same way, for the same reasons.
There are Z-machine "abuses" that we don't count as IF -- the text
editor, for example -- and it's precisely because they don't have even
a pretense of a story.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Walter Sandsquish
I find myself confused on what makes Interactive
An adventure game is a piece of software that is
similar to Crowther and Woods' "Adventure."
Interactive fiction is what Infocom called its brand
of adventure game. These games were a little more
concerned with plot and character than many, but
not all, of the adventure games produced by
Infocom's competitors.
Some members of r.a.i-f have experimented with the
format and expanded its boundaries a little, but I
think the genre hasn't really changed significantly.
(Even Infocom did odd things on occasion, like "AMFV"
and "Nord and Bert," but they always returned to,
pretty much, what they started doing after "Zork.")
Character, story and "simulation" may play a slightly
more important role now, partially because of the
efforts of some of the people here, but I think an
adventure game and IF are, essentially, the same
thing. They are computer programs that tell a story
when the player solves the problems, usually
"puzzles" of some sort, that the story's protagonist
encounters.
RPGs, on the other hand, seem less concerned with
plot and problem solving and more concerned with
combat and player-character statistics.
CYOA stories are also less concerned with problem
solving, but they are very interested in branching
plots.
Hyperfiction also has little concern for problem
solving and seems to be more about "exploring"
different aspects of a story (or a character, or an
environment).
Sometimes the boundaries between these things get
a little blurry. This is okay with me, but I think
most of what goes on around here is still about
"adventure games" because most of the stuff that
r.a.i-f produces still has a significant amount of
problem solving for the player to do. (If this weren't
true, I probably would have stopped reading r.*.i-f,
and playing the games associated with them, a long
time ago.)
Jim Nelson
> Aris Katsaris wrote:
>
> > And you feel that the "text" criterion is more important than the
> "fiction"
> > criterion?
> >
>
> Well, yes. Text is essential, otherwise we are including graphic
> adventures
> like the Myst series. Myst is Interactive and it is Fiction, but I don't
> think most posters here consider it IF.
Why not? If Myst doesn't work for you, what about Grim Fandango (which
Aris mentioned earlier)?
I'd suggest to the original poster (and anyone else interested) to apply
top-down methodology here. First define 'interactive' and 'fiction'
separately before attacking the big enchilada.
--
Jim Nelson
jim_n...@mindspring.com
Steven M. Castellotti
>> Well, yes. Text is essential, otherwise we are including graphic
>> adventures
>> like the Myst series. Myst is Interactive and it is Fiction, but I
>> don't think most posters here consider it IF.
>
> I do.
>
> But that's a pretty trivial point. We can easily factor text/graphics
> out of the discussion, and talk about what IF is otherwise. If,
> afterwards, half of us wind up saying "text IF and graphical IF" and the
> other half say "IF and graphical adventures", that's a minor
> terminological split.
I would have to second that. I have a game that I'm putting the
finishing touches on which can be played in either entirely graphical
mode, or entirely text mode, or any combination of the two. It's the exact
same game code, runnning on the same game engine, with different
frontends.
While you might have a hard time converting Myst into a purely text
interface (how would you differenciate between different piano keys in
the spaceship without becoming tedious, for instance?)
-Steve Castellotti
SteveC (at) innocent.com
http://cogengine.sourceforge.net/
Andrew Plotkin
> I have a game that I'm putting the
> finishing touches on which can be played in either entirely graphical
> mode, or entirely text mode, or any combination of the two. It's the exact
> same game code, runnning on the same game engine, with different
> frontends.
Now that, while it's always been a theoretical possibility, seems like
it's hard to get right. Do both formats work as games? How do you deal
with keeping the focus -- what objects are obvious or hidden, what
actions are obvious or clever -- the same between the two modes? Or is
it not that kind of game?
Are you able to keep the same level of alternate messages and extra
information flowing in the graphical version as in the text version?
Paul Drallos
which is the origin of this thread. I will repeat his post here:
> Mr. Panks's now infamous article on adventure game design started me
> thinking of something. Has there ever been a formal definition of
> Interactive Fiction that most of us could agree on? I find myself
> confused on what makes Interactive Fiction and what makes, for example,
> RPG. To me, Westfront PC is pure RPG, but Beyond Zork is IF with RPG
> added to it. I feel this way because Westfront PC has no developing
plot
> nor any interactive characters. However, where does Zork I fall in?
< Infocom called it IF, but I am not sure. Like Westfront PC, it is
lacking
> in actual plot and has a limited amount of combat. Westfront PC is
almost
> strictly combat. Zork I, however, does have its sequels which
> increasingly move towards what I consider IF. Deadline is obviously IF
> and so is Enchanter. So, here is what I consider to be IF for sure. It
> must have a plot. It must have actions that the player must perform to
> move the story along. It must be primarily text-based. So, is there
> anything else that you all feel is mandatory for it to be IF? For that
> matter, what is an "adventure game?" Is it an Adventure-like text-based
> game involving treasure hunting? Can IF be an adventure game? Which
> would First Things First be? I would say that it is IF, but the author
> calls it an adventure game. Maybe adventure game is a broader category
> than IF.
In Adam's post, he wonders if Zork I, for instance, falls into the catagory
of IF because it doesn't have a real plot. I am not arguing
that Galatea is not fiction. Of course it is fiction. I am arguing
that it
doesn't have a plot in the sense of what Adam is refering to in his post.
I am also arguing that Informatory, School, Schroedinger's Cat, and
Downtown
Tokyo also fail to meet Adam's criteria. But most importantly, I am
arguing
that Adam's definition is too restrictive because I consider all of these
works to be fine example of IF.
The business about text verses graphics is something else. Far be it
for me
to dictate what is IF. Certainly graphic adventures are interactive and
they
are fiction, so in the technical sense they are interactive fiction.
But my
*impression* is that people in the Interactive Fiction community have a
bit of
a hostility toward graphical adventures and don't consider them to be IF.
I don't know how to say it. Yes, they are interactive fiction, but no,
they
are not IF? I would just say that the people who call themselves the
interactive
fiction community could be more accurately described as the interactive text
community. But of course, it is still IF.
I hope I'm making myself clear here, but I don't think there is a simple
answer
to Adam's question.
Paul
Matthew Russotto
>interface (how would you differenciate between different piano keys in
>the spaceship without becoming tedious, for instance?)
It was tedious in the graphical game, it could be tedious in the text
game as well.
--
Matthew T. Russotto mrus...@speakeasy.net
=====
Every time you buy a CD, a programmer is kicked in the teeth.
Every time you buy or rent a DVD, a programmer is kicked where it counts.
Every time they kick a programmer, 1000 users are kicked too, and harder.
A proposed US law called the CBDTPA would ban the PC as we know it.
This is not a joke, not an exaggeration. This is real.
http://www.cryptome.org/broadbandits.htm
Mike Roberts
> But my *impression* is that people in the Interactive
> Fiction community have a bit of a hostility toward graphical
> adventures and don't consider them to be IF.
If you're defining "the IF community" as roughly the readership of raif, I
think it would be more accurate to say that *some* people in the IF
community feel that way. You can probably find a good number of raif'ers
who are indifferent to graphical adventures, but I'd be kind of surprised if
there were very many who actually harbor "hostility" toward them; and I
don't think it's accurate to conclude that there's a consensus among raif
readers that IF can't be graphical.
--Mike
mjr underscore at hotmail dot com
Andy M
> The business about text verses graphics is something else. Far be it
> for me
> to dictate what is IF. Certainly graphic adventures are interactive and
> they
> are fiction, so in the technical sense they are interactive fiction.
> But my
> *impression* is that people in the Interactive Fiction community have a
> bit of
> a hostility toward graphical adventures and don't consider them to be IF.
>
> I don't know how to say it. Yes, they are interactive fiction, but no,
> they
> are not IF? I would just say that the people who call themselves the
> interactive
> fiction community could be more accurately described as the interactive
text
> community. But of course, it is still IF.
>
I tend to agree. I think we have made the mistake of taking the term
"interactive fiction" too literally in this thread. I see some people
trying to come up with a single definition that would apply to all things
that could possibly be meant by the term. But let's be blunt. When someone
here says interactive fiction, they don't mean Grim Fandango, or Myst, or
even Choose Your Own Adventure, although those are all examples of things
that are interactive and fiction. They mean a primarily text-based computer
game. That's what you tell people when they ask you what IF is, and that's
what this board is dedicated to. Or is someone going to honestly tell me
that if I started a discussion on rgif about the relative merits of King's
Quest 5 versus King's Quest 6, it would be considered on-topic? Of course
not. I would rightly be told to take it the adventure game boards, becausd
rgif is for text games. Let's try to come up with a definition for what we
all know IF *is*, and not what the words "interactive fiction" literally
mean.
--Andy
Andrew Plotkin
> I see some people
> trying to come up with a single definition that would apply to all things
> that could possibly be meant by the term.
I'd like to see a good general definition, yes. (I haven't worked much
to construct one. It's on my todo list. :)
> But let's be blunt. When someone
> here says interactive fiction, they don't mean Grim Fandango, or Myst, or
> even Choose Your Own Adventure
I do.
It's true that the R*IF newsgroups are more about text games than any
other kind of game.
> Or is someone going to honestly tell me
> that if I started a discussion on rgif about the relative merits of King's
> Quest 5 versus King's Quest 6, it would be considered on-topic?
I would consider it on-topic, if you were discussing design issues
applicable to both graphical games and text games. (And there are
plenty of such issues.)
I've been posting reviews of graphical adventure games to RGIF for
years now.
Philipp Lenssen
news:n34Q8.326$zN4.3...@news2.news.adelphia.net...
>..
> But let's be blunt. When someone
> here says interactive fiction, they don't mean Grim Fandango, or Myst, or
> even Choose Your Own Adventure, although those are all examples of things
> that are interactive and fiction. They mean a primarily text-based
computer
> game. That's what you tell people when they ask you what IF is, and
that's
> what this board is dedicated to.
Here we go again.
- When I talk about Interactive Fiction, I include
Choose-Your-Own-Adventures, as well as Lucasarts-type game
- I am on this board, and I do inform about my CYOA system* once in a while,
and I do get interested people coming back at me telling they found the
system via this newsgroup
If I want to seperate different forms of IF (which mostly happens in
discussions like these), I simply say "text input based IF", or "multiple
choice IF" and so on. It's fine by me if most people actually mean just one
kind of IF when they talk about it. But when we want to discuss broader
theories, limits of the genre, and so on, we need to differentiate instead
of limiting the scope artificially. Doing so can come off as a "don't move
in our neighborhood" attitude, when actually I think most of us respect the
different genres and find them appropriate, independent of wether or not
they want to play or discuss e.g. point-and-click games themselves.
Steven M. Castellotti
>> I have a game that I'm putting the
>> finishing touches on which can be played in either entirely graphical
>> mode, or entirely text mode, or any combination of the two. It's the
>> exact same game code, runnning on the same game engine, with different
>> frontends.
>
> Now that, while it's always been a theoretical possibility, seems like
> it's hard to get right. Do both formats work as games? How do you deal
> with keeping the focus -- what objects are obvious or hidden, what
> actions are obvious or clever -- the same between the two modes? Or is
> it not that kind of game?
The game is your typical adventure game format, but the engine [the "Cog
Engine"] is a little different than most IF engines. Both the engine and
the game are geared towards kids creating their own video games, so the
syntax and game play is fairly simplified. It breaks down like this:
Each room in the game gets a number, as does each direction you can
travel, each item, and each obstruction ("obstructions" are simply objects
which block you from traveling in a particular direction). In the room
editor you click on a direction to add it to the list of directions the
player can travel, and you tell the program which room that direction
leads to.
All items are "visible" - that is they will be listed in the text mode
when you enter the room, and an icon will be displayed representing them
in graphical mode. Obstructions work the same way, although you can check
off a box in the GUI development enviornment in order to keep them from
being listed. This is beneficial if you want to say that the player can't
enter a cave because it's too dark (you create an obstruction called
"darkness" which doesn't have a description or an icon), but you want to
give them the hint that they *would* be able to travel in that direction
if they could figure out how to produce a light source. In other cases,
where a player might be able to climb up a cliff if they shot a rope tied
to an arrow at a tree stump on top of the cliff, you simply don't list the
rooms as being connected.
That sets up the game environment, and an english-like syntax can be
point-and-clicked together from widgets that are generated from the
enviroment information you already set up, creating "events" which can
occur in the game. An example event would be:
(Extra carriage returns added to prevent line-wrapping)
Get Item[2 - Rock] ->
Removes Item[2 - Rock] from CurrentRoom
and Adds Item[30 - Rock (moved aside)] to CurrentRoom
and Adds Item[1 - Dagger] to CurrentRoom
and TextMessage[Rolling the rock aside, you find a dagger hidden underneath!];
and:
Use Item[1 - Dagger] on Obstruction[1 - Stranger] ->
Removes Obstruction[1 - Stranger] from Room[5 - Stranger]Direction[West]
and Removes Obstruction[1 - Stranger] from Room[7 - Rope]Direction[East]
and Adds Item[4 - Arrow] to CurrentRoom
and Adds Item[3 - Bow] to CurrentRoom
and TextMessage[Although this person has done nothing to you, you attack.
With lightning reflexes you lunge at the stranger with your blade.
Your arc falls wide however, and your target is left unhurt.
Frightened by your actions, the shadowy figure runs off into the
forest brush, leaving behind a hand-crafted bow and an arrow.];
In the case of the rock, there's two objects, with two pictures. It's
admittedly not the most elegant approach, but since the program is geared
towards children, it's reasonable tradeoff in favor of simplicity.
Incidentally, the Rope tied to Arrow trick goes like this:
Combine Item[5 - Rope] with Item[4 - Arrow] ->
Removes Item[5 - Rope] from Inventory
and Removes Item[4 - Arrow] from Inventory
and Adds Item[6 - Rope Tied to Arrow] to Inventory
and TextMessage[You tie the rope onto the end of the arrow.];
followed by:
Use Item[6 - Rope Tied to Arrow] on Item[7 - Tree Stump]
(Requires Item[3 - Bow]InInventory) ->
Removes Item[6 - Rope Tied to Arrow] from Inventory
and Adds Item[8 - Arrow (with Rope) shot intoStump] to Room[129 - Ledge over Mountain River]
and Adds Item[8 - Arrow (with Rope) shot into Stump] to Room[104 - Top of Cliff]
and Modifies Room[129 - Ledge over Mountain River] DirectionObject[Up]ToWhichRoom[104 - Top of Cliff]
and Modifies Room[104 - Top of Cliff]DirectionObject[Down]ToWhichRoom[129 - Ledge over Mountain River]
and Removes Item[7 - Tree Stump] from Room[129 - Ledge over Mountain River]
and Removes Item[7 - Tree Stump] from Room[104 - Top of Cliff] and
TextMessage[You take the arrow that you have tied your rope onto and pull
it back on your bow. After taking aim at the tree stump, on the top of
the cliff high above the ground, you release the arrow. Your shot is
clean and diectly on target, lodging into the tree stump. You can now
climb Up or Down the rope along the cliff.];
> Are you able to keep the same level of alternate messages and extraneous
> information flowing in the graphical version as in the text version?
