Preaching to the pews
Jason Melancon
"You should be a bit careful, perhaps, with puzzles based on morals:
You don't want to come off as preachy." —Avrom Faderman
"[The Broken String] would be lots better if there weren't that p.r.
preachy undertone, and it were written more tongue in cheek . . . ."
—dorkus horribilus
"The preachiness [of Delusions] made me hostile towards
the whole game."
"[on In The End] No good static story would have such little
conflict, such a preachy ending, indeed nothing to draw the reader
in."
"[on Tapestry] I'd much rather be *shown* what to do than *preached*
at. . . . I feel manipulated and resent it." -Andrew Pontious
-------------------------------------------------------------
I want to talk about this concept, preachiness. What do people mean by
this term? Is it more than just speaking our mind? I guess I don't
understand the "show vs. tell" dichotomy in IF very well. (Come to
think of it, past threads about this might be a good addition to the
IF authoring pages ... I'll be on the lookout.)
In my opinion, of the above three games I quoted Andrew on, In The
End, and the others to a lesser extent, weren't preachy enough: While
I liked ITE, except for the "solution," I could barely discern the
philosophy that In The End tried to demonstrate, and in fact I deigned
to use the author's walkthrough.
Other games that might be relevant to this question, games like
Trinity, Lost New York, or Shades of Gray, I haven't played yet, but I
understand they are good. Might I learn by example from these? AMFV
was good, but, again, it wasn't explicit enough; since it postulates
consequences without giving evidence, it presents opinions only, when
it could have been more convincing. Is this preaching as it's commonly
understood in IF?
Just to be clear, I come from a background of student organizing, so
naturally my bias here is, if anything, toward preaching. But can I
hear from others on what, *exactly, specifically* (give spoilers), you
thought was preachy in a text game and what could have been done about
it? Tall order, I know. No hurry.
One reason for asking is that I've had an idea in the back of my mind
awhile for a game that, if I did it right, would certainly deal with
particular generalizations and visions. What advice would people have
about avoiding preaching?
Thanks for your indulgence,
Jason Melançon
Phil Goetz
In article <587evk$1...@news2.gte.net>, Jason Melancon <hra...@gte.net> wrote:
>Other games that might be relevant to this question, games like
>Trinity, Lost New York, or Shades of Gray, I haven't played yet, but I
>understand they are good. Might I learn by example from these? AMFV
>was good, but, again, it wasn't explicit enough; since it postulates
>consequences without giving evidence, it presents opinions only, when
>it could have been more convincing. Is this preaching as it's commonly
>understood in IF?
>
>Jason Melançon
I thought AMFV was good, but pretty preachy.
<THEME SPOILER WARNING THAT PEOPLE WHO CARE ONLY ABOUT PUZZLES SHOULD IGNORE>
When you start the game, you find the usual opposition of liberal
social-minded bleeding hearts to conservative greedmongers.
It's made pretty clear as you go through the game that the liberals
are right and the conservatives are wrong. I found that preachy.
It doesn't matter that no character in the game comes out and says it.
The game would have been intolerable except that it also tried to show
that the conservative agenda was greatly beneficial in the short run.
I would argue the correctness of this "conservative is good in short
term, liberal is good in long term" summary, but at least they tried to
show some of both sides.
Any game that tries to deal with a big issue and presents only one side
of it makes me wish it were a real paper book so I could fling it
against the wall in disgust.
Phil Go...@cs.buffalo.edu
Bob Adams
>One reason for asking is that I've had an idea in the back of my mind
>awhile for a game that, if I did it right, would certainly deal with
>particular generalizations and visions. What advice would people have
>about avoiding preaching?
>
I always thought people played adventures for entertainment. Don't tell
me I've been doing it wrong all these years!
--
Bob Adams
http://www.amster.demon.co.uk
null...@aol.com
> I want to talk about this concept, preachiness. What do people mean by
> this term? Is it more than just speaking our mind? I guess I don't
> understand the "show vs. tell" dichotomy in IF very well. (Come to
> think of it, past threads about this might be a good addition to the
> IF authoring pages ... I'll be on the lookout.)
Well, as I use the term, anyway, it's not just presenting a message. The
best games (as with the best books, movies, etc.) (IMHO) tell you
something about the way the author sees the world, and help you understand
why. "Preachiness" is when the message is especially didactic and
heavy-handed, when you feel manipulated rather than educated.
Obviously, this is a pretty subjective notion.
> In my opinion, of the above three games I quoted Andrew on, In The
> End, and the others to a lesser extent, weren't preachy enough: While
> I liked ITE, except for the "solution," I could barely discern the
> philosophy that In The End tried to demonstrate, and in fact I deigned
> to use the author's walkthrough.
I didn't think ITE was preachy, either. (More to come on this in a later
post.)
> Just to be clear, I come from a background of student organizing, so
> naturally my bias here is, if anything, toward preaching. But can I
> hear from others on what, *exactly, specifically* (give spoilers), you
> thought was preachy in a text game and what could have been done about
> it? Tall order, I know. No hurry.
I, too, come from a background in student organizing. It's all about
recognizing that everything, ultimately, is propaganda; and yet people
really resent (understandably) really blatant propaganda. You want to
respect your readers' intelligence, present them with the same things you
see in the way you see them, and trust that they will draw the same
conclusions.
Good non-preachy example (IMHO):
[CHRISTMINSTER & TRINITY SPOILERS AHEAD:]
Breaking the window in Christminster and killing the skink in Trinity. In
both cases, these were actions you *chose* (without being made to think
much about them beforehand); more importantly, the consequences were
described evocatively but not dogmatically -- you had Edward following you
about moping and the skink's feeble squeaks as it expired, but the game
didn't deign to tell you how you emotionally felt about it; that was left
up to you.
This becomes a lot harder, of course, when the game itself depends on that
emotional reaction. Tapestry, for example, depends entirely on you
identifying with the anguish of the main character over his life
decisions. I didn't, and so for me the game was a total waste. Whether it
could've been written in such a way that I *did* feel that way is an
interesting question -- and anyway, it seems that lots of other people did
feel drawn in, so the game may have been too "preachy" for me but not for
others.
> One reason for asking is that I've had an idea in the back of my mind
> awhile for a game that, if I did it right, would certainly deal with
> particular generalizations and visions. What advice would people have
> about avoiding preaching?
Trust your readers, and the importance of your material. Focus on the
little things, and let the big messages take care of themselves.
Acknowledge complexity. And learn from other authors who do it
exceptionally well. (My own recommendations for recent books/movies:
Ursula LeGuin's novella collection _Four Ways to Forgiveness_ and Mike
Leigh's movie _Secrets and Lies_. Really, any LeGuin and Leigh. They are
my heroes of non-preachiness.)
Neil
---------------------------------------------------------
Neil deMause ne...@echonyc.com
http://www.echonyc.com/~wham/neild.html
---------------------------------------------------------
Avrom Faderman
In article <587evk$1...@news2.gte.net>, Jason Melancon <hra...@gte.net> wrote:
> "You should be a bit careful, perhaps, with puzzles based on morals:
[snip]
>I want to talk about this concept, preachiness. What do people mean by
>this term? Is it more than just speaking our mind?
Well, I can only say what I meant, and, to tell the truth, I'm not
sure "preachy" was quite the term I wanted.
Basing puzzles on morals, unlike mentioning morals in static fiction*
has a consequence far beyond speaking one's mind. It requires, or at
least risks, speaking one's mind in a particularly didactic way.
A puzzle is, by definition, supposed to be a point at which the player
figures something out. What will open this gate? How can I convince
the shopkeeper to give me the carpet that actually flies, rather than
the shabby useless one? Who murdered the horse-breeder?
Solving these puzzles requires learning something about the world in
which the game is based. You can think of the game's author as a
teacher (albeit a very Socratic one, unless the game contains a lot of
built-in hints) and the game's player as a student. This is generally
fine--the topic of instruction is how the game's universe works, and
this is something about which the author is legitimately in a position
of authority.
But morals are different. They're not relative to worlds--if the
player character in a game would be acting wrongly in doing X in
circumstances Y, someone would _really_ be acting wrongly in doing X
in circumstances Y. If an author proposes to teach a player something
with a puzzle about morals, it can't simply be something about the
game universe--it must be something about the world in general. And
this is something about which the author is NOT legitimately in a
position of authority.
Conducting moral discourse as if it were an exchange between teacher
and student, as opposed to two debaters of equal standing, is what I
was calling "preachy." This doesn't happen in (well written) static
fiction, even when the author is clearly expressing his or her
mind--the fiction can be taken as simply one argument in the debate.
But in a puzzle, where the author supposedly knows THE THING to do and
the player needs to LEARN what it is, isn't a matter of equal
footing--It's a conceit that the author has special access to the
truth (in the way they really do in non-moral issues, at least about
their own world) and that the player must discover what this truth is.
OK. That's my explanation of my words.
-Avrom
Cardinal Teulbachs
go...@cs.buffalo.edu (Phil Goetz) made so bold as to state:
>I thought AMFV was good, but pretty preachy.
><THEME SPOILER WARNING THAT PEOPLE WHO CARE ONLY ABOUT PUZZLES SHOULD IGNORE>
>
>When you start the game, you find the usual opposition of liberal
>social-minded bleeding hearts to conservative greedmongers.
>It's made pretty clear as you go through the game that the liberals
>are right and the conservatives are wrong. I found that preachy.
>It doesn't matter that no character in the game comes out and says it.
>The game would have been intolerable except that it also tried to show
>that the conservative agenda was greatly beneficial in the short run.
>I would argue the correctness of this "conservative is good in short
>term, liberal is good in long term" summary, but at least they tried to
>show some of both sides.
>Any game that tries to deal with a big issue and presents only one side
>of it makes me wish it were a real paper book so I could fling it
>against the wall in disgust.
I haven't played AMFV, but from your description of it, I'd say the
problem isn't so much that it's one-sided--it's that it's moronic. To
portray modern conservative vs. modern liberal doctrine in the way you
say the game does is simply to demonstrate ignorance of the subject
matter. Hence, it's annoying not because it's "preachy" per se but
because the author doesn't know what he or she is talking about.
Generally, we tend to call something "preachy" when it stands on moral
arguments we dispute and disagree with. Modernists hate anything that
stands on any absolute and objective ground of morality, since their
whole world-view depends upon the proposition that there is no truth
or that the truth can't be known. Thus, they call religious people
"preachy" for teaching or declaring things to be good and evil
contrary to their own relativist opinions. Likewise, religious people
call modernists "preachy" when they do the same from their opposite
point-of-view.
