Comment Re:Interactive? (Score 2, Interesting) 288
Ah, but IF is constrained by design, and willing to do so. As an IF writer, I don't give the player a world filled of interesting things to do and then suggest some goal: I simply plan about an specific puzzle and then populate the world with the minimal actions and objects needed to win. Any side addition such as extra actions available and more objects to define the world and interact with, are considered simple flavor or clues for the player, when this form of interactivity should be the central point of the experience instead of yet another word puzzle or yet another story to be told. It is incredible just how so many games blame the player when s/he attempts to interact with some things not related to the plot ("this is only scenary, you idiot!").
The game industry is in no good shape, but there is hope. Serious research has been going on the field since the 60's at least, and there is the literature to prove it. There is no excuse to ignore all this work, neither for the professional 3D-wizbang developer (who unfortunately usually does) nor for the amateur game writer.
Actually, I see Photopia as a step backwards. I agree it's a fantastic story, but there is no interactivity at all. The command prompt in Photopia could be substituted by a "press any key to continue" message and the overall experience could be about the same. Perhaps better, because the "puzzles" in Photopia serve no purpose at all and can distract you. Photopia triumphs with the fiction part while dismishing the interactive one.
I have to concede at least that the IF designer does not have nonsense marketing constraints such as the need to do big, flashy 3D graphics. Actually, the command prompt would be the best interface there is IF (and it is a big if) it understands everything. Then it is the equivalent of a Star Trek computer hearing your voice and doing just what you said. The problem with current command prompts, and the cause they are substituted by GUIs, is they don't. They only understand a tiny subset of verbs you're supposed to memorize. Interactive fiction "pretends" it understands a lot. You're supposed to try anything you want. The reality is, however, very different. There is a tiny subset of commands accepted, and you know them either because you're familiar with the genre or because guessing them is part of the puzzle. This is horrendous interface design at best. There should be another way, maybe inverse parsers, maybe some new interface abstraction not seen yet.
Finally, I'm not interested in historical retrogaming. There are other good points to bring interactive fiction to the table. Anybody could write it, for example, transforming the genre to a medium and not only a bunch of "games" (it's not true today simply because the current tools are simply not designed this way).
The game industry is in no good shape, but there is hope. Serious research has been going on the field since the 60's at least, and there is the literature to prove it. There is no excuse to ignore all this work, neither for the professional 3D-wizbang developer (who unfortunately usually does) nor for the amateur game writer.
Actually, I see Photopia as a step backwards. I agree it's a fantastic story, but there is no interactivity at all. The command prompt in Photopia could be substituted by a "press any key to continue" message and the overall experience could be about the same. Perhaps better, because the "puzzles" in Photopia serve no purpose at all and can distract you. Photopia triumphs with the fiction part while dismishing the interactive one.
I have to concede at least that the IF designer does not have nonsense marketing constraints such as the need to do big, flashy 3D graphics. Actually, the command prompt would be the best interface there is IF (and it is a big if) it understands everything. Then it is the equivalent of a Star Trek computer hearing your voice and doing just what you said. The problem with current command prompts, and the cause they are substituted by GUIs, is they don't. They only understand a tiny subset of verbs you're supposed to memorize. Interactive fiction "pretends" it understands a lot. You're supposed to try anything you want. The reality is, however, very different. There is a tiny subset of commands accepted, and you know them either because you're familiar with the genre or because guessing them is part of the puzzle. This is horrendous interface design at best. There should be another way, maybe inverse parsers, maybe some new interface abstraction not seen yet.
Finally, I'm not interested in historical retrogaming. There are other good points to bring interactive fiction to the table. Anybody could write it, for example, transforming the genre to a medium and not only a bunch of "games" (it's not true today simply because the current tools are simply not designed this way).