The engine uses two tricks to overcome this:
1) You can use "Closeup" images when the user asks to look at an object.
2) Text-to-Speech synthesis. The engine supports TTS under Linux and
Windows.
Each verb in the game can be given a graphic to be used as a mouse
pointer. The user can then right-click to cycle through the verbs. If the
user right-clicks and cycles to an eyeball (representing "Look") and then
clicks on an object, the Closeup graphic will be displayed (if one
exists), and the text description will be fed to the TTS system. Same goes
for the "TextMessage" portions of the events above.
As the engine grows in complexity, so will the features available to the
game designer, but the overriding priciple is that if it gets too hard to
understand how to use the tool, the tool becomes useless, no matter how
powerful it is.
Incidentally, the code is GPL, and the project website is at:
http://cogengine.sourceforge.net/
Adam Thornton
Andy M <an...@dreamforge.com> wrote:
>But let's be blunt. When someone
>here says interactive fiction, they don't mean Grim Fandango, or Myst, or
>even Choose Your Own Adventure, although those are all examples of things
>that are interactive and fiction. They mean a primarily text-based computer
>game.
I might.
I've been known to talk about Grim Fandango and Planescape: Torment
here. I consider them both interactive fiction, and no one, that I
recall, jumped on my ass because I started talking about them.
Adam
Aris Katsaris
> "interactive fiction" too literally in this thread. I see some people
> trying to come up with a single definition that would apply to all things
> that could possibly be meant by the term. But let's be blunt. When someone
> here says interactive fiction, they don't mean Grim Fandango,
I already said that I *do* mean Grim Fandango, so please don't tell me
that I don't mean it. I know quite well that I mean it.
> or Myst, or
> even Choose Your Own Adventure,
I've not played Myst, but CYOA games I certainly consider to be interactive
fiction.
> Let's try to come up with a definition for what we
> all know IF *is*, and not what the words "interactive fiction" literally
> mean.
Sorry, you clearly have a different kind of "knowledge" than mine about
what IF *is*, since we clearly disagree on whether something is IF or not.
CYOA games have been accepted in the IFComp for starters.
Aris Katsaris
Andy M
> "interactive fiction" too literally in this thread. I see some people
> trying to come up with a single definition that would apply to all things
> that could possibly be meant by the term. But let's be blunt. When
someone
> here says interactive fiction, they don't mean Grim Fandango, or Myst, or
> even Choose Your Own Adventure, although those are all examples of things
> that are interactive and fiction. They mean a primarily text-based
computer
> game. That's what you tell people when they ask you what IF is, and
that's
> what this board is dedicated to. Or is someone going to honestly tell me
> that if I started a discussion on rgif about the relative merits of King's
> Quest 5 versus King's Quest 6, it would be considered on-topic? Of course
> not. I would rightly be told to take it the adventure game boards,
becausd
> rgif is for text games. Let's try to come up with a definition for what
we
> all know IF *is*, and not what the words "interactive fiction" literally
> mean.
>
> --Andy
I think some clarification is in order here.
First, although no one has accused me of it yet, I just want to reiterate
that I don't consider graphical adventures to be inferior to their textual
counterparts. I can see how someone could take that away from my post, so I
wanted to clear that up.
Second, I was referring to Choose Your Own Adventure books, on real paper,
not hypertext CYOA or CYOA implemented in an IF development language. I
know some of you will insist that paper CYOA is IF too, but I just wanted to
make that clear.
Third, it is obviously silly for me to tell people what they mean when they
use certain terms. I meant to say that when *most people* use the term IF,
they mean text games. This brings me to my final and most important point.
We need to draw a distinction between defining what one thinks "interactive
fiction" should mean, and defining what it does mean. An anecdote: I worked
for about a year as a programmer at a computer game developer. This company
had been responsible for developing a few graphical adventure games, the
most popular among them being Sanitarium. When I asked people who had
worked on these games what they thought of interactive fiction, the response
was invariably, "Interactive fiction, what's that?" It was only when I
would say, "You know, text adventures," that I would get a response. "Oh,
like the Infocom games. I remember those."
My point is that terms are defined by what most people think they mean, not
by the dictionary writers. These people, who had created numerous examples
of what some here would consider interactive fiction, had never heard of the
term. They called their games, as everybody involved with the game industry
does, "adventure games" (or sometimes "classical adventure games" to
distinguish them from combat adventure games). Nobody refers to them as
graphical interactive fiction.
Similarly, I think the large majority of people consider "interactive
fiction" to be the name for the text-based stuff, and "adventure game" to be
the name for the graphical stuff. And I think the definition of what IF is
should reflect that. You can agitate for change, of course. You can say
people should start calling them both interactive fiction, that it's more
accurate, more fair, more whatever. I'm sympathetic to that. But that
doesn't change the fact that it isn't that way now.
So then the question is, what are we doing in this particular thread?
Defining what IF means or what it should mean?
--Andy
Aris Katsaris
>
> Similarly, I think the large majority of people consider "interactive
> fiction" to be the name for the text-based stuff, and "adventure game" to be
> the name for the graphical stuff.
I've not gotten that impression. For starters I think that "adventure games" is
what most people once used to describe *both* text and graphical games
of this sort.
That currently all (or almost all) such commercial games happen to be
graphical isn't a sign that "adventure games" wasn't used to include the
text-based ones! You called them yourself "text adventures"! 'Adventure'
being the key word.
> And I think the definition of what IF is
> should reflect that. You can agitate for change, of course. You can say
> people should start calling them both interactive fiction, that it's more
> accurate, more fair, more whatever. I'm sympathetic to that. But that
> doesn't change the fact that it isn't that way now.
We first have to agree on what the "fact" is. Would most people of this
community refuse to call "interactive fiction" a game which was mostly
graphical, simply because it was mostly graphical?
Aris Katsaris
toppsoft
As a newbie in this group, I have to say that in my mind, IF is a lot
broader than just text adventures or adventure games. My little venture into
alternate reality gaming falls completely within my definition of IF.
I read the FAQ before posting and considered the thread(s) I started to be
on-topic. To quote from the beginning of the faq, "Welcome to
rec.arts.int-fiction. The newsgroup discusses writing text adventures and
interactive fiction games."
My conclusion was that interactive fiction games are distinct from text
adventures. Sadly, text adventures really aren't what I consider
"mainstream" products. The market seems to be substantially nostalgia,
non-commercial, or older platforms. There isn't anything wrong with that,
but I believe it is the reality of today's gaming market and this market
(and these games) will become even more obscure as time passes.
With that said, it's pretty obvious that the majority of posters here are
most interested in adventures, primarily of the text variety. I enjoyed many
of Infocom's games and still have Bureaucracy, Hitchhiker, and a couple of
others on the shelf. And to the extent that any discussion I'm interested in
crosses over between my interests and yours, I'm sticking around hoping to
learn a bit and contribute a bit.
I'd be really interested in seeing more posts about plot development,
character development, and puzzle creation. I think they would be both
relevent and interesting.
Regards,
Bill Shaw
Email is munged with an obviously invalid domain. See
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2606.txt para. 3 if you need help figuring it
out.
Alternate Reality discovered at www.deaddrop.us/sdx
Lucian P. Smith
: We need to draw a distinction between defining what one thinks "interactive
: fiction" should mean, and defining what it does mean.
<snip anecdote about people not knowing the term IF>
: Similarly, I think the large majority of people consider "interactive
: fiction" to be the name for the text-based stuff, and "adventure game" to be
: the name for the graphical stuff.
You may think so. I don't think so. I think the majority of people
who know the term think it applies to both, and I think the majority of
people who hear the term for the first time will deduce that it applies
to both, if they aren't told, as you told the Sanitarium people, that
it only applies to one.
Case in point: People on rec.games.design were somewhat miffed a few
years back when Stephen posted an invitation to join the "Annual
Interactive Fiction Competition" and, visiting the site, thought that
he meant only *computer*-based fiction. "Why can't I enter a CYOA
book?" one complained, "That's 'interactive fiction' too!" And
Stephen's response was, "You are welcome to enter a CYOA book if you
like." The only reason we tend to get text adventures exclusively is
because of the community it's geared towards. (And that's changing--I
expect we'll have an actual graphical IF entered in the annual comp
pretty soon, if not this year. (If you don't already count games like
'Arrival' or 'SMTUC'.))
To summarize: many people have posted here that they personally
consider IF to apply pretty widely. People who haven't heard the term
before will extrapolate from what they know the words 'interactive' and
'fiction' mean, and come up with pretty much the same wide definition.
Which is why...
: You can say
: people should start calling them both interactive fiction, that it's more
: accurate, more fair, more whatever. I'm sympathetic to that. But that
: doesn't change the fact that it isn't that way now.
I directly disagree with this last sentence.
-Lucian
Mike Roberts
> I think the large majority of people consider "interactive fiction" to
> be the name for the text-based stuff, and "adventure game" to be
> the name for the graphical stuff. And I think the definition of what
> IF is should reflect that.
Sorry if I missed the point somewhere upstream in the thread, but which "the
definition" exactly are you proposing to establish here? Are you writing a
dictionary of gaming or something? My sense of the thread is that it's the
raif vernacular that's at issue, and I think it's pretty clear that there's
no consensus among raif readers that IF is limited to text. If raif usage
is the question, then it seems awfully circular to argue that people in raif
should stop using "IF" to refer to graphical games because no one in raif
uses "IF" to refer to graphical games.
> An anecdote: I worked for about a year as a programmer at a
> computer game developer. [...] When I asked [co-workers] what
> they thought of interactive fiction, the response was invariably,
> "Interactive fiction, what's that?" It was only when I would say,
> "You know, text adventures," that I would get a response.
>
> My point is that terms are defined by what most people think
> they mean.
The point your anecdote makes is that IF means *nothing* to most people, not
that it means "text adventures." You were the one who told these people
that it means text games; they weren't the ones who came up with that.
Philipp Lenssen
>..
> I know some of you will insist that paper CYOA is IF too
Oh, absolutely and completely!
As to your elaboration on what it does versus what it should mean, I hear
your words. But I do think we need to differentiate the target group and
where you talk about something. I will have some very different images in my
head simply for the fact that my native language is german, and in the Real
World I don't call it "Interactive Fiction". Or "Interaktive Fiktion", which
would be a literal translation. I call all that stuff "Abenteuerspiele",
which would translate back to "adventure games". The CYOA books, Infocom
text-games, the Maniac Mansion's and Grim Fandango's, and all that.
What to me is distinctive about it and common to all them is not as much the
interface (text-input, point-and-click) or medium (digital, paper), but the
fact that you can decide what to do in a story, and that by large parts
positive outcome is related to your understanding of it. Different
approaches have different strenghts and should play them out accordingly,
but from the player perspective, I see very similar thrills and rewards in
all the sub-genres of IF.
Just take my own CYOA system, which has export wizards to a static,
print-optimized version to be put on paper. I see a lot of technical
differences as to what is possible in each medium, but I would never create
a clear-cut distinction: "this is digital IF, this is IF on paper". No, for
me it's digitally stored AND can exist on paper. And yes, in the digitally
played version you can also have text-input, very helpful at times. All this
IMO blurs artificial distinctions. (So do many other games which combine
different interface elements, like the Arcade bits in Indiana Jones
adventures.)
Almost unrelated sidenote: from the marketing side, what it does mean is
important in advertising, but from the developer side, what it could mean is
important to push the limits and hit on a new niche. The best (and often,
most successful) games have been pushing the genres -- at times so far as to
justify new words. Like, it's not just Strategy after Populous, Sim City --
it's now a God game. Span the gap by creating a bridge from old to new:
"XYZ: A Strategy Game so Different, We Call it God Game".
Adam Thornton
Lucian P. Smith <lps...@rice.edu> wrote:
>(And that's changing--I
>expect we'll have an actual graphical IF entered in the annual comp
>pretty soon, if not this year. (If you don't already count games like
>'Arrival' or 'SMTUC'.))
I defy anyone to tell me that SMTUC wasn't graphic.
Adam
Andy M
of not reprinting arguments into several different posts.
"Mike Roberts" <mjr-S...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:XQ7Q8.25$%O....@news.oracle.com...
> Sorry if I missed the point somewhere upstream in the thread, but which
"the
> definition" exactly are you proposing to establish here? Are you writing
a
> dictionary of gaming or something? My sense of the thread is that it's
the
> raif vernacular that's at issue, and I think it's pretty clear that
there's
> no consensus among raif readers that IF is limited to text. If raif usage
> is the question, then it seems awfully circular to argue that people in
raif
> should stop using "IF" to refer to graphical games because no one in raif
> uses "IF" to refer to graphical games.
Adam Myrow started the thread by posing the following question: Has there
ever been a formal definition of Interactive Fiction that most of us could
agree on? What I'm proposing is that the term interactive fiction refers to
primarily text-based games, and not to primarily graphical ones. And I
propose that this is so because most people mean text-based stuff when they
say interactive fiction. Others disagree that most people think this.
That's fine. I don't have any polling numbers or anything to submit as
evidence, that's just my sense of things. I want to point out, though, that
I am not arguing that raif readers should stop using any particular term to
talk about graphical games. I made it clear that posters should feel free
to advocate the use of whatever terms they want. But I believe they should
realize that as it stands now, IF implicitly means text to most people who
have heard the term at all. I also think that this question of an IF
definition
extends beyond raif. That is, whatever definition we might come up with
should keep in mind what even those IF enthusiasts who do not subscribe
to this board mean when they say "interactive fiction".
> The point your anecdote makes is that IF means *nothing* to most people,
not
> that it means "text adventures." You were the one who told these people
> that it means text games; they weren't the ones who came up with that.
This is something that both you and Lucian pointed out, and I can see that I
wasn't clear. I want to stress that my point with the anecdote was not that
people tend to equate interactive fiction with text adventures after I tell
them the two are equivalent. This is obvious, and naturally helps my
argument not a bit. The point was that these people, who worked
professionally on graphical adventure games, had never heard the term
"interactive fiction". They, and everyone they had ever interacted with,
had always referred to their games as classical adventure games. I
intended to show that the commonly accepted term for the games they
made is not "interactive fiction". Go to any major website devoted to
computer games and you will hear them called simply "adventure games".
Last, I wanted to reply briefly to Aris's post.
"Aris Katsaris" <kats...@otenet.gr> wrote in message
news:aeqve9$khd$1...@usenet.otenet.gr...
> I've not gotten that impression. For starters I think that "adventure
games" is
> what most people once used to describe *both* text and graphical games
> of this sort.
>
> That currently all (or almost all) such commercial games happen to be
> graphical isn't a sign that "adventure games" wasn't used to include the
> text-based ones! You called them yourself "text adventures"! 'Adventure'
> being the key word.
You're right. It used to be that when a person talked about this great
adventure game they were playing on their computer, it wasn't assumed that
the game was graphical. These days, in the absence of clues to the
contrary, it is. I wish it weren't so, but it is. To an average person,
adventure game means graphical adventure game; you have to say text
adventure if you want them to think of text-based adventure games.
