Some thoughts on writing IF
J. J. Guest
something that will gain me more widespread recognition, but I'm just
too interested in it to do so.
I currently have three games on the go, not counting the one that's in
testing. Sometimes I think this is too many and try to kill one off,
but they are tenacious little boogers and somehow always manage to
cling on to life. They are masters of adaptation, constantly mutating
in order to survive. They are also highly competitive, forever
attempting to cannibalise each other's puzzles.
What's also hard is that I'm doing it alone, in a vaccuum. I've never
gotten along with the IF Mud, always feeling like I've gatecrashed a
party without bringing a bottle. Nobody I know in the "real world"
either plays IF or even knows what it is. When I bounce ideas I'm
often bouncing them off a later version of myself; old notebooks full
of half-baked ideas often find their metier in the light of greater
experience.
I'm not into puzzleless IF. I don't have a problem with it, but for me
IF has its origins in the pulps; one only has to look at the titles
(and cover art) of Scott Adams and Infocom games to see that. Pulp
fiction lends itself to IF because adventure stories are often driven
by practical problem solving. But I also love Flann O'Brien, Alain
Robbe-Grillet, Michael Chabon, P. G. Wodehouse, S. J. Perelman,
Laurence Sterne, Harry Stephen Keeler and the whole burgeoning
"Bizarro" scene.
Puzzles are tricky. They don't come along very often. Creating a
puzzle involves exactly the same thought processes as solving a
puzzle. You can force them into existence, but if it doesn't feel
right within the context of the game it's best to leave it out and
wait for the right one to suggest itself. The last puzzle in "Yak
Shaving" took a whole year to come up with, but when it finally came,
at three O'clock on a Sunday morning in December, it was exactly
right! The game was finished, but for the polishing. It had symmetry.
It had balance. It felt finished.
This is probably why I've never entered the IF comp - I never have
anything finished at the right time. For me the Comp is a nuisance;
I'd love to enter it, but every year it whooshes past like one of
Douglas Adams' deadlines. And curiously, the games I actually get
finished are never the big, clever ideas I've set aside for the comp,
but the throwaway ideas that aren't good enough. "To Hell in a Hamper"
was one, "Yak Shaving" is another. What starts off as a throwaway idea
often develops into a neat, rounded little game. What starts off as
"the one I'll be remembered for" ends up as a sprawling mess of code
that merely takes up space on my hard drive (and in my head).
And then of course there are the turkeys, the ones you do release that
drop like a lead balloon. Unleashing "Escape from the Crazy Place"
upon the IF world was always going to be a risk; a twenty-five year
old labour of love that I was just too attached to to properly edit
and refine. The damning SPAG review is a blot on my copybook but it's
still the game I love the most and it's still the game I've received
the most fanmail for.
I'm sorry, this was not intended to be a peice of PR puff. It's
difficult to talk generally about writing IF without mentioning
specific games. I simply wanted to share my thoughts on this
infuriatingly difficult, strangely unrewarding and yet devilishly
addictive pastime of ours. And I do so in the hope of engendering
similar but different thoughts from my colleagues in this rarified
field of endeavour. Plug your games as well, if you wish - nobody else
will do it for you. And perhaps, between us we can find a way to solve
common problems and make the process of writing IF a little easier and
more fun for ourselves.
- J. J. Guest
Conrad
>
> And then of course there are the turkeys, the ones you do release that
> drop like a lead balloon. Unleashing "Escape from the Crazy Place"
> upon the IF world was always going to be a risk; a twenty-five year
> old labour of love that I was just too attached to to properly edit
> and refine. The damning SPAG review is a blot on my copybook but it's
> still the game I love the most and it's still the game I've received
> the most fanmail for.
JJ, I think that means you're one of the profoundly lucky ones -- like
me! If you really enjoy writing IF, to the point where you're happy
you wrote a game even when no-one else is, or very few are... I have
some personal experience with this one... and you won't be
discouraged when you get bad reviews... then those bad reviews won't
make you not write.
Now, what's happening for me is that my first few games are getting
mostly poor reviews. And I'm not happy with that, but I'm encouraged
by the fact that they get poor reviews for *different reasons*.
Sooner or later, I figure I'll run out of ways of writing bad games.
Good luck with focusing on one of your three...
Conrad.
Traviswf
> And then of course there are the turkeys, the ones you do release that
> drop like a lead balloon. Unleashing "Escape from the Crazy Place"
> upon the IF world was always going to be a risk; a twenty-five year
> old labour of love that I was just too attached to to properly edit
> and refine. The damning SPAG review is a blot on my copybook but it's
> still the game I love the most and it's still the game I've received
> the most fanmail for.
>
Is the SPAG review the only review of your game? I don't see any
others on IFDB. Hardly a statistically significant sample. And if
you're getting fanmail - then who cares about the critics!! Encourage
those writing the mail to go rate or review the game on IFDB.
Unfortunately, IFDB can be an unreliable source for finding a game you
might like. There's some guy on their with the ID "Amber Shards" and
he seems to hate everything. Honestly, the amount of games he gives
horrible reviews and low ratings - it's a wonder he plays IF at all.
Luckily, he takes special delight in slamming established authors -
and they have enough positive reviews and ratings to balance it out.
But if someone like that is the ONLY review or rating on an unknown
game - that can mean people simply won't play it.
Poster
<a8563bcc-0b4c-4c5d...@t41g2000yqt.googlegroups.com>,
"J. J. Guest" <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Writing IF is difficult. I keep thinking I'll give it up, try writing
> something that will gain me more widespread recognition, but I'm just
> too interested in it to do so.
[SNIP]
>
> What's also hard is that I'm doing it alone, in a vaccuum. I've never
> gotten along with the IF Mud, always feeling like I've gatecrashed a
> party without bringing a bottle. Nobody I know in the "real world"
> either plays IF or even knows what it is. When I bounce ideas I'm
> often bouncing them off a later version of myself; old notebooks full
> of half-baked ideas often find their metier in the light of greater
> experience.
This is the #1 problem that leads to IF author burnout and people
leaving the community -- the fact that there's no support for authors by
other authors.
If the community is to endure, we'll have to fix this.
--
Poster
www.intaligo.com I6 libraries, doom metal, Building
sturmdrangif.wordpress.com Game development blog / IF commentary
Seasons: Q4 '10 -- One-man projects are prone to delays.
Tatiana
> This is the #1 problem that leads to IF author burnout and people
> leaving the community -- the fact that there's no support for authors by
> other authors.
>
> If the community is to endure, we'll have to fix this.
I think what might lead to this is the eventual realization that
writing IF is a dead end. Like J.J. says, not too many people out
there play it or even care about it. So all the creative energy that's
used to work on IF could be used to produce something that people may
actually be interested in but instead you've spent all that time and
effort on the exact opposite thing. It's kinda hard to keep talented
creators working to create things that the vast majority of people
could care less about. In this kind of environment, who cares if
authors support authors? It's sort of like the dumb leading the
dumber, isn't it? Once people start realizing they're wasting their
time on something that so few people will see or care about, that's
really the issue. If I went through years and years of producing
things and all I had to look back on was stuff I wrote in IF, I'd
consider that a sad state of affairs. So if this pasttime is
"devilishly addictive" as J.J. says maybe that's only the case for
people who don't have the talent to actually do anything else.
Conrad
> On Mar 13, 6:42 pm, Poster <pos...@nospam.com> wrote:
>
> > This is the #1 problem that leads to IF author burnout and people
> > leaving the community -- the fact that there's no support for authors by
> > other authors.
>
> > If the community is to endure, we'll have to fix this.
Well, I do my best. For my part.
What other support am I supposed to be offering?
(The community of authors being individual authors, answering this for
me will answer it generally; or so I reason.)
> I think what might lead to this is the eventual realization that
> writing IF is a dead end. Like J.J. says, not too many people out
> there play it or even care about it. So all the creative energy that's
> used to work on IF could be used to produce something that people may
> actually be interested in but instead you've spent all that time and
> effort on the exact opposite thing.
Surely, if you're writing IF to be a rock star, it's the wrong way to
go about it.
Conrad.
Jim Aikin
> On Mar 13, 6:42 pm, Poster<pos...@nospam.com> wrote:
>> This is the #1 problem that leads to IF author burnout and people
>> leaving the community -- the fact that there's no support for authors by
>> other authors.
>>
>> If the community is to endure, we'll have to fix this.
I think J.J. was making a broader point. Yes, he mentioned not feeling
at home on IFMUD, but he then went on to say, "Nobody I know in the
'real world' either plays IF or even knows what it is."
> I think what might lead to this is the eventual realization that
> writing IF is a dead end. Like J.J. says, not too many people out
> there play it or even care about it. So all the creative energy that's
> used to work on IF could be used to produce something that people may
> actually be interested in but instead you've spent all that time and
> effort on the exact opposite thing. It's kinda hard to keep talented
> creators working to create things that the vast majority of people
> could care less about.
I pretty much agree with Tatiana on this point. I've written and
released five or six games (depending on how you count), but at this
point my creative effort is going into composing music, and that's
likely to remain the case in the near future.
It's not that I hope to become a rock star. If I'm lucky, I might sell
30 or 40 copies of a CD. But the fact remains, if a friend comes to
visit, I can put on my CD and they can listen to and perhaps appreciate
it, because **people know how to listen to music.** It doesn't require
of them any special taste or any special insider knowledge, and they can
do it without banging their head against a single puzzle for an hour or
more.
> So if this pastime is
> "devilishly addictive" as J.J. says maybe that's only the case for
> people who don't have the talent to actually do anything else.
On this point I would beg to differ. I find writing games very enjoyable
-- more enjoyable than playing them, in fact. But at the end of the day,
there are other activities that I feel will give me a stronger sense of
connection with my fellow humanoids.
--JA
mwigdahl
I wouldn't characterize IF as a dead end so much as a very specialized
niche of computer gaming, much like, say, bagpipe solos are a very
specialized niche of music. If you want to get rich and famous in
gaming or writing, you make World of Warcraft or write _The DaVinci
Code_. But a good bagpipe solo and a good IF can still move people,
still mean something, even with a small audience and a tiny prospect
of breakthrough success.
Also, IF is one of the few remaining genres of gaming where expected
production values haven't escalated to the point where a single person
can't complete a work by themselves any more. If there were more
money and fame in it, that wouldn't be the case for long. For a lot
of us hobbyists, that's an important point. I'd be happy as a player
if that changed, but I'd be less happy as an author, because there
would be less chance for me to contribute meaningfully.
Bottom line -- I love the bagpipes, plan to keep playing the bagpipes,
and am not worrying about whether I'd look cooler or get more chicks
playing an electric guitar instead.
Matt
J. J. Guest
I get a lot of pressure from friends and family to write straight
fiction and get something published. For them IF is something that is
holding me back, a phase I'm going through that I will eventually snap
out of. Well, I've got news for them. First of all writing books
doesn't guarantee fortune; there are plenty of published authors out
there who can't afford to give up their day jobs (most of them in
fact) and secondly being published is no guarantee of lasting fame,
books appear (good ones), don't sell particularly well and go out of
print fast. In many ways the only difference between writing IF and
writing 'static' fiction is the veneer of respectibility enjoyed by
the latter. You're about as likely to become the next Dan Brown as you
are to win X Factor (an apt comparison), and unless you're in it for
the money, why would you want to? Two of my favourite writers, S. J.
Perelman and Steve Gerber worked in the ephemeral world of magazine
columns and comic books, which also lack that veneer of
respectibility, but that doesn't make them any less important. It
might only take someone from a national newspaper to take notice of IF
and we could be catapulted into the limelight yet. Stranger things
have happened.