But authors from both groups are sometimes called "preachy" even by
the people within their own faction, if they seem to belabor obvious
things to no particular purpose or to take gratuitous shots at the
opposition with nothing to back up their bravado or to give an
infantile account of the subject they're treating of. In other words,
if an author doesn't seem to know what he or she is talking about,
then even naturally sympathetic readers will brand him or her
"preachy".
Because of this problem of preachiness and the guarantee that by
taking a stand one will piss off a great many people, the authors of
Infocom deliberately blurred the lines in most of their games. While
they definitely tended to the modernist view of things, they
nevertheless (except for Meretzky and, I guess, the author of AMFV)
were generally careful not to make direct or too-obvious declarations.
Cardinal Toolbox, in Beyond Zork, is a cartoonish figure possessed of
a modernist's satirical view of what Christian belief amounts to ("Oh,
woe. Who will save us from the christmas tree monsters?"), yet he's
written in such a way that a more orthodox or pleasing--to Christians,
I mean--interpretation can also be alleged. In this way, Infocom tried
to avoid picking fights while at the same time maintaining their
modernist point of view, the end result being that sort of mushy,
impossible, I-don't-believe-nor-disbelieve-in-anything atmosphere that
most of their games attempt to have.
So persistent and omnipresent is this attitude adopted by the
Infocommies that i-f'ers tend to take it for granted today--i.e. it's
generally assumed that such a stance is indispensible to i-f. But it's
not, if only one is prepared to accept the consequences of actually
having something to say.
--Cardinal T
I mean, what the hell kind of villain thwarts the hero's
progress with soup cans in the kitchen pantry?
--Russ Bryan
Are there any text games prominently featuring dinosaurs?
If not, does anyone besides me think it would be cool?
--Matthew Amster-Burton
Please be as rational as possible
--Mike Thomas
"Bathroom? Yeah. Go through that door, on the end
of the hall, on your left." "Pardon?" "South twice,
than east." "Ah."
--Clyde "Fred" Sloniker
Andrew Plotkin
Avrom Faderman (av...@Turing.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
> But morals are different. They're not relative to worlds--if the
> player character in a game would be acting wrongly in doing X in
> circumstances Y, someone would _really_ be acting wrongly in doing X
> in circumstances Y. If an author proposes to teach a player something
> with a puzzle about morals, it can't simply be something about the
> game universe--it must be something about the world in general.
Up to this point, I agree with you.
> And
> this is something about which the author is NOT legitimately in a
> position of authority.
Ok, just as in static fiction...
> Conducting moral discourse as if it were an exchange between teacher
> and student, as opposed to two debaters of equal standing, is what I
> was calling "preachy." This doesn't happen in (well written) static
> fiction, even when the author is clearly expressing his or her
> mind--the fiction can be taken as simply one argument in the debate.
> But in a puzzle, where the author supposedly knows THE THING to do and
> the player needs to LEARN what it is, isn't a matter of equal
> footing--It's a conceit that the author has special access to the
> truth (in the way they really do in non-moral issues, at least about
> their own world) and that the player must discover what this truth is.
But then isn't the whole IF work just another argument in the debate?
It's true that the author knows *the* solution, but this is exactly
analogous to the way in which a static fiction author writes *the*
solution, the thing that the the protagonist does and is rewarded by a
happy ending.
In one case, the author is declaiming "X"; in the other case, the player
has to try things one at a time, with the author saying "Nope... nope...
not that either... yes, *that's* right, it's X." These are equally
one-sided.
I've certainly tried to hit ideas about morals about my own work. I
haven't been accused of being preachy, possibly because I'm so
obfuscatory that nobody can figure out what I'm preaching. :)
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Andrew Plotkin
I just wrote a long, detailed, and insightful response to Cardinal T's
lovely posting, and then accidentally deleted it.
Fuck.
Andrew Plotkin
Andrew Plotkin (erky...@netcom.com) wrote:
> I just wrote a long, detailed, and insightful response to Cardinal T's
> lovely posting, and then accidentally deleted it.
I forgot to mention that it was also entertaining and spiced with
humorous asides.
However, I'll just mention the interesting point, which was "What about
_Infidel_?"
Adam J. Thornton
In article <erkyrathE...@netcom.com>,
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@netcom.com> wrote:
>I just wrote a long, detailed, and insightful response to Cardinal T's
>lovely posting, and then accidentally deleted it.
I respectfully submit that if there were more of this last going on, there
would be less quality IF being written here.
Adam
--
"I'd buy me a used car lot, and | ad...@princeton.edu | As B/4 | Save the choad!
I'd never sell any of 'em, just | "Skippy, you little fool, you are off on an-
drive me a different car every day | other of your senseless and retrograde
depending on how I feel.":Tom Waits| little journeys.": Thomas Pynchon | 64,928
aul...@koala.scott.net
In article <erkyrathE...@netcom.com>,
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@netcom.com> wrote:
>I just wrote a long, detailed, and insightful response to Cardinal T's
>lovely posting, and then accidentally deleted it.
>
>Fuck.
>
>
You do have your problems with TIN, don't you Andrew?
That is all,
Joe -- uses trn
Avrom Faderman
>However, I'll just mention the interesting point, which was "What about
>_Infidel_?"
I assume you're referring to the very last action that must be taken
to "win" the game, and its result.
The interesting thing about this is that it's very oblique about
morality, and certainly isn't an ethical _puzzle_--one assumes the
author wasn't really endorsing the action that must be taken (at least
I hope not). To the extent that the puzzle has ethical dimensions, it
is that the character has to do something that (IMO, at least) is,
while not exactly immoral, at least evidence of a pretty messed up
value system.
The puzzle is closer to being _psychological_. Rather than figuring
out what the PC _should_ do, the player has to figure out the one
thing they _would_ do. You "win" the game not because you bring about
the best possible outcome but rather because you bring about the
outcome that the PC would be happiest with.
(Sorry for the vagueness, I was trying to avoid real spoilers for
Infidel.)
-Avrom
Avrom Faderman
[snip]
>> Conducting moral discourse as if it were an exchange between teacher
>> and student, as opposed to two debaters of equal standing, is what I
>> was calling "preachy." This doesn't happen in (well written) static
>> fiction, even when the author is clearly expressing his or her
>> mind--the fiction can be taken as simply one argument in the debate.
>> But in a puzzle, where the author supposedly knows THE THING to do and
>> the player needs to LEARN what it is, isn't a matter of equal
>> footing--It's a conceit that the author has special access to the
>> truth (in the way they really do in non-moral issues, at least about
>> their own world) and that the player must discover what this truth is.
>
>But then isn't the whole IF work just another argument in the debate?
>It's true that the author knows *the* solution, but this is exactly
>analogous to the way in which a static fiction author writes *the*
>solution, the thing that the the protagonist does and is rewarded by a
>happy ending.
>
>In one case, the author is declaiming "X"; in the other case, the player
>has to try things one at a time, with the author saying "Nope... nope...
>not that either... yes, *that's* right, it's X." These are equally
>one-sided.
This is a good point, but I still think there is at least a
psychological difference between declaiming "X" and patiently but
critically waiting for your audience to guess "X." (And I did
originally describe the problem as COMING OFF AS preachy, not simply
as BEING preachy). The first is indeed only presenting one side, but
it's _presenting_ it, directly and (if, again, the fiction is
well-written) respectfully. The second is the technique the wise
teacher uses to guide the confused student. As I said before, this is
legitimate in areas where the teacher (author) really has more
authority than the student (player), but not in areas where he or she
doesn't.
Of course, the Socratic method isn't the only method used by
teachers. Teachers can lecture, too, and it's _possible_ to declare
"X" in a way that makes it sound like a lecture, or a homily. It's
precisely when static fiction does this that I think it comes off as
preachy as well. But lots of declarations are simply bits of a debate
between equals, so it's easy (if the author is skilled) to avoid
sounding didactic when they make declarations. It's a lot harder to
use the Socratic method that way, just because of the associations we
have with it.
>I've certainly tried to hit ideas about morals about my own work. I
>haven't been accused of being preachy, possibly because I'm so
>obfuscatory that nobody can figure out what I'm preaching. :)
Spoilers for So Far...
This is interesting. I've played "A Change in the Weather," "So Far,"
and "Lists and Lists," and finished all but the first, and I have to
admit that I didn't notice this (I assume you weren't talking about
"Lists," unless the moral issues were _very_ obscure).
Well, that's not quite true. You certainly _touch_ on moral issues in
"So Far," for example in [crawling, cramped], but the game provided,
for me at least, no clear answer. I didn't have the feeling when I got
out of [crawling, cramped] that I had been rewarded for morality, or
even that the game necessarily thought I had. I had witnessed a sad
event, and perhaps a moral tragedy--maybe in a morally ideal world,
the PC would have gotten the boy out instead of himself (although even
that isn't obvious), but that wasn't an option; the boy wasn't
accepting help. But even if we accept this as a moral claim, it's
closer to a _declaration_ than a _puzzle_; the player doesn't have to
figure out that injustice had occurred (or that it hadn't, if that was
your claim) to progress.
The closest the game came to a "moral" (probably "ethical" would be a
better word here) _puzzle_ is the very last move of the game. But
that's sufficiently close to the end, and the "losing" move has
interesting enough results, that the player can almost decide which
choice is the better. You clearly prefer one, but it's not like the
player is stranded unless he or she agrees with you.
-Avrom
Bill Hoggett
On 07-Dec-96 Bob Adams <ams...@amster.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <587evk$1...@news2.gte.net>, Jason Melancon <hra...@gte.net>
>writes
>>One reason for asking is that I've had an idea in the back of my mind
>>awhile for a game that, if I did it right, would certainly deal with
>>particular generalizations and visions. What advice would people have
>>about avoiding preaching?
>>
>I always thought people played adventures for entertainment. Don't tell
>me I've been doing it wrong all these years!
Stange concept!
I never thought of it that way. It's always been agony, sheer *AGONY* !
Bill Hoggett (aka BeeJay) <mas.su...@easynet.co.uk>
IF GOD IS LIFE'S SERVICE PROVIDER WHY HAVEN'T I GOT HIS I.P. NUMBER ?
Andrew Plotkin
Avrom Faderman (av...@Turing.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
> In article <erkyrathE...@netcom.com>,
> Andrew Plotkin <erky...@netcom.com> wrote:
> >However, I'll just mention the interesting point, which was "What about
> >_Infidel_?"
> I assume you're referring to the very last action that must be taken
> to "win" the game, and its result.
Actually, I was referring to the *opening*, where your character's
messed-up values (ie, the fact that he's a shithead) are established.