--Andy
Penner Theologius Pott
> While you might have a hard time converting Myst into a purely text
> interface (how would you differenciate between different piano keys in
> the spaceship without becoming tedious, for instance?)
I'm not sure I understand the function of this question...if the
implication is that it wouldn't be interactive fiction if it didn't
adapt well to text, then I'm not sure I buy into it. After all, how
many novelizations of movies turn out well, though we recognize them
both as fiction?
JJK
> Well, yes. Text is essential, otherwise we are including graphic adventures
> like the Myst series. Myst is Interactive and it is Fiction, but I don't
> think most posters here consider it IF.
I find it interesting that there isn't more disagreement with this
statement. Even I only mildly disagree with it. Odd, since the reason
I found rec.games.int-fiction (followed by this group) was my search for
non-spoiler Myst hints. Rec.games.int-fiction was full of them, as well
as a vigorous discussion of Riven, the sequel. I just Googled for Myst
in this group and my memory is correct: rec.games.int-fiction used to be
a hotbed of Myst talk.
Not sure what to make of the transition, not even sure if it is a
transition. There are several regulars who post now and again about
graphical adventure games, with reviews and some discussion. No one
looking for hints that I can remember though. Maybe it is just that
there hasn't since been anything remotely like the tidal wave of players
bought in by Myst.
-Jim
JJK
> I am not arguing
> that Galatea is not fiction. Of course it is fiction. I am arguing that it
> doesn't have a plot in the sense of what Adam is refering to in his post.
>
I felt that not only did Galatea have a plot, it was a fascinating
modernization of one literally millenia old. On top of that, the plot
was revealed in a truly interactive manner, one not possible to
replicate in a traditional text. Incredibly apt use-of-medium.
-Jim
Mike Roberts
> What I'm proposing is that the term interactive fiction refers to
> primarily text-based games, and not to primarily graphical ones.
> And I propose that this is so because most people mean text-based
> numbers or anything to submit as evidence, that's just my sense of
> things.
Okay, but my sense of things doesn't agree with yours here.
> But I believe [raif readers] should realize that as it stands now, IF
> implicitly means text to most people who have heard the term at all.
Perhaps you mean: raif readers should realize that this is your sense of
things. I think it's a bit of a leap to go from "this is my sense of
things" to "everyone must be made to open their eyes and realize that this
is the way it really is, and they're just living in denial if they think
otherwise." That might be more forceful than you intended, but that's the
way it sounds to me when you say "people should realize..."
(And I really do doubt IF actually means "text adventure" to people who've
never heard the term at all. If you've never heard the term before, "text
adventure" seems awfully obscure to be the first thing that would spring to
mind, especially in today's modern cyberworld where "interactive" is
buzzword-enabled for 3D motion simulators, web multimedia delivery vehicles,
and lots of other stuff that isn't especially textual.)
> [Some graphical game developers] and everyone they had ever
> interacted with, had always referred to their games as classical
> adventure games. I intended to show that the commonly accepted
> term for the games they made is not "interactive fiction".
It's not clear to me why this matters. It's not as though they made a
deliberate decision that what they're doing is *not* interactive fiction;
it's just that it never occurred to them to even consider the term because
they'd never heard of it. But anyway, can a thing not go by several
different names? If I always call a collie a dog, does it create a monopoly
so that no one can refer to it as an animal as well? I think the situation
is somewhat analogous, in that a lot of people around here (raif) use IF as
a broader category that includes text-based and graphical adventure games,
as well as some other things. The fact that said game developers never use
the term IF merely suggests to me that they're not especially interested in
the broader categories into which their games might fit.
tarage
>
> (And I really do doubt IF actually means "text adventure" to people who've
> never heard the term at all. If you've never heard the term before, "text
> adventure" seems awfully obscure to be the first thing that would spring to
> mind, especially in today's modern cyberworld where "interactive" is
> buzzword-enabled for 3D motion simulators, web multimedia delivery vehicles,
> and lots of other stuff that isn't especially textual.)
Ahem. Interactive FICTION...what is FICTION, if not text? (Yes, someone
will say anything ficticious is therefore a fiction, but that's pretty
clear from the term that we're not talking about an interactive untruth
in that sense.)
The other things to which you refer are not termed "FICTION." They are
termed interactive <otherstuff> by which otherstuff is the defining
term, as it is with FICTION.
Sorry if the caps offended anyone. The attention drawn to the term is
purposeful.
~Mike
Andrew Plotkin
> "Andy M" <an...@dreamforge.com> wrote:
>> I think the large majority of people consider "interactive fiction" to
>> be the name for the text-based stuff, and "adventure game" to be
>> the name for the graphical stuff. And I think the definition of what
>> IF is should reflect that.
> Sorry if I missed the point somewhere upstream in the thread, but which "the
> definition" exactly are you proposing to establish here? Are you writing a
> dictionary of gaming or something? My sense of the thread is that it's the
> raif vernacular that's at issue
Actually, I was kinda hoping we could talk about what the stuff *is*,
rather than what words we're going to use to label it.
(If I wasn't tired, I'd post a rough cut at a definition. Sorry.
Maybe tomorrow.)
Andrew Plotkin
I'm very careful to distinguish between a graphical game and a graphic
game. :)
>cox.net
<tar...@NOSPAM.bellsouth.net> wrote:
>Ahem. Interactive FICTION...what is FICTION, if not text?
<snip>
>~Mike
>
>
I just got finished watching Star Trek same as I do every night at
11pm. It isn't text but it is clearly fiction. So why wouldn't a
graphical game be fiction as well?
Saying that the word fiction implies text is absurd.
---Daniel
Left, left, I hadda good brain but it left...
Paul Drallos
Fiction
came from in the first place?
The way I remember things, back in the 80s, first there were
text-adventures.
I can't remember for sure if we called them text-adventures, or just
adventure
games. But some years later, graphic-adventures started to appear and
the old
text games were then routinely called text-adventures.
The text games rapidly lost market share to the graphical games. As
part of it's
survival, text games expanded into other genre besides adventure. To
reflect this
broader application of interactive text, somebody (I don't know who)
came up with
the term Interactive Fiction. I am certain that this term was initially
used only
for text-based games and not graphical games.
Over the years, this usage has apparently expanded to include graphical
games as
well. Some posters here obviously feel IF applies equally to text and
graphics,
some don't. Personally, when I hear the term, I assume it means
text-based. Most
of the time I'll be right, sometimes I'll be wrong. It is a matter of
common usage
which is subject to change.
But maybe text-based IF wants to have a term that means text-based and only
text-based. Is that term IF? Not according to some of you. Is it IT
(Interactive
Text)? Well, yes. But nobody uses that term.
Paul
Jim Nelson
>
> Ahem. Interactive FICTION...what is FICTION, if not text? (Yes, someone
> will say anything ficticious is therefore a fiction, but that's pretty
> clear from the term that we're not talking about an interactive untruth
> in that sense.)
>
> The other things to which you refer are not termed "FICTION." They are
> termed interactive <otherstuff> by which otherstuff is the defining
> term, as it is with FICTION.
Okay -- I can live with Paul's idea that interactive fiction is, really,
you know, not being dictionary-like or all, text adventures. Or type-in
text games, or those Infocom things. I don't strictly agree with the
definition, but okay.
However: fiction must be text? Now the thread's gone where no thread's
gone before.
As I suggested elsewhere, perhaps defining "interactive" and "fiction"
separately is a place to start. If there's this much variety on the
second term, then forget about defining the combination. No two people
will ever agree on it.
--
Jim Nelson
jim_n...@mindspring.com
Andy M
> > But I believe [raif readers] should realize that as it stands now, IF
> > implicitly means text to most people who have heard the term at all.
>
> Perhaps you mean: raif readers should realize that this is your sense of
> things. I think it's a bit of a leap to go from "this is my sense of
> things" to "everyone must be made to open their eyes and realize that this
> is the way it really is, and they're just living in denial if they think
> otherwise." That might be more forceful than you intended, but that's the
> way it sounds to me when you say "people should realize..."
What I wrote is exactly what I meant. You have added a bunch of meaning
that is not contained in my statement, and which I don't think you can
reasonably infer from it given my previous statements. I believe raif
readers should realize that IF implicitly means text. I do not believe
everyone must be made to realize this, because that implies a forced
imposition of my views on others, which I have neither the power nor the
inclination to carry out.
> (And I really do doubt IF actually means "text adventure" to people who've
> never heard the term at all. If you've never heard the term before, "text
> adventure" seems awfully obscure to be the first thing that would spring
to
> mind, especially in today's modern cyberworld where "interactive" is
> buzzword-enabled for 3D motion simulators, web multimedia delivery
vehicles,
> and lots of other stuff that isn't especially textual.)
I think you misread the sentence.
> > [Some graphical game developers] and everyone they had ever
> > interacted with, had always referred to their games as classical
> > adventure games. I intended to show that the commonly accepted
> > term for the games they made is not "interactive fiction".
>
> It's not clear to me why this matters. It's not as though they made a
> deliberate decision that what they're doing is *not* interactive fiction;
> it's just that it never occurred to them to even consider the term because
> they'd never heard of it. But anyway, can a thing not go by several
> different names?
I think the fact that the vast majority of people who play graphical
adventure games do not call them interactive fiction is relevant to a
discussion of what the term IF means, though I can understand why you don't
think so.
--Andy
Please be aware that I will be away from home Thursday through Monday and
won't be reading any posts till I get back. I wouldn't want anyone to think
I was ignoring their responses.
Dennis G Jerz
> While you might have a hard time converting Myst into a purely text
> interface (how would you differenciate between different piano keys in
> the spaceship without becoming tedious, for instance?)
Actually, I found that particular puzzle on Myst to be rather tedious
in its graphical form. And in "Fine-Tuned" (minor spoiler) I had a
simple puzzle that involved musical notes. The PC for that scene is a
professional singer with perfect pitch, so I simply had the text
identify what note the PC was hearing, and later, the player could
just type "sing A flat" (or whatever).
But commenting on the larger issue... if we're talking about language,
there are prescriptive definitions and descriptive definitions. It's
a bit solipsistic to define "interactive fiction" as "whatever this
group spends its time talking about," and it's pedantic to note that,
for instance, this group was originally founded as a forum for
discussing hypertext literature (although my visit to the gooja
archvies suggests there was never much activity on that topic). The
definitions of words do change over time, so it's useful to challenge
our assumptions about whether "interactive fiction" is the best term
to use.
To many people, "interactive fiction" means literary hypertext,
because that's really the only computer-mediated narrative that many
humanities types have encountered. The term "adventure game" stuck
long after the genre was no longer strictly focused on adventures, but
so too has the term "novel" stuck long after the form it describes is
no longer "novel."
Does the addition of graphics slowly move a given work away from IF
and towards something else? I don't think so. When does a short story
become a novella, and when does a novella become a novel? The
differences between a short story and a novel aren't simply
differences of length, but we might imagine that a boring novel could
be edited down to an exciting short story, and a thin short story
could be fleshed out and expanded to make an engrossing novel. Still,
there is no single agreed-upon definition for these genres, which is
good for English professors because it means they get to keep writing
books that struggle with these questions.
Elsewhere on the thread it's been pointed out that even the plotless
simulations describe the PC's experience of events that did not take
place in the real world, but I still have some problems with
"interactive fiction," mostly because I worry that people who are
familiar with literary prose bring certain expectations to something
with the word "fiction" in it. Since the literary types are often
(but now always) disisinterested in or completely inexperienced with
the coding aspect of the game, then they tend to judge the textual
output (or, just as oftn, a transcript that they find in books like
"Hamlet on the Holodeck") as if it were an excerpt from a novel. (I
realize that the opinions of literary types are not the only ones that
matter, of course.)
The genre is old enough now that, even if I had a "better" term to
suggest, I would still have to differentiate it from other terms used
by other people.
Dennis
Philipp Lenssen
news:3D115033...@NOSPAM.bellsouth.net...
>..
> Ahem. Interactive FICTION...what is FICTION, if not text?
Let me jump over to dictionary.com, their first definition of "fiction" is:
"An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent actuality but
has been invented"
You can see from another term, "Science Fiction", that it encompasses
different media, because there are Science Fiction movies, Science Fiction
books, and so on. Just the same, we have digital Interactive Fiction
(text-parsed, choice-based, point-and-click...), we have Interactive Fiction
movies on DVD, there's IF in book form, etc.
tarage
> On Wed, 19 Jun 2002 23:46:59 -0400, tarage
> <tar...@NOSPAM.bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Ahem. Interactive FICTION...what is FICTION, if not text?
>
> <snip>
>
>>~Mike
>>
>>
>
>
> I just got finished watching Star Trek same as I do every night at
> 11pm. It isn't text but it is clearly fiction. So why wouldn't a
> graphical game be fiction as well?
>
> Saying that the word fiction implies text is absurd.
Please explain how the term "fiction" as opposed to "poetry" or
"non-fiction" is not sufficiently clear. Are you purposefully taking a
word out of context?
Perhaps you need to consult a dictionary if you cannot fathom how
"fiction" implies "text." Fiction is a kind of writing, again, as are
poetry and non-fiction. Most people have been to a library in their lives...
TV as we know it today is certainly not interactive. I've watched it
once or twice and don't remember interacting in any way. You watch; you
listen; you are passive.
~Mike
tarage
>
> Does the addition of graphics slowly move a given work away from IF
> and towards something else? I don't think so. When does a short story
> become a novella, and when does a novella become a novel? The
You're comparing variations of written text to differences in entire
media types. It would be more accurate to ask when does a play become a
movie? Fundamentally, at the point that a different media type is used.
~Mike
Megan White
" Object -> mushroom "speckled mushroom"
[...]
has edible;
...the edible notation means that it can be eaten, so that for
the first time, the player can change the game state irrevocably:
from a game with a forest and a mushroom to a game with just a
forest" (DM4, p77)
That's more interesting than it might look. In fact, AFAIC, the
ability to change the game state irrevocably is a defining feature
of IF. If you can't, all you can affect is which parts of something
you look at and in what order. That leaves you with something like
a hypertext book - or, if you lose the fiction requirement, an
interactive encyclopedia, and indeed, the web.
That's not to say that everything in IF has to change the game
state, irrevocably or otherwise: Most of the commands in text-based
games don't, in fact, unless there's a time limit. I think most
people would agree, though, that a game in which you can't make
irrevocable changes isn't IF. For instance, the game would have
no end - a win is definitely an irrevocable change. (and in my
view, if it doesn't have some sort of end, it's not IF.)
Once you've added the requirement for a fictional and imaginative
setting to be described (verbally or visually), you seem to
come down to roughly the sorts of things people are discussing
on this newsgroup - in other words, IF on the wider view that
some people are suggesting. (including CYOA etc.) Describe a
fictional setting, and let me make changes, which you also
describe, until I reach an end: you've been telling a narrative
of some sort. You've got your plot and your 'actions that the
player must perform to move the story along' as Adam Myrow
suggests, and if you want to add a 'must be text-based' requirement
before you'll call it IF, well, fine by me.