IF as a form is so fascinating I can't leave it alone. It uses both
sides of the brain; if I get stuck with the creative writing part I
can sit down and work out how to code a working model of a vaccuum
cleaner instead. For me one of the most enjoyable things about playing
IF is when you type something silly that you know isn't going to work,
only to find that the author has already thought of that and comes
back at you with a withering put-down. No other written form allows
such banter between author and reader, and for a comic writer it's
hard to resist. As for not having the talent to do anything else, (do
you mean all of us, Tatiana?) how many writers of static fiction know
how to code? I actually suspect that IF authors are a fairly special
breed.
As for authors supporting authors, I think the problem is that the
community is so small. We toil away in isolation because if we talked
about our work as we worked on it, we'd be giving out spoilers to our
whole audience. On RAIF we can ask questions about how to do this or
that in I7 or T3 (with spoiler-free substitutions) but we can't talk
about plot, characters or puzzle construction. What would be great
would be to be able to get together in small groups of three of four,
like artists sharing a studio, and bounce ideas around without sharing
them with the rest of the community. For all I know this already goes
on in the IF Mud or other forums and I'm just out of the loop!
- J. J. Guest
Conrad
> On this point I would beg to differ. I find writing games very enjoyable
> -- more enjoyable than playing them, in fact. But at the end of the day,
> there are other activities that I feel will give me a stronger sense of
> connection with my fellow humanoids.
I like it because it's a new art form. You don't come across one of
those every day.
Also, probably the lingering after-effects of playing _Planetfall_ as
a kid.
Conrad.
Rikard Peterson
<6a81de19-345a-4f05...@x12g2000yqx.googlegroups.com>,
"J. J. Guest" <jason...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What would be great
> would be to be able to get together in small groups of three of four,
> like artists sharing a studio, and bounce ideas around without sharing
> them with the rest of the community. For all I know this already goes
> on in the IF Mud or other forums and I'm just out of the loop!
Something that can come close to this is beta testing, if you start
early with a small group of testers.
/ Rikard
Andrew Plotkin
>
> What would be great would be to be able to get together in small
> groups of three of four, like artists sharing a studio, and bounce
> ideas around without sharing them with the rest of the community.
> For all I know this already goes on in the IF Mud or other forums
> and I'm just out of the loop!
It goes on in the Boston area, and I think Dan Shiovitz mentioned a
Seattle get-together.
Geographic distribution is a problem for a hobby this small. (Boston
supports more weird tech hobbyists than anywhere else I've ever
lived.) But it's also true that more people are interested in IF than
are interested in RAIF.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Jim Aikin
>
> As for authors supporting authors, I think the problem is that the
> community is so small. We toil away in isolation because if we talked
> about our work as we worked on it, we'd be giving out spoilers to our
> whole audience. On RAIF we can ask questions about how to do this or
> that in I7 or T3 (with spoiler-free substitutions) but we can't talk
> about plot, characters or puzzle construction. What would be great
> would be to be able to get together in small groups of three of four,
> like artists sharing a studio, and bounce ideas around without sharing
> them with the rest of the community.
A couple of years ago I set up an IF authors' workshop. It was
sporadically active for a few months, and then tapered off.
By now my recollections are hazy, but I believe there were a couple of
stumbling blocks.
First, most of us have other things that we do, so our commitment to IF
writing rises and falls. People can join a workshop, and then three
months later they're off doing something completely different.
Second, there can be some friction over what it means to "bounce ideas
around." One person quit the group (rather loudly) because they felt
that some of the remarks I made (about another person's game, IIRC) trod
on cultural values that were, in their view, sacrosanct. Or something
like that. The generalizable point, I think, is that what people are
prepared to contribute to a workshop, and what they hope to get from it,
are somewhat variable.
That said, I'd love to see someone else try organizing something along
these lines. Maybe this time it will catch fire instead of going down in
flames.
--JA
Tatiana
> Well, I've got news for them. First of all writing books
> doesn't guarantee fortune;
So what? Is that what you're hoping for? If that's the case, you still
have a much better chance of making more money with writing books than
writing IF. If money is your motivator.
> and secondly being published is no guarantee of lasting fame,
Is that what you're hoping for? If that's the case, you still have a
much better chance of getting at least some fame or recognition with
writing books than writing IF. If fame is your motivator.
> In many ways the only difference between writing IF and
> writing 'static' fiction is the veneer of respectibility enjoyed by
> the latter.
This makes it sound like you think it's a pretty thin veneer, which is
odd since "static fiction" has been around for quite some time. I
think that "respectability" -- if that's how you want to phrase it --
has been earned.
> Two of my favourite writers, S. J.
> Perelman and Steve Gerber worked in the ephemeral world of magazine
> columns and comic books, which also lack that veneer of
> respectibility,
They do? Comic books have a huge amount of "respectability" these days
and really have for a long time. Those superhero movies that everyone
flocks to lately. Where do you think those come from? Comic books!
Yes, decades ago comics had a hard time. They don't anymore at all.
It's possible to have a fantastic career in comic books. I'm not
saying that means you're going to be the MOST famous or the MOST rich
necessarily.
I'm confused what you're looking for here. You're talking about fame
and then money and then respecability. You seem like you're trying to
justify the time you spend. You said it's "infuriatingly difficult,
strangely unrewarding" but "devilishly addictive." If that's the case,
then great. Go with that. You like it because you like it. And that's
why you do it. I'm not sure what else needs to be said, particularly
if you aren't looking to make a bigger splash in some way.
> As for not having the talent to do anything else, (do
> you mean all of us, Tatiana?) how many writers of static fiction know
> how to code? I actually suspect that IF authors are a fairly special
> breed.
I don't pretend to know how many can code. I don't really care. What
I'm more curious about is how many people who know how to code also
know how to write. Just knowing how to code up stuff doesn't mean you
know anything about something that people will actually care about.
Personally I'm not looking for justification. I don't need to relate
the time I spend to notions fame, money or respectability or even
being part of a "special breed." Many people think they're part of a
"special breed." I personally know this is a hobbyist thing that goes
nowhere because no one outside of a small group really cares. And
there's nothing to indicate that will change. Maybe if you figure out
that addictive thing you mention and figure out how that can be
translated to other people. Maybe then they'd become addicted like
you. Maybe then you'd find out if it's just people without the talent
to write comic books or "static fiction" or if it's really a "special
breed" that gets attracted to IF.
Tatiana
> I like it because it's a new art form. You don't come across one of
> those every day.
If you define "new" as being something that started about three
decades ago, yeah. That certainly does make it younger than comics,
books, and other stuff. But it's also not _that_ new, like it was just
invented yesterday.
> Also, probably the lingering after-effects of playing _Planetfall_ as
> a kid.
Yes, I think this is what it largely is. There are many of us who grew
up with this stuff. It's basically nostalgia. There's a guy out there
who was in the news that's coming up with an 8-track museum. There's
people who write emulators for the Commodore 64. There's a group that
came up with a new form of BASIC to write Atari 2600 games. These
people all grew up with that stuff and have a fondness for it. If you
then realize that maybe you can write some of that stuff that you
couldn't back then, it feels special. It's like you're recapturing
something of your past. I think part of the addiction for many people
with IF is the same thing. I know that's why IF will always hold a
special place in my heart. I just don't take it too much further than
that, though, because I know that creatively it's a dead end unless
there's a massive resurgence in it. The difference I've noticed is
that people who have been working in IF seem to take it a lot more
seriously than those other nostalgia-based things. And that's often
seemed to make IF people more defensive and more combative. It's like
people forget that it's really just being done for fun and not for too
much else: but it often gets taken as being more serious than it is.
Jim Aikin
> On Mar 14, 7:16 am, "J. J. Guest"<jason.gu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Well, I've got news for them. First of all writing books
>> doesn't guarantee fortune;
>
> So what? Is that what you're hoping for? If that's the case, you still
> have a much better chance of making more money with writing books than
> writing IF. If money is your motivator.
Maybe I'm misreading you, Tatiana. You may have meant this differently
than it comes across (to me, anyhow). I have the impression that you're
saying that J.J.'s desire for money, fame, and respectability are
wrong-headed or irrelevant. If that's what you're saying, may I
respectfully suggest that you're wrong?
As I read it, J.J. is saying something like, "Gee, I love writing IF.
I'm frustrated that it doesn't lead to money, fame, or respectability."
I, for one, find none of that difficult to understand.
> They do? Comic books have a huge amount of "respectability" these days
> and really have for a long time.
Having been through the r.a.i-f meatgrinder once already on this topic,
I should probably just stay out of it. Suffice it to say that some of us
_do_ continue to feel that, for anyone over the age of 14, comic books
are a silly waste of time. You may disagree, but we're entitled to our
opinion.
--JA
Peter Pears
> _do_ continue to feel that, for anyone over the age of 14, comic books
> are a silly waste of time. You may disagree, but we're entitled to our
> opinion.
I can't help but butt in with a note about V for Vendetta, Watchmen,
and most especially the Sandman series. Most, most especially the
Sandman series.
Tatiana, it's been three decades. In those three decades, IF has been
experimenting wildly. 3 decades is *nothing* in terms of history. IF
*is* new, and it's accomplished a hell of a lot in the three decades
it's existed for. Sure, it's a bit of a niche genre. So is "mindfuck".
So are the notion of interactive movies on the TV. So is that crazy
book whose title I don't remember - fallen leaves? House of leaves?
Something like that.
IF is innovative in the sense that it does with literature what
graphic adventure games did with movies, some with more success than
others - and like books, IF is not limited in the way movies are. In
our three decades, we've actually tapped into a LOT of what we can do.
And we're still tapping and looking.
IF is niche, sure. So what? It's still a means of producing art.
Comercial acceptance is fine if it's there, but it's not required.
Tatiana
> Maybe I'm misreading you, Tatiana. You may have meant this differently
> than it comes across (to me, anyhow). I have the impression that you're
> saying that J.J.'s desire for money, fame, and respectability are
> wrong-headed or irrelevant. If that's what you're saying, may I
> respectfully suggest that you're wrong?
No, what I'm saying is that if fame or money ARE your motivators, then
working in IF is probably not the smartest move. If "respectability"
is your motivator, then I guess it just depends on how you define
that. I didn't say they were not things worth seeking. What I thought
I was clear in saying was that if that's what you're seeking, perhaps
spending your time in another endeavor is more worthwhile than wasting
time writing a lot of IF that will likely get you know of those
things.
> As I read it, J.J. is saying something like, "Gee, I love writing IF.
> I'm frustrated that it doesn't lead to money, fame, or respectability."
I don't know if he is saying he's frustrated by that. That's partly
what I was saying. I don't what the motivator is. I just know three
things -- money, fame, "respectability" were mentioned -- without any
idea if those mattered or not.
> Having been through the r.a.i-f meatgrinder once already on this topic,
> I should probably just stay out of it. Suffice it to say that some of us
> _do_ continue to feel that, for anyone over the age of 14, comic books
> are a silly waste of time. You may disagree, but we're entitled to our
> opinion.
Of course you're entitled to your opinion. But comic books are an art
form and unless you've spent a lot of time reading them and watching
them evolve, perhaps reserving judgment is a good idea. They have
become quite sophisticated in many respects and there is a lot of
talent required to tell a story solely in pictures. And even if these
things are a waste of time, as you say, they get far more readership
or involvement than anything IF has done or continues to do. As such,
it's interesting to consider what's really the "waste of time." But
it also depends on what that means. Lots of things can be a waste of
time. Writing a novel could be a waste of time. So could composing
music. So could reading a comic book. So could writing IF. It's an
easy thing to get all opinionated about, I suppose.
