[Theory] The Meta-Puzzle of Interactive Fiction
Marnie Parker
thankfully, only a few quotes.) Original, ground-breaking, common sensical,
obvious, humdrum, boring.
You decide.
The Meta-Puzzle of Interactive Fiction: Why We Like What We Like
(Version 2.20)
This theory, although the basis of the IF Art Show, only mentions it once.
Because the focus of this "paper" is computer interactivity, specifically, IF's
interactivity.
It is too long, approx. 40 "pages", to publish here, so I have put it on my web
page. I certainly don't expect anyone who reads it to agree with all of it, or
even with just parts, but I think almost every IF author/player can get
SOMETHING out of it. So I now offer it for your perusal.
Reader comments:
"I think it should be required reading for nearly everyone writing IF."
Stephen Granade
"A very thoughtful and thought-provoking study."
Den of Iniquity (Dennis Scott)
"Congratulations, Doe; this is a fine piece of theory -- even if I don't agree
with all of it, it's still thought-provoking and worth
discussing/debating/otherwise chewing over."
Michael Gentry
"Read Doe's essay and think about it. Agree with her or not, this essay gives
us all a common theoretical footing and a vocabulary with which to begin
discussion of IF as theory."
Adam J. Thornton
If you have any reactions to this theory, please don't email me but post your
comments to this thread so we can keep any discussion in the newsgroup.
Thank you, Doe
http://members.aol.com/doepage/theory.html
doea...@aol.com ------------------------------------------------------
Inform Tips - http://members.aol.com/doepage/infotips.htm
IF Art Gallery - http://members.aol.com/iffyart/
IF Review Conspiracy - http://www.textfire.com/conspiracy/
David Cornelson
news:20000315072930...@ng-cd1.aol.com...
> Over a year in development! Thousands of words and tons of quotes! (Well,
> thankfully, only a few quotes.) Original, ground-breaking, common
sensical,
> obvious, humdrum, boring.
>
> You decide.
>
> The Meta-Puzzle of Interactive Fiction: Why We Like What We Like
> (Version 2.20)
>
[Gulp]
I'm still digesting this 'paper'. I'd say it's stunning
Hey Doe - you also have to add another 'type'. People who tend write games
and tools, hang around for conversations, but only rarely play any games at
all. Babel was the last game that I truly liked. Most others have lightly
tickled me or in some cases, I just didn't get it.
Anyway - required reading for sure. If you're going to even think about
writing IF, this should be a place to start - for several reasons. For the
enlightened, it gives some direction. For the dabbler, it may give you an
honest feel for just how difficult it is to create a widely liked game.
Marnie - I nominate you IF Person of the Month. (Swimsuit calendars will be
available later.)
Jarb
Andrew Plotkin
> "Read Doe's essay and think about it. Agree with her or not, this essay gives
> us all a common theoretical footing and a vocabulary with which to begin
> discussion of IF as theory."
Nooo! Not a sound theoretical footinnnnnng!
--Z
(I look forward to reading it -- after work, though)
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Marnie Parker
>From: "David Cornelson" dcorn...@placet.com
>Date: 3/15/00 6:49 AM Pacific Standard Time
>[Gulp]
>
>I'm still digesting this 'paper'. I'd say it's stunning
Thanks.
>Hey Doe - you also have to add another 'type'. People who tend write games
>and tools, hang around for conversations, but only rarely play any games at
>all. Babel was the last game that I truly liked. Most others have lightly
>tickled me or in some cases, I just didn't get it.
Hehehe. I admit, except for yearly comp games -- the more I write WIPs, plain
coding stuff, etc. -- the less I have played.
>Anyway - required reading for sure. If you're going to even think about
>writing IF, this should be a place to start - for several reasons. For the
>enlightened, it gives some direction. For the dabbler, it may give you an
>honest feel for just how difficult it is to create a widely liked game.
>
>Marnie - I nominate you IF Person of the Month. (Swimsuit calendars will be
>available later.)
I like soft furry animals, walks on moonlight beaches, and men with a sense of
humor. I also dislike intolerant people. And I am working on my college degree
and when I finish I plan to...
Oops. Sorry, was dazed there for a minute, don't know what came over me.
Doe :-)
Dennis Smith
>"A very thoughtful and thought-provoking study."