I can see why some people are reluctant to call CYOA interactive
fiction. In CYOA you're generally *required* to change the game
state irrevocably at every turn. In a way, that takes some of the
pressure off the decision. In the sort of IF that's generally
entered in the annual comp, you'd be able to hang around for a
few turns, and examine a few more things, before you made a decision,
even if such a decision obviously had to be made. That's what
gives you the feeling of freedom, despite the fact that in nearly
all such IF, there's only really one plotline implemented - so you
actually have far less choice in terms of plot than in CYOA.
For me it's the irrevocable decisions that make IF fun, and I like
as many of them as possible. That's why I get annoyed when a
game which pretends to be interactive presents me with 'choose
which order you're going to say these things in, or don't say them
and don't win the game' - which might as well be a cut scene, AFAIC.
It's probably also why most of my favourite games can be got
into unwinnable states. Although it's annoying, it also makes
you think more carefully about what you're doing and stops you
from feeling like you're being forced along one plot. It takes
a fair amount of skill to stop players putting games into unwinnable
states without making them feel they've been denied the chance to
make a decision. The best solution, perhaps, is to keep the decision-
making and implement another solution to the puzzle which still works.
(See below spoiler space for an example from Christminster).
It needn't always be obvious, either. I'm inclined to suspect
that you can make decisions in Galatea which prevent you from
later reaching certain endings, but I can't be sure, and I
certainly couldn't tell you what they are. In a way it doesn't
matter, as long as I think that what I say each turn is
important to the overall state of the game.
Most of the conclusions I've come to here are fairly conventional,
but I hope the way I've come to them is interesting nonetheless.
If not, don't worry, I'm toddling back off to lurkerdom.
------Spoiler for Christminster-------
If you miss your chance to collect the tears from Edward
(the easy way) then prick yourself with the pin to make
yourself cry (a harder puzzle to punish you for mucking
it up the first time round.) Great puzzle.
Stephen Granade
> "Mike Roberts" <mjr-S...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:5XaQ8.28$%O....@news.oracle.com...
> > > But I believe [raif readers] should realize that as it stands now, IF
> > > implicitly means text to most people who have heard the term at all.
> >
> > Perhaps you mean: raif readers should realize that this is your sense of
> > things. I think it's a bit of a leap to go from "this is my sense of
> > things" to "everyone must be made to open their eyes and realize that this
> > is the way it really is, and they're just living in denial if they think
> > otherwise." That might be more forceful than you intended, but that's the
> > way it sounds to me when you say "people should realize..."
>
> What I wrote is exactly what I meant. You have added a bunch of meaning
> that is not contained in my statement, and which I don't think you can
> reasonably infer from it given my previous statements. I believe raif
> readers should realize that IF implicitly means text.
You keep making this statement despite having a number of raif people
(including now me) tell you that they consider interactive fiction to
include graphical adventures. In addition, the support you've offered
for your position shows only that most people don't think of the term
"interactive fiction" at all.
> > (And I really do doubt IF actually means "text adventure" to
> > people who've never heard the term at all. If you've never heard
> > the term before, "text adventure" seems awfully obscure to be the
> > first thing that would spring to mind, especially in today's
> > modern cyberworld where "interactive" is buzzword-enabled for 3D
> > motion simulators, web multimedia delivery vehicles, and lots of
> > other stuff that isn't especially textual.)
>
> I think you misread the sentence.
That doesn't invalidate Mike's point.
> > > [Some graphical game developers] and everyone they had ever
> > > interacted with, had always referred to their games as classical
> > > adventure games. I intended to show that the commonly accepted
> > > term for the games they made is not "interactive fiction".
> >
> > It's not clear to me why this matters. It's not as though they made a
> > deliberate decision that what they're doing is *not* interactive fiction;
> > it's just that it never occurred to them to even consider the term because
> > they'd never heard of it. But anyway, can a thing not go by several
> > different names?
>
> I think the fact that the vast majority of people who play graphical
> adventure games do not call them interactive fiction is relevant to
> a discussion of what the term IF means, though I can understand why
> you don't think so.
He's not saying that it isn't relevant. He's saying that it doesn't
support the conclusions you're drawing from it. To go back to what you
said earlier:
But I believe [raif readers] should realize that as it stands now,
IF implicitly means text to most people who have heard the term at
all.
Your example of graphical adventure game designers who haven't heard
the term "interactive fiction" actually undermines your claim: the
fewer people outside of raif who know of the term "interactive
fiction," the higher the percentage of raif'ers (many of whom would
apply the term IF to graphical adventure games) in your sample, and
the higher the percentage of people who apply IF to non-text games.
Stephen
--
Stephen Granade
sgra...@phy.duke.edu
Duke University, Physics Dept
Stephen Granade
What's the difference in media type between, say, Losing Your Grip and
Arrival? Both can be played on the same computer using the same
interpreter. Both are stored on computer media, be it hard drive or
CD. Graphical adventure games and text adventure games are not
different media, not by a long shot.
David Brain
tar...@NOSPAM.bellsouth.net (tarage) wrote:
> TV as we know it today is certainly not interactive. I've watched it
> once or twice and don't remember interacting in any way. You watch; you
> listen; you are passive.
>
Now that's interesting. I've found TV becoming extremely interactive in the
last few years - from trivial examples of TV shows simply hijacking the
radio phone-in format via phone-poll interactivity (Big Brother style
voting) to full-blown web-chats and discussion boards running live alongside
the programmes (or immediately afterwards.)
Of course, I'm in the UK which may explain things!
You're still right though - fundamentally TV isn't interactive.
--
David Brain
London, UK
Aris Katsaris
> erthwin@ cox.net (Daniel Freas) wrote:
> >
> > I just got finished watching Star Trek same as I do every night at
> > 11pm. It isn't text but it is clearly fiction. So why wouldn't a
> > graphical game be fiction as well?
> >
> > Saying that the word fiction implies text is absurd.
>
> Please explain how the term "fiction" as opposed to "poetry"
As opposed to it? Poetry can be fictional. It often isn't, but
it sometimes is.
> or
> "non-fiction" is not sufficiently clear.
Of course fiction is opposed to non-fiction.
> Perhaps you need to consult a dictionary if you cannot fathom how
> "fiction" implies "text."
It doesn't imply it. Starwars is a fictional story. So is the play A Midsummer
Night's Dream, so is the poem "Lay of Leithian" that Tolkien started writing,
so are the Star Trek series, etc, etc, etc...
> Fiction is a kind of writing,
Nope. Writing can be fictional, and fiction can be writing, but the one doesn't
imply the other.
> again, as are
> poetry and non-fiction. Most people have been to a library in their lives...
Like it or not, fiction is *not* necessarily writing.
> TV as we know it today is certainly not interactive.
> I've watched it once or twice
Ah! A snobbish troll. Sorry, I thought you had actually meant the stuff
you said.
Aris Katsaris
Aris Katsaris
"Megan White" <megan...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:b4eccb5f.02062...@posting.google.com...
>
> That's not to say that everything in IF has to change the game
> state, irrevocably or otherwise: Most of the commands in text-based
> games don't, in fact, unless there's a time limit. I think most
> people would agree, though, that a game in which you can't make
> irrevocable changes isn't IF.
One word: "Aisle".
Aris Katsaris
Richard Bos
> TV as we know it today is certainly not interactive. I've watched it
> once or twice and don't remember interacting in any way. You watch; you
> listen; you are passive.
That's what the TV presenter said.
I changed channel on him.
Richard
Richard Bos
All changes in Aisle are irrevocable, for that one run of the game.
Richard
Philipp Lenssen
> I can see why some people are reluctant to call CYOA interactive
> fiction. In CYOA you're generally *required* to change the game
> state irrevocably at every turn.
> despite the fact that in nearly
> all such IF, there's only really one plotline implemented - so you
> actually have far less choice in terms of plot than in CYOA.
>
(Completely agreed.)
> For me it's the irrevocable decisions that make IF fun, and I like
> as many of them as possible. That's why I get annoyed when a
> game which pretends to be interactive presents me with 'choose
> which order you're going to say these things in, or don't say them
> and don't win the game' - which might as well be a cut scene, AFAIC.
> It's probably also why most of my favourite games can be got
> into unwinnable states. Although it's annoying, it also makes
> you think more carefully about what you're doing and stops you
> from feeling like you're being forced along one plot.
So what do you think about a LucasArts approach to not let there be any dead
ends, but applied to CYOA?
I'm wondering about that one myself.
(What I *do* think should be done is to immediately tell about dead-ends, if
one is reached and the game is puzzle-based -- Sierra didn't always follow
that rule.)
If the choice is a moral one, it doesn't seem to make sense to have it be
revocable:
- you give a coin to the beggar
- you ignore the beggar
Same goes for "define yourself" choices:
- you take the sword
- you take the magic staff
And for some choice-based puzzles.
- you eat the red berry
- you eat the blue berry
Andrew Plotkin
> On Wed, 19 Jun 2002 11:17:47 -0500, Andrew Plotkin wrote:
>>> I have a game that I'm putting the
>>> finishing touches on which can be played in either entirely graphical
>>> mode, or entirely text mode, or any combination of the two. It's the
>>> exact same game code, runnning on the same game engine, with different
>>> frontends.
>>
>> Now that, while it's always been a theoretical possibility, seems like
>> it's hard to get right. Do both formats work as games? How do you deal
>> with keeping the focus -- what objects are obvious or hidden, what
>> actions are obvious or clever -- the same between the two modes? Or is
>> it not that kind of game?
> The game is your typical adventure game format, but the engine [the "Cog
> Engine"] is a little different than most IF engines. Both the engine and
> the game are geared towards kids creating their own video games, so the
> syntax and game play is fairly simplified. It breaks down like this:
>
> [Explanation snipped]
Interesting. Thanks for posting the detailed explanation.
I originally thought (for some reason) that you were talking about a
game which ran in either Myst-style graphical mode or
Colossal-Cave-style text mode. (Don't ask me why I thought that --
blind assumption on my part. :)
Paul Drallos
a consensus about what IF is.
Everybody's right. Everybody's wrong. It depends on who you talk to
or how argumentative you want to be.
-Paul
Marnie Parker
story telling is much older than written language. A human activity that is so
old it, like art and music, is almost now instinctual.
In my opinion, the harder definition is INTERACTIVE.
I consider Carma IF. And it's graphical.
Doe :-) But not graphic.
doea...@aol.com
IF http://members.aol.com/doepage/intfict.htm
(An Iffy Theory | Glulx/Glk for Duncies | unglklib | Inform Primer)
IF Art Gallery http://members.aol.com/iffyart/
IF Review Conspiracy http://zork.plover.net/~textfire/conspiracy/
Aris Katsaris
"Richard Bos" <in...@hoekstra-uitgeverij.nl> wrote in message
news:3d11ebf2....@news.tiscali.nl...
Depends on how you define "run of the game". I could argue that to
experience any single "run of the game" of Aisle you have to keep
on typing commands until you are no longer interested in continuing
to do so.
Thus, the only irrevocable change is in *your* state (aka in your
memory and understanding of the situation), not in the game's.
Aris Katsaris
John W. Kennedy
> erthwin@ cox.net (Daniel Freas) wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 19 Jun 2002 23:46:59 -0400, tarage
>> <tar...@NOSPAM.bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Ahem. Interactive FICTION...what is FICTION, if not text?
>>
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>> ~Mike
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> I just got finished watching Star Trek same as I do every night at
>> 11pm. It isn't text but it is clearly fiction. So why wouldn't a
>> graphical game be fiction as well?
>> Saying that the word fiction implies text is absurd.
> Please explain how the term "fiction" as opposed to "poetry" or
> "non-fiction" is not sufficiently clear. Are you purposefully taking a
> word out of context?
> Perhaps you need to consult a dictionary if you cannot fathom how
> "fiction" implies "text." Fiction is a kind of writing, again, as are
> poetry and non-fiction. Most people have been to a library in their
> lives...
If you're going to get snarky about it, read a dictionary yourself;
you're flat wrong.
--
John W. Kennedy
Read the remains of Shakespeare's lost play, now annotated!
http://pws.prserv.net/jwkennedy/Double%20Falshood.html
>cox.net
<tar...@NOSPAM.bellsouth.net> wrote:
>Please explain how the term "fiction" as opposed to "poetry" or
>"non-fiction" is not sufficiently clear. Are you purposefully taking a
>word out of context?
No I'm not taking the word out of context, I'm simply objecting to
your non-existant logic that the word implies something it clearly
does not.
>Perhaps you need to consult a dictionary if you cannot fathom how
>"fiction" implies "text." Fiction is a kind of writing, again, as are
>poetry and non-fiction. Most people have been to a library in their lives...
Very well, lets consult a dictionary shall we?
Fiction: An imaginative creation or a pretense that does not represent
actuality but has been invented.
So where in that definition do you see the word text? Or even see it
implied? I've heard radio broadcasts that were fiction, I've seen
fictional movies, I watch fictional television shows, I've seen
fictional plays, and yes I have played fictional games - they even had
graphics.
>TV as we know it today is certainly not interactive. I've watched it
>once or twice and don't remember interacting in any way. You watch; you
>listen; you are passive.
>
>~Mike
I wasn't implying that it is interactive, nor do I consider television
to be IF. It *is* fiction though which was the point. Saying that text
implies fiction makes no sense and is based on nothing that I can see
other than your wish that it be so.
>cox.net
Freas) wrote:
>I wasn't implying that it is interactive, nor do I consider television
>to be IF. It *is* fiction though which was the point. Saying that text
>implies fiction makes no sense and is based on nothing that I can see
>other than your wish that it be so.
Just in case it isn't clear that last bit has a typo in it...should be
"Saying that fiction implies text...etc"
tarage
>
> What's the difference in media type between, say, Losing Your Grip and
> Arrival? Both can be played on the same computer using the same
> interpreter. Both are stored on computer media, be it hard drive or
> CD. Graphical adventure games and text adventure games are not
> different media, not by a long shot.
Sorry, I don't argue about games I haven't played. The difference in
media type is difference between using graphics and not using graphics.
You can tell by simply looking at the games.
That this point has to be made over and over is amazing.
~Tarage
("And the West fell because people abandoned common sense and
began to argue against obvious, self-apparent truths.")
tarage
>
> Your example of graphical adventure game designers who haven't heard
> the term "interactive fiction" actually undermines your claim: the
> fewer people outside of raif who know of the term "interactive
> fiction," the higher the percentage of raif'ers (many of whom would
> apply the term IF to graphical adventure games) in your sample, and
That is *your* opinion, not factual evidence. Don't use it as such.
~Tarage
L. Ross Raszewski
>
>Like it or not, fiction is *not* necessarily writing.
I'm starting to get tired of everyone saying more or less the same
thing. I think a lot of people are making a category error here.
'Fiction' has several senses, and the foremost of these (according to
Good Old Webster) is 'literature consisting of an invented narrative,
esp. the novel and short story'
Now, you are totally correct to say that 'fiction is not necessarily
writing' (Because webster offers other definitions, which non-written,
non-narrative works could conform to), just as you are totally correct
to say 'interactive fiction
is not necessarily text' (Though I don't think it's useful to define
'interactive fiction' so broadly that it contains, say, paper CYOA).