This is shown, in the diary and the opening game text, by having him be
disrespectful to the locals' religion -- and therefore the locals leave
him stranded to die in the desert.
This is not terribly controversial a statement -- except within the very
limited hack-slash-and-plunder confines of the IF genre of the time. But
it is an ethical position from Infocom, about religion even, and it's not
a joke like Cardinal T's namesake.
> The interesting thing about this is that it's very oblique about
> morality, and certainly isn't an ethical _puzzle_--one assumes the
> author wasn't really endorsing the action that must be taken (at least
> I hope not). To the extent that the puzzle has ethical dimensions, it
> is that the character has to do something that (IMO, at least) is,
> while not exactly immoral, at least evidence of a pretty messed up
> value system.
And the opening, of course, isn't a puzzle at all -- it takes place
before move 1.
Andrew Plotkin
Avrom Faderman (av...@Turing.Stanford.EDU) wrote:
> >I've certainly tried to hit ideas about morals about my own work. I
> >haven't been accused of being preachy, possibly because I'm so
> >obfuscatory that nobody can figure out what I'm preaching. :)
> Spoilers for So Far...
> This is interesting. I've played "A Change in the Weather," "So Far,"
> and "Lists and Lists," and finished all but the first, and I have to
> admit that I didn't notice this (I assume you weren't talking about
> "Lists," unless the moral issues were _very_ obscure).
Heh, correct.
> Well, that's not quite true. You certainly _touch_ on moral issues in
> "So Far," for example in [crawling, cramped], but the game provided,
> for me at least, no clear answer. I didn't have the feeling when I got
> out of [crawling, cramped] that I had been rewarded for morality, or
> even that the game necessarily thought I had.
> [...] it's
> closer to a _declaration_ than a _puzzle_; the player doesn't have to
> figure out that injustice had occurred (or that it hadn't, if that was
> your claim) to progress.
Hm. I see your point, but I wasn't specifically *avoiding* making moral
puzzles; it just came out that way. I guess I should put one in some
future game and see what people think.
Cardinal Teulbachs
>Andrew Plotkin <erky...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>I just wrote a long, detailed, and insightful response to Cardinal T's
>>lovely posting, and then accidentally deleted it.
If you'd repost, if only to indicate the general lines of your
agreement/disagreement and reasoning, I'd appreciate it.
Thanks,
Giles Boutel
Bob Adams <ams...@amster.demon.co.uk> wrote in article
<didq5EAq...@amster.demon.co.uk>...
> In article <587evk$1...@news2.gte.net>, Jason Melancon <hra...@gte.net>
> writes
>
> >One reason for asking is that I've had an idea in the back of my mind
> >awhile for a game that, if I did it right, would certainly deal with
> >particular generalizations and visions. What advice would people have
> >about avoiding preaching?
> >
>
> I always thought people played adventures for entertainment. Don't tell
> me I've been doing it wrong all these years!
>
> --
That's right. Adventures are for entertainment. Move on folks - there's
nothing to see here.
-Giles
(phew - that was a close one)
Cardinal Teulbachs
av...@Turing.Stanford.EDU (Avrom Faderman) made so bold as to state:
>In article <587evk$1...@news2.gte.net>, Jason Melancon <hra...@gte.net> wrote:
>> "You should be a bit careful, perhaps, with puzzles based on morals:
>>You don't want to come off as preachy." 輸vrom Faderman
>[snip]
>>I want to talk about this concept, preachiness. What do people mean by
>>this term? Is it more than just speaking our mind?
>Well, I can only say what I meant, and, to tell the truth, I'm not
>sure "preachy" was quite the term I wanted.
>Basing puzzles on morals, unlike mentioning morals in static fiction*
>has a consequence far beyond speaking one's mind. It requires, or at
>least risks, speaking one's mind in a particularly didactic way.
I don't disagree with you, but on the other hand where is it written
that i-f ought not be didactic? I realize this is the case you're
wanting to make, but I wonder why. There seems to be no reason in
principle why a work of i-f--even a text adventure--can't have a
teaching or rhetorical aim.
Aren't you really only saying that you yourself don't want to
play/read that sort of work, and then presuming that no one else does
either? Nothing wrong with that--it's just that I need to be clear
about the claim. You're not claiming that there's something
illegitimate in a person writing such a work if that's what he/she is
intending to write, are you?
>But morals are different. They're not relative to worlds--if the
>player character in a game would be acting wrongly in doing X in
>circumstances Y, someone would _really_ be acting wrongly in doing X
>in circumstances Y. If an author proposes to teach a player something
>with a puzzle about morals, it can't simply be something about the
>game universe--it must be something about the world in general. And
>this is something about which the author is NOT legitimately in a
>position of authority.
So no moral teaching is legitimate, or is it just that an author ought
not present himself explicitly as a teacher when he's writing fiction?
I think what you're saying, if I'm understanding you correctly, is
that you consider a story preachy that does anything more than simply
present a world as experienced through its character's eyes. If it
tries to declare that its world is the same as reality, then you
recoil.
That's mostly my reaction, too--when I disagree with the author. I
think most readers recoil at that sort of thing. But the fact remains
that stories still get called preachy even when they don't explicitly
state any intention to teach. Let's consider a Jewish or Christian
game; suppose that the idea of the thing is perform ten virtuous
actions corresponding to the Ten Commandments and that at the end the
player goes to heaven or whatever. I will absolutely dadgum fersure
guarantee you that such a game will be branded "preachy" by a certain
predictable crowd even though its author said not one whit about its
relation or lack thereof to the real world.
Is it because the story is clearly based on a world-view that claims
not to be fiction? That can't be it, can it? *Every* story is based on
some world-view, and every world-view makes claim to connection with
reality. That's what a world-view is: a doctrine about the nature of
the world and all reality. It's just well-developed in some stories
and glossed over in others. So where's the difference?
>But in a puzzle, where the author supposedly knows THE THING to do and
>the player needs to LEARN what it is, isn't a matter of equal
>footing--It's a conceit that the author has special access to the
>truth (in the way they really do in non-moral issues, at least about
>their own world) and that the player must discover what this truth is.
You complaint appears to me to be just as I said in my other post. You
don't think there's any absolute measure of good and evil, so you hate
reading stories that suppose there is. I, in turn, hate stories in
which it is clearly supposed there is not. I consider *them* preachy.
The only way, really, to avoid writing a story that both of us will
consider completely free of preachiness is to either write one that
only involves principles we agree on (which will be hard to do, I
suspect) or one that is so vague and indeterminate as to have very
little soul. This latter is the usual strategy, and it's one
reason--though only one--most i-f stories have the intellectual depth
of comic books.
The answer to the problem seems to me to be simply that an author
should know the audience he's writing for and write for them.
Cardinal Teulbachs
card...@earthlink.net (Cardinal Teulbachs) made so bold as to state:
>This latter is the usual strategy, and it's one
>reason--though only one--most i-f stories have the intellectual depth
>of comic books.
Yikes. I just realized this line could easily be misconstrued. I'm not
suggesting that the authors of "most i-f stories" are stupid. I just
think there are other things--"mechanical" things, if you will--that
saddle authors and tend to discourage more serious writing being done
in i-f. The allegiance to a mushy, point-of-viewless game world is
only one of them.
Mea culpa,
Admiral Jota
card...@earthlink.net (Cardinal Teulbachs) writes:
[lotsa stuff that I probably should have removed has been removed]
>Aren't you really only saying that you yourself don't want to
>play/read that sort of work, and then presuming that no one else does
>either? Nothing wrong with that--it's just that I need to be clear
>about the claim. You're not claiming that there's something
>illegitimate in a person writing such a work if that's what he/she is
>intending to write, are you?
It sounded to me that Avrom was saying that he didn't want to play a game
where the author was trying to teach him something that he didn't feel
the author was a legitiment person to teach. In other words, if a game
was intended as a didactic presentation of fluid dynamics, I'm not so
sure that I would accept it if it was written by a philosophy major. If
the game is written as didactic regarding morality, I wouldn't
particularly like it if it was written by someone that I didn't consider
an expert on morality.
Somehow, I've managed to switch from interpreting Avrom's opinion to
presenting my own... sorry about that. Anyway, here's the bit (by Avrom)
that seems to suggest that what I think is close to what he was thinking:
>av...@Turing.Stanford.EDU (Avrom Faderman) made so bold as to state:
>>But morals are different. They're not relative to worlds--if the
>>player character in a game would be acting wrongly in doing X in
>>circumstances Y, someone would _really_ be acting wrongly in doing X
>>in circumstances Y. If an author proposes to teach a player something
>>with a puzzle about morals, it can't simply be something about the
>>game universe--it must be something about the world in general. And
>>this is something about which the author is NOT legitimately in a
>>position of authority.
card...@earthlink.net (Cardinal Teulbachs) writes:
>So no moral teaching is legitimate, or is it just that an author ought
>not present himself explicitly as a teacher when he's writing fiction?
That's not what I saw in that paragraph. It looked like he was saying
that a moral teaching is only legitimate it the writer is a legimate
teacher of morals. I would probably consider a moral teaching by Billy
Graham to be more legitimate than one by Bill Clinton. (This part is, of
course, *my* opinion, and not necessarily Avrom's.)
[lots of other stuff snipped, because it's not the stuff I'm responding to]
--
/<-= -=-=- -= Admiral Jota =- -=-=- =->\
__/><-=- http://www.tiac.net/users/jota/ =-><\__
\><-= jo...@mv.mv.com -- Finger for PGP =-></
\<-=- -= -=- -= -==- =- -=- =- -=->/
George Caswell
On Mon, 9 Dec 1996, Cardinal Teulbachs wrote:
> >player character in a game would be acting wrongly in doing X in
> >circumstances Y, someone would _really_ be acting wrongly in doing X
> >in circumstances Y. If an author proposes to teach a player something
> >with a puzzle about morals, it can't simply be something about the
> >game universe--it must be something about the world in general. And
> >this is something about which the author is NOT legitimately in a
> >position of authority.
>
> So no moral teaching is legitimate, or is it just that an author ought
> not present himself explicitly as a teacher when he's writing fiction?
>
It's really just the wrong context. I-F prompts you to step into a
character's role. If that character needs to make serious decisions (not just
'how' or 'why' but 'should I?') it's presumptuous for the author to say 'this
is right. That is not.'.
> >But in a puzzle, where the author supposedly knows THE THING to do and
> >the player needs to LEARN what it is, isn't a matter of equal
> >footing--It's a conceit that the author has special access to the
> >truth (in the way they really do in non-moral issues, at least about
> >their own world) and that the player must discover what this truth is.