> Den of Iniquity (Dennis Scott)
Hoo. You spelled Iniquity right!
Rodman. Dennis Rodman.
--
Den
The Solar Echo
I'd have to say that this is a masterpiece. I felt enlightened, especially
reading it as a new writer of I-F.
Interactive Fiction is barely classified. Matching an I-F game to a players
likes and dislikes is difficult, either involving random downloads and trial
and error, or reviews written by people who may or may not share your I-F
personality type.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a site where games were classified according
to their I-F structure? Anyone visiting the site could take a test to
determine their I-F personality type, and linked to games that fit.
Not only would this take a lot of the guesswork out of finding games that
appeal to you, it would make it easier for I-F authors to match their games
with their target audience.
Just a few ideas. Thanks for the The Meta-Puzzle of Interactive Fiction,
Doe....it certainly was food for thought.
Solar
((((((:. The Solar Echo .:))))))
J.D. Berry
thesol...@aol.com (The Solar Echo) wrote:
> Interactive Fiction is barely classified. Matching an I-F game to a
> players likes and dislikes is difficult, either involving random
> downloads and trial and error, or reviews written by people who may
> or may not share your I-F personality type.
I found this part of Doe's oeuvre (if you will ;-) the most
intriguing.
>
> Wouldn't it be nice if there was a site where games were classified
> according to their I-F structure? Anyone visiting the site could take
> a test to determine their I-F personality type, and linked to games
> that fit.
The problem is that there aren't enough ratings in the first place, let
alone a break down by personality types.
I think a detailed review of a game can provide enough clues, though,
to how a given player will enjoy the game. Terms like "puzzle
fest" "puzzleless" "off the wall" "straightforward" "highly
interactive" say a lot. And, yes, that won't work every time, but
neither will personality type classification.
...
All in all, nice work, Doe. :-)
Jim
Also an INFP
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Adam Cadre
Good. This is something that's come up before, albeit in another
context -- the last time around I believe it was all about Genre:
dividing games up into categories like Mystery, Sci-Fi, College,
Everyday-World, Tragical-Comical-Historical-Pastoral, Scene
Individable, Poem Unlimited or what have you. And then someone
says, "But I prefer works that don't fit into a particular category"
and the taxonomists cry, "Great! We'll put those works in a category
called Uncategorizable!" and then there are tears.
> Wouldn't it be nice if there was a site where games were classified
> according to their I-F structure?
Not so much, no. I mean, the temptation when someone comes along and
makes some new and interesting points is to want to build a System
out of it. Observations are often packed with truth and meaning;
systems rarely are. If this essay causes people start talking more
about the way that a particular game engages their minds, the way it
causes them to construct or reconstruct sensory experience, then that's
certainly all to the good and a huge contribution to our understanding
of this still quite embryonic medium. But when people start to try to
fit their experiences into a pre-existing framework -- to "classify
games according to their IF structure" -- that seems more likely to
limit understanding than enhance it. To borrow from a buzzphrase of
the day, it encourages us to Think Inside The Box.
> Anyone visiting the site could take a test to determine their I-F
> personality type, and linked to games that fit.
See, this I really don't like. What shape would this test take? It
seems to me that it'd end up devolving either into tautologies ("5. Do
you like games with big maps to explore? Then you might want to try
games with big maps to explore") or an exercise in dubious connections
("11. How many dots end up on the inside of the cube when folded up?
Your spatial relations are strong enough that you'd like these puzzle-
oriented games...")
> Not only would this take a lot of the guesswork out of finding games
> that appeal to you, it would make it easier for I-F authors to match
> their games with their target audience.
Hmmm.
I was going to say that a more likely way to match up players with
games would be to simply have a web-like database where you pick a
game you've liked, and it says, "If you liked game X, you might
also like W, Y and Z," and then traveling on to W reveals that "you
might also like X, Z and Q" and so forth. But now that I think about
it, I'm not sure that even this would work.
After all -- if people started constructing lists of games they liked,
would it be likely that games would cluster up? That if someone does
like game A, that they pretty much always also like B and C, and that
if they dislike A, chances are they won't like B or C? My suspicion
is that that would *not* be the case. Just from my own experience: I
write games that I as a player would enjoy playing -- that's how I
decide whether a project is going well as I'm working on it. If
someone were to ask what category of game I most enjoy, I'd round up
the games on my web site and say, "The category to which these belong."