However, this does not change the fact that when one says 'fiction' in
the usual sense, a reasonable listener will assume that writing is
implied.
I suspect that even those persons who have claimed on this thread
'When I say Interactive Fiction, I don't mean just text.' take IF, in
the usual sense, to imply text.
Because that last statement sounds an awfuly lot like me calling
certain posters liars, I will explain further:
Now, you propose that 'fiction is not necessariyl writing' and
therefore 'fiction does not imply writing'. WHat I suspect is that
by this you mean to carry the implication that:
- Suppose I asked you 'Is the Star Trek TV series fiction?' Your
answer would be 'Yes'.
And, in the parallel IF case:
- Suppose I asked you 'Is the game Myst interactive fiction?' Your
answer would likewise be 'Yes'.
This is a fair thing to say, and certasinly your perogative, and
indeed, I think many people (including myself) would give the same
answers to these questions.
However, this is a sort of tripping over the technicalities. When I
say that 'The term "fiction" implies writing' (though personally, I
actually think this is a more tenuous implication than the statement
about IF), the implication carried by this is not that 'Star Trek is
not fiction because it is not writing', but rather this:
- Suppose I asked you to name some works of fiction. You would
almost certainly not name the Star Trek TV series, or any other
non-written work.
And likewise:
- Suppose I asked you to name some works of interactive fiction. You
would almost certainly name only text adventures.
Now, this is my usage of the term 'interactive fiction'. I find it
hard to believe that so many people here do not have a similar usage,
and are being unintentionally misleading in their claims (that are
reching the point of claiming that *everything* is IF)
More concretely, I take 'Interactive Fiction' and 'Adventure Game' to
be synonyms (TO be a synonym, you need only have the same denotation),
however, 'Interactive Fiction' carries the connotation of 'text',
whereas 'Adventure Game' carries the connotation of 'graphical' (or at
least 'not necessarily text'; in any case, the connotation is much
weaker for 'Adventuire game' than for 'Interactive Fiction').
Thus, it is not incorrect to speak of graphical IF, or to describe,
say, Gabriel Knight, as a work of Interactive Fiction. However, it is
not conventional to speak of Interactive Fiction and mean games like
Gabriel Knight, or to cite Gabriel Knght when asked for examples of
IF.
Likewise, it's not incorrect to call Zork and Adventure game.
'Text adventure' and 'Graphical adventure' are both subsets of
'Adventure Game'. 'Adventure Game' and 'Interactive Fiction' both
denote the same thing, but 'Adventure Game' connotes 'Graphical
Adventure' (albeit weakly), while 'Interactive Fiction' connotes 'Text
Adventure' (very strongly)
I suspect that this is a pretty common usage of the terms. Obviously,
I could certainly be wrong, but all of the posts in this thread which
appear to be to the contrary are really making orthagonal arguments
(That is, they're concerned with denotation more than connotation;
'Because I would, if asked, say that Myst is IF, IF must mean
somethign that includes Myst' rather than 'When I actually *say* IF,
though I know that Myst could of course be considered IF, I'm not
really talking about that sort of game.')
Ethyl Yuter
> Here's an idea: How about if we consider where the term Interactive
> Fiction
> came from in the first place?
>
> The way I remember things, back in the 80s, first there were
> text-adventures.
> I can't remember for sure if we called them text-adventures, or just
> adventure
> games. But some years later, graphic-adventures started to appear and
> the old
> text games were then routinely called text-adventures.
>
> The text games rapidly lost market share to the graphical games. As
> part of it's
> survival, text games expanded into other genre besides adventure. To
> reflect this
> broader application of interactive text, somebody (I don't know who)
> came up with
> the term Interactive Fiction. I am certain that this term was initially
> used only
> for text-based games and not graphical games.
>
> Over the years, this usage has apparently expanded to include graphical
> games as
> well. Some posters here obviously feel IF applies equally to text and
> graphics,
> some don't. Personally, when I hear the term, I assume it means
> text-based. Most
> of the time I'll be right, sometimes I'll be wrong. It is a matter of
> common usage
> which is subject to change.
>
> But maybe text-based IF wants to have a term that means text-based and only
> text-based. Is that term IF? Not according to some of you. Is it IT
> (Interactive
> Text)? Well, yes. But nobody uses that term.
>
> Paul
I believe that the main problem here is that Paul is trying to explain
that Interactive Fiction is a term that is used so often to refer to
text adventures that it would be quite meaningless to say they are
other things. In fact, 'Interactive Fiction' includes all the things
everyone has said it includes in this thread, but they don't realize
that Paul is not trying to alienate the genre, but only the term. If
anyone wants to discuss adventures other than text adventures using
the term interactive fiction, Paul would probably not dissagree at
all. However, it is meaningless to argue the point that the term IS
used to express other mediums of adventure, when in fact, the
frequency that it is used to express text adventures and the
infrequency it is used to express other types of adventures shows that
it is unneccessary to explicitly explain that it SHOULD refer to types
of adventure games other than text adventures. This is like arguing a
dictionary term; you can successfully argue that any term in the
dictionary can be used to include other things, but the result is
quite meaningless and produces little.
Steven M. Castellotti
>> While you might have a hard time converting Myst into a purely text
>> interface (how would you differenciate between different piano keys in
>> the spaceship without becoming tedious, for instance?)
>
> I'm not sure I understand the function of this question...if the
> implication is that it wouldn't be interactive fiction if it didn't
> adapt well to text, then I'm not sure I buy into it. After all, how many
> novelizations of movies turn out well, though we recognize them both as
> fiction?
Actually, it was less of asking a question, and more of hitting the post
button before the thought was actually completed... (c:
None the less, what I was going to say is that while you might have a
hard time converting Myst into a purely text interface, it could still be
done. Certain puzzles might need to be reworked significantly, and
possibly dropped if they are purley visual in nature, but otherwise
there's little inherant difference between text-IF and graphical-IF.
I wasn't trying to imply that a something couldn't be IF if it couldn't
be translated across mediums, but instead that if *any* example could be
implemented entirely within either medium, then the domain of IF must
include both graphical and textual interfaces. After all, they're both
"interactive" fiction, only the nature of the interface is different.
-Steve Castellotti
SteveC (at) innocent.com
http://cogengine.sourceforge.net/
>cox.net
wrote:
>I'm starting to get tired of everyone saying more or less the same
>thing. I think a lot of people are making a category error here.
>
>'Fiction' has several senses, and the foremost of these (according to
>Good Old Webster) is 'literature consisting of an invented narrative,
>esp. the novel and short story'
This statement I can accept. What I object to however is the statement
"Ahem. Interactive FICTION...what is FICTION, if not text?" but you
weren't responsible for that annoying little bit of logic so I'll move
on to the rest of your post...
>Now, you are totally correct to say that 'fiction is not necessarily
>writing' (Because webster offers other definitions, which non-written,
>non-narrative works could conform to), just as you are totally correct
>to say 'interactive fiction
>is not necessarily text' (Though I don't think it's useful to define
>'interactive fiction' so broadly that it contains, say, paper CYOA).
>However, this does not change the fact that when one says 'fiction' in
>the usual sense, a reasonable listener will assume that writing is
>implied.
Fair enough, but for a useful definition of IF can writing still be
implied? If so a lot of games that I have always considered to be IF
would suddenly disappear from the genre.
>I suspect that even those persons who have claimed on this thread
>'When I say Interactive Fiction, I don't mean just text.' take IF, in
>the usual sense, to imply text.
Generally speaking when someone starts talking about IF I assume they
mean text based IF, but this is not because I consider IF to include
only textual games. It is because the majority of the time when
someone is using the term IF they are refering to a text based game. I
would still consider a game like, say, Carma to be IF though even with
the graphics it includes and I suspect everyone else here considers it
IF as well.
<well built argument snipped>
> - Suppose I asked you to name some works of fiction. You would
> almost certainly not name the Star Trek TV series, or any other
> non-written work.
True.
>And likewise:
>
> - Suppose I asked you to name some works of interactive fiction. You
> would almost certainly name only text adventures.
Not so, the Myst series has long been my favorite set of IF games and
I would surely list it. What you could say is that the *majority* of
the works of IF I would name would be text adventures.
>Now, this is my usage of the term 'interactive fiction'. I find it
>hard to believe that so many people here do not have a similar usage,
>and are being unintentionally misleading in their claims (that are
>reching the point of claiming that *everything* is IF)
My personal requirements for a work to be considered IF are that it
must be a game and it must in some way involve a story line. In this
way I would leave out CYOA as I do not consider it a game (though I
could see where someone *might* call that IF) and on the other end of
the spectrum I would leave out games like PacMan because they have
little or no storyline. But I see no reason something like Zelda or
Final Fantasy shouldn't be considered IF.
<snip>
>I suspect that this is a pretty common usage of the terms. Obviously,
>I could certainly be wrong, but all of the posts in this thread which
>appear to be to the contrary are really making orthagonal arguments
>(That is, they're concerned with denotation more than connotation;
>'Because I would, if asked, say that Myst is IF, IF must mean
>somethign that includes Myst' rather than 'When I actually *say* IF,
>though I know that Myst could of course be considered IF, I'm not
>really talking about that sort of game.')
And here we get to the heart of the matter. What we have here is a
true definition of the term and a working definition of the term. It
is generally safe to assume someone is talking about a text adventure
if they say IF because the people that use that term are those in the
r.*.i.f. community and we more often talk about text adventures than
the graphical sort. However to exclude graphical games entirely from
the definition of IF simply because we don't talk about them as often
is a bit of a leap don't you think?
Aris Katsaris
> Stephen Granade wrote:
> >
> > What's the difference in media type between, say, Losing Your Grip and
> > Arrival? Both can be played on the same computer using the same
> > interpreter. Both are stored on computer media, be it hard drive or
> > CD. Graphical adventure games and text adventure games are not
> > different media, not by a long shot.
>
> Sorry, I don't argue about games I haven't played. The difference in
> media type is difference between using graphics and not using graphics.
Thus we conclude that a book with pictures in it is no longer a book.
Nay, even an illustrated cover prevents it from being a book and makes
it a painting (or, perhaps, comics) instead.
Aris Katsaris
Philipp Lenssen
news:3d123c27...@news.east.cox.net...
>...
> My personal requirements for a work to be considered IF are that it
> must be a game and it must in some way involve a story line. In this
> way I would leave out CYOA as I do not consider it a game (though I
> could see where someone *might* call that IF)
Paper CYOAs are called "gamebooks", for crying out loud.
http://www.netaxs.com/~katz/game/book.htm
(And yes, they're interactive, and fiction.)
>cox.net
Fair enough, as I said I can see where someone might call them IF and
I see no real reason not to call them that. I was only stating my
personal consideration of the term, I wasn't implying that it be an
accepted definition.
Paul Drallos
>
> I believe that the main problem here is that Paul is trying to explain
> that Interactive Fiction is a term that is used so often to refer to
> text adventures that it would be quite meaningless to say they are
> other things.
>
No. I'm saying that the use of the term Interactive Fiction has changed
over time and has broadened as more forms of interactive fiction have
become
available. I'm also saying that if someone wants a term that implies only
text, then a new term is needed. I suggested IT.
But until then, I guess that even the on-line Victoria's Secret catalog is
interactive fiction according to some of the posts here.
-Paul
Joao Mendes
Hey, all, :)
Paul Drallos <pdra...@tir.com> wrote in news:3D121D91...@tir.com:
> available. I'm also saying that if someone wants a term that implies
> only text, then a new term is needed. I suggested IT.
Please don't, as this means Information Technology, and as a (soon to be
former) IT professional, it would give me a headache. ;)
Cheers,
J.
Pissing Bandit
tarage <tar...@NOSPAM.bellsouth.net> wrote:
>Stephen Granade wrote:
>> Your example of graphical adventure game designers who haven't heard
>> the term "interactive fiction" actually undermines your claim:
>That is *your* opinion, not factual evidence. Don't use it as such.
Gentlemen:
(Not just the Two of You, of course, but Indeed Everyone in this Long and
Tiresome Thread.)
Present Cheerios.
<zzzzip>
<whiz whiz whiz whiz whiz whiz whiz>
<zzzzip>
That is All.
Most Sincerely, though Tiredly, Yrs.,
TPB
Andrew Plotkin
That seems a very bitter thing to say. Surely we can say something
other than "not everyone agrees". Even if not everyone agrees with
what you say!
What the hey, I'll post my ideas towards a characterization of IF.
These are incomplete. Further discussion may result in me adjusting
this. Or not.
Note that a good definition does not cover every single weird case.
(Platypuses are mammals.) It covers most of the important territory,
and makes people say "Yeah, that's basically it." The weirder and more
hypothetical the case, the less your definition should worry about it.
I do not have a good definition of IF. This is not just because the
community has many conflicting opinions about what IF *is*. (Although
the community does). It's because we have a lot of conflicting
opinions of what the *important* aspects of IF are. I'm going to give
my opinion about that. You won't all say "yeah, that's basically it"
-- but hopefully it'll spark a more interesting discussion.
This is what I think interactive fiction is:
A program which reveals a story (or related stories), created by an
author (or authors), to a player (or players); such that the range of
action available to the player is only partially known to him, and
must be understood in terms of the story world; and such that the
majority of important results of the player's actions are unique
results, specifically created by the author to support that part of
the story which the player is experiencing.
Footnotes:
"A program..." : IF happens between a computer and a player. Live
role-playing (with a human game master) is just a different category
of thing, and I'm not including it in this definition.
(A human undertakes to game-master an IF work to another human -- I've
done this with the _Enchanter_ trilogy. If he sticks strictly to the
program, he's just taking the role of a computer in executing that
program. If he allows the player as much freedom as is customary in
live role-playing, he's doing live role-playing. In between is a
continuum.)
"Story or related stories": The difference between a single-story IF
work and a work with multiple endings (or multiple stories in some
other sense) is an interesting division within IF. But from the
standpoint of defining IF, we take no notice of this distinction.
"Created by an author or authors": A totally open system, in which all
the story comes from the player and not from an author, is not IF.
It's a toy which you can make up stories while playing with.
(A system where the *program* creates the story... is hypothetical.
Erasmatron notwithstanding, we don't have it. I'm not going to distort
my definition to include examples which don't exist (and have no
prospect of existing soon).)
"Range of action is only partially known":
This is one of my two keynotes of IF. In a Colossal-Cave-style text
parser, you know a lot of the verbs which are available, and (when you
read the room descriptions) you know a lot of the nouns which are
available. But you don't know *all* of each, and you can't discover
them in a blind or mechanical way (treating the program in front of
you as a program). You must think in terms of the story world: what do
I have available to me? How do these things behave? If I were really
there, what would I do?
In a Myst-style graphical game, your "verbs" are completely known to
you: you can click. (Perhaps there are a couple more, like "open the
inventory window" and "drag one object onto another", but they're all
in the manual.) But the range of "nouns" available to you is
everything depicted on the screen, and it's not obvious which are
interactive -- which are within your range of action. You must study
your screen and make sense of it *as an environment*. Thus, it
satisfies my requirement, although in a completely different way than
Colossal Cave.