Traviswf
> I'm confused what you're looking for here. You're talking about fame
> and then money and then respecability. You seem like you're trying to
> justify the time you spend. You said it's "infuriatingly difficult,
> strangely unrewarding" but "devilishly addictive." If that's the case,
> then great. Go with that. You like it because you like it. And that's
> why you do it. I'm not sure what else needs to be said, particularly
> if you aren't looking to make a bigger splash in some way.
I think JJ was having one of those moments ANYONE has with a creative
endeavor: Is this worth it? His post really felt to me like: "I know
this is worthwhile, because it FEELS worthwhile - but it's very
difficult to convince others that it is." And the "others" in our
lives are often a very loud and insistent voice. At least if he was
plugging away at a novel, it COULD be something. It COULD BE the next
Pride and Prejudice, or at least Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
That is probably never going to happen with IF. To me - that's one of
the things that makes it so attractive. I make my living as a writer
- and EVERYTHING is about what sells, what works, who is producing
what - what has heat - who is attached, blah blah blah. The amount of
time you actually talk about story or the writing is dwarfed by all of
this other stuff. With IF - it's that lack of commercial potential
that makes it more... pure. For lack of a better word.
> I don't pretend to know how many can code. I don't really care. What
> I'm more curious about is how many people who know how to code also
> know how to write. Just knowing how to code up stuff doesn't mean you
> know anything about something that people will actually care about.
> Personally I'm not looking for justification. I don't need to relate
> the time I spend to notions fame, money or respectability or even
> being part of a "special breed." Many people think they're part of a
> "special breed." I personally know this is a hobbyist thing that goes
> nowhere because no one outside of a small group really cares. And
> there's nothing to indicate that will change. Maybe if you figure out
> that addictive thing you mention and figure out how that can be
> translated to other people. Maybe then they'd become addicted like
> you. Maybe then you'd find out if it's just people without the talent
> to write comic books or "static fiction" or if it's really a "special
> breed" that gets attracted to IF.
I do think IF authors are a "special breed." Maybe not as much as
ninjas or werewolves, but that mix of talent with programming and
writing is rare. And it IS hard. I've been trying to learn how to do
this for years and life always gets in the way. Life and pursuits
that will earn me money. But I've been "dabbling" and playing games
and lurking in this community for over a decade and have no doubt I
will continue to do so for another decade.
And I disagree it's just nostalgia. Do people go to the movies
because they're nostalgic for the movies they loved as kids? Is that
all its about, but it happens to make tons of money so it gets a
pass? Infocom games introduced the medium, but that doesn't mean the
medium is still about just trying to re-capture those glory days.
Is it a "dead end?" I'm not sure it is. It's useful as a teaching
tool - as Jim Aiken has shown. There is something singular about IF
and JJ is right, it IS a "new art form." Infocom and Level 9 didn't
exhaust the possibilities. The medium of computer entertainment just
advanced and the public moved on. It doesn't make the medium less
interesting or vibrant because it's not commercially viable.
Just as the massive success of the Twilight books and Michael Bay
movies do not make them great works of art.
Tatiana
> I think JJ was having one of those moments ANYONE has with a creative
> endeavor: Is this worth it?
That's obvious. What's not obvious is how he defines "worth it." That
will be something that differs for people. I already went over this:
fame, money, and "respectability." Is that what's being sought to make
it "worth it?" I don't know.
> His post really felt to me like: "I know
> this is worthwhile, because it FEELS worthwhile - but it's very
> difficult to convince others that it is."
So do you have to convince others that what you are doing is
worthwhile to make it actually worthwhile? I know I don't. I don't
feel the need to justify a hobby.
> this other stuff. With IF - it's that lack of commercial potential
> that makes it more... pure. For lack of a better word.
Ah, here's another to add to possible motivators: purity. So now we
have fame, money, "respectability", "worth it", and "purity."
> I do think IF authors are a "special breed." Maybe not as much as
> ninjas or werewolves, but that mix of talent with programming and
> writing is rare.
How do you know how rare it is?
> And I disagree it's just nostalgia. Do people go to the movies
> because they're nostalgic for the movies they loved as kids?
It can be, yes. Consider the massive number of remakes that
continually come out. But IF is a different category of thing than
movies and thus you can't judge the nostalgia factor the same way.
> Infocom games introduced the medium, but that doesn't mean the
> medium is still about just trying to re-capture those glory days.
Okay. What is the medium "about"?
> exhaust the possibilities. The medium of computer entertainment just
> advanced and the public moved on. It doesn't make the medium less
> interesting or vibrant because it's not commercially viable.
I'm not talking about commercially viable again. There we go with the
money thing. What I'm talking about is the total lack of interest.
That doesn't require _commercially_ viable. I'm talking about the lack
of viability due to the lack of an interested audience beyond a very
limited set. You said it yourself: "the public moved on." IF as "art
form" clearly doesn't interest too many people. The ones it does
interest seem, by and large, to have grown up with it but not "moved
on" with the public.
> Just as the massive success of the Twilight books and Michael Bay
> movies do not make them great works of art.
It depends on who you ask to judge whether "art" is "great." You
presume a lot when you say something is or isn't a "great work of art"
because someone could say that an interested viewership IS a measure
of that. Maybe you don't agree. But that doesn't mean your measure is
more valid than theirs.
Traviswf
> Of course you're entitled to your opinion. But comic books are an art
> form and unless you've spent a lot of time reading them and watching
> them evolve, perhaps reserving judgment is a good idea. They have
> become quite sophisticated in many respects and there is a lot of
> talent required to tell a story solely in pictures. And even if these
> things are a waste of time, as you say, they get far more readership
> or involvement than anything IF has done or continues to do. As such,
> it's interesting to consider what's really the "waste of time." But
> it also depends on what that means. Lots of things can be a waste of
> time. Writing a novel could be a waste of time. So could composing
> music. So could reading a comic book. So could writing IF. It's an
> easy thing to get all opinionated about, I suppose.
I agree with you about comics - but to draw from an earlier post of
yours - I would add that you can only have a fantastic career writing
SUPERHERO comics. Everything else has pretty dismal sales. And
comics are a niche too - with a dwindling direct market sales model.
The most vibrant discussions in comic fandom are usually about whether
or not they should have brought back Bucky or killed Hal Jordan
(again). The majority of this business is nostalgia-driven, in my
opinion, because it's middle aged men unwilling to leave their
childhood stories behind.
That doesn't mean great writers aren't doing good work on superheroes
- but it's still just ANOTHER Batman story or ANOTHER Spider-Man
story. And I feel that's an issue of the audience refusing to invest
in new stories.
I was going to try and tie this back into IF to keep it somewhat on
topic... OH!
I think you're exactly right on the issue of "wasting time." This
notion changes constantly for all of us I'm sure. I've written
material that was intended to sell - then it did not - was that a
"waste of time?" Sometimes it feels like it, for sure. Then again I
spent a whole lot of 2002 playing Everquest. That was, most
certainly, a "waste of time" in any sense of the word - but I had a
blast and wouldn't give it up for anything.
Time spent watching Joss Whedon's Dollhouse I would like back...
JJ was looking for some shoulders to cry on or ears to bend on this
issue - he actually said so in his post that part of the problem with
IF is that feeling that you're doing it alone in a vacuum. I have
exactly TWO flesh and blood friends who are at all interested in IF.
It can be tough, I'm sure - especially if you're trying to complete
something and you're at an impasse.
Traviswf
> On Mar 14, 2:32 pm, Traviswf <travi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I think JJ was having one of those moments ANYONE has with a creative
> > endeavor: Is this worth it?
>
> That's obvious. What's not obvious is how he defines "worth it." That
> will be something that differs for people. I already went over this:
> fame, money, and "respectability." Is that what's being sought to make
> it "worth it?" I don't know.
Yeah, you went over it in a post before I posted. We have a bit of
redundancy there.
> > His post really felt to me like: "I know
> > this is worthwhile, because it FEELS worthwhile - but it's very
> > difficult to convince others that it is."
>
> So do you have to convince others that what you are doing is
> worthwhile to make it actually worthwhile? I know I don't. I don't
> feel the need to justify a hobby.
I think JJ was looking for a bit of help to justify the hobby. At
least in this moment. So he reached out to other authors who
constantly face the same questions of "is this the best use of my
time." I think it's a completely valid dilemma, because writing IF is
more intensive than, say, scrapbooking or origami. (Both of those
claims I make in complete ignorance having done neither...)
> > this other stuff. With IF - it's that lack of commercial potential
> > that makes it more... pure. For lack of a better word.
>
> Ah, here's another to add to possible motivators: purity. So now we
> have fame, money, "respectability", "worth it", and "purity."
But purity is already attained! Mission accomplished.
> > I do think IF authors are a "special breed." Maybe not as much as
> > ninjas or werewolves, but that mix of talent with programming and
> > writing is rare.
>
> How do you know how rare it is?
Every writer I know is not a programmer. Every programmer I know is
not a writer. Other than that, I have no hard statistics.
> > And I disagree it's just nostalgia. Do people go to the movies
> > because they're nostalgic for the movies they loved as kids?
>
> It can be, yes. Consider the massive number of remakes that
> continually come out. But IF is a different category of thing than
> movies and thus you can't judge the nostalgia factor the same way.
Both IF and movies are a storytelling or narrative medium. I'm not
sure what makes them in different categories for the purpose of this
argument.
> > Infocom games introduced the medium, but that doesn't mean the
> > medium is still about just trying to re-capture those glory days.
>
> Okay. What is the medium "about"?
It's about telling interactive stories. About a different
relationship between author and player or "interactor." At least for
me that's what it's about.
> > exhaust the possibilities. The medium of computer entertainment just
> > advanced and the public moved on. It doesn't make the medium less
> > interesting or vibrant because it's not commercially viable.
>
> I'm not talking about commercially viable again. There we go with the
> money thing. What I'm talking about is the total lack of interest.
> That doesn't require _commercially_ viable. I'm talking about the lack
> of viability due to the lack of an interested audience beyond a very
> limited set. You said it yourself: "the public moved on." IF as "art
> form" clearly doesn't interest too many people. The ones it does
> interest seem, by and large, to have grown up with it but not "moved
> on" with the public.
Money is an important factor because everything in life essentially
boils down to "It is" or "it isn't" worth doing. And if it makes you
enough money, it's instantly "worth doing" if the money is good
enough. Ask any actor who has been in a Michael Bay movie.
> > Just as the massive success of the Twilight books and Michael Bay
> > movies do not make them great works of art.
> It depends on who you ask to judge whether "art" is "great." You
> presume a lot when you say something is or isn't a "great work of art"
> because someone could say that an interested viewership IS a measure
> of that. Maybe you don't agree. But that doesn't mean your measure is
> more valid than theirs.
Of course, the value of art is always subjective. And I didn't say
Twilight and Michael Bay movies AREN'T great art - but their
commercial success alone does not make them so. Someone could say "an
interested viewership IS a measure of that." Someone could also say
"Robot pig bacon salad socialist" - but that doesn't make it mean
anything.
My point being that - of course Twilight and Michael Bay have VALUE.
People love clearly love them and nobody can take that away from
them. You can't just point at all the young girls who love Twilight
and say "You're wrong."
You can do that with Michael Bay movies though, because those are
terrible.
Kathrel
coder, but an amateur writer. AND I enjoy creating IF so far, and
I don't really care if I ever get a huge audience or not - even if it'd be
nice. It's a new way of expressing things that I want to express, and that's
that.