But few people tend to think of my games as belonging in the same
category at all -- one reviewer once asked how many games I could write
that bore no resemblance to previous ones -- and very few people tend
to like (or, more hearteningly, dislike) all of them. Just to take my
main releases of each of the last four years: do you group I-0 with
Varicella for offering a lot of freedom of action, and Photopia with
Shrapnel for offering not much freedom at all? Or do you group
Varicella with Shrapnel for covering much of the same thematic
territory, and I-0 with Photopia for not straying into such dark
territory? Or do you group Photopia with Varicella for being fairly
complete works, and I-0 with Shrapnel as being more experiments than
full games? And this is even *before* you branch out into works by
other authors. Is someone who likes Photopia likely to enjoy Babel?
You'd get a vehement yes from some people and an equally vehement no
from others. Zarf has a sizeable body of work out there -- do people
either enjoy or not enjoy "Zarfian" works? If so, why is it that I
really enjoyed Spider and Web and (in retrospect) Hunter, in Darkness,
but didn't much care for So Far or A Change in the Weather?
Again, I think it'd be worth it to do some empirical research rather
than relying on hunches. But until that research is done, my hunch
is that people are no more likely to like a random game chosen from
their designated "personality category" than they are to like a random
game chosen from the archive as a whole.
-----
Adam Cadre, Sammamish, WA
http://adamcadre.ac
Joe Mason
>I was going to say that a more likely way to match up players with
>games would be to simply have a web-like database where you pick a
>game you've liked, and it says, "If you liked game X, you might
>also like W, Y and Z," and then traveling on to W reveals that "you
>might also like X, Z and Q" and so forth. But now that I think about
>it, I'm not sure that even this would work.
www.alexlit.com does this for science fiction and fantasy. The IMDB does it
for movies. The IMDB recommendations have been pretty useless, I've found,
probably because it's just one of the many things IMDB does (and not an
important one) so it's not done very well. I've never used alexlit, but the
observation on rec.arts.sf.written is something like, "You give it a highly
personalized list of books which you've liked in the past, and it goes through
a sophisticated matching process, correlates your taste with those of other
users, and tells you to read Lois McMaster Bujold."
Which is always a good recommendation, but it doesn't really need a web rating
system to tell you that. In an IF context, 80% or so of users are going to
be told 'You'll like stuff by Zarf,' no matter what they put in. The reason,
or at least the reason that seems reasonable to me, is that these games are
liked by people with a wide variety of tastes and are therefore going to show
up for a wide variety of input lists. (Now for a philosophical question: is a
recommendation service which always says "Zarf" more useless for people who
*like* Zarf's work, or who *hate* Zarf's work?)
Of course, it can't HURT to do a recommendation service like this, and there's
always the chance that it'll benefit people. alexlit still gets recommended
on rec.arts.sf.written fairly often, so the fact that Bujold and _Bridge of
Birds_ show up on every recommendation list doesn't seem to be much of a
problem. The big thing about a recommendation service is that it doesn't try
to slot things into categories, so there isn't a danger of starting to focus
on the wrong thing.
(BTW, I haven't read Doe's essay yet - midterms and assignments and stuff this
week. Which is also why I haven't yet typed up the IF Conspiracy review I was
supposed to have done for Friday. I'll probably get a chance this weekend.)
Joe
Second April
> In article <20000315152530...@ng-de1.aol.com>,
> thesol...@aol.com (The Solar Echo) wrote:
>
> > Interactive Fiction is barely classified. Matching an I-F game to a
> > players likes and dislikes is difficult, either involving random
> > downloads and trial and error, or reviews written by people who may
> > or may not share your I-F personality type.
>
> I found this part of Doe's oeuvre (if you will ;-) the most
> intriguing.
>
> >
> > Wouldn't it be nice if there was a site where games were classified
> > according to their I-F structure? Anyone visiting the site could take
> > a test to determine their I-F personality type, and linked to games
> > that fit.
>
> The problem is that there aren't enough ratings in the first place, let
> alone a break down by personality types.
And it's not clear that personality types dictate enjoyment all that much
anyway.