"Hunt the Wumpus", on the other hand, only has two commands: move to
an adjacent room, or shoot into an adjacent room. (The adjacent rooms
are listed for you.) The range of action is entirely known -- even
though the *results* of an action may not be known until you try it.
This requirement encapsulates my impulse to categorize CYOA, or other
purely-menu-driven systems, as "not IF". My problem with CYOA games
(or books) is that the range of action is never uncertain -- you *can*
progress mechanically, by trying every menu possibility. In fact, this
is what usually happens when I play a CYOA game.
(You might say, aha, the range of action for Colossal Cave is
perfectly well known -- you type on a keyboard and hit Enter. I reply,
don't be a silly person. That does not characterize the range of
action in the way that the player thinks about it... unless the player
is entirely unfamiliar with IF.)
(And such a novice player will in fact not get any IF out of the
program. Thus my point.)
"The majority of important results are unique results":
This is my second keynote of IF. It distinguishes IF from a CRPG
(computer role-playing game).
In an IF game, many of your actions cause "simulationist" results --
according to wide-spread, easily-learnable rules of the model world.
In fact these results are probably a requirement of making playable IF.
You type "get rock"; the rock moves to your inventory. You type
"north"; you move to an adjacent room to the north.
But these common responses in the simulated world are not the
*important* part of the IF work. They are tools you use to get to the
important parts. Your attention is focussed on *new* text or images,
new scenery. You've solved the puzzle not when you make the block
slide according to the rules, but when the block slides to its goal
and you read the author's hand-written description of the door
unlocking.
The characteristic of a CRPG is that *most of what you do* is in the
results-of-rules sector, not the hand-written-results sector. There
will certainly be some of both. But if you spend most of your time
thinking "How do I marshall my spells and weapons to kill the next
monster? How do I get enough gold or experience to get more spells and
weapons?" then you're playing a CRPG. The hand-written plot scenes
(and the specially-coded puzzles) are interludes and payoffs --
they're not the point of the game.
I don't mean to disparage what has been called "simulationist IF".
This is indeed a division of IF -- a game in which the rules of the
world are more complex, and you spend more time employing them to get
to the important outcomes. We *certainly* see a continuum between IF
and CRPGs. A very heavily simulationist IF game would approach being a
CRPG, just as a CRPG which was mostly hand-coded puzzles would
approach being IF.
(Furthermore, any game can have sub-parts which are of a different
form. Zork 1 and Beyond Zork had small CRPG interludes, in which you
fight monsters in a strongly rule-based way. Note that these are
generally considered jarring scenes -- not fitting well with the rest
of the game. This is more true of Beyond Zork, whose fight model had
more rule complexity than that of Zork 1. Thus my point.)
Okay, enough lecturing for tonight.
Paul Drallos
> Here, Paul Drallos <pdra...@tir.com> wrote:
>
>>I think what we've found out in this thread is that there simply isn't
>>a consensus about what IF is.
>>
>
>>Everybody's right. Everybody's wrong. It depends on who you talk to
>>or how argumentative you want to be.
>>
>
> That seems a very bitter thing to say.
>
Bitter? How in the world do you read 'bitter' in my simple post? It states
in a very neutral and unthreatening form something that is plainly obvious
and true. There is no consensus.
>Surely we can say something other than "not everyone agrees".
OK. One of the reasons not everyone agrees is because there are at least
two irreconcilable, mutually exclusive views. No matter how logically you
present your case, someone will insist on text-only, while another will
insist on any fiction which is interactive. One definition simply can't
satisfy both.
Paul
Adam Myrow
the earliest use of the term IF. It is in a New York Times article
published in May of 1983. I dug this out of the If-archive some time ago
and can't remember exactly where. Anyway, it has the title "Participatory
Novels." It is a review of Infocom's Deadline. It says in part
"Deadline, in fact, is more like a genre of fiction than a game. It is
published" by Infocom, a company founded by eight young M. I. T. computer
scientists in 1979. Infocom has been a major pioneer in such games, which
have been called 'participatory novels,' 'interactive fiction' and
'participa-stories.'" Deadline calls itself "an Interlogic Mystery," so I
think Infocom hadn't quite decided on Interactive Fiction at that time.
Somebody, however, had used it.
Anyway, my point is that it is certainly true that IF in its earliest
sense was text-based and the idea was that it was an interactive novel.
So, for me, I tend to stay with the most traditional definition of IF
which requires text-based games. Note that I do not rule out games with
graphics, but I personally rule out games that are 100% graphical. Would
you consider a book that had no text, but only pictures a novel? Probably
not. However, if those pictures told a story, and it was a story that had
been imagined by the author, it would still be fiction. So, a completely
graphical game that tells a story that was imagined could be called
computer-based fiction. In short, the terms "Interactive Fiction" and
"Participatory Novel" mean the same thing to me. Nobody uses the latter
term, however. Now, there are plenty of files on the IF-archive that are
not IF to me even though they are text-based. Pick Up The Phone Booth And
Die, as well as its parodies are not IF to me. They make no attempt to
tell a story. There are other files who are borderline. Photopia is IF,
but barely. It certainly tells a story, but it is impossible to alter the
story by your actions except for perhaps one or two paragraphs. I believe
that computer-based CYOA is IF and, as pointed out by a previous poster,
it often has more branches than traditional IF. However, it usually has
no puzzles which are fairly important to IF, but not completely necessary.
I personally prefer that a work of IF have puzzles, or it is no longer a
game. So, for example, Photopia is IF, but not a game. Jigsaw, Curses,
First Things First, and Beyond Zork are games and IF. Beyond Zork could
also be loosely called RPG, but IF ends up winning the day.
I guess I really opened a can of worms when I started this thread, but I
figured that since we talk about IF every day on this newsgroup, that
there would be some unity as to what it means. I know that by reading
these posts, I've made up my mind and will probably stick with my
definition unless the term gets in the dictionary with another one.
Actually, that would be cool to have IF in the dictionary. I heard that
such terms as "Treky" are in already, so who knows?
Adam
Joao Mendes
Hi, :)
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote in
news:aetn0i$ocp$1...@reader1.panix.com:
<snippage>
First off, I liked your definition, and further, I liked your footnotes.
However, see below. (Quotes included for clarity...)
> A program which reveals a story (or related stories), created by an
> author (or authors), to a player (or players); such that the range of
> action available to the player is only partially known to him, and
> must be understood in terms of the story world; and such that the
> majority of important results of the player's actions are unique
> results, specifically created by the author to support that part of
> the story which the player is experiencing.
>
> Footnotes:
<further snippage>
<final snippage>
This last paragraph left me wondering wether you would consider a SUDS game
to be IF.
(For those of you that are unfamiliar with SUDS, it is a text adventure
system with a purely point-and-click interface. Thusly, much like a Myst-
style game, all the verbs and actions are known throughout. Unlike those,
however, interactable "features" are always evident as they are displayed
in a separate window in a list. There are conversations with other
characters, but they are choice-based. Thusly, it is possible to come up
with a mechanical algorithm and conceptually test every single possibility
in a (relatively) finite amount of time.)
Continues below.
> (And such a novice player will in fact not get any IF out of the
> program. Thus my point.)
Aha! Major point, here. It's not just a matter of a piece of work _being_
IF, but rather, is the user (capable of) deriving IF from it or not. I
likes.
Anyway, to continue my point, I agree that playing a SUDS game mehcanically
should not be considered IF. However, barring the fact that there really is
no way to say xyzzy in a SUDS game, IMO, such a game is remarkably close to
a traditional parser-based text adventure. Think of it as an all-text
graphical adventure, if you like... yeah, I know... :) but it works for me.
Furthermore, consider the (_incredibly_ tedious) case of a CYOA book with
over 20 options at _every_ section. Wouldn't it be reasonable to posit that
the (_incredibly_ patient) player would be able to derive IF from such a
work?
Now, I know you made a cautionary note about the weird and the
hipothetical, and although the latter CYOA game would definitely fall into
that category, the former SUDS game, IMO, wouldn't. As such, I would
perhaps like suggest the following modification to the proposed definition:
> A program which reveals a story (or related stories), created by an
> author (or authors), to a player (or players); such that
the player may be reasonably expected to achieve a frame of mind in which
the range of available action is only partially known and
> must be understood in terms of the story world; and such that the
> majority of important results of the player's actions are unique
> results, specifically created by the author to support that part of
> the story which the player is experiencing.
Now, the problem with that is, how do you define 'reasonably expected'. :)
Other than that, I think this definition would now encompass the SUDS game
as well as the bad CYOA book, whilst still keeping out good CYOA books, as
intended. By the way...
Warning: controversy follows:
...since we're on the topic of formal definitions, I hereby formally define
the aforementioned frame of mind as 'immersion'.
You had been warned. :)
Cheers,
J.
Lucian P. Smith
: Hi, :)
: Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote in
: news:aetn0i$ocp$1...@reader1.panix.com:
<snip>
:> (And such a novice player will in fact not get any IF out of the
:> program. Thus my point.)
: Aha! Major point, here. It's not just a matter of a piece of work _being_
: IF, but rather, is the user (capable of) deriving IF from it or not. I
: likes.
This is, indeed, a major conceptual shift. Nick Montfort, in his
'Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction' essay
(http://nickm.com/if/toward.html) attempts to define IF strictly in
terms of the object itself. But what if his premise is wrong? What if
there is no way of defining IF outside of the interactor? Is
Interactive Fiction the *result* of the interaction of the game with
player, or the primed game state before any interaction takes place?
One person being able to derive IF from a work while another is
incapable of deriving IF from the same work a very interesting concept.
I'm inclined to agree with zarf here, believing that a key aspect to
any complete definition of IF must include the moment of interaction
itself, which must, in turn, include the interactor.
:> author (or authors), to a player (or players); such that
: the player may be reasonably expected to achieve a frame of mind in which
: the range of available action is only partially known and
And I like the slight modification here.
-Lucian
Philipp Lenssen
news:aetn0i$ocp$1...@reader1.panix.com...
>..
> This is what I think interactive fiction is:
>
> A program which reveals a story (or related stories), created by an
> author (or authors), to a player (or players); such that the range of
> action available to the player is only partially known to him, and
> must be understood in terms of the story world; and such that the
> majority of important results of the player's actions are unique
> results, specifically created by the author to support that part of
> the story which the player is experiencing.
A good definition for text-parsed IF. But you say it yourself, it excludes
CYOA, which I think is very much IF too. The definition therefore seems
artificially limited to me. I distinguish between choice-based IF, graphical
point-and-click IF, text-parsed IF, and so on; all very much "Interactive
Fiction", in its truest sense.
In any case, I wonder where this definition would put CYOAs that have
text-input. Do they suddenly, by your definition, become IF?
Stephen Granade
> Stephen Granade wrote:
> > What's the difference in media type between, say, Losing Your Grip
> > and
> > Arrival? Both can be played on the same computer using the same
> > interpreter. Both are stored on computer media, be it hard drive or
> > CD. Graphical adventure games and text adventure games are not
> > different media, not by a long shot.
>
> Sorry, I don't argue about games I haven't played. The difference in
> media type is difference between using graphics and not using
> graphics. You can tell by simply looking at the games.
>
> That this point has to be made over and over is amazing.
Perhaps because to make your point you are using a definition of
"media" that no one else uses.
> ("And the West fell because people abandoned common sense and
> began to argue against obvious, self-apparent truths.")
Always glad to do my part to help topple civilization.
Stephen
--
Stephen Granade
sgra...@phy.duke.edu
Duke University, Physics Dept
Joe Mason
>> ("And the West fell because people abandoned common sense and
>> began to argue against obvious, self-apparent truths.")
>
> Always glad to do my part to help topple civilization.
IRTA "toggle". It amused me.
Joe
Paul O'Brian
> "Range of action is only partially known":
>
> This is one of my two keynotes of IF. In a Colossal-Cave-style text
> parser, you know a lot of the verbs which are available, and (when you
> read the room descriptions) you know a lot of the nouns which are
> available. But you don't know *all* of each, and you can't discover
> them in a blind or mechanical way (treating the program in front of
> you as a program). You must think in terms of the story world: what do
> I have available to me? How do these things behave? If I were really
> there, what would I do?
>
> In a Myst-style graphical game, your "verbs" are completely known to
> you: you can click. (Perhaps there are a couple more, like "open the
> inventory window" and "drag one object onto another", but they're all
> in the manual.) But the range of "nouns" available to you is
> everything depicted on the screen, and it's not obvious which are
> interactive -- which are within your range of action. You must study
> your screen and make sense of it *as an environment*. Thus, it
> satisfies my requirement, although in a completely different way than
> Colossal Cave.
I wonder where this leaves Legend-style games, with their scrollbox lists
of nouns and verbs. Certainly, it is *possible* to treat those games as
programs rather than environments, just by going down the list and trying
every possible noun with every available verb. Indeed, some difficult
puzzles in Legend games have reduced me to a state approaching this
extreme.
However, with a list of a hundred verbs and a hundred nouns, it's almost
always much *easier* to treat the game as an environment. Perhaps a
continuum is at work here, too: with five verbs and nouns, a game is much
further away from being IF than it would be if it had five hundred verbs
and nouns?
--
Paul O'Brian obr...@colorado.edu http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian
Behold! My mystic spell concludes, and SPAG 29 is born! Savor its text
adventure reviews, news, and interviews at http://www.sparkynet.com/spag
Andrew Plotkin
> Joao Mendes <public...@anywhere.invalid> wrote in <Xns9234243009CB6j...@194.65.14.150>:
> : Hi, :)
> : Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote in
> : news:aetn0i$ocp$1...@reader1.panix.com:
> <snip>
> :> (And such a novice player will in fact not get any IF out of the
> :> program. Thus my point.)
> : Aha! Major point, here. It's not just a matter of a piece of work _being_
> : IF, but rather, is the user (capable of) deriving IF from it or not. I
> : likes.
> This is, indeed, a major conceptual shift. Nick Montfort, in his
> 'Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction' essay
> (http://nickm.com/if/toward.html) attempts to define IF strictly in
> terms of the object itself. But what if his premise is wrong? What if
> there is no way of defining IF outside of the interactor? Is
> Interactive Fiction the *result* of the interaction of the game with
> player, or the primed game state before any interaction takes place?
> One person being able to derive IF from a work while another is
> incapable of deriving IF from the same work a very interesting concept.
I actually don't want to go too far in that direction -- it gets
theoretical and silly.
If you hand me a science fiction novel written in Chinese, is it
really science fiction -- given that I can't make out any of the
words, much less figure out that it's about time-travelling neutronium
robots from Mars? Well, really I think the answer is "yes". I don't
want to clutter up my definition of "science fiction" with assumptions
about knowing the right language or having a translator available.
(*Even though* that's a *necessary* aspect of matching a novel to a
genre.)
I'm just taking a reasonably educated audience as a given.
Michael Lodge
> : Aha! Major point, here. It's not just a matter of a piece of work
_being_
> : IF, but rather, is the user (capable of) deriving IF from it or not. I
> : likes.