However, having just read a blurb by Elizabeth Moon on SFWA
(http://www.sfwa.org/2006/01/tanstaafl-and-the-novice-writer/) about
TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch), I am wondering if
there has been made any serious buisness efforts from the community, if any
one community can be said to exist, regarding spreading IF. Writing has its
editors, magazines, publishers and agents, and they all work *for* the
product. Writers (mostly) produce. IF got raif (which by its very nature is
exclusive), I heard about Textfyre since I joined in here, and I have since
discovered several interesting blogs, and that there is in fact a bit of
research being done on IF. However, it strikes me that these venues are
mostly ABOUT IF, not really targetted at promoting IF. (With the exception
of Textfyre.)
As I said, I'm a newcomer and my views are based on superficial observations
only. But with Elizabeth Moon's words in mind I feel inclined to think that,
"if you want it to be so, there's no other way than making it so." Possibly
IF writers generally are too little buisness oriented to make the effort on
the scale required? Most traditional art has its buisness (involves trade,
right?). The more established venues just have a lot more history and polish
to make the trade seem attractive to a socially conscious audience.
Hum. I see my post took a tangent to the left of the main thread. Oh well.
I'll just leave it here :)
Kath
"J. J. Guest" <jason...@gmail.com> skrev i melding
news:a8563bcc-0b4c-4c5d...@t41g2000yqt.googlegroups.com...
Rikard Peterson
<9a32097d-5504-4e9d...@15g2000yqi.googlegroups.com>,
Tatiana <tatma...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yes, I think this is what it largely is. There are many of us who grew
> up with this stuff. It's basically nostalgia.
That's probably part of it, sure. But some of us here (me! me!) didn't
grow up with the stuff, and still find it interesting, so you're not
right in dismissing it that easily.
Tatiana
> That's probably part of it, sure. But some of us here (me! me!) didn't
> grow up with the stuff, and still find it interesting...
Okay, but does "find it interesting" mean you do anything with it? Is
it interesting enough for you to spend a certain amount of your time
actually producing things with? Speaking for myself, I find IF
interesting as well, but more as a thing to observe and maybe once in
awhile play. I have little desire to actually write something in IF
because it would take away time from my more productive writing
pursuits, which is screenplays. So my interest only extends so far,
largely to the extent that I don't think I'm wasting my time. I'm just
wondering if there's some correlation between people who "didn't grow
up with the stuff" and those who actually still do substantive amount
of work in IF, particularly writing it. It would also be interesting
to know how many people actually stick with it. If IF does attract
people who didn't grow up with it, and if those people actually do
produce something with IF, do they tend to do so more than once? Is IF
as a community at least interested enough in itself to track such
things?
George Oliver
> A couple of years ago I set up an IF authors' workshop. It was
> sporadically active for a few months, and then tapered off.
[....]
> That said, I'd love to see someone else try organizing something along
> these lines. Maybe this time it will catch fire instead of going down in
> flames.
It seems like with a small group it's much easier to keep that kind of
thing going with in person meetings (at least I feel that way with the
Seattle group), or something beyond the online text thing.
Maybe with an online group something could be done with Skype/Vent?
Conrad
> On Mar 14, 7:17 am, Conrad <conradc...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I like it because it's a new art form. You don't come across one of
> > those every day.
>
> If you define "new" as being something that started about three
> decades ago, yeah. That certainly does make it younger than comics,
> books, and other stuff. But it's also not _that_ new, like it was just
> invented yesterday.
Well, in art-form years.
> > Also, probably the lingering after-effects of playing _Planetfall_ as
> > a kid.
>
> Yes, I think this is what it largely is. There are many of us who grew
> up with this stuff. It's basically nostalgia. ...
> ... I know that's why IF will always hold a
> special place in my heart. I just don't take it too much further than
> that, though, because I know that creatively it's a dead end unless
> there's a massive resurgence in it.
Oh, I think that's putting it pretty strongly. It's a fringe field,
but it does have its fans, a community -- even if a small one -- and
people in 'real' game programming fields keep an eye on us to see when
we do something interesting.
But certainly it's a fringe field, and a small one, yes.
> The difference I've noticed is
> that people who have been working in IF seem to take it a lot more
> seriously than those other nostalgia-based things. And that's often
> seemed to make IF people more defensive and more combative. It's like
> people forget that it's really just being done for fun and not for too
> much else: but it often gets taken as being more serious than it is.
I'm not sure IF folks are more combatative and defensive than other
people. But many of us do take our IF fun seriously, and personally I
like that. *Kids* take their fun seriously, and kids are the experts
in fun.
Conrad.
Andrew Plotkin
>
> However, having just read a blurb by Elizabeth Moon on SFWA
> (http://www.sfwa.org/2006/01/tanstaafl-and-the-novice-writer/) about
> TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch), I am wondering if
> there has been made any serious buisness efforts from the community, if any
> one community can be said to exist, regarding spreading IF.
Serious efforts, yes. *Well-organized and effective* efforts, maybe
not. :)
> Writing has its editors, magazines, publishers and agents, and they
> all work *for* the product.
That's true, but those exist because there *is* a product -- selling
steadily and making money, which goes to the writers, editors,
publishers, agents, ...
If I knew how to sell my work (not just "post to RAIF and ask for
money", but an actual business marketing effort that would reach the
public) I would try to jump-start that cycle. I don't know how to do
that. Dave Cornelson is making that effort right now, but his business
hasn't taken off yet.
What we have now is analogous to the world of *non-commercial*
writing. If you go looking for fanfic, for example, you'll find lots
of recommendation lists, collections, archives, chatter on Livejournal
and blogs, amateur competitions... but not publishers or agents. No
product, no money. That's where the IF world is today (and for the
past many years).
(For different reasons, of course. Fanfic has legal issues, IF has
obscurity issues.)
To some extent, the upcoming PAX activities (two weeks from now in
Boston) are IF's big promotional push. It's certainly the biggest
gathering of IF people in the past -- ten years? Twenty years? The
biggest I've heard of in the English-speaking IF world, at least.
It's not a *business* promotion (although Dave will be there) but
it will raise awareness, and I'm curious to see if anything will come
of that.
> Hum. I see my post took a tangent to the left of the main thread.
That's cool -- the main thread seems to be taking a turn towards the
personal and nasty. :(
Traviswf
It seems enough people stick with it for there to be several
substantial games released each year. When i first started playing
"amateur" IF - there were no games released by Emily Short, Eric Eve
or Aaron Reed. There was no book about it, no documentary produced.
So I wouldn't say the field is in its waning days right now.
And if you write IF - you can release a game. People can play it. It
can have a life on IFDB. Maybe tens of people will play it. But
that's a life for a creative project. if some dude in Australia
you've never met plays and enjoys your game - there's something
undeniably cool about that.
As for writing screenplays - that is a pursuit that is contingent upon
further success. The work unto itself has no real life until someone
produces it. It's certainly a worthy pursuit - but even established
screenwriters are fighting an uphill battle every time they write
something.
I guess I would challenge the notion that it is "more productive" to
write screenplays. It is if you're looking for money, fame and all of
those other previously mentioned goals. Because you can certainly
make a nice living writing screenplays; and you simply can't writing
IF. But plenty of people have written scripts with nothing to show
for it but a whole lot of courier 12.
Rikard Peterson
<757c87cc-130a-4988...@k17g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>,
Tatiana <tatma...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Mar 14, 3:36 pm, Rikard Peterson <trumgott...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>
> > That's probably part of it, sure. But some of us here (me! me!) didn't
> > grow up with the stuff, and still find it interesting...
>
> Okay, but does "find it interesting" mean you do anything with it? Is
> it interesting enough for you to spend a certain amount of your time
> actually producing things with?
I have never created any IF, no, and I doubt that I ever will, but I do
spend a lot of my time making graphical adventure games which is similar
in many ways.
Jim Aikin
>
> However, having just read a blurb by Elizabeth Moon on SFWA
> (http://www.sfwa.org/2006/01/tanstaafl-and-the-novice-writer/) about
> TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch), I am wondering if
> one community can be said to exist, regarding spreading IF.
As Andrew said, there have been some efforts. He mentioned Textfyre. My
impression is that Peter Nepstad made a significant chunk of change with
"1893" -- but (a) he did it by marketing entirely outside the context of
computer gaming, and (b) he hasn't, to my knowledge, followed up with
any new games.
And then, of course, there's Howard Sherman. His games are, from what
I've seen, not very good (and that's putting it mildly), his boasts
about his sales figures are highly suspect, and his failure to
acknowledge Graham Nelson as the author of Inform 6 is rather creepy ...
but his marketing efforts are really quite well organized, and he has
kept at it for years. After I downloaded a demo of one of his games, I
received seven or eight well-spaced follow-up emails attempting to
entice me to buy the game. Also, he has managed to place features on his
company and games in important online gaming zines. By any realistic
measure, he's making a serious business effort.
> As I said, I'm a newcomer and my views are based on superficial observations
> only. But with Elizabeth Moon's words in mind I feel inclined to think that,
> "if you want it to be so, there's no other way than making it so." Possibly
> IF writers generally are too little business oriented to make the effort on
> the scale required? Most traditional art has its buisness (involves trade,
> right?). The more established venues just have a lot more history and polish
> to make the trade seem attractive to a socially conscious audience.
You're raising a good topic, one that has been kicked around a few
times. My take on it comes, I think, from Theodore Sturgeon, an SF
writer of an earlier generation. Sturgeon, or whoever it was, said,
"Your competition is not the novel that's sitting next to yours on the
shelf at the bookstore. Your competition is a six-pack of beer. A guy
has a couple of dollars to spend, and he could spend it on your book, or
on a six-pack. You need to offer him something that will appeal to him
more than the six-pack does."
Consumers in search of entertainment products have an _enormous_ range
of choices today -- movies, video games, cable TV, sporting events,
concerts, weekend getaways to the wine country, and so on. That's your
competition as an IF author. It's quite likely that ten people, or
fifty, or a hundred, will prefer playing your game to watching TV or
playing with their Wii. (No pun intended.) But to sustain a business,
you need not a hundred people but a hundred _thousand_ people who will
find your game enticing.
In order to reach them, you'll need (a) a game that will actually give
them a tangible emotional reward, (b) an investment in promotion so that
they'll know about the game, and (c) a sales mechanism (online or
otherwise) that will make it easy for them to buy the game. Oh, and very
possibly a copy-protection mechanism that will keep them from making
free copies for their friends.
Now look at it from the other side. If you're an entrepreneur who has
the talent and the resources necessary to put something like that
together, how likely is it that interactive fiction would catch your eye
as a great field to get involved in?
It's possible that the new generation of digital telephones and
handhelds will open up a market for IF that an entrepreneur would want
to exploit. But on the other hand, the phone/handheld software market is
already pretty darn crowded, isn't it? Is there a real business
opportunity there? I'm not an entrepreneur, so I won't even try to guess.
--JA
S. John Ross
The respectability of individual _works_ has been earned, but when
people attribute any of that to some imagined value inherent to the
medium, it's nonsense. "The Hobbit" or "Call of the Wild" or "Jane
Eyre" may well have earned their laurels, but their medium - the novel
- remains inherently worthless ... exactly like every other creative
medium. Belief to the contrary amounts to superstition (and it's
common enough that it attracts writers hoping that some of the glamor
rubs off).
Kathrel
:) Interesting to hear, though. It would seem that with all the new gadgets;
Ipads, Kindles, reading boards, phones and whatnot, there would indeed be an
untapped market for IF, but perhaps closer to traditional fiction than to
traditional games?
I think conventional publishing houses are desperatly looking for something
that will give them an edge in today's tech saturated entertainment market.
If it's pitched to them just right, AND if there is sufficient high quality
content (??), they have the power and know how to market... is that an
unlikely thought?
Kath
"Kathrel" <i.m....@online.no> skrev i melding
news:VpOdnWS0Tc-Q2gDW...@giganews.com...