If you ask me for a short list of IF that I enjoyed most, I'd probably
mention Babel, Sunset Over Savannah, Varicella, Little Blue Men, Change in
the Weather, Worlds Apart, Spellbreaker, and Trinity. Oh, and Losing Your
Grip.
So what category am I in? Sunset and Worlds Apart could probably be called
"emotive," if that means anything, but it's hard to see how Varicella or
Spellbreaker or Little Blue Men could qualify. Change in the Weather was
highly visual, but I don't think you could say that of Little Blue Men or
Trinity--and if "enjoying words" is in opposition to visual, than I'm in
the "linguistic" category because it's the quality of the writing in
Varicella and Trinity that really appealed to me. Do I require movement to
process information? There's movement in all of the above, but varying
amounts of it, and I liked Enlightenment too. And I'll venture to say that
I liked Grip--and others too--because it rewarded analysis and thought,
which isn't really related to information processing at all.
I don't mean to bash Doe, really. There are probably lessons here for
potential authors, along the lines of "use all the senses." But
personality and information-processing types only dictate a narrow range
of reactions, namely to unusual works of IF that tend to favor one type of
processing approach over another. Photopia may be one example, but I'm
hard pressed to think of another.
Duncan Stevens
dns...@merle.acns.nwu.edu
But buy me a singer to sing one song--
Song about nothing--song about sheep--
Over and over, all day long;
Patch me again my thread-bare sleep.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay
mathew
> I thought of that too, but I don't think it would work either. Amazon.com has
> something like this for books and music, and it's never seemed to work very
> well at all for me.
Well, on the other hand, www.moviecritic.com has been stunningly good at
predicting movies I'll like -- to the extent that I'm planning to watch
something I was sure I'd hate, simply because moviecritic is convinced
I'll like it...
However, that accuracy comes after having rated over 300 movies. I'm
not sure I've played more than thirty pieces of IF.
mathew
dcorn...@my-deja.com
And I'd add to Adam's statement that on any given day I may like a game
like Photopia and then on other days, ach, give me a crobar and let me
do some damage. Yet on other days I just wanna find stuff and fix
things and not 'talk' to anyone (NPC's).
This is the piece that's likely missing from Doe's theory (even though
it's a great start). That we all evolve and change and that includes our
tastes in game-playing.
Categorization is a bad idea. As I've mentioned before, the best way to
weed out games is that the author should write something catchy that
describes the content and feel of their game and then potential gamers
can decide from the 'trailer' whether to play it or not. Reviews help a
lot too, but we're (RAIF) just not very good at reviews overall.
I know Doe mentioned categorization in her theory, but I think the value
lies in writing new games, not in categorizing already written games.
Her theories are more of a 'guideline', not a 'rule'.
I just thought of something else. I think real books and book stores are
moving in the non-categorization direction as well. Sci-Fi/Fantasy book
racks used to be huge and the general fiction section was the same or
smaller. Sci-Fi/Fantasy shelves are nothing compared to the general
fiction sections of today and you can certainly find overlap in both
directions.
Nothing concrete should come of this - it's just a "Hey, think about
this when you write a game" kind of thing.
IMHO
Jarb
ct
Joe Mason <jcm...@uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>important one) so it's not done very well. I've never used alexlit, but the
>observation on rec.arts.sf.written is something like, "You give it a highly
>personalized list of books which you've liked in the past, and it goes through
>a sophisticated matching process, correlates your taste with those of other
>users, and tells you to read Lois McMaster Bujold."
And, indeed, it did! Oh, ok, it recommended a variety of other books
too, a number of which I'd read and loved - it must be doing something
right. (Though I'm less convinced about Dorothy Sayer...)
>(Now for a philosophical question: is a recommendation service which
>always says "Zarf" more useless for people who *like* Zarf's work, or
>who *hate* Zarf's work?)
As a recommendation service, it'd be crap - it shouldn't be suggesting
things you've already 'rated'.
regards, ct
The Solar Echo
It's not that I really think that it would work, it's just that it would be
nice if there was a way it could work.
>I was going to say that a more likely way to match up players with
>games would be to simply have a web-like database where you pick a
>game you've liked, and it says, "If you liked game X, you might
>also like W, Y and Z," and then traveling on to W reveals that "you
>might also like X, Z and Q" and so forth. But now that I think about
>it, I'm not sure that even this would work.