>
> You complaint appears to me to be just as I said in my other post. You
> don't think there's any absolute measure of good and evil, so you hate
Is there? I tend to think not. There are only beliefs, which, of course,
vary.
> consider completely free of preachiness is to either write one that
> only involves principles we agree on (which will be hard to do, I
> suspect) or one that is so vague and indeterminate as to have very
> little soul. This latter is the usual strategy, and it's one
Not entirely. I do agree, in part on one point- an author should not
limit himself to what his audience will like. Otherwise, you may as well
start writing action movies...
________________________________________________
______________ _/> ____ | George Caswell, WPI CS 1999. Member L+L and |
<___ _________// _/<_ / | SOMA. Sometimes artist, writer, builder. Admin |
// <> ___ < > / _/ | of ADAMANT, a Linux box for the creative and |
// /> / / _/ / / <____ | productive members of the computer world. For |
// </ <<</ < _/ <______/ |_more info see http://www.wpi.edu/~timbuktu.____|
</ </
Avrom Faderman
In article <58g5gc$b...@colombia.earthlink.net>,
Cardinal Teulbachs <card...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>av...@Turing.Stanford.EDU (Avrom Faderman) made so bold as to state:
>>has a consequence far beyond speaking one's mind. It requires, or at
>>least risks, speaking one's mind in a particularly didactic way.
>
>I don't disagree with you, but on the other hand where is it written
>that i-f ought not be didactic? I realize this is the case you're
>wanting to make, but I wonder why. There seems to be no reason in
>principle why a work of i-f--even a text adventure--can't have a
>teaching or rhetorical aim.
I didn't simply mean "instructional" by "didactic." I was using the
word to refer to a kind of heavy-handed superiority of tone. But see
below.
>Aren't you really only saying that you yourself don't want to
>play/read that sort of work, and then presuming that no one else does
>either? Nothing wrong with that--it's just that I need to be clear
>about the claim. You're not claiming that there's something
>illegitimate in a person writing such a work if that's what he/she is
>intending to write, are you?
_Illegitimate_? No, not exactly. But any work they'll produce that
way won't be what I'd call a _good_ work. There was nothing
illegitimate about "Detective," but (IMO) it was not a good game, let
alone a good piece of interactive fiction. I'm saying something
similar (although, if the writing is technically good, I'm saying it
to a much lesser degree) about "preachy" IF.
>>But morals are different. They're not relative to worlds--if the
>>player character in a game would be acting wrongly in doing X in
>>circumstances Y, someone would _really_ be acting wrongly in doing X
>>in circumstances Y. If an author proposes to teach a player something
>>with a puzzle about morals, it can't simply be something about the
>>game universe--it must be something about the world in general. And
>>this is something about which the author is NOT legitimately in a
>>position of authority.
>
>So no moral teaching is legitimate, or is it just that an author ought
>not present himself explicitly as a teacher when he's writing fiction?
I don't like people I don't know (and most IF authors fall into this
category) presuming to teach me about morals. This doesn't mean I
don't like them trying to convince me of a moral position; it's just
that I require they do it in such a way that treats me as an equal
rather than as a pupil.
This is easier to do, as I said, in static fiction; making a moral
_claim_ can be done in such a way that I feel someone is _suggesting_
something to me; setting up a moral puzzle that I have to guess their
answer to lends itself to this far less.
>I think what you're saying, if I'm understanding you correctly, is
>that you consider a story preachy that does anything more than simply
>present a world as experienced through its character's eyes. If it
>tries to declare that its world is the same as reality, then you
>recoil.
See above. If the game tries to declare things about reality, that's
fine--it's the author's perogative to articulate his or her
positions. When things go awry is when the author decides something
about reality and then asks us to guess what it is.
[I'm going to snip a bit here]
>>But in a puzzle, where the author supposedly knows THE THING to do and
>>the player needs to LEARN what it is, isn't a matter of equal
>>footing--It's a conceit that the author has special access to the
>>truth (in the way they really do in non-moral issues, at least about
>>their own world) and that the player must discover what this truth is.
>
>You complaint appears to me to be just as I said in my other post. You
>don't think there's any absolute measure of good and evil, so you hate
>reading stories that suppose there is.
I didn't say this, and I'm not sure I think it. I just don't think I
have any reason to believe some stranger has fundamentally better
access to whatever measure this is. So, while I don't mind if they
debate with me about morality, to see if we can't come closer to
figuring out what it is, I mind quite a lot if they talk down at me
about it. Puzzles, by their nature, talk down. And while I don't
mind being talked down to about some fixture of a game universe, I do
mind being talked down to about right and wrong.
-Avrom
Avrom Faderman
In article <jota.85...@laraby.tiac.net>,
Admiral Jota <jo...@laraby.tiac.net> wrote:
[snip]
>It sounded to me that Avrom was saying that he didn't want to play a game
>where the author was trying to teach him something that he didn't feel
>the author was a legitiment person to teach. In other words, if a game
>was intended as a didactic presentation of fluid dynamics, I'm not so
>sure that I would accept it if it was written by a philosophy major. If
>the game is written as didactic regarding morality, I wouldn't
>particularly like it if it was written by someone that I didn't consider
>an expert on morality.
Thank you. That's it exactly. And as it turns out, there are
extremely few people that I consider _experts_ (as opposed to simply
thoughtful people with something interesting to say on the issue)
about morality. Maybe none.
-Avrom
Graham Nelson
Personally, I think it's fair enough for Meretzky to have been
"preachy" in AMFV -- at least preachy morality makes a break
from adolescent jokes about sex. I suppose part of the objection
stems from the player being required to be the main character, not
just observe the main character.
Jigsaw annoyed several people along similar lines. I think Jigsaw
has its preachy moments, too, but I thought it was more interesting
to stir up moral awkwardness -- to get the player to do things
which his conscience probably wouldn't be 100% happy with, to
be opposing someone he probably agrees with, and so on. The idea
was that the resolution at the end of the game would be a much
more suitable climax.
There is an interesting moral issue here which does not arise
in ordinary fiction. Suppose we have a game called "Nigel:
Confessions of a Grotesque Serial Killer", or some such. People
might well find reading such a novel acceptable (well, it would
be in poor taste perhaps, but it wouldn't be morally wrong).
But would it be immoral to play it as IF, in the persona of
the serial killer, solving puzzles like sharpening an axe
("The axe bounces off Geoffrey's neck. Doh!") before every
massacre, and so on? I certainly wouldn't like to.
I remember thinking much the same years ago on playing
a fatuous pornographic adventure game (can't remember the name,
and that's probably a kindness). I don't object to erotica,
personally, but having to answer questions like "Do you prefer
blondes or brunettes?" was faintly revolting.
--
Graham Nelson | gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom
George Caswell
On Mon, 9 Dec 1996, Graham Nelson wrote:
> I remember thinking much the same years ago on playing
> a fatuous pornographic adventure game (can't remember the name,
> and that's probably a kindness). I don't object to erotica,
Ah, yes... the porn works of AGT... the crap de la crap. <g>
> personally, but having to answer questions like "Do you prefer
> blondes or brunettes?" was faintly revolting.
>
Perfectly straightforward question... 'yes'.
Roger Carbol
Cardinal Teulbachs thus spake:
> Yikes. I just realized this line could easily be misconstrued. I'm not
> suggesting that the authors of "most i-f stories" are stupid. I just
> think there are other things--"mechanical" things, if you will--that
> saddle authors and tend to discourage more serious writing being done
> in i-f. The allegiance to a mushy, point-of-viewless game world is
> only one of them.
It's somewhat interesting that the concept of point-of-view has once
again been brought up in relation to IF and morals.
I think that most of us would agree that an IF becomes increasingly
difficult to write (and to write well) as one increases the complexity
and the character of the point-of-view of the main character, of which
the player assumes the role.
Why is this difficult? I think the answer lies partially within the
sense of abeyance in the player. The role of a mostly-faceless
character
is easier to assume than the role of a character which sharply differs
from the player's own nature.
As well, I suspect a great number of players treat explicit definition
of the main character's nature as cheap manipulation, which it probably
is.
Some of the difficulty arises in the very old and still very worthwhile
rule of thumb about showing, not telling.
I feel like breaking into transcript mode, so I shall:
>LOOK
You see here a half-empty bottle of red wine.
>EXAMINE WINE
The luscious crimson liquid swirls in the bottle, verily begging
you to quaff it.
---
>TAKE SWORD
You pull the sword out of the stone in one mighty stroke. Wielding it
lustily, you regret there is no one nearby to taste its cold steel.
---
Those two main characters had a viewpoint, I would think. And I for
one, and possibly many others, find it an irritating obstacle to
my viewpoint as a player.
But your mileage may vary.
Roger Carbol .. r...@col.ca .. You read the message and agree with it
entirely.
Cardinal Teulbachs
erky...@netcom.com (Andrew Plotkin) made so bold as to state:
>> >However, I'll just mention the interesting point, which was "What about
>> >_Infidel_?"
Hmm. I don't know, to be honest. All I can remember of it is being in
a desert and then later having to solve a very irritating puzzle
involving a wedge. I'll have to go back and play it again in order to
refresh my memory.
I think I might have just said "yeah, yeah, yeah, get on to the
puzzles already" the first time I played it, since the genre wasn't
one that particularly interested me.
Cardinal Teulbachs
av...@Turing.Stanford.EDU (Avrom Faderman) made so bold as to state:
>I didn't simply mean "instructional" by "didactic." I was using the
>word to refer to a kind of heavy-handed superiority of tone. But see
>below.
Well, ok, but it is in fact pretty much impossible to teach without
having a heavy-handed superiority of tone. That's what teaching is:
declaring something to be true and giving the reasons why. Anything
else isn't really teaching, is it? It's "suggesting".
>>Aren't you really only saying that you yourself don't want to
>>play/read that sort of work, and then presuming that no one else does
>>either? Nothing wrong with that--it's just that I need to be clear
>>about the claim. You're not claiming that there's something
>>illegitimate in a person writing such a work if that's what he/she is
>>intending to write, are you?
>_Illegitimate_? No, not exactly. But any work they'll produce that
>way won't be what I'd call a _good_ work. There was nothing
>illegitimate about "Detective," but (IMO) it was not a good game, let
>alone a good piece of interactive fiction. I'm saying something
>similar (although, if the writing is technically good, I'm saying it
>to a much lesser degree) about "preachy" IF.