Jim Aikin
> I guess my rookie-ness shines through in my lack familiarity with IF history
> :) Interesting to hear, though. It would seem that with all the new gadgets;
> Ipads, Kindles, reading boards, phones and whatnot, there would indeed be an
> untapped market for IF, but perhaps closer to traditional fiction than to
> traditional games?
>
> that will give them an edge in today's tech saturated entertainment market.
> If it's pitched to them just right, AND if there is sufficient high quality
> content (??), they have the power and know how to market... is that an
> unlikely thought?
Publishing houses are always looking for breakout books, of course. But
the business decision to publish a book -- any book -- is a decision to
spend tens of thousands of dollars. They have to commission cover art.
They have to pay for paper, binding, warehousing, and shipping. And if
they actually do anything to _promote_ the book, that's another huge
expense.
If you go into a brick-and-mortar bookstore, you'll see the latest hot
books displayed on enticing racks on the ends of the shelf units. I
believe those are called end-caps. I could be wrong about the term. But
my understanding is that the publisher _pays_ for position on the
end-caps in a chain bookstore. That's part of the promotional budget --
to make the book visible to you when you walk into the store.
Given all those costs, acquisition editors have little or no incentive
to take risks. The safest thing for them to do is say "no" to a project.
The editor who buys the IF title is going to have to explain to the
sales force how to sell IF, because they don't know how. Pretend you're
a fly on the wall at that sales meeting, and imagine how the
conversation is going to go. That might be a useful exercise.
No, what they want is a new book that's as much as possible like last
fall's best seller -- but with a new title, slightly different cover
art, and a slightly different story on the inside. They can explain that
to the sales force. They can say, "It's a hard-boiled detective series,
but with kinky sex and vampires." Everybody nods and scribbles on their
memo pads, and book is on its way to the top of the New York Times best
seller list.
If you'd like to get a mainstream publishing house interested in testing
the waters with an IF title, I would suggest that you do your best to
include, in some mix, as many of the following ingredients as you can
manage:
1) License, if possible, the electronic sequel rights to a hit series by
a best-selling author. This will give the publicity department a _huge_
leg up. If your cousin knows Terry Pratchett or Patricia Cornwell
personally, you're off to a fine start.
2) Have your agent line up glowing endorsements to print on the cover --
preferably from Dean Koontz and Laurell K. Hamilton.
3) Have your publicist line up a segment on Oprah in which you talk
about the wonderful response to your previous IF titles. (If you've
already been on Oprah, even once, I guarantee publishers will be
interested.)
4) Choose an absolutely unstoppable story line. Study Hollywood action
adventure movies closely, and make sure you hit _all_ of the right notes.
5) Build the website first, before your agent pitches the title to the
acquisitions editor. This will show them that you're serious. It will
also insure that nobody at the publishing house has to use an iota of
imagination.
Of course, if you're going to do all that, you might want to reconsider
whether to let a mainstream publisher stiff you with a measly 5% of the
cover price per unit sold, because that's what they're going to do. You
might want to put your effort into a massive self-publishing endeavor
instead. You'll make more money that way, and have more artistic control
too.
I'm not trying to be cynical, honest. (I don't have to try -- it comes
naturally.) I would _love_ to see a mainstream publisher go for an IF
title, but it's a big rock to push out of the mouth of the cave.
Eragon started life as IF, by the way. You can still play it on
Christopher Paolini's website. I don't know what technology was used,
either for authoring (probably I6) or hosting. But it seems clear that
Paolini has not forsaken his roots, because the game is still there, so
he might be the best wedge into the publishing world, if any IF authors
want a shot at this. Get in touch with him and show him your credentials
as an author. Ask if he'd like you to develop a new Eragon game, and ask
if he'll introduce you to his agent.
Hey, why am I telling you this? I ought to do it myself.
--JA
George Oliver
> Ipads, Kindles, reading boards, phones and whatnot, there would indeed be an
> untapped market for IF, but perhaps closer to traditional fiction than to
> traditional games?
>
> I think conventional publishing houses are desperatly looking for something
> that will give them an edge in today's tech saturated entertainment market.
> If it's pitched to them just right, AND if there is sufficient high quality
> content (??), they have the power and know how to market... is that an
> unlikely thought?
It's not a bad idea. But in these kinds of discussions, that go back a
ways on raif, Intfiction and so on, they always go over the same
ground...should IF be in bookstores, or not bookstores, in untapped
markets for phones, or on e-readers, with 'big-name' writers, or
graphics, or slick UIs, or mouse-driven interfaces instead of parsers,
or better parsers...
There is no lack of this kind of discussion, but what there is a serious
lack of compared to 99% of the rest of the mediums of books and games is
people trying to sell their work. There are lively freeware communities
for all sorts of games, large and small, indie RPGs, board games, FPSs,
RTSs, etcetera, but in each one of these genres there are healthy
numbers of people also marketing and selling their work, whether they
sell 40 copies or 4000 copies.
Do you need more than one hand to count the number of IF authors who've
done the same? Peter Nepstead, Kent Tessman, Howard Sherman, Textfyre,
S. John Ross, Cascade Mountain Publishing, OK, maybe you have to be some
sort of alien or mutant, but the point remains. Why is this so? I guess
if you don't consider IF as just parser-driver early period Infocom
style games, then the point is less valid. But just to take this
particular branch of the genre, I've always thought it's a little strange.
J. J. Guest
> On Mar 14, 1:00 pm, Jim Aikin <midigur...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > As I read it, J.J. is saying something like, "Gee, I love writing IF.
> > I'm frustrated that it doesn't lead to money, fame, or respectability."
>
> I don't know if he is saying he's frustrated by that. That's partly
> what I was saying. I don't what the motivator is. I just know three
> things -- money, fame, "respectability" were mentioned -- without any
> idea if those mattered or not.
Absolutely. The point I was making there was that my friends and
family seem to think fame and money, especially money *ought* to be
the motivating factor behind writing, and that I should "write
something that will make me money", meaning a novel. I went on to
point out that writing books often doesn't make you enough to live on,
and that I stick with IF because it interests me. I'd love to be able
to make a living from writing IF but I know that isn't likely, and I'm
not driven by a desire for fame and money but by an interest in the
medium.
- J. J. Guest
J. J. Guest
After seeing the Eragon site, (and I seem to remember there was
another book that used IF to promote it around the same time?) I
approached the author Robert Rankin about collaborating on a game set
within his "Brentford Trilogy" universe, perhaps to tie in with a
future publication. He sent me a very polite handwritten postcard*
explaining that he was an "unrepentant luddite" and that computer
games were not his thing, but I'm sure there must be other authors who
would be open to the idea.
- J. J. Guest
* A rooftop view of Brentford, for those of you who know his work.
Tatiana
> approached the author Robert Rankin about collaborating on a game set
> within his "Brentford Trilogy" universe, perhaps to tie in with a
> future publication. He sent me a very polite handwritten postcard*
> explaining that he was an "unrepentant luddite" and that computer
> games were not his thing
A pity he only saw it as a "computer game" and not a new "art
form." :)
I wonder if sometimes this isn't the problem with how people approach
this stuff. You mentioned people felt you should be in a pursuit
that's more possibly of earning fame or money, but I also wonder if
part of it was that they saw what you were doing as "just" a computer
game. I know some people who feel computer games are a waste of time,
just as much as Jim Aiken earlier said some feel comic books are a
waste of time. If you then tell them you're working in computer games
that very few care about because the "public has moved on," the
viewpoint is at least a bit more understandable. I'm not saying you
should change your mind or now start seeking fame or fortune. Like I
said, I don't feel the need to justify a hobby, but I also recognize
when that's all I'm dealing with. Maybe other people in your life just
need to realize that as well?
namekuseijin
> > And then of course there are the turkeys, the ones you do release that
> > drop like a lead balloon. Unleashing "Escape from the Crazy Place"
> > upon the IF world was always going to be a risk; a twenty-five year
> > old labour of love that I was just too attached to to properly edit
> > and refine. The damning SPAG review is a blot on my copybook but it's
> > still the game I love the most and it's still the game I've received
> > the most fanmail for.
>
> others on IFDB. Hardly a statistically significant sample. And if
> you're getting fanmail - then who cares about the critics!! Encourage
> those writing the mail to go rate or review the game on IFDB.
Well, considering there're fans for junk food, B-movies and other
mediocre kinds of amusement, getting impressed with statistical
ratings from fans is just a form self-denial.
> Unfortunately, IFDB can be an unreliable source for finding a game you
> might like. There's some guy on their with the ID "Amber Shards" and
> he seems to hate everything. Honestly, the amount of games he gives
> horrible reviews and low ratings - it's a wonder he plays IF at all.
> Luckily, he takes special delight in slamming established authors -
> and they have enough positive reviews and ratings to balance it out.
Sounds like Jacek Pudlo.
namekuseijin
> If I went through years and years of producing
> things and all I had to look back on was stuff I wrote in IF, I'd
> consider that a sad state of affairs. So if this pasttime is
> "devilishly addictive" as J.J. says maybe that's only the case for
> people who don't have the talent to actually do anything else.
like poetry? who cares about that? Is it RAP? Does it features cool
guys and luscious babes dancing, talking to the camera like angry
parents at a kid? Is it on TV? No? Then who friggin' cares about
poetry? why pursue it in this day and age?
namekuseijin
> On Mar 14, 7:17 am, Conrad <conradc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Also, probably the lingering after-effects of playing _Planetfall_ as
> > a kid.
>
> Yes, I think this is what it largely is. There are many of us who grew
> up with this stuff. It's basically nostalgia.
Not for me. I didn't have a computer when I was a kid, I had an Atari
2600. I only discovered Infocom /after/ playing games from ifcomp in
the late 90's. I'm sure I'm not alone in that.
Andrew Plotkin
>
> Publishing houses are always looking for breakout books, of course. But
> the business decision to publish a book -- any book -- is a decision to
> spend tens of thousands of dollars. They have to commission cover art.
> They have to pay for paper, binding, warehousing, and shipping. And if
> they actually do anything to _promote_ the book, that's another huge
> expense.
>
> If you go into a brick-and-mortar bookstore, you'll see the latest hot
> books displayed on enticing racks on the ends of the shelf units. I
> believe those are called end-caps. I could be wrong about the term. But
> my understanding is that the publisher _pays_ for position on the
> end-caps in a chain bookstore. That's part of the promotional budget --
> to make the book visible to you when you walk into the store.
Correct.
> Given all those costs, acquisition editors have little or no incentive
> to take risks.
That's a little bit simplified. They do want to take some risks; but
they want to take risks on new and different *books*. Book publishers
know how to sell books to people who read books. (E-books are
interesting but it's the same product sold to the same market.)
(One of the interesting comment to come out of last month's
Amazon-Macmillan dustup was, roughly, that a publisher makes most of
its money on new hardcovers -- primarily new *best-selling* hardcovers
-- but that money effectively funds the midlist writers, and
experimental writers, and less-popular writers. And keeping old
classics in print.)
> The safest thing for them to do is say "no" to a project.
> The editor who buys the IF title is going to have to explain to the
> sales force how to sell IF, because they don't know how.
Exactly right. Except that they *also* have to explain it to the book
distributors and the book retailers (not the same thing, but that's a
long story).
> Of course, if you're going to do all that, you might want to reconsider
> whether to let a mainstream publisher stiff you with a measly 5% of the
> cover price per unit sold, because that's what they're going to do. You
> might want to put your effort into a massive self-publishing endeavor
> instead. You'll make more money that way, and have more artistic control
> too.
But you'll spend more money. The job of a book publisher is to cover
*all* of the costs of book production and marketing, up front, and hope
to make it back on sales. This is not something that most writers
actually want to do.
