Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Oregonian Haruspex Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: The joy of text ? the fall and rise of interactive fiction Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 13:36:07 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 59 Message-ID: References: <81txxHkiYnorKB+sXGadVvhD@dont-email.me> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="442748a62ea1c20fc23ee880ac840014"; logging-data="2000"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX19PBwZp1idJszAqTl02jnOY" User-Agent: Unison/2.1.10 Cancel-Lock: sha1:tHKDKmCKANAKBw9ZlO4/x2U1lQg= Xref: csiph.com comp.misc:5422 On 2014-10-23 10:25:41 +0000, Rich said: > http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/22/interactive-fiction-awards-games > > > The annual Interactive Fiction Competition is an institution that has > endured for almost 20 years, with the goal of discovering each year's > best and brightest works in the world of text-based gaming. The genre is > surprisingly broad and complex ? and this year's entries show how much > text games have to offer modern audiences, even those who don't > ordinarily play computer games. > > The age of free and intuitive creation tools, combined with the > explosion of mobile platforms, e-reader devices and an audience that's > comfortable reading screens, means a brand-new opportunity for fresh > narrative experiences that stand to attract new types of players. > > Veteran gamers may remember the text-based adventures of history ? > titles like Adventureland, Zork and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. > Arriving in the late 1970s and early 80s, they were taut, forbidding > puzzles of logic and language; proceeding the age of graphics on home > computers, they made the most of constraints, using brief, carefully > chosen prose and a limited list of terse commands to create the > experience. > > ... I view interactive fiction through a somewhat more jaundiced eye than some. The interpreters were very rigid in their requirements, the interactivity was usually quite low - "you can't do that" being probably the most common response from the interpreter - and the storytelling was often quite bad. Take Zork for example. If it was published as a novel it would have cost the publisher a lot of money as I seriously doubt it would have broken even. But as an interactive novel, a novel form of entertainment in those days, it was fresh and exciting at least until you got it home and tried to play it. The story was just laughably bad, the dialog and plot would have cause a middle-schooler to get poor marks as fiction, and it was designed to frustrate the player in order to make the game seem cleverer than it actually was. Most Infocom games were like this. HG2G was even worse as a game, because it failed to capture the humor of the novel, and it was frustrating as hell to boot. I must say though, it did effectively communicate the helpless, frustrated feelings that Arthur Dent must have had and allowed me to empathize with the character in the novel much more than I could have had I not played the game. Stick a fork in it, interactive text-based fiction is done. The only way I could see it making a comeback is if there was a much more complicated and sophisticated interpreter that could actually understand natural language to a much higher degree, and provide a much more interactive environment that wasn't "on rails." As far as video games go, I'm personally past the point where I wish to have my hand held while I am led down a garden path by the developer. This is why I play Dwarf Fortress.