What if one were to do, say, Lucretius' On the Nature of Things? I
don't know what the hell a player would do in such a piece--I guess
just fall through the void and bump atoms around--but suppose it were
done. And suppose the original verse and language it's written in were
preserved. Wouldn't you call that a good work? It's generally held to
be more or less a great piece of poetic literature, in its original
form. Yet it's nothing but one long sermon. It raves on from beginning
to end about the nature of things, with all the moral consequences
that radical materialism has to offer.
>I don't like people I don't know (and most IF authors fall into this
>category) presuming to teach me about morals. This doesn't mean I
>don't like them trying to convince me of a moral position; it's just
>that I require they do it in such a way that treats me as an equal
>rather than as a pupil.
But no great author treats his readers in the way you're talking
about. He has something to say and he says it. There's no opportunity
for you to object and there's no pretense that he's merely suggesting
something.
>This is easier to do, as I said, in static fiction; making a moral
>_claim_ can be done in such a way that I feel someone is _suggesting_
>something to me; setting up a moral puzzle that I have to guess their
>answer to lends itself to this far less.
This feeling you have has nothing to do with what the author is
actually doing, nor with what great literature *is*. It's coming from
inside you, on account of a particular philosophical stance you've
taken.
>>I think what you're saying, if I'm understanding you correctly, is
>>that you consider a story preachy that does anything more than simply
>>present a world as experienced through its character's eyes. If it
>>tries to declare that its world is the same as reality, then you
>>recoil.
>See above. If the game tries to declare things about reality, that's
>fine--it's the author's perogative to articulate his or her
>positions. When things go awry is when the author decides something
>about reality and then asks us to guess what it is.
I agree completely that this makes for an aggravating puzzle, but
isn't the problem then simply one of the player's ignorance vis a vis
the author's game world? It's not really one of preachiness, is it?
It's just that you don't know the answer and/or don't think the author
ought to expect you to know it. If it were something you were in
agreement with and knew the answer for and took for granted, you
wouldn't give it a second thought.
>>>But in a puzzle, where the author supposedly knows THE THING to do and
>>>the player needs to LEARN what it is, isn't a matter of equal
>>>footing--It's a conceit that the author has special access to the
>>>truth (in the way they really do in non-moral issues, at least about
>>>their own world) and that the player must discover what this truth is.
>>
>>You complaint appears to me to be just as I said in my other post. You
>>don't think there's any absolute measure of good and evil, so you hate
>>reading stories that suppose there is.
>I didn't say this, and I'm not sure I think it.
You're right. I did jump a bit here. Sorry.
>I just don't think I
>have any reason to believe some stranger has fundamentally better
>access to whatever measure this is. So, while I don't mind if they
>debate with me about morality, to see if we can't come closer to
>figuring out what it is, I mind quite a lot if they talk down at me
>about it. Puzzles, by their nature, talk down. And while I don't
>mind being talked down to about some fixture of a game universe, I do
>mind being talked down to about right and wrong.
Ok. Here's my difficulty with your position. Moral science is the
science of human behavior with respect to what men ought and ought not
to do. As such, it encompasses in some way every conceivable human
act--not just questions of sexuality and distributive justice and so
on, as many people seem to think. The permissibility of everything
from picking your nose to rolling out of bed to chopping off
Geoffrey's head with an axe comes under its purview. Consequently,
we're faced with the fact that every puzzle in an i-f game *is* in
some measure a moral puzzle. That's not to say that the point of every
puzzle is or even seems to be moral--as if the author were immediately
concerned with the rightness or wrongness of pulling a bellrope, for
example--but every puzzle involves the player performing some act.
Now what is the difference, in principle, between pulling the bellrope
and, for instance, killing or not killing poor innocent Geoffrey, when
the author is not immediately concerned with saying anything about the
rightness or wrongness of killing him? You can say that killing
Geoffrey is a "big" question, an important one, and pulling the
bellrope isn't, but then that's just because the justice of pulling on
bellropes doesn't happen to be very hotly disputed at the moment. I
mean, one could have said the same thing about eating a chicken only a
few years ago. But the eating of chickens *has* come into question by
some (while the pulling of long-oppressed bellropes could conceivably
do the same), and I think we have every reason to believe that a
puzzle involving the eating of a chicken is going to send certain
people into a frenzy, even though the author didn't particularly have
it in mind to say anything about the justice or injustice of eating
the ugly little buggers. The anti-chicken-eaters are going to holler
and scream about the preachiness and oppressiveness of it all, aren't
they? Why, this pro-chicken-eating opus is mere propaganda, they'll
say, and that evil chicken-eating puzzle forces me to perform a
distasteful (no pun intended) act that I would otherwise wish not to
perform.
Which is why I maintain that it finally comes down to your agreement
with the author on the principles his world is founded upon. However,
I'll readily grant that it's possible for a reader to read (or a
player to play) something set in a world he doesn't fully agree with
or doesn't believe has a wholly true connection with reality--or even
the slightest connection at all--but to do so he sets aside, by force
of will, his disagreement for the sake of whatever it is he continues
reading/playing for. I used to do that with science fiction, for
instance, before I finally stopped reading it altogether for the lack
of any payoff to offset all the nonsense (that is to say, from my
perspective, all the ignorant preaching).
I'll also grant that things seem less preachy when the matters in
dispute are small matters to the reader and/or when they seem to arise
from innocent error--but when they're great, big, snarling,
in-your-face disagreements, or when we feel that the author clearly
has it in his power to know better, we get pissed off and feel the
author is pounding a pulpit, even if that wasn't really his intention.
Which leads, sort of, to one last point. There is also the case of the
reader/player who doesn't have any very fixed opinion about the
matters in question. This kind of reader will be far less likely to
call things "preachy", for the simple reason that there's less he's in
active disagreement with. Plain experience will, I think, bear me out
on this. The accusations of "preachiness" mostly come from people with
firm opinions about the things they're calling "preachy".
And with that this preacher will end his sermon :)
Gareth Rees
Cardinal Teulbachs <card...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Generally, we tend to call something "preachy" when it stands on moral
> arguments we dispute and disagree with.
There's more to "preaching" in fiction than you suggest. The author of
a work of fiction has an ability that people in real life do not have,
namely to make things work out according to the way he or she thinks on
the issue. In real life the facts relating to moral arguments are
usually not at all clear-cut, but in fiction an absolute certainty can
be established. We might call this "stacking the deck".
A classic template for the libertarian political novel (especially in
science fiction) is that there is a debate about some moral issue,
followed by events which overwhelmingly bear out the cause of one side
(presumably that with which the author agrees). One thinks of "Atlas
Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, or "Starship Troopers" by Robert Heinlein. The
reader who disagrees with the author wails "but it isn't like that" in
vain - because it *is* like that in the author's invented world.
If an author has something contentious to say, then it's more
interesting to read about that argument in a world that is recognisably
complex, that hasn't been expressly created for the purpose of winning
the argument.
Returning to interactive fiction, "Tapestry" allows the reader to take
one of three moral positions, and the created world supports all three
positions [1]. I found it insipid precisely because of this
unconditional support. Where is the moral position of the author, apart
from being completely nonjudgemental?
[1] It is therefore annoying that by choosing the car crash scene first
one can close off one of the three paths without actually making any
choices, simply by failing to solve the puzzle first time.
--
Gareth Rees
null...@aol.com
Gareth Rees wrote:
> If an author has something contentious to say, then it's more
> interesting to read about that argument in a world that is recognisably
> complex, that hasn't been expressly created for the purpose of winning
> the argument.
Okay, Gareth just said in four lines everything I was struggling to say in
my much longer, less coherent post. Very nicely put, Gareth -- I'm going
to be tacking this one to my bulletin board, as a constant reminder as I
write (and not just I-F).
Maybe we can stop arguing about the evils of preachiness now, and go on to
the virtues of pithiness...
Neil
---------------------------------------------------------
Neil deMause ne...@echonyc.com
http://www.echonyc.com/~wham/neild.html
---------------------------------------------------------
Matthew Amster-Burton
Gareth Rees <gd...@cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>A classic template for the libertarian political novel (especially in
>science fiction) is that there is a debate about some moral issue,
>followed by events which overwhelmingly bear out the cause of one side
>(presumably that with which the author agrees). One thinks of "Atlas
>Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, or "Starship Troopers" by Robert Heinlein. The
>reader who disagrees with the author wails "but it isn't like that" in
>vain - because it *is* like that in the author's invented world.
Excellent point--this is one of the reasons I can fairly say that I've
never had my position swayed on a contentious point by a work of
fiction, only nonfiction.
Frankly, I question the ability of IF, a form of literature far more
restrictive than the novel, to make a reasoned and earnest
sociopolitical point. IF offers fewer plot devices and less text than
a book. It exists on a plane somewhere between a video game and a
novel, neither of which is a good medium for a political message.
I'm not here to bash IF, obviously. After playing some political
works and making an abortive attempt to write my own, however, I've
concluded that political IF is doomed to be too preachy or too subtle.
Now that I've made sweeping generalizations, an alternative method
does come to mind. Lost New York presents its politics as a history
lesson, one that most player probably haven't heard before. A good
way of avoiding preachiness, but probably not appropriate for many
games.
Matthew
Andrew Plotkin
null...@aol.com wrote:
> Maybe we can stop arguing about the evils of preachiness now, and go on to
> the virtues of pithiness...
Ok.
Aaron Mandel
So, Cardinal Teulbachs (card...@earthlink.net) is like:
: But no great author treats his readers in the way you're talking
: about. He has something to say and he says it. There's no opportunity
: for you to object and there's no pretense that he's merely suggesting
: something.
But authors DO "merely" suggest moral ideas... because they depict
particular people taking actions that follow those ideas. If the author
doesn't come right out and have a Heinleinesque conversation in the novel
about whether or not something should be done, all they can possibly do
from a moral standpoint is to lead by example.
Aaron
"It seems to me that a lot of Williams's poems, if subjected to the
scrutiny of customs officials, would be taxed as something other than
poetry."
- Dan Chiassen, poetry TA O-
Roger Giner-Sorolla
Graham Nelson opined:
> I don't object to erotica,
> personally, but having to answer questions like "Do you prefer
> blondes or brunettes?" was faintly revolting.
As someone who fancies redheads, I'd have to agree.
Seriously, I wonder what in particular makes that question so tacky. My
sense is that it compromises the fictional reality of the story by
shamelessly pandering to the reader's own fantasies. The author should
be an author, not a pimp, right?.
On the other hand, it's also a stupefyingly shallow level of character
definition. I can imagine a more interesting erotic game asking deeper
questions about the personality characteristics the player desires, and
then constructing difficulties around those characteristics. Perhaps the
author of an erotic game should strive to be a spohisticated pimp?