I thought of that too, but I don't think it would work either. Amazon.com has
something like this for books and music, and it's never seemed to work very
well at all for me.
RudeJohn
thesol...@aol.com (The Solar Echo) didst proclaim:
...snip...
=> Wouldn't it be nice if there was a site where games were classified
according
=> to their I-F structure? Anyone visiting the site could take a test
to
=> determine their I-F personality type, and linked to games that fit.
...snip...
Howdy,
Is it just me, or is this whole concept of "IF personality typing" a
tad spooky? I mean, what if I change my mind? What if my taste in
entertainment changes from week to week. Am I going to have to pay a
fine? Will I have to take the test over and over and over again? Are
the IF Police going to drag me out of my bed and rush me off to a
Reeducation Facility? Will the lobotomy hurt? Will someone use this
bit of speculation as a theme for a short piece of IF?
Be afraid. Be very afraid. ];-)
C'ya,
RJ
"I'm rude. It's a job."
Plant Kingdom
wrote:
>> Interactive Fiction is barely classified.
>
>Good. This is something that's come up before, albeit in another
>context -- the last time around I believe it was all about Genre:
>dividing games up into categories like Mystery, Sci-Fi, College,
>Everyday-World, Tragical-Comical-Historical-Pastoral, Scene
>Individable, Poem Unlimited or what have you. And then someone
>says, "But I prefer works that don't fit into a particular category"
>and the taxonomists cry, "Great! We'll put those works in a category
>called Uncategorizable!" and then there are tears.
I propose three categories: "Bad IF", "Good IF", and "Mediocre IF To
Be Played When You've Played All the Good IF." Uncategorize that!
>> Wouldn't it be nice if there was a site where games were classified
>> according to their I-F structure?
>
>Not so much, no. I mean, the temptation when someone comes along and
>makes some new and interesting points is to want to build a System
>out of it. Observations are often packed with truth and meaning;
>systems rarely are. If this essay causes people start talking more
>about the way that a particular game engages their minds, the way it
>causes them to construct or reconstruct sensory experience, then that's
>certainly all to the good and a huge contribution to our understanding
>of this still quite embryonic medium. But when people start to try to
>fit their experiences into a pre-existing framework -- to "classify
>games according to their IF structure" -- that seems more likely to
>limit understanding than enhance it. To borrow from a buzzphrase of
>the day, it encourages us to Think Inside The Box.
With so much of an IF game being tied up in its structure, the simple
act of publishing classifications might act as a spoiler. The body of
available IF works is becoming large enough that there might be
interesting generalizations to be drawn, but I prefer not to know too
much in advance.
Novelty is the main draw in many works, and something is only novel
once (except perhaps viewed through the filter of nostalgia). Trying
to classify the level of novelty in a game is clearly a fraught
enterprise.
The things I would be most interested to know in advance are:
a) Has the author done something nasty and ill-advised to the parser?
(Lobotomized it, that is.)
b) Does the author know how to use Mr. Apostrophe in a non-heinous
manner?
c) Is the scatological humor at least mildly redeemed by ANYTHING else
in the work?
And so on.
[major snippage]
>Just to take my
>main releases of each of the last four years: do you group I-0 with
>Varicella for offering a lot of freedom of action, and Photopia with
>Shrapnel for offering not much freedom at all? Or do you group
>Varicella with Shrapnel for covering much of the same thematic
>territory, and I-0 with Photopia for not straying into such dark
>territory? Or do you group Photopia with Varicella for being fairly
>complete works, and I-0 with Shrapnel as being more experiments than
>full games? And this is even *before* you branch out into works by
>other authors.
Clearly, one would want to use a system like WordNet - one can choose
which morphological threads to follow through the labyrinth of
ftp.gmd.de. (Assuming one were to undertake this venture, of course.)
Remember, some of us may actually _like_ the waters largely uncharted.
Is the frontier as interesting once it has been tamed?
[snip]
>Again, I think it'd be worth it to do some empirical research rather
>than relying on hunches. But until that research is done, my hunch
>is that people are no more likely to like a random game chosen from
>their designated "personality category" than they are to like a random
>game chosen from the archive as a whole.