>
> This is, indeed, a major conceptual shift. Nick Montfort, in his
> 'Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction' essay
> (http://nickm.com/if/toward.html) attempts to define IF strictly in
> terms of the object itself. But what if his premise is wrong? What if
> there is no way of defining IF outside of the interactor? Is
> Interactive Fiction the *result* of the interaction of the game with
> player, or the primed game state before any interaction takes place?
>
> One person being able to derive IF from a work while another is
> incapable of deriving IF from the same work a very interesting concept.
>
> I'm inclined to agree with zarf here, believing that a key aspect to
> any complete definition of IF must include the moment of interaction
> itself, which must, in turn, include the interactor.
>
Do we really need a concrete definition of IF? I haven't seen the term used
much outside these two groups, and as these two groups are mainly focused on
text games, that is what 'Interactive Ficton' generally refers to.
I think that the only thing that this thread has shown is that no single
definition can be found. Some people consider graphical games as IF. I
believe that playing a graphical adventure is a rather different experience
that playing a text adventure. Therefore different terms are needed to
refer to them.
I think that the term IF is too broad to be very useful. It seems to be
used as a synonym for 'Adventure Game' but is also used for 'Something like
an adventure game, but not really a game'. This isn't entirely a bad thing,
and the annual IF comp is open to a wide range of different types of
entries.
To summarise a post that has become longer than I expected:
IF is a general term that will always mean different things to different
people. It should be used as such. If you wish to describe a particular
type of game, then qualify what you are talking about. a text adventure
could be text-based IF, a graphical adventure graphical IF.
Personally, I prefer to avoid the issue altogether and use the term 'text
adventure' or 'graphical adventure' instead.
Stephen Granade
> Andrew Plotkin wrote:
>
> > Here, Paul Drallos <pdra...@tir.com> wrote:
> >
> >>I think what we've found out in this thread is that there simply isn't
> >>a consensus about what IF is.
> >>
> >
> >>Everybody's right. Everybody's wrong. It depends on who you talk to
> >>or how argumentative you want to be.
> >>
> > That seems a very bitter thing to say.
>
> Bitter? How in the world do you read 'bitter' in my simple post? It states
> in a very neutral and unthreatening form something that is plainly obvious
> and true. There is no consensus.
I got the same feeling from your statement because it seems to imply
that there is no consensus, therefore there is no value in continuing
to discuss this topic, therefore we might as well all go home. It
wasn't so much what you said as what I (and, I presume, Andrew) read
into your statement.
> >Surely we can say something other than "not everyone agrees".
>
> OK. One of the reasons not everyone agrees is because there are at least
> two irreconcilable, mutually exclusive views. No matter how logically you
> present your case, someone will insist on text-only, while another will
> insist on any fiction which is interactive. One definition simply can't
> satisfy both.
Hm. I think you've actually listed two halves of separate exclusive
views. I've been thinking of the potentially-opposed camps as
* Text-only (or, for some, mainly-text-but-with-graphics) vs graphics
* Programmatically-generated text vs hypertext or computer-based
CYOA-style works
* Presented on computer vs other media (paper, movies)
There certainly can be more, and these are interacting categories --
if your view of interactive fiction only includes
programmatically-generated text, then you're not going to view
paper-based works as interactive fiction. But I think it's possible to
come up with a workable definition despite these differences. I'd
settle for a definition which, as Andrew mentioned, makes people say,
"Yeah, that's basically it."
Stephen
Paul Drallos
>
> I got the same feeling from your statement because it seems to imply
> that there is no consensus, therefore there is no value in continuing
> to discuss this topic, therefore we might as well all go home. It
> wasn't so much what you said as what I (and, I presume, Andrew) read
> into your statement.
>
>
> views. I've been thinking of the potentially-opposed camps as
>
> * Text-only (or, for some, mainly-text-but-with-graphics) vs graphics
> * Programmatically-generated text vs hypertext or computer-based
> CYOA-style works
> * Presented on computer vs other media (paper, movies)
>
> There certainly can be more, and these are interacting categories --
> if your view of interactive fiction only includes
> programmatically-generated text, then you're not going to view
> paper-based works as interactive fiction. But I think it's possible to
> come up with a workable definition despite these differences. I'd
> settle for a definition which, as Andrew mentioned, makes people say,
> "Yeah, that's basically it."
>
>
language? Are you sure 'bitter' is the actual word you were looking for?
I considered that maybe there is some other word-use for 'bitter' that I'm
not familiar with, so I checked my unabridged Webster. As far as American-
English goes, no way was my posting 'bitter', or in Andrew's words
'very bitter'. Pessimistic, perhaps, but bitter? No. Please explain if
you are using some non-American use of the word. I would find that
interesting.
We do agree, however, that there are at least two 'separate exclusive
views',
regarding the definition of IF. That sounds very much like a textbook
example
of 'not a consensus'. Like it or not, there are text-only people and
not-text-only people. Certainly there are some features from both camps
which overlap, but there are also essential features which are
irreconcilable.
I am merely stating this obvious observation. I'm not being bitter or
inflamatory. (I tried to ask about your use of 'bitter' in the most polite
way I could think of. Sorry if it offended. But how else could I ask?)
I did not suggest 'we all go home.' However, arguments can be, and have
been
made to that effect. See Michael Lodge's well-written post, for
example. But
don't blame me.
Paul
Jim Nelson
>
> Would you consider a book that had no text, but only pictures a novel? Probably
> not.
In the comics world, such a thing might be called a graphic novel.
--
Jim Nelson
jim_n...@mindspring.com
Dennis G Jerz
> Dennis G Jerz wrote:
> >
> > Does the addition of graphics slowly move a given work away from IF
> > and towards something else? I don't think so. When does a short story
> > become a novella, and when does a novella become a novel? The
>
> You're comparing variations of written text to differences in entire
> media types. It would be more accurate to ask when does a play become a
> movie? Fundamentally, at the point that a different media type is used.
>
> ~Mike
Plays and movies have much in common, but you can't turn one into the
other simply by swapping a live audience for a camera.
If you point a camera at a play you will get a recorded series of
moving images, so it qualifies as a "motion picture" -- but only in
the same sense that any series of pages, when assembled in a binding,
qualifies as a "book". It's not just a question of staging
technology vs. cinematography; the acting style is completely
different, as is the directorial process, criteria for critical
success, audience expectations, and so forth.
Cinematography depends on changes in camera POV, depth of field,
tracking and panning, framing, not to mention editing effects like
jump cuts and fades. A two- or three-character play that takes place
all in one room could mesmerize a live audience if well done, but a
film of the same actors in the same setting would feel claustrophobic,
since movie audiences are used to external establishing shots, outdoor
scenes, crane and tracking shots, etc.
A theatre director can emulate some of these effects using spotlights
and scrims and whatnot, but there are just as many theatrical effects
that cinematography can't really reproduce. I saw Phantom of the
Opera in Toronto, and was mildy impressed by a wall of fire that shot
up at one point, though I immediately found myself wondering why the
people in the front of the theatre seemed to be gasping so
appreciatively; then a fraction of a second later a wave of heat hit
my face, and I gasped too.
A theatrical acting style requires you have to project your voice so
the back row of the balcony can hear you, and exaggerate your gestures
so the back row can see you. This style may look silly on the big
screen, where microphones can pick up a whisper, and tight shots can
pick up pulsing veins, tears welling up in the eyes, etc.
Returning to the topic of this thread, I'd say that the quality,
presence, or absence of images isn't enough to define whether
something is or isn't IF. The time that the developer chose to put
into creating pictures instead of writing more text is going to affect
the story (plot scope, the character depth, etc.), just as the time
that a developer chooses to put into developing the story is going to
take away from the quality of the graphics, so I tend to prefer games
with textual depth rather than visual depth. But that doesn't mean
that parser-based command-line text games are the only kinds of
cybertexts worth enjoying, or that those are the only ones that
deserve the name "interactive fiction".
Garth Dighton
> Here, Lucian P. Smith <lps...@rice.edu> wrote:
>> Joao Mendes <public...@anywhere.invalid> wrote in
>> <Xns9234243009CB6j...@194.65.14.150>:
>
>> : Hi, :)
>
>> : Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote in
>> : news:aetn0i$ocp$1...@reader1.panix.com:
>
> If you hand me a science fiction novel written in Chinese, is it
> really science fiction -- given that I can't make out any of the
> words, much less figure out that it's about time-travelling neutronium
> robots from Mars? Well, really I think the answer is "yes".
<mode=hard-sci-fi-snob>
The answer is "no, that's pulp trash." Time traveling neutronium Martian
robots indeed! [looks down nose]
</mode>
:-)
--
Garth Dighton
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Andrew Plotkin
> A good definition for text-parsed IF.
And Myst-style graphical adventures as well! I hope that was clear --
I did my best to extract what I see in common between the Myst genre
and the Colossal Cave genre, and explain why I *care* that there's
something in common.
> But you say it yourself, it excludes CYOA, which I think is very
> much IF too. The definition therefore seems artificially limited to
> me.
I probably overstated my distinction, in my drive to make a coherent
post. :) I don't really think of CYOA games as *not* IF -- I think of
them as *almost* IF; a stool with one leg made out of straw instead of
wood.
Really what I think -- and I freely admit this is an intuitive
distinction in my mind, which I'm trying to explicate in words -- is
that a (unadorned) CYOA game isn't much different from a CYOA
hypertext site (implemented with basic static HTML pages), or a CYOA
*book*. Sitting in front of a computer adds no true interactivity to
the old-style book interface. And the old-style books always felt like
they came up short, even compared to the crudest two-word-parser text
adventures.
> In any case, I wonder where this definition would put CYOAs that have
> text-input. Do they suddenly, by your definition, become IF?
Not suddenly -- *gradually*. It's a matter of how important the text
input is to the game, and how much searching you do around the range
of possible inputs. If the game asks "What's your name?" and then uses
the name in context, that's not moving towards IF at all. But if you
have a keyword-based conversation system, such as was used in the
middle-era Ultima games, that's getting to be an interesting range of
action -- you have to identify important words from the world (the
dialogue) and use them appropriately. (If the keywords are
highlighted, it's less interesting and more mechanical.)
Here, Joao Mendes <public...@anywhere.invalid> wrote:
> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote in
> news:aetn0i$ocp$1...@reader1.panix.com:
>> This requirement encapsulates my impulse to categorize CYOA, or other
>> purely-menu-driven systems, as "not IF". My problem with CYOA games
>> (or books) is that the range of action is never uncertain -- you *can*
>> progress mechanically, by trying every menu possibility. In fact, this
>> is what usually happens when I play a CYOA game.
> <final snippage>
> This last paragraph left me wondering wether you would consider a SUDS game
> to be IF.
> (For those of you that are unfamiliar with SUDS, it is a text adventure
> system with a purely point-and-click interface. Thusly, much like a Myst-
> style game, all the verbs and actions are known throughout. Unlike those,
> however, interactable "features" are always evident as they are displayed
> in a separate window in a list. There are conversations with other
> characters, but they are choice-based. Thusly, it is possible to come up
> with a mechanical algorithm and conceptually test every single possibility
> in a (relatively) finite amount of time.)
Good example. I would say it depends on how many nouns and verbs there
are, and how practical it is to *really* try every combination. (You
can try every combination of letters in a Colossal Cave command line,
but it's utterly impractical.)
If the system in a given SUDS game is rich enough that you have to
consider it in terms of what's appropriate in the world, then you're
playing it in an IF mode.
Now again I'm phrasing it in terms of "is this IF for the player?"
rather than "is this objectively IF?" I do this *not* because I'm
fascinated by the idea of a totally subjective definition of IF. (As I
said, I think that's a silly road to go down.) Rather, as a game
designer, I have to assume that most players are *lazy*, and would
rather bang on mechanical menu options than think about my
carefully-constructed puzzles. (Because that describes me!)
So a game becomes IF if my hypothetical average-and-lazy player winds
up thinking in the mode of the protagonist, engaged in the world. If
the interface leads him to think in the mode of pushing buttons
on-screen, the game is drifting away from my definition of IF.
> Furthermore, consider the (_incredibly_ tedious) case of a CYOA book with
> over 20 options at _every_ section. Wouldn't it be reasonable to posit that
> the (_incredibly_ patient) player would be able to derive IF from such a
> work?
Absolutely.
Here, Paul O'Brian <obr...@ucsu.colorado.edu> wrote:
> I wonder where this leaves Legend-style games, with their scrollbox lists
> of nouns and verbs. Certainly, it is *possible* to treat those games as
> programs rather than environments, just by going down the list and trying
> every possible noun with every available verb. Indeed, some difficult
> puzzles in Legend games have reduced me to a state approaching this
> extreme.
> However, with a list of a hundred verbs and a hundred nouns, it's almost
> always much *easier* to treat the game as an environment. Perhaps a
> continuum is at work here, too: with five verbs and nouns, a game is much
> further away from being IF than it would be if it had five hundred verbs
> and nouns?
Yes, exactly -- I think this is just what I was saying above.
I haven't played all of the Legend games, but I did play Spellcasting
1/2/301, and I experienced just what you describe: mostly I played the
game just as I had played the Infocom text games. But occasionally I'd
get frustrated and start looking at the menus for clues.
(And this is not unique to the Legend interface, of course. There were
moments in Infocom text games where I started mechanically casting a
given spell on every object in the game, or casting every possible
spell on a given object. As you said, it's a continuum, and no game is
100%, or 0% for that matter.)
Billy Harris
does seem to be two different uses of the term "IF".
On the one hand, virtually no one outside of the two int-fiction groups
use the phrase. As the originators of the phrase, surely the authors
are entitled to define it, and their consensus is that it is a super
set of "adventure game."
On the other hand, really and truely it is used far far more often in
the context of text adventures (which includes "text adventures with
graphics") than it is for graphical adventure games. Has any
unambigously non-text adventure game EVER been submitted to any of the
IF competitions? I am excluding z-code abuses such as Daelecks.
This doesn't seem to me to be entirely coincidental. Hypothetically, if
I gave Andrew Plotkin, Emily Short, Adrew Cadre, and Adam Thorton
$1,000,000 to create "the best IF you can", then (1) they would likley
not get along well enough to create anything, and (2) at the end of it,
I would be astounded if they had a graphic(al) adventure rather than a
text adventure or a text adventure with graphics.
In other words, the posters to this group are overwhemingly more
interested in text adventures than graphical adventures, and if anyone
comes up with an "IF question", the answers are going to implictly
suited for a text adventure rather than a graphical one.
I am one of the people who tell my friends that interactive fiction is
synonymous with text adventures because a game self-identified as
"interactive fiction" or appearing on the interactive fiction archive
is 90% likely to be a text adventure and 9% likely not to be adventure
related at all. But of course, the postings on this group occasionally
use the broader definition.
Stephen Granade
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> writes:
> Here, Philipp Lenssen <len...@hitnet.rwth-aachen.de> wrote:
>
> > In any case, I wonder where this definition would put CYOAs that have
> > text-input. Do they suddenly, by your definition, become IF?
>
> Not suddenly -- *gradually*. It's a matter of how important the text
> input is to the game, and how much searching you do around the range
> of possible inputs....