Roger Giner-Sorolla University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
rs...@virginia.edu Dept. of Psychology (Social)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Please, your Majesty," said the Knave, "I didn't write it, and they can't
prove I did: there's no name signed at the end."
"If you didn't sign it," said the King, "that only makes the matter worse.
You /must/ have meant some mischief, or else you'd have signed your name
like an honest man." -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Trevor Barrie
card...@earthlink.net (Cardinal Teulbachs) wrote:
>>This latter is the usual strategy, and it's one reason--though only
>>one--most i-f stories have the intellectual depth of comic books.
>
>Yikes. I just realized this line could easily be misconstrued. I'm not
>suggesting that the authors of "most i-f stories" are stupid.
Or, even worse, it could be read as you assuming that "like comic books" is
equivalent to "lacking intellectual depth" or "stupid", which would be, to
put it politely, utter crap.
Trevor Barrie
av...@Turing.Stanford.EDU (Avrom Faderman) wrote:
>>So no moral teaching is legitimate, or is it just that an author ought
>>not present himself explicitly as a teacher when he's writing fiction?
>
>I don't like people I don't know (and most IF authors fall into this
>category) presuming to teach me about morals. This doesn't mean I
>don't like them trying to convince me of a moral position; it's just
>that I require they do it in such a way that treats me as an equal
>rather than as a pupil.
>
>This is easier to do, as I said, in static fiction; making a moral
>_claim_ can be done in such a way that I feel someone is _suggesting_
>something to me; setting up a moral puzzle that I have to guess their
>answer to lends itself to this far less.
I don't see how that's the case. Perhaps if you'd elaborate more on what you
mean by a "moral puzzle"? (If you've explained earlier but I missed it, I
apologize for asking you to repeat yourself.) Examples would be nice...
George Caswell
On Wed, 11 Dec 1996, Trevor Barrie wrote:
> card...@earthlink.net (Cardinal Teulbachs) wrote:
>
> >>This latter is the usual strategy, and it's one reason--though only
> >>one--most i-f stories have the intellectual depth of comic books.
> >
> >Yikes. I just realized this line could easily be misconstrued. I'm not
> >suggesting that the authors of "most i-f stories" are stupid.
>
> Or, even worse, it could be read as you assuming that "like comic books" is
> equivalent to "lacking intellectual depth" or "stupid", which would be, to
> put it politely, utter crap.
>
It depends on which ones you read. I believe there may be a limited number
of non-crap comic books out there, but damned if I can find any.
Cardinal Teulbachs
Graham Nelson <gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk> made so bold as to state:
>But would it be immoral to play it as IF, in the persona of
>the serial killer, solving puzzles like sharpening an axe
>("The axe bounces off Geoffrey's neck. Doh!") before every
>massacre, and so on?
A hole in one, without any doubt.
See below.
--Cardinal T
I mean, what the hell kind of villain thwarts the hero's
progress with soup cans in the kitchen pantry?
--Russ Bryan
Are there any text games prominently featuring dinosaurs?
If not, does anyone besides me think it would be cool?
--Matthew Amster-Burton
"The axe bounces off Geoffrey's neck. Doh!"
--Graham Manson
Aaron Mandel
So, George Caswell (timb...@adamant.res.wpi.edu) is like:
: It depends on which ones you read. I believe there may be a limited number
: of non-crap comic books out there, but damned if I can find any.
Atomic City Tales
Eightball
anything by Kyle Baker
Doom Patrol (Grant Morrison)
Optic Nerve
...et(multi)c.
Your mileage may vary.
Aaron
I said I wanna be a singer like Lou Reed
'I like Lou Reed' she said, sticking her tongue in my ear
- Pixies, "I've Been Tired" O-
Cardinal Teulbachs
tba...@cycor.ca (Trevor Barrie) made so bold as to state:
>Or, even worse, it could be read as you assuming that "like comic books" is
>equivalent to "lacking intellectual depth" or "stupid", which would be, to
>put it politely, utter crap.
It was intended to be read as me "assuming" that "like comic books" is
equivalent to "lacking intellectual depth." That was the point.
I really don't think "The Brothers Karamazov", for example, could have
been done as a comic book. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but then you'll
have to show me, since I've never seen a comic book myself that
measured up to good prose fiction in any way.
Best regards from the utterest of crapmeisters,
--Cardinal T
I mean, what the hell kind of villain thwarts the hero's
progress with soup cans in the kitchen pantry?
--Russ Bryan
Are there any text games prominently featuring dinosaurs?
If not, does anyone besides me think it would be cool?
--Matthew Amster-Burton
"The axe bounces off Geoffrey's neck. Doh!"
--Graham Manson
Thomas Nilsson
George Caswell wrote:
> >
> It's really just the wrong context. I-F prompts you to step into a
> character's role. If that character needs to make serious decisions (not just
> 'how' or 'why' but 'should I?') it's presumptuous for the author to say 'this
> is right. That is not.'.
>
And previously Roger Carbol wrote:
> I feel like breaking into transcript mode, so I shall:
>
> >LOOK
> You see here a half-empty bottle of red wine.
> >EXAMINE WINE
> The luscious crimson liquid swirls in the bottle, verily begging
> you to quaff it.
> ---
> >TAKE SWORD
> You pull the sword out of the stone in one mighty stroke. Wielding it
> lustily, you regret there is no one nearby to taste its cold steel.
> ---
>
> Those two main characters had a viewpoint, I would think. And I for
> one, and possibly many others, find it an irritating obstacle to
> my viewpoint as a player.
>
This discussion can be viewed as to focus on the question if the author
is 'allowed' to decide the right and wrongs in the eyes of the
protagonist.
Personally I don't feel in the least bit irritated with small (but
tasteful) comments about 'my' (as the character in the work of IF)
feelings or viewpoints. On the contrary I feel they help me to take the
guise of the character created by the author.
Perhaps this is the result of my view of what an author is trying to
offer the player. I think a work of IF should offer something very akin
to a role in a play. I.e. as the player of that part I am the one doing
the interpretation of what the author intended, but the script does the
lion part of leading my in the direction to do this in the spirit of the
author.
Consider you as a modern western person doing the role of Hamlet. Would
you even consider playing that part with your own views of the world? Of
course not! Instead you would study the script to 'get into' the role of
Hamlet so as to act in a natural way on stage according to who you think
Hamlet is. In a work of IF I feel little comments about views, longings
etc. does make the spirit of the protagonist more visible to me. Of
course it must be done with some subtleness so as not to (as we say in
Sweden) 'write things on the persons nose'.
An opposing view could be that the author create the setting, and most
of the actors, but not the (perhaps most important) 'hero'.
Having this latter view I am sure that any 'prechyness' would upset
anyone, because any views and thoughts are imposed on *you* (as in the
real you).
Thomas
--
"Little languages go a long way..."
(ThoNi of ThoNi&GorFo Adventure Factories in 1985)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thomas Nilsson Phone Int.: (+46) 13 651 12
Junovägen 12 Phone Nat.: 013 - 651 12
S-590 74 LJUNGSBRO Email: th...@softlab.se
SWEDEN alan-r...@softlab.se for info
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Torbj|rn Andersson
Thomas Nilsson <th...@softlab.se> wrote:
> This discussion can be viewed as to focus on the question if the author
> is 'allowed' to decide the right and wrongs in the eyes of the
> protagonist.
>
> Personally I don't feel in the least bit irritated with small (but
> tasteful) comments about 'my' (as the character in the work of IF)
> feelings or viewpoints. On the contrary I feel they help me to take the
> guise of the character created by the author.
I had some ideas for a game which would give quite a bit of comments
on the protagonist's feelings about the other characters during the
prologue, but not very much after that.
I very much doubt it will ever be written, though. Partly for lack
of spare time, but mostly because I can't for the life of me think
of any way for the protagonist to get out of the rather awkward
situation the prologue would leave him in. :-)
_
Torbjorn
Avrom Faderman
In article <32ae2928...@news.peinet.pe.ca>,
Trevor Barrie <tba...@cycor.ca> wrote:
>av...@Turing.Stanford.EDU (Avrom Faderman) wrote:
>>This is easier to do, as I said, in static fiction; making a moral
>>_claim_ can be done in such a way that I feel someone is _suggesting_
>>something to me; setting up a moral puzzle that I have to guess their
>>answer to lends itself to this far less.
>
>I don't see how that's the case. Perhaps if you'd elaborate more on what you
>mean by a "moral puzzle"? (If you've explained earlier but I missed it, I
>apologize for asking you to repeat yourself.) Examples would be nice...
I don't think I did explain earlier...I was originally responding to
someone who asked whether "puzzles based on morality or emotions" were
a good idea. What I took them to mean by a "puzzle based on morality"
was this:
The player is confronted with what at first glance looks like a moral
dilemma. The author, however, has a particular opinion on which route
is the right one to take, and (and this is the important part, what
makes it a moral puzzle rather than simply a point at which the author
makes a moral claim) this is implemented in terms of which route will
allow the player to progress in the game.
As for examples, I don't really think there are very many
(fortunately) in the existing body of IF--I was responding to a
_proposal_, not criticizing any actual games. But here's a situation
(a pretty silly one; my puzzle-writing skills aren't up to creating
anything more interesting right now): The PC is riding on a trolley
which is barreling out of control. There is a switch up ahead.
Trapped on the left branch of the track is one person; on the right
branch are five. On the trolley is a switch. The player knows that
if he or she does nothing, the trolley will end up on the right
branch, while flipping the switch will put it on the left branch.
Now, suppose the following holds in the game: 1) Flipping the switch
will make the game unwinnable, and 2) There is no way for the player
to figure this out logically from the information given them in the
game; the only way they could know to do this is if they've figured
out that the author thinks it's better to let five die than it is to
actively kill one (there might be hints of _this_ elsewhere in the
game, but there are no hints that such an action would be not only
right but prudent).
This is the sort of situation I was describing as objectionable. Note
that it doesn't include:
1) The game making it clear that the PC has particular moral
viewpoints.
2) The game _describing_ the player's choices in laudatory or
condemning terms.
3) The game describing the player's choices in ways that, while not
explicitly approving or disapproving, are clearly meant to evoke pride
or guilt.
4) The game requiring the player to figure out the moral attitudes of
various NPCs in order to progress.
I think all these situations (including, and this is where all the
talk about static fiction vs. IF came in, #2-3) are fine.
One way to get around the danger of this situation, while still having
actions with moral weight and real consequences, is what I suggested
in the original thread, and what Tapestry seems to have tried to
do--abandon the idea of winning, and make multiple importantly
different endings that correspond to the player's choices (note that
Tapestry did engage in #3 above--one of the endings was clearly
considered best by the author--but the other endings weren't
premature; the player didn't have the feeling of having been punished
with a shortened or unsatisfying game for the choices he or she made).