I prefer is the recommendations of individuals to distillations of
mass knowledge. With the individual, I can form opinions about their
tastes, and determine whether their ideas of what constitutes
enjoyable IF are likely to jibe with mine. Aphoristically: when
dipping one's spoon into the porridge of agglomerated opinion, the
chances of fetching out a raisin of enlightenment are heavily
dependent on the number of raisins.
Er. Somebody slap me now.
> Adam Cadre, Sammamish, WA
> http://adamcadre.ac
Plant Kingdom
p...@littleraven.com
"You, Sir, talk like a Rosicrucian who will love nothing but a sylph, who
does not believe in a sylph, and who yet quarrels with the universe for
not containing a sylph."
--Thomas Love Peacock, _Nightmare Abbey_
Andrew Plotkin
> Adam Cadre <a...@adamcadre.ac> wrote:
>>I was going to say that a more likely way to match up players with
>>games would be to simply have a web-like database where you pick a
>>game you've liked, and it says, "If you liked game X, you might
>>also like W, Y and Z," and then traveling on to W reveals that "you
>>might also like X, Z and Q" and so forth. But now that I think about
>>it, I'm not sure that even this would work.
>
> for movies. The IMDB recommendations have been pretty useless, I've found,
> probably because it's just one of the many things IMDB does (and not an
> observation on rec.arts.sf.written is something like, "You give it a highly
> personalized list of books which you've liked in the past, and it goes through
> a sophisticated matching process, correlates your taste with those of other
> users, and tells you to read Lois McMaster Bujold."
And Barry Hughart. (Oh, damn, you mention that farther down. Sorry.)
You're right; it's an interesting tool, but it should be regarded as an
adjunct to Going Out And Getting Some Damn Book Recommendations.
Note that rec.arts.sf.written is an *excellent* mechanism for getting book
recommendations -- because it's a big fat pool of sci-fi fans.
Marnie Parker
>Date: 3/15/00 12:25 PM Pacific Standard Time
>Wouldn't it be nice if there was a site where games were classified according
>to their I-F structure? Anyone visiting the site could take a test to
>determine their I-F personality type, and linked to games that fit.
>Not only would this take a lot of the guesswork out of finding games that
>appeal to you, it would make it easier for I-F authors to match their games
>with their target audience.
Well, I had obviously played around with the idea mentally, or it wouldn't have
been mentioned in my paper.
And it wouldn't really matter if people didn't agree with it, because there are
all kinds of rating / recommendation services out there that people don't agree
with. Like Baf's guide, which I think is now defunct, I often disagreed with
that, although it was pretty good and often helpful.
But imagine the work involved! Imagine how many games one would have to play!
Maybe if I am still around in 8-10 years I might. Because I also might have
finally played enough IF games by then.
Glad you enjoyed the paper.
YesuSlave
>Is the frontier as interesting once it has been tamed?
I think that the question no longer comes down to "will we chart these waters"
but "how will it happen?" We either have the choice of working together to
create a good and acceptable system, or we will completely separate on this
issue and the work will be done, but not as well as it could have been.
Josh
Play Deephome, an interactive exorcism and repair job.
Http://www.angelfire.com/nj2/Yesuslave
Iain Merrick
[...]
> And I'd add to Adam's statement that on any given day I may like a game
> like Photopia and then on other days, ach, give me a crobar and let me
> do some damage.
...to some cute, fluffy lion-cubs?
Don't worry, everyone has days like that. I think.
--
Iain Merrick
i...@cs.york.ac.uk
Andrew Plotkin
>>Remember, some of us may actually _like_ the waters largely uncharted.
>>Is the frontier as interesting once it has been tamed?
>
> I think that the question no longer comes down to "will we chart these waters"
> but "how will it happen?" We either have the choice of working together to
> create a good and acceptable system, or we will completely separate on this
> issue and the work will be done, but not as well as it could have been.
I know I'm repeating myself, but I don't think this is a task which
improves with concensus.
Nor is it a matter of "charting a frontier", for heaven's sake. Have you
*noticed* that the task of genre classification has *never been done*, not
for books, not for movies, not for board games or wallpaper patterns?
Paul O'Brian
> Reviews help a
> lot too, but we're (RAIF) just not very good at reviews overall.