And on whether or not SUDS is IF:
> Good example. I would say it depends on how many nouns and verbs there
> are, and how practical it is to *really* try every combination. (You
> can try every combination of letters in a Colossal Cave command line,
> but it's utterly impractical.)
> Here, Joao Mendes <public...@anywhere.invalid> wrote:
>
> > Furthermore, consider the (_incredibly_ tedious) case of a CYOA book with
> > over 20 options at _every_ section. Wouldn't it be reasonable to posit that
> > the (_incredibly_ patient) player would be able to derive IF from such a
> > work?
>
> Absolutely.
If you're talking about the range of action necessary for something to
be interactive fiction or not, there's no obvious demarcation. The
element of Planescape: Torment (a computer RPG) which I suspect made
it so interesting to people in this newsgroup is its breadth of
conversation options. It used standard conversation trees with four or
five options, but the trees branched and re-branched, with scads of
conversations spread out over its hundred-plus hours of gameplay. You
*can* go through and mechanically see all of the conversations, but
not without investing a giant chunk of time.
Were there a CYOA-style or hypertext work with similar depth, I do
think it would be fully interactive fiction by Andrew's definition.
Philipp Lenssen
news:af0bbp$571$1...@reader1.panix.com...
>
> I probably overstated my distinction, in my drive to make a coherent
> post. :) I don't really think of CYOA games as *not* IF -- I think of
> them as *almost* IF; a stool with one leg made out of straw instead of
> wood.
>
OK. I think of them as simply being a different kind of stool, and I can
comfortably sit on several kinds. I might even embrace the change once in a
while.
Yes, I do think CYOA is different to text-parsed IF. Very much. Does that
mean it's better or worse? No, it has advantages and disadvantages, and
making use of the specific advantages of CYOA creates good IF. Same holds
true for text-parsed IF.
> Really what I think -- and I freely admit this is an intuitive
> distinction in my mind, which I'm trying to explicate in words -- is
> that a (unadorned) CYOA game isn't much different from a CYOA
> hypertext site (implemented with basic static HTML pages), or a CYOA
> *book*. Sitting in front of a computer adds no true interactivity to
> the old-style book interface.
In CYOA, the outcome of the story is defined by the choices you make. That's
interactivity. On paper, as well as on computer CYOAs. That's why I think
it'd be a moot point to emphasize further potential of digital CYOA in this
context.
> And the old-style books always felt like
> they came up short, even compared to the crudest two-word-parser text
> adventures.
>...
Just because you don't like them, you shouldn't limit the term of IF. It's a
good explanation why you do it, but a mediocre justification. I loved
graphic adventures. I loved CYOA books. My friends and I read a hundred of
them. We never played text-parsed IF. (I did later on.)
Does that mean I suddenly limit what I call "interactive", or "fiction"? No,
I happen to acknowledge there's different tastes which can happily
coexist -- especially, I hope, in a newsgroup like this, where so far
nothing convinced me to stop looking for, and posting about CYOA especially.
If you work outside a medium, or outside a genre, seeing only what you know,
you will automatically work against it and find reasons why it's inferior.
You could say paintings are inferior to movies because movies could contain
lots of paintings. That's a very numerical and quantitative approach, but
you apply similar in your comparison of interactivity by pointing
out how many choices one needs to traverse to "win" a CYOA. What you do is
apply what you know from text-parsed IF, which often is a puzzle-based
approach.
What if I told you now not infinite traversion of choices could "win" a
CYOA, because there might not be a winnable state -- just different paths
to progress into a different story, based on player preferences? That is the
core of the best CYOAs I've come across.
PTN
hasn't been mentioned because everyone already knows it. Infocom published,
in all of their "grey-box" editions, a definition of Interactive Fiction.
The definition did not change for their SHOGUN game, which included
graphics. It was NOT reprinted in their MINES OF TITAN game instructions
(which instead they called a 'role-playing game').
The Infocom definition:
What is Interactive Fiction?
Interactive fiction is a story in which YOU are the main character. Your own
thinking and imagination determine the actions of that character and guide
the story from start to finish.
Each work of interactive fiction, such as <insert name of game here>,
presents you with a series of locations, items, characters, and events. You
can move from place to place, use the objects you find, and interact with
the other characters, to affect the outcome of the story.
An important element of interactive fiction is puzzle-solving. You should
think of a locked door or a ferocious beast not as a permanent obstacle, but
merely as a puzzle to be tackled. Solving puzzles will frequently involve
bringing a certain item with you, and then using it in the proper way.
<from this point, specific features of the game in question are described>
***
It may be that Infocom text games pioneered the usage of the term
Interactive Fiction, but even in their own definition, it was not limited to
text only.
I have no doubt this def. is too specific to be accepted generally by
everyone today, (the puzzle solving part comes to mind as a possible trouble
spot), but if this was the original def. of the term, at least it's a
jumping point to start off from.
Interesting, but long, thread. I enjoy lurking when working on a game, but
really, this is cutting into coding time!
-- Peter
The Illuminated Lantern
http://www.illuminatedlantern.com/
Jim Nelson
>
> This is what I think interactive fiction is:
>
> A program which reveals a story (or related stories), created by an
> author (or authors), to a player (or players); such that the range of
> action available to the player is only partially known to him, and
> must be understood in terms of the story world; and such that the
> majority of important results of the player's actions are unique
> results, specifically created by the author to support that part of
> the story which the player is experiencing.
Finally, this thread has become interesting. Are you going to post this
on the Web (or somewhere)? Usenet's pretty temporary storage.
I have an honest question about this definition. Would this not include
certain first-person shooters? Take, for the sake of widespread
familiarity, Doom.
(Warning: Doom spoilers. As if that's going to stop you.)
* A program.
* A story. (Thin, but there. Space marine saving universe from opened
rift of Hell. Starts as a mystery -- where is everyone? -- to full-on
carnage until hero confronts the Big Boss. Even has ominous ending:
Earth's been overtaken by more hellspawn!)
* Created by authors.
* For a player (or players).
* Range of action is only partially known. I'm still a bit shaky on this
criteria; does it involve the mystery of the player expanding the game's
landscape? (Not necessarily physically.) If so, then find the right
lever to open the right door would seem to count.
* Must be understood in terms of story world. (Find guns. Kill demons.
Find more guns and kill more demons.)
* Majority of important results are unique results. If I grok this
criteria, this is where Doom falls short. However, some FPS have become
quite inventive in their gameplay to achieve a cinematic feel. Doom
might work: When the lever is pulled and the door opens, is a demon
lurking beyond or a power-up? (Okay, not edge-of-your-seat narrative,
but still.) Or, take the new Castle Wolfenstein. I've only played the
first level, but I had to kill a mad doctor, take out a sniper, and fend
off attackers who bulleted through from beneath the floor. Each problem
required a different approach, some a light touch, others the traditional
FPS rivers-of-blood. Just as IF is no longer "simply" Infocom, FPS is no
longer torrential onslaughts of braindead creatures.
The other half of this criteria, if I hear you right, is the "simulated
world [is] not the *important* part of the IF work." You give some
examples how CRPGs fail here, and it's tempting to lunge and say Doom
does too. But, what does a FPS player spend most of his time thinking
about (if he's thinking at all): Marshalling bullets and weapons or "Man,
I want to get past this door and see what's next!" Maybe the results-of-
rules are so simple (and seamlessly handled by the computer) they are
really the important thing, but not to the player. To him, it's plots
and puzzles and discovery. If he happens to find a bigger gun on the
way, so much the better.
With the possible exception of the last point, Doom (or others) seems to
fit.
Let me be clear: There's a lot to like about this definition. I'm not
trying to make swiss cheese out of it. However, I don't think Doom (or
other FPS) are weird or hypothetical cases. Frankly, I don't want them
to fit. No one buys these steroid monsters for their storyline.
Interactive fiction "feels" different than Doom et al.
Maybe Doom is the far end of a continuum, as been's discussed elsewhere?
Maybe this definition's too mechanical? It leaves out what I consider to
be the most important element of IF: "You." As in second-person present
tense. (I know, not a requirement. Some IF is first-person, some is
past tense, etc.) When I play IF, the immersion is *I'm* there in the
story. When I read a novel, even first-person, the narrator is a
surrogate for the experience.
I realize you could say the same about FPS. It's "you" firing the
chaingun, etc. But in IF, I find myself thinking "How's this going to
end?" There's a *sense* of Aristotlean story, not merely a plot gluing
together the levels and mayhem.
I just think a definition without some identification of the "you" and a
sense of story is lacking.
--
Jim Nelson
jim_n...@mindspring.com
Andrew Plotkin
> news:af0bbp$571$1...@reader1.panix.com...
>> Really what I think -- and I freely admit this is an intuitive
>> distinction in my mind, which I'm trying to explicate in words -- is
>> that a (unadorned) CYOA game isn't much different from a CYOA
>> hypertext site (implemented with basic static HTML pages), or a CYOA
>> *book*. Sitting in front of a computer adds no true interactivity to
>> the old-style book interface.
> In CYOA, the outcome of the story is defined by the choices you make. That's
> interactivity. On paper, as well as on computer CYOAs.
I wind up not perceiving it as interactive, is my point. I wind up
perceiving it as a static object, which I can decide which sub-parts
to look at. (Except I wind up looking at all of them, so in the end
there's no choice there either.)
>> And the old-style books always felt like
>> they came up short, even compared to the crudest two-word-parser text
>> adventures.
>>...
> Just because you don't like them, you shouldn't limit the term of
> IF.
Oh, I think I *should*. :)
Seriously -- I'm trying to pick out and explain the qualities of a
category I like. My reasons for liking it are where I'm *getting* all
this stuff from! If an example doesn't work for me, I can't reject it
-- I want to know *why* it doesn't work for me as IF.
Adam Thornton
Billy Harris <wha...@mail.airmail.net> wrote:
>This doesn't seem to me to be entirely coincidental. Hypothetically, if
>I gave Andrew Plotkin, Emily Short, Adrew Cadre, and Adam Thorton
>$1,000,000 to create "the best IF you can", then (1) they would likley
>not get along well enough to create anything, and (2) at the end of it,
>I would be astounded if they had a graphic(al) adventure rather than a
>text adventure or a text adventure with graphics.
I'm thinking you'd end up with something along the lines of:
"The Gnomic (Albeit Menu'd) Conversation: a Postmodern, In-Jokey
Expectation-Breaker, _avec fromage_."
Adam
Trevor Powell
> Here, Philipp Lenssen <len...@hitnet.rwth-aachen.de> wrote:
>
>> In CYOA, the outcome of the story is defined by the choices you make. That's
>> interactivity. On paper, as well as on computer CYOAs.
>
> I wind up not perceiving it as interactive, is my point. I wind up
> perceiving it as a static object, which I can decide which sub-parts
> to look at. (Except I wind up looking at all of them, so in the end
> there's no choice there either.)
The critical point here is that "interactive" is a very loaded term.
"Interactive" implies that input is taken from both sides of the
exchange, and a book simply cannot take action based upon the reader,
and selecting from a menu of options and flipping to the relevant page
doesn't _feel_ the same as conveying instructions explicitly in writing,
typing, or by speech, and having a result given back to you.
If one was to create a massive CYOA which consisted of the full game
of Photopia, with every possible option at each prompt explicitly
written out so that you could select from them, it would be hard,
though, to argue that selecting the command from a list rather than
writing it explicitly actually changes how interactive the game is..
I would suggest that CYOA-Photopia and Photopia.z5 are equally
interactive[1].. but Photopia.z5 will intuitively feel more interactive,
because typing is more of an interactive-feeling activity.
Similarly, playing IF on my palm pilot feels more interactive to me than
does playing it on my computer, presumably because I'm physically writing
my commands, and writing feels more like an active involvement than does
the miniscule movements involved in typing my commands on a keyboard. I
expect that if we had good voice recognition and speech synthesis
technology, vocal commands might work even better.
The question is.. if playing Photopia feels more interactive on my
computer than in the dead tree CYOA book, and feels more interactive
still on my palm pilot... has simply moving the words from one display
medium to another actually changed its interactivity?
Trevor Powell
[1] Photopia was selected in particular for this example precisely
because it isn't very interactive.. a CYOA of, for example, Curses,
would probably require more paper than is produced in a year to print
a single copy..
Emily Short
<35559DA2CA8A705E.FB66C0EB...@lp.airnews.net>, Billy
Harris <wha...@mail.airmail.net> wrote:
> This doesn't seem to me to be entirely coincidental. Hypothetically, if
> I gave Andrew Plotkin, Emily Short, Adrew Cadre, and Adam Thorton
> $1,000,000 to create "the best IF you can", then (1) they would likley
> not get along well enough to create anything
I don't know -- I get along with zarf and Adam Cadre reasonably well, I
like to think; I haven't met Mr. Thornton, but we seem to have a certain
amount of common ground. For instance, I don't eat breakfast cereal of
any kind.
Oh, "well enough to create anything," you said. Yeah, probably not.
Unless you were willing to settle for, like, an anthology. Or PUTBAA.
--
Emily Short
http://emshort.home.mindspring.com/index.htm
Philipp Lenssen
news:3d140bb9$0$21003$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
> > Here, Philipp Lenssen <len...@hitnet.rwth-aachen.de> wrote:
> >
> >> In CYOA, the outcome of the story is defined by the choices you make.
That's
> >> interactivity. On paper, as well as on computer CYOAs.
> >
> > I wind up not perceiving it as interactive, is my point. I wind up
> > perceiving it as a static object, which I can decide which sub-parts
> > to look at. (Except I wind up looking at all of them, so in the end
> > there's no choice there either.)
>
> The critical point here is that "interactive" is a very loaded term.
> "Interactive" implies that input is taken from both sides of the
> exchange, and a book simply cannot take action based upon the reader,
> and selecting from a menu of options and flipping to the relevant page
> doesn't _feel_ the same as conveying instructions explicitly in writing,
> typing, or by speech, and having a result given back to you.
You mean, it doesn't feel the same to you. Your assumptions of what IF is
too seem to be based on likes and dislikes.
Again, I think we should not talk about the quantitative limit of choices
the player has. What truly feels interactive to me are solely the *critical*
choices. You can even say CYOAs have much more critical choices -- those
that actually change the outcome of the plot -- than typical text-parsed IF.
Or, whereas text-parsed IF hides the actions that will truly change the
outcome of the game (to better allow for puzzle-oriented games), CYOA makes
them explicit (emphasizing that choices offered are indeed critical at a
given stage in the game). Good CYOA doesn't offer meaningless actions.
text-parsed IF explicitly allows meaningless actions, to create the puzzles.
I don't think meaningless actions offer true interactive value.
Don't take me wrong, I don't think giving meaningful reactions to every
possible player action is wanted in the first place. If you want a game
where you can truly affect the outcome in every way, you'd have to open up a
text-editor and write your own story -- no constraints, no game.
Michael Lodge
> I did not suggest 'we all go home.' However, arguments can be, and have
> been
> made to that effect. See Michael Lodge's well-written post, for
> example. But
> don't blame me.
>
> Paul
>
>
Actually I didn't mean to imply that this thread should die. The topic is
'What is IF?' and I stated my case that no single definition can be found.