-Avrom
Avrom Faderman
In article <58j697$s...@paraguay.earthlink.net>,
Cardinal Teulbachs <card...@earthlink.net> wrote:
[snip]
>What if one were to do, say, Lucretius' On the Nature of Things? I
>don't know what the hell a player would do in such a piece--I guess
>just fall through the void and bump atoms around--but suppose it were
>done. And suppose the original verse and language it's written in were
>preserved. Wouldn't you call that a good work? It's generally held to
>be more or less a great piece of poetic literature, in its original
>form. Yet it's nothing but one long sermon. It raves on from beginning
>to end about the nature of things, with all the moral consequences
>that radical materialism has to offer.
I would object to it much more if it had exercises. I expect debaters
to (usually) be earnest; I expect them to (often) hold their beliefs
deeply; I expect them to want to convince me of their views, and
(sometimes) to use very strong language in getting me to do so. I
have somewhat less patience with them if they (as, say, Anselm
occasionally does) call their opponents fools, and considerably less
if they pat their interlocuters on the head and toss them anchovies
when they seem to be coming around to their side--which is basically
what putting a moral puzzle in IF does.
>>I don't like people I don't know (and most IF authors fall into this
>>category) presuming to teach me about morals. This doesn't mean I
>>don't like them trying to convince me of a moral position; it's just
>>that I require they do it in such a way that treats me as an equal
>>rather than as a pupil.
>
>But no great author treats his readers in the way you're talking
>about. He has something to say and he says it. There's no opportunity
>for you to object and there's no pretense that he's merely suggesting
>something.
"Suggesting" was a bad word for me to use because it sounds limited to
something very mild. I don't mind an author trying very hard to
convince me of something, in language as vivid as they want to make
it, so long as they don't actually insult me.
I guess the upshot is that I'd rather be sermonized to (if the sermons
isn't insulting) than tested on morality, evaluated for my "progress"
towards a particular position, as if it were obvious that I would
reach it if I were only paying attention.
[snip]
>>See above. If the game tries to declare things about reality, that's
>>fine--it's the author's perogative to articulate his or her
>>positions. When things go awry is when the author decides something
>>about reality and then asks us to guess what it is.
>
>I agree completely that this makes for an aggravating puzzle, but
>isn't the problem then simply one of the player's ignorance vis a vis
>the author's game world? It's not really one of preachiness, is it?
^^^^^^^^^^
This is where the distinctive nature of _morality_ (as opposed to,
say, physics) comes in. If the author asks me to guess how to open a
gate, that's just a matter of my ignorance about the game world. But
morality isn't like that, as I claimed in a much earlier post--if a
moral claim is true in the game world, it's just plain true. So the
author hasn't simply decided something about the _game_world_ and
asked us to guess what it is (which needn't be aggravating, if we're
given some good hints); he or she has decided something about
_reality_ and asked us to guess what it is.
>Ok. Here's my difficulty with your position. Moral science is the
>science of human behavior with respect to what men ought and ought not
>to do. As such, it encompasses in some way every conceivable human
>act--not just questions of sexuality and distributive justice and so
>on, as many people seem to think. The permissibility of everything
>from picking your nose to rolling out of bed to chopping off
>Geoffrey's head with an axe comes under its purview. Consequently,
>we're faced with the fact that every puzzle in an i-f game *is* in
>some measure a moral puzzle. That's not to say that the point of every
>puzzle is or even seems to be moral--as if the author were immediately
>concerned with the rightness or wrongness of pulling a bellrope, for
>example--but every puzzle involves the player performing some act.
By "moral puzzle," I didn't simply mean a puzzle about which one could
have moral beliefs. I specifically meant one that had morality as its
point.
>Now what is the difference, in principle, between pulling the bellrope
>and, for instance, killing or not killing poor innocent Geoffrey, when
>the author is not immediately concerned with saying anything about the
>rightness or wrongness of killing him?
If the author isn't concerned with the rightness or wrongness of
killing Geoffrey, I wouldn't describe the puzzle as a moral one. And
while I would find a game that required me to kill Geoffrey to win
_distasteful_, my problem with it wouldn't be what I've been calling
"preachiness," unless the only way I could figure out that I was
supposed to kill Geoffrey was by figuring out that the author thought
the killing of innocents was morally obligatory.
Now of course it would never _occur_ to me that the author of a game
had moral positions about pulling bellropes, so if there were no other
clues about whether to pull the bellrope, I would assume not that I
was being asked to divine a moral principle but rather that I was
being asked to guess randomly. I don't like games that require that
of me, either, but again it's a completely separate issue.
> And with that this preacher will end his sermon :)
And with that _this_ preacher will lose email access for a couple of
weeks, so all those who have grown tired of me going on at great
length about this may rejoice. ;)
-Avrom
Trevor Barrie
card...@earthlink.net (Cardinal Teulbachs) wrote:
>>Or, even worse, it could be read as you assuming that "like comic books" is
>>equivalent to "lacking intellectual depth" or "stupid", which would be, to
>>put it politely, utter crap.
>
>It was intended to be read as me "assuming" that "like comic books" is
>equivalent to "lacking intellectual depth." That was the point.
>I really don't think "The Brothers Karamazov", for example, could have
>been done as a comic book. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but then you'll
>have to show me, since I've never seen a comic book myself that
>measured up to good prose fiction in any way.
Well, you could ask the folks who gave Maus the Pulitzer Prize; I'm sure
they felt that it measured up to prose in at least some ways. Watchmen is a
pretty good thought-churner. If you want to include non-fiction,
Understanding Comics is another good one.
aul...@koala.scott.net
>having a heavy-handed superiority of tone. That's what teaching is:
>declaring something to be true and giving the reasons why. Anything
>else isn't really teaching, is it? It's "suggesting".
I taught myself to play guitar, and I never took that tone with myself.
_The_Remains_of_the_Day_ taught me quite a bit about British nobility
and the culture of house servants (at least for the time in which it was
set). I-F games have taught me about thinking, patience, and persistence.
Various life experiences have taught me moral lessons.
Fairy Tales, Aesop's fables, and Sesame Street all entertain the audience
they are trying to teach.
(skip to the next paragraph if you haven't played Zork III.)
Zork III, specifically, did a little to teach that perhaps we should
trust people and perhaps we shouldn't kill people just because they
attacked us first. It's possible to find other lessons in these episodes,
but let's not bother in this article.
I don't think you could call any of that heavy-handed and superior.
So we see that perhaps moral teaching in I-F can be successful. I just
wonder if Joe Newbie could get away with the exact same thing, if
Infocom hadn't beaten him to it, or would critics line up to accuse him
of "preachiness?"
That is all,
Joe -- Aultman, not Newbie.
Forgive me if this article sounds heavy-handed or superior.
aul...@koala.scott.net
In article <32b2268f...@news.peinet.pe.ca>,
Trevor Barrie <tba...@cycor.ca> wrote:
>Well, you could ask the folks who gave Maus the Pulitzer Prize; I'm sure
>they felt that it measured up to prose in at least some ways. Watchmen is a
>pretty good thought-churner. If you want to include non-fiction,
>Understanding Comics is another good one.
Well, I guess I'll help this thread wend farther off topic...
I must second the mention of _Watchmen_ as seriously non-crap. It's a 12
book series published in 1986-87, which is probably still not hard to
find in a trade paperback edition. I highly recommend it. For more
information, follow the link on my home page: www.scott.net/~aultman.
That is all,
Joe -- whose computer is named dreiberg (I stay up late)
Trevor Barrie
av...@Turing.Stanford.EDU (Avrom Faderman) wrote:
>>>This is easier to do, as I said, in static fiction; making a moral
>>>_claim_ can be done in such a way that I feel someone is _suggesting_
>>>something to me; setting up a moral puzzle that I have to guess their
>>>answer to lends itself to this far less.
[...]
>What I took them to mean by a "puzzle based on morality" was this:
>
>The player is confronted with what at first glance looks like a moral
>dilemma. The author, however, has a particular opinion on which route
>is the right one to take, and (and this is the important part, what
>makes it a moral puzzle rather than simply a point at which the author
>makes a moral claim) this is implemented in terms of which route will
>allow the player to progress in the game.
Are the consequences of the "moral" action logical? If so, I don't see the
problem; if not, it's just bad puzzle design.
>As for examples, I don't really think there are very many
>(fortunately) in the existing body of IF--I was responding to a
>_proposal_, not criticizing any actual games.
It seems to me there are thousands of examples. Off the top of my head, what
about having to kill the troll in Zork (I)?
>But here's a situation[...]: The PC is riding on a trolley
>which is barreling out of control. There is a switch up ahead.
>Trapped on the left branch of the track is one person; on the right
>branch are five. On the trolley is a switch. The player knows that
>if he or she does nothing, the trolley will end up on the right
>branch, while flipping the switch will put it on the left branch.
>
>Now, suppose the following holds in the game: 1) Flipping the switch
>will make the game unwinnable, and 2) There is no way for the player
>to figure this out logically from the information given them in the
>game;
Then it's unfair. Letting the game become unwinnable without warning is just
basic bad design.
>This is the sort of situation I was describing as objectionable. Note
>that it doesn't include:
>
>1) The game making it clear that the PC has particular moral
>viewpoints.
>2) The game _describing_ the player's choices in laudatory or
>condemning terms.
But as far as I can tell, this is the _only_ way your comments about the
authour setting himself up as a moral authority could make sense. In
constructing a puzzle, the most he or she can say is that such-and-such
action has such-and-such consequence; this is totally different from saying
such-and-such action is right or wrong. I don't see how a work could convey
the latter message without flat-out saying it.
Brad O`Donnell
Graham Nelson wrote:
> There is an interesting moral issue here which does not arise
> in ordinary fiction. Suppose we have a game called "Nigel:
> Confessions of a Grotesque Serial Killer", or some such. People
> might well find reading such a novel acceptable (well, it would
> be in poor taste perhaps, but it wouldn't be morally wrong).
> But would it be immoral to play it as IF, in the persona of
> the serial killer, solving puzzles like sharpening an axe
> ("The axe bounces off Geoffrey's neck. Doh!") before every
> massacre, and so on? I certainly wouldn't like to.
If somebody made it, I'd probably play it... personally, I think
a game focusing on the turmoil within a serial killer (Either that,
or one that slowly reveals how the player has come to whatever calm,
"reasoned" basis he has for his hobby) could be very good.