I'm not so sure about that. I've been pretty impressed with the number of
reviews I've received for SPAG. This last issue had 22 reviews in it, from
a variety of sources. Not only that, there's the IF Review Conspiracy,
which seems to be cranking out the reviews at healthy rate. Not only that,
there are the scads and scads of competition reviews that show up every
year. Not only that, there are the occasional one-off reviews that appear
in rgif from time to time. (You say RAIF above, but I assume you're
referring to the community as a whole. Rec.arts.int-fiction isn't the most
appropriate forum for reviews.) From what I can see, I'd say we're pretty
damn good at reviews, especially for a hobbyist community where nobody
gets renumerated for their work.
--
Paul O'Brian obr...@colorado.edu http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~obrian
> GET SPAG ISSUE 20 FROM HTTP://WWW.SPARKYNET.COM/SPAG. EXAMINE IT.
This lovingly produced zine features news, reviews, and more, all focusing
on interactive fiction! It's nice and thick, too.
YesuSlave
>improves with concensus.
To clarify, I don't mean that we should all sit down and agree whether Photopia
should be counted in the Sci-fi realm or not because of the sections in it that
may be construed in such a way...but how we see IF as a whole.
Practically tested, a few people would set up a page to catagorize a small
section of randomly chosen IF and classify it. We could then get the responses
from people as to how such a system might be improved and expanded to be most
useful.
Please also understand that this isn't an attempt to Nazize the world of IF,
but simply a way of making the games less enigmatic. The info at the IF
Library on each game is certainly wanting greatly. If I showed up there
looking for a puzzleless game, I would have no idea where to look or how to
find it.
Alan Trewartha
> > important one) so it's not done very well. I've never used alexlit, but the
> > observation on rec.arts.sf.written is something like, "You give it a highly
> > personalized list of books which you've liked in the past, and it goes through
> > a sophisticated matching process, correlates your taste with those of other
> > users, and tells you to read Lois McMaster Bujold."
This reminds me of the website of the publishers I work for. They had a
"gift suggester" sort of thing where you filled in a little form describing
the person (relation, age, etc), but it always came back with
"Angela's Ashes" no matter what!
dcorn...@my-deja.com
<Pine.GSO.3.96.100031...@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>,
Paul O'Brian <obr...@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Mar 2000 dcorn...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> > Reviews help a
> > lot too, but we're (RAIF) just not very good at reviews overall.
>
> I'm not so sure about that. I've been pretty impressed with the number
of
> reviews I've received for SPAG. This last issue had 22 reviews in it,
>
Well, I guess what I meant was that the overall review process for IF
hasn't been consistent. I also believe that although many of the reviews
are good, they also leave something to be desired in the way of helping
people locate games they would like to play.
There are several types of reviews:
1. Critical - reviewer just didn't like the game
2. Fan - reviewer loved the game or loves the author's work in general
and simply repeats "this is great!"
Then overlapping these types are spoiler/non-spoiler reviews.
I dislike both types of reviews in that they polarize (thumbs up, thumbs
down) review process.
A more accurate review (in my opinion) would talk about the story, plot,
puzzles, npc's, sounding like an innocent bystander and add spoilers at
the end of the review so that a person could stop at a certain point or
read on to get detailed info.
Of course I'm a monority here. I really find critical reviews
distasteful and the 'fan' reviews, well, some people just feel the need
to heap praise on others no matter what.
The review process in IF should be strictly directed at the author so
that he/she may become a better writer.
What is written for the masses should be as non-subjective as possible.
Adam Cadre
> > > Adam Cadre <a...@adamcadre.ac> wrote:
> > > [...]
Just a quick reminder to double-check your attributions -- I didn't
write any of that stuff. Not a huge deal this time out, but just for
future reference...
-----
Brian 'Beej' Hall
>Categorization is a bad idea. As I've mentioned before, the best way to
>weed out games is that the author should write something catchy that
>describes the content and feel of their game and then potential gamers
>lot too, but we're (RAIF) just not very good at reviews overall.
I agree with what you said about the best way to weed out games, and
that a "trailer" is a great way to decide if you want to play an
individaul game or not.
That being said, I think categorization is also a good thing. When
I walk into my favorite used bookstore and I feel like reading some
sci-fi, it wouldn't be acceptable at all for the owner to tell me, "I'm
sorry, but we don't believe in categorization. Read all the back covers
and choose the books you like."