> Eragon started life as IF, by the way. You can still play it on
> Christopher Paolini's website. I don't know what technology was used,
> either for authoring (probably I6) or hosting.
I don't think that's what happened... I believe that, as part of the
marketing of _Eragon_, somebody said "We should make a little computer
game and give it away for free!" And somebody else said "Hey, this
text adventure stuff is free." I don't know whether this discussion
happened at the book publisher or what. I don't know whether Paolini
was involved at all. But the I6 game certainly didn't come first.
(It is, unfortunately, a *lousy* I6 game -- I speak purely in terms of
IF craftsmanship and implementation. I doubt it hooked any new
readers. This probably didn't make the book publisher feel better
about IF as a new market.)
Another little-known attempt: Cecilia Dart-Thornton (no relation, I'm
sure) convinced Cyan to build a couple of custom Myst areas to promote
one of her fantasy novels. (No puzzles, just environments.) The
publisher said "Uh, that sounds cool" and bundled the CD with the
hardback.
*But* my guess is that the publisher didn't have to pay much money, if
any, for this to happen. And nobody's tried that since, which tells me
that it wasn't a successful gimmick.
Now. All that said, there is an angle here, and it's not about Oprah:
it's convincing people in the book industry that IF would be
interesting *to book readers*. Starting by partnering with an author
is one possibility. Another, which I might even pursue someday, is to
go to tor.com (book blog/community/podcast associated with Tor the
book publisher) and offer to do a series of (free) IF vignettes
demonstrating the art form to SF fandom. If that garners a lot of
attention, you've got leverage.
(If it sinks without a trace, you've got bupkis, and IF has more bad
karma. So please don't do this unless you can pull it off
successfully. :)
namekuseijin
> > Suffice it to say that some of us
> > _do_ continue to feel that, for anyone over the age of 14, comic books
> > are a silly waste of time. You may disagree, but we're entitled to our
> > opinion.
>
> and most especially the Sandman series. Most, most especially the
> Sandman series.
I second those. I'd also chime in "The Swamp Thing" from Alan Moore
in the 1980's. Utterly poetic. Can I have a say in japanese manga
too? Kozure Okami/Lone Wolf and curb is possibly one of the
highlights of this art form ever since first published in the 1970's
and influenced notable american authors like Frank Miller.
That said, one of my very favorites still is Watterson's Calvin and
Hobbes comic strips.
Jim Aikin
>
> like poetry? who cares about that? Is it RAP? Does it features cool
> guys and luscious babes dancing, talking to the camera like angry
> parents at a kid? Is it on TV? No? Then who friggin' cares about
> poetry? why pursue it in this day and age?
Not a bad question, actually. I know you're being sarcastic, but I kind
of think poetry with luscious babes dancing would be a good thing.
And let's not forget slams. There are open-mic events where angry young
poets get to strut their stuff, wave their arms, and use the common
terminology for body parts and functions. I've never been to one (never
been to a rap concert either, if "concert" is even the right term). But
there _are_ people who are kicking up a sweat to keep poetry relevant.
An IF slam ... now there's an idea.
--JA
Jim Aikin
>> Eragon started life as IF, by the way. You can still play it on
>> Christopher Paolini's website. I don't know what technology was used,
>> either for authoring (probably I6) or hosting.
>
> I don't think that's what happened... I believe that, as part of the
> marketing of _Eragon_, somebody said "We should make a little computer
> game and give it away for free!" And somebody else said "Hey, this
> text adventure stuff is free." I don't know whether this discussion
> happened at the book publisher or what. I don't know whether Paolini
> was involved at all. But the I6 game certainly didn't come first.
My memory may be slipping. I seem to recall reading an interview that
said Paolini wrote the game when he was a teenager, and then decided
that writing real novels would pay better and get him more babes, or
just be a better way to tell the story.
> Now. All that said, there is an angle here, and it's not about Oprah:
> it's convincing people in the book industry that IF would be
> interesting *to book readers*. Starting by partnering with an author
> is one possibility. Another, which I might even pursue someday, is to
> go to tor.com (book blog/community/podcast associated with Tor the
> book publisher) and offer to do a series of (free) IF vignettes
> demonstrating the art form to SF fandom. If that garners a lot of
> attention, you've got leverage.
>
> (If it sinks without a trace, you've got bupkis, and IF has more bad
> karma. So please don't do this unless you can pull it off
> successfully. :)
I think that idea has some real merit. For one thing, it's quite likely
that Tor has already purchased electronic rights to a number of novels,
and could license them to an IF author without tying the legal
department in knots or even asking the authors for permission. For
another, you're offering them something for nothing. They would be
getting free publicity for their existing titles, and so forth. Yeah, it
could work.
--JA
Andrew Plotkin
>
> >> Eragon started life as IF, by the way. You can still play it on
> >> Christopher Paolini's website. I don't know what technology was used,
> >> either for authoring (probably I6) or hosting.
> >
> > I don't think that's what happened... I believe that, as part of the
> > marketing of _Eragon_, somebody said "We should make a little computer
> > game and give it away for free!" And somebody else said "Hey, this
> > text adventure stuff is free." I don't know whether this discussion
> > happened at the book publisher or what. I don't know whether Paolini
> > was involved at all. But the I6 game certainly didn't come first.
>
> My memory may be slipping. I seem to recall reading an interview that
> said Paolini wrote the game when he was a teenager, and then decided
> that writing real novels would pay better and get him more babes, or
> just be a better way to tell the story.
I totally missed that interview. If you find it, I'd be delighted to
find out that I was wrong.
> > Now. All that said, there is an angle here, and it's not about Oprah:
> > it's convincing people in the book industry that IF would be
> > interesting *to book readers*. Starting by partnering with an author
> > is one possibility. Another, which I might even pursue someday, is to
> > go to tor.com (book blog/community/podcast associated with Tor the
> > book publisher) and offer to do a series of (free) IF vignettes
> > demonstrating the art form to SF fandom. If that garners a lot of
> > attention, you've got leverage.
> >
> > (If it sinks without a trace, you've got bupkis, and IF has more bad
> > karma. So please don't do this unless you can pull it off
> > successfully. :)
>
> I think that idea has some real merit. For one thing, it's quite likely
> that Tor has already purchased electronic rights to a number of novels,
> and could license them to an IF author without tying the legal
> department in knots or even asking the authors for permission.
(Cough) Please ask the author for permission, in any case.
Tor publishes some of the more Internet-aware authors (Stross, Scalzi,
Jo Walton -- not to mention Cory Doctorow). They've done interesting
stuff before.
> For another, you're offering them something for nothing. They would
> be getting free publicity for their existing titles, and so forth.
> Yeah, it could work.
--Z
Conrad
>
> And let's not forget slams. There are open-mic events where angry young
> poets get to strut their stuff, wave their arms, and use the common
> terminology for body parts and functions. I've never been to one (never
> been to a rap concert either, if "concert" is even the right term). But
> there _are_ people who are kicking up a sweat to keep poetry relevant.
>
> An IF slam ... now there's an idea.
"That word is not used in this
story"
rips out my heart
with really really sharp talons
like the Terrible Eagle Beast from last year's competition.
C.
Ron Newcomb
your eagle poem
neither rhymes nor is haiku
alas i cry fowl
Conrad
>
> your eagle poem
> neither rhymes nor is haiku
I thwart your attempts bogus
To ensnare me in a system a'rules
That would fetter my genius
Because real genius will not be fettered in a bogus way and anyone who
says otherwise are fools.
So there.
Adam Thornton
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>Another little-known attempt: Cecilia Dart-Thornton (no relation, I'm
>sure)
Indeed not. At least, as far as I am aware.
Adam
Adam Thornton
Andy Leighton
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
> Here, Jim Aikin <midig...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 3/15/2010 1:36 PM, Andrew Plotkin wrote:
>> I think that idea has some real merit. For one thing, it's quite likely
>> that Tor has already purchased electronic rights to a number of novels,
>> and could license them to an IF author without tying the legal
>> department in knots or even asking the authors for permission.
>
> (Cough) Please ask the author for permission, in any case.
Indeed. I wouldn't have thought that the standard bundle of rights
extends to derivative works such as games (computer or analogue).
--
Andy Leighton => an...@azaal.plus.com
"The Lord is my shepherd, but we still lost the sheep dog trials"
- Robert Rankin, _They Came And Ate Us_
Jim Aikin
>>
>> (Cough) Please ask the author for permission, in any case.
>
> Indeed. I wouldn't have thought that the standard bundle of rights
> extends to derivative works such as games (computer or analogue).
Muwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! I'm guessing that you've never taken a close look at
a contract for a book. Trust me, corporate lawyers will grab anything
that isn't nailed down -- and if it's nailed down, they'll add a clause
insisting that it be pried loose.
As an example of the latter, I recently turned down a book contract
(non-fiction, as it happens) that included the following charming
clause: "The Author hereby waives any so-called 'droit moral' rights,
'moral rights of authors' and all other similar rights however
denominated throughout the world." The droit moral is a category of
rights that is well recognized in Europe as something that the author
possesses (google it if you're curious). The lawyers for this U.S.
publisher demanded that I give up a right that I would otherwise have
had. Why? Who knows? Maybe just to show what big cojones they have.
More to the point of your comment, in the same section ("Grant of
Rights"), we find this language: "The Author hereby assigns to the
Publisher all right, title and interest the Author may have had, now
has, or hereafter may have in and to the Work, including, without
limitation, the copyright rights therein, including any and all
renewals, revisions, revivals, reversions and extensions thereof, in any
medium now existing or hereafter created or discovered, together with
any and all accrued rights of action ..., to have and to hold the same
for the full life of each such right in each territory throughout the
Universe."
That doesn't specifically mention electronic game rights (because it
would have been a non-fiction book), but this type of rights would
almost certainly be found by a court to be included among "all right,
title and interest".
Oh, and one other thing: If I had signed the contract, I wouldn't be
able to tell you what was in it, because the corporate lawyers inserted
a clause stating that I couldn't reveal any trade secrets about their
company, _including_ the contents of the contract. Sweet, hunh?
Generally speaking, book publishing contracts are a nasty, nasty thing.
--JA
Andrew Plotkin
> >>
> >> (Cough) Please ask the author for permission, in any case.
> >
> > Indeed. I wouldn't have thought that the standard bundle of rights
> > extends to derivative works such as games (computer or analogue).
>
> Muwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! I'm guessing that you've never taken a close look at
> a contract for a book. Trust me, corporate lawyers will grab anything
> that isn't nailed down -- and if it's nailed down, they'll add a clause
> insisting that it be pried loose.
This is why authors have agents.
(Note: I am not a published authors. But I read a lot of blogs of
published authors. If you want to take a look at a book contract, as
Jim suggested, here's Charles Stross analyzing one of his:
<http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/02/cmap-3-how-books-are-sold.html> )
Ron Newcomb
> On Mar 14, 3:36 pm, Rikard Peterson <trumgott...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> > That's probably part of it, sure. But some of us here (me! me!) didn't
> > grow up with the stuff, and still find it interesting...