>
--
Brad O'Donnell
STANTON FINLEY
It has come to my attention that, for reasons that people have argued
violently over, the most talked about, widely debated, and perhaps most
"famous" of this year's competition entries were the moral twisters
"Tapestry" and "In the End". Whether or not you agree or disagree with
the authors' messages, their implementation of it, or what not, I think
we all owe them a hand for the courage they showed in really trying to
squeeze into a two hour game some real "literary" and thought-provoking
points, often discussed but rarely implemented. These two games may
well become game legends, as A Change in the Weather and Curses,
because they've made us look at something in another way, and given us
a lot to talk about. My thanks to the authors.
Ian Finley
Graham Nelson
In article <Pine.SUN.3.91.96121...@xp.psych.nyu.edu>,
Roger Giner-Sorolla <URL:mailto:gi...@xp.psych.nyu.edu> wrote:
>
> Graham Nelson opined:
>
> > I don't object to erotica,
> > personally, but having to answer questions like "Do you prefer
> > blondes or brunettes?" was faintly revolting.
>
> As someone who fancies redheads, I'd have to agree.
>
> Seriously, I wonder what in particular makes that question so tacky. My
> sense is that it compromises the fictional reality of the story by
> shamelessly pandering to the reader's own fantasies. The author should
> be an author, not a pimp, right?.
>
> On the other hand, it's also a stupefyingly shallow level of character
> definition. I can imagine a more interesting erotic game asking deeper
Oh, it asked deeper questions all right. Answering that one's
ideal bust size is 1,000,000 inches may have been a puerile
response, but it did result in a much more intriguing text.
Personally, I think I'd prefer a game in which the ultimate
object of attraction was a person one wouldn't have guessed
from the outset (much less created from a specification).
But then I think this discussion is drifting back to an
interesting one held a couple of years ago, about the possibility
of a credible romance game (romance, rather than genre fiction
with a twist of romance, which is what I take "Plundered Hearts"
to be). I really do think this would be a fine idea for
someone to pursue.
I wonder if it would be possible to write an adventure-game sex
scene which was interactive, had a modicum of taste and still
took itself at all seriously? I think the very furthest it
could get would be foreplay, or worse...
> GET CONDOM
But the condom's right at the back of the medicine
cabinet, behind the piles ointment, and you don't (*)
want Delores to see that, do you?
> DELORES, CLOSE YOUR EYES
Delores pouts. "You close yours, first!"
> CONSUMMATE
Who are you calling consummate?
Etc., etc.
--
Graham Nelson | gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk | Oxford, United Kingdom
(*) This is not autobiographical. I do not have a medicine
cabinet.
Art Gecko
aul...@koala.scott.net penned:
> In article <58j697$s...@paraguay.earthlink.net>,
> Cardinal Teulbachs <card...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> >having a heavy-handed superiority of tone.
> I taught myself to play guitar, and I never took that tone with myself.
> _The_Remains_of_the_Day_ taught me quite a bit about British nobility
> and the culture of house servants (at least for the time in which it was
> set).
Funny you should mention that example -- according the laserdisk edition
of the movie, Ishiguru made most of that up. :)
In the hands of a good writer, it's usually impossible to tell.
--Liza, hoping she got his name correct.
--
ge...@retina.net MSTie #69957
http://fovea.retina.net/~gecko/
Neil Brown
In article <ant182009d07M+4%@gnelson.demon.co.uk>, Graham Nelson
<gra...@gnelson.demon.co.uk> writes
>Personally, I think I'd prefer a game in which the ultimate
>object of attraction was a person one wouldn't have guessed
>from the outset (much less created from a specification).
I suppose the ideal objective would be to allow the player to develop a
romance with any character who's 'available'. I imagine that this would
involve keeping scores and eventually matching the player with the
character who has the highest score (a bit like a dating agency, then).
But this could be open to misinterpretation, with a heterosexual male
player spending time befriending a male character only to find that the
game's decided that he's going to be the love interest.
>But then I think this discussion is drifting back to an
>interesting one held a couple of years ago, about the possibility
>of a credible romance game (romance, rather than genre fiction
>with a twist of romance, which is what I take "Plundered Hearts"
>to be). I really do think this would be a fine idea for
>someone to pursue.
>
>I wonder if it would be possible to write an adventure-game sex
>scene which was interactive, had a modicum of taste and still
>took itself at all seriously? I think the very furthest it
>could get would be foreplay, or worse...
I don't think that would work. I personally wouldn't want to have sex
with a woman in order to score points or win a game, and anyway, the
whole idea is tangled up with the issues of sexual preference and
gender.
At the most, it would be best to do what they do in James Bond films,
and focus on the couple before and after, but not during.
But then, can it only be a matter of time before we see interactive porn
springing up on the IF archives?
"Veronica
An Interactive Peek Into The Bedroom Of A Night Nurse
(c) 1997 DirtyOldMan Productions"
--
Neil Brown
Jason M Tucker
Neil Brown (ne...@highmount.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: I don't think that would work. I personally wouldn't want to have sex
: with a woman in order to score points or win a game, and anyway, the
: whole idea is tangled up with the issues of sexual preference and
: gender.
Are there any games available that have some sort of explicit gay theme?
Not necessarily sexual, just anything.
I haven't played the game Jigsaw (that's the one with Black, right?), but
that's supposed to be somewhat implicit, I believe.
--
______________________________________________________________________________
Jason Marc Tucker University of Minnesota
P.O.Box 13226 Middlebrook Hall
Minneapolis, MN 55414 412 22nd Ave. S.
pager: (612) 818-3555 Minneapolis, MN 55455
e-mail: tuck...@tc.umn.edu IRC nick: HearThrob
Web: http://www.tc.umn.edu/nlhome/m010/tuck0052
______________________________________________________________________________
Chuan-Tze Teo
Jason M Tucker wrote:
> Are there any games available that have some sort of explicit gay theme?
> Not necessarily sexual, just anything.
>
> I haven't played the game Jigsaw (that's the one with Black, right?), but
> that's supposed to be somewhat implicit, I believe.
Strsnge; I thought one particular scene made it implicit that White and
Black were of opposite (though unspecified) gender.
- Chuan
Neil Brown
In article <32BDFE...@hermes.cam.ac.uk>, Chuan-Tze Teo
<ct...@hermes.cam.ac.uk> writes
>Jason M Tucker wrote:
>
>> Are there any games available that have some sort of explicit gay theme?
>> Not necessarily sexual, just anything.
fear of the subject, I'm sure that IF can deal with it.
>> I haven't played the game Jigsaw (that's the one with Black, right?), but
>> that's supposed to be somewhat implicit, I believe.
>
>Strsnge; I thought one particular scene made it implicit that White and
>Black were of opposite (though unspecified) gender.
>
>
>- Chuan
That's the scene on the barge, isn't it? I know it's a bit of a weak
explanation, but the description of the passport photo suggests that it
is blurred and hard to make out - and perhaps the genders are hard to
make out.
But isn't the argument that Black can be a woman who dresses up as a
bloke a bit weak at times? I think that Jigsaw tries it's best not to
define gender, but at times we all have to stretch our imaginations in
order to incorporate our preferences. (There is no suggestion that the
player goes anywhere near makeup and prosthetics, so how does a female
player pass herself off as an officer on the Titanic and an army officer
elsewhere?) Anyway, this is an old argument, so I'll shut up now.
--
Neil Brown
Admiral Jota
Neil Brown <ne...@highmount.demon.co.uk> writes:
>In article <32BDFE...@hermes.cam.ac.uk>, Chuan-Tze Teo
><ct...@hermes.cam.ac.uk> writes
>>Jason M Tucker wrote:
>>> Are there any games available that have some sort of explicit gay theme?
>>> Not necessarily sexual, just anything.
>>> I haven't played the game Jigsaw (that's the one with Black, right?), but
>>> that's supposed to be somewhat implicit, I believe.
>>Strsnge; I thought one particular scene made it implicit that White and
>>Black were of opposite (though unspecified) gender.
>That's the scene on the barge, isn't it? I know it's a bit of a weak
>explanation, but the description of the passport photo suggests that it
>is blurred and hard to make out - and perhaps the genders are hard to
>make out.
But even if no one could make out the genders in the passport photo,
folks could probably figure out the genders of Black and White themselves
-- and I somehow doubt that a same-sex marriage would be considered
normal in that day and age.
--
/<-= -=-=- -= Admiral Jota =- -=-=- =->\
__/><-=- http://www.tiac.net/users/jota/ =-><\__
\><-= jo...@mv.mv.com -- Finger for PGP =-></
\<-=- -= -=- -= -==- =- -=- =- -=->/
Neil K. Guy
Jason M Tucker (tuck...@maroon.tc.umn.edu) wrote:
: Are there any games available that have some sort of explicit gay theme?
There's at least one but it's not finished. :)
- Neil K. Guy
--
the Vancouver CommunityNet * http://www.vcn.bc.ca/
(formerly the Vancouver Regional FreeNet)
David Baggett
>Jason M Tucker (tuck...@maroon.tc.umn.edu) wrote:
>: Are there any games available that have some sort of explicit gay theme?
I guess that depends on what you mean by "theme". The New Hell area in
"The Legend Lives!" is intended to remind readers of the marginalization of
and resulting misery endured by those whose inclinations are generally
viewed as somehow deviant by mainstream society. (E.g., gays, people who
look androgynous, women who are power-hungry.) It also points out the
irony of the sterotype that such inclinations are evil or aberrant, by
suggesting that making any group miserable enough will tend to produce evil
and aberrant behavior in its members.
It's clumsy, oversimplified, and overdone, but no one commented on it (to
me at least).
Dave Baggett
__
d...@ai.mit.edu
"Mr. Price: Please don't try to make things nice! The wrong notes are *right*."
--- Charles Ives (note to copyist on the autograph score of The Fourth of July)
Neil Brown
In article <jota.85...@laraby.tiac.net>, Admiral Jota
<jo...@laraby.tiac.net> writes
>But even if no one could make out the genders in the passport photo,
>folks could probably figure out the genders of Black and White themselves
>-- and I somehow doubt that a same-sex marriage would be considered
>normal in that day and age.
Yes, but they weren't seen together, were they? I'm not suggesting that
they went round declaring that they were a gay married couple (not very
wise in the Middle East even to this day) - no one linked the people in
the photo with Black and White. Then the question arises - who threw the
rope up to White? Someone trying to get White back to the barge so that
they could kill off both Black and White - but you don't see this person
and they might not see you, or simply assume that they've made a
mistake. Or something like that.
--
Neil Brown