Admittedly, there are billions of books, and only several score pieces
of IF...but it's still enough IF that lazy me doesn't feel like reading
all the teasers. :)
And I still think that a loose-fit keyword categorization would work
better than just saying that Babel is sci-fi. Or is it horror? You see
my point.
-Beej
Paul O'Brian
> That being said, I think categorization is also a good thing. When
> I walk into my favorite used bookstore and I feel like reading some
> sci-fi, it wouldn't be acceptable at all for the owner to tell me, "I'm
> sorry, but we don't believe in categorization. Read all the back covers
> and choose the books you like."
Well, of course it wouldn't. The owner of the fabled categoryless
bookstore should instead say something like, "Sci-fi, eh? OK, how about
Asimov? Do you like Heinlein? Have you tried Connie Willis?"
You know, a conversation.
My point is that if you walk into a bookstore asking for something that
falls into the store's preset categories, the staff can just grunt and
point toward the proper shelves. But as soon as your wants get more
specific ("Science fiction about galactic empires", "Alternate histories",
"I liked Doomsday Book. What's like it?"), the store's categories aren't
all that helpful. What would be helpful is reading reviews, trying out a
few pages of some things that look interesting, and talking to people.
These are the sorts of things that the IF community already offers.
Stephen Granade
> A more accurate review (in my opinion) would talk about the story, plot,
> puzzles, npc's, sounding like an innocent bystander and add spoilers at
> the end of the review so that a person could stop at a certain point or
> read on to get detailed info.
I disagree. While you can strive to write a more balanced review, at
some point it all boils down to whether or not you liked the game. You
can talk about the writing, the craft, and all of that; but at some
point you'll have to give your opinions of such things.
> The review process in IF should be strictly directed at the author so
> that he/she may become a better writer.
Good lord, no. In that case, why not just mail your review straight to
the author and never mind posting it? While reviews can help authors,
they can also help other players know whether or not they want to play
a game.
> What is written for the masses should be as non-subjective as possible.
I think this is wrong in many, many ways.
Stephen
--
Stephen Granade | Interested in adventure games?
sgra...@phy.duke.edu | Visit About.com's IF Page
Duke University, Physics Dept | http://interactfiction.about.com
dcorn...@my-deja.com
Stephen Granade <sgra...@login2.phy.duke.edu> wrote:
> dcorn...@my-deja.com writes:
>
<snip me and Stephen disagreeing>
>
> I think this is wrong in many, many ways.
>
Where books and movies are concerned, you need the reviews and
categorization.
Where IF is concerned, and it's such a incestuous little group of
people, well, I think it does more harm than good. The one difference
between our hobby and most other artisitic endeavors is that we're more
or less a closed society.
Our games aren't played by the masses, nor are they generally played by
people that aren't interested in writing games.
Most of the players are also authors too.
So the review process has a different effect. I think we're still too
small of a group to handle public criticism well. I think we need more
encouragement and education, more marketing (to each other and to the
masses), and less "your game sucked and here's why..."
It's almost like we're on one side of a glass wall and no one is on the
other side. The reviews are generally meant for the other side - but no
one is there to hear them. So we end up sharing the reviews amongst
ourselves and - well - I just think it's unnecessary.
If we were to weigh the two - I would actually favor categorization over
reviews.
Nick Montfort
it's good for some reviews to have authors (not just the single author
of the particular game) as an intended readership. Additionally, it
makes sense to write reviews to help people decide what they'd like to
play. But that's not why I'm posting...
dcorn...@my-deja.com wrote:
> Our games aren't played by the masses, nor are they generally played
> by people that aren't interested in writing games. [...]
>
> It's almost like we're on one side of a glass wall and no one is on
> the other side. The reviews are generally meant for the other side
> - but no one is there to hear them.
Although the closed-off IF community is quite vibrant, aren't there some
people interested in broadening the appeal of their works so that those
who aren't Zork fans might enjoy their work?
Of course many recent IF works are a far cry from Zork. But even the
most experimental, diverging, non-puzzle-cenetered, and otherwise
un-Zork-like works often assume that the player has been initiated by
Infocom and knows the rules of compass-direction navigation,
object-taking, puzzle-solving, what the letter "i" does, etc.
Are there others who are interested in writing IF for different
audiences? If so, what have you been doing to bring your works outside
the IF community?
-Nick M.