> Okay, but does "find it interesting" mean you do anything with it? Is
> it interesting enough for you to spend a certain amount of your time
> actually producing things with? Speaking for myself, I find IF
> interesting as well, but more as a thing to observe and maybe once in
> awhile play. I have little desire to actually write something in IF
> because it would take away time from my more productive writing
> pursuits, which is screenplays. So my interest only extends so far,
> largely to the extent that I don't think I'm wasting my time. I'm just
> wondering if there's some correlation between people who "didn't grow
> up with the stuff" and those who actually still do substantive amount
> of work in IF, particularly writing it. It would also be interesting
> to know how many people actually stick with it. If IF does attract
> people who didn't grow up with it, and if those people actually do
> produce something with IF, do they tend to do so more than once? Is IF
I qualify here. I discovered it a few years ago, thanks to Chris
Crawford, of all people. I produce things, yes. (Games, well,
working on it.) I've about a dozen published I7 extensions, more than
that unpublished, wrote the Programmer's Manual for I7, a SPAG article
comparing two different extensions (neither mine) to each other, and
then there's the Gamasutra blog that hits I-F pretty heavily, partly
to remind the videogame-playing world about that I-F thing and how
awesome interactive storytelling is / could be / *will* be.
I *do* have some nostalgia: for NES videogames. I occasionally
replay the best ones them for an evening or three. Zelda, Guardian
Legend, Crystalis, River City Ransom, etc. But I've never tried re-
creating the past, no. Never tried to write another Street Fighter.
Such genres are doing fine by themselves; companies are all over it.
I don't care for old Infocom games, or dungeon crawls, or anything old-
school, really. They irritate me, and life is short. While Dwarf
Fortress is an undeniably cool idea, I wouldn't have the patience for
the interface or the grinding.
I think I-F has a bright future. If it's true that graphics killed the
i-f star, I see the pendulum beginning to swing the other way.
Graphics are topping out, and now people are looking for story in
their games. Currently, the best ones are like amusement park rides
-- on rails, essentially -- cause interactive story is an unsolved
problem, and it's much easier, especially for one person trying to
make his or her mark in the world, to prototype and experiment with
interactive story in prose than it is in 3D. Sentential input gives
much greater and much more nuanced control over imperative button-
pressing. One day, nuance will be king.
On the other subject in this thread, as it happens I just attended a
comic book convention last Saturday. I went with a friend who's into
them; I am not, apart from a couple of webcomics I read sporadically.
Verrry interesting, seeing a 45 y.o. in a 1940's -era superhero
getup. Even my friend snorted and looked away. And like videogames
and movies, a lot of it is low-brow. Violence & sexuality. Big boobs
and bunnies with sharp shards stuck in their eyes. Some of it was
great to look at, except it needed a good (even decent) writer. Some
of it had a great writer, except that the artwork is ugly, or "highly
craft-y" or "subversive" or some other such thing that means little to
half the insiders and nothing to all of us outsiders. I did talk with
a gentleman there who was serious about getting his work into other's
hands. You could tell because he has something of a businessman's /
salesman's aspect to him when you approached his booth. (He asked me
what [comics] I read. I told him. He answered, "oh, so, nothing
younger than 10 years, then." He sounded a bit let-down. His work
wasn't as old as Penny Arcade or Megatokyo.) There were also a few
artists whose work was hot. They had lines of people for sketches and
autographs and whatnot. You could see differences in craft between
different artist's work. Some were slave to the box (the border
around each frame.) Others knew how to break it artistically, that
added impact to whatever was going on in the story / action / art.
Other stuff looked like back-of-the-napkin doodles.
And there was one or two whose stuff looked mature and interesting and
attractive. I don't agree that comics are just for silly boys, of any
age, but I would say that a lot of it is low-brow in the same way that
many movies are. In the same way that a lot of I-F is. How many of
us here are a little too fond of sci-fi and fantasy novels? (Me.)
I think a creative endeavor is always worth trying, regardless your
chosen medium. Art makes the world a better place to live. And the
only difference between mediums is the problems you face to get
recognized. In I-F, its obscurity and the machinations of a
computer. In comics, it's a stigma. In screenplays and novel writing,
it's the sheer amount of competition. You can waste your life toiling
away for nothing in all of those things.
Betrand Russell said, "time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time."
I like that. Especially if my time has a small % chance of making
something the rest of the world wants to waste time with too.
S. John Ross
> I *do* have some nostalgia: for NES videogames. I occasionally
> replay the best ones them for an evening or three. Zelda, Guardian
> Legend, Crystalis, River City Ransom, etc.
For me it's all about Solar Jetman.
> I think a creative endeavor is always worth trying, regardless your
> chosen medium. Art makes the world a better place to live. And the
> only difference between mediums is the problems you face to get
> recognized. In I-F, its obscurity and the machinations of a
> computer. In comics, it's a stigma. In screenplays and novel writing,
> it's the sheer amount of competition. You can waste your life toiling
> away for nothing in all of those things.
That whole paragraph was good.
Tatiana
> I think I-F has a bright future. If it's true that graphics killed the
> i-f star, I see the pendulum beginning to swing the other way.
> Graphics are topping out, and now people are looking for story in
> their games.
Actually, if game sales trends are anything to go by, people are
looking for stories within games with great graphics. That's what
Assassin's Creed, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and Dragon Age:
Origins show. People want both. This is what I think people in IF seem
to forget when they think about the "bright future" that's always just
around the corner. One of the major complaints about Modern Warfare 2
was that the story was lacking but the graphics were fantastic. "If
only we could have both..." Dragon Age was commended for its deep
story and great voice acting. Mass Effect 2 is continuing the trend of
great story that it had with the first Mass Effect. So I don't see the
pendulum swinging such that text-only games would come back in vogue
just because people want story. In fact, I see the opposite. Now that
these games are getting so graphically good, people want the story
experience with that.
> How many of us here are a little too fond of sci-fi and fantasy novels? (Me.)
What does that mean: "a little too fond." Sorry, but that's
ridiculous. You just lumped two entire diverse categories together and
then implied that it's possible to be a little "too interested" in
them, as if that were a bad thing. I get that you're including
yourself in the group so that's cool. But I don't get why that's a bad
thing or even a semi-not-good thing.
> You can waste your life toiling away for nothing in all of those things.
Yeah, I would agree with that. That's why I said before that I didn't
get this need to justify a hobby or a pursuit. Just do it. Who cares
what others think? Why worry about fame if that's not your goal? Why
worry about money if you get your money some other way?
> Betrand Russell said, "time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time."
> I like that. Especially if my time has a small % chance of making
> something the rest of the world wants to waste time with too.
I'd agree with that as well. Usually the people who worry about this
stuff are when they realizes that "the rest of the world" that they
are thinking of is a very small part of that world. With IF you have
to realize you're reaching a very small audience. For some people,
that's okay. For others, it's not. It's those latter people that are
often trying to justify things.
namekuseijin
> On Mar 14, 1:57 pm, Tatiana <tatmasl...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I don't care for old Infocom games, or dungeon crawls, or anything old-
> school, really. They irritate me, and life is short.
You should give at least Trinity a chance. Sure there are puzzles,
but 1) it also sports an amazing story and prose, 2) it strikes me as
odd that someone who enjoys Zelda is so short-tempered about
puzzles...
> I think I-F has a bright future. If it's true that graphics killed the
> i-f star, I see the pendulum beginning to swing the other way.
> Graphics are topping out, and now people are looking for story in
> their games.
People still dig graphics. Those that don't are amusing themselves
with silly storyless toys for the Wii or casual Flash games.
And it's not from now. As far as I can tell, the first mainstream
game to really put story and dialogue front row -- and receive
multiple bashes from gameplay-only addicts -- was Metal Gear Solid for
the original Playstation. In fact, with Wii's success and casual
games, I'd say story-based games suffered a backslash from the general
public...
> Currently, the best ones are like amusement park rides
> -- on rails, essentially -- cause interactive story is an unsolved
> problem, and it's much easier, especially for one person trying to
> make his or her mark in the world, to prototype and experiment with
> interactive story in prose than it is in 3D. Sentential input gives
> much greater and much more nuanced control over imperative button-
> pressing. One day, nuance will be king.
Yes, but I have more confidence in *oral* sentential input than in
text input. Perhaps the Molyneaux Milo offering for Project Natal
with its speech recognition and all. Face it: people don't like
reading or writing. They are perfectly fine to exchange short one-
liners in the twitter vein. Books are now just used as basis for
movies and games, images and sounds people can consume far faster than
written words.
> I think a creative endeavor is always worth trying, regardless your
> chosen medium. Art makes the world a better place to live. And the
> only difference between mediums is the problems you face to get
> recognized. In I-F, its obscurity and the machinations of a
> computer. In comics, it's a stigma. In screenplays and novel writing,
> it's the sheer amount of competition. You can waste your life toiling
> away for nothing in all of those things.
>
> Betrand Russell said, "time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time."
> I like that. Especially if my time has a small % chance of making
> something the rest of the world wants to waste time with too.
well put.
Andrew Plotkin
> Face it: people don't like reading or writing.
A myth about the world, unsupported by fact.
Traviswf
> I think I-F has a bright future. If it's true that graphics killed the
> i-f star, I see the pendulum beginning to swing the other way.
> Graphics are topping out, and now people are looking for story in
> their games. Currently, the best ones are like amusement park rides
> -- on rails, essentially -- cause interactive story is an unsolved
> problem, and it's much easier, especially for one person trying to
> make his or her mark in the world, to prototype and experiment with
> interactive story in prose than it is in 3D. Sentential input gives
> much greater and much more nuanced control over imperative button-
> pressing. One day, nuance will be king.
I think you hit on a huge element that seems to be often left out of
the IF "relevance" conversation. It's usually about "graphics" and
"production value" - but the idea that IF can be written and
implemented by one author is a huge distinguishing factor.
Most of the big games these days have budgets in the millions, or tens
of millions - and that means a lot of cooks in the pot. And focus
groups and testing and so on and so forth. A game can be great, but
rarely does it present a singular vision or author's voice.
The same is true in television and movies. When you're spending other
people's money, those people get a say in the final product. And
almost always, they have very little ability as story-tellers. So the
final product ends up just that - a product.
I'm not saying these things can't be great in their own right, but
very rarely are they wholly original and distinct. Think of how many
Xbox and PS3 Games are about marines shooting creatures/aliens/zombies
and the like. Because it's commercially safe.
A single author can make a game that is unique and great. Granted
they can also make one that is a dramatic failure. But I'd take
original and failed over endlessly bland sameness any day..
Tatiana
> I'm not saying these things can't be great in their own right, but
> very rarely are they wholly original and distinct.
Okay this is a really interesting point. But I wonder how much of IF
is "wholly original and distinct?" No doubt you can point to some
examples. (I can too.) But like you said: we can also point to such
examples in movies, games, comics, and whatever else. I can tell you
that most of the IF I've played has really boiled down to pretty much
the same stuff: find a way past a locked door, get a treasure or some
sort, get information out of an NPC (usually by following an exact
conversation path), type directions to navigate around a map (or maybe
use GO TO for those real "advanced" games). I'll grant that some games
may cover up some of the how this is done a little differently (and
maybe better) than others, but it's still really the same old thing.
The IF that may shine a little brighter are those where the story is
really good. And that's the same thing that happens with games in
general. Tales of Monkey Island seems pretty good to a lot of people
apparently. The Longest Journey and Dreamfall were fairly good
stories. Hell, even Tunguska was good as a story (while the game
mechanics may have sucked a bit). What about the games I already
mentioned? Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect (1 and 2), and so forth?
Those are collaborations of various sorts and they all seem to work
pretty well. I can speak from actual work experience here. Many games
that you see on the shelves are written with a story concept usually
penned by only a very few people. In fact I've worked on some where
you ended up writing what amounted to a "screenplay" of sorts.
> Think of how many
> Xbox and PS3 Games are about marines shooting creatures/aliens/zombies
> and the like. Because it's commercially safe.
And again think of how many IF games are pretty much the same old
thing. They're not "commercially safe" but they are "safe" in
resonating with the audience that tends to play IF, usually following
the conventions that are "expected." I'm not saying there's no
experimentation or some stand-outs but that's the same in anything.
namekuseijin
> On Mar 17, 10:43 am, Traviswf <travi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm not saying these things can't be great in their own right, but
> > very rarely are they wholly original and distinct.
>
> Okay this is a really interesting point. But I wonder how much of IF
> is "wholly original and distinct?" No doubt you can point to some
> examples. (I can too.) But like you said: we can also point to such
> examples in movies, games, comics, and whatever else. I can tell you
> that most of the IF I've played has really boiled down to pretty much
> the same stuff: find a way past a locked door, get a treasure or some
> sort, get information out of an NPC (usually by following an exact
> conversation path), type directions to navigate around a map (or maybe
> use GO TO for those real "advanced" games). I'll grant that some games
> may cover up some of the how this is done a little differently (and
> maybe better) than others, but it's still really the same old thing.
Really?! My day job involves typing SQL queries, testing them,
fixing, repeat. Same old thing. But you're focusing too much on the
usual mechanics and forgetting the experience and challenge each time
you do this is completely different and new.
Games still envolving either shooting or jumping and these 2 basic
actions are responsible for a multi-billion industry.
Ron Newcomb
> Actually, if game sales trends are anything to go by, people are
> looking for stories within games with great graphics.
Per the Wii's popularity, I'm saying graphics have gotten good enough,
and so stories are becoming ascendant. This means I-F has a chance
again, because it's specialty is coming back into vogue.
> What does that mean: "a little too fond." Sorry, but that's
> ridiculous.
> You just lumped two entire diverse categories together and
Together they're called speculative fiction, and I think you hit upon
what I was saying in your later post about sameness.
Ron Newcomb
> You should give at least Trinity a chance. Sure there are puzzles,
> but 1) it also sports an amazing story and prose, 2) it strikes me as
> odd that someone who enjoys Zelda is so short-tempered about
> puzzles...
I might, and Plundered Hearts as well. You make a good point about
Zelda, but it's primarily an action-rpg, with some puzzle elements.
(And Solar Jetman is hard, man. I totally did not touch that wall.)
> Yes, but I have more confidence in *oral* sentential input than in
> text input.
Well sure, but the sound waves of voice need be tokenized into
(phonetically-spelled) words first. There's still a parser; the
microphone interface to it is just gravy.
But yes, I agree.
namekuseijin
> On Mar 17, 6:49 am, namekuseijin <namekusei...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > You should give at least Trinity a chance. Sure there are puzzles,
> > but 1) it also sports an amazing story and prose, 2) it strikes me as
> > odd that someone who enjoys Zelda is so short-tempered about
> > puzzles...
>
> I might, and Plundered Hearts as well.
Good choices.
> You make a good point about
> Zelda, but it's primarily an action-rpg, with some puzzle elements.
I'm guessing you've not played it past the NES, huh? :)
> (And Solar Jetman is hard, man. I totally did not touch that wall.)
yes, good game but have not played it extensively. Definitely
Rare. :)
Tatiana
> Per the Wii's popularity, I'm saying graphics have gotten good enough,
> and so stories are becoming ascendant. This means I-F has a chance
> again, because it's specialty is coming back into vogue.
That's not a speciality of IF. That's dependent upon the person who
writes the IF. That's specialty as an author. Anything can tell a
story: movie, TV, comic book, computer game, newspaper article, etc.
IF's speciality is presenting a game that's usually composed solely of
text. Whether that text is found to be part of a good game is another
thing entirely.
> Together they're called speculative fiction, and I think you hit upon
> what I was saying in your later post about sameness.
Right okay, but a lot of people respond to those things because of the
sameness. Space opera became popular because of the common elements.
The same applies to much horror fiction or romantic fiction. There are
things people respond to and if you differ too much from established
conventions, you tend to have something unpopular on your hands. Not
always but there's a reason for the "sameness." Familiarity with a
format or concept counts for a lot.
John G. Wood
> And let's not forget slams. There are open-mic events where angry young
> poets get to strut their stuff, wave their arms, and use the common
> terminology for body parts and functions. I've never been to one (never
> been to a rap concert either, if "concert" is even the right term). But
> there _are_ people who are kicking up a sweat to keep poetry relevant.
Back in the '80s and '90s I used to go and see ranting poets like Attila
the Stockbroker and Benjamin Zephaniah, so you don't even need open-mic to
get this sort of poetry performance. Never saw any with luscious babes
performing, though. Now there's a thought: babes shaking their booty to
the strains of "Contributory Negligence". Oh, the irony...
John
Jacek Pudlo
> Face it: people don't like reading or writing.
So what convinced you that a textual medium like Usenet would be the best
place to share that little gem of a thought?
> Books are now just used as basis for movies and games
Sorry to have interrupted your visual train of thought. Do carry on,
troglodyte.
namekuseijin
> namekuseijin
>
> > Face it: people don't like reading or writing.
>
> So what convinced you that a textual medium like Usenet would be the best
> place to share that little gem of a thought?
Obviously, we are a little niche audience. An elite if you will... :P
Newsgroups is very tiny when compared to "the internet (web)".
> > Books are now just used as basis for movies and games
>
> Sorry to have interrupted your visual train of thought. Do carry on,
> troglodyte.
Funny you would say that, troll. In any case, I stand by that:
written language and storytelling are dying arts among common people.
You know, the kind of which doesn't even know there's more to the
internet than Facebook, MSN, Twitter and online gaming? MSN supports
camchat. Who needs to type now? Online games? Chatting with buddies
while shooting away? Some day twitter will support video twits.
Who will write or read when they may simply talk to others? I heard
it once: written language is a historical device. I sadly agree.
It's becoming increasingly irrelevant. Perhaps one day it'll be
regarded the same as musical notation: only known by highly paid
technicians. It was the first way mankind used to register its
thoughts, but now you can simply directly register voices, sounds and
images. What else has written language to offer to counter that?
This is a controversial topic, of course, and one which makes me
uneasy. I dig written language and I'd say most of my thoughts get
spread in this way. It's just that looking a few generations ahead,
it all just sounds unlikely...
mwigdahl
For chat I could easily see audio and video superseding text. It's
quicker than typing for almost everyone and allows you to easily
transmit tones of voice, facial expression, etc.
But for prepared communications? Reference materials? I don't see
it. It would be tough to scan through a video encyclopedia looking
for specific facts. With text I can quickly find headers in a well-
organized document and drill straight to the relevant information.
And people tend to read text about 2-3 times faster than the normal
conversational speaking rate.
I've visited several software sites (that screenwriting tool mentioned
recently was one of them) where the "documentation" on what the
program does comes in the form of several monolithic video files. It
stopped me cold. I don't want to spend fifteen minutes watching
someone ploddingly exercise the File menu on some program just so I
can stumble over the part where they actually tell me what the useful
features are. If they'd had a transcript of a session, with
screenshots, I could have scanned it and quickly decided whether it
was worth further investigation or not.
Matt
S. John Ross
> I'm just wondering if there's some correlation between people who "didn't grow
> up with the stuff" and those who actually still do substantive amount
> of work in IF, particularly writing it.
I'm another one of those who "didn't grow up with the stuff," though I
was aware of it when I was young (and watched friends play), I never
owned a computer until around 1993-ish, and by then the commercial era
had already gone (and the post-commercial was already warming up).
I can't address the "substantive amount" question since I don't know
what your definition of "substantive" is. I've got two games public
and several in the works. My release schedule suffered a blow when I
reached the go-glulxe-or-die wall on some of my WIPs, but apart from
that I devote regular work-time and hobby-time to IF projects.
Tatiana
> > I'm just wondering if there's some correlation between people who "didn't grow
> > up with the stuff" and those who actually still do substantive amount
> > of work in IF, particularly writing it.
> I can't address the "substantive amount" question since I don't know
> what your definition of "substantive" is. I've got two games public
> and several in the works. My release schedule suffered a blow when I
> reached the go-glulxe-or-die wall on some of my WIPs, but apart from
> that I devote regular work-time and hobby-time to IF projects.
Nifty. So at least from your own perspective, why do you write IF? Is
it something about IF in particular that you like? Have you thought
about writing in general (novels, stories)? Have you thought about
working on other sorts of games? This is the stuff that I think it
would be interesting to know and I've a bit surprised when I check in
on the IF world that there still doesn't seem to be a place where
authors talk about why they do *this* (IF) rather than *that*. I think
that kind of information would be interesting to know. It might also
help people like J.J. who was originally looking at how people view
the hobby and maybe "justify" it if they felt the need to do so.
For myself, if I was going to devote too much time to writing games,
it would definitely be in a format that more people play. I
participate a lot in the modding communities for example. I've written
some mods for Grand Theft Auto and done some Half Life 2 material. I
don't do that for "fame" or "riches" or anything like that. I just do
it because I want as many people as possible to experience what I do.
I like IF in theory because the thinking behind it matches what I do
when I write screenplays. But I don't really "do" IF because the
potential payoff is just too low. I don't mean in "fame" or "riches"
again. I just mean in terms of the audience that I would reach and my
personal view of the feedback I would get. The main feedback I'd want
to get is on how my writing is and the last thing I'd trust the bulk
of people who write IF to comment on is writing skills, at least in a
way that would help me improve. There are exceptions but they are few
and far between. One thing that I've found challening in writing games
is that whole idea of keeping a good story going with the game. That
can be a challenge in both IF and other game formats but again it
comes back to the fact that so little people care about IF. I think
the mentality is different for someone who wants to read and someone
who wants to play a game. They can go together but there's definitely
friction. I think that fcition can be better explored in game areas
that more people care about, where graphics, sound and story have to
merge.
So that's all just me of course but I wanted to at least answer my own
questions.
S. John Ross
> Nifty. So at least from your own perspective, why do you write IF?
I like it a lot. There are days when I love it.
> Is it something about IF in particular that you like?
Not just one thing, no.
> Have you thought about writing in general (novels, stories)? Have you thought about working on other sorts of games?
I've been a full-time writer, editor and game designer for close to 20
years now, working mainly in my areas of interest (almost entirely
games and gaming, with a few side-jaunts into local theater and
hospitality writing). I work outside my areas of passion only rarely,
when finances demand it. This has included some pseudonymous work,
etc ... I like my real name attached to things I love. I also dabble
in font-making and graphic design, enjoy long walks on the beach, oral
sex, and wasting time on the Internet.
> This is the stuff that I think it would be interesting to know
Happy to oblige.
> It might also help people like J.J. who was originally looking at how people view
> the hobby and maybe "justify" it if they felt the need to do so.
Those who need their hobbies validated can get them stamped at any of
the mall retailers.
> I think that [friction] can be better explored in game areas
> that more people care about, where graphics, sound and story have to
> merge.
I disagree.
mwigdahl
> For myself, if I was going to devote too much time to writing games,
> it would definitely be in a format that more people play. I
> participate a lot in the modding communities for example. I've written
> some mods for Grand Theft Auto and done some Half Life 2 material. I
> don't do that for "fame" or "riches" or anything like that. I just do
> it because I want as many people as possible to experience what I do.
> I like IF in theory because the thinking behind it matches what I do
> when I write screenplays. But I don't really "do" IF because the
> potential payoff is just too low. I don't mean in "fame" or "riches"
> again. I just mean in terms of the audience that I would reach and my
> personal view of the feedback I would get. The main feedback I'd want
> to get is on how my writing is and the last thing I'd trust the bulk
> of people who write IF to comment on is writing skills, at least in a
> way that would help me improve.
So you'd prefer the writing feedback of Grand Theft Auto mod players
over that of IF authors?
Matt
namekuseijin
Guess that's still better than making an youtube bloppers video for
the masses and read their one-liners. Except not as popular either.